I think that's pretty misleading. What protects you when you've incorporated is that your contracts are between your company and your customers, vendors, or partners. It's not the nature of the contracts themselves. Consolidated Gypsum can put your company out of business by dragging you through a lawsuit until you BK. It can't take your house.The reason contracts don't protect businesses is that they cost too much to enforce. When you're not in the same league as your adversary, they will simply outlast you. The same dynamics do not apply to an attempt by Consolidated Gypsum to make themselves whole on a debt by trying to take your house.

Incorporate early. There's no good reason not to. ... See all content Hide content

32 minutes ago onHackernews in www.kalzumeus.com

Patrick has been writing about his competition for awhile. He has not cornered the market on bingo cards.

3 hours, 18 minutes ago onHackernews in www.kalzumeus.com

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1186157

3 hours, 19 minutes ago onHackernews in www.kalzumeus.com

What's your point? He's not saying every company should work this way. He's saying "this is a way to do it that works when you have other time constraints".In Patrick's case, doing it this way got him from full-time job to full-time startup entrepreneur without taking a dime of money from anybody but his customers. We'll see what he comes up with after a few years of doing it full time.

Finally , writing a database from scratch? Crappy business to get in to even if you're full time! ... See all content Hide content

3 hours, 22 minutes ago onHackernews in www.kalzumeus.com

Not that I'm putting a stake into either side of this debate, but workaholism is clearly also extremely detrimental to your health; there are ways to abuse drugs while being careful about your health just like there are ways to work 70 hours a week and still take care of yourself --- it's just that in both cases people rarely pull it off.

3 hours, 29 minutes ago onHackernews in 37signals.com

(Aside: I know many Americans consider the last option shockingly irresponsible. My ability to prevail over my employer — a major multinational — in a lawsuit is effectively nil. A contract is just a formalization of a promise. In Japan, the ongoing relationship with my bosses is the part of the agreement that provides security, not the piece of paper.)This is one of the more important bits of advice I've seen Patrick give, and I think it applies to those of us full-timing with our companies even more. Your lawyers are going to tell you that contracts matter a whole lot, too. And just like Patrick with the company in Nagoya, your ability to prevail in a dispute, contract or not, is usually going to be nil. ... See all content Hide content

3 hours, 59 minutes ago onHackernews in www.kalzumeus.com

I spent the first part of my career as a "server guy" (along with networks). I ran tech at a popular ISP in Chicago called EnterAct.I spent the next part of my career as a developer, first at a security company, then at a streaming multicast company I founded, then at a network managment company.

I spent the next part of my career as an almost full-time security researcher for hire, with a pronounced focus on high-end enterprise technology (SAN, WAN compression, replication, database, storage).

Looking at it from all three angles, I'd say: there's definitely something to this. Being a programmer gave me insight into how systems worked. Being a security researcher gave me even more insight (I had projects that were literally months spent reverse engineering equipment firmware and building protocol test suites).

I'm confident that after all this "insight", I knew more about how, say, iSCSI worked than any SAN administrator in Chicago.

So, how would I have done as a manager of a SAN array? Terribly!

The things that actually matter in administration --- understanding the processes that need to be in place to make changes, understanding what kinds of changes will occur, understanding what's a typical kind of failure that will just take a couple hours to diagnose versus what kinds of problems mean that your vendor is putting engineers on an airplane --- those things you learn by being in the operational/engineering role.

To excel in the operational/engineering role, you need to dedicate yourself to the things that matter for that role, and not allow yourself to get distracted by shiny things. Developers and researchers: prone to distraction by shiny things!

What I don't think is true is that strong tech people are predisposed to one of these roles or the other. Could I be a strong ops/engineering person again? I think so. But I know I can't do it while I'm doing this job. ... See all content Hide content

4 hours, 27 minutes ago onHackernews in news.ycombinator.com

You're building it on a system without zlib or OpenSSL. Install those too.

23 hours, 42 minutes ago onHackernews in code.google.com

This is way, way over the line. "I want to be clear that my team is a fast-paced, hard-working, hectic environment. I am going to work you hard...". There are places where you can lose your job for publicly describing an internship that way.

1 day ago onHackernews in www.jonobacon.org

These are substantially similar terms to YC for a program with essentially no track record in a geographic area that is not catnip for investors. Accepting these terms --- 5% for 15-20k --- seems like effectively saying "I'm as likely to get funded in Chicago after being 'mentored' by people nobody has heard of as I am to get funded in the valley after being 'mentored' by PG, PG's friends, and 100 entrepreurs PG & Co kickstarted.I'm very cynical about the YC value prop. But even I don't think it's worth nothing.

Interested in this because you don't think you can get into YC? Let me introduce you to a concept called "adverse selection". These programs are like b-schools: who you go with is as important as who you go for. ... See all content Hide content

1 day ago onHackernews in www.exceleratelabs.com