Thanks for the wikipedia link! Any article like that first link I posted seems suspect. I'm not surprised it's neoconservative funded FUD.
Still, I think Iran remains more of a direct threat than NK. In North Korea, the leader is nuts, but he's your basic dictator, interested in protecting his own power. Also, he proven that he can be bought (which Clinton was happy to do). In Iran, their leader thinks he's taking orders directly from God. The funny thing is if I replace NK and Iran with 'neoconservatives', it's all still true!
However, Bush already won the last election of his life. What we need now is a better leader to begin cleaning up the mess. I don't see any strong Democrat candidates. My personal favorite for 2008: John McCain. However, neoconservatives have hijacked the Republican party. I'm very strongly hoping for a change of control in both houses this election. If not, I'll have to vote against John McCain next election. We've got to get rid of this neoconservative "Axis of Evil" FUD that threatens the entire world.
What we need right now is George Bush Senior, or Bob Dole, or John McCain, or Bill Clinton, or Nixon. An old fashioned foreign-policy wise leader, not a neoconservative self-righteous ignoramus. I strongly recommend the following 3-hour documentary:
"Just outright stupid", is about the best three word description I can give for Bush's North Korea policy, which directly led to a nuclear armed rogue state, and which is the #1 cause that we now are dealing with a radicalized Iran that is rapidly pursuing nuclear weapons.
With expert advice, and sound council from the countries close to NK, Bush Senior, and later Clinton, forged a wise policy that was working, though distasteful to self-righteous neoconservatives. This delicate balance, achieved through years of negotiation, resulted in a verifiable halt to large-scale nuclear enrichment.
All this was smashed to pieces the day Bush gave his infamous "Axis of Evil" speech.
Remember the three "Axis of Evil" countries? Iraq... gee that's going well. Iran... now possibly the largest threat to world stability due to it's nuclear ambitions combined with it's terrorist backing. North Korea... now nuclear armed.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course, anyone reading this who is a true neoconservative ditto-head, or one of those who think Bush is doing God's work, will naturally continue to ignore reality...
Which is very hard to answer. Of course, it can be done on Linux. It can also be done on Windows, and MAC OS-X.
Do you want to pay the big bucks, or write code from scratch? The vendors charging the big $$ hope you're forced to buy. Of course, we on/. hope you'll do it with open-source, so we can start our own TV broadcast stations for free:-D
In any decision a corporation makes, it will choose the most unethical path found acceptable to it's least ethical leader.
Some corporations have many leaders, and no strong central leader. I've found dealing with them to be miserable. For any decision to be made, it only needs to be acceptable to any one of their many leaders, thus, the whole corporation is able to justify acting like a raving-mad power-crazed lunatic. No single individual is highly unethical, just the corporation as a whole.
A board of directors typically has no strong leader, choosing instead a more democratic structure. This can lead to highly unethical behavior, as with the HP board.
I think the reason things work this way is simple. In any decision that might benefit the company, it's easier to simply stand-down and not make waves while somebody else carries out the unethical act. It's harder and more risk prone to stand in the way and demand ethical behavior. After all, corporations are about profits, and you'd be standing in the way of profits. Chances are far higher that you'll get run over than it is that people will say, "Yeah, your right. We were acting unethically, and we were wrong."
That said, I've found the vast majority of corporate board members to be amazingly ethical. After all, investors trust these guys with their money. But, it only takes one or two bad apples...
That's just what I was wondering. Open source is such a powerful force, yet making IPO kinds of money off it seems quite difficult.
In my own experience, open source takes over where profits leave off. Once the profits have left a market, you get all kinds of open source projects supporting it. So long as there are strong profits to be made, the developers prefer to sell their wares. Seems pretty natural to me. The obvious exception is M$, as monopolies have different market dynamics. In the age of robust, versatile, free open source operating systems, what really counts is market dominance.
So, no question here... please pose the one the parent asked. However, now that I've said that, let me contradict myself and state what I think would be a kicking open source startup concept.
Those Garmin guys piss me off. The hardware is expensive as heck, and then they charge you tons for the stupid maps. So, what if you built a Linux based GPS guidance system, which could be taken out of your car and connected to the Internet for map updates. It could also keep track (anonymously - thus the need for open source) of where you went, and this data could be used to automatically update the global map database. How cool would that be?
Taking it one step further, add a low-bandwidth wireless capability (like the ham-radio guys do with packet radio), and now you could track traffic in real time, and view congestion as it happens on your GPS display.
The software would be free, so you'd have to make your money on the hardware.
Agreed. However, digital cash seems like the solution for the Digital Age. Doesn't it seem funny to anyone else that we still carry money made out of linen? No digitally secure signature, nothing I can e-mail or beam, nothing but ink and plants.
A co-worker showed me his new wallet, and I'm envious. Room for nothing but several credit cards, stylish leather, folds up tiny.
So, if we live in the digital age, why do we need to carry money made of paper, and coins made of metal? I don't, and oddly feel freer for it. My old stupid wallet (a true geek hangs onto them until they rot), is mostly cow leather, with very little actual content. Stupid, stupid, stupid...
So, for an article posted to/., why didn't they show any wallets not designed to hold cash?
The fun thing about reading auras is you don't have to be accurate very often. Get 1 in 3 right, and you've impressed at least one pretty drunk girl. Not that it ever did me any good, other than having fun in bars.
At 16, you're skills beat my own teen years hands down. Of course, all I had access to was an ADM3A terminal at Emory University after 10th grade, and I use to drive into Atlanta twice a week just to use it. Up hill, both ways. I'm not surprised you don't like Java. It offers few of the features found elsewhere.
Still, I remember being a sponge. I learned assembly, BAISC, Pascal, FORTRAN, the VMS scripting language, then C, Lisp, Prolog, C-shell, C++, Awk, Perl, Java, and a few I can't even remember. I learn best from other people rather than books (I don't read very well). I had some great mentors up until the age of about 30. Then, one day, I looked around and realized everyone else in the group was interested in what I could teach them, and there was no one left to mentor me.
It was kind of weird forcing myself to change how I get satisfaction from work. Instead of watching myself grow every day into a more valuable engineer/programmer, I learned to gain satisfaction watching others grow. Now that I'm in my 40's, I'm discovering new ways to grow, which is refreshing. I'm learning to read and write better, for example, and I'm learning sales skills, and one day may even begin to learn leadership skills (shudder). It seems that the experiences I've had at all those failed business attempts, plus the experiences at successful ones (Synplicity, QuickLogic) are beginning to add up. There are only so many ways you can screw up, then unless you're totally dense, you begin to learn.
My dad writes only assembly. He's of the generation that can't move up into C. However, that generation doesn't read/., so you can't be 68, like my dad.
I am going to assume you are an embedded software developer, where code size, speed, and power still count. That probably makes you under 30, so I'll guess 27.
I love this sort of challenge. I also used to tell pretty (but not very bright) drunk girls in bars that I could read their auras. I'd tell them that light blue in their energy meant that they had recently healed from some deep emotional scar. The funny thing: I'm color blind.
You're probably about as old as me. I'm guessing 42 +/- 5 years. By "My favorite language", I assume you mean the one that you actually prefer to write real applications in, not the one you like coding in. C sucks, always has. C is also the language I use. I also still use VI (and Emacs when I talk to my computer).
Re:That explains the "take me back" kiss ass, then
on
Ten Geek Business Myths
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
I have to agree. Vulture capitalists can be the worst offenders when it comes to stealing ideas. They will never agree to any kind of NDA, and if they like what you present, but not your team, they'll sometimes go build a team on their own to pursue your idea. Of course, if they really do hate your team, you probably will fail anyway.
Those were all really good points in the article. I've personally stumbled into most of those traps (being the prototypical geek). Just for fun, I'll list some of my mistakes that correspond to his points:
#1 - A brilliant idea will make you rich. In 1991, I started DataDraw as a company on the side that would sell software to make teams of programmers more productive. It's a great idea, with huge potential to benefit the whole planet. All it requires is that all those programmers out there understand how they can be more productive, care, and then take action to change. The harsh reality: they don't figure it out (go read datadraw.sf.net if you think you're really smart); they don't care (it's all just money after all); they don't like to change (show me your computer language of choice, and I'll guess your age within 5 years).
#2 - If you build it they will come. Err... see #1. The next company I started also suffered from this problem. A friend and I started OpenASIC to solve the terrible communication problems between EDA tools. I wrote a very complex and fairly complete LPM module generator, simulator, and various readers and writers. My problem this time was that I BELIEVED what the customers were saying. Just because every major EDA and FPGA company issued press releases supporting LPM doesn't mean that they actually want anything to do with it (it's basically now an Altera specific format). Learning the difference between what a customer will buy, and what he says he will buy is key.
#3 - Someone will steal your idea if you don't protect it I've had ideas stolen by professors and managers, and I've been stiffed by clients who decided not to pay me after they learned all they needed. The underhanded BS that happens in startups is unreal. Stop worrying about protecting your ideas, and worry about the guy who's gonna try and steal you blind.
#4 - What you think matters I agree and disagree with this point. Many geeks imagine that if they like something, then so will customers. That's just plain wrong. However, if you actually listen to the customers, and go build what they ask for, you're sure to go broke. You have to be like Steve Jobs, and figure out that people want to pay more for a music player (not less), and that looking cool, and being bone-head easy (so dummies can use it) is what counts. You wont get average customers describing themselves as vain and stupid, but you'd better understand that most people are!
I started a company in 1996 called FPGA Technologies, with the purpose of creating embedded FPGA IP for SoC applications. I listened to all the SoC guys complaining about rising tooling costs, and heard their very enthusiastic response to my proposed FPGA cores. So, I went and built it... and got out when I realized that the customers were wrong. FPGA cores are waaaay to big to make sense in SoC applications. Stupid vulture capitalists keep on funding these poor doomed startups that want to do the FPGA IP thing. It makes a great elevator pitch, but a lousy product. The latest is M2000, which will most likely go broke when investors get fed up with them.
#8 - I need $5 million to start my business That's funny coming from a VC, since few VCs will consider investing in a company that needs less than $10M to go public. They often have hundreds of millions of dollars to invest, and they can't waste time tracking every $1M investment.
However, I believe there's a huge opportunity for geeks like us to get semi-rich doing non-VC funded startups. In 2000, I moved to North Carolina, and started ViASIC. We have some angel investors, but no VCs, and our investment to date has been qu
It sounds like you favor the split in the open-source community that the Linux guys are warning us about. Personally I'd be in the GPLv2 camp. It looks like you'd be on the other side.
I have to agree with the Linux guys: the value of this new license does not justify the damage it will do by splitting the community.
Ok, I stand corrected. RSA made money for the inventors, and it's clearly a software patent. Of course, they used it to sue the author of PGP, but that's another matter.
Overall, software patents hamper creativity in America. Worse, it gives all the competing nations a huge boost, since they do not recognise our software patents. I know darned well my life at a tiny startup would be easier without software patents. These beasts cost us $10K-$20K each (which small companies can't afford), and all they do is hopefully allow us to exist.
The part that really sucks is that I have to file these damned things, simply because our system allows them. I'm trying to think of just ONE software patent that made a creative invetor some money...
I apriciate the discussion, though I must admit I'm confused by your position.
As a typical approximately-objective scentific type, I'm disdainful of data that only spans 750k years when we believe that the biosphere is around 4 billion years old
Accepting that life on earth is around 4 billion years old should be just about as hard as accepting that humans are increasing the earth's temperature. For example, I could attack carbon dating as being an unproven technique. If we haven't watched the radioactive decay of one from of carbon into another for thousands of years, how can we be sure that carbon dating works? We can accept it because it is confirmed by a hundred other ways that we estimate age of a fossil. You state that using a mountain of evidence where each piece is only suggestive isn't good science. I'm afraid that's pretty much all we get in science. Actual proofs are for mathematicians. No one has ever seen a proton, for example. The "Scientific Method" (check wikipedia for a blurred definition) is all about confirming theories bit by bit, with evidence, not proof.
I'm also confused why you contradict wikipedia.org repeatedly. Your post would suggest that you haven't read the articles there. Of course, having opinions about something we know little about is our right on slashdot:-) For example, they talk plenty about global warming and green house gasses during the entire history of life on Earth. I only pulled the 750K year out as one piece of compelling evidence. I could just as easily pulled out evidence that's many millions of years old, though it's less well confirmed.
That's compelling evidence that increasing temperatures melts glaciers in the short term (which here means anything less than a century)
This contradicts wikipedia, and most of the other reputable articles I read out there on the net. There is compelling evidence that tropical mountain glaciers are now smaller than they have been in thousands of years. This is not a simple hundred-year cycle thing. You can find articles on it in less time than it took to claim otherwise.
You also talk about five mass extinctions. Rapid climate change is a leading theory as a cause of End Ordovician, End Permian, and Late Devonian extinctions (I just read that on Wikipedia). I'm amazed you can quote mass extinctions as strong evidence that global warming wont cause mass extinctions this time around.
So, in short, I find your arguments interesting, but based on false data. I'm left guessing how you came to believe things like mass extinctions show global warming wont cause another when the evidence is clearly indicating it can, or why you thought glaciers were only smaller than they have been during the last hundred years. Faith in the literal truth of the Bible was my best guess, but I accept your statement that you believe evolution.
However, if you believe life is around 4 billion years old (which of course, it is), I'm left with the other theory. Many of us do not ever question the position of our political party. It's much like faith in a religion. It's absurd, but the Republican party neoconservative leadership currently ignores science (and most expert opinions) and sides with the fundamentalists (who give them votes) and energy producers (who give them money). Do you simply believe what they do, or do you prefer to do research on the web to find out the truth?
The clean coal articles I just check are very interesting. A "medium" sized coal plant generates "760M" tons of CO2/year. Apparently, coal is a bigger threat than oil. The oil industry may be trying to get us to believe that peak production has already passed, but according to Wikipedia, that point could be any time from now until about 2025.
Coal, on the other hand, seems to be available enough to seriously change the planet. I should have bought a house farther north! Canadians rejoice! It seems that the coal industry is retooling rapidly now in the US, while regulations are light, and the new plants are high CO2 emiters. CO2 capture and storage isn't cheap, with estimates ranging from $0.04-$0.09 per KW Hour. In other words, it could almost double our electric bills.
It looks like the Kyoto Protocol was our best chance at making real progress here, and thanks to GW, it's toast. You'd think a guy from Texas would generally be against global temperature increases on the order of 10 degrees during his children's lifetime.
On the positive side, rapid advances in solar and biomass technologies are happening now, thanks to $3/gallon gas. Ethanol production has gone up 5X this decade, and now consumes 15% of our corn crop. Maybe our farmers will finally recover from the economic devistation done to them by the Green Revolution.
It's always nice to talk to Christians who manage to integrate science and faith. I probably sounded disrespectful in my post, which is unfortunate. I personally am Unitarian, and while we have few stated beliefs, respect for other people's religious beliefs is one of them. I just don't want anyone running our country based simply on faith, without taking into account science, and expert opinions.
I've read a bit on-line about the guys who believe the world has passed it's peek oil production. The research is fuzzy, because countries like to keep their actual oil reserves a secret. However, the various web sites I visited sounded respectable. Do you have a source that shows why they are suspect organizations?
Slashdot Mirror
Thanks for the wikipedia link! Any article like that first link I posted seems suspect. I'm not surprised it's neoconservative funded FUD.
Still, I think Iran remains more of a direct threat than NK. In North Korea, the leader is nuts, but he's your basic dictator, interested in protecting his own power. Also, he proven that he can be bought (which Clinton was happy to do). In Iran, their leader thinks he's taking orders directly from God. The funny thing is if I replace NK and Iran with 'neoconservatives', it's all still true!
It sure as heck should be scared! If you haven't read this yet, you gotta check it out:
= /opinion/2006/04/16/do1609.xml
e s
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main.jhtml?xml
The other really scare force in the world is well documented here:
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmar
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
Well said.
However, Bush already won the last election of his life. What we need now is a better leader to begin cleaning up the mess. I don't see any strong Democrat candidates. My personal favorite for 2008: John McCain. However, neoconservatives have hijacked the Republican party. I'm very strongly hoping for a change of control in both houses this election. If not, I'll have to vote against John McCain next election. We've got to get rid of this neoconservative "Axis of Evil" FUD that threatens the entire world.
What we need right now is George Bush Senior, or Bob Dole, or John McCain, or Bill Clinton, or Nixon. An old fashioned foreign-policy wise leader, not a neoconservative self-righteous ignoramus. I strongly recommend the following 3-hour documentary:
e s
http://www.archive.org/details/ThePowerOfNightmar
"Just outright stupid", is about the best three word description I can give for Bush's North Korea policy, which directly led to a nuclear armed rogue state, and which is the #1 cause that we now are dealing with a radicalized Iran that is rapidly pursuing nuclear weapons.
With expert advice, and sound council from the countries close to NK, Bush Senior, and later Clinton, forged a wise policy that was working, though distasteful to self-righteous neoconservatives. This delicate balance, achieved through years of negotiation, resulted in a verifiable halt to large-scale nuclear enrichment.
All this was smashed to pieces the day Bush gave his infamous "Axis of Evil" speech.
Remember the three "Axis of Evil" countries? Iraq... gee that's going well. Iran... now possibly the largest threat to world stability due to it's nuclear ambitions combined with it's terrorist backing. North Korea... now nuclear armed.
Stupid, stupid, stupid. Of course, anyone reading this who is a true neoconservative ditto-head, or one of those who think Bush is doing God's work, will naturally continue to ignore reality...
Sure, if it could withstand the /. effect!
Which is very hard to answer. Of course, it can be done on Linux. It can also be done on Windows, and MAC OS-X.
/. hope you'll do it with open-source, so we can start our own TV broadcast stations for free :-D
Do you want to pay the big bucks, or write code from scratch? The vendors charging the big $$ hope you're forced to buy. Of course, we on
One of my favorite bumper stickers:
"I thought I'd never miss Nixon"
A guy driving a nice Mercedes sedan has it, making it even better.
I've found this to consistently be true:
In any decision a corporation makes, it will choose the most unethical path found acceptable to it's least ethical leader.
Some corporations have many leaders, and no strong central leader. I've found dealing with them to be miserable. For any decision to be made, it only needs to be acceptable to any one of their many leaders, thus, the whole corporation is able to justify acting like a raving-mad power-crazed lunatic. No single individual is highly unethical, just the corporation as a whole.
A board of directors typically has no strong leader, choosing instead a more democratic structure. This can lead to highly unethical behavior, as with the HP board.
I think the reason things work this way is simple. In any decision that might benefit the company, it's easier to simply stand-down and not make waves while somebody else carries out the unethical act. It's harder and more risk prone to stand in the way and demand ethical behavior. After all, corporations are about profits, and you'd be standing in the way of profits. Chances are far higher that you'll get run over than it is that people will say, "Yeah, your right. We were acting unethically, and we were wrong."
That said, I've found the vast majority of corporate board members to be amazingly ethical. After all, investors trust these guys with their money. But, it only takes one or two bad apples...
That's just what I was wondering. Open source is such a powerful force, yet making IPO kinds of money off it seems quite difficult.
In my own experience, open source takes over where profits leave off. Once the profits have left a market, you get all kinds of open source projects supporting it. So long as there are strong profits to be made, the developers prefer to sell their wares. Seems pretty natural to me. The obvious exception is M$, as monopolies have different market dynamics. In the age of robust, versatile, free open source operating systems, what really counts is market dominance.
So, no question here... please pose the one the parent asked. However, now that I've said that, let me contradict myself and state what I think would be a kicking open source startup concept.
Those Garmin guys piss me off. The hardware is expensive as heck, and then they charge you tons for the stupid maps. So, what if you built a Linux based GPS guidance system, which could be taken out of your car and connected to the Internet for map updates. It could also keep track (anonymously - thus the need for open source) of where you went, and this data could be used to automatically update the global map database. How cool would that be?
Taking it one step further, add a low-bandwidth wireless capability (like the ham-radio guys do with packet radio), and now you could track traffic in real time, and view congestion as it happens on your GPS display.
The software would be free, so you'd have to make your money on the hardware.
Agreed. However, digital cash seems like the solution for the Digital Age. Doesn't it seem funny to anyone else that we still carry money made out of linen? No digitally secure signature, nothing I can e-mail or beam, nothing but ink and plants.
A co-worker showed me his new wallet, and I'm envious. Room for nothing but several credit cards, stylish leather, folds up tiny.
/., why didn't they show any wallets not designed to hold cash?
So, if we live in the digital age, why do we need to carry money made of paper, and coins made of metal? I don't, and oddly feel freer for it. My old stupid wallet (a true geek hangs onto them until they rot), is mostly cow leather, with very little actual content. Stupid, stupid, stupid...
So, for an article posted to
The fun thing about reading auras is you don't have to be accurate very often. Get 1 in 3 right, and you've impressed at least one pretty drunk girl. Not that it ever did me any good, other than having fun in bars.
At 16, you're skills beat my own teen years hands down. Of course, all I had access to was an ADM3A terminal at Emory University after 10th grade, and I use to drive into Atlanta twice a week just to use it. Up hill, both ways. I'm not surprised you don't like Java. It offers few of the features found elsewhere.
Still, I remember being a sponge. I learned assembly, BAISC, Pascal, FORTRAN, the VMS scripting language, then C, Lisp, Prolog, C-shell, C++, Awk, Perl, Java, and a few I can't even remember. I learn best from other people rather than books (I don't read very well). I had some great mentors up until the age of about 30. Then, one day, I looked around and realized everyone else in the group was interested in what I could teach them, and there was no one left to mentor me.
It was kind of weird forcing myself to change how I get satisfaction from work. Instead of watching myself grow every day into a more valuable engineer/programmer, I learned to gain satisfaction watching others grow. Now that I'm in my 40's, I'm discovering new ways to grow, which is refreshing. I'm learning to read and write better, for example, and I'm learning sales skills, and one day may even begin to learn leadership skills (shudder). It seems that the experiences I've had at all those failed business attempts, plus the experiences at successful ones (Synplicity, QuickLogic) are beginning to add up. There are only so many ways you can screw up, then unless you're totally dense, you begin to learn.
My dad writes only assembly. He's of the generation that can't move up into C. However, that generation doesn't read /., so you can't be 68, like my dad.
I am going to assume you are an embedded software developer, where code size, speed, and power still count. That probably makes you under 30, so I'll guess 27.
I love this sort of challenge. I also used to tell pretty (but not very bright) drunk girls in bars that I could read their auras. I'd tell them that light blue in their energy meant that they had recently healed from some deep emotional scar. The funny thing: I'm color blind.
You're probably about as old as me. I'm guessing 42 +/- 5 years. By "My favorite language", I assume you mean the one that you actually prefer to write real applications in, not the one you like coding in. C sucks, always has. C is also the language I use. I also still use VI (and Emacs when I talk to my computer).
I guess you're 36 +/- 5 years.
I have to agree. Vulture capitalists can be the worst offenders when it comes to stealing ideas. They will never agree to any kind of NDA, and if they like what you present, but not your team, they'll sometimes go build a team on their own to pursue your idea. Of course, if they really do hate your team, you probably will fail anyway.
Those were all really good points in the article. I've personally stumbled into most of those traps (being the prototypical geek). Just for fun, I'll list some of my mistakes that correspond to his points:
#1 - A brilliant idea will make you rich.
In 1991, I started DataDraw as a company on the side that would sell software to make teams of programmers more productive. It's a great idea, with huge potential to benefit the whole planet. All it requires is that all those programmers out there understand how they can be more productive, care, and then take action to change. The harsh reality: they don't figure it out (go read datadraw.sf.net if you think you're really smart); they don't care (it's all just money after all); they don't like to change (show me your computer language of choice, and I'll guess your age within 5 years).
#2 - If you build it they will come.
Err... see #1. The next company I started also suffered from this problem. A friend and I started OpenASIC to solve the terrible communication problems between EDA tools. I wrote a very complex and fairly complete LPM module generator, simulator, and various readers and writers. My problem this time was that I BELIEVED what the customers were saying. Just because every major EDA and FPGA company issued press releases supporting LPM doesn't mean that they actually want anything to do with it (it's basically now an Altera specific format). Learning the difference between what a customer will buy, and what he says he will buy is key.
#3 - Someone will steal your idea if you don't protect it
I've had ideas stolen by professors and managers, and I've been stiffed by clients who decided not to pay me after they learned all they needed. The underhanded BS that happens in startups is unreal. Stop worrying about protecting your ideas, and worry about the guy who's gonna try and steal you blind.
#4 - What you think matters
I agree and disagree with this point. Many geeks imagine that if they like something, then so will customers. That's just plain wrong. However, if you actually listen to the customers, and go build what they ask for, you're sure to go broke. You have to be like Steve Jobs, and figure out that people want to pay more for a music player (not less), and that looking cool, and being bone-head easy (so dummies can use it) is what counts. You wont get average customers describing themselves as vain and stupid, but you'd better understand that most people are!
I started a company in 1996 called FPGA Technologies, with the purpose of creating embedded FPGA IP for SoC applications. I listened to all the SoC guys complaining about rising tooling costs, and heard their very enthusiastic response to my proposed FPGA cores. So, I went and built it... and got out when I realized that the customers were wrong. FPGA cores are waaaay to big to make sense in SoC applications. Stupid vulture capitalists keep on funding these poor doomed startups that want to do the FPGA IP thing. It makes a great elevator pitch, but a lousy product. The latest is M2000, which will most likely go broke when investors get fed up with them.
#8 - I need $5 million to start my business
That's funny coming from a VC, since few VCs will consider investing in a company that needs less than $10M to go public. They often have hundreds of millions of dollars to invest, and they can't waste time tracking every $1M investment.
However, I believe there's a huge opportunity for geeks like us to get semi-rich doing non-VC funded startups. In 2000, I moved to North Carolina, and started ViASIC. We have some angel investors, but no VCs, and our investment to date has been qu
Is that it could be used to train a true AI (uh... not "artificial insemination"... the other kind). Just what do you think you're doing, Dave?
It sounds like you favor the split in the open-source community that the Linux guys are warning us about. Personally I'd be in the GPLv2 camp. It looks like you'd be on the other side.
I have to agree with the Linux guys: the value of this new license does not justify the damage it will do by splitting the community.
That's my favorite quote that Ben Franklin never said! See:
:-)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Benjamin_Franklin
Still... keep on posting it! My sig actually IS a Franklin quote
Ok, I stand corrected. RSA made money for the inventors, and it's clearly a software patent. Of course, they used it to sue the author of PGP, but that's another matter.
Overall, software patents hamper creativity in America. Worse, it gives all the competing nations a huge boost, since they do not recognise our software patents. I know darned well my life at a tiny startup would be easier without software patents. These beasts cost us $10K-$20K each (which small companies can't afford), and all they do is hopefully allow us to exist.
Ditto.
The part that really sucks is that I have to file these damned things, simply because our system allows them. I'm trying to think of just ONE software patent that made a creative invetor some money...
Accepting that life on earth is around 4 billion years old should be just about as hard as accepting that humans are increasing the earth's temperature. For example, I could attack carbon dating as being an unproven technique. If we haven't watched the radioactive decay of one from of carbon into another for thousands of years, how can we be sure that carbon dating works? We can accept it because it is confirmed by a hundred other ways that we estimate age of a fossil. You state that using a mountain of evidence where each piece is only suggestive isn't good science. I'm afraid that's pretty much all we get in science. Actual proofs are for mathematicians. No one has ever seen a proton, for example. The "Scientific Method" (check wikipedia for a blurred definition) is all about confirming theories bit by bit, with evidence, not proof.
I'm also confused why you contradict wikipedia.org repeatedly. Your post would suggest that you haven't read the articles there. Of course, having opinions about something we know little about is our right on slashdot
This contradicts wikipedia, and most of the other reputable articles I read out there on the net. There is compelling evidence that tropical mountain glaciers are now smaller than they have been in thousands of years. This is not a simple hundred-year cycle thing. You can find articles on it in less time than it took to claim otherwise.
You also talk about five mass extinctions. Rapid climate change is a leading theory as a cause of End Ordovician, End Permian, and Late Devonian extinctions (I just read that on Wikipedia). I'm amazed you can quote mass extinctions as strong evidence that global warming wont cause mass extinctions this time around.
So, in short, I find your arguments interesting, but based on false data. I'm left guessing how you came to believe things like mass extinctions show global warming wont cause another when the evidence is clearly indicating it can, or why you thought glaciers were only smaller than they have been during the last hundred years. Faith in the literal truth of the Bible was my best guess, but I accept your statement that you believe evolution.
However, if you believe life is around 4 billion years old (which of course, it is), I'm left with the other theory. Many of us do not ever question the position of our political party. It's much like faith in a religion. It's absurd, but the Republican party neoconservative leadership currently ignores science (and most expert opinions) and sides with the fundamentalists (who give them votes) and energy producers (who give them money). Do you simply believe what they do, or do you prefer to do research on the web to find out the truth?
The clean coal articles I just check are very interesting. A "medium" sized coal plant generates "760M" tons of CO2/year. Apparently, coal is a bigger threat than oil. The oil industry may be trying to get us to believe that peak production has already passed, but according to Wikipedia, that point could be any time from now until about 2025.
Coal, on the other hand, seems to be available enough to seriously change the planet. I should have bought a house farther north! Canadians rejoice! It seems that the coal industry is retooling rapidly now in the US, while regulations are light, and the new plants are high CO2 emiters. CO2 capture and storage isn't cheap, with estimates ranging from $0.04-$0.09 per KW Hour. In other words, it could almost double our electric bills.
It looks like the Kyoto Protocol was our best chance at making real progress here, and thanks to GW, it's toast. You'd think a guy from Texas would generally be against global temperature increases on the order of 10 degrees during his children's lifetime.
On the positive side, rapid advances in solar and biomass technologies are happening now, thanks to $3/gallon gas. Ethanol production has gone up 5X this decade, and now consumes 15% of our corn crop. Maybe our farmers will finally recover from the economic devistation done to them by the Green Revolution.
It's always nice to talk to Christians who manage to integrate science and faith. I probably sounded disrespectful in my post, which is unfortunate. I personally am Unitarian, and while we have few stated beliefs, respect for other people's religious beliefs is one of them. I just don't want anyone running our country based simply on faith, without taking into account science, and expert opinions.
I've read a bit on-line about the guys who believe the world has passed it's peek oil production. The research is fuzzy, because countries like to keep their actual oil reserves a secret. However, the various web sites I visited sounded respectable. Do you have a source that shows why they are suspect organizations?