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The Innovators' Ball
Babylon Rocker writes "Latest Cringely: The Innovators' Ball: Why Business Isn't as Fun as it Used to be.
'Sharp business is cheating and not getting caught.'"
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If I can beg a little impartiality from the Slashdot editors, must every story include a dig at me or my company?
Yes, Microsoft is an innovator and I don't think that is good. I'd have to disagree that microsoft is an innovator. What has microsoft done? 1. Created the first OS? Far from it. Not much of an innovation. 2. Created the first GUI? Also not true, the Apple Lisa was the first true GUI. 3. Created easy PnP? Definitley not right, OS/2, Amiga, Linux, and a slew of other OS's had PnP support. And to be fair, Windows 95 wasn't really Plug'n'Play. Microsoft's innovations are limited to trying something someone else does, and hoping it works.
And why did you staple the trout to the RAM?
It's not just the few like Enron that get onto the front pages, it's all the other businesses that it never quite seems to be worth anyone's while to bust (but damn well should be!) There are several extremely obvious examples in IT (cough*MS*cough*SCO*cough), to the extent that reading /. or any of the techy press it's hard not to see most of the industry as riddled with corruption, and I'm sure the same is true in other areas of business.
The thing is, I bet there are a lot of cases where one or two bad guys not necessarily right at the top can turn a whole company crooked (or at least semi-crooked) just because everyone else is too apathetic - or frightened - to shop them.
Of course, when the crooks really are at the top then it really sucks.
"'I pass the test,' she said. 'I will diminish, and go into the West, and remain Galadriel.'"
- JRR Tolkien.
Most inventions were based on some innovation or the other - the IC was an innovative usage of the transistor, the microwave an innovative usage of UV, etc.
As Newton opined "If I have seen further, it is because I was standing on the shoulders of giants" I've created/invented software that I'm proud of and others might term innovation - what's so wrong with innovation anyway?
No. Sharp business is 'cheating' while following the letter of the law. What he is describing is 'Sharp Criminal Conduct' which some business people and many politicians engage in. When the politicians engage in 'Sharp Criminal Conduct' they make it easier for those engaging in 'sharp business' to do really foul things without actually breaking any laws. It's a subtle, but important difference and worth remembering next time you vote.
Decent article, but regarding this part:
We've gone from following the rules to playing the odds.
And if we do follow the rules and don't play the odds, then we are figured to be suckers.
Speak for yourself. Some of us just keep doing the right thing as best we can, no matter what everyone else is doing. We usually come out better in the long run.
everything in moderation
Read the article and started to wonder if Cringley was having a bad day. For every business he's mentioned, there are several who are doing well and doing it cleanly.
.. just an observation.
Companies like Google, Berthshire Hathaway and others come to mind as good counter examples of what Cringley calls "gone from following the rules to playing the odds".
A sligh positive note in that article would have helped. Oh well
This just in... our sources have just informed us that there are business executives out there who lie, cheat, and even steal! I'll take this oppurtunity to warn all decent folk out there to think twice when making dealings with such evil, evil men.
Seriously though, since when is the common practice of "savvy businessmen" screwing trusting people out of money news?
My father is a very moral man, who taught me early on that winning isn't the point in life. In fact, if "winning" is your only goal, you will never win.
He would tell me stories, like the time he quit his high school water polo team after the coach encouraged his team to elbow the opposing team whenever the ref looked away.
My father's tech company was stolen away from him in the same way as in this artical. He and several friends created a start up, and within a few years, all were shut out of the company, and the investors walked away with the prefered stock.
Companies like Microsoft practice an odd form of amorality and defend it as good business practice. It might be sound business practice, but there is nothing good about it.
Admittedly, in any capitalist society there is a dog-eat-dog quality to business, but is there really the need to specifically crush upstart companies, play fast and loose with public standards to kill competition, and other such underhanded techniques that are only good for your company, but bad for everyone else.
In the end, I think most people who were raised with a firm and grounded set of morals appriciate that there is such a thing as good business practices. I try my best to stay abrest of those companies that follow them and only give them my business. It's hard sometimes, but in the end, it might be the only way some businesses can be made to behave.
innovation ( P ) Pronunciation Key (n-vshn)
n.
1. The act of introducing something new.
2. Something newly introduced.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
My term is 'gaming the system'. When you exploit loopholes and bend rules, you defeat the purpose and intent of a system, thus ensuring that even if you believe the system in theory should work as intended, it won't.
Some people assume if you end up with the desired goal of the system (wealth), than it has served its purpose. In reality, the system was devised not so an individual can become rich, but rather so we have a set of rules in which to facilitate improving our standard of living without resorting to social friction and unfair (subjective, I realize) treatment of others.
All the market tactics, advertising ploys, and accounting/legalese rule bendings seem to weaken the role of merit in capitalism. And I know what constitutes 'merit' is subjective, but I'd rather not give merit to those creative and smart enough to figure out how to bend rules in their favour without being caught.
"Old man yells at systemd"
Innovation is the act of INTRODUCING something new, not creating something new. All thing are based on other things.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
My recommendation is to raise money from people who already know or trust to some degree whenever possible, and ALWAYS, I repeat, ALWAYS, worry about control. Control is often times far more important than who has how many shares. Shares can very often end up worthless at the end of life of a business venture, if it is liquidated, or M&Aed away, or basically has any end-game other than an IPO, unless your shares are all on a level basis (this is a nice thing about flat LLC memberships and S Corporations as business entities, though that's certainly not necessary).
Just remember that you have to make sure that all your contracts and legal structure reinforce your power and control, and it's often better to give up some extra equity in exchange for this. Be careful who you trust. And never make yourself unnecessary before you have your exit strategy well on its way to execution.
In the US at least, shady inventors have a long tradition dating back to Thomas Edison, whose patent trickery and idea-stealing is somewhat legendary (he even invented the electric chair to make the competing A/C current look dangerous).
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
Now this is a bit ridiculous. Business is a game where the winners turn a profit- which is to say, sell things for more than they are "worth," where "worth" is what these things actually cost to produce. Thus, business is not nice and never has been- hence Jesus with the money-changers, prohibition against usury, Medieval Jewish banking, anti-semitism, Shakespeare, Dickens, Marx, Steinbeck... the list goes on, defining massive areas of history, especially in the Christian world.
Cringely wants no part of that sleaze. He's a geek and a PBS writer instead.
For a while, it looked like people could be geeky and ethical while still turning a profit. This was a temporary illusion caused by a populace that had a religious awe of geeks, caused mostly by FUD, and was willing to overpay even those geeks who didn't really turn the screws. The middle managers who forked over millions of dollars (which THEY had scammed from others) for their own electronic replacements were not making headlines during the late nineties, but there were more of them than there were techie nouveau riche.
So. Every geek, and indeed every human, must ask him or herself whether to try to profit by bringing misfortune to others, or whether to embrace poverty, in the unlikely hopes that that will make the world a better place. I don't have an answer to that for myself, let alone for everybody, but claiming that the sky is falling just because the tech bubble burst months ago is worthy only of ridicule. It is good for anyone, even slashdotters, to be reminded of these Big Questions; but all in all, I think Cringely and most of the rest of this crowd are in way over their heads.
Will Warner geocities.com/wtw0308
Well the whole thing is an arms race. There's one side saying "you can't do that". And the other side saying (silently) "yes I will, and you can't stop me". In the face of that all laws will have "loopholes", be it simply ignoring the "spirit" while following the letter. Or something more severe.
Our society lost this battle a long time ago, because we've stopped teaching right and wrong. And started teaching "what's in it for me?", and "what can I get away with?".
Innovate \In"no*vate\, v. i.
- To introduce novelties or changes; -- sometimes with in or
on. --Bacon.
WordNet (r) 1.7 [wn]Every man,therefore,is not fit to innovate. --Dryden.
innovate
So, Microsoft is proud of introducing changes (often created by others?), as opposed to inventing anything of their own.
Now, that makes total sense
Free Software: Like love, it grows best when given away.
...."And the result is that we all become cynics."
Welcome to the harsh world of reality. Do or Die.
--
How do you build wealth?
By making more money than you spend?
How do you do that?
By only spending what you are absolutely required to spend and not a dollar more.
How do you do better than that?
By finding ways to spend less than your you are required to spend
"The more laws a country has, the more corrupt its government."
How about: The more "explicit" laws there are, the less "implicit" laws there are. Think about it.
However, when you look at it in the other direction, not all innovations are related to inventions, as an invention would be an object of some form or another, and well, software, for one, is not an object.
Now, something that's hardware, that uses software or firmware might qualify as an invention. But when we start getting to 'innovative business practices' or 'innovative billing techniques' or 'innovative ways to force your competitors out of business', there's no particular object, and hence no invention involved. [Now, that's not to say that your business process, billing technique, or whatever may depend on an invention, but it is not, in itself, an invention].
Build it, and they will come^Hplain.
Does anyone else get tired of having articles about him posted to Slashdot. Is he even anyone? Tried to google, and it sounds like he's just a self-absorbed journalist. Is their a damned I, "Cringely" checkbutton I can select so I never have to hear his damned name again. He's an ass who thinks he has all the answers, why does /. send more traffic to his narcistic articles?
The point of the article was that innovation was a corporate metaphor for playing politics, cheating and stealing, and invention was just invention. He said that Microsoft was an innovator, not an inventor.
This is my sig.
I realize this is offtopic, or flamebait, or troll or what have you but I really must speak out on the amount of absolute filth that gets posted to this site by the "trolls." It's disgusting and has no place whatsoever here. It's not the place for sex stories, discussions about the homosexual editors of this site, or beastiality. The moderation is not enough. I demand that the filthy posts themselves be deleted. It is offensive and has no bearing whatsoever on a productive discussion of the topic at hand.
Rant over...
All this pales in comparison to the greatest search engine evar. Why, you can search all you want for "Linux" and "Apache" on all these other search engines without getting what you want - the answer to all your Linux questions
I maybe stretching things, but I think part of the problem is with collective decision making itself. We tend to think that if everything is done democratically, we'll get the best results. So when a company is divided up amoung shareholders, as long as they get to vote, or have representatives to vote for them, we expect things to work out fine.
Unfortunately, it's been proven, under a few resonable assumptions, that there exists no fair voting system. This was proven by the economist Kenneth Arrow who won the Nobel prize for his work. A short discussion is here.
So what ever system of democratic decision-making you might create, it has fundamental weaknesses that are exploitable by the unscrupulous.
The only way to stay out of trouble is to find other ways of raising capital.
nothing beats the happy fun ball
mirror...
Cringley builds the foundation of his entire article on a person who got screwed and was left with nothing. Yet, there is no attribution. It would seem to me this is a person who would want light shone on his plight and the evil doers who did him in.
By not providing attribution, Cringley deprives us of getting both sides of the story. That's why many news organizations frown on anonymous sources except when absolutely necessary.
I realized a long time ago that no one I ever knew who was involved in a car accident was at fault. Like here, I only got one side of the story.
Have I made my point?
that the man who had his company stolen from him could find no lawyers willing to take his case. And isn't this a HUGE part of the problem. Lawyers themselves re no longer interested in law, only in pursuit of the almighty dollar. Cases that have no clear profit, regardless of legality (or illegality, for that matter) cannot attract a lawyer anymore.
What this country needs is less laws/lawyers and a helluva lot more justice!
Yes but it wouldn't be very good either if we just started deleting posts. Wouldn't you be pissed if one of your replies was deleted, simply because the moderator didn't like it? We have moderation, and everyone can moderate so if the article is a flame/troll it goes into the happy little -1 status in a couple of minutes and rarely seen again. I do agree they don't belong and I would like them gone too, but it would defeat the purpose of an open forum if you couldn't post what you want.
Mod parent troll
Business isn't fun for inventors and creative people because it is impossible for a creative person to bring an idea to production within a bureaucracy.
This is because we allow office politics to completely absorb every single moment of every single day in "corporate" businesses.
There is absolutely no concern for a quality product or a truthful discussion of the right and wrong ways to build something in the cubicles. It's who can fuck who over so they can keep their job while simultaneously destroying someone else's career. It's who can point out the most failures. It's who can foster the most suspicion and doubt about their colleagues' competency that succeeds in the never-ending schedule of meetings.
And nobody ever talks about it. Nobody ever squarely points out the enormous amount of time and money that is wasted, man-hour to man-hour, by people building spectacular layers of redundancy to cover every possible and several impossible failure possibilities while attempting to answer the unanswerable questions posed by middle management.
These are the same people by the way, who insist on everyone being a "team player." Of course, that only applies when these people are the quarterback, not the left tackle.
Want to know where the largest source of waste in business is today? This is it: office politics. People working against each other instead of working as part of a team which actively encourages people to grow and succeed. It's a disgrace and it shouldn't be allowed to continue.
Business isn't willing to pay for products, innovation and careers, so we get brands, mortgage commercials and layoffs.
"But sharp business is something different, it is playing the game of business so close to the boundary of good faith and legality that it is hard to tell where that boundary is or if there even is such a boundary. "
This is also sometimes refered to as a Coup de Jarnac. Jarnac won a dual against Francois de Vivonne in 1547. Jarnac got to pick the weapon, and instead of one, he picked several fo that Francois wouldn't know which one. Jarnac also knew that Francois was famous for a particular move when he fought that would expose his hamstring. So, Jarnac just played the dual to a draw until Francois exposed himself, and then he cut his hamstrings and Francois bled to death.
While technically within the rules, it was considered dirty, and hense Coup de Jarnac is a term that can be used to describe this.
So ends your history lesson for today.
Lawrence Lessig is my personal hero.
He didn't even read the article- He's got the whole idea wrong. Invention is not the same thing as innovation.
Wrong reference, too... The first system with a GUI was the Xerox Star, not the Apple Lisa.
See proof here .
If you knew the stuff they actually do and have done, your head would probably explode. I'm serious, literally explode. Like a small mellon or something in the hands of Gallagher.
Yes, I'm quite positive. The only way to get something done is to have 4000 of your customers call the PUC (hey, it beats them bitching at you! Customers love to hate SBC and techies love to pass the buck). Then maybe they'll "look into it."
Like a large, ripe berry.
"Wait, you mean they actually...*kaboom!*"
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
...with society
'Sharp business is cheating and not getting caught.'
There is an undercurrent that looks to exploit whatever opportunity they might have. There are many people that would rather cheat/quit/stall than fight an honest fight, or play an honest game, with all the ground rules laid out in advance.
Some might argue, "there are no rules - just don't lose".
What is so wrong with losing an honest competition?
Wanna flip a coin? Will you snatch it in air rather than take the chance of losing?
If you answer "Yes" then DON'T PLAY
Good, healthy competition is important. I've had a hard time getting a fair shake in some arenas of life. I fear for the long-term population at large based on my relatively limited lifetime observances.
Anyone else sense a "wild west" atmosphere where there are no rules?
We are approaching a world where "what you can get away with" is more important than "what you are good at".
Cringley wrote "When did we fall so low?" He should ask, "why haven't we been able to climb higher?"
The middle mind speaks!
Since we are all geeks who love instant gratification;
Oops, doesn't this defeat the whole "greed is everything" premise going on here?
--- Oceania has always been at war with Eurasia.
Hey, you've got a good thing going. I mean, using Darl's name to get a few laughs. I'd say karma, but funny doesn't give you karma.
anyway, when you say stuff like that it makes you less funny and look like a troll in a darl suit.
This is the modern buisiness environment.
... themselves.
.
If you're a programmer, engineer, or even a doctor, you're just worker. You don't matter except as an "overhead" figure.
The people that do matter don't actually produce anything, the lawyers and the CEO's, they try to see how little they can pay the "overhead" while still meeting various buisiness benchmarks(production, PE ratios, etc). Then they give the lionshare of profit to
They enroll employee's in HMO's that are cheap so they can give that money as bonus to themselves for increasing the company's profits
They play fast and loose with the company savings funds and give themselves a share of that for being "innovative".
Even if it bankrupts the saving fund. The bonus still stands.
More and more the american worker is just dirt that's tilled for whatever it can produce. And it's given the same consideration as dirt. Buisiness leaders paint Unions as greedy for wanting raises that keep pace with inflation, health care benefits that can be actually used, and decent working conditions.
All while these same leaders tear the buisiness apart trying to squeeze everything they can personally take from it.(how many times do we see the CEO that led a company into Chapter 11 getting million dollar bonuses or golden parachutes as a reward for their sterling effort)
And they've made the laws and rules dealing with buisiness so convoluted that only someone who's never learned ANYTHING but buisiness can hope not to be screwed. There's nothing corporations love more than screwing over the neophyte who thinks just because they created something they should make money from it. (this story, Spiderman the movie, Forrest Gump)
Why does this happen? Because big buisiness makes all the rules, if the rules say they can't win, they have them changed. Or they just ignore them and "settle" if it goes bad, with a mandatory non-disclosure agreement of course.
MPAA, RIAA are on a war against illegal profitless file trading. Why is it illegal? Because they had the laws changed to MAKE it illegal. We sit through sanctimonius ads about "doing the right thing" and respecting the artists, the actors, and the industry workers.
While at the same time those corporations "settle without admitting wrong doing" illegal price fixing on music CD's, and they're telling the creator of Spiderman and the writor of Forrest Gump that the movies didn't make a profit so they, the creators, get NOTHING.
But they insist everyone else be ethical about respecting IP laws that THEY wrote.
I was once in your situation, but have found ways to 'spice' up masterbation:
1. Use Ben Gay as a lubricant
2. Masterbate during business conference calls
3. Have sex with pizza dough
Try to mix and match, just remember to have fun
O Triunfo das Nulidades
De tanto ver triunfar as nulidades, de tanto ver prosperar a desonra,de tanto ver crescer a injustica, de tanto ver agigantarem-se os poderes nas maos dos maus, o homem chega a desanimar da virtude, a rir-se da honra, a ter vergonha de ser honesto.
(Senado Federal, RJ. Obras Completas, Rui Barbosa. v. 41, t. 3, 1914, p. 86)
The Triumph of The Nullities
From so much seeing triumph the nullities, from so much seeing prosper dishonor, from so much seeing grow injustice, from so much seeing build up powers in the hands of the evil ones, man comes close to get discouraged from virtue, to deride honor, to be ashamed of being honest.
(Federal Senate, Rio de Janeiro. Complete Works, Rui Barbosa, vol. 41, tome 3, 1914, p.86)
FUCK yes! Theres too GODDAMN many FUCKIN lewd SHITTY comments from POOPY SPEWING FUCKING SHITTY FUCKY FUCKS. Delete every TESTACLE BREST DWARF ASSMUNCH post like that that you find, COCKBOY NEEL. FART! I say KNICKERS! KNICKERS and ERRECTIONS is all anyone can write about these days, by cracky! ENUICH! WEINER! GOATSE....oh never mind.....
In the article by Mr. Cringly, he wrote, "...and now bad lawyers are everywhere among us."
Oh, come on! When did everyone take the stupid pills? When did lawyers get the reputation of being fine, upstanding people who always do what is ethical? This is the same profession that has all of those jokes about how awful they are, isn't it?
Also, when did the board members, owners, CEO's, and the like, of large corporations become trustworthy, ethical titans of industry? What about the Robber Barons of old? When was there a switch to the ethical so we can be surprised that they switched back?
Geez! Business is the same as it always has been. It's just the spin and PR that has changed. People are scum, and powerful people are powerful scum. History keeps repeating itself and we just keep forgetting how it was and is.
That was a fascinating show, history of death machines.
Most folk'll never lose a toe, and then again some folk'll...
no you fool. if you are fair to those that share in your business and gave you the money to get it off the ground in exchange for a slice of the company, if you are fair to your employees, if you are fair to the rest of the world who can benefit by innovation, then you will charge profit maximizing price, pay your employees (including yourself) well, pay your investors better then well as a thank you by performing well, put money back into growth, and create new jobs, create new technology, and have a good business.
yeah, yeah, yeah. you might be able to make some special case arguments, but for the most part, trying to build a strong, wealthy business is a good thing, you communist wonk.
This is how America works these days! It's not about whether or not it's legal, it's whether or not someone will press charges/sue/etc. EULA is oppressive, rude, annoying, and possibly illegal? That doesnt matter until it gets to court. DMCA is bad and unconstitutional? Even though lawmakers know this, it still has to be proven in court.
I worked for a debt collection company for a while. They would threaten and harass and threaten more, but they would never take a case to court unless 1) the person had reasonable credit, 2) they had an income, and (this is the big one) 3) the debt had to be over $3000! There was a little flexibility there, but basically if you owe $2000 and don't pay it, all you have to do is wait seven years.
Obviously that example is pretty specific, but "barely legal" tactics are everywhere. I would guess that it's even worse in big companies... But cheating is a way of life. You may not be cheating, but you are probably being cheated by someone somewhere!
I hate to rain on your parade, but you just illegitimately reversed the burden of proof.
Shri stated that companies X, Y, and Z obey the law. You just said "prove it." But it doesn't work that way.
It is natural to assume, legally and intuitively, that entities (people and organizations of people) obey rules, and we only assume otherwise when shown some evidence. For example, an anonymous coward in this thread pointed out some evidence of specific wrongdoing on Berkshire Hathaway's part, so he could then legitimately ask shri for evidence of Berkshire Hathaway's innocence. However, lacking any evidence or even specific allegations of wrongdoing, you cannot ask for nor can you expect shri to provide proof of innocence.
Furthermore, stereotyping is not a legitimate form of proof. You cannot legitimately make a statement like: "All businesses cheat, therefore company X cheats." Although this is logically valid, it is not a sound argument because you haven't provided evidence, nor can you, that the assertion "all companies cheat" is true.
In closing, I could say "geekoid does not collect child pornography." I bet you would get understandably upset if someone then brashly stated "All geeks look at kiddie porn, therefore geekoid also, so prove he doesn't." Stereotyping and absence of proof of innocence are not proofs of guilt.
The preceding comments reflect the author's personal opinion and are public domain, unless explicitly stated otherwise.
Slashdot Troll Scoreboard:
Trolls: 1
You: 0
... because I don't think I would have clicked on an article called "The Innovator's Balls".
The type of behavior described is over the long term self correcting. Yes you have people that have decided to gain an undeserved advantage by whatever means neccesesary, but by winning through such means they either so their destruction or the destruction of the society that harbors them.
There are many examples occuring in the wider world right now. Terrorists don't spontaneously generate. What is sufficient motivation to trigger a suicide bombing ?
Even without the extreme case of terrorism in democracies there are simpler but much more damaging means of correction. Rome was destroyed by the body politic deciding that its own base pleasures were all that mattered. Simply put when cynicism becomes so widespread that the people will elect whoever promises a bigger and better deal, you see the rapid degeneration of anybody to profit by sharp dealing for long.
Finishing with an empirical observation direct foreign investment in US companies was down 80% last year. The simple explanation is the tremendous losses of investors in companies like enron and worldcom has discouraged investing in companies they can't feel a measure of trust about.
ever see bowling for columbine?
It all comes down to what you consider to be the reason the company is in
business. Is it to benefit the owners, the managers, the employees, the
customers, or the community in which the business resides? While there can
be more than one reason, one of those reasons must be larger than the
others.
Public companies are supposed to benefit their owners though we've seen a
lot of stockholders burned lately by companies where the managers seemed to
come out on top. Great companies are supposed to put customers first, but
will they do so at the expense of profits? And community, whether it means
my town, my country, or the environment, is usually last of all.
I have no answers, only questions.
All the best,
Bob
This signature has Super Cow Powers
Mr Burns (clasping his hands): Yessss.
In the end, I think most people who were raised with a firm and grounded set of morals appriciate that there is such a thing as good business practices.
Mr Burns: Yessss. Thank you. It's quite important that you continue to believe such things.
On the contrary, many major inventions are hotly disputed. Usually they were invented independently by several people around the same time. For example, Alexander Bell and Elisha Gray invented the telephone concurrently. Bell won the legal battle.
Mr. Cringely beats around the bush about the following:
Ideas, people, businesses, countries, they all have lifecycles.
Dunno whether it's fear of death or distaste for instability, but we seem to think that there is some possibility of forming a bullet-proof company.
We really mean: one with predictable income until I retire.
Then there is the shock and dismay when that mean old market bites on our naughty bits.
One wise fellow once told me: "Fair" is what you pay to ride a bus.
A pun on "fare", which doesn't work anywhere but in English, and after I had internalized the fundamental lack of fairness in life, stuff like "whoops, they stole my company" really doesn't surprise me much.
Some may take comfort in the idea of an ultimate judge, and the knowledge that the misdeeds of all will eventually be required of them...
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
Any activity based on self-interest will always be predatory unless operating in a vacuum. Given this, it follows that any business that wants to make money will do so on the backs of its employees and at the expense of its competitors. The illusion of symbiosis and mutual benefit that accompanies 'gainful employment' is just that - an illusion. If you're lucky, that illusion may be so comfortable that you become a willing participant (and aggressively so) as long as you can pay your bills, buy a home and retire to some place warm.
'Sharp business' is predatory behavior taken to the extreme, bound only by the laws of the state. If the boundaries of law are pushed back or violated by the skilled application of knowledge (read corporate lawyering), business becomes 'sharper' and the magnitude of predation becomes larger. But predation is not self-sustaining (doesn't operate in a vacuum, remember?), so something has to give. Enron, anyone?
Enough of all this pontification - my point is that attempting to see past the illusion will make your head explode. This is what it means to live in human society at this point in time, so deal with it.
HelpUsObi 1
Don't start a company. Start a business instead.
As long as you pay your debtors, you'll never lose control of a sole proprietorship.
-1 Uncomfortable Truth
Someone once told me that the greatest danger as a CEO of a small company was not when it was going under, but just before getting acquired or going public, because that's when the investors try to grab as much as they can from you, replace you with their golfing buddy, then sue you when he blows out the whole deal.
When you're about to go under, they just want to hide it from their investors and minimize the embarassing news.
Pick your CEO when you have the most leverage. This means NOT YOU, but someone that the VC's will approve of, and you can make sure isn't a drooling incompetent. Why? Because you still own 100% of your company when you're making the deal, not 20% of non-voting stock. Insist on checking out this guy's background as if he were about to marry your daughter. If his previous employees trash him, run from him and the VC. Don't even give them a second chance, since this is the guy that they would replace you with later.
VC's make their living fleecing CEO wannabes.
Option #2: Get financed with presales from *multiple companies* in different geographic locations, which makes it less likely that they've cross-breeded. You can keep your equity, you just risk all your technology if you can't deliver (which proves you weren't *the man* anyway). Don't do it with just one company, because they'll drive you under just to rip off your stuff.
Deal when you have the strongest advantage. If you're in a poor position, don't deal. Walk away.
Keep enough money off the balance sheet (i.e. personal cash reserves) to keep the company running for 3 months. VC's will offer you their terms at the last possible moment.
"general populace". "Populous" is an adjective, not a noun.
i consider your pro-censorship post to be far more offensive than a vietnamese tug boat full of shit-soaked midgets fucking billy goats so lets start with yours.
One real problem is rewarding executives for volatility, rather than profits. We need long holding periods on insider stock, maybe five years. That way, if you do a startup, you don't get to cash out for five years, by which time it's clear whether the profits are real. The holding period used to be two years; it was changed to six months in the mid-1990s. Look what happened.
Pay for volatility encourages dumb merger and acquisition activity. Most mergers turn out to be a long-term lose for the stockholders, but a short-term win for management. Management needs to be on the hook for long-term losses.
Executive pay should be set by the stockholders. Each stockholder puts on their proxy how much the CEO's total compensation should be, and the share-weighted median is used. Executive pay is up by a factor of several hundred since the 1950s, even after inflation adjustment. Third-rate CEOs of money-losing companies are making multimillion dollar salaries. Executive pay decisions should pass through the ultimate owners, who are typically people with money in pension funds.
Those two changes alone would cut out considerable dumb financial activity.
Not sure if this has anything to do with sharp business, but perhaps along the lines of invention and innovation, Jim Clark, founder of Netscape and SGI and other companies said something about how Silicon Valley isn't as fun anymore. I think that there might be a /. article which corresponds to this, but here's the interview nonetheless. http://sg.biz.yahoo.com/030820/68/3dj1z.html
For the rest of us, Ayn Rand wrote in the 'Fountainhead' that (sorry about the butchering and the preaching) the only thing of importance to a creator, is to be able to create. There is no greater accomplishment; no awards, money, recognition is better than the act of creating and realizing your own designs. I liked Cringely's article, but I think that his focus was based from mixing invention with business... and thus getting innovation.
Remember Bob? Nobody else does either. Even that wasn't invented there, really.
Amusingly enough, Mrs. Bill Gates was the Project Manager (PM) on that one.
I have been similarly disadvantaged by the "sharp" practices of so-called "businessmen".
:-)
Back in 1999, I "was" 7am News, a web business that effectively established the viability of syndicating content on the Net.
I had to fight for my success along the way, fending off attempts by "big" old-school publishers who claimed that syndicating their headlines and links to their sites was a breach of copyright and who didn't understand the difference between republishing and hypertext linking.
After starting the venture in 1997, and investing 18 hours a day, 7 days a week for nearly three years, I'd built the business up to the point where 7am.com's server was dishing out the news over two million times a day and Nielsens/NetRatings ranked it ahead of the BBC's news website, Fox News, Wired.com and even Playboy.com
By 2000, 7am.com was delivering its news content through a nework of nearly a quarter-million third-party websites and was valued at US$20m-US40m (wasn't everything in those days though?).
Back in 1998 I was offered $1 million for the business by a US-based company but chose not to sell because they wanted to simply strip it for inclusion into their own product.
By 1999 I was still working 18/7 but had the help of two part-time writers who were also producing news and the service had racked up an impressive record for breaking news on the web. (Believe it or not, 7am.com was actually the first website in the world to carry the pictures beamed back from the surface of Mars by the Pathfinder mission).
Anyway, I was eventually promised the earth by a group of investors who assured me that they were not interested in simply asset-stripping the business, but were actually planning to grow it in a way that would ensure it continued to be innovative and maintain its lead in the field of syndicated news content and independent reporting.
My goal was not to become a "get rich quick" dot-com millionaire (I knew that would be a "fad") but to set myself up with a good shareholding in a company with long-term profitability.
Well do I look stupid now?
I still have around 30% of the shares in 7am.com but through some very clever "manipulation" by the investors, and a total lack of vision and willingness to accept good advice, that shareholding is effectively worthless.
Not only did they not invest in the continued growth of the company, they also hired another company (in which they had a shareholding) to provide consulting and other services which were never delivered (but they were paid for).
It appears very much to me as if 7am.com became a company that was used to raise a bundle of cash that could then be shifted into another company that was really their darling-child. The conflict of interest wasn't disclosed until after the contracts were signed and the money paid.
What's worse, they completely ignored my advice in respect to how the company should be changing and growing to maintain its dominance of the market it had created.
As a result, 7am.com, which was once the world's most widely syndicated web-based news sercice, is now a no-name website that no longer even features on the Web rankings.
Its news content is no longer fresh, exciting and different. Its offerings are tired and old, there's no innovation, no energy, no value left.
Because it's been run into the ground, the investors have lent the company huge sums of money by way of "convertible notes."
This means that if the do manage to sell the company as a going-concern, they can convert those loans into shares and thus effectively dilute my shares to near-nothing. If however, they sell the company's assets, then they simply use the money to repay the notes (plus interest) -- effectively leaving nothing for the shareholders but an empty shell.
Whatever happens, it's not so much the loss of money and long-term income that hurts, it's the fact that a really terrific ser
Cringely leaves things hanging in his article; it's mostly a rant about "oh no, big tech companies become evil for their own survival." Lots of companies in lots of industries become evil for their own survival. It's known as part of an "economic moat" - once you're the leader, you want to stay ahead forever, so you do whatever you can to acheave that goal.
/. keep saying that all that's being done is a great game of catch-up with Microsoft, it is becoming a visible possibility that MS will be caught-up with.
Depending on your business, the answer may or may not involve crushing your rivals. A company like Johnson & Johnson, with most of its revenue coming from drug patents(in addition to the other diverse health care needs like shampoo and whatnot), is going to stay ahead by getting new patents through R&D. A company like Wal-Mart, on the other hand, cannot win on the quality of its retail operations alone, since there will always be specialized businesses that can beat the "superstore" concept for price, quality, or service in any one area. So it runs the competition out of town by losing money on a store for some time, and then enjoys the advantages of monopoly by overpricing and using the money to continue its expansion.
So why is tech a business where the most successful companies have to work like Wal-Mart?
In tech, unlike with pharmecuticals, the comparative lack of patenting makes it extremely difficult to maintain the moat. In effect, anything new quickly turns into a "commodity item," especially with software ideas. And products are hard to sell to consumers through the qualities of efficency, stability or security. This encourages almost all software for the end-user to be fairly bloated and unwieldy, because the alterative is to let the competition have more features and look better. And in turn, everyone has to re-invent the wheel for their own product; very wasteful and costly. This encourages evil strategies.
This is also why open-source has had great success - the amount of specialized training and materials needed for a software project to succeed is quite small; one talented programmer and his computer will often do. In addition, successive projects build on the old ones, so even if people on
In turn, it may happen that the business of software will actually shrink, replacing the old closed-source model with an open-source one. Development funding and jobs would then come from service-oriented enterprises and public entities, instead of companies solely focused on having the dominant product in their field.
In other tech industries it's slightly less clear, since they tend to deal with projects requiring a fairly large materials and infrastructure investment. They do not face the problem of easily being challenged by an small upstart. Thus their business strategy is likely to be less dirty and more benefical in a social sense. Their major problem is not one of retaining a dominant product that can be revised - it is of bringing out a new dominant product with each new business cycle. Since their competition usually can't be seen until it clobbers them at retail, dirty tactics are much harder to enact. For example, 3d cards - each generation has brought a slightly different competitive mix, with winners of one cycle suddenly disappearing in the next, though recently it seems to have settled between ATI and Nvidia.
I love this comment, as it's similar to things I've noticed over the years working in lots of different companies.
Private companies tend to have their eye on the customer and the product. They want the customer to buy the product. If the customer buys the product, they make money.
Public companies tend to have their eye on themselves. In their minds, what they are selling is themselves and their "customers" are investors. It's good that people buy their products because strong sales make them look good to investors.
As an aside, this can also happen at venture capitalist-funded companies. Way back when, I worked at a company which did a graphics product. They had some money from a VC when they started and were doing well. They had some interesting future directions to take their technology.
Suddenly, they had to drop all that because the VCs wanted to know their Internet strategy. Their product had nothing to do with the Internet but they suddenly had to spend a ton of money coming up with and executing an Internet strategy.
The company is gone today--bought out by their chief competitor--because they lost sight of the product and customer and, instead, tried to please the investors.
If I were Cringely, I'd be pretty pissed at the world too.
"A worthy cause has never been harmed by the truth" - Gandhi
"Capitalism," such as it was, disappeared forever circa World War II. All the world's major economies are hybrid mercantilist/state-socialist/fascist. Medieval Iceland was probably the only capitalist country that ever existed; that Marx et al misnamed the previous economic revolution they hoped to supercede doesn't mean we have to keep doing it. Being "anti-capitalist" today is like being anti-Confederacy--it's too late, and the real enemies of the people can proceed unmolested while you waste your time shadowboxing.
Your mouth is like Columbus Day.
You have to remember, "unlikely" is our own fallible judgement. But the question is a classic question of game theory, similar to the tragedy of the commons, and in recognizing the application here, this guy is very, very insightful.
Someone mod this up.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
You wouldn't, by chance, happen to be a Christian, would you?
And that cute dog . . .
INENTED and INNOVATED security flaws and unstability..
you have to give them some credit here, dont be so harsh.
The lunatic is in my head
I am in a situation where my significant other owns 95% of the business I started and capitalized. It makes everything very scary, but virtually guarantees to her that I won't leave her. I can only make myself indespensible in an attempt to not lose everything.
Put identity in the browser.
This is very true, believing something does not make it true, ignoring it does not make it go away, and fighting is never futile. If only Cringerly had the guts to fight for his convictions we'd be better off. Cringerly is wrong when he proclaims:
My readers, ... are many of them still debating in their minds whether software can even be patented. Whether it can be patented or not, in the U.S., it IS patented, and expecting that some contrary decision will be shortly made and the planets rearranged in space is just folly. This is the difference between cynicism and realism.
How bizzare for Cringerly to understand how M$ works and then recomend resignation. Software is pantented because asswipe companies like M$ made enough people believe that it was good. The only way to reverse this is to continue to understand and tell other why it's bad. How can someone understand that patent and copyright abuse are the means by which inventors are screwed by "innovators" or "sharp business", and not fight such abuse? Propaganda can and is defeated by reality. Understanding that something is wrong and not speaking out or acting is not "realism" or "cynicism" it's cowardice. Shame on you, Mr. Cringerly, for understanding the problem, anouncing it, resigning yourself to suffer and recomending for others to do the same. Knowledge, conviction and an audience have the power to change.
When laws are bad and permit immoral beahvior, people suffer regardless of how happy you tell them they are. Reasonable laws leave people free to act as they will, so long as they don't harm others. Unreasonable laws block the actions of others for the benefit of a few who seek such "protection". Restrictions are something people understand and feel, even when the activity restricted is something they don't ordinarily do.
Friends don't help friends install M$ junk.
In the end, he has no one to blame but himself.
Let's say that Jon's the founder and sole owner of Some Tech, Inc. Jon's doing pretty well and was approched by two investors named Joe and Bob. They wanted to buy 30% of the stock (for simplicity's sake, let's say that there is only one class of stock, common.) each. Jon wanted to see your business grow and since he'll still own the majority of the stock in the company. A couple of months later, Bob sells all of his shares to Joe (they were friends) and Bob becomes the controlling interest in the company. Soon after, he elects himself and his buddies as the new board of directors and removes Jon as both the director and the officer of the company.
Now you can argue that Joe is a shady guy all day long, but the fact is that Jon's the one who ultimatly gave up the control of the company. Therefore, I don't feel sorry for anyone who was 'victimized' because they didn't do their research. Maybe there is a good reason why the founders of Google decided not to go public at this time.
1f u c4n r34d th1s u r34lly n33d t0 g37 l41d
"Nye poyman, nye vorr". In English: "Not caught, not a thief". This is pretty much the core principle of Russian 'business' these days. Funny how much we have in common with those communist pigdogs these days isn't it.
Or something else. How come this moderation:
Moderation +3
30% Funny
40% Insightful
30% Interesting
leads to (Score:4, Funny)!?!?
Disclaimer: If I disagree with you I'm probably trolling...
Tell that to one of the most successful businessmen in history ever, the Pope who was too busy selling indulgences to notice he was sowing the seeds for Martin Luther's Protestant revolution.
Ethics has absolutely nothing to do with Religion. Just because there is some overlap does not necessitate a belief in GAWD. One can act with the uptmost honor and integrity while being the most ardent of Athiests.
Mac OS X and Windows XP working side by side to fight back the night.
You hypocrite. The only reason you're pushing god stuff is for your own mental comfort and egotistical conviction that your ideas are better than mine. There is no purity in your motives.
Catholicism has tried to enforce "godly" morality for years, and we still have priests buggering young children. We've had religious wars and crusades, and the notions of religious sites for competing religions -- who gets to control Jarusalem -- have caused massive misery and strife. The outdated question "who created me" has resulted in some of the stupidest thinking in the universe.
Go peddle your god-wares elsewhere, you soul-soliciting pig-fucker.
It isn't just the secular ("post-Christian") world that is abandoning all sense of decency. It's religion too, and in particular Christianity. The religious right is constantly complaining about sex, drugs and violent movies, yet condones corporations that do everything in the name of profit. (Yes, I know that fundamentalists don't represent all Christians, but they do have a very powerful influence on U.S. policy.)
At the core of most religions is some variant of the "Do unto others" Golden Rule. There's a reason for this: it's the best strategy for long-term survival in a society composed of intelligent agents. It emerges naturally through evolution, and is probably hard-coded into our DNA. Only in the corporate world is it routinely ignored.
Innovation is a process , Invention is a product .
The first person to build a mousetrap is an inventor and the anecdotal "builder of a better mousetrap" is an innovator.Atleast that's what I can get from the definitions at dictionary.com (at the end of my post).
In a sense most of the software industry is an innovator or problem solver.
Innovation
The act of introducing something new.
Something newly introduced.
Invention
The act or process of inventing: used a technique of her own invention.
A new device, method, or process developed from study and experimentation: the phonograph, an invention attributed to Thomas Edison.
Whine to success
The more you whine the more you are successful in business. SCO whines about Linux - must be successful. RIAA wines about P2P - big. Your boss: "why is it not ready on time? why is it buggy? why is it not as good as theirs? - well that tactics got him his job. The more you want and the more you make/request other people to fulfill your desire. The more successful you are. call it Boaz's Law. Whine to fame.
And all that why? because we the doers are too busy in doing. we leave the wanting (and whining) to others.
So the next time your boss comes whining about why the dead-line was no meat. Just ask him what can he do about it? (but whine).
FWIW, I believe that the fall started when we elected a Republican majority to the U.S. Senate and Congress. Since that time there has been a steady increase in corporate contempt for anything that gets in the way of making money; environmental regulations, SEC regulations, common decency, and so on. Now, we have sunk to the point where businesses consider litigation as just another means to "...derive more revenue from...intellectual property..." (http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1104_2-5072061.html) This type of behavior goes on because, as Cringley observes, we are growing increasingly cynical, and that cynicism breeds apathy.
Edison did NOT invent light bulb