I agree. If the University provided a technology that was useful to you, why shouldn't you support further research in that area.
Usually the licensing revenue is divided like this: The professor who discovered it gets 20-33%, the Department he's in get's 20-33%, and the university administration takes the rest to cover legal costs, and random university budget things (like maybe the arts).
I know the professors who generate a lot of patents get the red carpet rolled out for them, but that is because they are usually great for industry relations and creating local startups, not just for producing patents for the university.
http://deinterlace.sourceforge.net/ I've used this for some basic tape transfer. It was messy, but I think that was due to the TV card I was using. I think if I had a better quality TV card and a nice fast hard drive, I could have gotten a very nice picture indeed.
The denoising part is probably going to require some serious ASICs if you want a clean copy.
"Your Favorite Band Sucks" - I think that's why the networking stuff didn't work so well - I just don't much care what other people are listening to. If there was a statistical matching program that matched me up with other people that liked a lot of the same music, then we might have something, but I really don't want to be bombarded by top 40 all the time.
Yes, there is a dearth of programming and technical talent in Russia, and there seems to be some of that happening in Siberia.
However, commercialization requires:
strong property rights [Silicon Valley (check), Russia (????)]
access to markets [Silicon Valley (check), Russia (????)]
access to capital [Silicon Valley (check), Russia (????)]
I've seen other countries try and build their own Silicon Valley, but ultimately, if there is talent (which there usually isn't), there is either corruption or vicious socialism (or both) that get in the way. I speak from experience.
I heartily agree with most everything you said, especially about meeting people. The travel towel tip was also a good idea too.
I am a big fan of USB flash disks (or old ipod shuffles if you must have some music) + internet Cafes or using other people's laptops. Make some local friends and use their computers to copy photos and send emails and the local mapping software.
I also recommend a multiband phone that will work in the country you are going to. Buying a local sim-card can be really cheap ($15) in most industrialized countries that I've been in, and then you can send text messages to the people you meet.
Here's what I usually pack otherwise:
1-2 pairs of my favorite jeans, and a pair of khaki/linen pants for dressier occaisions
1 pair of hiking boots/running shoes and 1 pair of black dress shoes/boots (you can always pick out the americans by their white tennis shoes)
2 polyamide nylon t-shirts in black (hard to find, but comfortable, classy, and look pretty clean.)
a black button down shirt for clubbing
a poly fleece sweatshirt (in black of course)
a waterproof (rubberized) windbreaker - keeps the rain out, and traps heat well.
7-10 days worth of underwear and socks (3-4 laundromat trips per month)
A hand towel (get's you dry, dries quick, takes up less space, you might have to walk around naked, but most european countries aren't so victorian)
travel size toiletries (you need these to get through the airport anyhow)
shout wipes are great for random stains when you don't want to wash something
a mobile phone with an MP3 player/SD card that you can swap with your camera if you need more space
a camera with as large of an SD card as possible, it's worth it
money - you can usually buy things cheaply if you need them. I love buying bread and cheese in the shops and having picnics.
This will usually all fit in a carry-on backpack, and I've lived well for a month using this formula.
I seem to recall there was a freezing effect on the bosses when you used the holy water. It is awesome for Frankenstein and if you use it on the reaper (jump and hit the reaper with the water as it appears) then the sickles don't have time to appear.
Other cool games that are just as hard are Blaster Master and Zelda II.
The laplanders self identify as sami. Their language is on the same tree as Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian. They live in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
The Entrepreneurial Mindset (ISBN: 0875848346) (A bit theoretical, but gives some good qualitative measuring sticks) The Beermat Entrepreneur (ISBN: 0273704540) (Available mainly in the UK, from what I can tell. Fantastic book about the phases of growing a company!) The Art of the Start (ISBN: 1591840562) (I know the parent mentions Guy Kawasaki) High Tech Startup (ISBN: 068487170X) (I second the recommendation of the parent) The Intelligent Investor (ISBN: 0060555661) (A great book about investing - should help you avoid doing stupid things)
I recommend finding trade organizations for your target country in the U.S. or your current country, and talking with them. They usually have a network of companies that are doing business in your country and who might have an interest in hiring someone from that country for a number of different positions. Helpful Link
I ran into a guy who worked at one such trade organization for an obscure european country at a christmas party, we started speaking the language, which I just so happen to speak (Language skills are quite important), and he basically recommended me for a position he heard about through his international grapevine. It worked out - and I know that knowing the language helped immensely.
I'm going to break the rules and put down my top 8, in no particular order:
Final Lap Twin (Turbografx/Duo) Final Fantasy (NES) Heroes of Might and Magic (PC) Zelda II: The Adventures of Link (NES) The Oregon Trail (Apple IIe) Uniracers (SNES) Killer Instinct (SNES) Twinkle Star Sprites (Neo Geo and now the PS2)
I agree completely. And you can take a year abroad in the U.S. (wait until you're 21) and do some research for professors who will want to bring you back for graduate school.
Fortunately, most of the bright engineers I know are becoming entrepreneurs. Maybe it's just in my neck of the woods, but I believe that that is what they are teaching at MIT and Stanford these days, with a lot of schools catching on. Of course entrepreneurial role models are very helpful. This kid probably has a patent lawyer somewhere in his background, or else someone who saw the paycheck of a patent lawyer.
Get your first number of customers from referrals of friends and family. Give an estimate of time, and negotiate the charges up front for your first 10-20 customers. Use this data to decide on a pricing scheme that is fair to you, and that customers are willing to pay. Don't sell yourself too cheap, I'm thinking $30 an hour sounds reasonable.
Be professional (courteous, stand up straight, make eye contact and talk slower, lower and more relaxed). Tuck in your shirt. Be on time. Even if you charge a little bit more, these little things make all the difference, and most people will pay for it, as good help is hard to find. Only keep good customers, who treat you right and pay you well. Good luck.
Insure your luggage with travel insurance (much more common in Europe I think). Take pictures of the insides of your packed luggage before you leave and store them on your gmail account.
What? With the Zune? With their URGE music service? Apple is an MP3 player company with a strong distribution platform (iTunes). Their PC division is not their ace, so Microsoft can mess with it, but as long as Apple has the iPod (and continues to crush any other "iPod-killer") they will reamin healthy. It will take more than a few years to crush them, even with a huge warchest like Microsoft has.
I also think that if apple did some quality control on these open office programs, or teamed up with google/writely etc. - to create an online/offline office suite, they could really do some damage to Microsoft. d20 damage.
NES. Blaster Master. Level 5. Boss. (Blaster Master was the first game to start calling the big monsters 'bosses'). This game still rocks - it has gotten easier as I have gotten older.
I agree with the parent, but rather than lose 2 grand, just sign up for a FREE account and practice trading with that. I think there are others, but the only one I found with a quick google was Forex
Read John C. Hull's "Options, Futures and Other Derivatives" which is the absolute minimum BASIC knowledge you should have for trading the market. The day trading books might make more sense after reading that. You work at a bank, and I would be very surprised if someone, somewhere didn't have a few books like this lying around that you could loan.
Also, you can read some mathematical finance texts, and maybe take a few courses (I believe Stanford and Carnegie Mellon have good programs, if you consider education an option at this point, if you can get in, and if are interested in becoming a quant).
Good luck, and I hope you don't get whipsawed too badly in the beginning.
Doesn't lightning strike the desert? I know it doesn't rain that often in the Sahara, but still, I find that at least as plausible as a huge meteorite.
I agree with you mostly, except for one thing: This is the second comment about "invest by mortgaging your house",so I need to set the record straight. You can't just take money and put it in a company (if the company was cash strapped and short of investors, perhaps, but this was not the case). There are few things worse than having an immature/nervous/difficult-to-deal-with investor on board, and so it is often INVITATION ONLY.
No investor/founder worth their salt is going to let just anyone invest in their company, particularly some software developer with no business or investment experience (the poster). They are going to seek investors who have experience and can open doors for them with customers, just by making 2 phone calls. If this guys was as key as he said (he probably wasn't), maybe he should have been allowed to buy a few percent, but I doubt that would have required a mortgage.
The poster options hadn't vested (obviously his vesting deal wasn't good enough), and the owners were dropping the headcount (it's a balance sheet figure) so they could get a better deal when acquired. If the poster was as key as he made himself out to me, then the company that acquired the startup was screwed over - this happens all the time.
I would restate this as "check your connections" i.e. making sure that the wire is seated properly and conducting, that solder hasn't created any shorts, etc.
Looking back on every generation of consoles, the most popular and successful systems had fantastic games, many of them exclusive to the system.
Apple probably won't be able to woo some significant game developers away from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo into anything exclusive, but they can certainly leverage their large installed base of iPods, and create some good first party games that take advantage of the clickwheel and audio/photo features and other unique aspects of the ipod.
More people - for one thing, how many Slashdotters can read and understand a patent (or even tell the difference between the claims and the technology description, and what they are for)? Putting this in the hands of laypeople will be a disaster.
Then you have the conflict of interest. Let's say a large company wants to stomp a startup - they get their lawyers to wallop every part of the application, and they steal all the technology in the process. So much for the little guy.
Slashdot Mirror
Get a userbase. Grow really fast. That's a serious competitive advantage - much more than a few patents.
I agree. If the University provided a technology that was useful to you, why shouldn't you support further research in that area.
Usually the licensing revenue is divided like this: The professor who discovered it gets 20-33%, the Department he's in get's 20-33%, and the university administration takes the rest to cover legal costs, and random university budget things (like maybe the arts).
I know the professors who generate a lot of patents get the red carpet rolled out for them, but that is because they are usually great for industry relations and creating local startups, not just for producing patents for the university.
http://deinterlace.sourceforge.net/
I've used this for some basic tape transfer. It was messy, but I think that was due to the TV card I was using. I think if I had a better quality TV card and a nice fast hard drive, I could have gotten a very nice picture indeed.
The denoising part is probably going to require some serious ASICs if you want a clean copy.
Good luck!
"Your Favorite Band Sucks" - I think that's why the networking stuff didn't work so well - I just don't much care what other people are listening to. If there was a statistical matching program that matched me up with other people that liked a lot of the same music, then we might have something, but I really don't want to be bombarded by top 40 all the time.
However, commercialization requires:
I've seen other countries try and build their own Silicon Valley, but ultimately, if there is talent (which there usually isn't), there is either corruption or vicious socialism (or both) that get in the way. I speak from experience.
I am a big fan of USB flash disks (or old ipod shuffles if you must have some music) + internet Cafes or using other people's laptops. Make some local friends and use their computers to copy photos and send emails and the local mapping software.
I also recommend a multiband phone that will work in the country you are going to. Buying a local sim-card can be really cheap ($15) in most industrialized countries that I've been in, and then you can send text messages to the people you meet.
Here's what I usually pack otherwise:
This will usually all fit in a carry-on backpack, and I've lived well for a month using this formula.
I seem to recall there was a freezing effect on the bosses when you used the holy water. It is awesome for Frankenstein and if you use it on the reaper (jump and hit the reaper with the water as it appears) then the sickles don't have time to appear.
Other cool games that are just as hard are Blaster Master and Zelda II.
The laplanders self identify as sami. Their language is on the same tree as Finnish, Estonian and Hungarian. They live in northern Norway, Sweden, Finland and Russia.
Amen Brother.
A few more:
The Entrepreneurial Mindset (ISBN: 0875848346) (A bit theoretical, but gives some good qualitative measuring sticks)
The Beermat Entrepreneur (ISBN: 0273704540) (Available mainly in the UK, from what I can tell. Fantastic book about the phases of growing a company!)
The Art of the Start (ISBN: 1591840562) (I know the parent mentions Guy Kawasaki)
High Tech Startup (ISBN: 068487170X) (I second the recommendation of the parent)
The Intelligent Investor (ISBN: 0060555661) (A great book about investing - should help you avoid doing stupid things)
I recommend finding trade organizations for your target country in the U.S. or your current country, and talking with them. They usually have a network of companies that are doing business in your country and who might have an interest in hiring someone from that country for a number of different positions. Helpful Link
I ran into a guy who worked at one such trade organization for an obscure european country at a christmas party, we started speaking the language, which I just so happen to speak (Language skills are quite important), and he basically recommended me for a position he heard about through his international grapevine. It worked out - and I know that knowing the language helped immensely.
I'm going to break the rules and put down my top 8, in no particular order:
Final Lap Twin (Turbografx/Duo)
Final Fantasy (NES)
Heroes of Might and Magic (PC)
Zelda II: The Adventures of Link (NES)
The Oregon Trail (Apple IIe)
Uniracers (SNES)
Killer Instinct (SNES)
Twinkle Star Sprites (Neo Geo and now the PS2)
I agree completely. And you can take a year abroad in the U.S. (wait until you're 21) and do some research for professors who will want to bring you back for graduate school.
Fortunately, most of the bright engineers I know are becoming entrepreneurs. Maybe it's just in my neck of the woods, but I believe that that is what they are teaching at MIT and Stanford these days, with a lot of schools catching on. Of course entrepreneurial role models are very helpful. This kid probably has a patent lawyer somewhere in his background, or else someone who saw the paycheck of a patent lawyer.
Funny! I actually put $50 in originally, but decided I would get flamed for it by a sysadmin making $30. So I changed it. ;)
Get your first number of customers from referrals of friends and family.
Give an estimate of time, and negotiate the charges up front for your first 10-20 customers. Use this data to decide on a pricing scheme that is fair to you, and that customers are willing to pay. Don't sell yourself too cheap, I'm thinking $30 an hour sounds reasonable.
Be professional (courteous, stand up straight, make eye contact and talk slower, lower and more relaxed). Tuck in your shirt. Be on time. Even if you charge a little bit more, these little things make all the difference, and most people will pay for it, as good help is hard to find. Only keep good customers, who treat you right and pay you well. Good luck.
Insure your luggage with travel insurance (much more common in Europe I think). Take pictures of the insides of your packed luggage before you leave and store them on your gmail account.
What? With the Zune? With their URGE music service? Apple is an MP3 player company with a strong distribution platform (iTunes). Their PC division is not their ace, so Microsoft can mess with it, but as long as Apple has the iPod (and continues to crush any other "iPod-killer") they will reamin healthy. It will take more than a few years to crush them, even with a huge warchest like Microsoft has.
I also think that if apple did some quality control on these open office programs, or teamed up with google/writely etc. - to create an online/offline office suite, they could really do some damage to Microsoft. d20 damage.
NES. Blaster Master. Level 5. Boss. (Blaster Master was the first game to start calling the big monsters 'bosses').
This game still rocks - it has gotten easier as I have gotten older.
I agree with the parent, but rather than lose 2 grand, just sign up for a FREE account and practice trading with that. I think there are others, but the only one I found with a quick google was Forex
Read John C. Hull's "Options, Futures and Other Derivatives" which is the absolute minimum BASIC knowledge you should have for trading the market. The day trading books might make more sense after reading that. You work at a bank, and I would be very surprised if someone, somewhere didn't have a few books like this lying around that you could loan.
Also, you can read some mathematical finance texts, and maybe take a few courses (I believe Stanford and Carnegie Mellon have good programs, if you consider education an option at this point, if you can get in, and if are interested in becoming a quant).
Good luck, and I hope you don't get whipsawed too badly in the beginning.
Doesn't lightning strike the desert? I know it doesn't rain that often in the Sahara, but still, I find that at least as plausible as a huge meteorite.
My japanese isn't nearly good enough to read this, but: World of Mana sounds like it might be an MMORPG.
I agree with you mostly, except for one thing: This is the second comment about "invest by mortgaging your house",so I need to set the record straight. You can't just take money and put it in a company (if the company was cash strapped and short of investors, perhaps, but this was not the case). There are few things worse than having an immature/nervous/difficult-to-deal-with investor on board, and so it is often INVITATION ONLY.
No investor/founder worth their salt is going to let just anyone invest in their company, particularly some software developer with no business or investment experience (the poster). They are going to seek investors who have experience and can open doors for them with customers, just by making 2 phone calls. If this guys was as key as he said (he probably wasn't), maybe he should have been allowed to buy a few percent, but I doubt that would have required a mortgage.
The poster options hadn't vested (obviously his vesting deal wasn't good enough), and the owners were dropping the headcount (it's a balance sheet figure) so they could get a better deal when acquired. If the poster was as key as he made himself out to me, then the company that acquired the startup was screwed over - this happens all the time.
I would restate this as "check your connections" i.e. making sure that the wire is seated properly and conducting, that solder hasn't created any shorts, etc.
Looking back on every generation of consoles, the most popular and successful systems had fantastic games, many of them exclusive to the system.
Apple probably won't be able to woo some significant game developers away from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo into anything exclusive, but they can certainly leverage their large installed base of iPods, and create some good first party games that take advantage of the clickwheel and audio/photo features and other unique aspects of the ipod.
I'm curious to see what comes of this.
More people - for one thing, how many Slashdotters can read and understand a patent (or even tell the difference between the claims and the technology description, and what they are for)? Putting this in the hands of laypeople will be a disaster.
:(
Then you have the conflict of interest. Let's say a large company wants to stomp a startup - they get their lawyers to wallop every part of the application, and they steal all the technology in the process. So much for the little guy.
Nope. I am not as optimistic as you are.