I actually started working on it for last year's NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month; http://nanowrimo.org) but life happened and it got shelved so I pulled it out again today and got it into somewhat usable shape.
Sorry about the FB login, I know I will get shit for that but I need it because I eventually want to add social features :)
I've been running a few Linodes for the past year with absolutely no complaints. A year isn't a huge sample period, but I am very happy with my experience so far. I can't compare to Slicehost or Rackspace, but compared to my previous VPS at Media Temple (grrr...) Linode is paradise.
Ahh, I think I may have originally caught you before an edit (or just misread). There is probably more money to be made teaching eg. email marketing for someone in patio11's position, but that doesn't extrapolate well. For young developers like myself, I think it would be foolish to target other developers when there are so many valuable business problems that software can solve. (IOW I was contesting the idea that there is generally more money to be made selling shovels, but I do not contest the idea that patio11 or perhaps bdunn might be able to make more money selling shovels at this point.)
I'm not sure that's true. My hypothesis is that we find it easier to meet and communicate with people similar to us, so marketing a product aimed at other developers is an obvious path. There is lots of money to be made by getting out of our stupid little bubble--last week I went for coffee with a guy that sells a modern UI for a legacy system in the construction industry. His code base is probably not the prettiest, and he has less than ten clients, but he is a multi-millionaire.
If you look at the linked report it says that online segments are growing in all of air, rail, car rentals and hotels--"vacations" are just not growing as a segment online. I think what tstegart might be saying is that it's not obvious which aspects of "vacation" are left, when all of those pieces can be booked individually.
I agree with regard to whether or not this needs to be disrupted--I do some work for a local travel agency and the level of service they provide is remarkable (it would be very difficult for me to save money by booking the same trips myself online, without even accounting for the time it would take me).
I wouldn't put it past gliese1337. I turned 24 yesterday, and I can honestly tell clients that I've been programming professionally for over a decade. (Obviously, my abilities/standards have changed since then, and so have my rates... hopefully that trend will continue!)
Sure, objectivity is good, but often times difficult decisions have no objectively clear optimal path (eg. there are many good arguments to be made for why MZ should not be replaced, and even time will only evaluate a single path). Emotion has been a useful (though admittedly fallible) cognitive shortcut for our species in those situations.
Geez, a lot of jerks on HN today. jv22222, thanks for making this. You're obviously putting a lot of work into it. I can't say that it particularly interests me at this point, but I'm glad that you and people like you work hard on things and open-source them.
FWIW, when I was figuring out Bitcoin I avoided the paper at first (due to logic similar to yours) but eventually read it because there was a lot of noise in the wiki, etc (may have changed). I found it surprisingly accessible; more so than the vast majority of academic papers I've come across (I have most of an EE degree but little to no formal CS training).
That's awesome Roman (it's Roman, right?), I'm looking forward to it! And yes, Black Chair is going to be my full-time gig, although the website is a major work in progress right now :)
As a counterpoint to some of the views already expressed, I would happily pay for this. I'm planning to take my freelance/consulting business full time starting January, and have become hyper-aware of the importance of my personal network and meeting new people (not even for business opportunities, just to understand a wider cross-section of people in general). I'm also planning to travel a lot and work remotely--in other words, what you are proposing sounds ideally suited to me.
I already signed up for your list, feel free to shoot me an email if you want to know more (its in my profile).
Congrats to the Balsamiq team! To anyone who isn't using Balsamiq yet, do it--an astoundingly useful bit of software. It's difficult to convey just how valuable this tool is for anyone that makes software/website for people to use.
The fact that everyone at the company is friendly and helpful and awesome is a significant bonus.
Sorry about the FB login, I know I will get shit for that but I need it because I eventually want to add social features :)