en-us https://www.intensedebate.com/users/32641 Comments by Jay Levitt http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2009/05/the-public-restroom-as-hci-laboratory.html#IDComment22080929 Tip of the hat for talking about your OCD - real OCD, not "I'm detail-oriented" OCD. Sat, 23 May 2009 00:38:00 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2009/05/the-public-restroom-as-hci-laboratory.html#IDComment22080929 http://www.jasonmendelson.com/wp/archives/2009/05/quick-ways-to-get-fired-as-a-lawyer.php#IDComment21474951 Re #3, leadership: I think the value of an "expertise" professional - attorney, accountant, realtor - is inversely proportional to the number of good ideas *I* have to come up with. If they make me do all the thinking, they're not advisers - they're gatekeepers. Oddly, I have yet to find someone who'll make that their basis for compensation. Thu, 14 May 2009 22:00:24 +0000 http://www.jasonmendelson.com/wp/archives/2009/05/quick-ways-to-get-fired-as-a-lawyer.php#IDComment21474951 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2009/05/my-airplane-super-power.html#IDComment20542869 I have the uncanny and impressive ability to, given any conversational topic, remember and sing a thematically-appropriate pop-music lyric, usually from the 1980s. Also: Discover new bugs that really ARE in the compiler, not my code. Sun, 3 May 2009 23:51:22 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2009/05/my-airplane-super-power.html#IDComment20542869 http://www.jasonmendelson.com/wp/archives/2009/04/drummer-jokes-101.php#IDComment20040253 Drummer parties a little too hard one night. The next morning, his roommate sees him walking around with his wallet duct-taped to his cheek. Seems he was trying to stop his head from ringing. Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:44:36 +0000 http://www.jasonmendelson.com/wp/archives/2009/04/drummer-jokes-101.php#IDComment20040253 http://www.jasonmendelson.com/wp/archives/2009/04/drummer-jokes-101.php#IDComment20039860 Oh-HOO, look who's getting picky! OK, I'll make some up. Fresh off the grill: Investor: This recession's awful. I can't stand to listen to the market reports anymore. Drummer: Really? I couldn't listen to them before, but now everything's great. Investor: Great? Have you heard the Dow today? Drummer: Yeah, and boy, did I miss that! I can't hear anything above 8K. Tue, 28 Apr 2009 00:34:01 +0000 http://www.jasonmendelson.com/wp/archives/2009/04/drummer-jokes-101.php#IDComment20039860 http://www.jasonmendelson.com/wp/archives/2009/04/drummer-jokes-101.php#IDComment20037740 How can you tell when a drummer's knocking at the door? He speeds up. Mon, 27 Apr 2009 23:44:07 +0000 http://www.jasonmendelson.com/wp/archives/2009/04/drummer-jokes-101.php#IDComment20037740 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2009/04/when-i-grow-up-i-want-to-be-a-solutions-provider.html#IDComment19374928 She looks to be about 11. I'm sure other parts of the country are tamer, but as a native Long Islander, the only term I'd have trouble conceptualizing at age 11 would be "bloated"... Sun, 19 Apr 2009 21:25:44 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2009/04/when-i-grow-up-i-want-to-be-a-solutions-provider.html#IDComment19374928 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/12/the-unbearable-frustration-of-error-code-80169d94.html#IDComment12887113 What's really surprising is that Microsoft tends to have bafflingly good tech support. And I say that as someone that really wanted to hate it! I usually can debug my own problems, so when I needed XP support, it was usually a deep-seated bug of some sort. My tickets would always get detailed responses, with techs asking for log files, suggesting workarounds, duplicating it themselves with my failcase data, etc. We almost inevitably found the problem. If not, I left satisfied that it really *was* intractable, and I never got that "if I could just talk to the guy who wrote it, he could solve it" feeling. Shame that their phone-based Xbox support doesn't live up to their web-based XP support. Mon, 22 Dec 2008 00:33:28 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/12/the-unbearable-frustration-of-error-code-80169d94.html#IDComment12887113 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/11/understanding-ignorance-and-humility.html#IDComment10526729 Hear, hear! I get annoyed by certain very bright entrepreneurs, because all they talk about is what worked for them. Who cares? "This worked for me" doesn't mean "the true path to success"; it doesn't even mean "important". (In "Founders at Work", half the founders swore that Aeron chairs were critical; half swore that plywood desks were critical. Talk about a distinction without a difference... Success is nice, but I'd much rather hear about what didn't work, and why. Only then can you start comparing successes to failures, and find out what's important. Richard Satava gave a great talk at BIF-4. He said that DARPA had a rule: If more than 10% of their projects succeeded, they considered it a problem; clearly, they weren't taking enough risks. Mon, 10 Nov 2008 00:17:45 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/11/understanding-ignorance-and-humility.html#IDComment10526729 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/11/mailing-list-spam.html#IDComment10521007 Agreed about the "wide range of philosophies". But, as far as I know, there's simply nobody - from major ISPs down to their own customers - who's been able to get them to engage at ALL in dealing with either their outbound spam or their inbound blackholing. I know the anti-spam world; I testified in some of the first lawsuits, wrote some of the code, spoke to the DMA on line 1 and Sanford Wallace on line 2. Postini doesn't engage at different levels; they lock themselves in the bunker. My personal (non-commercial, non-bulk, DKIM-signed) server was being silently blackholed by Postini a while back; my mail didn't even appear in the Postini junk folder. After multiple brush-offs and back-channel escalations, I found out that Postini feeds their spam scores back into their spam scores! If I send five e-mails to Postini clients a day, and one gets mis-tagged as spam, I'm 20% spam. Which is awfully high, so I must be a spammer, so the next day, I'm bumped to 40% spam. And clearly, my spam volume is increasing - just look at the numbers! By the end, I had a 98% spam score - and no way to get off their list. See also "vicious cycle", "begging the question", "Kafka". Sun, 9 Nov 2008 14:55:38 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/11/mailing-list-spam.html#IDComment10521007 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/11/mailing-list-spam.html#IDComment10518150 Return Path has indeed done a great job. But I wouldn't be so proud of Postini; they're well-known in the anti-spam world for being both an unapologetic source of outbound spam and an unapologetic blackhole for legitimate inbound mail. They're a great example of misaligned incentives; the more "spam" they block, the bigger their numbers are. Who can argue with numbers? They're also a great example of why you can't assume that computer science solves everything. Algorithms are great, but you need a help desk behind them. Everyone but Google and Postini has one - even Yahoo!, which is legendary for being otherwise unresponsive. Sat, 8 Nov 2008 21:08:39 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/11/mailing-list-spam.html#IDComment10518150 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/10/the-hedge-fund-essays.html#IDComment9388423 I've always thought of these as "Sorry about your money" letters. Thu, 30 Oct 2008 23:10:49 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/10/the-hedge-fund-essays.html#IDComment9388423 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/09/a-new-approach-to-the-us-election-process.html#IDComment6987643 As someone else said, you've basically reinvented instant-runoff voting (aka STV, or Single Transferable Vote). I've always thought that would be terrific, and I think I've read that STV is close to the fairest system possible. (The Wikipedia page goes into more detail, IIRC; there are some potential flaws, but they're small.) @Chip: You don't actually need multiple days of voting. Voters rank the candidates in their preferred order, and the votes automatically transfer as candidates are eliminated. It's brilliant, and it eliminates the two-party system, by eliminating most of the "spoiler" effect that keeps us from voting "purity over pragmatism". Of course, the reason it will probably never happen here is because it eliminates the two-party system and allows us to vote purity over pragmatism. Fri, 26 Sep 2008 07:03:06 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/09/a-new-approach-to-the-us-election-process.html#IDComment6987643 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/09/will-android-be-googles-vietnam.html#IDComment6889523 Ted commissioned a giant dinosaur cut-out, we all signed our names to it, and he stationed it outside his office; we all got a picture of that too, and the original dinosaur was on display in the Dulles office as recently as a few years ago. It was, without question, the most motivating, mobilizing, now-or-never moment in AOL's history. Is Android Google's Vietnam? Too early to say. But Google has little expertise in client software, even less in hardware and embedded apps, and none at all in wireless. Apple's wiped the floor with their competition on all of those. And if Apple's employees *think* that Android is Google's Vietnam... it might well be. Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:49:15 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/09/will-android-be-googles-vietnam.html#IDComment6889523 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/09/will-android-be-googles-vietnam.html#IDComment6889423 It wasn't a long meeting. Ted relayed the quote from Microsoft: They thought we were dinosaurs. Well, good: Let them think that. They have no idea what they're getting into. They don't know the territory; we created it. They aren't prepared; a few years prior, the Internet wasn't even in their product plan. They think they can brute-force their way to a victory, but we're smarter and more nimble. In short: They've got the wrong metaphor. It's not evolution. It's war. "Interactive online services will be Microsoft's Vietnam." I still have the T-shirt somewhere: Ted's quote, below the letters "AOL". The "O" was the international "no" symbol - with a picture of a dinosaur. (continued again.. really? "your comment is too long?" What year is it?) Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:49:05 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/09/will-android-be-googles-vietnam.html#IDComment6889423 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/09/will-android-be-googles-vietnam.html#IDComment6888743 It did go deeper. Microsoft was making a very loud play for AOL, in their usual style: If we compete with AOL, we'll destroy them - so we'll save us both some trouble, and buy them instead. They said services like AOL were "dinosaurs", and that MSN was the future. Steve, of course, wasn't publicly ruffled - but Ted was furious. They quickly announced an all-hands meeting in the cafeteria; all anybody knew was that it was something about Microsoft. Did they make Steve an offer he couldn't refuse? (continued) Thu, 25 Sep 2008 16:47:51 +0000 http://www.feld.com/wp/archives/2008/09/will-android-be-googles-vietnam.html#IDComment6888743 http://www.askthevc.com/blog/archives/2008/05/should-i-protec.php#IDComment1239111 @Abraham: I think you'd be prior art, then. (But IANAL.) Sat, 24 May 2008 09:12:47 +0000 http://www.askthevc.com/blog/archives/2008/05/should-i-protec.php#IDComment1239111