Please, don't learn to code, learn how to model solutions to problems. Code and programming are just tools for solving these problems.
If somebody comes to you with a problem and the first thing you say is "Oh, yes, of course, just let me start coding." then something is probably going to go wrong with your project. Understand what the problem is, build a model, show it to the person asking, most of the time this person doesn't really know what he wants.
You are all misunderstanding Atwood's article. Think about this: a variable in a programming language isn't really a variable, it's a name for a certain space in memory. Variables exist only in mathematical logic. Mind blown.
I figured most folks knew that Google doesn't support arbitrary punctuation/strings. Do any search engines? I tried bing and duckduckgo and got nothing.
Don't get me wrong, I'm sure the quality folks would love to be able to support searching the web for arbitrary strings... but that's not something any search engine can provide right now, is it? It's orders of magnitude harder than current web search offerings.
Google Code Search supported [1] regular expressions. Google Web Search can match punctuation in some cases, but it seems to do best when the symbols are at the beginning or end of the search term. Examples:
Now I begin to understand why Canonical made those recent changes. The Ubuntu part of it seems kinda slow, but smartphones are going to get faster. [1]
Coincidentally, it's the other way around with USB dead drops.[1] Either trust that the USB won't fry your motherboard or carry a multimeter with you all the time.
Ouch. I'd thought of the malware risk of plugging into a dead drop, but it never quite crossed my mind that someone could basically turn one into the equivalent of the Etherkiller:
I suspect some hubs would be suitable for buffering against that sort of attack. Not sure which though, or whether a more subtle approach (some sort of pulsed power to avoid tripping polyfuses, perhaps) would still be practical.
If you wanted to be a dick, I think replacing the insides of a USB stick with a large charged capacitor and leaving them in parking lots would be the way to go.
Yes, these "science" ideas (actually, traditional engineering) really are that hard to fund.
One thing software people always forget is how expensive it is to perform R&D on real, physical things. Software is practically free to produce in comparison - your big campus of 1000 engineers, with free lunch and masseuses, is practically free in comparison to say, the cost of developing a new drug, or introducing a revolutionary new jet engine.
I don't think it's necessarily true that VCs only care about iPhone/Android apps, but they honestly cannot afford to invest in "real" engineering. The risks are just as great, and the stakes are far, far higher, beyond the deep pockets of many angels and VCs.
I don't think you're the only one that's realizing this. I'm seeing more and more posts where people complain that startups aren't solving "real" problems.
Perhaps investors look at FB, Twitter, Google, LinkedIn, and think that these 4 statistical anomalies are examples to follow, and thus fund companies with similar ideas?
On the other hand, I have a hard time believing that the "real problems" aren't being addressed by anyone.
