demandred

"At stake, say supporters, are American jobs. Every free piece of content scraped to be sold, or given away, online takes money out of the pockets of record companies, movie producers and other content creators and their millions of employees. Pharmaceutical companies, sports leagues and video-game makers have also voiced support. "Especially in this time of economic recovery, we cannot stand by and watch while American companies and the jobs they support are being bled by foreign criminals who are taking advantage of a massive loophole in our law enforcement capabilities," wrote Steve Tepp, who works on counterfeiting and piracy issues for the U.S. Chamber of Commerce. "These illicit enterprises are not tolerated in the brick and mortar marketplace, so why would we allow them to flourish unchecked online?""

Rhetoric of SOPA supporters > Rhetoric of SOPA detractors, when it comes to winning public support. The message needs to be streamlined...

"From the blog: http://bit.ly/startuptees

This started as an idea to save money on laundry. We've visited the offices of Dropbox, Twilio, PB Works; even new startup Piazza, and we always accepted free t-shirts because it means more to wear and less to wash. Our ambitious goal: Sell 25 startup tee shirts for $25 each from 25 of our favorite startups. "

"The denial of an objective moral law, based on the compulsion to deny the existence of God, results ultimately in the denial of evil itself...

The one who raises the question against God in effect plays God while denying He exists. Now one may wonder: why do you actually need a moral law giver if you have a moral law? The answer is because the questioner and the issue he or she questions always involve the essential value of a person. You can never talk of morality in abstraction. Persons are implicit to the question and the object of the question. In a nutshell, positing a moral law without a moral law giver would be equivalent to raising the question of evil without a questioner. So you cannot have a moral law unless the moral law itself is intrinsically woven into personhood, which means it demands an intrinsically worthy person if the moral law itself is valued. And that person can only be God.

Our inability to alter what is actual frustrates our grandiose delusions of being sovereign over everything. Yet t he truth is we cannot escape the existential rub by running from a moral law. Objective moral values exist only if God exists. Is it all right, for example, to mutilate babies for entertainment? Every reasonable person will say “no.” We know that objective moral values do exist. Therefore, God must exist. Examining those premises and their validity presents a very strong argument. "

RZIM.org

the real evan williams: http://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=evhead

out of curiosity (and not sarcasm) what took so long?

what was your injury? one that they will still allow you in the military with?

so the answer is to write ... an article whining about the whiners???

Or you probably could trust Paul, who seemingly worked on Googles servers since just about near the beginning...

short summary: America, for its fear and litigious society, is neutering herself.

This does not nail it though on why the country is failing at Math & Science. Parental influence is the top correlation between children and success in school. It's not a surprise that 50% of STEM degrees are going to International students (who make up less than 10% of the general US student populous) -- their parents push them towards the most difficult degrees -- Sciences, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics.

the YC press machine churns on. good coordination. time to get outside the 250.

YN wants the data -- not sure they really care about making an (accurate) prediction. Foolhardy exercise to fill in the information.

it doesn't calculate for supply & demand.

Powerset is worth whatever MSFT was willing to pay for it, not what the predictor says its worth.

which leads...to the dark side.

of course, now it all makes sense.

Just release already.

This from 28 February 08 (and blog posts dating back about 9 to 10 months as well):

We have been working on our Social Marketplace “Onista” for quite sometime and every week (and every month) we think we are almost ready for launch “only if we fix these remaining little issues”. To be honest, there is no such thing called “little issues”. There are bugs in product (tons of bugs) and we must fix those before launching.

problem is, this only works for guys like Fred. How many hackers on here have thousands reading your blog, twitter, etc.?

Hank's titles are almost always hyperbole.

While this is an interesting idea to help advance the revenue model, I'm not sure I understood how this would potentially 'save' the music business.

how to generate multiple articles by msm, tech blogs, etc... in the same day!

or get really, really good at skim reading.

I do wonder how many upvotes this got because people wanted to see a good discussion/ rebuttal.

"5. They are subject to entrapment (isolation from friends, relatives, and the mainstream culture) and their access to information is severely controlled."

Yet on Hacker News, the recruiting grounds of said cult, this post (information contrary to the teaching of said cult) has ascended to the top?

well I didn't like the name either, but I thought maybe it made sense for the tipping aspect. Seems like you're building a great product, and branding/positioning/messaging is obviously very important for what you two are doing.

how is it pronounced? their name is not memorable.

@ivankirigin: any thought of changing the mascot?

as a consumer -- amazing as it sounds -- i would not trust something with that silly logo with my money, without doing some pretty extensive research.

in general, I feel that the look and feel of the logo, design, and mascot are just ...wrong. I can't put my finger on it exactly, but for a micro-payments service (or any that service that deals with real, hard, cash) I would surmise that presenting a reputable foot forward would go a long way in building trust and brand equity.

OP is fairly articulate and intelligent, but would be greatly appreciated if he would stop trolling with his titles.

Given that OP ripped a quote out of context, we will continue to use it as such.

If a reporter/interviewer asks you about your failures, and you simply reference your success, does that necessarily mean you do not fix your mistakes?

How do you suggest you 'fix' the mistake of dropping a few balls in a game on the spot? The only answer is, you go out and continue to have big games. This would be akin to an interviewer asking Michael Jordan 'why did you miss 10,000 shots in your game' and he says 'I made XYZ game-winning shots and was NBA Finals MVP.'

If you look at any of the interviews about teammates/opponents of MJ, they all say he was very, very cocky.

Cocky != Refusal to fix mistakes.

Or perhaps, in a better context, an interviewer asking you why some of your stock purchases did not work out favorably, and you stating that you've had a lot of successes despite your failures.

I'm by no means a Michigan fan, but I saw him play a few games last year (on TV) and he was clearly a very, very good football player. Looking at Manningham's stats on Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mario_Manningham he seemed to have a pretty good season last year, when I believe the interview took place.

When asked about the balls he dropped in big spots, he responded, ‘What about the ball I caught?’” So while an exceptionally score on a standardized test might suggest dyslexia, the guy’s an egotistical bonehead even without mitigating factors.

And that is why Manningham is in the NFL and OP is the one writing about him. Excuse someone for wanting to focus on their accomplishments and not their failures and for having a little backbone -- must be a terrible thing to have. Great athletes who aren't uber confident (whether or not they express it externally) aren't great athletes.

It was a solid post -- I'm all for finding real 'paying' customers, as well -- just seems that some of the posts are prodding other web app startups (a lot of your fellow YC compadres actually).

Solid writing though.

is it just me or do these guys' post seem to reek of quite a bit of arrogance?

Great that they're 'making something people want' but their posts are generally condescending -- stop the incessant chatter and show off this amazing product you've built for 'normal' people that is going to change the world and be uber-profitable.

Not exactly.

He already had lots of traction. I think the author's supposing that Zuck went to a VC before FB took off like crazy.

Sure, Facebook may not have made sense until it existed in some form, nor friendfeed, but that doesn't mean they couldn't have a good elevator pitch, the pitch is often showing off part of the product, not just an idea, which by itself is largely worthless. Most VCs don't fund just ideas, there has to be at least some basic implementation already.

What is this point talking to? I don't think it addresses anything in the post, and I think you might have read it incorrectly.

The author's arguing that elevator pitches don't do justice for some products; that a VC essentially won't be able to understand/grasp the power of a product until s/he sits down and uses it, a la the Nintendo Wii or the iPhone.

are you using the songza api? i tried a few searches, and its clear, while your search is good, theirs is much better.

great execution, but where's the differentiation with Songza, Seeqpod, Streamzy, et. al?