The issue in IT doesn't arise around the Coke formula on Dropbox, unless Coke could somehow sue Dropbox for damages. The issue arises around large quantities of sensitive information. What if those Red Box video rental machines could be stolen to get the credit card data inside (they can't, the data aren't in there).
The issue hits hard in medical record IT. Losing control of 500 or more folks' medical records gets your name in lights here, and you're required to try to notify everybody who might be affected.
http://www.hhs.gov/ocr/privacy/hipaa/administrative/breachno...
What kind of insurance could possibly cover a startup against the reputation cost of this? Not insurance that any startup could afford. Plus, the liabilities for misuse of the leaked data (identity theft, employment blacklisting of sick people, you name it) are unlimited.
So, a business that holds medical records for people is inherently a Ferrari car wash, unless the entrepreneurs can somehow persuade their hospital customers to bear the reputation risk. That's very hard.
Cool! The wall around another walled garden starts to crumble! How many years before the carriers themselves start using open source code in their infrastructure because it's more reliable and robust?
No, sir, it's not inappropriate. The cost of health care is a major cost to most businesses. Startups are lucky that the investors bear the cost; but it shows up as a major line item, second only to salaries, in the typical startup's pro forma expense budget. You could probably stretch your first round 15% further timewise if you could get employees without buying them health insurance.
When I was a college student, I had my bikes stolen so often that I did two things: First, I started buying hot bikes cheap because, hey, legal bikes were expensive.
Second, I wrapped the frame of one bike in masking tape and smeared grease and paint on it. I kept that one for years; not even the local junkies wanted it. I guess they didn't notice my servicable Campy brakes and shifters, or didn't see the value in them.
I'm not sure the rational-actor theory applies to bike theft.
UNLESS it's the bike dealers behind the theft rings doing it to create demand, and they're just crushing the old stuff. Bwahahahahahaha. There's a batman movie in that villain theory.
Investors annoyed that Zuckerberg's management beat them at their own game! Film at 10!
Bankers didn't have to go out at $38. Investors didn't have to buy at $38. I should think the VCs who sold into the IPO would be happy they got such a premium. The ones who bought into the IPO are probably feeling burned. The insiders who had a lockup are probably feeling burned. That's the way it goes on 21st-century wall street.
Would this business of guessing whether a prospective customer will spend big money be more ethical if it were transparent -- that is, if these escores were visible to the persons being scored?
Librarians aren't as dumb as you make them out to be. Several times I've asked a librarian to locate a mis-shelved book I really needed, and they've always succeeded. I gather it's a pain, but it's considered a big victory.
Also, as a library patron, they've taught me to take any book that I notice mis-shelved and set it on a nearby table.
It never ceases to amaze me how human intelligence and care can transform algorithms that are theoretically brittle into systems than endure for centuries.
Who's the most important person in your software development shop on any given day? The one you're interviewing. This person is, hopefully, your future.
What's the most important part of your job if you're a software developer in a pre-revenue startup? Hiring people who are smarter than you.
If you don't believe that, do your colleagues and investors a favor and quit.
> Part of me wishes MS forced updates like these.
> Sure it would probably break a few ancient
> mission critical ActiveX apps, and
> my god the outcry would be immense and furious,
> but it would be better for everyone in the long run
YOU tell the famous doctors in hospitals you're going to break the medical-imaging app they use that depends on IE6. I'M not telling them that. Seriously. It's not as simple as ripping off a band-aid.
There's lots of enterprisey stuff out there that only "supports" various versions of IE, and bounces out other makes and models of browser. HN folks may or may not see much of that, because that stuff is typically in various corporate portal technology.
In health-care IT in particular, there's a popular radiology app that uses an ActiveX control that is bug for bug compatible with IE6 and doesn't work on IE7. That's an important reason for browser-upgrade inertia in that business. Another reason is the risk of hassles. What hospitals use now sorta works. An upgrade to IE7 might cause some patient-critical thing to break, and then all hell would break loose and the IT folks would get sacked.
It may or may not be good startup marketing to slam IE. For those of us who serve health-care and other institutional customers, it makes us green with envy, no doubt.
But it is definitely good startup engineering, if you can get away with it, to cut down the workload of qualifying various browsers by simply eliminating a vendor from the test matrix.
I don't notice Microsoft offering any labor or money to help developers qualify on their browser products, or to incent the big institutions (who provide substantially all their revenue) to upgrade.
Tobias wrapped up this fine post writing, the "gap [between developed and underdeveloped counties] will be, if it continues, a major fissure in a future America."
WILL be? It already is. It's pretty much in line with the so-called red / blue divide in the nation.
What about the page charge? Some of these journals charge the author (or her institution) by the page for papers they accept. They get ya coming and going. Nice racket. Check it out.
Careful, folks, it takes a while to transfer domains. The ones I transferred are still with Go Daddy. It's probably the same deal for wikipedia and stackoverflow.
Maybe they just priced their IPO shares correctly for a change. When the share price doubles on the first day, it means the offering price was too low. That means Wall Street gets the money, not the company and not the pre-IPO investors.
They could have priced it 40% lower, and seen a big runup. But this way the company gets more working capital. That's good.
Maybe that's a positive consequence of Zynga's CEO's need to hang on to so much control and equity.
I happen to live outside hipster nation, so it took a while to load stuff. It did OK at letting me know this was in progress, but it could have been better. Had I not been reviewing it, I might have abandoned it.
Going to the second page of items took longer than it should have.
Returning to the site, it seems to want to start over acquiring the location. Can you not insert some memory for place in a first-party cookie?
The place-locator button won't turn green unless the place is spelled perfectly. It's case sensitive.
You might rethink the "generic" language shown to those who decline fb / tw access. Of course, if your monetizing scheme requires access to those services, maybe you're doing the right thing.
I live in a place with lots of summer visitors, but right now it isn't summer.
Data-wise, it seems to repeat items when there aren't enough items to fill its UI. Maybe it's only fair that there should be lots of dunkins and starbucks on line; there are in real life. But it's a little hokey looking.
The Google Maps placemark (red ice-cream-cone with rectangle in it) is recognizable. It looks like an affordance to get to a map. But it isn't. The scroll-in Click To Expand does exactly the same thing as clicking on the picture or the placemark, as far as I can tell. Also, the cursor doesn't change anywhere within a place listing. Lost opportunity for UX depth?
Thanks for the chance to review this. All the best.