In addition it could also possibly pose an interesting safety issue, since a pedestrian or motorist would not hear it coming.
We bicyclists have the same problem, but if one obeys the rules of the road, there should be no problem. The problem bicyclists (and many motorcyclists) have is with people in their automobiles who fail to properly look out and are too busy talking on the damned cell phone while driving their gas sucking SUVs. (Disclaimer: I own a Toyota 4runner, but bicycle back and forth to work every day, and run many of my errands on the bicycle) My recent experience with a near miss can be read here.
The engine is completely silent, which might not go well with many motorcycle lovers.
I have to admit that when I did ride motorcycles, there was a certain magic about either the banshee wail of a sport bike as you wound it up while screaming up a canyon road or even the relaxed "POTATO POTATO POTATO" of the Harleys. However that said, this is going to be the future of transportation and I would most certainly embrace fuel cell technology that reduces the worlds outrageous consumption of oil. Plus, this ENV bike is a pretty sweet looking ride.
So, like you I have had the same thoughts. However, I have been constantly surprised at what the market will support. The trick is that you have to think outside of your own needs or intellectual viewpoint. For instance, I have always been stunned at the sales of things like magnetic bracelets and much of the supplement industry (not all mind you, but most of it). People will buy what they want because they think they need it.
The above was just an example and I am not lumping Google into that category as I believe in their product and their business approach. As for thin client computing, there are those that are simply interested in typing letters, surfing the web and email. That's it. For those customers (arguably in the tens of millions or more), this solution looks to me like it would work. Google already has a built in client base and this might be a perfect business to expand into.
Interesting. I have actually suspected this for a while given their hires over the past year or so. There have been a few PhDs they hired including one from our cs department that would have suggested this is where they might be going. At any rate, this could prove quite interesting and make irrelevant many of the security concerns that the average consumer faces as well as consolidate and ease software distribution issues. Of course this approach will never supplant the needs of most of the Slashdot crowd, and I am not letting go of my dual G5 or OS X, but for the unwashed masses, it might very well be an interesting way for Google to go that will certainly prove to be a way for them to branch out of the search engine field and extend the fight with Microsoft and Yahoo.
Well, when Orkut can solve their teething problems and get their servers up to the load that is coming from S. America and the Middle East, then perhaps they will start allowing more people. I was in one of the first groups of folks to start using Orkut, and at the time it was useful, but it rapidly started going down hill due to all the traffic, noise and garbage which is making it largely useless. I actually have not visited in quite a while.
Moderation is the only thing that has prevented Slashdot from completely going to hell and unless Orkut implements the same type of moderation system, they will become totally hopeless.
Ah, maybe this will explain the sharp increase in bots from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and others hitting my Blog constantly over the past couple of months. The interesting thing is that the bots somehow have been preferentially scanning my blog over our lab site which is also hosted on my same workstation.
Dude, you guys were rolling in luxury! What a cool school you must have had to lay that out for you in a formal club. We were lucky to be able to come up with the occasional cash to purchase the new (at the time) crystal dice. Remember those? They wanted a couple of bucks per die and it took me forever (as DM) to collect enough to replace and supplement the plain brown dice that came with my red box.
It's funny that you mention the whole biblical scare thing too as we had a Southern Baptist neighbor that suddenly would not let her kids play with us because of that paranoia. We were fine upstanding members of the community and it was cool to have her kids hang out with us before she heard about the D&D, but then......
It is about time that somebody entered this market. I suppose that because age is a risk factor for essential tremor, the need for such a device is only going to increase given the age group that has now become completely dependent upon computers. Most folks I have known with essential tremor (and patients of mine when I was in the clinical side of things) were old enough that they did not routinely use computers. For those that did, keyboarding did not prove as much a problem as using the mouse which requires fine motor skills that often enhance the tremors. Trackballs helped these folks a bit more, but I really would like to see how these compensatory mice work for these patients.
FPGA is clocked at 90 MHz and is 3-5 times faster in raytracing then a Pentium4 CPU with 30 times more MHz.
I am really not surprised at the performance as most anytime you build code into hardware, it is significantly faster. For instance, I used to have a Radius 4 DSP Photoshop accelerator card in my old 68030 based Mac IIci I bought in 1990 that would run Photoshop filters significantly faster than even my much later PowerPC based PowerMac 8500 purchased in 1996 with faster hard drives and more memory.
The same sorts of benefits can be seen in vector math for optimizations that have been built into the G4 and G5 chips with Altivec.
So, the question is: Can these guys get ATI or nVidia to buy their chip?
please list atleast 10 of those "more than a dozen laws this violates" that you can so easily think of.
O.K, you anonymous coward wise ass. The overall federal charges that they could be facing would be something like: theft, racketeering, forgery, violation of the electronic fund transfer act, violation of the telemarketing/consumer fraud protection act, violation of the telecommunication act, bank fraud, wire fraud followed by individual state charges that in some cases duplicate the federal charges and in others supplement, but will be along the lines of various civil penalties that vary by state concerning accepting or engaging in illegal transactions.
I am sure one could think of others, but law is not where I am trained. Google is your friend for stuff like that.
surely some slashdotter who cashed out of the bubble at the right time can bid it up.
Yeah, so the problem is that while some of us cashed out at the right time, we reinvested it in the stock market and lost our collective asses just like everybody else. Since I was tech heavy (hey, I was in my twenties and did not know anything about investing at the time), much of it disappeared as paper worth. Given that we are five years out from the crash, it is interesting that many estimates say the NASDAQ is another good decade from reaching the levels we had back then, which should teach you younger folks here about the value of market diversification.
Actually, yes, you did. Don't believe me? Go back and check your credit card bill.
Actually, no I did not and all my credit card bills are scrutinized carefully. If anybody charges anything to my credit card that is not authorized, they are committing fraud and will be prosecuted as such. I don't know about your credit card companies, but mine have been very good about this. Any purchases that fall outside my normal purchase pattern are flagged and my credit card company calls me to ensure that they are legitimate. For instance, when I bought 4Runner on my card, American Express called to ensure that it was indeed an authorized purchase. Same for other purchases that while small (like the shareware I bought from India last week), even resulted in a call from my company to ensure it was approved.
Even if 99.9% of people they cold-called call back and demand that the charges get removed, enough people won't call back. Do the math and you'll find this is highly profitable.
If companies can be documented doing this as a matter of business practice, it is fraud and prosecutable under existing US law. I can think of more than a dozen laws this violates.
"The average enterprise or household could see as much as 150 calls a day from these telemarketers. It has to happen, because it is a market force that takes the market feedback and makes it into a profitable approach."
Ah, so this is how they are going to use all that dark fiber.:-P
Seriously though, it would be in the phone companies best interest to figure out how to block this. After the legislation for the do not call list, calls to our home plummeted. And rightly so. If I have to deal with telemarketers calling my home again, I will simply have the phone company disconnect my land line, especially with the prospect of 100-150 calls/day. Most people that really need to get ahold of me immediately can use the cell phone or email/IM me anyway. As for calling people at work, I cannot figure out how businesses will tolerate this. Businesses will be more likely to pressure phone companies to limit this kind of activity as it impacts productivity.
So, I don't really care how they do it, but from an end users perspective......They can either fix the loopholes and prevent phone spam or they will lose business.
On another note. Serious question to all the Slashdotters: Has anyone here actually bought ANYTHING from a telemarketer who called you? I have never purchased any good or service solicited over the phone, and I am wondering who it is that actually keeps these knuckleheads in business.
What the hell are you talking about... link it into search engines? Christ almighty.... oh and nice bit about the calculators, that always gets you modded up a few times by HP calc die-hards around here.
About the most polite thing I can say to your rather ignorant post is, don't be so quick to judge without thinking. Otherwise, you show your ignorance. Are you familiar with spotlight? If not, Google "Apple" and "Spotlight" and you should be able to grasp what I intended by my statement about linking it into search engines. After studying the results, use your imagination and you should be able to see what many others here did.
I won't put you down as the first foe in my list for this, but please ease up in the future.
Now, this is the kind of thinking and research development that I would expect from HP! This technology combined with optimizations in the OS like Quartz could be a real boost to the way we interact with our portable devices, allowing for progressive dynamic layering of items that are important to view. Shoot, one could even link it into search engines to render only what is relevant for display.
Now if they could just put a little innovation into their calculators again....
I might be inclined to suggest that much of the hard work is carefully crafting the next strategy and how to implement that strategy. Apple has been tremendously creative while building products that are most definitely lustworthy. The problem with this is that ideas are easy to copy and the time is takes for somebody to copy an idea is much shorter than the time it takes to develop the idea in the first place. Just look at the iPod Shuffle copies that have come out. They are an absolute blatant rip off, even down to the marketing. That took what? two months after the Shuffle was released.
I think Apple Computer Inc. has the right strategy of keeping quiet until the product is ready.
I can't help thinking that this is bad timing on Think-Secret's part. To raise your profile by doing (again!)
The reason is that Nick Ciarelli is making beaucoup cash from Think Secret. It has been a cash cow for him.
On the other hand, there's the case that if he's not doing anything wrong, why not continue doing exactly that.
The blog world is having a field day with this case but the reality is that Apple is not trying to limit what blogs report, and they do not consider Think Secret to be a blog site. It is a rumor site that has broken the law by soliciting confidential information and compensating those who choose to divulge confidential proprietary information. Good write up on the reality here.
So, while it is interesting to speculate on what Apple may be doing and where they may be going with various products, I have never really understood the rabid nature of the fan sites and rumor sites. What is the point with rumors? Can anybody explain that to me?
I am going to be practical here: It has always amazed me that people say "I am going to wait to buy XXXX until they come out with the new one".Buy what you need for the job you need it for and realize that whenever you buy something computer related, it is likely already obsolete and will be replaced with the next shiny thing in a couple of months. There are very few times where waiting will recoup your investment. Get what you need for the job and start being productive now. If something comes out that will make you more productive, then sell off the previous system and get the new one if 1) it will pay off the investment or I suppose, 2) if you simply like shiny things.
Don't get me wrong. Apple builds some sexy hardware and software, but I prefer to use their stuff for my work and research because it simply allows more productivity and is more pleasurable to work with, but somebody, please explain to me why the rumor sites are so popular? I understand why business analysts might be interested, and competitors, buy why the obsession of fans with these rumors?
Oh, and is not it time for the Slashdot Apple desktop icon to be updated to reflect the current desktop line? i.e. G5.
"[The film] is much more dark...more emotional. It's much more of a tragedy," adds Lucas. ".
Great. Will the story be any better than the last two? Will the acting be any better? BUT.....I ^H^H^H LOVE HER SO MUCH!!!!!! Please. I hope I am wrong as I thought that Empire Strikes Back was the best of the three original Star Wars films principally because it was dark and did not have Ewoks or (Exsqueeze me?) Jar Jar and the acting was much better. Star Wars had its appeal, but they started dropping off in Return of the Jedi and buying into the Hollywoodification and hype. There's also a new trailer airing during tonight's The O.C., so you can use that as an excuse to watch FOX teen drama.
This is where they are choosing to premier this trailer? Oh man, all hope is lost. Seriously though, why? What is the demographic that they are appealing to for this film? Are Anakin and Padme going to develop into some soap opera? This is soooo disappointing. Perhaps I will see the trailer once it hits the Internet, but given the fact that I have not yet seen the last Star Wars film, I don't have much hope.
I should also have mentioned. There is a wonderful documentary called Startup.com that documents a small companies beginnings from obtaining VC funding to their rise and ultimate fall. It was an amazing example of a not atypical experience where a company was organized and obtained VC funding based solely upon an idea. They had no infrastructure, no network, no customers, no product. Yet they were able to secure a significant amount of VC funding. It's an absolute hoot to watch.
This was the thing that absolutely amazed me with the startup fever in the 1990's. I had a couple of friends I visited in the bay area who were with startups that had essentially no existing product, infrastructure or long term plan. Yet, they had an idea which inspired VCs to pour money down their throats. It made for a surreal situation where twenty-somethings were driving Ferrari's and Porsche's all purchased on the value of their existing stock. The parties were amazing and the whole atmosphere was one of incredulity. Of course we all know what happened.
I know one guy who bought a house, Lamborghini, Ferrari, matching Range Rovers for he and his girlfriend and loaded the house with furniture and electronics. The scary thing was that all of these purchases were made from loans based on the value of his stock holdings (because presumably he did not want to sell his stock). When the stock dropped through the floor along with everybody else, he had to come due. It was an absolute firesale and the only thing he kept was the big empty house, for which he had to struggle to make the payments. Moral? Live frugally and don't buy much on credit, especially leveraged against your holdings in your company.
Coming from someone I don't know - ON SLASHDOT. Hmmm. That's funny. Do you have evidence?
Yes. Click on my website link and look at the papers and collaborations. I am a scientist and have been engaged in stem cell research in collaboration with other scientists.
just that he was the first to allow federal funding for stem cell research.
That is bullshit too. Stem cell research has been federally funded for years. It was just not labeled as such until it became political. Trust me on this one.
Slashdot Mirror
In addition it could also possibly pose an interesting safety issue, since a pedestrian or motorist would not hear it coming.
We bicyclists have the same problem, but if one obeys the rules of the road, there should be no problem. The problem bicyclists (and many motorcyclists) have is with people in their automobiles who fail to properly look out and are too busy talking on the damned cell phone while driving their gas sucking SUVs. (Disclaimer: I own a Toyota 4runner, but bicycle back and forth to work every day, and run many of my errands on the bicycle) My recent experience with a near miss can be read here.
The engine is completely silent, which might not go well with many motorcycle lovers.
I have to admit that when I did ride motorcycles, there was a certain magic about either the banshee wail of a sport bike as you wound it up while screaming up a canyon road or even the relaxed "POTATO POTATO POTATO" of the Harleys. However that said, this is going to be the future of transportation and I would most certainly embrace fuel cell technology that reduces the worlds outrageous consumption of oil. Plus, this ENV bike is a pretty sweet looking ride.
OK, here is the challenge:
:-)
Hitachi's new wheeled robot versus Honda's Asimo and Sony's Qrio in BATTLE STAIRS! First one down a flight of 100 steps intact wins.
Since when are we happy about monopolies in the making? Google is cool now, but can we trust them to stay that way indefinitely?
Oh, like we don't already have a monopoly in the operating system market with Microsoft? More competition is almost always a good thing.
So, like you I have had the same thoughts. However, I have been constantly surprised at what the market will support. The trick is that you have to think outside of your own needs or intellectual viewpoint. For instance, I have always been stunned at the sales of things like magnetic bracelets and much of the supplement industry (not all mind you, but most of it). People will buy what they want because they think they need it.
The above was just an example and I am not lumping Google into that category as I believe in their product and their business approach. As for thin client computing, there are those that are simply interested in typing letters, surfing the web and email. That's it. For those customers (arguably in the tens of millions or more), this solution looks to me like it would work. Google already has a built in client base and this might be a perfect business to expand into.
Interesting. I have actually suspected this for a while given their hires over the past year or so. There have been a few PhDs they hired including one from our cs department that would have suggested this is where they might be going. At any rate, this could prove quite interesting and make irrelevant many of the security concerns that the average consumer faces as well as consolidate and ease software distribution issues. Of course this approach will never supplant the needs of most of the Slashdot crowd, and I am not letting go of my dual G5 or OS X, but for the unwashed masses, it might very well be an interesting way for Google to go that will certainly prove to be a way for them to branch out of the search engine field and extend the fight with Microsoft and Yahoo.
Well, when Orkut can solve their teething problems and get their servers up to the load that is coming from S. America and the Middle East, then perhaps they will start allowing more people. I was in one of the first groups of folks to start using Orkut, and at the time it was useful, but it rapidly started going down hill due to all the traffic, noise and garbage which is making it largely useless. I actually have not visited in quite a while.
Moderation is the only thing that has prevented Slashdot from completely going to hell and unless Orkut implements the same type of moderation system, they will become totally hopeless.
Ah, maybe this will explain the sharp increase in bots from Yahoo, Google, Microsoft and others hitting my Blog constantly over the past couple of months. The interesting thing is that the bots somehow have been preferentially scanning my blog over our lab site which is also hosted on my same workstation.
Dude, you guys were rolling in luxury! What a cool school you must have had to lay that out for you in a formal club. We were lucky to be able to come up with the occasional cash to purchase the new (at the time) crystal dice. Remember those? They wanted a couple of bucks per die and it took me forever (as DM) to collect enough to replace and supplement the plain brown dice that came with my red box.
It's funny that you mention the whole biblical scare thing too as we had a Southern Baptist neighbor that suddenly would not let her kids play with us because of that paranoia. We were fine upstanding members of the community and it was cool to have her kids hang out with us before she heard about the D&D, but then......
It is about time that somebody entered this market. I suppose that because age is a risk factor for essential tremor, the need for such a device is only going to increase given the age group that has now become completely dependent upon computers. Most folks I have known with essential tremor (and patients of mine when I was in the clinical side of things) were old enough that they did not routinely use computers. For those that did, keyboarding did not prove as much a problem as using the mouse which requires fine motor skills that often enhance the tremors. Trackballs helped these folks a bit more, but I really would like to see how these compensatory mice work for these patients.
FPGA is clocked at 90 MHz and is 3-5 times faster in raytracing then a Pentium4 CPU with 30 times more MHz.
I am really not surprised at the performance as most anytime you build code into hardware, it is significantly faster. For instance, I used to have a Radius 4 DSP Photoshop accelerator card in my old 68030 based Mac IIci I bought in 1990 that would run Photoshop filters significantly faster than even my much later PowerPC based PowerMac 8500 purchased in 1996 with faster hard drives and more memory.
The same sorts of benefits can be seen in vector math for optimizations that have been built into the G4 and G5 chips with Altivec.
So, the question is: Can these guys get ATI or nVidia to buy their chip?
please list atleast 10 of those "more than a dozen laws this violates" that you can so easily think of .
O.K, you anonymous coward wise ass. The overall federal charges that they could be facing would be something like: theft, racketeering, forgery, violation of the electronic fund transfer act, violation of the telemarketing/consumer fraud protection act, violation of the telecommunication act, bank fraud, wire fraud followed by individual state charges that in some cases duplicate the federal charges and in others supplement, but will be along the lines of various civil penalties that vary by state concerning accepting or engaging in illegal transactions.
I am sure one could think of others, but law is not where I am trained. Google is your friend for stuff like that.
surely some slashdotter who cashed out of the bubble at the right time can bid it up.
Yeah, so the problem is that while some of us cashed out at the right time, we reinvested it in the stock market and lost our collective asses just like everybody else. Since I was tech heavy (hey, I was in my twenties and did not know anything about investing at the time), much of it disappeared as paper worth. Given that we are five years out from the crash, it is interesting that many estimates say the NASDAQ is another good decade from reaching the levels we had back then, which should teach you younger folks here about the value of market diversification.
Actually, yes, you did. Don't believe me? Go back and check your credit card bill.
Actually, no I did not and all my credit card bills are scrutinized carefully. If anybody charges anything to my credit card that is not authorized, they are committing fraud and will be prosecuted as such. I don't know about your credit card companies, but mine have been very good about this. Any purchases that fall outside my normal purchase pattern are flagged and my credit card company calls me to ensure that they are legitimate. For instance, when I bought 4Runner on my card, American Express called to ensure that it was indeed an authorized purchase. Same for other purchases that while small (like the shareware I bought from India last week), even resulted in a call from my company to ensure it was approved.
Even if 99.9% of people they cold-called call back and demand that the charges get removed, enough people won't call back. Do the math and you'll find this is highly profitable.
If companies can be documented doing this as a matter of business practice, it is fraud and prosecutable under existing US law. I can think of more than a dozen laws this violates.
"The average enterprise or household could see as much as 150 calls a day from these telemarketers. It has to happen, because it is a market force that takes the market feedback and makes it into a profitable approach."
:-P
Ah, so this is how they are going to use all that dark fiber.
Seriously though, it would be in the phone companies best interest to figure out how to block this. After the legislation for the do not call list, calls to our home plummeted. And rightly so. If I have to deal with telemarketers calling my home again, I will simply have the phone company disconnect my land line, especially with the prospect of 100-150 calls/day. Most people that really need to get ahold of me immediately can use the cell phone or email/IM me anyway. As for calling people at work, I cannot figure out how businesses will tolerate this. Businesses will be more likely to pressure phone companies to limit this kind of activity as it impacts productivity.
So, I don't really care how they do it, but from an end users perspective......They can either fix the loopholes and prevent phone spam or they will lose business.
On another note. Serious question to all the Slashdotters: Has anyone here actually bought ANYTHING from a telemarketer who called you? I have never purchased any good or service solicited over the phone, and I am wondering who it is that actually keeps these knuckleheads in business.
What the hell are you talking about... link it into search engines? Christ almighty.... oh and nice bit about the calculators, that always gets you modded up a few times by HP calc die-hards around here.
About the most polite thing I can say to your rather ignorant post is, don't be so quick to judge without thinking. Otherwise, you show your ignorance. Are you familiar with spotlight? If not, Google "Apple" and "Spotlight" and you should be able to grasp what I intended by my statement about linking it into search engines. After studying the results, use your imagination and you should be able to see what many others here did.
I won't put you down as the first foe in my list for this, but please ease up in the future.
And yet you pull out an insightful reply, while beating everyone else to FP?
:-)
I'm cool like that.
Well... the slashdot world needs more people like you. Right on.
Thank you.
Now, this is the kind of thinking and research development that I would expect from HP! This technology combined with optimizations in the OS like Quartz could be a real boost to the way we interact with our portable devices, allowing for progressive dynamic layering of items that are important to view. Shoot, one could even link it into search engines to render only what is relevant for display.
Now if they could just put a little innovation into their calculators again....
I might be inclined to suggest that much of the hard work is carefully crafting the next strategy and how to implement that strategy. Apple has been tremendously creative while building products that are most definitely lustworthy. The problem with this is that ideas are easy to copy and the time is takes for somebody to copy an idea is much shorter than the time it takes to develop the idea in the first place. Just look at the iPod Shuffle copies that have come out. They are an absolute blatant rip off, even down to the marketing. That took what? two months after the Shuffle was released.
I think Apple Computer Inc. has the right strategy of keeping quiet until the product is ready.
I can't help thinking that this is bad timing on Think-Secret's part. To raise your profile by doing (again!)
The reason is that Nick Ciarelli is making beaucoup cash from Think Secret. It has been a cash cow for him.
On the other hand, there's the case that if he's not doing anything wrong, why not continue doing exactly that.
The blog world is having a field day with this case but the reality is that Apple is not trying to limit what blogs report, and they do not consider Think Secret to be a blog site. It is a rumor site that has broken the law by soliciting confidential information and compensating those who choose to divulge confidential proprietary information. Good write up on the reality here.
So, while it is interesting to speculate on what Apple may be doing and where they may be going with various products, I have never really understood the rabid nature of the fan sites and rumor sites. What is the point with rumors? Can anybody explain that to me?
I am going to be practical here: It has always amazed me that people say "I am going to wait to buy XXXX until they come out with the new one". Buy what you need for the job you need it for and realize that whenever you buy something computer related, it is likely already obsolete and will be replaced with the next shiny thing in a couple of months. There are very few times where waiting will recoup your investment. Get what you need for the job and start being productive now. If something comes out that will make you more productive, then sell off the previous system and get the new one if 1) it will pay off the investment or I suppose, 2) if you simply like shiny things.
Don't get me wrong. Apple builds some sexy hardware and software, but I prefer to use their stuff for my work and research because it simply allows more productivity and is more pleasurable to work with, but somebody, please explain to me why the rumor sites are so popular? I understand why business analysts might be interested, and competitors, buy why the obsession of fans with these rumors?
Oh, and is not it time for the Slashdot Apple desktop icon to be updated to reflect the current desktop line? i.e. G5.
"[The film] is much more dark...more emotional. It's much more of a tragedy," adds Lucas. ".
Great. Will the story be any better than the last two? Will the acting be any better? BUT.....I ^H^H^H LOVE HER SO MUCH!!!!!! Please. I hope I am wrong as I thought that Empire Strikes Back was the best of the three original Star Wars films principally because it was dark and did not have Ewoks or (Exsqueeze me?) Jar Jar and the acting was much better. Star Wars had its appeal, but they started dropping off in Return of the Jedi and buying into the Hollywoodification and hype.
There's also a new trailer airing during tonight's The O.C., so you can use that as an excuse to watch FOX teen drama.
This is where they are choosing to premier this trailer? Oh man, all hope is lost. Seriously though, why? What is the demographic that they are appealing to for this film? Are Anakin and Padme going to develop into some soap opera? This is soooo disappointing. Perhaps I will see the trailer once it hits the Internet, but given the fact that I have not yet seen the last Star Wars film, I don't have much hope.
I should also have mentioned. There is a wonderful documentary called Startup.com that documents a small companies beginnings from obtaining VC funding to their rise and ultimate fall. It was an amazing example of a not atypical experience where a company was organized and obtained VC funding based solely upon an idea. They had no infrastructure, no network, no customers, no product. Yet they were able to secure a significant amount of VC funding. It's an absolute hoot to watch.
This was the thing that absolutely amazed me with the startup fever in the 1990's. I had a couple of friends I visited in the bay area who were with startups that had essentially no existing product, infrastructure or long term plan. Yet, they had an idea which inspired VCs to pour money down their throats. It made for a surreal situation where twenty-somethings were driving Ferrari's and Porsche's all purchased on the value of their existing stock. The parties were amazing and the whole atmosphere was one of incredulity. Of course we all know what happened.
I know one guy who bought a house, Lamborghini, Ferrari, matching Range Rovers for he and his girlfriend and loaded the house with furniture and electronics. The scary thing was that all of these purchases were made from loans based on the value of his stock holdings (because presumably he did not want to sell his stock). When the stock dropped through the floor along with everybody else, he had to come due. It was an absolute firesale and the only thing he kept was the big empty house, for which he had to struggle to make the payments. Moral? Live frugally and don't buy much on credit, especially leveraged against your holdings in your company.
Coming from someone I don't know - ON SLASHDOT. Hmmm. That's funny. Do you have evidence?
Yes. Click on my website link and look at the papers and collaborations. I am a scientist and have been engaged in stem cell research in collaboration with other scientists.
just that he was the first to allow federal funding for stem cell research.
That is bullshit too. Stem cell research has been federally funded for years. It was just not labeled as such until it became political. Trust me on this one.