uh, actually this makes it easier to be decentralized, since it allows you to put a word document in iPaper on your own site (and looks a hell of a lot better than .doc -> HTML)
Great! Last time I felt like a loser roaming around - where everybody was talking to everybody else and I was looking in all possible general directions - like having a bad day at a night club.
Let me ask a more fundamental question first: does this startup have a well defined mission? In my experience the lack of a solid mission usually reflects bigtime in operations and development, causing a lot of frustration.
How are they beating PDF on cost? Acrobat Reader is free, and they don't put ads in there.
On top of that, they say that the cost of creating documents is "free". What? Are they handing out free Word licenses with this thing or something? Because last time I checked, the price of creating a document for iPaper is the cost of the program that makes the original document for iPaper. As you stated yourself, "converting" to iPaper is free. So yeah, if all your documents are TXT files then this thing is free, but if you want any semblance of structure in your document then you're probably using... you guessed it, DOC or PDF. There are plenty of free PDF converters out there (plugins for Word, built-in support in Mac OS X, standalone programs, etc etc). So I think at best iPaper is even with PDF in this regard.
Tangentially, PDF is not "bulky and painful". It just happens that Acrobat Reader is a ridiculously awful reader. Mac OS X handles PDFs like a breeze, they feel incredibly light weight as they open instantly and any application can output to them. So I whole-heartedly agree that Reader is a bad program, but don't extrapolate that to the format.
I call bullshit. A lot of his arguments perhaps make sense for early versions of Office, but for '97 and later? It didn't occur to anyone on the Word or Excel teams in 1997 that maybe interoperability would be an issue?
I really enjoy Joel's blog, but sometimes I can't stand the clubbish-ness of the old-school Microsoft brigade. "We were a bunch of geniuses, doing the best we could..." Yeah, well, the software is usable, but it kinda sucks. Don't be surprised if the people MS victimized for a decade sound critical now that we can all see how the sausage gets made.
Ugh. Article is bunk, and I really wish nutritionists and dieticians and their ilk would stop trying to convince people that they only need to eat something else to feel 100% better.
The most important thing you can do for your health -- and I'll tie this in to entrepeneurism in a moment -- is get some regular exercise. It doesn't have to be at the gym, for 6 hours a week, either.
I used to hang with a bunch of rock climbers. Some of them prided themselves on their dirtbag scavenging habits, and they ate some pretty gnarly gruel. But, they were fit. In many cases, they could have been models for anatomy lessons. Their health had almost nothing to do with what they were eating, and much more to do with the regular exercise they got.
So, if I'm having trouble getting focused, I'll go for a walk. I walk down to the local gas station for a soda, or the store for some groceries -- both about a half mile out is all -- and it gives me plenty of time to get away from the work and the computer and refocus a little. I get back to the desk, I feel a lot better, and I'm ready to roll on the next project.
Forget this diet crap. Go find an excuse to walk somewhere regularly.
Also: even if you could create an excellent predictor with the right inputs, a tiny startup wouldn't be able to collect the inputs -- including inside/detailed info -- all by itself. So starting as a service to the people who can demand such info (investors) makes sense -- and if it works, then they can "raise a fund themselves and beat the tar out of" the old guard. That's how it usually works in finance -- prove yourself first in the service of others, then once you have a track record, run your own show.
The problem I have with articles like this is they find some fringe figure (either a total bull or bear) and have them talk about the extreme edge of an argument because it makes better press. Because of this motivation, you're not going to get an objective analysis of the issue. The author even said "To answer this question we should ask a true bear".
No one economist is ever going to get this right because economics is more like weather forecasting than anything. You're better looking at "surveys of economists" you can find in many publications to get an idea of what economists on aggregate think. The wisdom of crowds, anyone?
hey chill. They offered you, so they wanted you, you are not dumb. What is actually wrong is with the people managing your startup, NOT YOU. (isn't people management something you would want to avoid at a startup? )
Hiring a freshman, a tricky decision. Its two way.
One freshers are full of energy, you have a clean slate to define culture and mould them the way you want your team to look like.
At the same time there are 2 big issues - You need to groom them, train them, grow them. If you are not good at it or think you won't have time for it, please don't waste any time in the kid's career. (skill & time, both of which seems to be the issue at your startup)
You need to be ready to be on your own, if you think you cannot, you should happily move out. Find a company with senior folks who know to handle this better, more have time on their hands dedicated to grow you.
In it, there's a great heuristic for walking out of your local supermarket carrying food (as opposed to processed "edible foodlike substances"): shop near the edges.
