Before everyone starts posting stories about how they grew up on their Apple II using a 300 baud modem, let's have a forward looking discussion.
The Internet as we define it today was born 40 years ago when two big computers were hooked up with a cable and exchanged data. Let me ask: what are the milestones that will matter 10, 30 years from now? Some guesses (pick your favorites):
- wires, what wires?: The Internet goes wireless, with the invention of Wifi (circa 1991 - yes, really that old)
- device, what device?: The Internet goes ubiquitous, we don't even have to carry those bulky iPhones around (circa ???)
- telepresence: I see you, you see me, in HD, anytime, wherever you and I are. Maybe we can even shake hands. Definitely coming in the next decade.
- oracle: all knowledge, all questions, answered all the time (that might change the way we think of our education system!)
Who said innovation is slowing down? We are still in the stone age of the Internet.
The most thoughtful article I read that truly explains what the technical tradeoffs are with dock/taskbar design: here.
On a similar topic, if you want to work on the home page GUI for Android, there is an on-going project as well.
The good news for consumers is that both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are great-looking OS. Computerworld is just wrong to give a point to Apple on price:-)
For once, it's worth reading TFA until the end, when you find out: that the blog had "minuscule" traffic, it was taken down as soon as the lawsuit was filed, and it only had 5 posts all written in one day. Basically the blog was dead.
Sure, as a public figure, it's never fun to be insulted on the Internet (ask Mike Arrington if you don't believe me). But this didn't seem to warrant a full-fledged lawsuit.
-- Calling all indie iPhone developers: fair and open app crowdsourcing
Let's see if you can find the trick in Palm's privacy policy:
Personal information is information directly identifiable to you, such as your name, address, email address, and phone number, as well as other non-public information associated with such information. Some examples of how we collect and use personal information include... [ a list that sounds pretty safe and reasonable]
The operating word is Some examples: legally, they don't say that the list is exhaustive and that they don't collect information any other way. So the long list of nice looking collection is just a decoy!
a Participant that is part of a team understands and agrees that if his/her team is selected to receive a Prize, the team is responsible for ensuring the funds are appropriately distributed to each member of the team
Developers can officially unite, work together, collaborate, and maybe split $100,000. Nice. These are very flexible and open terms on the part of Google.
Maybe they should have used HW/SW co-verification (like Seagate in that study - an example of how a storage company tests their firmware).
For you software developers out there who enjoy free debuggers, you should know that we, hardware designers, also have our own debuggers. Except they are a little bit more expensive (think $500,000+) and can be quite bulky. But they are the only way to really test firmware before taping-out a chip.
IANAL, but I'm guessing that "liability" is a legal term, so if you ask a non-lawyer a legal question (do you admit liability), then the answer is meaningless. Think of it as hearsay for experts: if you don't know about a topic, you shouldn't be allowed to comment on the record on that topic. Does the guy understand the legal ramifications of what liability means? I don't.
Now, I must say that I'm not impressed with his defense. Anyone can comment on who the defense lawyer was and whether they did a good job? It just doesn't sound great to admit on the stand to being fully, completely guilty. Criminals tend to get away with a lot of stuff, but not this guy.
A good example of the justice system at work for your average citizen... So really, what happens next? The guy files for bankruptcy. The RIAA doesn't get any money (not that they really intend to get significant income from those cases). What are the consequences for Mr. Tenenbaum? Can't get a credit card for a few years? Needs to get a job? I'm really curious as to what the true consequences will be.
Does the extra 15 seconds added by the operator really cost me anything since my phone bill uses 1-minute increments?
What would save us consumers a lot more money is having cellphone operators bill usage by the second. The European Commission already forced the European operators to adopt 1-second billing increments.
True. 95% of the workforce is way too risk-averse. On the other hand, there is no arguing that people's attitudes are changing. The 9-5 job today is so ingrained in our culture that very few are questioning it.
20 years from now, the current generation, raised on multitasking iPhone/IM/FaceBook may continue to multitask in the workplace by working on several projects at the same time. Will we still have 9-5 day jobs with cubicles, assuming telepresence will be good enough that you could work anywhere with anyone and not be impacted by the distance?
shameless plug: the digital nomad also cut loose all links with cubicle nation, including the employee contract. Instead, they work on agile projects, where groups of people can dynamically recombine online using stuff like online deals.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. What matters is confronting your idea with real world feedback and you'll be astonished by the results (read this for more on keeping your idea confidential: the great startup idea that I can't reveal yet).
Guy Kawasaki gave one really good suggestion to test your idea: convince a woman. It sounds stupid and insulting, but what he really means is that it's too easy for geeks and tech lovers to fall in love with a geeky idea. Presumably, women are more grounded and will tell you why your idea is not practical.
Finally, regarding confidentiality: don't worry about it so much
Some monetization techniques make sense (charging $5 for a premium account), but I'm shocked by this one:
Techdirt Reviews Your Business Plan, only $5,000. Describe your business, and what you're trying to accomplish... We'll run it as a case on the Insight Community
To everyone starting out there: conserve your cash, don't spend it on any of those "magical programs" or consultants that promise you the moon.
What almost makes more sense, if you really want to pick the brains of the TechDirt guys is to fork the $1,000 for spending one day with them (even tough I think it's only worth maybe $200).
Sure, but on the other hand, you have to agree that Apple did a good job of keeping viruses and spamware off their platform. There is indeed a real human being(*) who tests all the apps and makes sure that the app does what its description claims...
If you make a completely open app store, make sure you protect your users against malicious experience. You don't want your end-users to be upset.
(*) sometimes it does feel like there is indeed one human being doing all the testing:-)
I'm surprised that this is news. I remember working a few years ago on booting Linux (also the MontaVista version) in 600 million cycles flat, which for a CPU running at 600 MHz, is exactly one second as well.
I agree with the article that user involvement is key. However, users are clueless about what they really want and you can't possibly use them to write the specs of your product! On the other hand, developers tend to reject criticism from end-users because they lack technical expertise.
I can think of one approach that might work: build a really good analytics library that would measure various usability aspects. Applied to Firefox for instance, it could generate data on how the average user goes about finding a particular setting, how long it takes them to perform a given action, etc.
Developers would respect the hard, factual data that the analytics would generate. It would make it easier for the minority of usability engineers to argue against feature creep.
The French "Conseil Constitutionnel" is a joke compared to the US Supreme Court, but for once they made the right decision.
At a minimum, the right to defend yourself and face your accuser was sorely lacking from the "3-strike" legislation. The French legal system already has the equivalent of the US small claims court, so there was no reason for the ISPs to become judges.
The other good news is that the court is basing its decision on the fact that a right to communication (speech, really, if you translate into US constitution lingo) includes the right to access the Internet. That's pretty cool potentially!
-- pour les developpeurs qui n'habitent pas dans la Silicon Valley: FairSoftware
Agreed. Trackers such as Google Analytics and more have been around for years. But now it's getting even worse with the flurry of URL shorteners. Not only can't you see what the real URL points to, its main purpose is to track, track, track.
Personally, I don't believe it makes sense to have a web completely free of "web bugs". I'd rather have some pretty strong laws, along the lines of the presumption of innocence, so that anything collected about you can't possibly be used against you if it was obtained "by chance". That would be a start.
If your goal is to prevent the students from ever completing their project and running on real hardware, then pick VHDL. Its ADA-like compiler will reject every possible attempt at coding until you master the language.
At least with Verilog you'll compile some gates, which may or may not work functionally, but at least you'll have fun discovering what your code does in hardware.
I was part of the IEEE committee which standardized the VHDL subset for synthesis (a fiasco, but that's another story).
10 years ago, the debate between Verilog and VHDL was that the US was using Verilog and academia and Europe were using VHDL. That's over: pretty much everyone switched to some form of SystemVerilog.
In the end, what really matters is that students can go back and forth between any given language construct (blocking assignment, missing assignment, for loop, etc.) and its hardware equivalent (flip-fop, latch, mux, etc.).
Very few people are good at this. The ones that do make $150,000+ in Silicon Valley. So it is definitely a good career path.
We all know paywalls won't work. However, the alternative is worse: if newspapers don't find a way to make money online soon, they'll start seriously blending advertising inside news content. I don't want that to happen!
One idea, based on what I have seen work abroad, is to mandate, for a limited time, a fee of $1 on all Internet connections. You could then use that monthly credit to subscribe to whatever content you chose. That would inject millions in the content economy. If what you want is free music, use your credit for that. If you want to read the New York Times, fine.
After a few years, phase out the fee (hum...). By then, people should have gotten used to it and you get a smooth transition to people using micro-payments for content. Any better ideas?
-- FairSoftware.net -- fair jobs for iPhone developers and graphic designers
The economy is moving online. Soon, it won't matter anymore where you live and who you work with.
And I'm not talking about the scams such as "make $100K working from home". I mean real, legitimate, value-added work (like programming), that you do wherever you want, whenever you want, as long as you deliver a good product.
The problem with free (gratis) is that it doesn't pay the bills for the developer. I'm not talking about being greedy, but accessories like kids, spouse and house come in handy in winter:-)
That's why I have been giving more and more thought to a Fair business model, which would combine the best of two worlds: libre, but not gratis.
The distributed revenue sharing part we already solved with FairSoftware.
It would work like this: Corporations and end-user would have to pay for the service or software. But it wouldn't quite be commercial. The proceeds would be shared among the development team. But you could still retain the rights to see the source and modify or tweak it for your environment. Your only constraint is that if you redistribute, you must pay the licensing fee to the original team.
All it takes is to put more libre in the Software Bill of Rights. Volunteers?
The rule is quite simple really. Either they are offering you independence (also known as "f***-you-money"), or they just offer you a glorified salary.
If the offer will truly give you independence (say $1M each?), then take it. You'll be able to start something else just as fun soon enough.
If the offer is $500K to share among 4 people, then I agree with your attitude: it's basically the same as working for a big company and you don't want to do that.
Slashdot Mirror
Before everyone starts posting stories about how they grew up on their Apple II using a 300 baud modem, let's have a forward looking discussion.
The Internet as we define it today was born 40 years ago when two big computers were hooked up with a cable and exchanged data. Let me ask: what are the milestones that will matter 10, 30 years from now? Some guesses (pick your favorites):
- wires, what wires?: The Internet goes wireless, with the invention of Wifi (circa 1991 - yes, really that old)
- device, what device?: The Internet goes ubiquitous, we don't even have to carry those bulky iPhones around (circa ???)
- telepresence: I see you, you see me, in HD, anytime, wherever you and I are. Maybe we can even shake hands. Definitely coming in the next decade.
- oracle: all knowledge, all questions, answered all the time (that might change the way we think of our education system!)
Who said innovation is slowing down? We are still in the stone age of the Internet.
The most thoughtful article I read that truly explains what the technical tradeoffs are with dock/taskbar design: here.
On a similar topic, if you want to work on the home page GUI for Android, there is an on-going project as well.
The good news for consumers is that both Windows 7 and Snow Leopard are great-looking OS. Computerworld is just wrong to give a point to Apple on price :-)
For once, it's worth reading TFA until the end, when you find out: that the blog had "minuscule" traffic, it was taken down as soon as the lawsuit was filed, and it only had 5 posts all written in one day. Basically the blog was dead.
Sure, as a public figure, it's never fun to be insulted on the Internet (ask Mike Arrington if you don't believe me). But this didn't seem to warrant a full-fledged lawsuit.
--
Calling all indie iPhone developers: fair and open app crowdsourcing
Let's see if you can find the trick in Palm's privacy policy:
Personal information is information directly identifiable to you, such as your name, address, email address, and phone number, as well as other non-public information associated with such information. Some examples of how we collect and use personal information include ... [ a list that sounds pretty safe and reasonable]
The operating word is Some examples: legally, they don't say that the list is exhaustive and that they don't collect information any other way. So the long list of nice looking collection is just a decoy!
--
FairSoftware.net -- iPhone dev jobs for geeks by geeks
From the article:
a Participant that is part of a team understands and agrees that if his/her team is selected to receive a Prize, the team is responsible for ensuring the funds are appropriately distributed to each member of the team
Cool! This is the first time that I see Google proactively support a revenue share solution for developers!
Developers can officially unite, work together, collaborate, and maybe split $100,000. Nice. These are very flexible and open terms on the part of Google.
Maybe they should have used HW/SW co-verification (like Seagate in that study - an example of how a storage company tests their firmware).
For you software developers out there who enjoy free debuggers, you should know that we, hardware designers, also have our own debuggers. Except they are a little bit more expensive (think $500,000+) and can be quite bulky. But they are the only way to really test firmware before taping-out a chip.
IANAL, but I'm guessing that "liability" is a legal term, so if you ask a non-lawyer a legal question (do you admit liability), then the answer is meaningless. Think of it as hearsay for experts: if you don't know about a topic, you shouldn't be allowed to comment on the record on that topic. Does the guy understand the legal ramifications of what liability means? I don't.
Now, I must say that I'm not impressed with his defense. Anyone can comment on who the defense lawyer was and whether they did a good job? It just doesn't sound great to admit on the stand to being fully, completely guilty. Criminals tend to get away with a lot of stuff, but not this guy.
A good example of the justice system at work for your average citizen... So really, what happens next? The guy files for bankruptcy. The RIAA doesn't get any money (not that they really intend to get significant income from those cases). What are the consequences for Mr. Tenenbaum? Can't get a credit card for a few years? Needs to get a job? I'm really curious as to what the true consequences will be.
--
fantasy camp for iPhone developers
Does the extra 15 seconds added by the operator really cost me anything since my phone bill uses 1-minute increments?
What would save us consumers a lot more money is having cellphone operators bill usage by the second. The European Commission already
forced the European operators to adopt 1-second billing increments.
--
crowdsource your iPhone app ideas
True. 95% of the workforce is way too risk-averse. On the other hand, there is no arguing that people's attitudes are changing. The 9-5 job today is so ingrained in our culture that very few are questioning it.
20 years from now, the current generation, raised on multitasking iPhone/IM/FaceBook may continue to multitask in the workplace by working on several projects at the same time. Will we still have 9-5 day jobs with cubicles, assuming telepresence will be good enough that you could work anywhere with anyone and not be impacted by the distance?
shameless plug: the digital nomad also cut loose all links with cubicle nation, including the employee contract. Instead, they work on agile projects, where groups of people can dynamically recombine online using stuff like online deals.
Ideas are a dime a dozen. What matters is confronting your idea with real world feedback and you'll be astonished by the results (read this for more on keeping your idea confidential: the great startup idea that I can't reveal yet).
Guy Kawasaki gave one really good suggestion to test your idea: convince a woman. It sounds stupid and insulting, but what he really means is that it's too easy for geeks and tech lovers to fall in love with a geeky idea. Presumably, women are more grounded and will tell you why your idea is not practical.
Finally, regarding confidentiality: don't worry about it so much
Some monetization techniques make sense (charging $5 for a premium account), but I'm shocked by this one:
Techdirt Reviews Your Business Plan, only $5,000. Describe your business, and what you're trying to accomplish... We'll run it as a case on the Insight Community
There are better ways to crowdsource a business idea. At least you'll get unbiased feedback (caveat: I'm one of the founders).
To everyone starting out there: conserve your cash, don't spend it on any of those "magical programs" or consultants that promise you the moon.
What almost makes more sense, if you really want to pick the brains of the TechDirt guys is to fork the $1,000 for spending one day with them (even tough I think it's only worth maybe $200).
This is EXACTLY why we need OPEN architectures.
Sure, but on the other hand, you have to agree that Apple did a good job of keeping viruses and spamware off their platform. There is indeed a real human being(*) who tests all the apps and makes sure that the app does what its description claims...
If you make a completely open app store, make sure you protect your users against malicious experience. You don't want your end-users to be upset.
(*) sometimes it does feel like there is indeed one human being doing all the testing :-)
I'm surprised that this is news. I remember working a few years ago on booting Linux (also the MontaVista version) in 600 million cycles flat, which for a CPU running at 600 MHz, is exactly one second as well.
You can even still: watch a video of this here
I agree with the article that user involvement is key. However, users are clueless about what they really want and you can't possibly use them to write the specs of your product! On the other hand, developers tend to reject criticism from end-users because they lack technical expertise.
I can think of one approach that might work: build a really good analytics library that would measure various usability aspects. Applied to Firefox for instance, it could generate data on how the average user goes about finding a particular setting, how long it takes them to perform a given action, etc.
Developers would respect the hard, factual data that the analytics would generate. It would make it easier for the minority of usability engineers to argue against feature creep.
Is it just me or is this huge?
We'll finally be able to measure IE's marketshare in a non-biased market.
The French "Conseil Constitutionnel" is a joke compared to the US Supreme Court, but for once they made the right decision.
At a minimum, the right to defend yourself and face your accuser was sorely lacking from the "3-strike" legislation. The French legal system already has the equivalent of the US small claims court, so there was no reason for the ISPs to become judges.
The other good news is that the court is basing its decision on the fact that a right to communication (speech, really, if you translate into US constitution lingo) includes the right to access the Internet. That's pretty cool potentially!
--
pour les developpeurs qui n'habitent pas dans la Silicon Valley: FairSoftware
Agreed. Trackers such as Google Analytics and more have been around for years. But now it's getting even worse with the flurry of URL shorteners. Not only can't you see what the real URL points to, its main purpose is to track, track, track.
Personally, I don't believe it makes sense to have a web completely free of "web bugs". I'd rather have some pretty strong laws, along the lines of the presumption of innocence, so that anything collected about you can't possibly be used against you if it was obtained "by chance". That would be a start.
--
escape the corporate world, code for fun and profit
If your goal is to prevent the students from ever completing their project and running on real hardware, then pick VHDL. Its ADA-like compiler will reject every possible attempt at coding until you master the language.
At least with Verilog you'll compile some gates, which may or may not work functionally, but at least you'll have fun discovering what your code does in hardware.
I was part of the IEEE committee which standardized the VHDL subset for synthesis (a fiasco, but that's another story).
10 years ago, the debate between Verilog and VHDL was that the US was using Verilog and academia and Europe were using VHDL. That's over: pretty much everyone switched to some form of SystemVerilog.
In the end, what really matters is that students can go back and forth between any given language construct (blocking assignment, missing assignment, for loop, etc.) and its hardware equivalent (flip-fop, latch, mux, etc.).
Very few people are good at this. The ones that do make $150,000+ in Silicon Valley. So it is definitely a good career path.
We all know paywalls won't work. However, the alternative is worse: if newspapers don't find a way to make money online soon, they'll start seriously blending advertising inside news content. I don't want that to happen!
One idea, based on what I have seen work abroad, is to mandate, for a limited time, a fee of $1 on all Internet connections. You could then use that monthly credit to subscribe to whatever content you chose. That would inject millions in the content economy. If what you want is free music, use your credit for that. If you want to read the New York Times, fine.
After a few years, phase out the fee (hum...). By then, people should have gotten used to it and you get a smooth transition to people using micro-payments for content. Any better ideas?
--
FairSoftware.net -- fair jobs for iPhone developers and graphic designers
The economy is moving online. Soon, it won't matter anymore where you live and who you work with.
And I'm not talking about the scams such as "make $100K working from home". I mean real, legitimate, value-added work (like programming), that you do wherever you want, whenever you want, as long as you deliver a good product.
Get him a girlfriend.
That's pretty much the only solution.
Save a geek: help me develop the Geek Saver, the iPhone app that makes dating for geeks a breeze!
The problem with free (gratis) is that it doesn't pay the bills for the developer. I'm not talking about being greedy, but accessories like kids, spouse and house come in handy in winter :-)
That's why I have been giving more and more thought to a Fair business model, which would combine the best of two worlds: libre, but not gratis.
The distributed revenue sharing part we already solved with FairSoftware.
It would work like this: Corporations and end-user would have to pay for the service or software. But it wouldn't quite be commercial. The proceeds would be shared among the development team. But you could still retain the rights to see the source and modify or tweak it for your environment. Your only constraint is that if you redistribute, you must pay the licensing fee to the original team.
All it takes is to put more libre in the Software Bill of Rights. Volunteers?
Call it sustainable development if you will.
The rule is quite simple really. Either they are offering you independence (also known as "f***-you-money"), or they just offer you a glorified salary.
If the offer will truly give you independence (say $1M each?), then take it. You'll be able to start something else just as fun soon enough.
If the offer is $500K to share among 4 people, then I agree with your attitude: it's basically the same as working for a big company and you don't want to do that.