ryanwaggoner

529 ms·

1. 3871.▲
   by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

   Hmmm...so traders had a 1 in 4 shot of picking the correct company and they happened to do so? I remain unconvinced. I also remain unconvinced that this data is useful. It's not like we should let trader behavior influence safety investi
2. 3872.▲
   by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

   Branson is definitely one of my favorite entrepreneurs of all time. That said, Virgin Galactic is a long way from being a $1Bn company :)
3. 3873.▲
   by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

   Very simple: I'm a greedy bastard.
4. 3874.▲
   by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

   You're really missing the point here.
5. 3875.▲
   by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

   I'm one of those people who has a really hard time with the idea of having left money on the table. When I'm in foreign countries, I love to haggle in the markets, but no matter how big a reduction in price I get, I always walk away wonder
6. 3876.▲
   by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

   jyothi: are you fucking kidding me? This was probably the most humble, most gracious, most introspective blog post I can imagine them writing under the circumstances. There was absolutely nothing there that could be considered a "rant", n
7. 3877.▲
   by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

   Good thing this is for OS X, then, and not Windows.
8. 3878.▲
   by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

   This could be a significant boost to backup companies that use S3, as they probably have way more transfer in than out.
9. 3879.▲
   by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

   I did down-mod it, but I see it often enough that I wanted to bring it up and see if I was misunderstanding something.
10. 3880.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    Totally OT, but aren't posts like this and other similar "I agree" posts redundant? I thought that's what the little up-mod button was for? This feels like clutter to me.
11. 3881.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    It's not like it's an either/or decision to send a private email or post an accusatory blog post. They could have simply tried the mature way first and then posted publicly if that didn't work. In fact, the public post would probably have
12. 3882.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    For what it's worth, Thor Muller (Cofounder of Get Satisfaction) responded in the comments and said the wording was a mistake and would be changed immediately: "Gosh, we messed up on the wording of that badge and are changing it pronto. The
13. 3883.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    Yeah, Google hasn't stolen your idea yet because they hadn't launched a venture arm to serve as a honeypot for hackers and their brilliant ideas.
14. 3884.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    Is it just me, or does this seem like a bad idea for entrepreneurs? I mean, if Google backed you, wouldn't that make you less desirable to many acquirers who compete with Google?
15. 3885.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    Do we have any proof of that? I have to believe that if Apple released a new version of Apple.com that caused a huge overnight drop in their online sales, they'd change it back. If they released a new iTunes Store design that caused sales
16. 3886.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    37signals uses testing for copywriting (headlines, specifically), a creative process. Do you think that's a mistake? http://www.37signals.com/svn/posts/1525-writing-decisions-he...
17. 3887.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    Comparing company A to company B is not entirely useful here, because so many other things are going on. However, there are loads of examples where a company used metrics to drive design for higher profits. Best example is probably Google
18. 3888.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    As many have commented around the web, Microsoft should contribute all the content and data to Wikipedia. It would be a smart move on their part in terms of garnering goodwill.
19. 3889.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    I think designers should use their gut and artistic skills to design. But I think the effectiveness of that design should be judged on some quantifiable set of metrics, to the extent possible. Business isn't an art contest.
20. 3890.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    Of course it's their choice. That doesn't mean it's the optimal choice or one to be admired.
21. 3891.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    If you want to use metrics, that's fine. If not: well, whatever works for you, works for you. Obviously 37signals is a success, and they design on impulse. Is 37signals a success because they design on impulse, or in spite of it? I'm sor
22. 3892.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    One thing that's interesting to me is that they clearly view each of their changes as being an improvement, but do they have empirical data to back that up? According to this copyblogger article, it doesn't sound like they had any metrics
23. 3893.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    Agreed...the about page isn't much better.
24. 3894.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    This is a really interesting idea, but I'd like to see more examples with some actual data. For example, how many people check the box? Of those, how many actually sign up when the service is available?
25. 3895.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    What you're suggesting sounds suspiciously like AIG and the whole "credit default swaps" mess. What about when the insurance company goes under and needs a bailout?
26. 3896.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    Actually, you did sound like you were complaining about the diversity of platforms and environments that open source projects exhibit. And I didn't see him ridiculing you, just asking a question. I read the question as being this: If yo
27. 3897.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    You can use the * character for italics. The /thing/ is annoying.
28. 3898.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    You're not making any sense. Here are a couple of the logical holes in your argument: 1. Demand for programming is variable, not fixed. Our demand for great programmers is arguably much higher today than it would have been without OS, bec
29. 3899.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    You sound pissed that these FOSS projects are kicking the ass of products that you consider to be superior. The fact that many of these projects were started by college students, grew out of commercial enterprises, or have a business model
30. 3900.▲
    by ryanwaggoner 18y ago

    I'm confused...aren't there quite a few counter examples to your claims? Things like Linux, Apache, MySQL, PostgreSQL, PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby, Firefox, etc, etc? I'd feel better about your rant if you weren't a) biased against the idea an