meatpeople

I have no problem subscribing to Pages without Liking them. (Little drop down to the right of Like and Message buttons on a page; click on Add to Interest Lists...)

As per the grandparent post of this thread, I don't "Like" anything on twitter, and follow things in interested with Interest Lists.

Gobekli Tepe is indeed fascinating. There's a good article on it in the latest National Geographic: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/06/gobekli-tepe/mann-...

Having only recently read Peopleware 2nd Ed., I've been mulling over the audition concept in the "Hiring A Juggler" chapter - effectively having a developer present on a project they worked on, what they contributed and learned and so forth.

It seems like it would have value - allow the candidate to prepare and present on a topic they're strong on, and in-depth enough to allow cross-examination.

Has anyone any experience of this from either side?

Great idea, and well stated. I'll add a plus-one for filtering based on shipping territories.

It ties in with other peoples' comments regarding personal shoppers, but once you get past the initial mvp stage, I think there's an opening for adding the ability to ping my clothing-savvy (female) friends to say "what do you think of this?" There's possibly an exploitable network effect in there.

Likewise, but I'm using one of the newer ones (Natural Ergonomic 4000) and I like it. Been meaning to mod it ala tlb (http://tlb.org/keyboardchop.html) to get the mouse closer but I've never gotten around to it. Would love to have a trackball in between the keyboard sections to see if it works but never looked into it either.

I'd agree about the insularity of the press and community around the MS ecosystem.

I got a job programming blub in VB.Net straight out of college and am writing C# at the moment. I don't have anything to back it up but I have always found a general suspicion of anything that didn't come from MS or an related source. The obvious example would be formerly non-mainstream programming features which are now getting very popular with C# 3.

It reminds me of Joel Spolskys' idea about the 'Five Worlds' - MS stuff, Java stuff, Unix etc - that they all come with fairly distinct cultures.

There's a lot of good food for thought here. I can empathise; I had similar thoughts in college that I wouldn't stick it. I love programming, sometimes even the Blub code I work on day to day, however I don't like sitting at a desk all day, so I'm thinking of a career change. Something in sports or perhaps physiotherapy, things like that.

Anyway, I will say that when it comes to making a go out of arts as a career, I'm watching a lot of my friends and acquaintances struggle hard. They're art students, musicians, actors and comedians, circus performers (my housemate; the place is littered with stilts and facepaint and whatnot) and despite some fantastic dedication to it they struggle to make a go of it. All work day jobs, some of the more talented and dedicated are in low paid arts-related jobs - administration, promotion etc. Most, now pushing into their late twenties and early thirties are starting to think about settling more permanently into the day jobs. Of course, north-west Ireland isn't Boston, so YMMV...

As to having your cake etc, do you do any such activities currently? If you're currently performing in plays etc or gathering the work needed for a gallery show and you can deal with the grind that entails, then I'd be more inclined to say go for it. If not, do so; I'd guess the best barometer of whether you'll have made the right decision is if you can cheerfully dedicate a few evenings a week over the course of the months to years it can take to get something into production.

I can't speak for m0nty but I'd agree that I don't recognise the Europe of the FP article.

I'm in Ireland, historically a very left leaning state until drastic measures were taken in the 1980s leading to our recent growth and prosperity. We've a culture of what's called 'begrudgery' - speaking ill of people who succeed - though in truth it doesn't seem to have held us back.

As to the things you describe I doubt they're of the same caliber. Someone starting a business here will often look to government grants and other funds for bootstrap cash. Does that create a bad environment though? In some ways yes, Govt may not be quick to hand over money and may not have the understanding a lot of venture capitalists do, but overall I don't think so: I know quite a few small business owners and technology startups, it certainly doesn't seem excessively detrimental. I've no experience of that scene in the US though.

In Ireland at least, I think we develop polar love/hate relationships with those that succeed, either lauding or slandering them. Micheal O'Leary of Ryanair is a good example.

I come from a family of business owners and starters and know many others. I've also worked on EU-wide research projects (telecoms related; and see little of the resentment the article implies is prevalent). As such my experience is obviously rather selective.

About a month ago, I was talking to a man that sells hardware and support to small businesses (almost exclusively non-technical ones at that) for a living. He said his company spends a surprising amount of time downgrading Vista machines to XP - the majority of Vista installs sold to business customers come back for downgrading.

Whether it's an unsatisfactory experience or unfamiliarity that's the cause, it's a losing proposition for Microsoft if that's a common pattern.