The problem I see with this kind of thing is that it looks like it would probably be against someone's self interest to make too much of an investment in (by hanging out there, possibly paying up for it). Because it could be a big time-suck.
It is not possible to have a good or meaningful relationship with everyone, especially if you have a busy life already (non-computer friends, family, work etc.). So we discriminate. Not in the surface-sense, but the more you get to know someone you discriminate on future potential from the relationship.
In the context of hacking on things together or shooting the shit about computer etc: some people are not in the same place at all.
After talking with someone (sometimes, even for a minute or two) you could determine that they a) don't know crap about computers, b) seem to be good company, or c) are way more experienced than you.
B and C are cool, but in this context I'd really worry about meeting a lot of people that don't program for a living, etc. It's all a question of balance, I don't mind "teaching" someone something at all, but I can't move forward if that is going to take up my whole day (unless I am trying to move forward as a teacher which I am not).
I meet "computer people" at coffeeshops all the time (for three years I worked full time as a coffeeshop-inhabitating programmer). I always tended to like the people fine enough socially etc. in our "half-relationships", and even made a friend.
But by far the majority of the computer conversations were not anything interesting to me because I was "beyond" that level. Hmm, "beyond"... I am trying really hard to not make this about any kind of hierarchy -- I fully appreciate that there is a rich world of ideas and concepts out there that I am a beginner in. But if someone's asking you how to do something that is answerable in a "I'm feeling lucky" google query... I tend to not try to go out of my way to be have lasting "computer relationships" with them.
Online mechanisms allow you to have some control over who you spend time talking with and it's much easier to arrive at a good balance.
I'm very interested in opposing opinions (especially from people with busy lives).
I was talking about the specific plan to monetarily support such a place. Seems like it would be a time suck to engage in this kind of place a lot -- and therefore the self interest it takes to get people to "buy in" and help isn't there.
Your comment, it doesn't address anything I've said. I'm well aware that relationships take work and that is central to my point: sometimes that work isn't worth it.
Consider the "Grandma" in your life, the person you love to help set up their computer, come over to troubleshoot, etc. What a sweet lady.
Now imagine there are ten of these people in your life. Now imagine they start loving computers and tell you all about the cool new stuff they found, etc. Now imagine you have no other relation to them other than these conversations. And they love starting such conversations.
I have a screenscraping thing in place that targets an ASCII only environment (LambdaMOO mud). Manually replacing unicode stuff like this has been a pain in the butt. Luckily that was all just for fun and didn't need to be perfect.
Is there a good library out there (in any language) that does good unicode --> ASCII substitutions for major languages?
It's highly likely that you a) explicitly agreed to this default when you signed up and b) their terms of service (which you agreed to when you signed up) is written in such a way to prevent them from refunding you.
I'm not going to go look into the details but I'll wager $10.88 that this is the case. (seriously)
I see downmods on above comment without explanation. On a whim, this prompted me to say a little more:
The more OSX crosses into mainstream consumer territory, the better. I only run Linux myself, but having been a long time developer and troubleshooter for Windows, I am seriously psyched about seeing the OSX market grow and grow. Getting over the stigmas of "coolness" and elitism is a good step in a positive direction. Whether you like it or not, these stigmas are out there (I doubt people frequenting this website were lured into Macs for this particular aspect of them).
It was actually accepted as a "poster" which is not a rigorous thing. I still think it's an embarrassment. This has been done before, and accepted as a full CS paper (search for "scigen").
The best example is the "Sokal affair" (search for "Alan Sokal") which is awesome because it doesn't just demonstrate sheer negligence with a randomly generated paper: it was carefully crafted to sound like it made sense.
Does your buddy need to travel back to consult with customers in the US (assuming that is where he is from)? Was he an established consultant before the move?
He does have to travel to meet with clients, but from what I've gathered, it is not particularly frequent. He had a pretty solid resume as an engineer and is definitely one of the most creative, smart people I know, but I don't think that he had much of a list of prior clients. As I recall, our school kind of set him up with his 2 main clients. Its quite a bold move on his part and inspiring to me. It's only one data point, but its certainly an example of how its possible to carve out a niche.
