I've found linux to be the best environment for doing programming work. The command line is a powerful tool. The key is scripting repetitive tasks, so you only have to ever do them once. Most stuff in windows can't be scripted very easily.
If you nail price-points (UV & Gsfn charge a lot), feature-sets, and UX (Only Gsfn has this really down), you could shake up feedback forms a good bit.
There are a number of serious problems with this vision:
1) Of course the digital components of cameras (storage size, sensor resolution, processing power) will continue to improve at Moore's law pace, but optics is quickly becoming the limiting factor. In particular, diffraction limits sharpness as you increase depth-of-field (a result of the small aperture size) and the limited number of photons in dark scenes limits our high-ISO potential and resolution on small sensors.
2) "...the ability to keep everything viewable in focus at the same time".
Even if you could do this you wouldn't want to. Depth-of-field and focus point are some of the most important creative decisions a photographer makes per photo, and since they are "3D" phenomenon the effects cannot be accurately simulated during post-processing. (maybe stereoscopic cameras would be able to but then you need two lenses, which would add cost & weight in comparison to a "single" lens model)
3) "But perhaps the most radical thing about this camera is that it's really a camcorder. Rather than take individual stills, Wonder Camera owners would simply have their pick of perfectly crisp photos as frames grabbed from video."
Maybe, but there would have to be a way to have it integrate over several frames to get long-shutter-speed effects, and there would have to be a way to "tag" points in time so you're not sifting through hours of footage later to get the stills you wanted. Much of what this article proposes sounds like it just defers work (choosing aperture, choosing shutter speed, choosing point in time) to a later point, something I would NOT think photographers would want to do, since they already complain about how long post takes!
4) Finally, even this concept turns out to be 100% correct, I don't see it changing the art of photography all that much. As other people here mention, good photography is about good subject matter, framing the shot, clever use of lighting (whether artificial or available), post-processing to get the desired artistic effect, and being in the right place at the right time. Technology can certainly assist us with these things, but fundamentally it is these human element, not the technology, that makes photography what it is, and that won't change. As technology improves the photographer's decision process focuses less on making technical trade-offs (like shutter-speed vs aperture, high-ISO vs noise), but the creative aspects remain as important as ever.
I'm a fan too; you can see from this review: http://jseliger.com/2009/07/20/kinesis-advantage/ that I was initially somewhat ambivalent... until I switched back to a normal keyboard, at which point I realized just how nice the Advantage is.
10:30: get to work (now my home office), check email
10:30-noon: procrastinate
noon-1:15: lunch then 45 minute walk
1:15-5:00: procrastinate
5-7pm: 2 hours of amazing productivity
7-8:30: Cook & eat dinner
8:30-midnight: Take rest of night off or perhaps have another couple hours of productivity.
It's not as bad as it sounds cause usually the "procrastination" is me experimenting with new code or programming languages (or reading HN), just not what I'm "supposed" to be doing.
Usually at some point I start yelling at myself "ok, you REALLY need to work now" and once I get into it I'm extremely focused and productive, especially if a deadline is looming.
When I worked in an office I was the same way. If I hit a good stride by like 4-5pm, I would usually end up staying until 7-9pm. It's good to have bosses that recognize that 40 hours a week don't have to be at the same time every day to maximize productivity.
My advice: Get really good at C in linux. Focus on learning about cool algorithms and datastructures (hash tables, rb-trees, alpha-beta search, shift-reduce, ...) rather than the particulars of any language. If you get great at C programming in linux, and have a solid algorithmic foundation, then you'll be able to pick up the language-du-jour in a matter of days (if not hours).
I think design and profit margins go hand-in-hand. If you have a low margin business selling something cheap in large volume then design doesn't matter so much. If you want to sell higher margin, boutique, premium goods then design matters more (hence the word "designer").
I would expand this further and say that the more margin you want, the more you need to spend on marketing in general. Marketing a product that is obviously similar to but cheaper than the competition is easier/cheaper than marketing a high margin product.
Note, I would be careful to not confuse margin and profit. Volume can often make up for a lower margin.
Sounds pretty realistic, but I wonder what the profit margin is for Sriracha sauce. It seems like a pretty recognizable brand - and a recognizable brand usually = higher profit margin.
Not sure yet. I'd imagine LLC down the road for it's tax advantages, but I'd have to look in to it more later. In other words... I'm not incorporating until I have to.
Also for the images - they're links to particular articles. Do you really think they'll have a problem for linking like that?
Sadly, I feel the same way about "organic" and "free range" labels. I wish I could feel good about spending more money to buy sustainable food, but I think it's mostly bogus marketing.
No, the number of applications doesn't seem to have decreased. We decided to do this back in Jan when we moved the application deadline earlier, because there's now a 3 month gap between the application deadline and when the cycle starts, and we know from experience that when people start startups, they don't always know they're going to 3 months beforehand.
We've thought about it. We may one day. But there is some stuff that usually happens between cycles, like organizing Startup School. Plus we need some time off. During the YC cycle we are very busy, like the startups themselves are, because time is so compressed.
Maybe a little, but I doubt it. Sounds like they've known this is a problem for awhile: someone decides to start a startup right after the deadline, hears about YC, wants to do it, but has to wait a long time (beginning of April- beginning of January is 9 months) to hit a cycle.
But by moving the deadline earlier, they made the problem that much worse, which got them thinking about the problem, which lead them to decide on this approach.
PG has said in the past that YC don't have an upper limit on the number of groups to fund. This isn't a zero-sum game: if having no deadline means they get more applicantions of which a steady percentage is fundable, then it's worth doing as long as they don't overstretch their resources.
