https://www.amazon.com/dp/0321534042/ref=as_li_ss_til?tag=de...;

(And, yes, I have an affiliate link there. That's why I got a high karma score here, so I could start raking in the millions with affiliate links to books...)

However, I would prefer to patronize a tracker that required subscription fees and didn't display ads. I have thought about launching a startup that would provide media companies with the platform to do this. There are a lot of interesting possibilities for both producers and consumers there.

At the same time, advertisement is so deeply ingrained in the operation of TV companies that I am not really sure they'd ever be comfortable moving to a model of distributing TV that didn't rely upon an advertisement as a revenue stream.

As jerf mentioned, these companies love streaming because it gives the same kind of control they get from "streaming" the broadcast to your television; all the content is retained server-side and the user doesn't get their own copy without special initiative (DVR/VCR). They are still able to consolidate control of distribution under the streaming model (or the iTunes model, where they ask Apple to remove the file and it's apparently gone forever) and I find it unlikely that they'll be willing to give that up.

This is primarily hypothetical as I consciously avoid almost all TV and movies.

We work with a lot of small businesses and I've had conversations with a statistically significant number of them who have admitted trying to flood Yelp with reviews they've written themselves, writing reviews under fake named accounts, and providing over-glowing text for reviews to be submitted by friends. They get angry at Yelp for allowing bad reviews to show up and think they can fix it with reviews written in all-caps with text like "Bob and Jane ARE THE NICEST, WARMEST, MOST AMAZING PEOPLE I KNOW and the person who wrote the review above DOESN"T KNOW WHAT THEY'RE TALKING ABOUT." We always advise them not to use these tactics but to instead put a sign up asking their customers to leave reviews on Yelp (since all reviews on the site trend to 4.3, they're probably improving their position with every new review).

To recap:

- So a business has a small amount of reviews online, one negative from someone who has left more than 400 reviews.

- The business asks their loyal customers to leave positive reviews all at the same time.

- Yelp sees abnormal traffic and abnormal acceleration of overly-positive reviews from brand new users (OMG. Best Dog Trainer EVER!! A+++++ Would recommend).

- Yelp's algorithm flags this activity as abnormal since it looks similar to spam/paid/fake reviews and won't alter their algorithm to accommodate an attempt to game their system.

The reality is small businesses do this kind of "gaming" all the time and sometimes it's benign, sometimes it's malicious or fake. I once worked with a client who had left dozens of reviews about themselves and complained that Yelp always took them down which "wasn't fair". Yelp sees way more attempts at gaming reviews than you'd realize and I imagine they've gotten pretty good at it. Like Google's algorithms, Yelp's algorithms may occasionally flag real reviews. Both have an incentive to improve.

The other thing is that if I'm a sales agent at Yelp (responsible for bringing in $8k in revenue this month), I'm going to call on customers who have bad reviews (and thus show up lower in searches) first. This is not because I'm trying to scam anyone. It's because the folks at the bottom are usually the most eager to pay to show up at the top. The guys who already sit in the top 5 spots of an organic search have trouble justifying the expense. If I call on someone who is on the first page of a Yelp search, their first thought isn't going to be "this guy's trying to scam us". Likewise, the companies that buy Google ads aren't the ones who show up first in an organic search either (unless they demonstrate that the ROI justifies it. SMBs aren't typically as sophisticated).

This isn't extortion, it's not a scam, and it's not wrong. It may appear obtuse from the outside, but nothing would harm Yelp more than for these allegations to be true. It would be downright irresponsible of Yelp to try to do things this way from a shareholders' perspective.

TL;DR: SMBs try to game Yelp all the time. Yelp's built algorithms to look for this kind of behavior. This business hit a lot of triggers.

Now imagine the benefits of a torrent option where they have the option of updating the ads every 6-12 months; and releasing fresh torrents (or even better they use your IP Geo info when you fetch the torrent and have region-specific torrent offerings with different ads in them.)

Maybe if its a legit source, you're more likely to download it when you need it from the trusted source, instead of hoarding the file for 10 years, swapping it with friends through other means, etc.

Bonus for increased likelihood that you're swarming with people closer to you instead of slower connections on the other side of the globe

I understand that the good outcome was partly due to years of draining work and even more so due to very good luck.

Many developers are undervalued by employers, but shares can work out. It's worth taking the time to learn what percentage stake you're getting (if you ask and the employer doesn't tell you, walk away) and doing your own assessment of the possibilities and risks for the company.

1) Liquidation preferences.

2) "We wipe out common stock at acquisition and offer employees retention bonuses, leaving 2% owner who moved on totally shafted."

3) Pretend your corporate charter is a Ruby program and a malicious adversary gets write access to it. Seriously, the sky's the limit. Integers might be kitten pictures now, and multiplication returns shades of pink.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/26078087/

  The most egregious certs issued were for *.*.com and *.*.org

There was a leaked FAA memo that claimed that he had been shot. Later it was claimed this was a first draft with incorrect information.

http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=26626

I don't think it really matters exactly what happened, I only brought it up because I wanted to point out that I felt that he was a tough and very aware individual.

Possibly relevant:

Excerpt from "Year to the Twin Towers Disaster" Yediot Ahronot, Seven Days Magazine Section 6 September 2002. Translation by IMRA:

"Danny Lewin was the first victim of the biggest attack in history that morning, in which almost 3,000 people died. An internal memorandum of the Federal Aviation Administration sets that in the course of a struggle that took place between Lewin, a graduate of Israel's elite commando unit, Sayeret Matkal , and the four hijackers who were assaulting that cockpit, Lewin was murdered by Satam Al Suqami, a 25 year old Saudi.

Some time after the attack the Lewin family in Jerusalem received a telephone call from the FBI offices in New York. On the line was the agent responsible for the investigation of the attack on Flight 11. He told Peggy and Charles Lewin that there is a high degree of certainty that their son Danny tried to prevent the hijacking. The FBI relied, among other things, on the testimony of the stewardess Amy Sweeney.

Sweeney called Michael Woodward, the flight services supervisor in Boston, from the rear of the plane: "a hijacker slit the throat of a passenger in business class and the passenger appears to me to be dead." To this day the American investigators are not convinced that Danny Lewin was murdered on the spot. An additional stewardess, Betty Ong, who succeeded in calling from a telephone by one of the passenger seats, said that the passenger who was attacked from business class seat 10B was seriously wounded.

The Lewin family, Danny' parents and brothers, have no doubt that Danny battled the hijackers. And it is for them a tremendous consolation. "I wasn't surprised to hear from the FBI that Danny fought. I was sure that this is what he would do," Yonatan, his younger brother, said. "Danny didn' t sit quietly. From what we heard from the Americans, the hijackers attacked one of the stewardesses and Danny rose to protect her and prevent them from entering the cockpit. It is a consolation to us that Danny fought. We see it as an act of heroism that a person sacrifices his life in order to save others. An act of heroism that everyone should do at such an instance and particularly suitable for Danny."

That battle in the business section ended quickly. Lewin was overcome and bled to death on the floor. Two additional flight attendants were knifed and the captain was murdered. The hijackers were already inside the cockpit. They announced to the passengers to remain quiet in their seats.

Also there is this:

But a childhood friend who served with Lewin in the Israel Defense Force says only a bullet would have stopped Lewin.

"He'd be more than a match for those skinny little (expletive)," said Brad Rephen, a New York lawyer who grew up with Lewin in Jerusalem. "With his training, he would have killed them with his bare hands."

"I can tell you, their knives would not have stopped him," he added. "He would have taken their knives or their box cutters away and used them against them."

Rephen recalls Lewin's injured hands after he returned from an Israeli anti-terrorist training course.

"They were pretty beaten up from the fighting he did," he said. "He knew how to fight with knives and take knives away from people."

He described Lewin, at about 5-11, 200 pounds, as "thick-boned." He says he witnessed him bench-press more than 300 pounds and squat close to 500 pounds.

"He was very, very strong and had a lot of meat on him," Rephen said. "They couldn't have subdued him by slashing him. The only way they could have stopped him was by shooting him."

http://www.wnd.com/?pageId=13281

Look, the Eureka myth is a myth as this article rightly points out. But the "just work harder and you'll succeed" myth that it embraces is, likewise, a myth. The key to Apple's success is as old as humankind itself. Jobs is just continuing the same tradition that started when the first monkey looked at his seed-eating chump friends, then down at the rock in his hands, and then decided "screw the nuts and berries, I'm going to go kill me a wildebeest!"

That first monkey probably died. Jobs's first company called Apple effectively died. His second company, originally called NeXT, nearly died. It's a wild stroke of luck that he was able to merge the two corpses and finally succeed.

Having worked at Apple, and now at a more "normal" company, I've seen both sides of the same story. It goes like this...

CEO: We need a hit!

MARKETING MANAGER #1: I have an idea!

CEO: Do you think it can make money?

MARKETING MANAGER #1: Yes.

MARKETING MANAGER #2: Wait, I also have an idea!

ENGINEER #3: I have an idea.

CEO: Wait, there's a professional speaking. Mr. Marketing Manager, can your idea make money?

MARKETING MANAGER #2: Sure.

MARKETING MANAGERS #3-9 (in unison): We ALSO have ideas!

CEO: Great! Will they all make money?

SYSADMIN: Um...we could be running our servers more efficiently if...

CEO: Quiet! There's work going on here.

MARKETING MANAGERS #3-9: YES!

CEO: Excellent! Let's do all the ideas!!!

ENGINEERING MANAGER: Um...excuse me, we don't have very many engineering resources...

(CEO has already walked out the door)

ENGINEERING MANAGER (frowning, dejected): ...oh

--- vs ---

STEVE: Who's got a good idea?

(in the audience 100 hands are raised simultaneously)

STEVE: No. No. Nope. Nu-uh. As if. Yeah right. Nope. Not gonna happen. No. No...

(this goes on)

STEVE: Ok. So we're doing a tablet!

MARKETING MANAGER (obviously new on the job): Um. But, excuse me Mr. Jobs. The tablet market has been stagnating for over a decade and dozens of our competitors who have attempted to enter the market with a myriad of different technologies have all foundered or given up outright.

STEVE (glaring): We're. doing. a. tablet.

Content middlemen: you've lost. The 21st century has no place for you. Distribution is now dirt cheap and dirt simple. You can't add any value because you don't solve any hard problems. All you've done for the last 10 years is make content harder to pay for.

Content creators: make content, add it to your website, charge $2 (or whatever) for a DRM-free download, and enjoy money forever. People will pay you for making things if you let them. No, you won't get a billion-dollar lump sum just for coming up with an idea. Sorry, those days are over too.

(Also, I'm not willing to share my 'net connection with big companies. You have money, buy your own bandwidth.)

RSS is immensely useful for staying up-to-date with postings from a broad collection of websites, and without missing a lot of good content, and it's pretty much universally supported. It annoys me very much that there are so many "hip techies" encouraging killing RSS when it is clearly superior to Twitter, or manually browsing all of the different websites, at syndicating content.

I've been hearing this back from a lot of my subscribers (I run weekly JavaScript, Ruby, and HTML5 newsletters). They've gotten sick of the deluge that accompanies RSS feeds and the lack of discrimination that sometimes occurs on Twitter and they trust me to curate that info for them. Of course, the next step is to expand into some slightly bigger niches ;-)

Of course, there's the "why aren't you doing this with RSS" crowd too, but with 25k subscribers and growing, I'm finding it pays to focus on those who actually want the e-mails!

I've been a member of Angie's List for over 2 years now. It's not only saved me countless amounts of money over choosing nationally-advertised service companies for stuff like plumbing and HVAC work, but it's saved me tons of aggravation filtering out the honest, hard-working businesses from the fly-by-night charlatans who pile on services and "annual maintenance contracts" that are just code for finding yet another problem next year.

How do they get "local" reviews? Simple. If you pay for it, you'll review to keep the cycle of reviews going. If you're invested $30-60/yr. to subscribe, you feel like you have a vested interest in keeping both the review site and the service provider alive. I liken it to the SomethingAwful forums: the ones who subscribe are also the most frequent posters.

But, Angie's List also uses their own tactics to keep reviews flowing and fresh. They will email reminders to review service providers you've recently browsed if you decided to use them. They'll even call you to record a review over the phone and then they'll transcribe it.

It's why they've been blowing everyone else out of the water in "local" search since the 90s.

I have no affiliation with Yelp. Click on my username anytime if you want to read who I work with and some background. It's right out in the open. However, I had to look at your posts to learn that your new startup is in the local review/recommendation space which is something you should actually disclose when bashing a competitor.

If what you're saying about Yelp's ad reps and software is truthful, then you should be spreading your father's story far and wide (call your local newspaper, they'd love the story), and you should feel comfortable recommending that your father cease to do business with them (why did he?).

Best of luck in your new venture.

I frequently hear complaints about debugging LINQ, but Visual Studio supports it well enough. Microsoft could have done a better job informing people about it.