Radical Jinn

Logo agony of a dying business

2011-03-16T02:40:26Z

When a company's reason for being is in agony, the first order of business is to modify the brand. The logo seems malleable, the business plan requires integrity and perseverance.

Temptation for politicians: hiding truth

2010-12-04T13:48:49Z

Dave Winer: ... the only way to shut [WikiLeaks] down will be to shut down the Internet itself. Politicians should be aware that these are the stakes. They either get used operating in the open, where the people they're governing are in on everything they do, or they go totalitarian, around the globe, now.

Ephemeralization by Tablets

2010-12-02T12:11:47Z

Paul Graham: The advantages of doing things in software on a single device are so great that everything that can get turned into software will. So for the next couple years, a good recipe for startups will be to look around you for things that people haven't realized yet can be made unnecessary by a tablet app.

In 1938 Buckminster Fuller coined the term ephemeralization to describe the increasing tendency of physical machinery to be replaced by what we would now call software. The reason tablets are going to take over the world is ... they have this force behind them. The iPhone and the iPad have effectively drilled a hole that will allow ephemeralization to flow into a lot of new areas. No one who has studied the history of technology would want to underestimate the power of that force.

Depends on who it was

2010-10-07T05:50:31Z

Necropsy: pathological dissection of a corpse, belonging to any life form; particularly to determine cause of death. A dissection is a minute and detailed examination.

Autopsy, from Ancient Greek αὐτοψία ("the quality of being seen for oneself"): dissection performed on a cadaver to find possible cause(s) of death. A cadaver is a dead body, a human corpse. By extension to human artefacts and activities: an after-the-fact examination, especially of the causes of a failure (more common term in this context: post-mortem).

Elements must have been there already

2010-10-04T17:24:47Z

In my experience, and that of others I've spoken with, reading Ayn Rand's works has often elicited a feeling of recognition -- yes, this is how the world works, this is how I've been operating -- but with the tremendous addition of a whole system, integrated principles, knife-sharp definitions, and vivid descriptions. Of course, it felt like coming home, being welcomed on Earth by a benevolent, far-seeing mind that would not preach self-sacrifice or mysticism; reading ideas towards which one had groped but never quite found the right words for; and understanding thoughts one didn't know had been developed, illustrated, and presented with such a degree of rationality. She was a towering giant, and the only reason we are close to her is that we had what it took to approach her, something in common before we even heard about her.

What's wrong with the sales guy?

2010-09-19T06:43:11Z

At startup #4 we developed a product, and we went to a trade show. We had a willing buyer who wanted a quantity of tens of thousands to equip all of the ministry employees in their country. We had a manufacturing facility producing hundreds per week and aching to ramp-up to thousands. What did the CEO / sales guy do? nothing. He didn't return the buyer's calls, didn't send 10 samples as promised in person (right in front of me), never had an explanation of why that sale wasn't happening, why we weren't signing a contract. What he did do was interrupt meetings with his mobile phone, make bad jokes, never write down what the founders agreed needed to be done; and he always asked when the next version of the product would be ready to sell. A business cannot exist with salespeople who neglect to take money from buyers for available merchandise. The sales guy was not listening to the market.

Give me unadulterated value, not interference

2010-06-11T02:40:19Z

This applies to much more than restaurants and web sites. Dave Winer: When I go to a great restaurant I don't want the waiter to interfere with the experience. I came there to eat and be with my friends. Same thing with software and with websites. I came there to read and to learn and to be inspired. The website can help, but it isn't the show.

Kept in the light

2010-04-10T21:40:25Z

Nightfall, a short story by Isaac Asimov (1941) nicely answers this question: If the stars should appear one night in a thousand years, how would men believe and adore, and preserve for many generations the remembrance of the city of God? (Emerson)

Who is the iPad user?

2010-04-09T23:25:07Z

Do we value the pursuit of knowledge, discovery, and innovation into the mass-information age? do we want our children to grasp and manipulate the world first-hand? are man-made objects as equally accessible as natural entities?

Coy Doctorow is angry with Apple's path: The model of interaction with the iPad is to be a "consumer," what William Gibson memorably described as "something the size of a baby hippo, the color of a week-old boiled potato, that lives by itself, in the dark, in a double-wide on the outskirts of Topeka. It's covered with eyes and it sweats constantly. The sweat runs into those eyes and makes them sting. It has no mouth... no genitals, and can only express its mute extremes of murderous rage and infantile desire by changing the channels on a universal remote." He is on to something significant.

Apple (now) opposes tinkerers

2010-03-17T00:20:49Z

ben fry: There's simply no reason to prevent people from installing anything they want on the iPad. The same goes for the iPhone. When the iPhone appeared, Steve Jobs made a ridiculous claim that a rogue application could "take down the network." That's an insult to common sense ... The $499 iPad that has no data network hardware is not in danger of "taking down" anyone's cell network, but applications will still be required to go through the app store and therefore, its approval process.

Computing platforms need to remain open. Tinkerers explore and innovate. Apple will lose this battle.

How to fix a Maglite bulb

2010-03-13T19:36:00Z

Most Maglites come with a spare light bulb in the butt. Unscrew the cap on the bottom of the Maglite, pull the spring off, and out slides a plastic capsule with replacement bulb. Later, remember to refill the reserve.

Unemployment tops 20% in eight California counties

2010-03-13T00:55:31Z

The state's jobless rate of 12.5% in January was its worst since records have been kept (starting in 1976) and fifth-highest in the nation. It's not over yet, there is no actual economic recovery, just government propaganda. I'm glad we left.

Actual Function for Mobile Connectivity

2010-03-06T12:58:22Z

Just give us a device that can and will maintain always-on connection via 4G, 3G, Edge, and Ethernet (throw in bluetooth and USB for desperate cases), and all that device needs to do is provide tethering to that connection in the form of a secure, local WiFi hotspot. No screen, no button, no nothing else -- just a battery, power plug, and red/green led. Then I can tether my laptop, tablet, "smartphone", anytime and anywhere. Charge $100 to sell the device, then $10-20 / month for an unlimited data plan.

I don't want a phone that works as a computer, I want small computing platforms that give me access to abundant protocols of communication over the Internet and a separation of concern for the necessary wireless, mobile connectivity. The phone companies will disappear. All we need are wireless Internet access.

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Living in an Ice Age

2009-11-28T15:48:48Z

We are in an ice age. Over the last 2.5 million years we have experienced about twenty periods of glaciation and a similar number of interglacial periods. The current, warm, interglacial period is ending.

Within this ice age, periods of deep glaciation last about 100,000 years and interglacial periods last 15-20,000 years (these are slightly warmer times within the ice age). The last glacial period was the most recent glacial period within the current ice age. It began about 110,000 years ago and ended about 9,600 - 9,700 BC. History, the agricultural revolution, and the industrial revolution have all happened within this short interglacial period.

We are approaching the end of the current interglacial period, it's going to get colder again. We don't know with certainty what triggers the entrance to glaciation, or to the warmth of an interglacial. But they occur with documented accuracy. The Earth will freeze again.

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Of deafness and frogs

2009-11-27T22:15:16Z

A post-modern scientist is determined to test the sensitivity of a frog's response to the spoken command "jump."
]]> Carefully cutting off one leg at a time and commanding the frog to jump, he noted positive results for each of the first three amputations; upon severing the fourth and final leg, no response at all ensued.

His final notes read: "It is clear that cutting off the sum of a frog's appendages renders the beast stone deaf."