bigthboy

I understand that, I know we're not going to abolish government incompetence, but lessen the degree is something realistic to shoot for.

I bet they called George Lucas and asked him...

I believe, but I'm not for certain, that developing a plan includes also coming up with new and helpful ways to do community service, not just a "here, 50 hour requirement, go have fun." That's something the Bush admin would do, I sure hope an Obama admin won't.

I also don't think its necessarily the best thing to do... perhaps he should give incentives to school districts that implement such a system but make the school districts responsible for it.

Thanks for the advice and good luck, again, to all those venturing out there in a couple of weeks.

Well, the determination was made partly on what I and my co-founder have both experienced (being we're both students, freshmen in college), and additional talking we've done with both teachers and students in various types of classes. We've also done a fair amount of reading from studies about the usage of laptops/tablets in the classroom and read opinion articles like these to observe the issues.

In your case, you're one of the students who has already made that digital jump over and has all the gear you need. You, being the geek that I'll assume you are (-don't take that as an insult, I am too...), got these tools and self taught them and are self disciplined in their usage. However, most students and most schools don't have this.

While my venture is specifically interested in K12, we are interested in college too. For most classes (a ceramics class could be an exception), you have your basic necessities and then some additional tools you could be using. That's what we're focused on in our works, is creating the basics in a way that can be easily and seamlessly used in classes so that every student has access to the tools and resources they need, and with a certain degree of personalization to fit the different needs of different people.

From my position, I see two root causes why this is the problem and they could be fixed (its what my venture is working on doing). The problem with laptops most notably is the fact that they have this screen. The screen more or less creates a barrier between the person and speaker. This is not a good thing, especially not in a classroom and its also disrepsectful to the speaker. The second is laptops that are not being used for education but rather, as the article writer suggested, for Instant Messaging or other various purposes. If, theoretically, the laptop was one that was specifically designed and built for use in the classroom by students on a day-to-day basis, the problems addressed in this article would not be an issue. However, because they aren't, many times students don't have adequate tools on their laptops, the tools that are there are time consuming and hard to switch between for doing multiple things at one time, and they aren't focused on anything educationally enriching.

[promo]That's exactly what my venture, EDunuity, is working to address.[/promo]

I wonder who got the better end of THAT deal...

Being bost companies have denied it already and the circumstances around it all (not to mention the fact that Microsoft and Yahoo reaching a deal from supposedly dead talks in less than 24 hours at ~$19 a share? c'mon!) lead me to believe this truly is a rumor...

but would Jerry really be missed? I mean he did make nearly everyone at Yahoo soil themselves when he sends them an e-mail that 10% of them are fired but nobody knows who, and then tells them, more or less, "have a happy weekend" smile and wink.

Very nice collection of resources for anyone, professional or amateur. This could be especially helpful when learning a new programming language or just using one that you haven't in a while.

Something I've also found helpful (when doing web scripting), is Dreamweaver's built-in syntax database that really helps speed things up as you type.

Good Article.... I completely agree with Fred's positions and beliefs in this article. I especially agree on points 1,4, and 5. In government especially, and as President of the United States, its critical that you surround yourself with intelligent people. The President is not the sole authority and there is no way one person could handle all that. It's important that you surround yourself with "the best in the business." In all fairness, it works much the same in business. As a founder/owner and CEO, its important to surround yourself at that level with qualified people to manage the technology, to manage capital, etc.

I think the title is slightly misleading but whats actually said in the article is very much true. In any early stage company, how well they fit together with not only you but the rest of the team members is just as important as what they know.

More surprising is how many investors I've talked to end up telling me that if I'm looking for people to help accomplish some of these more complex tasks that I should just outsource to India or just find a person who does know how and pay them for it. In reality, that's likely not going to solve anything and has a high potential to create more problems on down the road (not to mention if that person doesn't stay forever).

Article makes a good point. Microsoft is a colossal monster that, while not as fierce as it once was back in the age of the browser wars, still no beast to be taken lightly.

I'm reminded of pg's article about "Microsoft is Dead" (http://paulgraham.com/microsoft.html). While pg makes many good points and it is undoubtedly true that Microsoft isn't something that companies cower in fear of anymore, they are still alive and still moving forward at impressive speed. The beast may be dead, but the animal still lives. I don't believe Microsoft will be going away anytime soon. Maybe in my lifetime they'll eventually truly become a dwarf company and eventually burn out (I'm 18), but that happening soon I just can't believe is likely.

I've never really understood Facebook from the business side at all. I generally like the service they offer (generally, though it is really lacking interesting and helpful aspects) but I've never understood their thinking on business moves. They've got a very popular software platform, one of the most visited sites in the world and rising, and some how 700 people can't figure out how to make a buck.

I agree with most of the other people here... Zuckerberg promises a business plan in 3 years? What the hell? I can see having your product and company out there and be selling things or providing a service and not necessary have the business plan down and taking some time to find one that really does work well, but when you have 700 people, corporate offices, and a widely popular product/service, a business plan seems to me to be something you put at the front of the line. Not: "hmm, we'll get to it later, lets just enjoy the fame!"

Most of what goes on at Facebook could be ran by 70 really good people. That's not including investors/shareholders at all. That's 70 people that are just in charge, server/network managers, system engineers, accounting (do they need one?), and marketing. It appears Facebook got the idea that it needed to have its own in-house Microsoft Research or something.

I like the concept. If it does whats advertised and without too many bugs it sounds like something a LOT of sports buffs would like. So it looks like a good idea with a lot of potential... beyond that I have not yet tried it myself, but I intend to.

That's important to note, I know specifically that some non-major service providers (meaning: not Verizon, Comcast, etc.), sometimes don't even show you what spam you get. So, if your using a smaller service provider and you still haven't got it and its also not in your "spam box" there's likely two things that happened.

A) You didn't put your email in your profile "email" box. I would direct you to pg's post last night but its gone now.

B) Your service provider may use a special filter in front of your mailbox which means not only was it marked as spam but it was marked before it actually reached your email and just got tossed overboard in cyberspace. Though, one would expect the number of people to suffer from this problem to be small but it does happen.

What's unfortunate is if that e-mail that got lost was an invite. =C

Recession and YC Rejection.... sounds like part of some hit new rap single for Wall Street.

It's been said a lot lately as a reminder, not only by people of this community but also by pg himself in the letters and in HN comments. Don't stop doing what you love because pg and co didn't have space for it out of the estimated (no official numbers) 700 applicants that applied at the same time. PG will tell you that they aren't exactly the best at necessarily "picking the winners" and neither are most other investors.

The important thing is to move forward. As the OP shows, you don't NEED YC to be a successful and thriving business, even in troubled times. YC is a stepping stone and sure shot at opening doors that most of us have to pry open ourselves. YC != Success... YC is the beginning, but it should not be the end.

In my application they sent an e-mail to both founders who were attached with HN accounts.

Didn't make it but we're still moving forward. I mean, its not like PG and Ycombinator is the ONLY way to make a start-up work. What about those billions of them that came before YC existed?

Congratulations!

turns out to be a rejection +1 room it seems :P

GMail > PG?

Fail :P

oh well, onward and upward I suppose, can't let something like this knock you down. Like it was said many many times. Everyone who didn't make it, please, by all means, keep moving forward because this is not a death certificate.

may want to fix your post, just to make sure you don't get any spammy junk...

please edit your profile and put your email address in the email field.

I don't think its as much as "need permission to start a company." It's just more at a chance to walk through a door of opportunity that not everyone gets to do. It's not just an investment, but its an excellent opportunity to network and meet really cool and smart people as well as have you and your idea sat down in front of other potential investors. One of the biggest feats of raising capital in order to accomplish some of the things that some of the people here want to do is getting that recommendation. Well, this is our chance to get that recommendation.

My venture, for example, we're still working, still talking to people, still getting stuff developed and getting out and selling our idea. If this doesn't go through for us, it just means we don't get a "Go to VC free" card (if you will). We'll still keep doing what we were doing.

They do this, of course, because we all know that MTV is "Musical Television" and MTV actually plays music. ;-) </sarcasm>

Nah, I'm sure they hired this guy cause he actually knows something about what he's doing. More than likely he's done something in the past with the big record companies.

I always find these moments of tension and hope to be so exciting! I'm definitely on edge waiting for anything..whether it be a "sorry, no." or a "congratulations!"..

edit and oh yes, good luck to all!

Well that was certainly entertaining to read... I can only imagine the user on the other end of this being like...=O touche...I also learned about how the calendar came to be because of that! So, another plus.

Does anyone else think its interesting that throughout history there have been numerous... "this isn't working for me, lets just skip some days and it'll be okay!" Heck, this may not even really be there year 2008.

For me, I'm a college student and that means I have a notebook with me most places anyways, and if its not a physical notebook, its my TabletPC. I usually write notes down in a reserved section in all my class notebooks if I'm in class and something pops up all of a sudden. Same goes for my TabletPC which I have my own venture notebook that I will scribble thoughts down in. On the go, I usually just keep it in my head because I don't yet have my own smartphone. Later in the evening after I've taken these notes I usually sit down and flip through my new ones and look at what I was thinking and figure out if its something worth expanding on or not. This goes a lot back to how you manage your time and the "shinny thing syndrom" (ADD).

It's a system that works pretty well for me, but everyone's different. I'm the kind of person who, even while other things are going on around me, am looking not only at the current state of my current venture but the direction and potential of that venture and others. Needless to say, I get a lot of those "oh crap, that's neat" when I'm out and about. The important part is really how you make use of those notes later on. I go through them on a nightly or bi-nightly basis and just browse through some of my ideas or concepts and figure out what's worth keeping track of or expanding and what's something to set aside as "good idea, but not now." It's important not to overwhelm yourself with notes going in a different direction.

The notes that are worth keeping and expanding I usually stick all together in a folder of some sort and they usually end up typed, expanded, and analyzed in a word document at some point in time where I've fully expanded on or refined an idea or perspective.

Nice rebuttal, I wish you the best of luck, it seems like something with a good amount of potential. I especially liked your perspective on because the gaming services do this and you pay them for it, they can implement better features for their own users.

I think this is an innovative approach to getting more people involved with grid computing for major computations and a clever way to market it in general. However, I agree with some other people here, there has got to be some sort of licensing issue. As much as the whole "you clicked okay to the TOS, you gave us permission." is a tank in court, it still seems to risky. If nothing else, it would risk users no longer using the games from the providers using that service if they found out that their computer slowed down at all during playing that game because it was doing things it wasn't supposed to. Not that I would likely have a problem with it, but lets face it...the general public is slap happy with lawsuits.

Also privacy issues in the entire concept. I didn't notice any (note: I didn't go out of my way to find one either) way for the end users to directly go and see exactly what kind of materials were being processed and what data, if any, was being collected from the user's machine. That might also be a source of trouble in the long run.

All good ideas of directions to take this, imo. Now that's insight. The have a different sponsor every day is something I thought of while I was making my pointless post (see bottom of this page) but neglected to mention.