sgoraya

Morey is not even an especially notable NBA figure, Twitter doesn't even work in China, it would have been easy to block news of this in China.

NBA fan, who will NOT be renewing league pass, checking in. Morey is considered one of the top NBA GM's of one of the top teams (Rockets) that have a strong Sino-centric fan base because of former Rocket great, Yao Ming. Yao was the first Chinese superstar in the NBA. The Rockets are the 'adopted' team of China.

Isn't a backlash among the US population over this plainly foreseeable?

I agree - I'm not paying for league pass this year. I did not like the response from the NBA.

How does this tracking really works?

Cookies and/or pixels - edit If you've opted out of being cookied, then you may be "targeted as an balding middle aged man with erectile dysfunction."

Google is by far the most serious about fraud prevention.

I agree - they've had 'Verification' in DFA > DCM > DDM and the associated tools and reports keep getting better. And if you have ReportBuilder skills, you can really ID and find discrepant/fraudulent data.

Are you creating a 'traditional' bank or considering a Credit Union model?

(Should have read further down :), looks like 'traditional' bank - please correct me if I'm wrong.)

Can't wait for him to start up something new, Grantland was really great.

He's with HBO now and his podcasts are back too. I think his show is starting next year and he's hired some of the ex-grantland staff too.

The recent Standford ETL talk by Jeff Seibert (Senior Director of Product at Twitter) provides some insight into the development of the Twitter API's/SDK (Fabric). Overall, I thought it was one of the better and more practical talks.

http://goo.gl/WfAiPU

I spoke with a laptop reseller a few minutes ago and according to him, the 980 will only fit in laptops thicker than 1" - so it will not be available in a slimmer, lighter gaming laptops like the MSI Ghost series.

I thought this was a great primer on Chrome Canary:

http://jtaby.com/2012/04/23/modern-web-development-part-1.ht...

> I always find this list tremendously useful when I don't know what to read next.

Likewise - This is how I recently found 'The Windup Girl' by Paolo Bacigalupi; thoroughly enjoyed this book and would highly recommend it.

My father's/family friend opened a McDonalds franchise about 20 years ago. He needed to have approximately $350k, 'non-borrowed' cash on hand to be considered as a franchisee.

> How's the experience?

It must be good because he now owns 4 McD franchises. All his kids worked there through HS and (some) college. His son is the "Manager" of all 4.

> Does it require lots of work?

I think after their first couple of restaurants, they have developed and refined their management system. The son works a typical work week floating between restaurants and balancing books, hiring managers, etc.

> Or just require passive monitoring?

My fathers friend was at the first restaurant from almost open to close everyday for several years. (I used to ride my bike there for free ice cream and he was always there). The son seems to have enough free time - its almost like a 8-6pm type job for him.

> How's the cost vs payout?

He and his family are very well off and have been able to invest in other money making areas as well. A lot of hard work on the front end but now he has 4 cash cows that his son manages.

>> Is there some kind of widespread anger at truck drivers?

I'm just one data point, but I've driven the I-5 in California between the bay area and southern CA a lot (about 180,000 miles on my 2005 Tacoma truck) as well as Hwy. 99 in the same vicinity.

I'd say that I've become apathetic towards truck drivers in general. I've been nearly run off the road twice (once where I was sure I was going to wreck real bad - got lucky), been cutoff, etc. by truckers more times than I can remember. Most truckers are safe, but the ones that are not can really skew your perception. Considering, in most cases, when a 18-wheeler causes an accident (I've witnessed a few), there is little damage to their truck or to themselves...the 'regular' car on the other hand is usually destroyed with devastating injury to the occupants.

This story made me feel like a jerk for moment (I've flipped off truckers before) - but the emotional aspects of the story can be applied to everyone else on the road too. Truckers are not the only ones that have to drive for their livelihood or have personal issues to deal with.

Fun read - I especially liked the last statement of the interview:

>> Software is a great combination between artistry and engineering. When you finally get done and get to appreciate what you have done it is like a part of yourself that you've put together. I think a lot of the people here feel that way.

I would recommend joining the SVForum if possible - They offer, among many other things, 'office hours' with technology/startup law firms;

http://www.svforum.org/

Regarding carrot quality, both Bolthouse and Grimway Farms have been growing a different type of carrot specifically for the baby carrot products.

A family friend is an exec at one of the above companies and he mentioned that the taste of the baby carrots are indeed more bland than the 'regular' carrots. I just conducted a highly scientific experiment and tasted one of each at lunch - my conclusion: he is correct :)

We let a mid-sized oil services company beta test our software for free and had our lawyer draft a non-compete/IP protection contract letter;

For the amount and quality of feedback we received, allowing the free beta test worked out great - I could not have paid a group of QA testers to provide as good feedback as I got from the beta test company;

In addition, most companies do not like to 'pay to test' a product.

In our situation, the company ended up purchasing our software and about 18 months later was acquired by Halliburton - Halliburton has its own software division and no longer needed us;

Goes almost without saying that Epic develops great game engines; however, IMHO, Crytek's cryengine at GDC was more impressive and has done a better job of rendering outdoor environments and foliage better than the Epic's Unreal engine; Unreal still has top spot in market share but I think Crytek will make significant gains in the next couple of years;

That said, Tim Sweeney is still a hero.

>> What else do you do besides computers?

Wife and one child provide a lot of 'doing' :)

I have a mountain bike that I ride around nearly every evening for at least an hour (a lot longer on weekends)- I ride that same bike to a gym three times a week;

Read a book;

Having bootstrapped my own business, my biggest issues were dealing with stress and 'the unknown'. I was unmarried at the time so I could handle the pay decrease and living without niceties.

Cash flow was always on my mind - if a client postponed payment, or flat out refused to pay for whatever reason (happened to me a few times, even from 'established' clients) I would be mentally overloaded trying to figure out how to get by for the month.

You go through such a roller coaster ride of emotion - There is no better feeling of joy and accomplishment than having a client sign a contract and pay with a nice check; there is no worse feeling than sitting at your desk, staring at the wall trying to figure out how you'll pay the bills for the month...

Anyhow, I would never trade the experience for anything, though I'm not sure if I could have handled it if I were married at the time; I would echo Dave's sentiment that bootstrapping is hard but also extremely rewarding. You'll come out a tougher SOB for it, thats for sure! ;)

> ...there's the obvious question of what the heck do you do with all this data? If you have a crummy night sleeping you're going to wake up and have a bunch of graphs and charts that basically say "Yup, you sure had a crummy night." You can apply tags to the data, things like "cat scratch" or "creepy owl outside window" to help you figure out why your evenings aren't as restful as they should be. But, really, wouldn't a pen and piece of paper achieve much the same thing?

I was about to pre-order a wakemate several months ago, but I had the same lingering thoughts above and canceled my order;

> There are a lot of people asking in comments whether the thing managed to make us feel more refreshed when waking up, and the simple answer is no. That's because, more often than not, the battery was dead by the morning or for some other reason the wristband failed to trigger the alarm.

Considering the wakemate had several delays prior to launch, looks like they should have let it bake a little longer...

> my favorite place Ten Ren down in Chinatown.

Ten Ren is awesome - friendly folks who also educated me about how to prepare tea and let me know that you could steep it multiple times (which was news to me at the time since I only steeped once and then threw out the leaves).

Having since moved to Southern CA, I visit their store in Monterrey Park. Good folks still, but I miss the charm of the Chinatown store.

Not a fan of blockbuster been using Netflix for a long time (I did jump ship to blockbusters online service temporarily when it first came out - the incentives were too good).

To get nostalgic for a second, I will miss the experience of visiting the movie rental stores. The excitement was palpable as a kid - walking the rows, looking at all the movie covers, hoping that Dad would let me rent a game, etc.

The social experience of walking around with other strangers, looking for the entertainment of the evening...there was something fun and special about it that Netflix will never capture.

...the convenience of netflix trumps that though ;-)

Congratulations - The journey only gets better!

I've got a 8 month baby boy and wonderful wife that are the center of my universe right now.

I got a chuckle about the time invested into the childbirth process; my wife teased me about knowing more about having a baby than she did ;)

That said, I am spending less time on my business - whereas in the past after coming home from the office I would take a break for dinner, the gym, then get back to my desk at home and work into the night. That schedule has changed drastically - I would rather spend the evening playing with my son and hanging out with my wife than working. After the little one goes to sleep though, I try to put in a couple hours of highly focused work.

Overall, I think I'm almost as productive (after the first 4 months) - when you have a child, the need to maximize time and effort are amplified.

> But I do think everyone should work at a restaurant at least once in their life. It's a customer-service learning experience and gives you an appreciation for the staff when you patronize restaurants later.

Very much agreed - I worked in the kitchen of a family run Chinese restaurant during my junior and senior years of high school. Did everything from taking orders, to chopping tons of cabbage, mopping up a drunk assholes puke to de-veining shrimp. All at the same time! J/K ;)

Although it sucked some of the time, looking back at it, I would have done it all over again. Learned a lot (I can cook Chinese and can put together a great dinner very quick), made long lasting relationships (the same family still owns the restaurant and I stop by whenever I visit my parents) and the customer service aspects have been ingrained in me since.

I hold commodity ETF's in my taxable account. No reason behind it other than they were in my scottrade account prior to me getting behind the index fund strategy.

> This is betting on the previous 30 years of financial history going forward.

How does that old yarn go, past performance is no indication of future return. ;)

I subscribe to the John Bogle school of passive index fund investing (Rebalancing once a year) - Currently have a 401k that I max out using Vanguard funds. I'm also working on saving a 12-month 'emergency' fund. When the emergency fund is complete, I'll move on to adding more funds to my taxable account that I have with Scottrade.

For whatever it worth, my current asset allocation is:

Vanguard Institutional Index VINIX 25%

Vanguard Extended Market Idx Instl VIEIX 15%

Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US Index Inst VFWSX 35%

Vanguard Inst Total Bond Market Index VBMPX 25%

I use the following site and forums for my investing questions and info:

http://www.bogleheads.org/

I've found it to be very informative and the forum participants to be helpful.

I agree - A 'buy RubyPoints' image/link might be desirable; and similarly to parent comment, what is the major incentive here? What site(s) currently offers redemption of Rubypoints?

> Thanks for the suggestion, for now if you'd like to see what a paid link looks like: https://www.rubypay.com/i/9c7wfUo4ACZ

Rather than having to sign-in to view how a transaction is done, can you have a demo page that includes 'dummy' rubypoints that can be redeemed to view a pdf/mp3 - for me, it would help make a decision about whether the service is useful or not.

In general, cool idea! I'm just the type of person that would like to see the service in action without having to login/create an account first.

We setup a presentation that included 8 different individual businesses (total headcount in the meeting/presentation was about 20); My business partner knew some of these folks and invited them to hear our offer. The others, we emailed - not framed as a sale but to check out our technology and provide feedback.

After the presentation, we had 2 businesses ready to cut us a check and 3 that later signed and the others provided us valuable feedback and references.

There is an interesting book by Adrian Slywotzky, The Art of Profitability, that goes over various profit models. I think the above example falls into 'Multi-Component' profit, in that the same product (water) is priced differently in different businesses (super market, convenience store, delivery); since customers behave differently in each purchasing situation you see the ability to price the product in various ways.

Another example would be how Coke is priced (to restaurants, grocery stores, vending machine).

A Dell computer running Win 2K server w/ a Pentium 400MHz & 512MB RAM. Its an old server but has not crashed in years (I've rebooted for maintenance here and there, but thats it).

I think I've had it since since 2001 or 2002.

> the consumers never wrote off Netflix and that's pretty much all that matters.

Not that I necessarily wrote off netflix, but I did jump ship to Blockbuster's online service for short while when it was first introduced. The ability to return the movies I got in the mail with any movie at their physical store was a pretty nice feature, in addition I got to rent one game per month as well.

A couple of months later, blockbuster started changing their policies and I switched back to trusty netflix.

When blockbuster first introduced their service I thought that netflix might be in trouble...but my unpublished prediction was unfounded! ;)