HN user
Sam Walton's autobiography mentions that his father-in-law provided the initial capital (that was about it), and his brother played an insignificant role (like buying things from suppliers). His brother, who was younger, was more of a helper while Walton built his first store (a Ben Franklin store that he later sold and started Walmart on his own based largely on his Ben Franklin stores).
http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune500/2010/full_...
and Wikipedia. I went through most of the list. It's right to me.
"No, you won't get a single econ prof to say that the Chinese are more efficient at sewing buttons."
Are you serious? A Chinese worker will produce more sewing buttons for $1 than an American can. I'm very sure every reputable economist agrees.
"consensus means nothing but politics"
Actually, why don't you do this if you think it's all about politics. Get your favorite politician, see who their economic advisers are, then understand their views. Mankiw stated economic points that are accepted by a wide political spectrum.
"Except for some points of information, biomedical, and materials technology, it's not clear that our standard of living is as high now."
This is probably the most uninformed, illogical, and inept points I've ever read on HN. Third-world children are now texting their friends on mobile phones, instead of dying of hunger. You have no idea what it was like growing up in the 50s. Do you even know what "economic growth" even means? Do you understand how many consecutive periods of growth our economy has had?
Unbelievable.
Any lessons you can share after your 2nd or 3rd time? What would you have done differently?
Sorry, but that's not true at all. iTunes alone makes Apple over $1 billion in revenue per quarter. That's a lot of money and alone could almost vie for a Fortune 500 listing.
In your opinion, what are Joomla's greatest weaknesses?
I'm sure she wants to remain anonymous judging by her email.
It's a great offer, btw. I'd feel way too guilty for her like that though.
Edited: Sorry!
I think it depends on the type of application you're building. A Twitter like application probably doesn't need as much hardware as something more complex.