I think reading any/all headlines with the mindset of "interesting if it's true" is worthwhile here. The facts need to materialize before declaring fraud or any other type of malice. $425 million makes for a wonderful headline.
Illegal, maybe not...but malicious? Certainly. An advertisement just doesn't come out accidentally looking like it's an invoice from the Yellow Pages (the real ones), that takes effort. The intent is crystal clear, it's not to convince someone that they would gain something from your service, it's to trick them into thinking that they already owe the money.
Really, now - can anyone honestly imagine any plausible scenario by which this "business model" could have been devised other than "Hey, I've got a great idea, Yellow Pages is not a trademarked term, let's print up an ad that looks like one of their bills and send it to millions of small businesses, some of them probably won't read the fine print and they'll pay up, thinking that they'll be removed from the Yellow Pages if they don't!"
If you really think this was more innocent than that, I've got a bridge to sell you. Even if it's legal, this is some shameful shit, and that Hashrocket is associated with (let alone founded by) these douchebags casts a long dark shadow over its image...
Congrats on both your hard work and what looks like a very cool product. It's encouraging to see others with families making their product aspirations work, even if at a slower pace than a FT startup. Best of luck!
Yeah, my experience having to swap to TFS from SVN was awful given the completely connected nature of it. The only way to make it bearable was by adding 3rd party add-ons that should of been there from V1 already.
Maybe I should write a mini-app for idea generation. I feel like everything I come up with is a rehash of something already out there. I tend to focus on small business stuff since these are people with money that might actually cough up some dough... maybe that's the problem?
I thought the article was worth while if only for pointing me at various plugins I wasn't aware of. If you're a vim hardcore then this is probably nothing new... but for others who are not it seemed useful. I agree that having some more info on why these plugins are useful would be nice, but following the links was easy enough to see if the plugin was interesting.
