jwh

Why spend money when you don't have to? Go direct to the relevant UK authority at http://www.companieshouse.gov.uk/, read the guidance notes carefully and incorporate away. Pay special attention to your articles of association as they're akin to a constitution for your business. Also, you'll need a registered office in the UK that documents can be delivered to.

Experience: UK resident who set his own Limited company up

Thanks for the downvotes, I'll take them on board

Did you not RTFA? The article is about a PHP hosting company that is getting merc'd because of the security flaws inherent in PHP that lead to their design decision to use Amazon EC2.

Have you tried NetBeans?

Whilst I couldn't find a way to automatically include header files, once they're added NetBeans automagically switches on autocomplete and finds documentation where available. I've used it for my own C++ projects (using headers and libraries from others as well as my own) and had no problem. I'm by no means an expert (used C++ for only a few months, coming from a PHP background) but I managed to get a few CGI applications working using Xerces-c

Whilst I don't think a profitable business like Groupon will 'burst', I think it will slowly deflate. Why? Does anyone remember the company from over a decade ago, backed by Paul Allen, who were going to revolutionise ecommerce by offering group discounts? It was Mercata and they went under in 2001.

The article at http://www.seattlepi.com/business/vc122.shtml sums up why long-term, Groupon will face challenges (and it's also the exact reason why I decline to use Groupons' services):

"Those who wanted a baby jogger or DVD player, for example, sometimes had to wait seven days for Mercata's so-called PowerBuy to kick in. By that time, shoppers had moved on to another store or online shopping site. Instead of creating a faster, cheaper way to buy products, Mercata actually slowed the buying process."

Que Groupon offering group-buying service with no time-limits, only a quantity-limit?

"...if you have to raise thirty million to start your business, its probably not a good business (at least for me)."

I've lost count of the number of articles I've read saying "Startup XYZ Inc just raised $X million!" and a dearth of the "Startup ABC Inc made $X million profit on revenues of $Y million" kind.

It's refreshing to see an article on HN that points out the obvious: if you have such a good business, why doesn't it make any money?

"The growing use of Ruby on Rails, a Web application framework, in recent years has created developer shortages everywhere, said Rails creator David Heinemeier Hansson...Many developers who were trained in Java or PHP simply need to be retrained, he said."

=== "Hmm, PHP and Java are out, so what does someone with vested interests in Rails think I should learn? Hang on, Rails isn't mentioned as out of date by its creator so I'll retrain in that!"

I can't remember the exact articles from HN but there were two recently: one was about a sysadmin that went for an interview at Facebook or Google and was surprised that they wanted knowledge on low-level, performance critical features rather than advanced bash programming; another was an example of why it's often more cost effective to get twice the performance out of one server (by investing more development time i.e. C/C++ over PHP) rather than buying another server.

YMMV but I switched from PHP to C++ for my personal web projects and haven't noticed it taking me exponentially more time to develop.

What about the effect of bad students? Isn't education a two-way process involving a supplier and a consumer?

I got my highest grades in subjects I enjoyed (Business and Mathematics) and my lowest grades in those I didn't (English). Was my English teacher not as good because I got a D yet the Business and Maths teachers got an A or B out of me? Does the fact that other students got A in English and a D or E in Business or Maths show that actually the English teacher is 'better'? Or was it just an anomaly?

Sure, there are no doubt a tiny minority of teachers who (in the UK at least) have paid thousands for a degree, gone through some form of postgraduate training and accreditation (years in total) only to land a job and then throw it all away. However, my own opinion is that 'bad teachers' are an excuse for bad students and (anecdotally and just in my experience) poor parental/primary caregiver role models. I saw the same 'my son/daughter is performing poorly because of bad teachers' come from parents whose children were more adept at petty crime and drug dealing.

As other comments have drawn attention to, it's a shame that the first things to go in any government austerity drive are sciences and things too complicated for the average, TV-educated Joe to care about. Imagine how different the world would be if in the 1940s the UK decided computers had no use outside of war and cut their funding. Or if in the 1960's the US government decided that DARPA should be focusing on cutting costs, not trying to connect these computer machines together over this network they'd been working on...

I agree. It's a fact that men far outnumber women in I.T. for a variety of reasons (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women,_girls_and_information_te...). One interesting point from the article:

"From a two year research initiative published in 2000 by AAUW, young girls in focus groups reported that "lack of interest" was not the reason for steering away from a computing career, but rather, their male peers were treating computers as toys"

Is it safe to assume girls + I.T. + toys != good times?

The problem is the 'rich guys' are using the average Joes money, often lent to/invested with them by banks and pensions funds to try and secure the largest return possible.

Even if they're using their own money, the cynic inside me predicts that if/when the house of cards comes crashing down, Mr and Mrs Taxpayer will be asked to 'stabilise' the industry in the interests of national economic security.

The video shows perfectly why unwritten/verbal/implied contracts are to be avoided at all cost.

Against my better judgement I recently completed some work without a written contract. It was exactly like the restaurant scene: they'd received the services and used them but started questioning the bill (after it became overdue).

I still find it strange that people view other people as a commodity like oil or pork bellies yet they expect ridiculous returns, akin to a barrel of oil spontaneously duplicating and selling itself for $300

Part of that slow GDP growth can be attributed to having to absorb an entire communist country (East Germany) into a capitalistic society (West Germany).