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spoonyg

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I would like to see what the % of projects that are not outsourced fail for comparison. My guess is that bad projects with bad management contribute to both, more-so than outsourcing. We just completed a large outsourced project that would have taken not just 4x the money by twice the time if we had tried to do it in-house. And at the end of the project, the labor overhead for in-house is low and sustainable.

A bit off topic, but I have been doing medical startups for 10 years now and can provide a little insight into your questions.

Directly helping people with technology is extremely satisfying and I would definitely recommend it as a career. That said, it is not an easy career. You have to be patient. Getting a new device from concept to even human trials (much less market approval) can take 2-4 years and depending on the complexity. You have to be diligent and tireless. The complexity and amount of paperwork to meet regulatory compliance requirements would shock you. The current product I am working on has about 15,000 pages of documentation, test reports, etc. Nothing extra above the regulatory requirements is included in this number.

In the end, my opinion is that the direct difference you can make in peoples lives in the healthcare industry outweighs the difficulties.

Not exactly correct. For an FDA market approval a medical device must be proven to be safe AND effective. This can be proven in several ways: through a trial or as I believe in this case, through similarity to another proven device. And this is not the only bar. If you have a new device you also have to get reimbursement from health insurance. This is not guaranteed just because you have FDA approval.

Love it, but the real way to test this is to present the monetary choice itself. For example, they could pick to get payed 1 cent with 100% certainty or 25 cents with 4% certainty. (although I don't think mturk supports this natively) EDIT: right, exactly as been suggested by other commenters!

Octopart Traffic 18 years ago

I use the hell out of your site and I am stoked that it sounds like you will be around for some time. Congratulations.

I have built up something similar to what you are describing and it was a fun project. My first reaction to #1 is that if the information you want to repeatably in the same place you are probably better off just doing things manually and not going to the trouble of building a visual tool. In my experience the interesting pieces of data tend to move around and something like regex is the best way to handle this. I used wget to grab data because it was quick and easy. I then did the post processing in the background, separating out the grabbing of data and the interpretation of data.

Yep, exactly correct. For my sites I use Valueclick, Adsense and I am always trying something new. You will also find that the best network varies on the placement on your page, so try a few combinations out. You might check out pubmatic.com, I have been using their ad server and it is great for someone who is getting started with ads.

Cost of Living 19 years ago

I live in the Bay Area, and those #'s look pretty close to me for a minimum, penny-pinching baseline. When it comes down to it, you can almost forget about the money ycomb is offering. The money is NOTHING. It is all about the contacts and guidance, which is priceless.

PHP anyone? 19 years ago

It isn't the tool that is important but what you do with it. PHP is a pretty good tool. Rails is the (relatively) new shiny tool. You can build fantastic or crappy things with either one.