barisme
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15 years ago
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on: Trying to pursue many different directions at once?
Or you can do the human thing. Grab the water, move it next to the food, and enjoy them together. While you're at it, you can even pay someone to take the donkey to market and trade him for a case of scotch. That's multitasking!
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: It’s OK to make an extra $2k per month if you’re a programmer. Here’s how.
My first time being downvoted, I think. Humor falls flat == bad. Got it. Sorry for dragging you down with me.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: Ask HN: My Startup is Going to Die Because I Messed Up
Yeah the other founder probably needed to contribute $5000 too. If he could not, that would have been your first clue that it wouldn't work.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: Ask HN: My Startup is Going to Die Because I Messed Up
Product and sales first. It sounds like you spent your marketing money way too soon. Later you might have found out that your offering was not even what customers really wanted. Then you're back in the same position where you've spent everything on marketing, and have no money to make more appropriate materials.
Here's your next written business plan:
1. Build something you can show off - a product, a demonstration of your service, whatever.
2. Show it to anyone who will sit still.
3. If 2 out of 10 people are not trying to buy your stuff or hire you by the end of the demo, pick one from a,b,c below:
a) show it to different kinds of people
b) revise it and show it to more people
c) take whatever you've learned and can recycle (code, art) and go back to #1 above.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: Ideas Matter
... if you execute them.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: It’s OK to make an extra $2k per month if you’re a programmer. Here’s how.
I demo'd some apps I made at a local group and before I knew it they were beating the doors down. Job offers too, but I turn those down.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: It’s OK to make an extra $2k per month if you’re a programmer. Here’s how.
I guess the real money comes when you help marketing people find spend-happy people's mailboxes ;)
Or connect conmen with heiresses, vacuum cleaner salesmen with Persian cat owners, horny teenagers with lonely centerfold models... I can come up with these all day, now get busy!
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: It’s OK to make an extra $2k per month if you’re a programmer. Here’s how.
This reply is quite hilarious. I'm bursting with laughter.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: Lionhead: Pre-owned worse than PC piracy
Is that violin music? Are those tears? Is the resale value of your product hurting you? Aww.
I guess next I should feel sorry for GM because they don't get a cut when I sell my 10 year old car. OR maybe they should disable the steering wheel if the driver changes. That way they can charge a fee to enable the car for each new user.
This studio needs to get out the duct tape and shut up its developer before any more of this crap flows out of his mouth.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: Last chance: let the FDA know why you want direct access to your own genome
We came up with the same metaphor. My post started with the glucose meter as well, and pointed out that misinterpreting blood glucose was more likely to have immediate and dire consequences.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: Startups Are Hard
Wow, your catharsis really comes through in your writing. If nothing else, maybe there's a memoir in all this ;) Seriously though, stay positive and stay in the habit of asking people for help when you're stuck. And don't just ask investors, 'cause their agenda might force them to say 'double or nothing' every time. Ask friends, other tech people, people who work on FOSS, old college professors, online friends. You need to develop, but you also need to spend a lot of time in front of other people. Also, make sure you're doing something you like. If the work is not rewarding, find something that is.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: Clean Up Your Mess - A Guide to Visual Design for Everybody
I think the one on the right (same one you indicate) is definitely more readable. I'm a former copywriter, so I'm more verbal than visual in some ways, and I am still quite sure you have this right. For further reading and info about user testing, you might check out books by Jakob Nielsen -- ie: Designing for Web Usability, and Eyetracking Web Usability.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: Clean Up Your Mess - A Guide to Visual Design for Everybody
Wow. Thank you. I'm still reading but so far you've increased my visual IQ by 1000%.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: Bose founder makes big stock donation to MIT
Sort of a tech school with a marketing culture. They have a tendency to define new words and get the coolest press.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: Why the end of scarcity will change the economics of everything
There's a lot of talk about this from time to time, but it's nothing new. For example, the book _Free: The Future of a Radical Price_ by Chris Anderson discussed it extensively in human-readable language. 1st edition was July 2009.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens
Yes. Why do people assume you can just make a phone call to Andromeda? 'Ya, hi ET, what's new?' If Andromeda disappeared into a black hole 1 million years ago, we wouldn't even know yet. We have to wait 2.5 million years for news from Andromeda, assuming the news can't transcend the speed of light.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: Ask HN: Is there an open source license which prevents commercial use?
Look into how Ghostscript is capitalized. It might be good to look at some other case studies too so you understand the broader range of possibilities. To get help on that you might need to phrase the question a little differently.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens
Bill Gates might rather cure river blindness, malaria and cholera. He's at that stage when a billionaire thinks about humanitarian legacy. Similar to Andrew Carnegie and the moguls of that generation.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: SETI Institute suspends search for aliens
Yes or 'they' might use a form of energy that is totally foreign to us. Maybe it's not even a beam or a ray. Maybe it's micro-black-hole-oscillation (yeah, made that up). I mean, who knows? It's all hypothetical anyway. And here we are spending money on a bunch of dishes that pick up a specific range of radio frequency. Stick the same dishes on top of a sports bar and at least we can all watch football.
barisme
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15 years ago
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on: Does hacking dilute creativity?
No, programming empowers you to make your ideas actually work. It also forces you to break the great big idea into chewable little pieces, and that's the process that turns imagination into creation.
But yeah, you might feel constrained for a while until you master the tools. Once you do master them though, will anyone be able to tell you that your idea can't be implemented?
