I heard a great term applied to a startup: "uninterrupted financial backing".  I think it might have been used by Elon Musk in his terrific series of updates about his new company SpaceX.  Anyway this sure isn't something most startups get to enjoy.  Usually you are looking for money out of the gate, and either positioning to raise money, actively raising money, or digesting money at each point.  You don't want to take too much, too early, but not enough is bad, too. 

P.S. Noticed SpaceX' "hotfire" for new engine scheduled for today.  Cool.  Er, Hot!

Paul Graham: A unified theory of VC suckage.  Or why it is tough to raise money, and why uninterrupted financial backing is so compelling. 

SpaceX isn't the only space-oriented company posting updates; I received my first update from Virgin Galactic.  Among other things they've posted a questionnaire for their "members"; it aims to find out how much you're willing to pay to go into space, and whether you'd be willing to pay more to go sooner.  I figure going "into space" soon will be great practice for going to Titan later on :) 

Will Collier rants: Yesterday United Air Lines was allowed to dump it's pension plan on the Federal government.  Great, so you and I get to bail them out.  Not good.  In fact, horrible.  [ via Glenn Reynolds ] 

This is unbelievable: In this video clip, Neil Cavuto totally bags on Senators and Congressmen who complained about being evacuated because a small plane entered airspace above the capital.  I might have to start watching TV "news" again.  Nah.  Anyway click the thumbnail at left to play.  [ via Trey Jackson ] 

Here's a cool story about the waterfall being planned as a ground zero memorial.  "Perhaps the most striking thing when the mock-up came into view, nestled incongruously in a suburban setting, was that the water walls were not the 'thin sheets' described by the design jury that chose 'Reflecting Absence' last year.  Rather, they were more like beaded curtains, with a striation that called to mind the vertical bands of the twin tower facades, dissolving in a cascade of tears."  This seems like it will be really awesome.  [ via Clive Thompson, who notes: "Now I think the design sounds quite beautiful" ] 

Joel Spolsky has posted another winner: Making Code Look Wrong.  As usual, I agree with him 100%; I like HN, although I don’t use it religiously, and I dislike exceptions, although I don’t avoid them religiously.  I do agree that coding style is important, some style, and that “clean” in code doesn’t mean the same thing as clean in general (or even clean in ovens).  This is closely related to the idea that when you modify code, you must do so in a way which is stylistically consistent with the code you’re modifying.  You have two choices, adapt to the original style, or restyle the module.  Door number three - mixing styles – has a donkey behind it. 

Koders.com is a new search engine, "searching 198,319,894 lines of code" (at the time this was posted).  From their about page: "Our source code optimized search engine provides developers with an easy-to-use interface to search for source code examples and discover new open source projects which can be leveraged in their applications."  Very cool.  [ via John Battelle ] 

These are awesome: Firefox promotional videos.  Think they won't get passed around? 

Among the interesting properties of Google's Web Accelerator - which scares me - is that it pokes through the "great firewall of China".  Well that's a good thing.  Especially if (but not only if) you're Chinese. 

Ottmar Liebert notes "Ottmar" is now listed in the Slang Dictionary:  "Ottmar:  The New Age Southwestern style acoustic guitar music that stores and restaurants use as background music over the PA system.  The word is derived from Ottmar Liebert, whose music it likely is."  You practice and practice and practice, but you never dare hope... 

By the way, Ottmar is about to go out on tour again; dates have been posted.  We're going to see him with a bunch of friends on June 10 in Agoura Hills, at the Canyon Club, along with a case of great Cabernet.  It really doesn't get much better than that.  We'll be Ottmared :)