You can and must know your subject area, in this case, tech. You also need to put together a business plan and shop it around. But the thing that there doesn't seem to be a lot of help out there on is the magic ingredient: learning to think like a Yankee trader. There's a certain kind of thinking that works out ways to monetize a technology product or service. Sales people kind of have it. MBAs don't have it, or if they do, in small degrees (learning the CAPM doesn't teach you how). Engineers definitely don't have it.
So where/how can the aspiring entrepreneurs among us learn how to think about how to make money with their marvelous inventions? Do you have any books, organizations, or workshops you could recommend?
This was first said in the 70's when the environmental movement was trying to call attention to waste in the U.S.
Since then fuel standards have risen, pollution has fallen, and energy efficiency has begun to be built into products as a matter of course. Despite the current administration and Congress's attempts to unravel all that, we're still much further along than we were 30 years ago. So this "25% of the world's energy, but only 5% of the world's population" line is quite outdated and threadbare.
Now, there could certainly be a transition away from a car culture to mass transit, and a full conversion from oil to renewables, and all that good stuff. But it's China's and India's following in the US's consumption footsteps that's an even bigger problem. Unlike the US, which is 5% of the world population, China and India combined are about 50% of the world's population. If their per capita consumption rose to that of the US, we'd need several more Earths just to supply them with raw materials.
So a better thing to do is not wallow in self-hatred nor finger pointing, but to find a sustainable way to raise standards of living for everyone. Think of it as an exercise in balancing an equation.
Well, that's now how the story goes the way I heard it.
What I heard happened was that you took a trip to Europa and wound up at a party where you were trying to pick up this chick Phoebe and her friend Miranda. They blew you off so you started drinking way too much Ganymede. Before you knew it, you were so blasted that some leatherman who was built like Atlas and hung like a Titan packed you into his Saturn, lowered your Kuiper belt and violated your I/O protocols. Then you released an Oort cloud. Somehow you wound up back in your hotel. But the next day you discovered you had the dark spot on Uranus.
a lawyer or an MBA, or that most fell of beasts, an lawyer with an MBA, who came up with this nonsense. earth to Apple--it's good to have your product name become synonymous with the action it performs.
You want to test your new weapons on Americans exercising their constitutional right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Perhaps it's time we test our old weapons on governments who have forgotten that they work for us.
Using this stuff on Americans is about the quickest and surest way to guarantee that the second scenario happens.
So spying on the rank-and-file employees is OK, but do it to the members of the board, who in all likelihood sit on many other boards of major corporations, and suddenly it's like, "oh. my. gosh! haw cud they doo thaat?"
On the other hand, Dunn had to be pretty stupid to piss off the members of the board, who in all likelihood sit on the boards of many other major corporations. Suddenly, Congress itself is investigating. Yes, those people have that kind of juice.
That's true, and it always put me in mind of another thing that doesn't make sense if you only saw the movies: why would Sauron be afraid of Aragorn, and how is it that Aragorn was able to resist the temptation of the ring and deny Sauron the palantirs? In the movies Sauron is a seemingly omnipotent evil.
It's only when you read all the back story notes Tolkien wrote before writing LOTR that you find out that the Numenoreans, Aragorn's ancestors, were so powerful that they kicked Sauron's butt and kept him imprisoned and tortured in a tower for a long, long time. They were so powerful that they made war on the Valinor, nearly made it, but then were cast down for their blasphemy. That's when Sauron escaped, and the survivors fled to found Gondor and the Northern kingdom.
So Sauron was really more like an evil Gandalf on steroids, and knew that Aragorn had the stuff to take him down.
In the movie, Aragorn randomly hands the four hobbits four short swords right before the Nazgul attack at Amon Sul. He doesn't explain where they come from nor how he came to have them. Later, Merry uses his to stab the Witch King in the back of the knee, which despite the admonition "no man can slay me," seems to be pretty effective at hurting him and rendering him vulnerable to Eowyn's coup de grace. But nobody knows why.
Now, Tolkien, in true Tolkien fashion, had a back-story for everything, and the Tom Bombadil episode provided the back story for those swords. (It also did other things, but I won't go into that here). The four hobbits escape Buckland in the Shire into the adjacent woods where Bombadil rules. They have various adventures, but as they're just about to get back onto the road to Bree, they are taken by wights who drag them into ancient barrows. Bombadil comes to rescue them, and gives them swords he finds there. The barrows belonged to warrior kings of the Northern Kingdom, who forged their swords with spells to break the enchantments of the Witch King of Angmar, their mortal enemy.
So, at the moment of truth on the plains of Gondor, Merry's sword was the only one around that could have possibly broken the Witch King's invulnerability.
My GF and I rented Segways on a recent trip to Montreal. It was a blast. We zipped all over the waterfront, testing it on inclines, gravel, etc. It's pretty amazing how steep a surface it can climb. I wished it could go faster, actually.
These things could revolutionize cities, but it's not an overnight proposition because you're battling for real estate on the road with cars. Cities like Montreal, with extensive and sensible bike lanes/routes, make the most sense initially. But if they sold them in NYC, you'd really have to sell models equipped with miniguns to defend yourself against crazy taxi drivers.
In any case, if you get the chance to take one for a spin, do. It's really fun.
If a member of my team is efficient enough to finish everything I require in the time allotted, well then it's their little bonus for being so efficient. If they're not finishing everything I require in the time allotted, then if it resists corrective measures and goes on long enough, I fire them. I don't care if the reason is that they're good but just can't stop blogging at work or whatever. The proof is in the pudding. A coder might be Einstein, but if he never does any work then he's no good to me.
Thinking that blocking internet access will make a difference is a childish yet warped paternalistic impulse.
Ah yes, iPods at War
on
iPods at War
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· Score: 3, Funny
I remember when I was in the service the only weapons they gave us were old battle-scarred walkmans that could only play 99 Red Balloons. That was before they realized that batteries did not carry enough charge and desert sand played the mickey with tape-fed cartridges. Often you'd be hunkered down in the trenches, waiting for the whistle and cry to go 'over the top,' only to find that your tape had jammed.
Then near the end of doing my bit, they rolled out slim players that needed only one battery and had special sand filters. They played, "Another One Bites the Dust," and were quite the thing. We put the Jerries to route with that number. A handful of the lads were equipped with odd prototypes that had no batteries or cartridges and got their songs from a computer, but we hard-bitten vets laughed and laughed and would never have gone to war with something like that.
Video games aren't kicked around by pols because they're low-brow. If they did that, they'd lose 90% of their constituencies. Video games are kicked around because they're a convenient whipping boy for demagogues who want to appeal to the 'think of the children!' crowd. It's no different than Elvis and Rock 'n' Roll were back in the day--a convenient scapegoat for shysters who want your vote and money.
But Rock 'n' Roll is now considered mainstream because those darn kids grew up. Video games are almost there, given how many adults play them too now. Let's see how long politicians continue to slam video games once 80% of their audience pipes up and says, 'hey! i play video games and they rock and you have your head up your ass.'
I was about to say, hey, wouldn't Freedom of Press cover taking photos in public or even my own private property? Then I said, oh wait, we're in the New Amerika.
Good thing many private citizens still own automatic weapons. It may soon be time to exercise the right to bear arms, wipe the governmental slate clean, and start over again. Next time, we should drill the constitution into the heads of law enforcement and politicians until they get that when they violate those, the citizens will get seriously pissed off.
Thank god. In the U.S. there is such a climate of fear that no one can utter a word even faintly critical of Israeli policy without being labeled an anti-semite. If an American dare suggest that slaughtering innocent Lebanese is not good, in every medium and in the most strident tones pro-Israel apologists immediately throw the slander machine into gear and liken the speaker to a Nazi or at best ignorant. It is vile and profoundly undemocratic, and this American is utterly fed up with it.
Arabs who slaughter innocent Jews are bad. Jews who slaughter innocent Arabs are bad. Arab terrorists are trying to force the formation of a state. Jewish terrorists (Hagannah) forced the formation of their state. Israel is a state founded by terror, maintained by terror, fighting terror. It's all terror. And the United States should either sit on all parties concerned until they stop the terror, or walk away and let them annihilate each other. I favor the former, but will accept the latter. But the status quo, unequivocal support for Israel, must end.
I worked a stint in JWT's (nee J. Walter Thompson) Interactive Division on Madison Avenue. Creative Directors would come down with retarded ideas like this all the time two weeks before launching the TV and Print components of an integrated campaign and demand we pull something the size of MySpace out of our asses, with such detailed instructions as, "we want something really hip and cool that's 'viral.'" They asked for the same thing in the same words so often that we had a canned spiel explaining that that word, 'viral,' does not mean what they think it means. Then the marketroids in the Account Department would further retard the Creative Directors' stunted concepts with their lunacy, and finally both the Agency and Client legal departments would do their review of the online component and vomit all over it, touch up the corners with their own feces, and the final product would look exactly like this opt-out message.
It's pitiful, laughable, and annoying; but on the bright side it does permanently preclude a true corporate takeover of the internet's mindspace because even though individuals at corporations understand that they don't get it, the very nature of a corporation makes it impossible that the corporation ever will.
Corporate America/World retards human progress, not promotes it.
But what ever are Fox, CNN, and the Bush administration going to use to distract us now? It's been such an integral part of their claim that the sky is falling and that we should therefore hand over all our freedoms. Does this mean double helpings of immigrant phobia? Would have to be, since if they whip up North Korea or Iran, they'd actually have to do something about it.
This is such a misconception. It sounds very logical, and it fits with the accepted wisdom. But it could not be more wrong. Precisely because most people do not pay attention to what government is doing is why the individual who does can be more influential than you think. Why is that? Because they are in Washington, while you are in the congressman's district, on the ground. If you start handing out flyers at the local grocery store, they will pay attention. If you get together a group of 50 neighbors who also start handing out flyers and going door-to-door, they get nervous. If you start a political club and start moving local and state politicians toward their positions, they court you. If you start talking to the media, they get scared.
But does it take work? Yes. Does it take thought? Yes. Is it a skill you can acquire? Definitely. If you want to be a free citizen in a free society, you must acquire the skill and put it to use. You'll surprise yourself with how much you get done, and quickly.
since the motto of NH is "live free, or die", you'd think there'd be legal precedent there for mr. gannon to haul out a BFG and arrest the cops for criminal trespass. friend of mine from college was from NH, and she told me in her town it was legal to march into the mayor's office, pick him up by the scruff of the neck, and throw him out on the front steps. being from montana, i remember being instantly and terribly jealous of that.
I'll be happy to have George W. Bush and Karl Rove know my every move as long as I get to know their every move. If anything, they should know nothing about what we do whilst we know every move they make. After all, they work for us.
If neither of those scenarios work, then they can butt the hell out of our lives.
Phones need to be smaller, like the size of an earring or something that you have constantly available, and which is speech activated. Think the "call bob" features they have in some phones now. Camera features, displays, etc., belong more naturally in smart spectacles. More involved interaction like text input is a tougher cat to skin, but then hey IANAID (I Am Not An Industrial Designer).
just got an x41 "Raven" tablet from EmperorLinux, and it rocks. i asked them to keep a small WinXP partition on the drive in case i really need to play a game or run software that is only available on windows, and 3 weeks in haven't had to boot into it once. linux has come a long way. additional pluses about EmperorLinux were that they have good support and a standing order for many laptops, so if you can't get your machine from the manufacturer direct, check there.
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You can and must know your subject area, in this case, tech. You also need to put together a business plan and shop it around. But the thing that there doesn't seem to be a lot of help out there on is the magic ingredient: learning to think like a Yankee trader. There's a certain kind of thinking that works out ways to monetize a technology product or service. Sales people kind of have it. MBAs don't have it, or if they do, in small degrees (learning the CAPM doesn't teach you how). Engineers definitely don't have it.
So where/how can the aspiring entrepreneurs among us learn how to think about how to make money with their marvelous inventions? Do you have any books, organizations, or workshops you could recommend?
This was first said in the 70's when the environmental movement was trying to call attention to waste in the U.S.
Since then fuel standards have risen, pollution has fallen, and energy efficiency has begun to be built into products as a matter of course. Despite the current administration and Congress's attempts to unravel all that, we're still much further along than we were 30 years ago. So this "25% of the world's energy, but only 5% of the world's population" line is quite outdated and threadbare.
Now, there could certainly be a transition away from a car culture to mass transit, and a full conversion from oil to renewables, and all that good stuff. But it's China's and India's following in the US's consumption footsteps that's an even bigger problem. Unlike the US, which is 5% of the world population, China and India combined are about 50% of the world's population. If their per capita consumption rose to that of the US, we'd need several more Earths just to supply them with raw materials.
So a better thing to do is not wallow in self-hatred nor finger pointing, but to find a sustainable way to raise standards of living for everyone. Think of it as an exercise in balancing an equation.
Well, that's now how the story goes the way I heard it.
What I heard happened was that you took a trip to Europa and wound up at a party where you were trying to pick up this chick Phoebe and her friend Miranda. They blew you off so you started drinking way too much Ganymede. Before you knew it, you were so blasted that some leatherman who was built like Atlas and hung like a Titan packed you into his Saturn, lowered your Kuiper belt and violated your I/O protocols. Then you released an Oort cloud. Somehow you wound up back in your hotel. But the next day you discovered you had the dark spot on Uranus.
At least that's how I heard it. Sucks, dude.
furthermore, the more they do this, the more they chance repeating the great Stitch 'n' Bitch controversy.
ahem, that's "Trekkens."
You want to test your new weapons on Americans exercising their constitutional right to freedom of speech and freedom of assembly. Perhaps it's time we test our old weapons on governments who have forgotten that they work for us.
Using this stuff on Americans is about the quickest and surest way to guarantee that the second scenario happens.
So spying on the rank-and-file employees is OK, but do it to the members of the board, who in all likelihood sit on many other boards of major corporations, and suddenly it's like, "oh. my. gosh! haw cud they doo thaat?"
On the other hand, Dunn had to be pretty stupid to piss off the members of the board, who in all likelihood sit on the boards of many other major corporations. Suddenly, Congress itself is investigating. Yes, those people have that kind of juice.
That's true, and it always put me in mind of another thing that doesn't make sense if you only saw the movies: why would Sauron be afraid of Aragorn, and how is it that Aragorn was able to resist the temptation of the ring and deny Sauron the palantirs? In the movies Sauron is a seemingly omnipotent evil.
It's only when you read all the back story notes Tolkien wrote before writing LOTR that you find out that the Numenoreans, Aragorn's ancestors, were so powerful that they kicked Sauron's butt and kept him imprisoned and tortured in a tower for a long, long time. They were so powerful that they made war on the Valinor, nearly made it, but then were cast down for their blasphemy. That's when Sauron escaped, and the survivors fled to found Gondor and the Northern kingdom.
So Sauron was really more like an evil Gandalf on steroids, and knew that Aragorn had the stuff to take him down.
In the movie, Aragorn randomly hands the four hobbits four short swords right before the Nazgul attack at Amon Sul. He doesn't explain where they come from nor how he came to have them. Later, Merry uses his to stab the Witch King in the back of the knee, which despite the admonition "no man can slay me," seems to be pretty effective at hurting him and rendering him vulnerable to Eowyn's coup de grace. But nobody knows why.
Now, Tolkien, in true Tolkien fashion, had a back-story for everything, and the Tom Bombadil episode provided the back story for those swords. (It also did other things, but I won't go into that here). The four hobbits escape Buckland in the Shire into the adjacent woods where Bombadil rules. They have various adventures, but as they're just about to get back onto the road to Bree, they are taken by wights who drag them into ancient barrows. Bombadil comes to rescue them, and gives them swords he finds there. The barrows belonged to warrior kings of the Northern Kingdom, who forged their swords with spells to break the enchantments of the Witch King of Angmar, their mortal enemy.
So, at the moment of truth on the plains of Gondor, Merry's sword was the only one around that could have possibly broken the Witch King's invulnerability.
My GF and I rented Segways on a recent trip to Montreal. It was a blast. We zipped all over the waterfront, testing it on inclines, gravel, etc. It's pretty amazing how steep a surface it can climb. I wished it could go faster, actually.
These things could revolutionize cities, but it's not an overnight proposition because you're battling for real estate on the road with cars. Cities like Montreal, with extensive and sensible bike lanes/routes, make the most sense initially. But if they sold them in NYC, you'd really have to sell models equipped with miniguns to defend yourself against crazy taxi drivers.
In any case, if you get the chance to take one for a spin, do. It's really fun.
how those who oppose evolution seem to have no problem believing in social darwinism.
If a member of my team is efficient enough to finish everything I require in the time allotted, well then it's their little bonus for being so efficient. If they're not finishing everything I require in the time allotted, then if it resists corrective measures and goes on long enough, I fire them. I don't care if the reason is that they're good but just can't stop blogging at work or whatever. The proof is in the pudding. A coder might be Einstein, but if he never does any work then he's no good to me.
Thinking that blocking internet access will make a difference is a childish yet warped paternalistic impulse.
I remember when I was in the service the only weapons they gave us were old battle-scarred walkmans that could only play 99 Red Balloons. That was before they realized that batteries did not carry enough charge and desert sand played the mickey with tape-fed cartridges. Often you'd be hunkered down in the trenches, waiting for the whistle and cry to go 'over the top,' only to find that your tape had jammed.
Then near the end of doing my bit, they rolled out slim players that needed only one battery and had special sand filters. They played, "Another One Bites the Dust," and were quite the thing. We put the Jerries to route with that number. A handful of the lads were equipped with odd prototypes that had no batteries or cartridges and got their songs from a computer, but we hard-bitten vets laughed and laughed and would never have gone to war with something like that.
in evolution because I personally evolved from a lower life form--I used to be a Republican.
Video games aren't kicked around by pols because they're low-brow. If they did that, they'd lose 90% of their constituencies. Video games are kicked around because they're a convenient whipping boy for demagogues who want to appeal to the 'think of the children!' crowd. It's no different than Elvis and Rock 'n' Roll were back in the day--a convenient scapegoat for shysters who want your vote and money.
But Rock 'n' Roll is now considered mainstream because those darn kids grew up. Video games are almost there, given how many adults play them too now. Let's see how long politicians continue to slam video games once 80% of their audience pipes up and says, 'hey! i play video games and they rock and you have your head up your ass.'
I was about to say, hey, wouldn't Freedom of Press cover taking photos in public or even my own private property? Then I said, oh wait, we're in the New Amerika.
Good thing many private citizens still own automatic weapons. It may soon be time to exercise the right to bear arms, wipe the governmental slate clean, and start over again. Next time, we should drill the constitution into the heads of law enforcement and politicians until they get that when they violate those, the citizens will get seriously pissed off.
Thank god. In the U.S. there is such a climate of fear that no one can utter a word even faintly critical of Israeli policy without being labeled an anti-semite. If an American dare suggest that slaughtering innocent Lebanese is not good, in every medium and in the most strident tones pro-Israel apologists immediately throw the slander machine into gear and liken the speaker to a Nazi or at best ignorant. It is vile and profoundly undemocratic, and this American is utterly fed up with it.
Arabs who slaughter innocent Jews are bad. Jews who slaughter innocent Arabs are bad. Arab terrorists are trying to force the formation of a state. Jewish terrorists (Hagannah) forced the formation of their state. Israel is a state founded by terror, maintained by terror, fighting terror. It's all terror. And the United States should either sit on all parties concerned until they stop the terror, or walk away and let them annihilate each other. I favor the former, but will accept the latter. But the status quo, unequivocal support for Israel, must end.
I worked a stint in JWT's (nee J. Walter Thompson) Interactive Division on Madison Avenue. Creative Directors would come down with retarded ideas like this all the time two weeks before launching the TV and Print components of an integrated campaign and demand we pull something the size of MySpace out of our asses, with such detailed instructions as, "we want something really hip and cool that's 'viral.'" They asked for the same thing in the same words so often that we had a canned spiel explaining that that word, 'viral,' does not mean what they think it means. Then the marketroids in the Account Department would further retard the Creative Directors' stunted concepts with their lunacy, and finally both the Agency and Client legal departments would do their review of the online component and vomit all over it, touch up the corners with their own feces, and the final product would look exactly like this opt-out message.
It's pitiful, laughable, and annoying; but on the bright side it does permanently preclude a true corporate takeover of the internet's mindspace because even though individuals at corporations understand that they don't get it, the very nature of a corporation makes it impossible that the corporation ever will.
Corporate America/World retards human progress, not promotes it.
But what ever are Fox, CNN, and the Bush administration going to use to distract us now? It's been such an integral part of their claim that the sky is falling and that we should therefore hand over all our freedoms. Does this mean double helpings of immigrant phobia? Would have to be, since if they whip up North Korea or Iran, they'd actually have to do something about it.
This is such a misconception. It sounds very logical, and it fits with the accepted wisdom. But it could not be more wrong. Precisely because most people do not pay attention to what government is doing is why the individual who does can be more influential than you think. Why is that? Because they are in Washington, while you are in the congressman's district, on the ground. If you start handing out flyers at the local grocery store, they will pay attention. If you get together a group of 50 neighbors who also start handing out flyers and going door-to-door, they get nervous. If you start a political club and start moving local and state politicians toward their positions, they court you. If you start talking to the media, they get scared.
But does it take work? Yes. Does it take thought? Yes. Is it a skill you can acquire? Definitely. If you want to be a free citizen in a free society, you must acquire the skill and put it to use. You'll surprise yourself with how much you get done, and quickly.
Stop rationalizing inaction and get to work!
since the motto of NH is "live free, or die", you'd think there'd be legal precedent there for mr. gannon to haul out a BFG and arrest the cops for criminal trespass. friend of mine from college was from NH, and she told me in her town it was legal to march into the mayor's office, pick him up by the scruff of the neck, and throw him out on the front steps. being from montana, i remember being instantly and terribly jealous of that.
I'll be happy to have George W. Bush and Karl Rove know my every move as long as I get to know their every move. If anything, they should know nothing about what we do whilst we know every move they make. After all, they work for us.
If neither of those scenarios work, then they can butt the hell out of our lives.
Phones need to be smaller, like the size of an earring or something that you have constantly available, and which is speech activated. Think the "call bob" features they have in some phones now. Camera features, displays, etc., belong more naturally in smart spectacles. More involved interaction like text input is a tougher cat to skin, but then hey IANAID (I Am Not An Industrial Designer).
just got an x41 "Raven" tablet from EmperorLinux, and it rocks. i asked them to keep a small WinXP partition on the drive in case i really need to play a game or run software that is only available on windows, and 3 weeks in haven't had to boot into it once. linux has come a long way. additional pluses about EmperorLinux were that they have good support and a standing order for many laptops, so if you can't get your machine from the manufacturer direct, check there.
The time is swiftly approaching for patriots to initiate the Second American Revolution and burn Washington D.C. to the ground.