
Let them eat veggies: Obama has dinner with Steve - evo_9
http://www.cringely.com/2011/02/let-them-eat-veggies-obama-has-dinner-with-steve/
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dabent
"In Silicon Valley you decide to start a company then look for ideas. In real
America you have an idea that eventually becomes a company."

That certainly seems to be the case. I know some successful business people
locally who didn't have to pivot, or face many of the problems tech/web
startups do.

~~~
imperator
Agreed. I think that was Cringley's best point, and also why I sometimes get
frustrated in the valley. Some people say they like ideas here, but what they
really like are startups and the effects of the ecosystem.

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juiceandjuice
I was wondering why Woodside Rd was so packed with cops when I went to my
friend's house in Woodside last night. She thought there was a flood or
something. This explains it.

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swombat
_It was, of course, just an interesting coincidence but I used it as an excuse
to accuse them of brand hijacking. Wouldn’t you? So we’re literally moving
toward the White House getting an IP license from me._

I'm not a lawyer, but hasn't he just effectively torpedoed his legal case for
accusing the White House of anything to do with brand hijacking?

~~~
jaysonelliot
Neither am I a lawyer, but I'd look at it this way: suppose I had never heard
of Google or Android, and I tried to name a new operating system "Android"
purely by coincidence.

They could still sue me, couldn't they?

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danilocampos
Driving home last night, maybe around 10 PM, I heard a deafening whump-whump-
whump over San Mateo. It was almost extraterrestrial in nature. Crane out the
car window to see one of those beefy helicopters with dual rotors. It passes.
Then _another one_. This would have been Obama's entourage, yes? If so, a much
smaller footprint than last time he was on the Peninsula. His motorcade shut
down a nice stretch of the 101 for a few minutes.

~~~
goodgoblin
I used to work in NYC and we could see the helipad out of our window, and when
the president came to visit there were three identical choppers, presumably so
that if you wanted to try and shoot him down you'd be playing 3-card monte.

~~~
kmfrk
That, and at least one of them probably carries the ad-hoc hospital, weapons
and agents, ABC bomb detection system, etc.

The Atlantic had a great article with a break-down of the motorcade:
[http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/03/the-
pres...](http://www.theatlantic.com/national/archive/2011/03/the-presidential-
motorcade/70681).

~~~
psn
Thanks for posting this - its a pretty good example of requirements creep. I
doubt that anyone in the fifties planned out that the president would need 16
cars to go anywhere, but thats whats happened. One can picture the Secret
Service holding meetings in which they decide to add "just one more" agent.

~~~
tptacek
To me, "creep" implies that much of what's there is unnecessary. If you told
me adding 4 more cars to the motorcade would make the President more secure,
I'd so, "go buy 4 more cars now". No part of the motorcade comes close to the
cost to the world --- in damage to the markets and in the stupid subsequent
policymaking that would result --- of a successful attack.

~~~
kmfrk
Dick Cheney could have been the president of the United States.

I'll just wait for that sink in for those who consider cutting costs to Secret
Service. :)

~~~
Jach
No, no, no. Colin Powell could have been President! If they went after Bush,
they'd certainly have gone after Cheney...

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6ren
> In Silicon Valley you decide to start a company then look for ideas.

It was true for HP, the original Silicon Valley startup, but not for all of
them (e.g. Apple, Adobe).

Interesting, fits with a focus on the company, not the tech. I personally
prefer the tech-based approach.

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gord
wheres pg ?

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tastybites
Maybe Obama should have dinner with a few small business/startup founder
people instead of a couple of billionaires in a giant hilltop compound.

~~~
edw519
Why bother? He already knows what they'd say: "Cut spending, cut taxes, and
stay out of our way."

~~~
staunch
I don't know of any startup that's struggling because of government spending
or taxes.

In fact taxes are probably too favorable for VCs. They have a completely
unnecessary and unfair loophole that should be closed.

Immigration is the biggest government policy issue impeding startups, and
that's something Obama could help fix.

~~~
yummyfajitas
I can think of plenty of American startups that are hindered (or simply don't
exist) as a result of regulation.

Betfair should be a Silicon Valley (or NY) company with billions in revenue.
Instead, it's a UK company with $350M in revenue, available only to the UK
market. See also Intrade, Hollywood Stock Exchange, etc. All due to regulatory
issues.

How about automated medical diagnostics? Many prototypes have been built which
outperform human doctors, but the entire industry is dead due to fear of
litigation/FDA.

Leverage the internet to disruptively innovate in education? Good luck, with
the massive subsidies given to the traditional system.

See also the regulatory issues that Ubercab, AirBnB and others are running
into.

This isn't taxes, but it sure doesn't count as "stay out of our way".

~~~
jessedhillon
You listed three things that I'm really glad the government does:

\- Attempts to keep all investment activity well-regulated and conformant to
some definition of legitimate. Thus minimizing the risk that my money manager
is going to lose my money on an illegitimate, thinly disguised gambling
platform like the Hollywood Stock Exchange.

There's no reason why something like that shouldn't be tightly regulated --
HSX is not the same thing as the NYSE and shouldn't be allowed to take real
money in exchange for fake value. The NYSE returns my investment when
companies I've selected do well: actual value. The HSX returns my money when
random celebrities have an on camera nipple slip: no value.

\- Make sure that there are tight restrictions on what counts as a medical
device, or as medicine. If there's something approved to go into my body for
medical reasons, I want associated risks to be minimized. This is not where I
want the boomtown to be -- I don't want to undergo the therapeutic equivalent
of WebVan or Twitter.

\- I also don't want just any jackass to be able to print a textbook off of
Blurb and start selling it to my kid's teachers. Qualified jackasses only,
thank you :) No seriously, the way education is decided in this country is
currently suboptimal, but the goal is to have all children on the same page. I
don't want to find out that my kid has been on some experimental curriculum
that turned out to be a pointless waste of time.

But you're also wrong about this. It is possible to start an alternate
education system, so long as you conform to guidelines about what you teach.
I've never heard anyone complain that they couldn't get their education
startup going because of "massive subsidies given to the traditional system."
There are a number of folks trying to crack this one from different angles,
from textbooks to actual brick-and-mortar institutions.

~~~
yummyfajitas
If you tell your money manager not to limit his gambling in your behalf to
NYSE listed equities, he is legally obligated to do so. He will go to jail if
he does not. However, even if your wallet stays closed, you can reap the
positive external benefits - if HSX says some movie will suck, you can avoid
shelling out $12 to your local movieplex (guess why Hollywood's bought and
paid for politicians killed it?).

Or perhaps your goal is not to protect your money, but to prevent me from
harmlessly entertaining myself in activities you dislike?

The same thing applies to manual medical diagnostics - you are free to pay
extra for a human to give you a less accurate diagnosis if you want. Although
I'm not sure why you think human doctors do such a great job - diagnostic
procedures and surgery are not regulated by the FDA at all. Only devices are.
So an automated medical diagnostic tool would actually be _more regulated_
than the system we have now.

 _I don't want to find out that my kid has been on some experimental
curriculum that turned out to be a pointless waste of time._

This already happens under the current system. Ever hear of "whole language"?

~~~
jessedhillon
Both you and your sibling poster are claiming that individual instances of
failure within the existing regime are reasons why the current regime should
be abolished, which is a completely absurd reduction. I don't care how you
entertain yourself. I do care if your method of entertainment, if scaled to
billions of dollars, has the potential to destroy volumes of wealth for no
particular reason of consequence. And I do want an agency to try to keep
completely unviable quackery off the medical market.

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chailatte
Topics of conversation:

\- How to get 2% corporate taxes paid down to 1%

\- How to get more printed dollars into SV, nevermind skyrocketing gas/food
prices

\- Best way to offshore jobs

\- Toast to code monkeys

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timmins
Let me get this straight... they discussed innovation?

What was Y! CEO Carol Bartz doing there? Another Obama party crasher?

