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Planetary Resources Inc

LORD-ORION — Tue, 24 Apr 2012 11:48:37 PM -0400

History in the making... a company that is about to begin "real" asteroid mining work.

http://www.planetaryresources.com/technology/

Watching the live announcement stream right now, it's pretty fantastic stuff.

Where'd this stupid idea come from?

terpfan1980 — Wed, 22 Feb 2012 3:02:47 PM -0500

Argh, talk about an idiotic idea. Check out this article (headline is linked):

Outages could lift Pepco rates

If you read through a little of that you find that somewhere along the lines someone decided that it would be a good idea -- to encourage energy conservation -- if Pepco would be able to charge higher rates when less energy was being used. Huh? Did I write that correctly, you bet I did. Apparently some politician(s) decided it would be a great idea if Pepco was able to ...

5 cold hard realities about owning a business

Frogboy — Sun, 12 Feb 2012 7:52:53 AM -0500

Over the years, I’ve seen so many people with high potential diminish their prospects for success in business because they lacked a few key axioms of business.

To that end, I’d like to share a few things I’ve learned (often the hard way) about what is what in business:

#1 Risk capital trumps “sweat equity”. The guy willing to risk real dollars is worth 100X as much as the guy who is willing to “risk” working hard for some period of time. If you disagree, you’ve probably never rem...

So how big do you want Stardock to get?

Draginol — Fri, 10 Feb 2012 9:46:46 PM -0500

I get asked this a lot. And the answer I gave most recently was “About a third smaller than it is today.”

As a statistical nut, I made a pie chart of what I spend my day doing. It was depressing.

Most of my work day is spent doing business stuff. And the more “successful” (and I use that term with some derision these days) the worse it gets.

Every week I can count on an hour of legal review. What kind of legal landmines do we need to watch out for now? If you’re a bus...

Stack Exchange and Jeff Atwood

Draginol — Wed, 08 Feb 2012 10:45:14 AM -0500

I was somewhat bummed to read on Coding Horror that Jeff Atwood is leaving the Stack Exchange. As many of you know, we are pretty religious readers of Coding Horror and Joel on Software.

Jeff’s blog had come up quite a bit recently as we are in the process of coming up with new coding standards here at work. More specifically, his recent blog on anti-aliasing was a major inspiration for doing “spot antialising” in Elemental: Fallen Enchantress (the idea is ...

Starting a business

Draginol — Tue, 24 Jan 2012 8:49:36 AM -0500

Mashable Business has a good article today on starting a business. They list 6 things which are very useful.

It’s missing a few items that I think should be added or emphasized more. Here are 7 through 10 that I would have added:

7. Get used to failing often.

The article talks about not being afraid to fail. But I think most people will take that as meaning that your business might fail. In my 20 years of running a business, 90% of the things I’ve worked on have failed (from...

What I learned about life from Steve Jobs

Draginol — Fri, 02 Dec 2011 11:44:44 AM -0500

I started my company when I was still a teenager. And I can tell you, looking back, I wish I knew now what I knew then. Starting a company with no capital and no partners is most definitely the hard way to do things. But I had no money and none of my friends were comfortable taking the necessary risks. The result was many years of long hard slogging. Sheer brute force in terms of hours being put in.

Capital trumps time. Anyone who says time is money really has no idea what they’re talking a...

Netflix sued for lack of closed captions

terpfan1980 — Wed, 22 Jun 2011 4:46:30 PM -0400

News headline that I caught at Cnet.com (headline is linked):

Netflix sued by deaf group over lack of subtitlesI know of at least several individuals that will be happy if this issue is ever properly addressed as they've been unable to enjoy the streaming service that Netflix offers due to lack of closed captioning or subtitles for the deaf and hard of hearing.

I've been known to turn on subtitles for films I have on Blu-ray or DVD just because I can catch *more* of the conversatio...

Things to do (and not do) in the market

terpfan1980 — Wed, 23 Mar 2011 8:57:43 AM -0400

Interesting article here: Savers' plans make back recent losses (from Washington Times, originally via Associated Press)

My quick summary: if you were not STUPID (or foolish, or whatever other word you wish to substitute in there) and didn't rush to SELL when the market was taking its nosedive, then you should be finding that your investments are returning to pre-"crash" levels and even better, you should be seeing some gains in your investments.

I've said before that there are very few th...

Stupid businesses... Infrastructure, investments, and more

terpfan1980 — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 9:21:39 AM -0500

As someone that was a fan of the iPhone, I was previously stuck with AT&T as my service provider no matter how good or bad their network was (mostly bad ) Now, with the pending arrival of the Verizon iPhone (finally!!) I will finally have some choice in the marketplace, though in order to have that choice I'd have to make some technical trade-offs and would also have to pay a significant early termination fee to get out of my current AT&T contract.

For now I'll likely stay with...

The 2011 business climate

Draginol — Mon, 03 Jan 2011 9:31:13 AM -0500

As we enter the New Year, 2011 has some hope in front of it but I’m not ready to predict anything too exciting.

For business owners, interest rates remain very low which makes capital for those with good credit ratings readily available. 3.25% interest rates are not uncommon right now for those who know how to obtain it. Thus, it becomes a question of how certain you are to generate net revenue that exceeds what you borrow at the going interest rate.

Historically, I’ve disl...

Why business owners get rich (or very poor)

Draginol — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 9:54:28 AM -0500

So as some of you know, I recently built a big house. And by big I mean ridiculously, offensively big.

Naturally, the class warfare people have come out of the woodwork in certain circles to complain.

Do I need such a large house? Nope.

Then why?

Because I wanted it. It was one of the personal objectives I had set out for back when I started my business.

But doesn’t such an extravagant display of wealth merely demonstrate how unfair our system is? Sure, I may have work...

It’s a CEO! Burn ‘im!

Draginol — Tue, 21 Sep 2010 11:22:12 AM -0400

http://gawker.com/5641211/steve-jobs-in-email-pissing-match-with-college-journalism-student?skyline=true&s=i

A woman buys an apple from a local farmer. The woman now has an apple and the farmer has money. Both parties have made, what they believe, is an even trade.

Yet, time and time again we see people who feel entitled to something beyond the original trade. In this case, the woman buys an apple and now expects the farmer to help her out on something unrelated.

What amazes m...

Question About Copyrighted Source Code

ReuelKB — Fri, 30 Jul 2010 10:39:01 AM -0400

Not sure if this is the proper category for this question, but here it goes.

I understand that if you contract yourself out as a programmer, your work can be classified as 'Work for Hire', in which case the employer would own all the copyrights to the code. Now, obviously in this case, I'll likely have a copy of the code, and even if I delete it (would I be legally bound to delete it?), a good chunk of the structure and stuff would be in my head.

The first question I guess is, let's ...

Burberry-elegant brands

burberry6 — Tue, 06 Jul 2010 6:06:31 AM -0400

Burberry (BURBERRY) is a British national treasure brand, which also represents one of the elegant British taste of the brand. Burberry (BURBERRY) published in spring 2010, with the usual elegant new color, giving the most pleasant fresh feeling. From burberry bags, sandals to scarves, bracelets and accessories are abundant. See burberry bags, as if to see that lattice demagogic Scotland, and now no one more representative than BURBERRY England, people are confused not only the Burberry check, n...

Links ARCHIVE: MSN Money - Cashless Society

joetheblow — Wed, 23 Jun 2010 5:19:16 AM -0400

Source: MSN

The Basics
Why isn't cash obsolete?

A cashless world is coming -- just a lot later than we expected -- and it’s going to revolve around single plastic cards that provide currency, identification, security clearance and a whole lot more.

By Karen Hube

At the peak of the tech boom in 1999, techies raved about how cash was quickly going to become obsolete. Everyone, they said, would pay for things using cards embedded with microprocessor chips -- be it at the dry clea...

These womens wellies can also be worn in any kind of terrain

louboutin888 — Wed, 02 Jun 2010 4:52:27 AM -0400

There are some unique features in these womens wellies because of which they are in demand. These are lively, resistant to water and the perfect kind of hunter Christian Louboutin. These are mainly made of vulcanized rubber because of which it can reflect all the feature of the rubber boots.
The womens wellies are quite durable in nature due to the materials with which these are made of. It is the vulcanized rubber which adds to the lastingness of the Christian Louboutin Shoes. These can be wo...

Mason Horvath Offers Majestic Adventure Travel Packages

masonhorvath — Fri, 28 May 2010 7:12:13 AM -0400

For those who love thrilling moments and excitement, an adventure tour is a best way to live up to the fullest. River water rafting, skiing, wildlife visits, mountain rides, and more can be the most awesome adventurous retreats. They offer relief from daily work life stress and tensions and also rejuvenate the mind and soul. There are many adventurous locations across the globe, but if you want to visit the most exotic and amazing ones, then Mason Horvath Travel Agency has exciting tour plans to...

An engineer dealing with the business world

Draginol — Sun, 09 May 2010 12:02:41 PM -0400

I’m an engineer. I went to college for it. Got a degree in it. Dilbert cartoons apply to people like me.

One of the things that’s been really challenging since having my own company is just how idiotic the business world is.

You read about it. You hear about it. But seeing the idiocy first hand is just incredibly frustrating. Why did such and such deal get made? Because someone had a better technology? No. Because someone made a better business case? No. Instead, all too often I see de...

IIPM: An intriguing story of growth and envy

pankajspider — Fri, 09 Apr 2010 2:31:06 AM -0400

While leading journalism schools worldwide teach journalists the sacred value of reporting a story with an immaculately neutral point of view, many 'investigative' journalists, given frequently to sensationalist reporting, unfortunately have ended up being bards to the slant that everything positive about the protagonist must have been bought and everything negative must be true!

One such entity to clearly have had its unfair share of such roughneck reportage from an unseemly coterie is the ...

Pride is the enemy of success

Draginol — Wed, 17 Mar 2010 10:30:17 AM -0400

Ego isn’t the same as pride. Pride is the enemy. It is the destroyer. Pride is what makes people go against their own best interests.

The Business of Business

Tova7 — Sat, 27 Feb 2010 2:00:57 PM -0500

I’m working on an economic development plan for a fairly prosperous suburb. They want to re-vamp their light-industrial area by bringing in more high-tech industry, and “cleaner” (meaning not heavy industrial) businesses. Great community, wonderful housing stock, schools, access to the highway…all the infrastructure is in place…(including several buildings already outfitted for “high-tech” industry), there are too many incentives to list here offered by the city, the county, and the ...

Mortgage Refinancing

refinanceloan — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 6:39:35 AM -0500

Is your credit rating a little shaky?If it’s time to renew your mortgage, you may be wondering if you’ll have problems finding lenders. Depending on your information, it is certainly possible (and probable) to get mortgage refinancing with bad credit.Do you really need a bad credit loan?If the following statements apply to you then the answer is ‘yes’.

You have a credit score of 620 or lowerYou have missed two or more 30 day mortgage payments in the past yearOr you ha...

If I flame you, do I become you?

Draginol — Sun, 10 Jan 2010 11:18:24 PM -0500

One of my observations on the net is that the better known I become, the more likely someone will flame me and try to explain how much more they know than I do in one of my professional areas of expertise.

Whether this be the game industry, business, or PC software development, I increasingly will find some guy on a forum who will smugly try to tell me how much smarter than they are than I am.

Now, maybe they are smarter than I am. But strangely, what I suspect is more likely is that t...

Why I drive an expensive car to work

Draginol — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 9:54:43 AM -0500

When my company was smaller and struggling, I drove a very modest car. Nothing is a bigger obstacle to success than consumerism. People who squander precious resources on consumables are their own worst enemy. But in the past few years, as the company has become increasingly successful, I have increased the budget on what consumables I purchase. My attitude hasn't changed, I actually spend a smaller percentage of my income on consumables than I used to. It's simply an increase in consumption ...