I thought this kind of attitude would appeal to anyone building a startup:
"Freddie was fully focused, never allowing anything or anyone to get in the way of his vision for the future. He was truly a free spirit. There are not many of these in the world. To achieve this, you have to be, like Freddie, fearless—unafraid of upsetting anyone's apple cart.
To create with Freddie was always stimulating to the max. He was daring, always sensing a way to get outside the box. Sometimes he was too far out ... and he'd usually be the first to realise it. With a conspiratorial smile he would say "Oh ... did I lose it, dears?!" But usually there was sense in his nonsense—art in his madness. It was liberating. I think he encouraged us all in his way, to believe in our own madness, and the collective mad power of the group Queen."
I appreciate you sharing this; it was sweet. But there's something disturbing in the way you're framing it.
Have we lost perspective to the point where even the basic notions of how to live one's life have to be seen through the lens of a hacker working on a startup?
I say this as a hacker, working on a startup. When I'm done with my IE7 hacks, and I figure out why my production server isn't behaving like my dev server, I might take a moment to re-read that article and play some Queen, so I can fix my mind's eye on that beautiful human being who died too young.
> Have we lost perspective to the point where even the basic notions of how to live one's life have to be seen through the lens of a hacker working on a startup?
Absolutely not, I just posted that because people tend to complain about posts that are not related enough to the hacker/startup world here so I anticipated that complain by posting that.
I think bands are one of the most common startups. You can learn a lot from successful bands. They sell a product, a potentially life changing product and they often do it with little more than a dream, some talent and a million people against them.
"Freddie was fully focused, never allowing anything or anyone to get in the way of his vision for the future. He was truly a free spirit. There are not many of these in the world. To achieve this, you have to be, like Freddie, fearless—unafraid of upsetting anyone's apple cart.
To create with Freddie was always stimulating to the max. He was daring, always sensing a way to get outside the box. Sometimes he was too far out ... and he'd usually be the first to realise it. With a conspiratorial smile he would say "Oh ... did I lose it, dears?!" But usually there was sense in his nonsense—art in his madness. It was liberating. I think he encouraged us all in his way, to believe in our own madness, and the collective mad power of the group Queen."