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nice comment from Fried blog (by Mark Pesce): "Jesus fscking Christ. What these kids need is a little support, not some idiot tearing them down because they sud

nice comment from Fried blog (by Mark Pesce): "Jesus fscking Christ. What these kids need is a little support, not some idiot tearing them down because they suddenly find themselves in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right idea. Jealous much? If you want to see Diaspora* succeed, then you’d better work very, very hard coming up with solutions to every one of the very real problems you just raised. Otherwise, you’re just a hater, and you’re only making the problem worse."

rick_2047 16y ago
I don't think that the author has ever tried to undermine what diaspora is trying to do in any one word of the short article. What he has tried to tell everyone is what is essentially the best advice those people can ever get. Somebody has to put a reality check on things. I seriously believe that a reality check has to be put on the dream run the diaspora team is getting. Essentially they are getting money just for an idea. And that too, not even a half baked one. I would have been more supportive of them getting around 1700% of there expectations if they had at least a spec out before. Edit: Changed kids to people as I am younger in intellect and age and it felt silly when I read it again.
- lionshare 16y ago
  The reality check can be taken one day after the finance period is due. It's not a reality check, it's a deliberate attempt to stop the finance momentum. They have basic specs, and it doesn't look like a rocket surgery (as Steve Krug calls it), certainly not for 4 dedicated CS grads working hard. And although my comments are demoted here, the truth is that distributed "nodes" is a threat to the "central hub" owners, including J Fried, especially when your customers are geeks who can easily install and config the distributed thing. Paradigm shifts can wipe out other companies very quickly, and Fried knows it.
  - rick_2047 16y ago
    If you are paid $170K for this spec http://joindiaspora.com/project.html http://joindiaspora.com/project.html then it is easy to be rich. There are far too many better things that people can spend there money on. Cool things, even on kickstarter, are going underfunded. After all they just $10000 dollars, what is the need to give a 1730% funding to something.
    - lionshare 16y ago
      1. A common seed stage is 250K-750K and they are currently way below it. Since they are going open source, there is no better way to achieve it. 2. 250K+ for 4 people will give them the opportunity to focus and advance fast without financial side effects. 3. Since when the J. Fried camp is so worried about specs? They want to build a tool to scrape the data, store it local and make it avail. via standard protocol. Nothing to invent, all the tools are in place, but a lot of hard work on the boring integration/config details and testing. And to the point again: if such thing work I guess it will not be that hard to include a tasks and project management layer that will hurt Basecamp.
      - rick_2047 16y ago
        1) I am not speaking on the behalf of J. Fried. I don't care who that is. 2) I have said that before and will say it again. Sure seeding is way above that. But those seed money go to startups which make money. The VCs make more money off it. Nobody is getting money from this.
        lionshare 16y ago
        Exactly! We agree here. This is why they succeeded. And this is why the old anti-raising money arguments of J.Fried do not hold. And his "anti-evil" strategy also doesn't work here. So he picks the "no product" PR strategy (again, when Google had a full product, albeit free and competing with Campfire, it was the "evil" PR strategy). It's a PR to stop a competing trend, a paradigm shift that sooner or later threatens his core business. His subtext is sorta "listen, don't give them more money because it will spoil them and there will be no product." I see no other way to start such a project than a few geeks sitting and building it, and nothing will help them more than a few months freedom from financial distractions.
- chegra 16y ago
  The thing about selling the dream is that everybody has a picture in their own minds that makes it exciting. If we were to put actual code to it, it doesn't look like what I had in mind. So, alot of people will then say it's junk. Now this 37 signal's guy might say hey, the expectations are too high. Yes it is. But like any it is a problem to be solved. Just off the top of my head frequent release of the progress would migitate this risk. Maybe code or Screenshots to manage expectation. Look at Obama, tons of expectation or any other popular president, did they deliever as expected? No. I think everybody here knows that the presidents aren't going to deliver as expected. So, it is with these guys. With all the hype, people can figure it out. Hey they might not do as well as expected, but we can atleast try to be apart of history.
  - lionshare 16y ago
    hmmm... interesting. But really, to write some client software that stores and provides read/write of the common "social content" (pics, blog posts, writing on the wall etc) in common standard RESTful way is such a far fetched dream? It could be simple as www.mysite.com/diaspora/albums or www.mysite.com/diaspora/wall. Even Obama can handle it. (Not to mention 4 dedicated CS grads)
    - chegra 16y ago
      So, that is the picture you have in your head? See I would be disappoint with this. My idea of it was you have a node and you add stuff to your profile, then some body copies it, several copies all on different nodes, so at any given time your nodes is always available. And there is some kinda security encrytion for each node. No key = no node. What I was trying to point out some people are going to be disappointed regardless. All there is to do is manage it.
      - lionshare 16y ago
        as long as the protocol is done right, applications are endless. TCP is maybe 30 years old? The copy is an issue - because once it's copied you can not fully control it, similar to Facebook. Yes, there will be disappointments. But it's not "a curse", a healthy 250K seed-stage worth is not the end of the world, and as someone pointed here: it's an open source seed. It will grow. Fried should not bash them like that, unless he has some special interest - which he does. The Diaspora paradigm threatens his core business and he knows it.
ErrantX 16y ago
Jesus fscking Christ. What these kids need is a little support, not some idiot tearing them down because they suddenly find themselves in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right idea Bullshit - what they need is tearing into now (just like this; politely) so they realise that they can't wing it on the good vibe. They gotta produce something good off this money; otherwise it's a potential disaster! Call it a reality check.
- lionshare 16y ago
  fair, but let them finish the finance properly. This is not a reality check, it a move to stop the finance from a potential competing tool
  - shadowsun7 16y ago
    What potential competing tool? You've been taking a rather ridiculous stance, lionshare. In order for your arguments to hold true, justify the following: a) that Diaspora (an anti-Facebook) is a Basecamp competitor, which implies that b) Facebook is a Basecamp competitor; c) the rise of node systems == the fall of centralized server systems d) that Jason Fried isn't just weighing in as a 3rd-party startup founder.

rick_2047 16y ago

I don't think that the author has ever tried to undermine what diaspora is trying to do in any one word of the short article. What he has tried to tell everyone is what is essentially the best advice those people can ever get. Somebody has to put a reality check on things. I seriously believe that a reality check has to be put on the dream run the diaspora team is getting. Essentially they are getting money just for an idea. And that too, not even a half baked one. I would have been more supportive of them getting around 1700% of there expectations if they had at least a spec out before. Edit: Changed kids to people as I am younger in intellect and age and it felt silly when I read it again.

lionshare 16y ago
The reality check can be taken one day after the finance period is due. It's not a reality check, it's a deliberate attempt to stop the finance momentum. They have basic specs, and it doesn't look like a rocket surgery (as Steve Krug calls it), certainly not for 4 dedicated CS grads working hard. And although my comments are demoted here, the truth is that distributed "nodes" is a threat to the "central hub" owners, including J Fried, especially when your customers are geeks who can easily install and config the distributed thing. Paradigm shifts can wipe out other companies very quickly, and Fried knows it.
- rick_2047 16y ago
  If you are paid $170K for this spec http://joindiaspora.com/project.html http://joindiaspora.com/project.html then it is easy to be rich. There are far too many better things that people can spend there money on. Cool things, even on kickstarter, are going underfunded. After all they just $10000 dollars, what is the need to give a 1730% funding to something.
  - lionshare 16y ago
    1. A common seed stage is 250K-750K and they are currently way below it. Since they are going open source, there is no better way to achieve it. 2. 250K+ for 4 people will give them the opportunity to focus and advance fast without financial side effects. 3. Since when the J. Fried camp is so worried about specs? They want to build a tool to scrape the data, store it local and make it avail. via standard protocol. Nothing to invent, all the tools are in place, but a lot of hard work on the boring integration/config details and testing. And to the point again: if such thing work I guess it will not be that hard to include a tasks and project management layer that will hurt Basecamp.
    - rick_2047 16y ago
      1) I am not speaking on the behalf of J. Fried. I don't care who that is. 2) I have said that before and will say it again. Sure seeding is way above that. But those seed money go to startups which make money. The VCs make more money off it. Nobody is getting money from this.
      - lionshare 16y ago
        Exactly! We agree here. This is why they succeeded. And this is why the old anti-raising money arguments of J.Fried do not hold. And his "anti-evil" strategy also doesn't work here. So he picks the "no product" PR strategy (again, when Google had a full product, albeit free and competing with Campfire, it was the "evil" PR strategy). It's a PR to stop a competing trend, a paradigm shift that sooner or later threatens his core business. His subtext is sorta "listen, don't give them more money because it will spoil them and there will be no product." I see no other way to start such a project than a few geeks sitting and building it, and nothing will help them more than a few months freedom from financial distractions.
chegra 16y ago
The thing about selling the dream is that everybody has a picture in their own minds that makes it exciting. If we were to put actual code to it, it doesn't look like what I had in mind. So, alot of people will then say it's junk. Now this 37 signal's guy might say hey, the expectations are too high. Yes it is. But like any it is a problem to be solved. Just off the top of my head frequent release of the progress would migitate this risk. Maybe code or Screenshots to manage expectation. Look at Obama, tons of expectation or any other popular president, did they deliever as expected? No. I think everybody here knows that the presidents aren't going to deliver as expected. So, it is with these guys. With all the hype, people can figure it out. Hey they might not do as well as expected, but we can atleast try to be apart of history.
- lionshare 16y ago
  hmmm... interesting. But really, to write some client software that stores and provides read/write of the common "social content" (pics, blog posts, writing on the wall etc) in common standard RESTful way is such a far fetched dream? It could be simple as www.mysite.com/diaspora/albums or www.mysite.com/diaspora/wall. Even Obama can handle it. (Not to mention 4 dedicated CS grads)
  - chegra 16y ago
    So, that is the picture you have in your head? See I would be disappoint with this. My idea of it was you have a node and you add stuff to your profile, then some body copies it, several copies all on different nodes, so at any given time your nodes is always available. And there is some kinda security encrytion for each node. No key = no node. What I was trying to point out some people are going to be disappointed regardless. All there is to do is manage it.
    - lionshare 16y ago
      as long as the protocol is done right, applications are endless. TCP is maybe 30 years old? The copy is an issue - because once it's copied you can not fully control it, similar to Facebook. Yes, there will be disappointments. But it's not "a curse", a healthy 250K seed-stage worth is not the end of the world, and as someone pointed here: it's an open source seed. It will grow. Fried should not bash them like that, unless he has some special interest - which he does. The Diaspora paradigm threatens his core business and he knows it.

ErrantX 16y ago

Jesus fscking Christ. What these kids need is a little support, not some idiot tearing them down because they suddenly find themselves in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right idea Bullshit - what they need is tearing into now (just like this; politely) so they realise that they can't wing it on the good vibe. They gotta produce something good off this money; otherwise it's a potential disaster! Call it a reality check.

lionshare 16y ago
fair, but let them finish the finance properly. This is not a reality check, it a move to stop the finance from a potential competing tool
- shadowsun7 16y ago
  What potential competing tool? You've been taking a rather ridiculous stance, lionshare. In order for your arguments to hold true, justify the following: a) that Diaspora (an anti-Facebook) is a Basecamp competitor, which implies that b) Facebook is a Basecamp competitor; c) the rise of node systems == the fall of centralized server systems d) that Jason Fried isn't just weighing in as a 3rd-party startup founder.