There's also that little thing where Intuit and Citysearch fail to innovate and have terrible products. That just might have something to do with Yelp and Mint's success.

Funny, I assumed it was a thinly veiled jab at Mark Pincus.

I didn't attend SUS09, but by the video clips, it seems he committed this very "presentation sin."

I am honestly having a hard time believing someone with decent eyesite can say ubuntu(3) is fuzzy while osx(1) is not,

ubuntu obviously chooses sharpness over balance (H and E), however osx has virtually every lowercase character heavily aliased, its blurry to the point where its almost 2 shades lighter than its supposed to be and there are individual characters A, u, B, a where it is almost a joke

OS X has the glyphs clipped to an imaginary sub-screen-resolution grid. The same letter may in some instances take up one black pixel and in others take up two (and be greyish in both). That's what he meant by accuracy. On linux every identical glyph is rendered identically, no matter where it is positioned.

I absolutely admit that OS X has a somewhat fuzzy appearance, particularly at small point sizes. This gets exaggerated with the MS Core/Web fonts, which were designed for the screen (stems that line up with pixel boundaries, etc), and have hinting that is specifically designed to be compatible with MS ClearType.

Ubuntu has similar (but not exactly the same) levels of fuzziness, but the rendering is inaccurate. Character tracking/spacing is the biggest issue, but there are others.

If you look at traditional fonts that are designed for print or general purpose use (e.g. Helvetica, Frutiger, Univers, Myriad, etc.), the accuracy and quality of OS X rendering stands out considerably. There is simply no comparison.. and once you get used to it, the small amount of "fuzziness" that you observe in small point sizes just doesn't bother you anymore.

its kerning not tracking, and its only off in a few minor places (for the same reason the midline is off in H E), in those paragraphs I can find around the same mistakes from both the renders around the kerning (both make pretty identical errors)

I use osx every day, I am very used to it, I just prefer ubuntus rendering by quite a long way

That's funny, I didn't know Verdana was optimized for that type of rendering.

I use Ubuntu configured to use Windows style hinting without sub-pixel smoothing, and I have absolutely every font forced to Verdana. I'm glad that there is accidentally a little bit of logic behind my choice.

Being fair to the parent, you don't seem to have the MS web fonts installed on Ubuntu, so the two OSes are rendering different fonts.

Still.. even if you do install the right fonts, the results will be the same.

Run, don't walk, to your nearest optometrist and get your eyes checked.

Ubuntu and OS X are not even remotely comparable from a typography standpoint. Using Freetype (the Linux/X11 lib for font rendering), tracking and stem thickness is inconsistent, ascenders and descenders get cut off, etc.

The Freetype team puts forth a valiant effort, but until they're allowed to use Adobe/Apple/etc.'s patented hinting algorithms, there's no comparison.

Interestingly enough, they probably are allowed to use those in my country ;-)

This line toward the bottom really caught my eye:

"Cselle said reMail will soon add a feature allowing users to upgrade by inviting 10 friends to to download the app."

This is a brilliant move.

I might have to borrow a page from Gabor's playbook very soon. :)

(Also, congrats on the new feature launch. ReMail looks great.)

If you're disappointed with the quality/performance of Fusion 2, why would you pay more and blindly upgrade to 3 without actually knowing that it has measurably improved?

Either way, please report back after the upgrade. The 'new features' list isn't terribly compelling, but a genuine performance boost (on, say, a dual-core MacBook Pro, not just an 8-core MacPro) would be.

Free 30 day trial

http://communities.vmware.com/docs/DOC-11004

It works great for me. My system specs:

Model Name: MacBook Pro Model Identifier: MacBookPro5,1 Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo Processor Speed: 2.66 GHz Number Of Processors: 1 Total Number Of Cores: 2 L2 Cache: 6 MB Memory: 4 GB Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz Boot ROM Version: MBP51.007E.B00

I can confirm that if I turn on the GT video card that I can actually play DoTA (Warcraft 3) in Vista at 1024x768 with no skipping. Obviously it doesn't balk at anything less complex (like Linux development and testing, which is what I usually use it for).

Edit: The support for multiple monitors is also greatly improved. I tend to like to connect my MBP to a second monitor, throw the VM on it, then fullscreen it. Works great.

Looking at your list, I see universities that have some amount of cachet or prestige, but not necessarily with specifically solid Engineering/CS programs. Further, many of them are in locations that are not traditional startup hubs (StL, Nashville, Philly, Cleveland, RI, etc.).

If your goal is truly focused completely on starting a tech startup after completing your degree, then you should be looking for:

1. Location. Go somewhere where you can find and meet like-minded people and the resources to help you get going. San Francisco, NYC, Boston, Chicago, maybe Austin. Cities with established startups and college towns are both great for this. PG conveys similar opinions in his essays about startup hubs.

2. A good CS department. You'll need fellow developers. Mine them from a good CS department.

3. Being in a school that is known to generate lots of startups is certainly helpful. Think Stanford, Berkeley, MIT.

Keep in mind, this is coming from someone who spent 3 semesters at Rice (before transferring to UT Austin).. It's a great school, but I would not choose it as a place to get a startup kicked off.

I'd also like to backup tsally's comments about large vs. small CS programs. This is the primary reason why I left Rice (although I was EE, not CS). The school is too small and the CS and EE programs did not offer the breadth of topics that the larger schools do.

> It's pretty clear that the core simulation objects have to be written in C++. C is too painful, and anything else is going to give an unacceptable hit in speed

The author lost me right here. C is too painful, and C++ is materially better? OOP is nice and all, but it's no panacea. I've worked plenty in both languages and find that both score roughly equally in 'pain quotient.'

Interestingly, the "LFSP" theory breaks down when you consider memory management and pointers. Those two features of "LFM's" cause far more difficulty for average developers, IMO, than the abstractions available in "LFSP's."

Disagree. Chris's point regards direct seed-stage investment from a VC, where a "pass" on funding an A-round indicates that the VC lost interest over time (suggesting that they might be disappointed in execution, think the market is no longer there, etc.).

My understanding is that Sequoia is simply providing more capital to YC, and that YC handles all the decision-making with regards to company selection and investment. For Sequoia to "pass" on investing in a YC-funded company after the seed stage is not the same situation.. they never "selected" the seed-stage funding recipient in the first place.

Edit: Regardless, this is all a silly thing to be concerned about. If your idea is even remotely viable, your execution is solid, and you have determination, you will find traction and success (and investment, if you really want it). If you're sweating things like this, you're getting distracted from the things that matter.

>If you're sweating things like this, you're getting distracted from the things that matter.

Agreed.