Garage tech and barriers to entry
on
Primer
·
· Score: 2, Interesting
A number of early systems makers and software shops (not to mention dozens of web sites) came out of garage-style operations when the barrier to entry was low. Thinking of starting a hardware operation in your garage now? Good luck, you are squaring off against massively funded incubator programs from the major manufacturers. Same with software. As for the web, the low hanging fruit has been picked and the cost of competing with "real" websites is getting higher every day. With biotech and other new techs the barrier is even higher.
Not to sound discouraging - there are always ways bright entrepeneurs outwit big money, but doing so with practically none of their own is getting unrealistic as the IT industry matures. VCs and angel funders can help close the gap, but that of course comes with a steep price later on should things work out.
The semantic internet is dead, there is no way to get truthful and accurate metadata out of even a small portion of the internet traffic. It doesn't matter anyway since SEO (search engine optimization) has already figured out how to create the specific info most crawlers are looking for. So if anything, the metadata created has not been descriptive relative to the document, only descriptive insofar as instrumenting the crawler (not the same thing - its saying what I think you want to hear instead of telling the truth).
On intranets it is a different issue - a company can create templates and enforce their truthful use internally.
Compare the number of shares outstanding in MSFT to the shares outstanding in RHAT. Compare the breadth of ownership across the public. Sorry, but RHAT stock movements just don't matter to 99% of the investing public...30% of which probably owns MSFT.
People often write stories using wire material, but the quoted material is never "rewritten". I have worked in this industry and I can tell you the wire services would litigate the hell out of anyone altering their stories (which is different than using their data in a story you are writing).
First of all, MSNBC gets its news mostly from the wire services like most other news websites, so cool it with the unwarranted bias talk. This makes sense. The MS developers can talk directly with MSNBC folks and try to get more advanced crawling and indexing methods in place. This is why MS is involved in MSNBC in the first place - integration. Don't you think Yahoo gets the inside scoop on how Yahoo News articles are formatted directly from the developer? Or any other portal for that matter? Shock and amazement - employees talk to each other!
Much of the heavy lifting of course needs to be done outside of these projects - X.org, Freedesktop.org (DBUS, HAL) etc, in order to make a desktop that "just works". People often talk up KDE reflexively yet fail to address the rot that has existed in many key apps like KOffice, which has failed to remain competitive with the alternatives. Konqueror has clearly lost the mindshare war with Mozilla but hopefully it can get some benefit from the huge swell of plugins emerging if the KDE folks are going to use the new common plugin spec (can anyone confirm?). And yes I know KHTML is in Safari, and no I don't really think it really has that much meaning for KDE users.
The GNOME folks do have some distance to go as well. Desktop integration is still not quite there - some apps play ball, some apps don't. What GNOME does have in its corner is the apps that have the mindshare of most users - Mozilla, Evolution, GAIM, OpenOffice etc. I am not claiming these are "better", just commenting on momentum.
Whats next for both is something new. Both environments pretty much do offer a decent enough environment that you can point Aunt Millie at it. Both need to start innovating with new ideas.
Anyone can file a patent or seek protection of a technology. The question is - will people pay to license it? Look at IBM - research pays for this firm as they rake in massive licensing revenues every year. What does MS have that others will pay to license? Thats the rubber/road issue for any protected tech.
I guess I presume that most "stable" corporations (those out of their high growth phases) don't raise cash that often via increasing their outstanding shares, but instead go through the bond market or other lines of credit (banks or suppliers).
True, but the cost of that capital is influenced by their performance as measured by the common stock. It isn't a strict dependency, but corporate bonds will almost certainly have to pay higher rates if the company becomes a penny stock or is delisted. Its an indicator that creditors are taking on more risk.
You can only print stock if your stock value is fast rising, and that's not that many companies. Otherwise it has the same effect as printing money -- devaluing the existing shareholder's shares.
Thats true. Most shareholders seem to have no understanding of dilution.
Regardless, heavy trade in a corporation's stock actually does very little to raise capital for the company.
Not true, the company often holds a large number of its own shares through past buybacks or other measures, so a lower or higher price emerging from share volatility does impact its own accounts. Presuming a firm does not hold its own shares, you would be correct.
I commend SGI for finding a way to survive in a brutal post-workstation, post-proprietary-unix world - for a bit there it looked like they were going to be a candidate for an office furniture auction....but the stock is about to enter the penny range. It will be hard for SGI to attract serious capital if they go sideways in a range under $1, and they will once again court delisting.
Good luck SGI, the Valley is rooting for its former star, and so are a lot of stock speculators.
The difference is that no one is seriously contemplating travel in our own solar system as being beneficial with regards to us "getting off this planet" or teahing us how to travel somehwere actually useful.
Lets do a short course: the Earth is the only place in this solar system we can live unaided. The next best truck stop is a looooooooooong way away and humans probably won't be around as we know them to arrive safely.
People seriously need to stop "learning" about science from Star Trek.
Humans weren't meant to dive to depths of dozens or hundreds of meters (subs, pressure suits). Humans weren't meant to fly through clouds and above thunderstorms.
All done in an environment more or less compatible with human needs. And once again, do not suspend basic science - scale matters in the universe. To everyone who equates flying around the world in a hot air balloon with travelling to another galaxy - please stop getting your science education from Star Trek.
but Im willing to bet that the proportion of cooked food to raw food that humans eat FAR FAR outpaces the proportion naturally occurring in nature.
Really? What was the world population in 50,000 BC? How were they evolved with regards to the consumption of raw or vegetative food sources? You're projecting a lot about our current condition on to a previous time.
At least thats what they felt when they were running the show. The single-celled organism culture must be preserved...otherwise it would die!! The tragedy....!
You are assuming like most other posters that the universe is here for humans and needs humans. At some point something that came from us will go out there and maybe it will keep your history in mind for nostalgic purposes, but don't presume that you need to be there or were ever meant to be there. Maybe we're just a step on the path to something higher, bound to be forgotten.
Once again you are presuming humans as we currently exist must be part of the future equation. We will evolve ourselves into something that can in fact live for ten thousand centuries, able to endure open space (in which case we will not be human any longer). Yet another comment that presumes the Star Trek universe in which only that which we want to change will change - in your case, the assumptions that humanity stays as it is and everything else moves around it.
Once again you are suspending a basic understanding of space science in place of some vague glib appeal to otherwise minor achievements. Scale matters. Don't compare Lindbergh and travelling to another galaxy.
False. We were given all of the raw materials to make this leap with ease. Livestock. Wood. Lightning. All in abundance. In fact, given forest fires, one can claim that cooked food will appear naturally over time without human interference, presuming Bambi can't outrun the wall of flames.
Since cooked food is naturally occurring in nature, your analogy is totally false.
The universe does not need Marilyn Monroe or Shakespeare or Einstein to be known. The survival of the single-celled organism was once at stake too, and instead of it being an issue of "does the single celled culture survive or not?", there was a third option - a higher form of life.
Do not presume that humans as they exist now represent the highest form of evolution. Anthro-centrism is another fallacy of scifi.
First off, the medium that the oceanic explorers travelled on was also the one that could sustain them. They could pull their food out of the ocean. Space is the opposite - exposure to the native environment is fatal.
This is apart from the issue of distance. In the real universe, scale matters. You cannot compare travel to another galaxy to travelling across the Pacific.
Humans were not meant to leave Earth. People seem to suspend so much understanding of basic science when pondering spaceflight...all of our fictional models presume some effortless way to move very far distances and of course no adverse health affects on the human body. Presuming of course that by time we have invented the "warp drive" and artificial gravity, we wouldn't have already tranferred our consciousnesses into sturdier, longer lasting shells (in which case we would no longer be human). This is the classic fallacy of scifi - we choose the tech to magically progress while everything else somehow stays the same.
What do we know about spaceflight? Its toxic to humans and there is nowhere anywhere nearby by any conceivable technology that we could get to. The reality is that one day something from Earth will reach another planet in another galaxy but it is going to look more like R2D2 than Captain Kirk.
Lots of interesting angles coming out for exploiting a wearable, portable data store. Seems like this was the proposition of the Java Ring, but that assumed too much bandwidth. People still need to carry their data with them until bigger pipes are easily available.
Would be interested to see someone float a thin client based on using the iPod as the user identification/storage component. Lots of ideas come to mind once you assume the iPod is ubiquotous.
Okay, so you have toured the plant. Okay, you live near the plant. Okay, so you watch TV news for information about the plant. So far I haven't heard anything that makes you remotely qualified to tell us if the plant is safe or not. For all you know you are already subject to a host of illnesses that may not manifest themsevles for years to come.
Its been well known that Slate was an experiment for MS, just like Sidewalk etc a few years back. I'm not surprised they are looking to sell it. I'm surprise they waited this long.
I really fail to see what is so exceptional about the Apple webcam or even the G5. Many vendors have been providing innovative cooling solution for years before the vented design of the G5 case - just look at 1U servers.
As a side note, most of the home computer systems awarded by BW over the years are pretty but totally useless. The mice and keyboard are cool looking but so hopelessly minimalistic that it is unclear who could use them long term.
How many times has this been written? MSFT is the master of the binary CDROM release code. But its not a binary CDROM release world anymore. Its a world of ASCII-based protocols accessing the most important services over the network against constantly evolving codebases, which are more often than not free and open.
If MSFT really wanted to latch on to the future they would buy Yahoo, Google or Ebay. The era of anyone really caring that much about a document editor (enough tp pay gobs of cash for it) are over.
Slashdot Mirror
Not to sound discouraging - there are always ways bright entrepeneurs outwit big money, but doing so with practically none of their own is getting unrealistic as the IT industry matures. VCs and angel funders can help close the gap, but that of course comes with a steep price later on should things work out.
On intranets it is a different issue - a company can create templates and enforce their truthful use internally.
Compare the number of shares outstanding in MSFT to the shares outstanding in RHAT. Compare the breadth of ownership across the public. Sorry, but RHAT stock movements just don't matter to 99% of the investing public...30% of which probably owns MSFT.
People often write stories using wire material, but the quoted material is never "rewritten". I have worked in this industry and I can tell you the wire services would litigate the hell out of anyone altering their stories (which is different than using their data in a story you are writing).
First of all, MSNBC gets its news mostly from the wire services like most other news websites, so cool it with the unwarranted bias talk. This makes sense. The MS developers can talk directly with MSNBC folks and try to get more advanced crawling and indexing methods in place. This is why MS is involved in MSNBC in the first place - integration. Don't you think Yahoo gets the inside scoop on how Yahoo News articles are formatted directly from the developer? Or any other portal for that matter? Shock and amazement - employees talk to each other!
The GNOME folks do have some distance to go as well. Desktop integration is still not quite there - some apps play ball, some apps don't. What GNOME does have in its corner is the apps that have the mindshare of most users - Mozilla, Evolution, GAIM, OpenOffice etc. I am not claiming these are "better", just commenting on momentum.
Whats next for both is something new. Both environments pretty much do offer a decent enough environment that you can point Aunt Millie at it. Both need to start innovating with new ideas.
Anyone can file a patent or seek protection of a technology. The question is - will people pay to license it? Look at IBM - research pays for this firm as they rake in massive licensing revenues every year. What does MS have that others will pay to license? Thats the rubber/road issue for any protected tech.
True, but the cost of that capital is influenced by their performance as measured by the common stock. It isn't a strict dependency, but corporate bonds will almost certainly have to pay higher rates if the company becomes a penny stock or is delisted. Its an indicator that creditors are taking on more risk.
You can only print stock if your stock value is fast rising, and that's not that many companies. Otherwise it has the same effect as printing money -- devaluing the existing shareholder's shares.
Thats true. Most shareholders seem to have no understanding of dilution.
Regardless, heavy trade in a corporation's stock actually does very little to raise capital for the company.
Not true, the company often holds a large number of its own shares through past buybacks or other measures, so a lower or higher price emerging from share volatility does impact its own accounts. Presuming a firm does not hold its own shares, you would be correct.
Good luck SGI, the Valley is rooting for its former star, and so are a lot of stock speculators.
Lets do a short course: the Earth is the only place in this solar system we can live unaided. The next best truck stop is a looooooooooong way away and humans probably won't be around as we know them to arrive safely.
People seriously need to stop "learning" about science from Star Trek.
All done in an environment more or less compatible with human needs. And once again, do not suspend basic science - scale matters in the universe. To everyone who equates flying around the world in a hot air balloon with travelling to another galaxy - please stop getting your science education from Star Trek.
Really? What was the world population in 50,000 BC? How were they evolved with regards to the consumption of raw or vegetative food sources? You're projecting a lot about our current condition on to a previous time.
You are assuming like most other posters that the universe is here for humans and needs humans. At some point something that came from us will go out there and maybe it will keep your history in mind for nostalgic purposes, but don't presume that you need to be there or were ever meant to be there. Maybe we're just a step on the path to something higher, bound to be forgotten.
Once again you are presuming humans as we currently exist must be part of the future equation. We will evolve ourselves into something that can in fact live for ten thousand centuries, able to endure open space (in which case we will not be human any longer). Yet another comment that presumes the Star Trek universe in which only that which we want to change will change - in your case, the assumptions that humanity stays as it is and everything else moves around it.
Once again you are suspending a basic understanding of space science in place of some vague glib appeal to otherwise minor achievements. Scale matters. Don't compare Lindbergh and travelling to another galaxy.
False. We were given all of the raw materials to make this leap with ease. Livestock. Wood. Lightning. All in abundance. In fact, given forest fires, one can claim that cooked food will appear naturally over time without human interference, presuming Bambi can't outrun the wall of flames.
Since cooked food is naturally occurring in nature, your analogy is totally false.
Do not presume that humans as they exist now represent the highest form of evolution. Anthro-centrism is another fallacy of scifi.
This is apart from the issue of distance. In the real universe, scale matters. You cannot compare travel to another galaxy to travelling across the Pacific.
What do we know about spaceflight? Its toxic to humans and there is nowhere anywhere nearby by any conceivable technology that we could get to. The reality is that one day something from Earth will reach another planet in another galaxy but it is going to look more like R2D2 than Captain Kirk.
Would be interested to see someone float a thin client based on using the iPod as the user identification/storage component. Lots of ideas come to mind once you assume the iPod is ubiquotous.
Okay, so you have toured the plant. Okay, you live near the plant. Okay, so you watch TV news for information about the plant. So far I haven't heard anything that makes you remotely qualified to tell us if the plant is safe or not. For all you know you are already subject to a host of illnesses that may not manifest themsevles for years to come.
Does a spinoff count?
Its been well known that Slate was an experiment for MS, just like Sidewalk etc a few years back. I'm not surprised they are looking to sell it. I'm surprise they waited this long.
As a side note, most of the home computer systems awarded by BW over the years are pretty but totally useless. The mice and keyboard are cool looking but so hopelessly minimalistic that it is unclear who could use them long term.
If MSFT really wanted to latch on to the future they would buy Yahoo, Google or Ebay. The era of anyone really caring that much about a document editor (enough tp pay gobs of cash for it) are over.