Same here - mine was all alpha characters, seven characters, and the hash with five 0's was in the file. Guess who just changed their LinkedIn password today? And included some numbers?
There's not much room to joke about assassination and lynchings in a country that has a very recent history of assassinations and lynchings.
It's in bad taste, it can incite violence, and given your statements here, as well as those you've made elsewhere, I'm unsurprised that the law came down on you.
No, there YOU go doing it again. That comment was in a long thread of context, and you willfully ignored that. The comment was also non-actionable and was clearly political hyperbole.
> There's not much room to joke about assassination and lynchings in a country that has a very recent history of assassinations and lynchings.
Sure there is.
It's little thing called "the first amendment". Perhaps you've heard of it? Read it closely. It makes no reference to "...unless there were lynchings in the last century".
> No, there YOU go doing it again. That comment was in a long thread of context, and you willfully ignored that. The comment was also non-actionable and was clearly political hyperbole.
Not really, no. SOPA actually exists, and you joked about hanging its supporters. The only context that would have made it remotely appropriate is neutral one, in which it was clear to any observers that encouraging the hanging of SOPA supporters (even 'jokingly') was not your position.
> It's little thing called "the first amendment". Perhaps you've heard of it? Read it closely. It makes no reference to "...unless there were lynchings in the last century".
Then let me rephrase: There's no room to joke about lynching elected representatives (or anyone) in civilized mature discourse.
There is also a long history of case law that restricts "fighting words", despite the first amendment.
My only take-away from your repeated reference to assassination/lynching is that you're someone who is likely to incite if not participate in violence, and beyond that, you personally decrease the overall quality of rational discourse in US politics.
You may not be enough of a nutcase to try to assassinate a politician -- I'm honestly not sure, given your remarks here, and your ownership of the tools to do so -- but your seeming need to joke about assassination contributes to a culture of political violence that may very well incite someone to do what you won't.
If somebody had a "fuck you" bumper sticker, would you smash their taillight? Even if you're a technically sophisticated asshole, you're still an asshole...
I see Heroku, Beanstalk, et al as the future here. This code-less approach will hit a brick wall very quickly, at which point they'll be writing something not unlike Google AppEngine, which itself suffers from being proprietary.
There's a substantial difference between a service and an installed product.
PostgreSQL 9.3 is installed on your database server, the source is available, and it isn't going anywhere.
If Oracle discontinued their database platform tomorrow (unlikely!), your licensed copy will remain valid for a long time up until you swap it out for another closely compatible database.
If Parse closes their doors or exits tomorrow, that's it.
Compare to AWS: If Amazon discontinues EC2, other virtual hosting services exist. If they discontinue Beanstalk, then at least you were coding to a commmon servlet API. If they discontinue S3, there are some compatible competitors, but hopefully you wrote your data layer to be S3-agnostic.
I think non-standardized AWS services are more risky. More standardized fare -- EC2, Beanstalk, etc -- less risky. Basing your entire code base on pervasive use of Parse -- very risky.
1) There is very little chance of them closing their doors in the near future as they raised a large series A and have great growth.
2) Having personally talked with Tikhon on the subject and it's clear that they plan to make this a stable platform for the longhaul. I would not hesitate to build a project on top of Parse they are a great group and would not leave their users hanging.
3) If you're still hesitant keep in mind you can still keep mission critical stuff on your own Servers/APIs and use Parse for Push Notifications/Location etc.. There is nothing locking you into what parts of the Parse SDK you use.
> 1) There is very little chance of them closing their doors in the near future as they raised a large series A and have great growth.
Until/unless they get purchased. As you said, it was a large series A.
> 2) Having personally talked with Tikhon on the subject and it's clear that they plan to make this a stable platform for the longhaul. I would not hesitate to build a project on top of Parse they are a great group and would not leave their users hanging.
If they're bought, it won't be their decision.
> 3) If you're still hesitant keep in mind you can still keep mission critical stuff on your own Servers/APIs and use Parse for Push Notifications/Location etc.. There is nothing locking you into what parts of the Parse SDK you use.
Push, etc, is the easy stuff.
> 4) You can always export your data.
It's the continued functioning of the code that I'm worried about, not the data.
> AOL is going to get press out of this that am sure they will find worth the few months of squatting.
That's AOL's decision to make. Not yours, not his.
> Also, entrepreneurs break rules in order to get stuff done.
Unethical people engage in unethical behavior (which is sometimes "breaking rules") in order to get stuff done.
Plenty of entrepreneurs do business honestly, and I'd rather read about them. I don't need a news story to tell me that behaving unethically can provide gains at a cost to others.
What unethical behavior are you referring to, and how have you demonstrated that Apple's success not only stemmed from such behavior, but could have only occurred through unethical means?
Steve sold blue boxes with Wozniak that allowed you to make unlimited phone calls. They profited 6k from this and is often told as the story that set the bond and precedent on how the two worked together.
This cost the phone companies and was an illegal item that they sold on the "underground market"
If Steve didn't partner with Wozniak would Apple be around today? Doubt it.
Was this more immoral then sleeping on AOLs couches for a few months after your incubator ended? I would say so.
That neither proves that unethical behavior was required for Apple's success, nor that said bond could only be created through unethical behavior. If you want a recrimination of that behavior, I'd be happy to give it. It was immature and wrong.
What, if not the ends, justifies the means? I understand that, from a deontological perspective, you might believe that certain means can never be justified no matter what the ends, but surely squatting in an office building isn't a means so immoral that no end could ever justify it.
Now, you might think that building an education startup is not an end that requires or warrants trespassing, and you're probably right. However, I hope that you would feel differently about trespassing as a means to protect oneself from a dangerous oncoming storm.
I'm not sure if this is what you meant, but too often I hear people argue that if a certain means is immoral in one circumstance then it must be immoral in every circumstance. These people have the notion stuck in their heads that "the ends never justify the means." IMHO this viewpoint is far too reductionist to be universally valid.
1. False. Define "great" and "rules" and I or others will happily provide no shortage of examples.
2. I want to give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you're a reasonable person, and you were merely exaggerating, but I don't even know what you're trying to say. Are you trying to say that in order to do great things, rules generally have to get broken...and therefore it's ok for entrepreneurs to do unethical things?
3. Consider reducing your consumption of entrepreneurship porn.
2) The world is rendered in shades of grey, and not all ethical issues carry equal weight. Some are worth sweating, some aren't. This one isn't, according to a representative of the victimized party itself.
3) Consider having a beer or two and giving the high horse a good night's sleep.
As I said in the topmost parent thread, "you can be sure that this incident will create additional requirements and restrictions for the [honest] entrepreneurs who still remain in the building."
Many successful entrepreneurs engage in social hacking in some way. What the entrepreneur in this case did was both unethical and illegal.
Just because you have a key to someone's house doesn't mean you get to open their front door and sleep on their couch.
The world is rendered in shades of grey, and not all ethical issues carry equal weight. Some are worth sweating, some aren't. This one isn't, according to a representative of the victimized party itself.
The victimized party can choose to spin this any way they want, but it had no bearing on whether it actually did them harm or how they actually feel about it. That's not your decision to make, and 'shades of gray' is a lousy justification for theft of service.
Sigh. I'm sorry, I thought I was on a forum for hackers, not commercial property managers.
I see this fellow as no worse than, say, a telemarketer. In fact, that's probably a good analogy to draw... except that I typically get more annoyed at telemarketers who hijack my time and attention, than AOL management seems to be at the person who overstayed his welcome in their building.
It's possible that I'm only as sympathetic to him as I am because he committed his offense in the course of trying to create something. Telemarketers don't offend me because they're annoying and presumptuous, but because they're lazy and unnecessary. If every telemarketer dropped off the face of the earth tomorrow, life would go on for the rest of us. If every kid with a bit of hustle and debatable judgment dropped off the face of the earth, things would go downhill in a hurry.
Being a hacker has nothing to do with poor ethics. In fact, I'd say many of the best hackers I've had the privilege to work with have a strong sense of morals and ethics.
Agreed. Even YC explicitly says they look for the "naughty" factor in entrepreneurs, and this is exactly the type of quality I saw in Eric from reading this article.
"Though the most successful founders are usually good people, they tend to have a piratical gleam in their eye. They're not Goody Two-Shoes type good. Morally, they care about getting the big questions right, but not about observing proprieties. That's why I'd use the word naughty rather than evil. They delight in breaking rules, but not rules that matter. This quality may be redundant though; it may be implied by imagination." http://paulgraham.com/founders.html
AOL out the funds they spent on his theft of service and resources, and they're out the time they spent having security figure out why someone was sleeping there. They've been embarrassed in the press, and they're that much less likely to trust people that are part of their entrepreneur programs in the future.
The security staff in question was probably reprimanded for their failure to detect the interloper -- he abused the trust he had gained by previously becoming a "known" face.
You do what you have to do, ethically, to succeed.
They've actually been profiled as a reasonable company that invests in the future. How many people reading this article know AOL as "that company that first sent me discs in the mail" and previously thought AOL as a dead company?
AOL gets free, positive press showing that they're not dead, they're investing in the future, and that they're reasonable. The positive spin this article gives them is worth every penny of resources spent.
> They've actually been profiled as a reasonable company that invests in the future.
The best thing they can do at this point is put a positive spin on it, but ...
> The positive spin this article gives them is worth every penny of resources spent.
Not your decision to make for AOL. AOL will spin this, but post-facto justification ("see, it's not that bad -- they made good on my theft!") does not an ethical decision make.
Nowhere do I lay claim to making decisions for AOL. While I doubt they are interested, if AOL wishes to hire me for such purposes, I am available.
I pointed out that it was my opinion that the cost of the resources that Eric used was less than the cost of genuine, positive press.
I also did not declare his actions ethical. I responded to your claim that AOL has been embarrassed.
AOL responded appropriately (not pressing charges, just kindly requiring him to not sleep/live there anymore), and was able to respond to the press inquiry with a lighthearted statement that fits the narrative of the article. The article presents AOL not only as having reasonable management, but also as a place to work with great benefits (food, showers, gym, startup incubators, friendly environment).
AOL is where Yahoo will be in 5 years: they have nowhere to go but up in terms of public reputation and mindshare.
I see AOL as doing their best to avoid a bigger snafu over a smaller, unattractive snafu. Opinions on the value of this PR will vary, but the fact is that there's no substance here.
Somebody abused their fairly standard SV corporate perks, they responded without bringing in the police.
At the end of the day, my subjective impression is that their startup interests brought in an immature, ethically-challenged entrepreneur who is stuck in the money-raising cycle, and accordingly AOL has been dragged into the press because of something stupid he did.
That isn't a particularly positive narrative, but I can see how people that are more comfortable with Eric's failure of ethics can see it as a cool story of "hustling" entrepreneurship.
Meh. On AOL's scale, this sounds kind of like somebody noticing that I dropped a nickel and pocketing it instead of chasing after me. I suppose it's kind of unethical — I wouldn't do it, personally — but to put it in the same bucket with what we usually consider breaches of ethics seems incorrect. Even the AOL exec quoted in the article seemed more amused than anything else.
I'm sure the value of the theft is immaterial to AOL. The security breach is more serious, and the bigger issue, to me, is that other startups in the same building that are behaving ethically could suffer because of one person's behavior.
Or not... stop worrying that much until you actually see a consequence.
By the way, all AOL has to do now is to chastise a bit the security people and to make sure the security rounds do cover the whole floor plan. Nothing more, nothing less. I hardly see that as suffering for the other startups in the building.
