"When Alex was first told he needed glasses he got a little teary. Then, at the final fitting, he became stoic trying not to let his disappointment seep through as he protested quietly about trivial things. It was not an atmosphere of joy and celebration so much as one of resignation. I tried to spin it as much as could, telling him about my first pair when I was 4 and welcoming him to the club; however, I wear contacts day to day and this stratagem had little success.
We were headed to Dayton to see my parents that morning, so I secretly called ahead and requested that my father wear his glasses this day as a subliminal show of solidarity. That seemed to work, so much so that when my dad took his off, Alex wanted to take his off too. At this point Alex conceded to himself, and the world, that he could read things far away that he could not before. Soon concession snowballed into enthusiasm, as he started comparing what he could spy at a distance with and without his new spectacles." - RAPatton via Bookmarklet
I think I first got glasses at that age, was worried about being teased and called four-eyes. Do kids still do that? - Victor Ryden
I don't think anyone is going to bug him; many of his classmates already have glasses. He was just sort of sad in the way that you expect someone to get in a mid life crisis, but that has passed. Later, I also spun it as a competitive thing, and the he "beat" his brother by being the first one to get glasses. - RAPatton
+++ for parenting skills. What a sweet little story. :) - Anna Haro
RAP needs national parenting skills recognition. - Michael W. May
Ha. You just keep trying until something works. I was just struck by how sad it seemed. I had mine at 4, so I don't remember before them, although I remember the day I first wore them. My mom likes to remark it was the first time she recalls I ever pointed out a leaf or an airplane. My vision is much worse than his. Mine -14.00; his -1.75 - RAPatton
I remember seeing individual leaves from afar, that was really magical. First glasses, like 3rd grade. Had a crush on my teacher, it went away with glasses- she had moles all over her face! - anna
Anna, ha! It seems I was a really good diver as a child. Multiple flips from the high dive with perfect landings, no sweat. Got my glasses at 4. Looked down, and then did a belly flop. Never did a real dive from the high dive again. - RAPatton
I didn't get glasses until I was a young adult (19 or 20 as I recall). But leaves is what I remember too. That reminds me, I need to make an eye appt. I swear presbyopia is starting to kick in, which is amusing since I am pretty near-sighted. I'll probably need trifocals. Weeeee! :-) - Joanmarie
I wish i could work some place that fostered creativity... - Tad Donaghe
i don't understand why more companies aren't creative in office space. google, pixar, etc. all the top companies know that old 50's cubes are out and new "open" "inviting" areas are in. - Chris Harris
Mona: Perhaps there are more varieties of Peanut Butter (Creamy, Chunky, Organic, etc), but everyone only likes Strawberry jelly. - Justin Korn
JK: but only one jar? I would fight people to get to it everyday... Dude, this is in Emeryville. We should SO go check it out - Mona N
It wouldn't be that hard for Facebook. They're tiny compared to Google's massive campus. They don't even need a cafeteria. They could just hook up a deal with the restaurant that's next to them on the bottom floor or any of the other eateries around them. - Louie
Mona: I'd be totally down to go check it out! - Justin Korn
@Louis: but it's the THOUGHT that counts dude. @JK: I wonder if there're any FFers who work at Pixar... hmmmmmm - Mona N
i've seen this. pretty cool stuff. it actually makes one want to work productively - Cee Bee
Mona: I bet there is, but if not, someone out there (Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, etc.) has got to know someone... - Justin Korn
great pics. But that facility looks much more blah than I imagined Pixar to be - Aspi via twhirl
Got a buddy who works there and went on a tour... amazing place. They even have family oriented events in their quad area. Their movie theater gets special advance screenings of all the major blockbusters. Sadly, I'm still waiting for my invite... ;) - Jericho
I worked next to the Pixar compound for 3 years. They have a lunch room, yet they kicked out one lunch spot and are still trying to get Semifreddi's to move. I like the movies, but it would have been nice (given their lunch room and roving cake cart) that they'd preserve lunch spots for the rest of us. - AJ Kohn
Interesting: 11% are reading blogs regularly, but 12% have already created a blog (I first posted this comment under a newer post from Steve...) - Rubin Sfadj
"Ballmer, along with Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell and the presidents of Microsoft's three businesses, will address analysts and investors tomorrow at company headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Spokesman Frank Shaw declined to comment because the information is scheduled for release at the meeting.
The company has spent about $9 billion in the past 2 1/2 years building its Internet business, according to Directions on Microsoft, a research firm in Kirkland, Washington. Microsoft doesn't provide figures.
Liddell said on a conference call after last week's earnings release that spending on the online business, which includes the MSN Web site and Live search engine, will rise by ``several hundreds of millions of dollars'' in the fiscal year that began July 1. " - Thomas Hawk via Bookmarklet
MSFT should put aside $500 million or so into a VC like incubator within MSFT and hire some very smart people to go around and acquire a bunch of early stage internet plays. It doesn't make sense to pay $100 million for Powerset or invest $240 million in Facebook. They should be getting into interesting internet plays earlier even if it means some will fail. - Thomas Hawk
What will Microsoft be? What kind of business and what will they provide. Seems like they aren't focusing on Operating Systems anymore. - orionstarr
The OS and Office businesses are their cash cows but the problem is that these businesses are no longer seen as growth businesses. The internet is where the growth is but historically MSFT has not been very good at recognizing strong internet content plays early on. Yahoo has been much better at this but then Yahoo mismanages these properties into the ground. - Thomas Hawk
That makes sense. I did hear they were trying to buy Yahoo. If that is the case i'd drop my yahoo e-mail - orionstarr
They should build the web into the OS. Integrate all the things the web and other programs do and make it free as part of Windows Explorer (not IE). - Andrew Smith
the key is to get in early on many of these web companies. That's what Yahoo did right with Flickr. If you buy 10 companies for 30 million each, 9 of them can fail if one of them turns out to be a Flickr. I asked MSFT's CTO at the Pro Photography Summit if he thought it was a mistake for MSFT not to buy Flickr. He said that acquisitions like that are complicated. VCs already know that it's ok to buy companies that fail as long as you get a home run every now and again. - Thomas Hawk
Google does well here I think. Were Dodgeball and Jaiku mistakes? Probably. Only time will tell. But buying Blogger was a home run. The thing is though Google probably paid peanuts for all three relative to buying mature later stage successes like YouTube. If MSFT wants to succeed at the web they have to be able to understand and get into interesting earlier stage internet plays even if they fail. - Thomas Hawk
Andrew Smith - too bad governments won't let them do stuff like that. - Laura
Blogger was a home run... For the sploggers and scrapers. Google needs more QC to weed out the fakes from Blogger. - Bill Sodeman
Expression? Part of OS? Its a development tool.. what will a sales person in a pharma company who has Windows OS do with Expression? - Jigar Mehta
@Jigar Create stuff. The same thing that sales person did with a spreadsheet 12 years ago. Use about 2% of it then in time wonder how they would survive without it. - Andrew Smith
Blogger definitely needs more work Bill. Comment spam is a huge problem with that product. But as far as acquisitions go, for what they paid for it, they got a hell of a deal. But again, they were in early on that. - Thomas Hawk
"We have attempted to collect a variety of data about the relative popularity of programming languages, mostly out of curiousity." - Gary Burd via Bookmarklet
good for the reporter /blogger.. these SEO are more BS artist then real people that create value.. I add the social media consultants to this type of group too !! - Peter Dawson
Blah, blah, blah, all SEO's are bad, blah, blah, blah. - Jonathan Kemp
very good :-) (but ... can't wait when frf has an ability to add an arbitrary service (user-generated catalog of services available)) - Nikolay Samokhvalov
what about the facebook status updates? I hope that's coming... - Rahul Das
Nice work with the status, I would like to see DailyMugshot introduced! - Joe Dawson
Great! Just added identi.ca; configuring brightkite too. - Parth Awasthi
Paul, given Identi.ca uses the Twitter API it would be nice if we could respond via Identi.ca in the same way you can with Tweets. I presume implementing it wouldn't be overly hard (where as Plurk of course is another matter) - Duncan Riley
@Rahul FB status would be cool, but there is no public RSS feed. There is a feed, but it requires a key, which would require you to type in your username/password. - Hao Chen
@Duncan +1. i was thinking the same thing - Trent Olson
Integrated identi.ca via RSS feed before. OK, now it's there but it's not that big deal to me. - Ansgar Wollnik
Thanks for the identi.ca support ... Excellent work ! - Christian Farley
AWESOME!! Ok, I might be using Identi.ca again!!! Yippee! Thanks FF team!! - Susan Beebe
Why are the updates called Dents, I'll Dent you later :S - Joe Dawson
i love "status-blogging", but i still think that it destroys the flow of my friendfeed - i also blocked every twitter update from everyone here at ff... - Dieter Schwarz
Yay, more services to add to my profile! ;P - Aaron Myers
I am getting ready for Identi.ca Twitter going down the drain! - Igor The Troll
seems like i need to go get my identi.ca id before its taken ... - Raza
“NoiseRiver Live Dev' Update: Now FOAF information about the poster are available. You'll not wonder why does an entry appear in your stream anymore! Stay tuned :)”
@Greg (schergr): Well, actually I'm using the FOAF from FF now, but hey! NoiseRiver is still in Alpha (3 weeks old) It'll be a Beta in less than a week, and what a playfull experience we will have! Many many features, ideas will be added. So really stay tuned, and please share your opinions, suggestions, ideas, issues reporting... I'm nothing without your help :) - directeur via NoiseRiver
"Grim news for Merrill Lynch in the FT today: Executives have been informed that there will be no more private-jet travel, unless they really, really need to do it. That's right! No more attentive service and wet bar and those delicious crunchy things that Marquis serves every time they go anywhere. Turns out writing down $9 billion has a terrible price." - Dan Hsiao
This part is my favorite: "At Goldman, staff have to contribute to repairs to their BlackBerrys if the damage is deemed to be their own fault." - Ana
If a stock goes down and they smash their BlackBerry in anger, that's not their fault, right? - Casey Muller
"About three years ago he began steering his partners toward an emphasis on alternative-energy projects, or "green tech" in Kleiner parlance. The new eco-focus has attracted plenty of hoopla, most notably late last year when Doerr hired his pal Al Gore as a Kleiner partner.
Yet the firm's shift toward energy investing is only part of the story. As important is Kleiner's steady drift away from the industry that made the firm what it is today: the Internet. Kleiner's investments defined the Internet's first generation. Without Kleiner there was no Netscape, and without Netscape there was no cash-gushing dot-com boom. " - Ana via Bookmarklet
Kleiner Perkins has an entrepreneur in residence at NREL right now. I bet if you could use the internet or similar technologies to track where the power you consume was generated, they would be all ears. - Clare Dibble
"In a 2006 review of this study and two other surveys of U.S. military interventions, journalist Gar Smith found that “in our country’s 230 years of existence, there have been only 31 years in which U.S. troops were not actively engaged in significant armed adventures on foreign shores.” He concluded:
“The arithmetic is daunting. Over the long course of U.S. history, fewer than 14% of America’s days have been marked by peace. The defining characteristic of our nation’s foreign policy for 86% of our existence would appear to be a bellicose penchant for military intervention.
As of 2006, there were 192 member states in the United Nations. Incredibly enough, over the past two centuries, the United State has attacked, invaded, policed, overthrown or occupied 62 of them.”" - Jason Wehmhoener via Bookmarklet
sad indeed - we could have fed, clothed, educated and sheltered the world's population with the money we've spent on the military since 1900. - Tad Donaghe
this seems like the only way the powers that be believe the us has influence, whether at home or abroad -- through sheer force and intimidation. the same kind of politicians being lobbied by weapons and security corporations are found on their advisory boards years later. shameful. - Cee Bee
It would be intresting to see a comparision with Rome at the height of it's conquest and overextension. - Michael W. May via twhirl
mwm, that would be interesting. hmm. surely there exists a similar chart... - edythe
“in our country’s 230 years of existence, there have been only 31 years in which U.S. troops were not actively engaged in significant armed adventures on foreign shores.” - Alan Cheslow
that really puts things in some perspective - scary stats from Jason W as well - ben rogers via twhirl
Fight for freedom...it really do make a lot of sense, yep - Ben Borges
Like George Carlin says, "fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity". - Jason Wehmhoener
exactly Jason. I used that in a speech once, but I think the original quote is fucking, because I remember agonizing over whether to say screwing or fucking in the speech. - Anthony Citrano
Tad, maybe that's right, but if we had spent our money on feeding, clothing, and educating the world's population instead of the military since 1900, the education program would include German lessons instead of English ;-) - Karim
Heehee - by "we" I meant humanity. :P - Tad Donaghe
Jason W., that first link was hilarious. I for one welcome our future leader, "Keanu Kennedy Bush-Roosevelt," in 2233. Bonus points for "Li Kuan of Rigel 7." - Karim
Simply supplying food, clothing and shelter to "the worlds population" would not unfortunately not preclude the need for a military. The ability to defend a nation is a critical and necessary reality.There will always be tyrants, there will always be those who dream of conquest. They do not do this because they are hungry or naked... they do this because it is who they are. While it is fashionable to think of the US as a tyrannical force in the world - the answer is obviously that we are not. - Soulhuntre
Soulhuntre, I don't think it's necessary to dominate the world in order to provide defense for a nation. Our military is now many times the size of any other nation's worldwide. - Jason Wehmhoener
@US Citizens... I don't get it. I mean I get it i.e. what is happening but I just don't get it from a societal view point. As a Canadian living in Europe I am not even remotely near a culture with such defining militarism so it is hard to imagine. I am not hostile about the situation in the US (just being clear). I pity it. How could I not? - Roger Kondrat
I think you'd find much the same statistics for most nations extrapolated over a period of time. Great Britain has been in a near-constant state of war as far back as its history reaches, as has China, France, Russia, and Egypt. I'm not saying the current state of affairs isn't sad and horrible - just that this behavior is not exclusive to any particular society or time. - Jennifer Dittrich
Jennifer, do you think it might be accurate to say that in recent years (since WWII) it has been more true for the United States than for other countries? - Jason Wehmhoener
Jason: For *some* other countries, yes. Not for, say, the U.S.S.R./Russia, Israel, and Iraq. Also, the proliferation of nuclear weaponry has led to a lot of persistent cold wars where neither peace nor war truly exists. - Roger Benningfield
Roger: True, with regard to the amount of time spent at war. But with regard to the scale of the military, the United States has been in a class by itself since the fall of USSR. http://www.globalissues.org/Ge... - Jason Wehmhoener
@Jason - While the USSR fell behind in war machine production in the early '90's, Russia itself been at war with several of their neighbors/former states off and on during most of the last 200 years. The US and China have both been very aggressively pursuing weapons production. The US is currently "ascendant" as far as military might goes, but I really do believe it is a push and pull -- as the US diminishes, others will rise. - Jennifer Dittrich
Jennifer, I'm trying to understand your point of view, so please correct me if I am wrong. Are you saying that it's inevitable that some small number of nations will pursue global military domination? It's true that I can't think of a period of time when it hasn't been the case, but is it really unavoidable? It's like saying peace is impossible, unless I misunderstand you. - Jason Wehmhoener
Can't speak for Jennifer, but I'll definitely say that across-the-board peace is impossible. - Roger Benningfield
@Jason, we aspire and that is the human condition. We are all flawed and we know it but it is the desire to aspire that causes the wars and ends them. Ambition to be greater than you are by the definition you set for yourself right? :) - Roger Kondrat
Roger, I was thinking more along the lines of social aspiration, what are our aspirations to advance as a society? Unfortunately I think it's a very unusual question for most Americans. - Jason Wehmhoener
Jason: (You're getting Roger overload here.) IMO, we aspire to peace, but acknowledge reality. Most of us aspire to love, knowing all the time that there's an excellent chance we'll get rejected/dumped/betrayed at some point... it's practically an inevitability. Same thing here... your goal is perfection, even though you know you'll never reach it. - Roger Benningfield
In that case I'll keep pointing out how ridiculous I think our military is, and I guess other people will keep reminding me that it couldn't be any other way, and we'll just keep going round and round ;-) - Jason Wehmhoener
It is clearly not a pretty picture, how the US military canvases the globe like a modern day Roman empire. But I often wonder, would Americans want it any other way? To not be dominant, to not be the best, to not be powerful?? For some reason, I doubt Americans would satisfy themselves being mediocre, bullied around by other nations. - David Kemper
I find it interesting that so many people assume that *someone* has to be "the bully". Militarism is not the only available form of dialogue between nations (though the bully in the room often wants to pretend it is). - Jason Wehmhoener
what is silly glemak? I am just sharing... It's a fact. It will get tougher and tougher to raise money in this environment - Loic Le Meur via twhirl
Yet M&A is still happening. Google/Digg, Brocade/Foundry. Are those not exits? - Louis Gray
loic: there are many ways to exit & always will be exit opts, that won't change, what will change is whether the silliness of astronomical exits of recent past will happen, which it won't - whoever on the vc panel said that was just being melodramatic and silly - btw, how can the future be fact ;) - mike "glemak" dunn
sorry, as for tough to raise money, agreed - business models have needed to be solid for awhile now (except for those who are still doing crazy investments like in podshow) but raising & exits are two different sides of the coin no? - mike "glemak" dunn
this doesn't sound too problematic if you're starting a business today - a 3-5 year holding period for investments shouldn't break anybody's IRR model. could make things tougher if you've got a portfolio chock full of series c and d companies, though - Charles Hudson
Sad, but I'm reading many articles predicting a recession longer and worse than what we had in 2001. To think it won't affect tech is just naive. - Jason Kaneshiro
A big portion of high-risk capital is going to greentech. Aslong as there's a Google and a Microsoft (and a FB, etc), exits will be an option. But I think there's a glut of 'social media' investments that are finding out traffic doesn't always equal value. - Cains
WebEx works great, I rarely go into the office these days. - Jason Wehmhoener
I'm looking into WebEx too, it seems more prudent rather than fly from NY to SF for a one hour meeting - Sally Church
There was a great Dilbert cartoon a while ago where the boss wanted him to fly to the customer's site and Dilbert says, "why not just pick up the phone?" Point-haired boss replies - "What kind of message would that send to the customer?"...."Uhh..that we know how to use the phone?" - Rob Neville
