Am I the only pessimist here? After being bombarded with "ideas are cheap" nonsense all I can see is the same old "share, sync, discover, publish" stuff re-packaged and re-wrapped with different version of rounded corners, peppered with the same old&boring punches like "groundbreaking", "easy to use" and "disruptive" over and over again?

I mean come on, does anyone really believe that sharing a photo on the net is an unsolved problem?

Hey, here's an unsolved problem for you: endless signups everywhere - every single person who owns a computer will tell you that they're fucking tired of logging into gmail or yahoo mail or whatever, and "remember me" checkboxes work only for a little while. But sharing a photo online? I never heard anyone complaining: we all have multiple "Share!!!" buttons staring at us in iPhoto, Picasa, Vista, whatever and we don't give a flying fuck.

And how about millions of people screaming in pain who sit in front of their half-dead Windows machines, overloaded with spyware, malware, bloated slow registry and 8174 useless "services" running in background, slowing everything down, showing marketing messages from Logitech and overall ruining their everyday experience? Who's smart enough to solve that mess in 3 months?

Those obvious, screaming-in-your-face issues remain unsolved because they are HARD and, therefore, fall into a problematic category of problems that work against conventional "release often, release early" wisdom. After all, it seems like sending 140 characters to a list of subscribers can pass as a billion dollar technology, why bother with stupid Windows users?

Actually I believe that great, ambitious ideas are very, very rare and are, by far, the most important ingredient for a true innovation, for a true sustainable business. Great idea, more than anything else, separates Googles, Microsofts and Yahoos from thousands of tiny "widget" startups, focused on minimal coding and fastest time-to-flip, created and sold-or-died within two years, leaving everybody but the founders with nothing but lesser quality of personal lives, which makes their "change the world with us" hiring songs look kinda hilarious.

Ideas are priceless. If you are a programmer and you aren't "plugged" into the bubble money, a great idea is your only chance. Crappy-idea-great-execution companies are usually examples of networking/salesmanship skills, something programmers aren't terribly good at.

In the end, not a single YC-funded startup can compete with something like Mongrel, a one-man non-commercial effort which, when measured in value it brought into this world, or how much people wanted it, is what defines wealth, according to PG's own writings. I've been following YC-backed companies for more than 2 years and not a single one produced something I wanted. Come on, I am a computer-savvy, technology-loving, ad-blocking geek with a huge PC-per-capita ratio and a hefty tech gadget/software monthly budget, how come none of these startups managed to get a single dollar out of me? Am I alone asking myself this question?

This is a somewhat old article.

It's also very, very long.

It's also one of the greatest newspaper feature stories I've ever read. It was passed around the writers' circles I was part of when the Post ran it years ago.

Here's the gist (from memory):

1. Guy has a gift for connecting with little kids.

2. Guy has good sense of humor.

3. Guy decides to do magic shows at pre-school birthday parties for a living.

4. Guy targets the richest community of clients for his service.

5. Guy figures out what people are charging for pre-school birthday party magic shows and charges DOUBLE their price.

6. Guy markets his shows by hanging out around shopping malls where parents and kids wandered by, having fake conversations on his cell phone about non-existent work.

7. Guy works 10 birthday parties a weekend, charging $200 for a 30-minute magic show.

8. Parents feel guilty about dropping $200 on a 30-minute preschool magic show, but the kids ADORE the guy's funny act and tricks that blow up in his face. He's got a gift.

There's a great subplot about the magicians deep, dark secret, in fact it's what prompted the Washington Post reporter to shadow the guy for a few months. Parents were wondering why the magician kept showing up unshaven, with dark circles under his eyes, and why his gear was so beat up if he was making so much money.

I'll leave the surprises to those curious enough to read the whole thing.

Did you ever know a kid who would say something mean and then quickly follow it up with "JK!"? That kid was annoying.

I don't think it was a sincere effort. That's my point. Zed just wanted to be able to say mean things about people and not experience any consequences for it. And that's silly.

This fumbling around now is annoying. If he wants to be a mean person he should be a mean person. If he wants to be nice he should say he doesn't want to be mean anymore and be nicer. Changing his behavior and saying it's because I wasn't smart enough to handle his persona – and by the way don't criticize him for anything he said... What is that?

The blog was called "Zed's So Fucking AWESOME", and he had his name in flaming letters and silhouettes of strippers on the blog, as I recall. Did you really think it was a sincere effort?

There may be a part of Zed Shaw that is Fucking Awesome and that is highly opinionated (the audacity to even have an online persona, and to start software projects, points to a large amount of ego). But it was clearly always a self-parody. Unfortunately, self-parody doesn't work on the internet. Everyone always takes you at face value.

I've never said anything about a Zed Shaw link before, but this has my hands up in the air.

What comes to my mind is a fumbling art student who's been called out on a bad piece, so he's now claiming it's a parody of bad work, or, no wait, actually the reaction of everyone to the poor piece is the piece.

He trots out the persona argument all the time, but I won't give it to him. A persona isn't a set of fake glasses, nose and mustache you can wear whenever you don't want something attached to people's image of you. People with personas make a great effort to separate them from their real selves – wearing costumes, using different names, and actually behaving differently. Ranting from zedshaw.com under the name Zed Shaw doesn't fit my idea of a persona.

Also, it bothers me that the supposed real Zed Shaw uses this deletion to criticize people and put them down (for taking his "persona" seriously) – something his "persona" was well known for.

Wow. AnandTech has always been great, but this was especially well-written and informative. If you think 31 pages is too long, well, it's worth it. The article gives really good technical explanations of how SSDs work and how they compare to disk drives, tells about an interesting back-and-forth with OCZ (a Taiwanese SSD manufacturer), and gives you the info you need to make an SSD purchasing decision. And it's a shining example of tech journalism at its best (which we rarely see).

If no one sees an email in their inbox, is it really there?