Something Confusing about "Hard": It's tempting to think that if it's hard, then it's valuable. Most valuable things are hard. Most hard things are completely useless -- (picture of someone smashing their head through concrete blocks kung-fu style). Hard DOES NOT EQUATE TO BEING valuable. Remember Friendster back in the day? You'd sign in, invite friends, have 25 friends, go to their profile, and then it'd show how you were connected to each one. That's an impressive [some geeky CS jargon] Cone traversal of a tree - 100 million string comparisons per page -- it won't scale. Used to take a minute per page to load, and Friendster died a painful death. MySpace -- not interested in solving problems They use the shortcut of "Miss Fitzpatrick is in your extended network" (i.e. even when you're not even signed up for MySpace) They didn't solve the hard problem. But they make the more relevant assumption that you want to be connected to hot women. [LOL] Shows Alexa graph showing that in early 2005 Myspace took off, and quickly bypassed Friendster and never looked back. -- Max Levchin, PayPal founder, Talk at StartupSchool2007

Remember, always be yourself ... unless you suck! -- Joss Whedon

Measure everything you can about the product, and you'll start seeing patterns. -- Max Levchin, PayPal founder, Talk at StartupSchool2007

Only make new mistakes. -- Phil Dourado

I would rather be an optimist and be wrong than a pessimist who proves to be right. The former sometimes wins, but never the latter. -- "Hoots"

Philosophy: the finding of bad reasons for what one believes by instinct. -- Brave New World (paraphrased)

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You must expect great things of yourself before you can do them. ~Michael Jordan

The first step toward success is taken when you refuse to be a captive of the environment in which you first find yourself. ~Mark Caine

As we look ahead into the next century, leaders will be those who empower others. ~Bill Gates