mattadams

There is something to be said about wired peripherals... their dependability, ease of use and lack of wasteful batteries that just end up in a landfill.

I have to second this. I am a long-time Linux user, having run Debian since the late 90s and Slackware since 1993 but systemd put me over the edge. Things that worked and were easy to figure out in the previous init system just stopped working under systemd. It is a brutally complicated init that didn't add anything to my experience and pushed me out of Debian and into FreeBSD where things still have sane defaults. I like to get my work done instead of messing around with an init system that refuses to let me do even the most basic things.

Not all new things are great and I think Debian made a mistake not supporting a traditional init system alongside systemd or at least until the kinks could be worked out.

I feel badly for this guy but drinking on a public street is a no-no in most places in North America. There is something to be said for understanding the local rules, regardless of how stupid they may be.

TightVNC

I'm aware that there are unmanned stations -- not only oil platforms but regular leases. I live in oil & natural gas country (Northern Alberta). What you don't see are the thousands and thousands of guys running around keeping it all ticking.

There are some things that you can automate -- but a lot of things in the oil & gas industry cannot be automated. Specifically, the leg work required to get things started & keep them maintained. Automating those sorts of things requires a pretty advanced AI and I don't see that coming around the corner anytime soon.

Yeah, that is probably never going to happen or if it does it's so far out that it's not worth speculating on.

Quickbooks, absolutely. If you're doing anything serious you need to use an industry standard (not necessarily Quickbooks) for this kind of application. Your accountant will hate you for using anything else.

I think my biggest gripe is that these things are only possible by using one of the many libraries or rolling your own solution. The rather disorganized state of the node.js libraries is far too confusing for most of us who don't do Node 24x7.

How about "please don't use stuff that makes rendering horrifically slow on relatively modern hardware?"

Please see my reply below, thanks!

I know that Jason will reply to this later today but I figured I would do it now.

The company is based in Ontario. Jason lives in Oakville so anything in the GTA would be good.

Data tables (jQuery addon) does a pretty good job with HTML tables.

Is this just a subvertisement for Mongo?

Not even. You misunderstood what I was referring to: http://goo.gl/6iXui

HOSTS.TXT anyone?

Be very careful with screwing with your sleep cycle. Our bodies and to some extent our minds are hardwired to depend on the natural rhythm caused by daylight/night-time. Obviously this is pretty easy to mess with thanks to artificial light and the cross-over of light spectrums.

There are chemicals in our brains which are only produced by certain rhythms, not to mention the need for sunlight and vitamin D. Being especially hard on your body can be detrimental to your long-term health and when we sleep is almost certainly as important as how much sleep we get.

I write this as someone who has a very tough time on both counts and is seriously envious of his wife who gets good sleep at the drop of a hat.

Disagree. As a Canadian entrepreneur and someone who has previously worked as a sole proprietor for many years you should absolutely consider incorporation.

If you are a sole entrepreneur looking to go with a Canadan Controlled Private Corporation you should NOT pay a lawyer to get your business set up. Do your research, choose the jurisdiction that fits you best and get to it. It's dead simple and once you've determined the correct steps you can easily accomplish what need in a matter of days, or less.

Secondly, if you are paying $2k+ for your first fiscal year (let's assume that the company has not broken even) then you are being ripped off, plain and simple. You do not need audited accounts at this time. I paid roughly $450-550 annually for the first couple of years for the services of a very competent firm who I would refer in a heartbeat.

Being a sole proprietor is simple, both from the tax and setup perspectives however it is not without some drawbacks. The tax rate is much higher than that of a corporation and you will be doing business as yourself. This has far reaching legal ramifications if you want to accept money from people you don't know (online sales for your SaaS, for example) and many things that you will need to get to this stage are going to require a registered business at the very least. There are also some avenues that will be inaccessible to you because of your sole proprietor status (certain grants, tax credits, etc.) and you will constantly be fighting the little guy image.

The moral of the story is, if you ever want your business to move "beyond yourself", you should seriously consider incorporating.

Waitaminute. Paying to pitch?? I thought ideas were a dime a dozen!

My guess: severe burns, pulmonary edema and cardiovascular collapse. I'm basing this on the temperatures of lava vs. what would be expected inside of a fully involved house fire (I used to be a volunteer fire fighter).

Olark, among others. I'm surprised no one has mentioned them.

I agree with your point that "each purchase vector should either be done right or not at all." In Pizza Pizza's case they should have stopped at an easy-to-use location finder with address and contact info and avoided the ordering bit altogether.

I'm willing to bet that Pizza Pizza isn't missing out on much money over their website. It is far more common for someone to place an order for pizza by dropping by the establishment or making a two minute phone call.

What is more likely is that the majority of their customers really don't care about the website and so Pizza Pizza has little incentive to improve it. Why spend time and money on something that virtually no-one uses?

You're an exception to the rule. Businesses aren't as stupid as you think: they're simply putting their resources elsewhere. Online accessibility is not a priority for many businesses and the poor execution that follows should not be mistaken for anything else.

I don't think I've written anything extraordinary about running a startup in relative isolation but I am curious to know what other people think of the idea.

I'm definitely on the "it's better to be closer" side of the fence but I'm willing to be converted and hear what other people have to say about their startup experiences vs. proximity to other like-minded people.

To expand on your statement, if you're doing a lot of meaningless work in a startup then something is seriously out of whack. Nothing, absolutely nothing, should be meaningless to a startup. If it is then it's not essential to the startup and needs to be scrapped.

Fair enough. I really thought you were advocating something else.

Also most modern systems don't support hardlinks on directories.

Bullshit. Free market or not, that's an entirely one dimensional view on the value of software. Plenty of software has value -- the software that makes a business more productive, competitive or saves it money has inherent value, not to mention applications in other areas.

Competent business owners, managers and technical people making decisions about the implementation of software are very interested in the value of that software and its value to business is exactly why we have an economy that exchanges money for these things.

This might sound like a big deal but it shouldn't be a headliner. Whatever the details (and we don't have many) companies use and drop technologies on a fairly regular basis. Sometimes it's a good fit and sometimes it's not. Obviously in this case Couch didn't do everything Canonical needed (I think someone else actually pointed out that Canonical mentioned that their needs were unique).

For every Canonical that drops Couch there will be 10s of other companies that adopt it because it's a good fit there. All this should reinforce is that every tool has a good fit and that smart implementors pick the one that jives best or moves to a better one when the opportunity presents itself.