Westlake, I don't blame you for not understanding the needs of the visually impaired. I certainly never did until I found my vision failing. In any case, the problem with audio-books is they are "professionally" read super sloooooooooow. About as slow as your mother read to you as a child. Here's a sample of how fast I listen. Smarter adults (like those of us here?) tend to read at 250 wpm - 450 wpm. I listen at 550 wpm. So, I'm currently reading The Half Blood Price, which takes under 8 hours with my TTS engine, at 550 wpm. The freaking audio-book is over 19 hours! I'd... rather... have... teeth... pulled. I'm not alone in the VI (visually impaired) community. J.K. Rowling's audio books are an insult to the blind, as are all author's works who do not release a text version readable with a freaking screen reader.
I agree, though, that it's hard to "punish" a billionaire with Pirate Bay. However, feel free to use the plight of the blind as your excuse as you pirate J.K. Rowling's works.
I haven't had any pirated software for the last 10 years, but then again, I've been running Linux. Anyway, back in college (1982-1986), I pirated all sorts of software I could not even imagine being able to afford. When I got a real job (1986) and since, I've paid for virtually all of it. However, my generation didn't grow up comfortable with pirating.
One interesting thing I found in 1991: I tried selling "shareware" where you are suppose to buy the application if you use it and like it. It was downloaded and obviously heavily used a few thousand times. It was a memory checker for Windows programmers. How many programmers sent me a check for $10? One. Good grief. At the same time, my father wrote a shareware application useful for Delta pilots to "bid" on their routes for the next month. Dad made $32K on it! The difference? Pilots were older, middle class workers who never pirated anything. Programmers were young and on the leading edge of piracy (and we still are).
This game is a very interesting data point. I would expect that a young hacker who can pay $400 for an iPhone just might have $2 for a game. Frankly, I don't think this is as much about ability to pay as a new culture of piracy.
As for me, I don't pirate anything any more unless the author deserves to burn in hell, which is a very small portion of authors. For example, to read books now days I need to convert them to audio and play them, since my central vision is failing. I can break the Microsoft Reader format, which works well for me. I just buy the e-books and then translate them for my needs. However, some authors, like J. K. Rowling, are rich greedy bastards who don't care about the disabled. I already own all her books, and most of the movies. I felt pretty good about downloading her collective works on The Pirate Bay, and would encourage all of you to get it there to punish her.
Hey, it's only evil when they do it. China spying on the US isn't exactly new. It use to be (still is?) common for China to pay US immigrants to be spies, and not just a few - many thousands of them. I have a friend who caught Japanese industrial spies taking apart a stepper machine used to make ICs. It's pretty rampant.
On the positive side, spying leads to transparency, and helps ease tensions between powers. Of course, I'd prefer that the US maintain some sort of military technology lead, given that we pay for it.
I'm 45 years old, which around here makes me an old fart. I remember when the phrase "word processor" meant a dedicated machine designed to do one thing: document editing. In 25 years, the old farts will be saying "I remember when the phrase e-book reader meant a machine designed to do one thing."
There are going to be amazing tablet PCs coming soon. With a Pixel Qi display capacitive touch screen, the killer app will be 10" ebook readers that are clearer and easier to read than E-Ink in sunlight, but which do decent color video indoors. I just sent my wish list to a friend I have in marketing at Dell:
10" Pixel Qi display, multi-touch screen, scratch resistant, for awesome ebook reading, or just for use as a netbook
Ubuntu Netbook Remix (seriously, nothing else in netbooks comes close)
Fast Arm processor with video accelerator. Atom would nice, but ARM is good enough.
Competitively priced with Kindle
Integration with Google Editions for ebooks, hopefully sans DRM
Wifi, bluetooth, a couple USB ports
Plastic stand and optional wireless keyboard and mouse that turns it into a low-end desktop computer
Insane battery life when used as an e-book reader in black & white reflective mode (days, not hours)
Voxin (old IBM ViaVoice) text-to-speech working with ebook reader (Orca and Firefox may be ok)
Standard headphone jack, excellent audio quality
1 gig ram, at least 16 gig disk storage, either SSD or hard disk
Good speaker and mic for use with Google Voice and Skype
My son seems to have gotten swine flu last weekend, and is recovering fine. He tested positive for type-A influenza, of which H1N1 is a sub-type, and had a mild fever of 102F. He's on Tamiflu now. The doctor thinks it is probably swine flu, even though symptoms are mild. Our local school seems to have a bunch of similar cases, with low-grade fevers. I think I also have it, but my symptoms are even milder.
Is this really the swine flu? If so, it's not bad around here, near Raleigh, NC.
My tiny company makes money through outstanding engineering, both software and chip design. Our software algorithms geeks (self included) are not normal people. When I hire for this position, I'm looking for a personality disorder which causes otherwise bright intelligent outgoing people to be happy in dark corners hacking out brilliant solutions to problems few people will ever hear about. The trick is finding such people who can still work in a team environment.
So, normal software developers are not weird. They do simple things, like subclassing windows and putting together trees of data structures. But... the few who can do magic under the hood - yes, those guys are just a bit different.
We're a bunch of literally minded geeks here. Many of us don't get sarcasm unless it's pointed out to us. Going to lunch a while back with some other hard-core geeks at work, a lady was backing out of her space and had to slam on her brakes to avoid running us over. We hadn't even been looking. The lady said, sarcastically, "Next time you guys get out of the way or I'll run you over!" My co-worker didn't get the joke, and angrily tore into the poor lady with, "No madam. It is you who must be on the lookout, and you who are responsible for not running us over!" The rest of us slinked away, hoping to get away from the embarrassment.
I'm feeling a bit poor, but if I weren't I'd consider dumping my G1 and forking over $550 for an unlocked Hero. The major draw: a freaking headphone jack.
There's a very interesting correlation between reading speed and listening speed. If that was super-hard to understand for you, I'm guessing your reading speed is only average. Fast readers all seem able to understand fast speech. Apparently, a major bottleneck in reading speed is subvocalization speed (the speed you hear your voice in your own head).
However, you are correct. That sample is only 11KHz sample rate, and mp3 compressed. At higher listening speeds than this, I've switched to 22KHz, and uncompressed.wav files.
One dumb idea I have is to help kids learn to read fast by first helping them learn to listen fast while pre-reading age.
It's wonderful, but I doubt you're soon going to be replaced. The advantage of the computer generated voice (text-to-speech, or TTS), is that it's really fast. Here's a sample at around 450wpm.
I'm a programmer by trade, and a hacker/geek by choice. The TTS engine will enable me to remain highly productive even if I can't see. There's a blind guy getting a Ph.D. at NC State in computer science who has been giving me tips. He listens at around 850wpm, which is really amazing. He is probably just as good with a JAWS screen reader using the web as a person with normal vision, maybe better.
Anyway, for the elderly suffering from macular degeneration, there's probably not much use in learning speed listening. For those of us raising families and trying to be productive in the workforce, it's a godsend. Mostly, I'm listening to books rather than reading to train up my listening speed, preparing for the day I can no longer read. However, I have to admit, it's really fun listening to books that fast. I add the interpretation in my head, like I would if I were reading. The computer voice is fairly mechanical and flat.
Insightful post, which scared the heck out of me. However, TFA clearly indicates that any browser will do, and you'll be able to read off-line. Unless they're developing a custom plug-in for every browser everywhere that encrypts data on your disk, it's probably just plain old HTML. I suspect you'll be able to simply use file/save to save your book. However, you could be right.
The hard sell here is for Google to convince book publishers that it's OK to sell their books without DRM. It's one of those things where you know what's good for a whole freaking industry, but you can't easily get them to help themselves. Alternatively, book publishers are going to become slaves to a Amazon, with no bargaining power.
My wife self-published a nice book, which actually managed to make a little money. She listed it on Amazon for a while, until she realised that she lost money for every book sold!
It turns out that starting probably next year some time, you get the best of both worlds. We'll have netbooks and net tablets that pack displays equal to e-paper in sunlight, and with brilliant color.
Personally, I translate e-books to high-speed audio (about 500 wpm), rather than reading, as my central vision is failing. I can't tell you how much I enjoy having books read to me at that speed with the old IBM ViaVoice TTS. The problem with Kindle and friends is they make it too hard or impossible for me to enjoy their books in the form I want. I have high hopes that netbooks with the new displays coupled with Googles e-book service will change the world.
This is a very common desire for creative geeks. My favorite is a guy in China who invents all sorts of things. His last one was teaching foreign languages by randomly replacing words on web pages with translated equivalents, allowing you to learn through context.
At 45 years old, I've had enough experience to learn some unfortunate truths. One of them is only you can promote your idea. You have to build it, find the market, sell it, and either finance it yourself or convince an investor you can make him money.
Why this is the case, I can't say. I've also found that virtually all good ideas get panned publicly, even here on Slashdot. So, expect the world to call you an idot while you force your excellent idea on down it's throat. That's just the way the world is.
Actually, I would like to start a brainstorming web site, where inventors, entrepreneurs, and investors can help shake out ideas and possibly find support. Any interest?
"Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor."
So, technically, you are correct. Sarah Palin did not actually ban any books.
You're right in that it wont prevent someone else from patenting your invention. It wont even keep them from suing others to keep them from using it. However, if they sue you, you pull out the obscure prior art, and probably don't even have to bother going to court.
I'm in a somewhat related situation. A company with a particularly unethical CEO patented a ton of stuff he knew was already done 10 years earlier. He didn't bother showing the prior art to the patent office (which is a previous patent that covers the whole thing). Every now and then, their lawyer calls me (it's always a different lawyer), hinting that he thinks we might be infringing. I explain to the lawyer why all his patents are invalid, how the CEO lied to the patent office, and that if he would like to discuss it, please come on over. Funny thing... I never hear back from those lawyers.
We qualify as a "small business" on the Dell online store, where we buy all our PCs. We don't get the consumer support contracts. The crapy off-shore morons in Dells super-crappy support team are in fact small business support guys. At least they were a few years ago when I got fed up with them.
Originally, we kept our support contracts, but just stopped calling them. The theory was we could get Dell to replace a bad component when needed, and keep a guy productive. Dell screwed that up, too. The last time I had a bad motherboard, a guy in India wasted several hours of my time trying to get out of replacing it (apparently, they are compensated based on how little Dells spends on field visits). I had to talk to a supervisor, who also tried to wiggle out of the bad motherboard. Eventually, I threatened that they "fucking send a guy to replace the motherboard, or I'll switch our whole fucking company to HP." This did not do the trick. Rather than switch to HP, I stopped buying any and all support contracts with Dell. However, my boss independently was having similar experience with Dell at his previous company, and instead switched to HP. He still allows me to buy Dell laptops and workstations without support contracts, but any machine that needs a support contract (all our servers) must go to HP.
Agreed. I am typing this reply on my Dell Insprion 9400, the best laptop I ever owned. I have zero support contract. In 2001, when Dell fired their top-notch support team, I responded by making a blanket policy - we still buy Dells, but never fork over a penny for support. Even if we have trouble with a laptop during it's "covered" first year, we are never to call Dell, as it's a huge waste of our time. It's worked well for us. However, my boss has experience from another company where they kept the Dell support and were driven to hate Dell with a passion.
I don't know how Dell can climb out of this hole. I think they can rebuild their support team, but can they then pass on the cost to their customers, like HP does? At this point, Dell's branded themselves as bargain basement.
Geeks on slashdot get to have it both ways - getting rich while making the world a better place. Try starting a company that offers good jobs to deserving employees, and see you you feel as they raise good kids and enjoy their work. Invent something worthwhile, and force the world to benefit from it - you'd be very surprised at how often the world passes by perfectly good ides. Only the inventor can champion new technologies properly. Be a do-gooder: start companies, develop open source projects when it makes sense, improve the world with your ideas. Being a big geek rocks.
Do this - publish your idea in the most obscure way possible. Don't put it on the web. Instead, make sure some library like the one Sarah Palin likes to ban books from in Wasilla, Alaska. I kid you not - this is advice I've had from multiple patent attorneys. It protects your idea, and is nearly free, without much chance of tipping off your competitors.
Dell screwed up, big time, and now they're in a deep hole. In the 90's, I was influential in steering 3 companies to being all Dell houses. It was fun. Someone would ask why we should pay more for a Dell, and I could demonstrate what happens when I called support. I'd call Microsoft for a question about Power Point first... it's always fun being ridiculed by a moron, which is all the support Microsoft offers for us peons who only own hundreds of their licenses. Then, I'd call Dell for the same question about Power Point (or whatever Microsoft product was pissing me off that day). Dell support would say, "That's really a question for Microsoft, and we don't technically offer support in cases like this. However, the answer to your question is..."
Dell support was awesome. Then, during the off-shoring mania that swept boardrooms across the country in 2001, Dell fired all their on-shore support and routed our calls to guys in India who make Microsoft's support look good. Sure, Dell has dropped their prices a ton since then, but what matters having productive employees, not saving $100 on their laptop. Dell went the other way - super cheap, low margins, undercutting everyone else, offering crap support. The machines are still pretty good, and lately they've offered "Gold support" on all their products. What morons... don't they know how hard it is to convince your boss to pay $300 for a support contract on an $800 computer? HP went the other way, only offering good support, at higher prices. The difference - happy customers. A couple years ago, my boss overrode my support for Dell, and now all our high-end servers are HP. They're great machines, with incredible support, and we buy them, even though they cost 2X over Dell's.
Slashdot Mirror
Westlake, I don't blame you for not understanding the needs of the visually impaired. I certainly never did until I found my vision failing. In any case, the problem with audio-books is they are "professionally" read super sloooooooooow. About as slow as your mother read to you as a child. Here's a sample of how fast I listen. Smarter adults (like those of us here?) tend to read at 250 wpm - 450 wpm. I listen at 550 wpm. So, I'm currently reading The Half Blood Price, which takes under 8 hours with my TTS engine, at 550 wpm. The freaking audio-book is over 19 hours! I'd ... rather ... have ... teeth ... pulled. I'm not alone in the VI (visually impaired) community. J.K. Rowling's audio books are an insult to the blind, as are all author's works who do not release a text version readable with a freaking screen reader.
I agree, though, that it's hard to "punish" a billionaire with Pirate Bay. However, feel free to use the plight of the blind as your excuse as you pirate J.K. Rowling's works.
I haven't had any pirated software for the last 10 years, but then again, I've been running Linux. Anyway, back in college (1982-1986), I pirated all sorts of software I could not even imagine being able to afford. When I got a real job (1986) and since, I've paid for virtually all of it. However, my generation didn't grow up comfortable with pirating.
One interesting thing I found in 1991: I tried selling "shareware" where you are suppose to buy the application if you use it and like it. It was downloaded and obviously heavily used a few thousand times. It was a memory checker for Windows programmers. How many programmers sent me a check for $10? One. Good grief. At the same time, my father wrote a shareware application useful for Delta pilots to "bid" on their routes for the next month. Dad made $32K on it! The difference? Pilots were older, middle class workers who never pirated anything. Programmers were young and on the leading edge of piracy (and we still are).
This game is a very interesting data point. I would expect that a young hacker who can pay $400 for an iPhone just might have $2 for a game. Frankly, I don't think this is as much about ability to pay as a new culture of piracy.
As for me, I don't pirate anything any more unless the author deserves to burn in hell, which is a very small portion of authors. For example, to read books now days I need to convert them to audio and play them, since my central vision is failing. I can break the Microsoft Reader format, which works well for me. I just buy the e-books and then translate them for my needs. However, some authors, like J. K. Rowling, are rich greedy bastards who don't care about the disabled. I already own all her books, and most of the movies. I felt pretty good about downloading her collective works on The Pirate Bay, and would encourage all of you to get it there to punish her.
Hey, it's only evil when they do it. China spying on the US isn't exactly new. It use to be (still is?) common for China to pay US immigrants to be spies, and not just a few - many thousands of them. I have a friend who caught Japanese industrial spies taking apart a stepper machine used to make ICs. It's pretty rampant.
On the positive side, spying leads to transparency, and helps ease tensions between powers. Of course, I'd prefer that the US maintain some sort of military technology lead, given that we pay for it.
I'm 45 years old, which around here makes me an old fart. I remember when the phrase "word processor" meant a dedicated machine designed to do one thing: document editing. In 25 years, the old farts will be saying "I remember when the phrase e-book reader meant a machine designed to do one thing."
There are going to be amazing tablet PCs coming soon. With a Pixel Qi display capacitive touch screen, the killer app will be 10" ebook readers that are clearer and easier to read than E-Ink in sunlight, but which do decent color video indoors. I just sent my wish list to a friend I have in marketing at Dell:
Wifi, bluetooth, a couple USB ports
Yeah... I really want one.
My son seems to have gotten swine flu last weekend, and is recovering fine. He tested positive for type-A influenza, of which H1N1 is a sub-type, and had a mild fever of 102F. He's on Tamiflu now. The doctor thinks it is probably swine flu, even though symptoms are mild. Our local school seems to have a bunch of similar cases, with low-grade fevers. I think I also have it, but my symptoms are even milder.
Is this really the swine flu? If so, it's not bad around here, near Raleigh, NC.
While I'm a bit of a Microsoft fan, I just can't see putting my data on their servers. It'll go Sidekick for sure.
My tiny company makes money through outstanding engineering, both software and chip design. Our software algorithms geeks (self included) are not normal people. When I hire for this position, I'm looking for a personality disorder which causes otherwise bright intelligent outgoing people to be happy in dark corners hacking out brilliant solutions to problems few people will ever hear about. The trick is finding such people who can still work in a team environment.
So, normal software developers are not weird. They do simple things, like subclassing windows and putting together trees of data structures. But... the few who can do magic under the hood - yes, those guys are just a bit different.
We're a bunch of literally minded geeks here. Many of us don't get sarcasm unless it's pointed out to us. Going to lunch a while back with some other hard-core geeks at work, a lady was backing out of her space and had to slam on her brakes to avoid running us over. We hadn't even been looking. The lady said, sarcastically, "Next time you guys get out of the way or I'll run you over!" My co-worker didn't get the joke, and angrily tore into the poor lady with, "No madam. It is you who must be on the lookout, and you who are responsible for not running us over!" The rest of us slinked away, hoping to get away from the embarrassment.
Geeks... Sheeze.
I'm feeling a bit poor, but if I weren't I'd consider dumping my G1 and forking over $550 for an unlocked Hero. The major draw: a freaking headphone jack.
There's a very interesting correlation between reading speed and listening speed. If that was super-hard to understand for you, I'm guessing your reading speed is only average. Fast readers all seem able to understand fast speech. Apparently, a major bottleneck in reading speed is subvocalization speed (the speed you hear your voice in your own head).
However, you are correct. That sample is only 11KHz sample rate, and mp3 compressed. At higher listening speeds than this, I've switched to 22KHz, and uncompressed .wav files.
One dumb idea I have is to help kids learn to read fast by first helping them learn to listen fast while pre-reading age.
It's wonderful, but I doubt you're soon going to be replaced. The advantage of the computer generated voice (text-to-speech, or TTS), is that it's really fast. Here's a sample at around 450wpm.
I'm a programmer by trade, and a hacker/geek by choice. The TTS engine will enable me to remain highly productive even if I can't see. There's a blind guy getting a Ph.D. at NC State in computer science who has been giving me tips. He listens at around 850wpm, which is really amazing. He is probably just as good with a JAWS screen reader using the web as a person with normal vision, maybe better.
Anyway, for the elderly suffering from macular degeneration, there's probably not much use in learning speed listening. For those of us raising families and trying to be productive in the workforce, it's a godsend. Mostly, I'm listening to books rather than reading to train up my listening speed, preparing for the day I can no longer read. However, I have to admit, it's really fun listening to books that fast. I add the interpretation in my head, like I would if I were reading. The computer voice is fairly mechanical and flat.
Insightful post, which scared the heck out of me. However, TFA clearly indicates that any browser will do, and you'll be able to read off-line. Unless they're developing a custom plug-in for every browser everywhere that encrypts data on your disk, it's probably just plain old HTML. I suspect you'll be able to simply use file/save to save your book. However, you could be right.
The hard sell here is for Google to convince book publishers that it's OK to sell their books without DRM. It's one of those things where you know what's good for a whole freaking industry, but you can't easily get them to help themselves. Alternatively, book publishers are going to become slaves to a Amazon, with no bargaining power.
My wife self-published a nice book, which actually managed to make a little money. She listed it on Amazon for a while, until she realised that she lost money for every book sold!
Here's a nice video of it, courtesy of some slashdoter who I forget.
It turns out that starting probably next year some time, you get the best of both worlds. We'll have netbooks and net tablets that pack displays equal to e-paper in sunlight, and with brilliant color.
Personally, I translate e-books to high-speed audio (about 500 wpm), rather than reading, as my central vision is failing. I can't tell you how much I enjoy having books read to me at that speed with the old IBM ViaVoice TTS. The problem with Kindle and friends is they make it too hard or impossible for me to enjoy their books in the form I want. I have high hopes that netbooks with the new displays coupled with Googles e-book service will change the world.
This is a very common desire for creative geeks. My favorite is a guy in China who invents all sorts of things. His last one was teaching foreign languages by randomly replacing words on web pages with translated equivalents, allowing you to learn through context.
At 45 years old, I've had enough experience to learn some unfortunate truths. One of them is only you can promote your idea. You have to build it, find the market, sell it, and either finance it yourself or convince an investor you can make him money.
Why this is the case, I can't say. I've also found that virtually all good ideas get panned publicly, even here on Slashdot. So, expect the world to call you an idot while you force your excellent idea on down it's throat. That's just the way the world is.
Actually, I would like to start a brainstorming web site, where inventors, entrepreneurs, and investors can help shake out ideas and possibly find support. Any interest?
With my very limited sales experience, I've found it prudent to generally side with my customer.
Well, according to Time:
"Stein says that as mayor, Palin continued to inject religious beliefs into her policy at times. "She asked the library how she could go about banning books," he says, because some voters thought they had inappropriate language in them. "The librarian was aghast." That woman, Mary Ellen Baker, couldn't be reached for comment, but news reports from the time show that Palin had threatened to fire Baker for not giving "full support" to the mayor."
So, technically, you are correct. Sarah Palin did not actually ban any books.
You're right in that it wont prevent someone else from patenting your invention. It wont even keep them from suing others to keep them from using it. However, if they sue you, you pull out the obscure prior art, and probably don't even have to bother going to court.
I'm in a somewhat related situation. A company with a particularly unethical CEO patented a ton of stuff he knew was already done 10 years earlier. He didn't bother showing the prior art to the patent office (which is a previous patent that covers the whole thing). Every now and then, their lawyer calls me (it's always a different lawyer), hinting that he thinks we might be infringing. I explain to the lawyer why all his patents are invalid, how the CEO lied to the patent office, and that if he would like to discuss it, please come on over. Funny thing... I never hear back from those lawyers.
Maybe not... I ran into the problem in North Carolina. I don't think my friends in San Jose are having the same support problems we have out here.
We qualify as a "small business" on the Dell online store, where we buy all our PCs. We don't get the consumer support contracts. The crapy off-shore morons in Dells super-crappy support team are in fact small business support guys. At least they were a few years ago when I got fed up with them.
Originally, we kept our support contracts, but just stopped calling them. The theory was we could get Dell to replace a bad component when needed, and keep a guy productive. Dell screwed that up, too. The last time I had a bad motherboard, a guy in India wasted several hours of my time trying to get out of replacing it (apparently, they are compensated based on how little Dells spends on field visits). I had to talk to a supervisor, who also tried to wiggle out of the bad motherboard. Eventually, I threatened that they "fucking send a guy to replace the motherboard, or I'll switch our whole fucking company to HP." This did not do the trick. Rather than switch to HP, I stopped buying any and all support contracts with Dell. However, my boss independently was having similar experience with Dell at his previous company, and instead switched to HP. He still allows me to buy Dell laptops and workstations without support contracts, but any machine that needs a support contract (all our servers) must go to HP.
Agreed. I am typing this reply on my Dell Insprion 9400, the best laptop I ever owned. I have zero support contract. In 2001, when Dell fired their top-notch support team, I responded by making a blanket policy - we still buy Dells, but never fork over a penny for support. Even if we have trouble with a laptop during it's "covered" first year, we are never to call Dell, as it's a huge waste of our time. It's worked well for us. However, my boss has experience from another company where they kept the Dell support and were driven to hate Dell with a passion.
I don't know how Dell can climb out of this hole. I think they can rebuild their support team, but can they then pass on the cost to their customers, like HP does? At this point, Dell's branded themselves as bargain basement.
Geeks on slashdot get to have it both ways - getting rich while making the world a better place. Try starting a company that offers good jobs to deserving employees, and see you you feel as they raise good kids and enjoy their work. Invent something worthwhile, and force the world to benefit from it - you'd be very surprised at how often the world passes by perfectly good ides. Only the inventor can champion new technologies properly. Be a do-gooder: start companies, develop open source projects when it makes sense, improve the world with your ideas. Being a big geek rocks.
Do this - publish your idea in the most obscure way possible. Don't put it on the web. Instead, make sure some library like the one Sarah Palin likes to ban books from in Wasilla, Alaska. I kid you not - this is advice I've had from multiple patent attorneys. It protects your idea, and is nearly free, without much chance of tipping off your competitors.
Dell screwed up, big time, and now they're in a deep hole. In the 90's, I was influential in steering 3 companies to being all Dell houses. It was fun. Someone would ask why we should pay more for a Dell, and I could demonstrate what happens when I called support. I'd call Microsoft for a question about Power Point first... it's always fun being ridiculed by a moron, which is all the support Microsoft offers for us peons who only own hundreds of their licenses. Then, I'd call Dell for the same question about Power Point (or whatever Microsoft product was pissing me off that day). Dell support would say, "That's really a question for Microsoft, and we don't technically offer support in cases like this. However, the answer to your question is ..."
Dell support was awesome. Then, during the off-shoring mania that swept boardrooms across the country in 2001, Dell fired all their on-shore support and routed our calls to guys in India who make Microsoft's support look good. Sure, Dell has dropped their prices a ton since then, but what matters having productive employees, not saving $100 on their laptop. Dell went the other way - super cheap, low margins, undercutting everyone else, offering crap support. The machines are still pretty good, and lately they've offered "Gold support" on all their products. What morons... don't they know how hard it is to convince your boss to pay $300 for a support contract on an $800 computer? HP went the other way, only offering good support, at higher prices. The difference - happy customers. A couple years ago, my boss overrode my support for Dell, and now all our high-end servers are HP. They're great machines, with incredible support, and we buy them, even though they cost 2X over Dell's.