On Makers & Hackerspaces

Paul Graham's got a short thought piece up on makers and the Hardware Renaissance.  Great read.  Link to his latest thought piece here.

I recently joined denhac (www.denhac.org), a hacker space based in Denver and it's full of makers.  People who love hardware  But they also love software, technology, music, art and media.

There's a trend here.  A big one.  I think the cost of creating hardware is dropping.  Atoms will always cost more than bits to produce, but the distance in cost between the two is closing fast.  The cost of the tools needed to create are dropping extremely fast and the capabilities of these tools are skyrocketing.

When I really think about it, these hackerspaces are kind of the new computer club, moose lodge/coffee shop/bar/hangout/workspace and free schools of the 21st century.  

I suspect they may be even more, like the beginnings of new local media creation points.  A place where media makers come together as well as technology geeks.  An intersection where the cool kids from all the clicks meet, and. well.. create.

Our denhac, for instance, is for us a club,  a place to work, an impromptu movie theater, a recording, podcasting and live internet radio studio, a 3D print shop,  a well stocked toolshed for hacking together a range of silicon based projects you'd be surprised at the sophistication of and a university to take classes on damn near any subject you can imagine; for example: denhac has in the last few months, had classes on Synthetic Biology (hacking DNA with $3000 home 'labs'), Lock Sport (picking locks), Serious Computer Security (think: ROP Exploitation and associated protection techniques) Game development, Home Beer Brewing with microcontrollers, Silicon Mask Making (Level: Hollywood), DEFCON 'badge' creation (basically a custom computer that does wild stuff built into your DEFCON badge) and on and on and on.  It's a 'true' Free School where those who can teach something interesting self organize and present classes for any interested person to attend and learn.

We've got a van.  I don't know why.  But we've got a van.

We're also getting ready to put together a proposal for a Low Power FM (LPFM) license (something that's going to become available mid next year... a 100 watt FM station that covers your local community).  This would make us the first hackerspace with it's own live radio station (we already have an internet radio station, why not go retro AND analog!).

Creating DEFCON badges, en mass

Now, put all this stuff together and what you really have is a place that attracts intelligent, interesting, creative and slightly crazy people.  The ones that don't really fit into the 'corporate' culture of a big company (although many members work at these big companies).  You'll get lots of startup types.  People who like creating things because they feel the need to.  Because they want one.  Because that damn thing is stupid and and I can do so much better.  And when you get these kind of people together, well, really good things happen.

I'll even go so far as to say that, if your town doesn't have a hackerspace, you might think about getting to work on creating one.  It's going to be the place that attracts all the creatives.  It's where the cool kids will hang.  It's where the future's, very likely, being invented... right now.

A good cellular provider experience.

I had an odd experience yesterday with my cellular provider.

It was a good experience.  

I know, right?  Who says that nowadays?

But it's true.  I switched to Sprint about 3 months ago.  I received a bill that had something on it that I didn't understand.  On a Saturday  I called Sprint and was on hold for less than a minute (huh.. that's new).  The person who answered was not a native English speaker, but it took me a few minutes to figure that out- which is great.  No communication issues there.

The charge was an extra $10 a month that made sense, but hadn't been explained to me by the store employee.  This, of course, pissed me off and based on previous experiences, I simply said "fine... screwed by yet another phone company" and hung up in disgust.

End of story.  Well... no.

Several hours later, the SAME customer service rep called me back.  She told me she'd talked to her supervisor and they would remove the $10 charge, for 3 months, since no one explained it to me.  

I know, it's only a $30 credit, but damn.... I have never had a phone company give a crap about a complaint I made before, let alone have them react to it in the exact right way: "We'll refund your money, but now that you know about it, and why, we'll charge it from this point forward".

So, they addressed my concern, they gave me a reward, and they preserved their ability to charge me that $10 a month without pissing me off every time I see the bill.

Impressive.

Maybe I'm wrong; maybe this was an anomaly of some sort, but if this is the 'New Sprint", I'm sold.

And yes, that's a Galaxy S III (my new phone).  And yes, I love it, still, after 3 months.  Had the iPhone 4s, don't miss it at all.

Oldie but goodie: Custom eWorld Screens.

Ran across these and thought I'd throw them out there.  These are customized screens to the Apple eWorld service (my group at Apple created the software for this service) that was around in the early 90's (pre internet days).  Some appear to be copies, but they're all slightly different.  More on eWorld here if you're interested:  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EWorld

Enjoy.

The Fall of the Apple Empire...It's the Little Things

Apple's new Macbook magsafe power connector and it's new commercials:  The beginning of the end.

Simple stuff.  The first is the new Magsafe connector for Macbooks.  Here's a quote from the Apple forums on The Verge website:

"The new MagSafe 2 connector sucks. Apple blew it. It's hard to argue that they changed the adapter for the sake of room when the MBA accommodates it fine. This new adapter is quick to pop out when you are using the notebook on a couch, plush chair or somewhere where it can get forced up while in use."

This is a common complaint.  So what does this tell you?  It tells me Apple is getting sloppy, already.  Do you think Steve Jobs would have allowed something that was badly designed to ever leave the lab to be proto-typed let alone ship?  I think not.

I know this is a small thing, but it's the culmination of the small things that made Apple products great.  It will be the culmination of small things that destroys the 'magic' so many Apple enthusiasts wax poetic about.  The tiny details that are so well thought out and that people notice, sometimes only after months of use, or when they use a non-Apple product.  It's subtle, but it's very very important.

Next up are the new Apple Genius ads.

Take 2 minutes and compare the Nexus 7 (Googles new 7" table) add with Apple's Olympic ad(s):

Nexus 7:



Apple Genius:




Even Ad Age agrees that Google's advertising is better than Apples.

"Google's Nexus 7 TV Spot Tops Apple's 'Genius' Ads in Effectiveness"

Think about that:  Google's TV ads are better than Apple's TV ads.  This is just flat out heresy in the marketing world.  Apple, since Jobs return to the company, has consistantly created the best marketing and advertising compaigns, for any product, on the planet.  Now, here we are, months after Steve Job's dies, and Google, a company not known for making brilliant (or even interesting) TV ads, is beating Apple at it's own game.

Do you really think Steve Jobs would have let those genius ads anywhere near a production studio after seeing the pitch for them?  I know that when I first saw them I thought "Apple ad?  Really?  WTF happened?".

So this is how it begins.  The many little things that add up to a really big thing.  The inevitable fall is starting sooner than I thought it would.

Apple's 'Secret' Lab and the Knight Ridder Folks

Did you know Apple had a secret lab in Boulder, CO for several years?  Yep.  It was called the AEML (Apple Electronic Media Lab) and it was a part of the eWorld division, basically, it's research group.

I know because I started it and, along with my local proxy (a brilliant guy named Dennis Dube)  ran it for several years.
Why bring this up now you ask?  Well, this weekend, I attended a 20 year reunion party with a few folks from the AEML, but the parties main event was to bring together Roger Fidler and his crew from Knight Ridders IDL (Information Design Lab). 

The IDL was a 'futures' lab that ran from 1992 to 1995 and Roger Fidler was it's director.

Roger's IDL was the reason I started Apple's secret lab in Boulder in the first place.  I visited him there shortly after he opened his lab and knew, just knew, this was the kind of thing Apple needed to get's it's head around. .  At the time I was the head of R and D for eWorld (Apple's attempt at competing with AOL and other now long gone online services) and believed that the printed mainstream media of the time (primarily newspapers, magazines and books) would translate best to the online world.  This was way before video was possible due to slow bandwidth being the norm.  Hell, it was basically pre-internet (which I date to being born along with the first brower...Mosaic-1993 and it's commercial brother Netscape- 1994).

So I set up the AEML.  I rented the office space across the hall from his offices in the Randolph Building on the corner of Walnut and Broadway in Boulder, CO (Top floor, NW corner looking out on the flatirons and down on Walnut St) and set up our own lab.  One of the things we were trying to nail down was what good is the Newton PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) in a connected online world.  It was handheld, battery powered and it was supposed to fit in your coat pocket.  It was also slow and it wasn't connected to anything.  There was no wifi back then and data over the air was a Motorola engineers wet dream, but little more.

Here's what it looked like:

At around the same time, Roger and his guys were making an online newspaper tablet prototype.  Here's a video mockup of what he was doing from 1994:




He, spot on, envisioned tablets as data consumption devices, not data creation devices.  Here's a closeup of the mocked up tablet:

I'm not going to get into did Roger Fidler or Steve Jobs invent the Tablet Computer, but it's worth spending 13 minutes and watching that video up above.

Some things to keep in mind:

In 1994, you couldn't build something like Roger's tablet.  You could barely build something like Apple's Newton in 1994.  The technology hadn't caught up to (what was effectively) an interface design.

There were mocked up 'big Newtons' in Apples own labs (below) so you could make the argument it was only a matter of time.

But, everyone likes to be first and get credit where credit is due.  The Knight Ridder folks were first with the interface ideas of how to put a newspaper onto a tablet, that's clear.  The problem was Rogers vision just couldn't happen until a few other things happened.  With the iPhone (and then iPad) those stars lined up and it came together:  Fast low power consumption processors, much better battery technology and highspeed wireless networks.  It was 15ish years after the Knight Ridder video was made before these things got good enough.  Until then, it just wasn't technically possible.

We (AEML) played around with trying to figure out how to build one back then (using, of all things, a Mac Powerbook)....

Take off the screen, flip it, put a touch overlay on it, bolt it to the back of the CPU and pretend it's a working tablet (actually, worked pretty well and would have been build-able almost immediately).  But the idea just didn't fly.  Hungry processors, lousy battery life and no wireless bandwidth was still the issue.  It was, quite simply, too soon.  And, it was an ugly hack.  If Jobs had seen it he would have laughed his ass off and fired everyone who'd had anything to do with it on the spot.

But...... we (meaning Knight Ridder, Apple, and all the rest of us) were building on top of other people's ideas all the while.  I could put a LONG list in here as examples, but I suspect you already know this is true.  It's always true with technology.  Hell, just watch a few episodes of a Star Trek series (any will do) and you'll get plenty of ideas.

I don't think any one person (or even any one group at a specific moment in time) can "claim" they truly own, lock stock and barrel, an idea.  Of course, the patent system would disagree with me on this, but that's a topic for another post another day.

I did enjoy catching up with all those folks though.  It was great to see people that, 20 years ago, did indeed help move the needle a little closer to where we are today.

Privacy, Identity and Your Local Grocery Store

If you think Facebook knows alot about you, take a look at what your local grocery store is tracking.  If you want (sometimes significant) discounts, you are likely a member of a loyalty program with your local grocery store.  You get a card you scan before you checkout (or just your phone number) and viola! you save $10-20 bucks.  Who wouldn't?

Imagine how that information (what you - mostly - eat) can be interpreted.  Buy a lot of vegetables fruits and chicken?  How about a medical insurance discount to go along with that?  Oh, you like candy, Nutella and pizza?  We'll pass that along to your doctor and your insurance company for a future checkup and premium increase.

If they have a pharmacy (and many stores do) they're able to track that as well.

I'm not saying that's happening today, but, it easily could.  I mean, really.. did you read that Terms of Service for that loyalty program card? 

And it's getting even more all encompassing.

Now, of course, there's an app for that.  Safeway, in this case.

When I walked into the store recently, I was approached by two store employees asking me to 'sign up for our app'.

They were hitting everyone and they had both doors covered to make sure.  This went on for about a week, every day.

So, of course, I signed up.  It's an app!  Yay apps!  I asked them some questions about it but they didn't really know much other than they'd been told to do it.  They had an iPad right there and I was able to set up an account that sent me a link via email to download the app to my phone or tablet.

It's pretty simple really.  You put in your shopping list (which you can use as a check off list while you're shopping) and it finds coupons and deals for things you're looking for.  It also suggests 'additional' purchases (with an associated coupon to prod you toward 'trying it') that might go with what's already on your list.  It also gives you coupons for alternative products (let the competition begin!).

What I find fascinating about this, beyond the privacy and identity tracking issues, is how they are creating an entirely new marketplace via coupons.  It's a little like those endcaps at the end of the aisle- if you sell products at Safeway and you want great placement (end of the aisle) you PAY Safeway to put your products there.  They now have a virtual equivalent that they can sell to companies (pay us X dollars and we'll put up your Jiff coupon for that peanut butter and not your competitors, even though it says Skippy in their shopping list).

They're also creating an incredibly powerful direct relationship with their customer base.

This direct relationship effectively destroys traditional local advertising for third parties.  What grocery store is going to put expensive four color ads in a local newspaper when it has a direct, on their phone, relationship with a majority of their customers, for free.

It also means those coupon aggregation services  (Groupon, Living Social, etc.) are about to be cut out of the equation if the local merchants can get everyone to put an app on their phone that links them directly to that local merchant.

And you think no one's going to put that app on their phone because it's too many apps?  Think again.  How many places do you go on a regular basis?  I'll bet it's one grocery store.  one general purpose store (like Target).  one home improvement store.  Even restaruants... it's likely you favor only a few.

I'll bet it's less than 10 total.  More likely around 5 that you actually go to on a monthly or weekly basis. 

5 apps?  That's nothing.  That's less than 30% of one screen on your iPhone.

What about actually reaching all these people with an app?  I shop at the grocery.  All of us do.  It's part of life as we know it in America.  No avoiding it.  I have a smartphone, everyone I know does and, although it's not the population as a whole, like broadband internet, it'll reach 75%+ in, at most, another decade; most likely sooner.  Phone's are too expensive?  Nope.  Many perfectly useful Android based smart phones are free with a contract.

Imagine some of the big data tricks a store like Safeway could pull off.  Here's one:

That's a smartphone.  Trackable to within 30 feet via GPS and a couple of feet if you add in local wifi hotspots.  I can see store managers pulling up real time heat maps of the store layout showing where people go as they shop.  The path they take.  The displays that are ignored and the displays that draw people in like flies.

You think IKEAs (somewhat blatant) way of  forcing you to walk through the entire store to see what they want you to see via a maze... think about doing that in a way that's far more subtle (and really, manipulative).  But hey.. that's marketing eh?  Talk about real world data manipulation potentials. 

So, who owns all that data on you?  It's clearly not yours.  It's a free service.  Remember this and do not forget it:  If the service is free, you are the product.  Someone is selling all your data to someone, somewhere.

So, privacy.  Big issue.

And identity as well.  What you do is very closely tied up with who you are.  And who sees that data (health insurance company anyone?) can directly effect your finances, and your life.

But damn, I love all those discounts and coupons I get, so I leave the app on the phone.  Just remember it's there, and know, someone, somewhere, is watching.

Book Review: Kill Decision by Daniel Suarez

I can't say this is science fiction so much as a near (actually, really near) future war story.  I know a guy in Boulder, CO. that consults for the military creating a specialized Android OS specific to the US Air Force designed to fly, remotely, jets.  As in F18 type jets.  He told me almost 2 years ago about how they had to have autonomous operations if they were cut off from remote control and much of what I read in this book sounds very similar to concepts my friend told me about over lunch at a restaurant on Pearl street in 2010.

2010.

So, not so 'near future' as 'tomorrow or the day after' future.

As far as this book is concerned.. exceptionally well written.  He's using a Tom Clancy like style and, for a story like this, it works beautifully.  Fast paced, (reasonably) believable characters and an excellent plot line.  It's also all a bit close to home.  Police forces are considering (and in some municipalities, have already implemented) drone technology similar to what's used in the middle east now by our own military.  What if that were to go a little haywire?  That's what this book is about.  The engineers among you will love it, as will those who just like a good well told fast paced action story.

The only thing that bugs me (and the reason I'd give this a 4 instead of a 5 star rating) is his trick of getting me to buy the 'whole' story twice.  He did this with his first two books (Daemon and Freedom).  It's effectively a clever selling technique to make more money.  He's not exactly serializing the story like the old SciFi guys used to.  He takes a longer story, finds a good break point in the middle, and prints the first book (1/2 the story) at full price, then the second book (finishing the story), also at full price.  You'll notice this book is a little short.  That's because, I'm betting, he's not done (at least, I hope not.  There were some major plot lines left unanswered). 

Still, if you like his first two (really one) books, and Tom Clancy's style, you'll love Kill Decision. 

[[ASIN:0525952616 Kill Decision]]

Community Broadband: An apparent threat to big business

Every so often you see the real harm that comes from big companies having too much say in the local politics of your town, state or region.

Community broadband is one of those areas.  Just recently, we saw an example of this.  N. Carolina, effectively, made it illegal for a town to have it's own broadband services.

http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2012/06/south-carolina-passes-bill-against-municipal-broadband/

I live in a town that owns it's own power and water sources.  It also has a fiber loop that could easily be adapted to provide high speed internet services to businesses and households.  When the town started making noises like it might do just that, Comcast and others created an astro-turf 'group' that opposed the town's interest in being an actual 'smart' city.  They spent over a quarter of  million dollars (this is a smallish town; less than 100K people) to get the local population to vote against it.

The first time this happened (in the mid 2000's), they succeeded.  The second time (last year) they failed.  Now, the city council is visiting places like Chattanooga Tn. to see what a gigbit to the home network can create.  They are impressed, and I am very hopeful our little town here will become one of the dozen or so cities that actually has real broadband services available, to all.

Who's data is that... really?

Propublica has a fascinating article up on the location data your cell phone provider tracks and what they do with it.

The thing I found most interesting was they'll give it to lots of people, with one major exception:  You.

It's worth taking a few minutes to read if you have a cell phone with GPS capabilities (which is, very likely, most of you).

http://www.propublica.org/article/cellphone-companies-will-share-your-location-data-just-not-with-you

Silicon Valley is Hollywood for geeks... and not in a good way

Brendon Wilson from TechVibes has a pretty interesting post comparing Silicon Valley to the Bio-Dome.

Silicon Valley believes itself to be a self-contained, self-sustaining ark of innovation. To hear technology industry luminaries tell the tale, there is simply no better place to achieve your geek dreams than Silicon Valley: there’s money, there’s brains, and therefore (the theory goes) there’s success. Much like Woody Allen, Silicon Valley casts itself as the romantic lead in its own movie and the rest of us willingly suspend our disbelief. We hail pimply-faced youths on the covers of our magazines and marvel at the virtual success they’ve achieved, even if it defies all rational explanation.

I view the situation somewhat differently. Instead of thinking of Silicon Valley as a self-contained innovation ecosystem, I think of it more akin to Biosphere 2, a self-contained environmental ecosystem that spent the majority of its existence trying very hard to kill its own inhabitants.

Silicon Valley has a tendency to eat it's young and throw out it's old. Oh, sure, there are the grey beards (Canter, Winer, Dvorak etc. etc.) but once you're into your 40's, if you haven't made it already and are part of the Angel network, you're pretty much toast in the Valley. If you're under 30, generally, you can take a few hits but The Valley does it's best to use you up and burn people you out.

It's a little like Hollywood in some ways.

The bright eyed beautiful people star wannabe's come to LA all full of energy and hope. They network, they try to meet the 'right people', they work their asses off, they pitch themselves over and over to get a part so they can get into the game. Some of them (a tiny percentage) make it. Most burn out by 30 and end up as a hostess at a club, a gopher at some tiny production house or a bit player in B and C movies or never aired pilots. There are a huge number of people competing in a small geographic location  for access to a few hundred king/queen makers (producers, directors and studio execs) running the show.

Sound familiar?

Replace the king/queen makers with VC's and well known angels. Replace the beautiful people star wannabes with brilliant 20 something techwizkids and you get a very similar social interplay among all the players.

I've lived in both worlds (Worked for Paramount Pictures in Hollywood for a couple of years, and at Apple in The Valley a little under a decade). I've seen it up close and personal.

The people are really different, and being a technology guy, I of course like and prefer The Valley personalities, but the social dynamic is still quite similar in many ways.

As a result of the intense competition for resources (be it money or brains in the valley, or money and looks/star power in Hollywood) these two groups are generally out of whack with the rest of the world.

Oddly, these two groups are who personify much of what the rest of the world admires about America, and who both tend to wield unnatural degree's of influence in their respective areas (entertainment and cutting edge technology/branding).

I won't get into politics here but the 'winner takes all' nature of America in general is, largely, worshiped in both these environments. And since the rest of the world seems to want to re-create these environments for themselves, and tries to copy The Valley and Hollywood models (pretty much always failing, but each time getting a bit closer), I can't say this is 'good' for the world in general.

It's too concentrated. Like Brandon's Bio-Sphere analogy, it's a closed loop system without enough human feedback. That all important human element that the rest of the planet tends to work well within is largely missing. It's all purely market driven.. meaning: profit, the buck, the biggest box office, the largest funding round or the largest IPO listing.

It tends to kill the people that live and work there. Or, at the very least, it sucks out their souls and leaves bitter and burned out husks; even the ones with alot of money.

For example, let's use the poster child for Valley success.  Apple.  I just finished reading Steve Jobs biography and, well, wow.  This was a guy who's life I would not want to live.  If this is what it takes to be 'the best':  obsessive, narcissistic, abusive, extreme perfectionist, an asshole, I can think of better lives to live.  He created the most (rated by dollar value) valuable company in the world, but at what cost?  A sense of complete entitlement and a belief that the rules (ANY rules) didn't apply to him.  An alienated child he originally disowned who never grew to like (or trust) him.  3 kids by one women who were neglected (two, basically, ignored).  Friends who couldn't trust him and regularly talked about how often he lied (called Steve's 'reality distortion field') how to manage his childish tantrums (which continued up almost to the day he died) and what a self centered asshole he was.  What did he get?  5 or 6 'great' products, some hit movies, some screwed up kids, the last 2-3 years of his life living in extreme pain and misery, death by 57 and a company that was so controlled by his will and ego it can't possibly continue it's success more than a few years now that he's gone.  This is the goal?

When I was at Paramount, during my first couple of weeks I had a meeting with Johnathon Dolgen, then CEO of Paramount, to pitch a project.  I brought in a presentation on paper to go over with him.  He came in, sat down, looked at his assistant and said 'get me a bottle of aspirin', looked at the stack in front of him, put his hand on it and shoved it, hard, across the table sending it flying.  He then looked at me and said 'you've got 5 minutes, why am I here'*.

Similar to a meeting with Jobs?  Never had a face to face business meeting with Jobs, but I'll bet it would have been (sans the aspirin) pretty much  the same.

Life is short.  Relationships (friends, family, trusted associates) are rare and to be treasured, not abused.

I think our little corner of the world here in Colorado has a far better balance with people that are far less self centered and far better integrated into each others lives and society in general.


-----------------------------------------------


*Because someone will ask:  Yes, I took out a blank sheet of paper, drew as I talked and the project was funded and approved on the spot.  He gave me about 30 minutes, not 5.  Kerry McCluggage, president of Paramount TV and Dick Lindheim, SVP of Paramount TV where also there- ask them.

Daniel Suarez - A great new author worth checking out

  

Some fiction books are more then entertainment. Every so often you read a book (or in this case 'books') that really grab you and make you think.



Daniel Suarez has written a pair of books that nail it. Daemon and FreedomTM. If you've got a day free (you'll need it because you likely won't want to put these books down until you're done) and want to have your view of the world shaken up a bit, these near-future sci-fi books are worth every penny (thanks to Brad Feld for the pointer via his blog: http://bit.ly/A7uZVC ).

For more on the books and it's author: http://thedaemon.com/

Daemon & its sequel, FreedomTM - by Daniel Suarez

For those of you who are introverts.... Susan Cain on the power of introverts.

Don't join a class action suit. Instead, individually sue in small claims court.

This may seem like a small thing, but it's really a big thing because this women won her small claims suit against Honda.  Instead of 100,000 people suing a big company after it lies to them in a class action lawsuit, and, maybe, getting a few hundred bucks each, with the lawyers getting millions, they each sue in small claims court, getting, in this case, almost $10,000.  

Instead of a $100MM settlement, it becomes a $1 Billion dollar nightmare (not counting the administrative costs, likely another billion) for the companies involved.

Maybe, just maybe, this will help keep our largest corporations just a little more in line and thinking about their customer first.

This could change the face of class actions in America.  Instead of hiring a lawyer, you go to a coordinating website to learn how to get your fair share.

This is the kind of thing that the internet is best at, leveling the playing field for the average person and, in this case, democratizing the law itself making it more accessible, with a better payoff, for all of us.

Full story here: http://usat.ly/ziYpQk

A slippery slope

A slippery slope:  It would seem the word "Freedom" doesn't really correlate with "America" like it used to.


"Reporters Without Borders released its 2011-2012 global Press Freedom Index. The indicators for press freedom in the U.S. are dramatic, with a downward movement from 27th to 47th in the global ranking, from the previous year. Much of this is correlated directly to the arrest and incarceration of American journalists covering the 'Occupy' protest movements in New York and across the country. 'This is especially troubling as we head into an election year which is sure to spark new conflicts between police and press covering rallies, protests and political events.' Only Chile, who dropped from 33 to 80, joined the U.S. in falling over 100% of their previous ranking. Similarly, Chile was downgraded for 'freedom of information violations committed by the security forces during student protests.'"


http://en.rsf.org/press-freedom-index-2011-2012,1043.html

Apple, Evil Badass

I've got to hand it to Apple. 

 They've taken this we're gonna be the most evil badass you've seen since Gates version of Microsoft in the 90's really seriously.


Love the timeline:


January 2005 – Pixar senior executives (which include Steve Jobs) draft written terms for a no-poach agreement and send them to Lucasfilm
May 2005 – Apple and Adobe make agreements
2006 – Apple and Google make agreements shortly after Eric Schmidt joined Apple’s board of directors
April 2007 – Apple and Pixar make agreements
June and September 2007 – Google enters into agreements with Intuit and Intel that are identical to the agreements between Apple and Google, Apple and Adobe, and Apple and Pixar


I'm trying to figure out why a company with $100 Billion in cash would want to cheat the employees that made that cash pile possible.  And it wasn't some low level HR person doing this.  It was Steve Jobs.  He started it, personally.


Major alien puke on the 'do no evil' company as well.  Google, we hardly knew (the non-evil) you.


I am getting very (very) tired of the Steve Jobs worship in the tech industry.  If this is the guy we want to emulate as the best of the best, long term, we are lost.


http://techcrunch.com/2012/01/26/apple-google-consipracy/

Look ma... I'm a QR code!

A future of less?

Watching the final shuttle mission, I can't help but feel sad and a little worried. Will we have the courage to dream like this again as a species? Or, will we budget cut ourselves out of space forever?



The very last few seconds of the video has a very simple graph that shows worldwide annual military spending vs. space exploration spending. 2.1 Trillion vs. 38 Billion. I guess it's a matter of balance. I'm not sure we're very balanced, as a people, on the things that inspire and compel us to greatness anymore. I have hope, but I'm still a little worried about it, and still sad about where we are and where we appear to be heading.

Mastercard Parody

Whether you agree or not with what Wikileaks is doing, you have to admire their spunk (and irony) in this spoof 'commercial'.

How software companies die

Although I'm not a big fan of Orson Scott Card as a person, I do like his stories and, in this case, his observations on programming -- what works and what doesn't.

This one nails it.

An essay by Orson Scott Card

The environment that nutures creative programmers kills management and marketing types - and vice versa. Programming is the Great Game. It consumes you, body and soul. When you're caught up in it, nothing else matters. When you emerge into daylight, you might well discover that you're a hundred pounds overweight, your underwear is older than the average first grader, and judging from the number of pizza boxes lying around, it must be spring already. But you don't care, because your program runs, and the code is fast and clever and tight. You won. You're aware that some people think you're a nerd. So what? They're not players. They've never jousted with Windows or gone hand to hand with DOS. To them C++ is a decent grade, almost a B - not a language. They barely exist. Like soldiers or artists, you don't care about the opinions of civilians. You're building something intricate and fine. They'll never understand it.

BEEKEEPING

Here's the secret that every successful software company is based on: You can domesticate programmers the way beekeepers tame bees. You can't exactly communicate with them, but you can get them to swarm in one place and when they're not looking, you can carry off the honey. You keep these bees from stinging by paying them money. More money than they know what to do with. But that's less than you might think. You see, all these programmers keep hearing their parents' voices in their heads saying "When are you going to join the real world?" All you have to pay them is enough money that they can answer (also in their heads) "Geez, Dad, I'm making more than you." On average, this is cheap. And you get them to stay in the hive by giving them other coders to swarm with. The only person whose praise matters is another programmer. Less-talented programmers will idolize them; evenly matched ones will challenge and goad one another; and if you want to get a good swarm, you make sure that you have at least one certified genius coder that they can all look up to, even if he glances at other people's code only long enough to sneer at it. He's a Player, thinks the junior programmer. He looked at my code. That is enough. If a software company provides such a hive, the coders will give up sleep, love, health, and clean laundry, while the company keeps the bulk of the money.

OUT OF CONTROL

Here's the problem that ends up killing company after company. All successful software companies had, as their dominant personality, a leader who nurtured programmers. But no company can keep such a leader forever. Either he cashes out, or he brings in management types who end up driving him out, or he changes and becomes a management type himself. One way or another, marketers get control. But...control of what? Instead of finding assembly lines of productive workers, they quickly discover that their product is produced by utterly unpredictable, uncooperative, disobedient, and worst of all, unattractive people who resist all attempts at management. Put them on a time clock, dress them in suits, and they become sullen and start sabotaging the product. Worst of all, you can sense that they are making fun of you with every word they say.

SMOKED OUT

The shock is greater for the coder, though. He suddenly finds that alien creatures control his life. Meetings, Schedules, Reports. And now someone demands that he PLAN all his programming and then stick to the plan, never improving, never tweaking, and never, never touching some other team's code. The lousy young programmer who once worshiped him is now his tyrannical boss, a position he got because he played golf with some sphincter in a suit. The hive has been ruined. The best coders leave. And the marketers, comfortable now because they're surrounded by power neckties and they have things under control, are baffled that each new iteration of their software loses market share as the code bloats and the bugs proliferate. Got to get some better packaging. Yeah, that's it.

Progressive Tax; a point of view.

Every so often you read a comment on a blog, news aggregator site or social networking site that makes you go.. yea... damn well said.

A fellow who goes by the handle CaspianX2 on Reddit did that today on the subject of why taxation should be progressive (i.e. the more your make, the more you should be taxed). I read it and thought to myself, yea, damn well said.

"Firstly, it's important to note that money is nothing more than a symbol, an idea. It might sound strange, but one dollar is not worth one dollar - that dollar bill you're holding is nothing more than a piece of paper, virtually worthless. It only has worth because we, as a people, give it worth. We say that that piece of paper is worth one "dollar", a universal unit in trade, to save us the hassle of bartering. The important part being, that piece of paper is nothing, other than what we as a society decide it will be, for the benefit of our society. That's how money works.

Secondly, and I know this sounds like double-speak, but one dollar does not equal a hundred cents. Mathematically, it absolutely is, but effectively, it couldn't be farther from the truth. Walk into a dollar store with a penny and try to buy 1/100th of a candy bar. Go into McDonald's with a dime and try to get 1/10th of one of their dollar menu items.

Basically, the less money you have, the less effectively you can use it, and this scales all the way up. If you make enough money to afford a car, you don't have to go to the shitty grocery store across the street, and can head to one with better prices that's out of walking distance. If you make more, you might be able to afford a Costco membership, and buy your groceries in bulk sizes, which is a lot cheaper. And maybe you can trade in that shitty used car that was all you could afford before for something that gets more MPG and doesn't require costly repairs every six months. And instead of buying a cheap pair of sneakers you'll have to replace in a half a year, you might be able to buy yourself a decent pair of shoes that'll last you a few years. In many cases, you end up paying less in the long-run by paying more in the short-run.

So having more money means you can use it more effectively, giving you more bang for your buck. But it also gives you more opportunity, and not just opportunity to lead a better life, but more opportunity for upward-mobility.

Think of the costs associated with getting a job. To work in fast food, you presumably need some clean clothes, maybe a bus pass. To be able to shop around for a better employer, you'll need decent, reliable transportation. To get a better job, you might need better clothes, a cell phone, a computer with an internet connection... and moving up the scale, you need a college education... and for that, you're looking at tuition, books, and the costs associated with spending the amount of time it takes to get through college without a well-paying job.

If you can barely afford the clothes on your back, you'll be lucky to be earning minimum wage... and maybe after a few years of scrimping and saving, you'll be able to get a car, and have some slightly better options. If you have a decent income, you have a much better opportunity to get a college degree in a high-paying field, or work your way up the corporate ladder.

That's not even getting into the facets of your life that indirectly affect your job opportunities. If you're wealthier, you have better legal options, which means that you're less likely to be convicted or spend time in prison, even for committing the exact same crime as a poor person. You have better medical coverage, which means less time spent having to call in sick to work, and being more fit also makes you a more appealing job candidate. There are even some ties between level of income and access to a nutritional diet - low-income folks generally eat shittier food because they can't afford to buy healthier food.

This isn't a fluke. It's how money works - the more of it there is, the more powerful a force it is, even proportionally, and the easier it is to get more of it.

However, there's another side to this too. The more money you have, the more expendable any portion of it becomes, even proportionally-speaking. Let's look at three guys, Allen, Billy, and Charlie. Allen makes $20K a year, Bill makes $200K a year, and Charlie makes $2 Million a year. Each is taxed at 10% of their income... but as need to happen sometimes, the taxes need to go up. Let's say they double, so it's 20% now - the same for all three, right? Hell, it's harder on the richer, because they're paying more money than the poor guy! But in actuality, it's the poor guy who's sacrificing the most because of this, because so little of his income is expendable. Now Allen needs to decide between paying the rent and paying for food. Bill needs to hold off on that family vacation to Europe he's been planning. And Charlie... well, Charlie will gripe about the number in his bank account being less than he'd like, and then he'll go and buy his twelfth Ferrari anyway.

Remember how I said "money only has worth because we, as a people, give it worth, for the benefit of our society". That money you supposedly "own" isn't even really property, it's an idea used to facilitate the operation of a healthy society, and it does so by making an easy, simple conversion of property into a common exchange value. But since its very nature is uneven and broken, it needs to be addressed as such. And since a 10% tax hike on someone earning $20K is not the same as a 10% tax hike on someone earning $2 Million, for the many reasons I've just stated, we have progressive taxation, where the wealthier you are, the greater a portion of your income you contribute in taxes.

To take this to an extreme, if there was an across-the-board tax of 50%, with wages in America what they are now, the wealthy would still be living comfortably, the middle class would be scraping by... and the poor would starve to death. Treating everyone the same is not fair.

Republicans and those aligned with them like to paint this in a way that's essentially "ganging up on the rich people", "punishing" them for "success". However, if you treat everyone the same, make everyone pay a flat tax rate, then you are punishing the poor, who are less able to afford it. And it's easy to point at the numbers and turn them into a picture that shows the terrible burden the wealthy have to pay thanks to progressive taxation... but the truth of it is, the reality those numbers translate into is one where the wealthy can afford to contribute more, without any noticeable change to their lifestyle, and it's not just because they have more to give, it's because the fact that they have more makes them less dependent on it, better-able to acquire more of it, and less affected by its loss (again, even by proportion).

That is why any reasonable capitalist society taxes the rich progressively more than the poor. It's not to "punish" anyone for success, it's because the nature of money makes it far more invaluable by proportion to the poor than it is to the rich."

The New York Times Paywall

$420 a year.

That's what the New York Times thinks digital access to their newspaper is worth.

I would have had no problem paying for the NYT if it was reasonable. $5, maybe, $10 a month. But $15-$35 a month?

$15 mo for standard website and 'smartphone' access.

$20 mo for standard website and tablet access.

$35 a month for 'all access' (website, smartphone, tablet).

This is just baffling to me.

Why so much money? Are they removing ALL advertising from it? (because, at those prices, they damn well better).

Why the 'level's' that vary based on what device you're using to access what is, effectively, text and some reasonably good photography and some quite weak video?

I mean, come on NYT... I really expected something from you that made more sense.

This won't happen overnight, but, I believe they just went from being a national (even global) influencer, to be just another regional newspaper.

On being Anonymous

I've noticed a trend of late that people in cars with blacked out windows, where you can't really make out the person behind the wheel, tend to be some of the more aggressive drivers around me on the road. They cut you off, change lanes without signaling and, in general are more selfish and less concerned about people around them. I have to think that those blacked out windows, giving those drivers a degree of anonymity, have something to do with the behavior.

If we're not known, somehow, we become a bit less accountable and a little less careful about others around us.

If you know you can do something without anyone knowing it was you, would you do the same thing as you would if everyone knew it was you?

Think about that. I'm pretty sure most humans know exactly what I'm talking about.

I've seen similar behaviors in the online worlds where people can be whoever they want to be. You can see it in sties like 4Chan where everyone is anonymous and some of the things that go on there are undoubtedly entertaining, even hilarious, but also downright evil.

I worked for a large computer company some time ago that had a large companywide intranet that many of the engeineering staff would use to try things out on. One engineer wrote a program that had two fields in it. One field was a scrolling window of text posted, real time, as people typed it into the second field: A small 200 character text field at the bottom. It was totally anonymous (the people entering text were not tracked in any way). Some of the things that came across that program were priceless and it lent itself to endless entertainment, right up until someone posted the married VP of HR was screwing his admin.

There were thousands of people using this program so there was literally no way to figure out who put up this particular post, but you can bet that this Cupertino based company (known for being highly innovative) shut it down and actively went after the engineer who wrote it (and, his manager, who happened to be me at the time).

Was this the right thing to do? I don't really know. I guess you could say: Is Twitter 'right'. It's essentially the same thing but on a global scale.

I'm not saying anonymity is bad. It can be very useful in doing good. The group Anonymous actively went after the Church of Scientology and exposed much of their more questionable practices. They made a point of bringing attention to the financial institutions that said they wouldn't allow monies to be sent to Wikileaks (but had no problem handling finances for the Klu Klux Klan).

I know of a group of people that, by necessity, anonymously ran an underground pirate radio station because they couldn't get a license, wanted to create a locally focused community media resource and were effectively hunted down by a federal agency (the FCC) to stop putting out signal equal in power to a 100watt light bulb. The only thing that protected them was being anonymous.

And there are many larger examples such as the people behind the organization of the uprising in Egypt, or the people that give information to wistleblowers like Wikileaks and news organizations.

But I wonder if it doesn't make for a less civil and a little more chaotic world.

Actually, I think I do know the answer to that: Yes. It does.

It's not really a good thing, and, it's not really a bad thing.

It's a little like a gun. It can be used for good like protection, deterrence or survival in a post-apocalyptic zombie filled world. Or,it can be used to attempt the assassination of a congresswomen.

It depends on who's hands it's in and what inclination those hands have.

Hopefully, it's more often for doing good than doing evil.

Aggregator, Curator, Editor.. it's all the same thing

The NYT wrote an article on Oprah's new network OWN (Oprha Winfrey Network.. surprise) talking about how it's a 'curator' of content.

This got me to thinking about a conversation I had with the managing editor of the Washington Post newspaper back in the early 90's. He said:

"People read our newspaper because of what we don't print".

That's right.

The Washington Post was providing editorial perspective to content. They filtered. They provided context. They aggregated a mass of content, filtered out the chaf, collected it together (curated) and presented the package to a willing to pay for it audience.










That's 1/2 of where the media world is heading.

The other 1/2 is actually kind of new. It's powered more by technology than media and it's that oh so often used word: social . This is also called 'social networking' and used to be called 'community'. It's also been around forever. The draw of your friends providing guidance to what media you consume by recommending TV shows, movies, books and magazines, or driving you through social obligation to play games like World of Warcraft, or Farmville, that's just community turbocharged by technology.

So, it really just comes down to two things driving all this media (and really, consumption in general) stuff:

Editorial Perspective and Community.

I know this seems overly simplistic, but we tend to complicate things far more than needed in todays tech world. My take is to focus primarily on those two things, take the time too figure out what area of all the complexity that underlies them to make them better you should scope in on, and you'll likely come up with something very successful.

Will Oprah's OWN network succeed? Well, does it have an editorial perspective and does it draw on community?

I know one thing; if she's selling stock in OWN, I'd buy it.

Low Power FM just approved by Congress

You gotta love it. LPFM - i.e. Low power FM (100 watt community oriented stations) was just approved by Congress.

This legislation opens up radio spectrum to hundreds, if not thousands, of local independent radio stations (also known as LPFM).

From the Prometheus Project folks:

WASHINGTON, DC – Today a bill to expand community radio nationwide – the Local Community Radio Act – passed the U.S. Senate, thanks to the bipartisan leadership of Senators Maria Cantwell (D-WA) and John McCain (R-AZ). This follows Friday afternoon’s passage of the bill in the House of Representatives, led by Representatives Mike Doyle (D-PA) and Lee Terry (R-NE). The bill now awaits the President's signature.

These Congressional champions for community radio joined with the thousands of grassroots advocates and dozens of public interest groups who have fought for ten years to secure this victory for local media. In response to overwhelming grassroots pressure, Congress has given the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) a mandate to license thousands, of new community stations nationwide. This bill marks the first major legislative success for the growing movement for a more democratic media system in the U.S.

What's it mean? It means that your town will have actual local community oriented radio with local DJ's talking about local issues, playing a wide range of music and doing something wonderful with the public airwaves (i.e. FM radio) that we haven't seen in a long long time.

By this time next year, it'll be worth owning a radio again.

Create your very own newspaper

Now this is interesting. www.paper.li takes your twitter feed and creates a newspaper out of it based on the people you follow.

Here's mine: http://paper.li/scottconverse

It's just 3 things...

Hit me in the shower this morning.

It's just 3 things.

That's really all that's important.

We're not talking 3 specific things... it's different for each of us. But it's still just 3 things.

It seems to me that we're made to really focus, best, on 3 things. More than 3 and you start to get scattered in your approach, less than 3, too easy for the human mind.

Of course, there are generally about 30 important things that need your attention at any given time. Can you focus on those 30 things? Nope. You're brain just isn't wired for it. It's aware of them, but it can't focus on all of them. Too many things.

What makes for a highly effective person is the ability to determine, from those 30 important things, which 3 are important right now. Which 3 they should be working on (or making sure others are working on if they're managing people).

Anyone can 'track' 30 things,but only executive thinkers can really see, almost immediately, which 3 of those 30 things they should be focused on. If you're in a big company that's the difference between being an individual contributor or a manager. A director or VP... on up the line.

In a startup company, it's the difference between being the PHP program monkey working on the support forum or the company Architect. The product manager or the CEO. It makes a big difference.

The next 300 things are what really trip us up. We're all dealing with, overall, about 300ish details, just by being alive. Homeless or CEO, the numbers are about the same.

The people that can determine, out of those 300 things, which 30 are important, and which 3 should be the one's they're focused on...

Those guys... they run the place.

So, it's not really about being able to manage dozens of things as many of us believe and, often, what makes our lives so hectic and at times overwhelming.

It's about being able to tell what 3 things should be the primary focus, and not worrying about those important 30 things or those 300 in the back of your mind.. gotta deal with em things...

It's just 3 things.