mos1

Most of the wealthier people I know have reasonably nice cars. Maybe not Zonda/Lambo nice, but Audi, BMW, MB, Infiniti, Lexus and Cadillac are the norm.

And because of that, there is a healthy market for products and services dedicated to people who want to stop smoking.

The door is opening for some form of competition and a possible segmentation of the market.

When I've applied for credit, I got the same phone call but said "yes, that's me", and everything went through.

I have this on my account, and you don't need to go online to "thaw" it. The bureau calls you and asks "did you just apply for an auto loan at a Hyundai dealership in Florida?" and you reply "no, no I didn't", they say "okay, have a nice day", and that's that.

At least that's what happened when somebody tried to use my identity to buy a Hyundai in Florida.

I've only seen one legitimate point from him: that search isn't the root cause of the privacy problem.

Unfortunately instead of then admitting that it does exacerbate the issue, he then pretends that there is no issue, asserts that all FB users fully understand FB's privacy model and insults anybody who doesn't agree.

Something to think about: can you imagine a Zappo's employee arguing with concerned customers the way kmavm has?

Let's be clear: he threw the first grenade.

He mocked a legitimate user concern (FB privacy confusion) with his "How do you sleep at night???" comments, in which he portrayed anybody with this concern as hysterical and irrational.

Search doesn't cause the problem (it merely exposes and exacerbates it), but it's a legitimate problem. And it's ridiculous for a FB employee to go around mocking those of us who had to talk our parents through a more than 100 click privacy-restoration process over the phone. (Especially when our parents are over 70, and not the fastest clickers in the West.)

If he wants to mock people for holding that concern, he's a troll, plain and simple.

And if you think that mocking people by putting imagined hyperbolic rhetoric in their mouth is civil and cogent, well... I suppose we have different definitions of civil and cogent.

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edit: p.s. calling somebody a name is not an ad hominem, it's an insult. Here's a helpful example:

ad hominem: mos1 is wrong because he's an asshole.

insult: mos1 is both wrong and an asshole.

It takes over 100 clicks to make a FB profile completely private, and the settings aren't permanent. That's clearly a business decision. You don't need to be a UX expert to understand the aggregate effects.

I can't even fathom how anybody could look at such a system and claim that the users all understand the ramifications with a straight face.

It's really insulting that you're trying to sell such an utterly asinine claim by pointing out that people sometimes overshare on twitter, in blog comments, and in line at Starbucks. The FB privacy system is broken by design.

Search just happens to offer an amusing window into content that is, in all likelihood, x% people who would overshare anyway, and 100-x% people who thought they were just talking to their friends, or friends + FoF, where x is nearly guaranteed not to be 0 or 100.

I don't do PR.

Clearly not.

That said, HN isn't a place for trolling. I don't think anybody appreciates the way you're distorting people's concerns so that you can mock them.

You're smart enough to understand that the problem is not that 'public information is public', but rather that FB's habit of changing and hiding settings makes it hard to tell what is public. As such, your entire rant was not just off-topic, it was an insult to everyone with a valid concern, and every single member of the HN community who would be interested in a legitimate conversation.

So please... troll elsewhere. We don't need your kind here. This is supposed to be a place of discussion, not a place where angry FaceBook engineers insult FaceBook users with a barrage of irrelevant bullshit.

Your argument would be a lot more plausible if Facebook didn't have a habit of resetting peoples privacy settings, and if those settings were clearly, easily and permanently settable.

As it stands, I can only presume your defensiveness and your obviously nonsensical comparisons to twitter (a system where everyone knows that everything is truly public) make me think you know, deep down, that your employer has made some bad decisions.

I'm curious: does facebook train their employees to identify themselves as employees then to rail angrily and arrogantly at people who have privacy concerns, or is that your own initiative? Either way I'm unsurprised by it. Facebook seems like the sort of place where such utterly unprofessional behavior would be the norm.

Facebook: unilaterally changing your privacy settings then berating you and making disingenuous comparisons when you get upset about it since 2004.

I use my iPad differently than I use my laptop, and my desktop. I use it in instances where I wouldn't have used either the laptop or the desktop. I like it. If I didn't like it, I would've sold it.

I don't really care whether you want one or not. But it's really sad that you can't recognize that the set of things that are worth $x to you is not the same as the set of things that are worth $x to others, and have to instead make better-than-thou proclamations about a reality distortion field.

My car is better than yours, my editor is better than yours, my favorite trilogy is better than yours, and your favorite band sucks.

Get a fucking life.

I played tennis quite well in high school and college. I never tried to go pro. Does that mean the tennis teams failed?

I swam competitively in college. I didn't try for the olympics. Does that mean the swim team failed?

There are a lot of valuable lessons one can pull from a business plan competition even if you don't become a founder, or even if you never intend to become a founder.

CarWoo doesn't serve my area (I checked recently, since I just bought a new vehicle), but I definitely view dealership filtering as a positive. I don't want to do business with somebody who consistently ranks poorly in satisfaction surveys.

That said, I'd appreciate if there was some copy, somewhere in a FAQ, explaining what they mean by that.

One low-cost option that sometimes works well -- Creative Commons images that are licensed to allow commercial use (flickr lets you search for them).

I have a good friend who has asked me to look for opportunities to work at a startup, preferably in China.

He wants to be a founder deeper in the future, but wants to work under a serial entrepreneur first, for the experience.

It's on Netflix streaming. I'd say you owe me 3 hours, but I liked it.

I never would've thought to use it as a PDF reader. Installing now :-)

A design thing that confused me a bit, 'plant more foo' was displayed very differently (lighter and italic) than 'plant foo'. I initially thought that there was nothing for those weeks.

I don't want to say "I'd buy this if you made this change" because I live on a farm, but I would be a LOT less price sensitive if the seeds were described in a manner that made them sound more special. (even if I didn't know the variety off-hand.) Kentucky Blue Pole Beans, not 'Beans' and Organic Red Velvet Okra, not 'Okra'.

I wasn't sure I understood how large of a garden each seed pack is supposed to service. When you say '3 10 foot beds' does that mean 30 linear feet, or 300 square feet?

I'd also make sure you get real-world feedback about the plans and the pricing. If I was you, I'd go talk to people at local garden centers, and I'd bring my iPad and I'd ask them for help. If you're young, claim you're a student and it's a school project. If you're older, claim you're writing an article about this service and want to know what they honestly think.

I was surprised that the seeds weren't all organic / heritage (or that if they were, that wasn't marked.) I could be wrong, but I'd expect the sort of person who goes through this trouble would likely prefer those varieties, and would be willing to pay accordingly. After all, somebody who is looking for the cheapest seeds isn't your dream customer anyway.

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All in all, I really like the idea. It's a bit like joining a CSA, except that it's located in your backyard, with the 'assortment of foods, for a fixed price.'

But I suppose there are some people that fetishize the smell of wood pulp and who love signaling how smart they are to the world with shelves of impressive-looking unread books, and who therefore overlook a reading experience that is superior in every other way.

Your original statement was not set in a possible future, or in an theoretically different copyright regime.

Today, in the world we live in, books and e-books each continue to have their own strengths and weaknesses, with substantial portions of the market being better served with paper books, and a growing portion being better served by e-books, as reader technology improves.

Your comment was wrong. It was very, very wrong. And it still is.

And now I'm going to go curl up with a paper book, and fall asleep. I'm not using one of my readers, because that's a recipe for a broken reader.

But I suppose there are some people that fetishize the smell of wood pulp and who love signaling how smart they are to the world with shelves of impressive-looking unread books, and who therefore overlook a reading experience that is superior in every other way.

I'm a voracious reader, and have an iPad, a Kindle, and shelves of (mostly read) books.

Out-of-print -- with e-books, that means it's really out of print. With a traditional book, it means you need to talk to a used book store.

Used -- you can't save money by buying your e-books used. Nor can you sell them if you decide they have no further value to you.

Unanticipated Reading -- e-books are great for unanticipated delays where you brought an e-book device, but didn't bring a book.

Outdoor use -- you can take a paperback up a mountain, onto a lake, or into the jungle knowing that if it gets wet your losses are capped at $25, and if you fall down, it won't be damaged. With the e-book, a fall or weather could result in expensive damage.

Travel -- the paperback book doesn't need to be charged, doesn't need a power plug converter, works during takeoff and landing, and doesn't immediately mark you as a person who is worth robbing.

Portability -- you can carry a lot more e-books than books.

Search -- e-books are great for reference texts, where you intend to do a lot of searching for content, rather than linear reading. paper indexes are good, but not as powerful.

Markup -- e-books have a 'highlight' capability, and some note capabilities that seem like they'd work nicely in an academic context, but I generally prefer my system of post-it notes, scribbles in the margin, and underlines, which doesn't cleanly translate to e-books.

Disaster Recovery -- e-books are replaced from backups, or not at all. books are replaced by homeowners insurance payout.

Public Image -- my iPad and Kindle both mark me as an early adopter tech guy. a book likely says nothing about me, unless the person looking has an opinion about the title in question.

Permanence -- I'm relatively confident that my paper library will endure for as long as there's somebody who values the content of the books. I'm not confident my e-book library will be usable in 10 years. (between DRM, format incompatibility, and accidental data loss.)

Images -- books currently beat e-books pretty solidly when it comes to imagery. I can't really imagine getting a Photography book as an e-book at this point in time.

Visual ease -- e-books let you adjust the font, but paper books are often (though not always) easier to read.

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Or maybe e-books are superior in every single way, and I only buy books to fetishize the smell of wood pulp, whilst filling shelves to signal to my wife, kids, pets and good friends that I'm intelligent.

sigh

To quote NetFlix: "Friends is a feature on the Netflix Web site that’s been used by less than two percent of all subscribers since we added the feature in 2004."

That strikes me as a wholly adequate explanation.

Just checked one vid, it streamed without issue.

That said, I've never had an issue with my iPhone's youtube app either, so I don't know if there's something fundamentally different about my network and yours.

The #1 problem I have with scribd is that you appear to be unapologetic content thieves.

Take, as an example, the [scribd] links that HN generates automatically. That's your earliest investor automatically stealing and rehosting content in violation of both your TOS and the law, and you do nothing about it.

You must be aware of it, but you don't stop it. That certainly gives the appearance that you don't care that you make a large portion of your money by screwing over rightsholders.

Truly, I believe the world is a worse place because your business exists, and that if you shuttered your business today the gains would vastly outweigh the losses experienced by all. I understand that the DMCA allows you to operate with impunity, but legal doesn't mean ethical. In this case, it's just abuse of a loophole in a poorly written law.

This is my entirely honest opinion. I continue to hope you'll close down scribd, or at a minimum engage in a MASSIVE rethinking of how you deal with copyrighted content. I know this won't be a popular opinion, but I simply can't understand how [scribd] links are anything other than a tacit admission that your real business is the monetization of pirated documents.

FWIW, a 5 year Greek CDS currently sells for $925k/yr, and pays out $10m if the debt defaults in that time period.

Not exactly the bargain of the century at this point in time.

Edit: for context, that's roughly the same price as Venezuela and Argentina.

http://www.sba.gov/recovery/arcloanprogram/index.html

My failed startup didn't get a bailout, but two of my ongoing businesses each got $35k at 0%, with a 6 month deferral, which was a pretty good deal.

I absolutely agree that one should, at a minimum, test meaningful statements before resorting to pointless or tautological verbiage.

That said, if it turned out that 'Infiniti G37: car.' was split testing better than 'Infiniti G37: the high-performance luxury sedan', I'd double-check their work, then roll out the new slogan. After all, at some level it's more to do with what works than what is elegant and satisfying.

This is why I wrote that it indicates "on what dimensions it's supposed to excel". Here's a non-abstract example:

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Mercedes CLS550: the safe luxury car.

BMW M5: the sporty luxury sedan.

Toyota Camry: the reliable family car.

Hyundai Sonata: inexpensive, practical transportation.

Jeep Wrangler: fun off-road vehicle.

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Nobody is going to refer to their car as unsafe, not sporty, unreliable, impractical, or not fun, but that doesn't make the brief descriptions unhelpful. It tells me why the creator thinks their car is different than the others.

And while nobody will say "the slow, difficult way", they might well say "the most powerful way", "the fully-customizable way" or "the environmentally responsible way" all of which indicate to me that they are differentiated by something other than speed or ease of use.

Your proposed alternatives tell me absolutely nothing except what market the product is in. You're making me work to discover why your product is different than others in the market, and that can't be a good thing for you.

In practice, the screen is completely fine from a glare perspective, when used indoors. Fails completely in direct sunlight, but it's fine indoors.

The Bloomberg app is light text on a black background and it's very easy on the eyes.

My most common iPad uses to date:

- read my RSS feeds and Bloomberg News with my coffee and breakfast, just like I read the newspaper. I never did this with a laptop (too large, too vulnerable) and it's nice to start the day with all my news in one spot. (I also make my scrabble moves during breakfast now.)

- taking notes while in meetings / at a conference. Again, I never liked using laptops for notes because they create a physical barrier between me and the other people in the room. I didn't love paper because I didn't get a digital copy of it, unless I used my logitech pen and special paper, and it was annoying to write with and had mediocre battery life.

- auxiliary information. I now use it in lieu of printing recipes, and I use it constantly while watching sports (there's a great F1 timing and scoring app, and I love having some basic live sports data available while watching sports.)

- 'just in case' laptop. I've taken to bringing it with me in situations where I don't think I need a laptop, but where I could conceivably need better electronic communication / internet / etc than is provided by a blackberry / iphone / etc.

- 'keep the kid occupied' pad. my daughter has some quasi-educational games installed on it, and I have a few videos on it for her. Good for emergency entertainment.

Things it sucks at:

- being a full laptop. It's too small. I haven't tried using a keyboard with it, but I'm also not tempted to do so.

"Foo is a fast, easy way to bar." makes it clear what Foo does, and on what dimensions it's supposed to excel. That's clear and useful.

Please don't bog me down in details right out of the gate. Give me the 30,000 foot view, with an option to drop down lower if I like the lay of the land.