> Morey is not even an especially notable NBA figure, Twitter doesn't even work in China, it would have been easy to block news of this in China.
NBA fan, who will NOT be renewing league pass, checking in. Morey is considered one of the top NBA GM's of one of the top teams (Rockets) that have a strong Sino-centric fan base because of former Rocket great, Yao Ming. Yao was the first Chinese superstar in the NBA. The Rockets are the 'adopted' team of China.
> Isn't a backlash among the US population over this plainly foreseeable?
I agree - I'm not paying for league pass this year. I did not like the response from the NBA.
> Google is by far the most serious about fraud prevention.
I agree - they've had 'Verification' in DFA > DCM > DDM and the associated tools and reports keep getting better. And if you have ReportBuilder skills, you can really ID and find discrepant/fraudulent data.
The recent Standford ETL talk by Jeff Seibert (Senior Director of Product at Twitter) provides some insight into the development of the Twitter API's/SDK (Fabric). Overall, I thought it was one of the better and more practical talks.
I spoke with a laptop reseller a few minutes ago and according to him, the 980 will only fit in laptops thicker than 1" - so it will not be available in a slimmer, lighter gaming laptops like the MSI Ghost series.
My father's/family friend opened a McDonalds franchise about 20 years ago. He needed to have approximately $350k, 'non-borrowed' cash on hand to be considered as a franchisee.
> How's the experience?
It must be good because he now owns 4 McD franchises. All his kids worked there through HS and (some) college. His son is the "Manager" of all 4.
> Does it require lots of work?
I think after their first couple of restaurants, they have developed and refined their management system. The son works a typical work week floating between restaurants and balancing books, hiring managers, etc.
> Or just require passive monitoring?
My fathers friend was at the first restaurant from almost open to close everyday for several years. (I used to ride my bike there for free ice cream and he was always there). The son seems to have enough free time - its almost like a 8-6pm type job for him.
> How's the cost vs payout?
He and his family are very well off and have been able to invest in other money making areas as well. A lot of hard work on the front end but now he has 4 cash cows that his son manages.
>> Is there some kind of widespread anger at truck drivers?
I'm just one data point, but I've driven the I-5 in California between the bay area and southern CA a lot (about 180,000 miles on my 2005 Tacoma truck) as well as Hwy. 99 in the same vicinity.
I'd say that I've become apathetic towards truck drivers in general. I've been nearly run off the road twice (once where I was sure I was going to wreck real bad - got lucky), been cutoff, etc. by truckers more times than I can remember. Most truckers are safe, but the ones that are not can really skew your perception. Considering, in most cases, when a 18-wheeler causes an accident (I've witnessed a few), there is little damage to their truck or to themselves...the 'regular' car on the other hand is usually destroyed with devastating injury to the occupants.
This story made me feel like a jerk for moment (I've flipped off truckers before) - but the emotional aspects of the story can be applied to everyone else on the road too. Truckers are not the only ones that have to drive for their livelihood or have personal issues to deal with.
Fun read - I especially liked the last statement of the interview:
>> Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering. When you finally get done and get to appreciate what you have done it is like a part of yourself that you've put together. I think a lot of the people here feel that way.
Regarding carrot quality, both Bolthouse and Grimway Farms have been growing a different type of carrot specifically for the baby carrot products.
A family friend is an exec at one of the above companies and he mentioned that the taste of the baby carrots are indeed more bland than the 'regular' carrots. I just conducted a highly scientific experiment and tasted one of each at lunch - my conclusion: he is correct :)
We let a mid-sized oil services company beta test our software for free and had our lawyer draft a non-compete/IP protection contract letter;
For the amount and quality of feedback we received, allowing the free beta test worked out great - I could not have paid a group of QA testers to provide as good feedback as I got from the beta test company;
In addition, most companies do not like to 'pay to test' a product.
In our situation, the company ended up purchasing our software and about 18 months later was acquired by Halliburton - Halliburton has its own software division and no longer needed us;
Goes almost without saying that Epic develops great game engines; however, IMHO, Crytek's cryengine at GDC was more impressive and has done a better job of rendering outdoor environments and foliage better than the Epic's Unreal engine; Unreal still has top spot in market share but I think Crytek will make significant gains in the next couple of years;
I have a mountain bike that I ride around nearly every evening for at least an hour (a lot longer on weekends)- I ride that same bike to a gym three times a week;
Having bootstrapped my own business, my biggest issues were dealing with stress and 'the unknown'. I was unmarried at the time so I could handle the pay decrease and living without niceties.
Cash flow was always on my mind - if a client postponed payment, or flat out refused to pay for whatever reason (happened to me a few times, even from 'established' clients) I would be mentally overloaded trying to figure out how to get by for the month.
You go through such a roller coaster ride of emotion - There is no better feeling of joy and accomplishment than having a client sign a contract and pay with a nice check; there is no worse feeling than sitting at your desk, staring at the wall trying to figure out how you'll pay the bills for the month...
Anyhow, I would never trade the experience for anything, though I'm not sure if I could have handled it if I were married at the time; I would echo Dave's sentiment that bootstrapping is hard but also extremely rewarding. You'll come out a tougher SOB for it, thats for sure! ;)
> ...there's the obvious question of what the heck do you do with all this data? If you have a crummy night sleeping you're going to wake up and have a bunch of graphs and charts that basically say "Yup, you sure had a crummy night." You can apply tags to the data, things like "cat scratch" or "creepy owl outside window" to help you figure out why your evenings aren't as restful as they should be. But, really, wouldn't a pen and piece of paper achieve much the same thing?
I was about to pre-order a wakemate several months ago, but I had the same lingering thoughts above and canceled my order;
> There are a lot of people asking in comments whether the thing managed to make us feel more refreshed when waking up, and the simple answer is no. That's because, more often than not, the battery was dead by the morning or for some other reason the wristband failed to trigger the alarm.
Considering the wakemate had several delays prior to launch, looks like they should have let it bake a little longer...
Ten Ren is awesome - friendly folks who also educated me about how to prepare tea and let me know that you could steep it multiple times (which was news to me at the time since I only steeped once and then threw out the leaves).
Having since moved to Southern CA, I visit their store in Monterrey Park. Good folks still, but I miss the charm of the Chinatown store.
NBA fan, who will NOT be renewing league pass, checking in. Morey is considered one of the top NBA GM's of one of the top teams (Rockets) that have a strong Sino-centric fan base because of former Rocket great, Yao Ming. Yao was the first Chinese superstar in the NBA. The Rockets are the 'adopted' team of China.
> Isn't a backlash among the US population over this plainly foreseeable?
I agree - I'm not paying for league pass this year. I did not like the response from the NBA.