WebSitesOfNote

DRM "Just there to annoy" Counterproductive? NEVER

From http://www.dansdata.com/gz079.htm

The Great Apathetic Revolution
Originally published 2007 in Atomic: Maximum Power Computing
Last updated 27-Feb-2008.



As every nerd knows, copy protection - more accurately describable as "copy control" - works backwards.

And yet there seems to be more of the bloody stuff with each passing year.

The marketing people babble on about how Digital Rights Management "enhances" your "enjoyment" of a product. But what copy control really does is make ripped-off stuff better than the legal version.

The most obvious example of this is the difference between illegally downloaded movies and commercial DVDs.

To view a downloaded movie, you double-click it. And then you're watching it.

Stick a recent commercial DVD into your player, though, and you'll probably have to sit through lengthy, un-skippable warnings about how dastardly is the piracy which you did not just engage. And that's before you even get to the annoying menus, trailers, and other dross that stand between you and the movie for which you, one might start to think foolishly, paid.





From http://consumerist.com/consumer/drm/mpaa-says-drm-exists-to-annoy-honest-customers-153871.php

No, it is not correct to assume that one clever hack dooms all use of DRM. Content owners use DRMs because it provides casual, honest users with guidelines for using and consuming content based on the usage rights that were acquired. Without the use of DRMs, honest consumers would have no guidelines and might eventually come to totally disregard copyright and therefore become a pirate, resulting in great harm to content creators.

Top 100 Most Expensive Keywords (CPC)
Rank Term Max Price
1 conference calling companies $51.62
2 data recovery service los angeles $51.18
3 pennsylvania mesothelioma lawyers $51.16
4 home owner secured loan $51.07
5 mesothelioma attorneys san diego $50.78
6 secured loans calculator $50.68
7 mesothelioma patient $50.23
8 austin texas dwi lawyer $50.03
9 phoenix dui lawyers $50.01
10 insurance auto $50.00
10 secured loans $50.00
10 phoenix dui attorney $50.00
13 memphis car insurance $49.99
14 car free insurance online quote $49.96
15 student debt consolidation loans $49.87
16 new york mesothelioma lawyers $49.70
17 data recovery denver $49.56
18 boston dui lawyer $49.47
18 adverse credit remortgages $49.47
20 mesothelioma lawyers san diego $49.44
21 bad credit remortgages $49.37
22 consolidating student loans $49.27
23 student loan consolidation rates $49.17
24 purchase structured settlements $49.10
25 dui san diego $48.87
26 structured settlement investment $48.82
27 dui attorney los angeles $48.60
28 personal injury lawyer chicago $48.49
29 phoenix arizona dui lawyer $48.32
30 los angeles dwi attorney $48.28
31 uk homeowner loan $48.25
32 student consolidation loan $48.20
33 endowments selling $48.17
34 irs tax lawyers $48.11
35 nj auto insurance $48.08
36 free quotes for car insurance $48.05
37 los angeles criminal defense attorney $48.00
38 san diego dui defense $47.97
39 consolidating private student loans $47.96
40 in car insurance $47.68
41 lemon law california $47.63
42 los angeles criminal attorney $47.59
43 georgia car accident lawyers $47.54
44 culinary schools california $47.49
45 student loan consolidation interest rates $47.46
46 arizona dui attorney $47.45
47 consolidation student loans $47.44
48 injury lawyers 4 you $47.39
49 personal injury attorneys pennsylvania $47.17
50 student consolidation loans $47.06
51 instant car insurance quote $47.00
52 auto insruance $46.95
53 iva debt help $46.90
54 sell structured insurance settlements $46.82
55 structured settlement buyer $46.77
56 philadelphia personal injury lawyers $46.68
57 endowment policy sales $46.58
58 college loans consolidation $46.49
59 car insurances quote $46.47
60 irs tax attorneys $46.19
61 consolidation student loan $46.18
62 dui attorney sacramento $46.16
63 buyer structured settlement $46.12
64 california mesothelioma attorneys $46.10
65 home mortgages for bad credit $46.02
66 selling structured settlement $45.96
67 remorgaging $45.93
68 phoenix dui lawyer $45.90
69 dui attorney san francisco $45.75
70 school loans consolidation $45.65
71 donate your car $45.56
72 student loan consolidations $45.46
73 consolidate school loans $45.45
74 mesothelioma doctor $45.41
75 colorado truck accident lawyers $44.97
76 ny car insurance $44.83
77 virginia car accident lawyers $44.76
77 personal injury lawyers houston $44.76
79 structured settlement payments $44.57
80 car insurance texas $44.56
81 college loan consolidation $44.43
82 compare car insurance rates $44.41
83 break down cover $44.35
84 remortgage loans $44.33
85 sell structured settlement payments $44.31
86 austin criminal attorney $44.28
87 injury lawyers 4u $44.17
88 car insurance quotes online $44.14
89 raid data recovery services $44.09
90 arizona dui lawyer $44.05
91 eloan mortgage $43.98
92 consolidation of student loans $43.95
92 michigan car accident attorneys $43.95
94 student loan consolidation calculator $43.94
95 managed hosting service $43.90
96 bad credit home equity $43.88
96 los angeles criminal attorneys $43.88
98 auto insurance in michigan $43.79
99 dwi fort worth $43.78
100 home improvement loans rates $43.75

Joe Gregorio | BitWorking | REST and WS-*: "In a large system you may be faced with either a multitude of clients or a menagerie of them; in either case you have to stop serializing objects and start exchanging documents."

serializing data in the long term just doesn't work.

Google Reader (100+): "I believe that Alistair Cockburn's paper from the ICAM 2005 International Conference on Agility will come to seen as a seminal paper in Lean Software Engineering (ironic as it was inspired by the Theory of Constraints). In this paper, Cockburn explains that asking a non-bottleneck resource to do extra work to rework something does not cost anything extra and can create a desirable effect because it allows progress to be made and demonstrated earlier. Ergo, rework is not waste when performed by a non-bottleneck resource."

"Loan consolidation" ($69.16) currently owns them all

This is the list of the top 50 most expensive loan consolidations Google adwords as of September 11, 2006 (GMT+1) (according to wget, grep, sed & friends).

I found it rather amazing that the keywords loan consolidation for college, school, car etc. are much more expensive than, say... even private yachts, jets, luxury homes and so on!

Prices are shown in estimated average CPC (costs per click). Yes, just one tiny click from someone searching for these keywords is worth almost $70 to someone, apparently.

Adword	Average CPC
school loan consolidation	$69.16
college loan consolidation	$68.35
car insurance quotes	$66.88
school consolidation	$66.29
auto insurance quotes	$65.90
college consolidation	$64.04
student loan consolidation rates	$60.14
sell structured settlement	$59.82
sell annuity	$58.92
federal student loan consolidation	$58.58
auto quotes	$58.09
auto insurance quote	$57.99
student consolidation	$56.96
student loan consolidation	$56.91
student loan consolidation interest rate	$56.52
consolidate student loan	$54.61
san diego dui attorney	$54.56
car insurance	$53.16
structured settlement	$52.96
consolidate school loans	$52.88
student loan refinance	$52.44
consolidation of student loans	$52.43
consolidation loan rate	$52.04
citibank student loan consolidation	$51.85
car insurance quote	$51.80
consolidate student loans	$51.23
private student loan consolidation	$51.05
lasik new york	$49.86
student loans consolidation	$49.82
private loan consolidation	$48.95
insurance quotes	$48.78
teleconference services	$48.72
the art institute of seattle	$48.68
federal loan consolidation	$48.61
plus loan consolidation	$47.74
student loan consolidation programs	$47.58
bad credit equity loan	$47.46
houston criminal attorney	$47.44
student loan consolidation calculator	$47.19
cash settlement	$47.12
consolidating student loans	$47.09
orlando culinary institute	$46.84
student loan consolidation program	$46.77
orlando culinary institute	$46.69
consolidation loan	$46.54
loan consolidation	$46.54
orlando culinary institute	$46.51
ditech	$46.32
auto quote	$45.77
sallie mae student loan consolidation	$45.69

Once your loan has brought you through college, you probably will be in huge need of the adwords below position #50, which are mostly insurances, tax-related keywords and - bless America - lawyers ;)

The Top 10 Attributes of a Great Programmer – Programming Matters

1. Being a great problem solver.
2. Being driven and lazy at the same time.
3. Ability to understand other people’s code
4. Having a passion for programming
5. Loving learning for the sake of learning
6. Being good at math
7. Having good communications skills
8. Strong debating skills
9. Extreme optimism
10. Extreme pessimism

After putting together this list some aspects surprised me, and I was the one who put together the list. So let me explain each in detail.These attributes describe those I’ve found in pretty much every great programmer I’ve come across. There were a number that fell through the cracks and I’ll explain those later.
1. Being a great problem solver - Hopefully everyone recognizes this one. Most good programming is all about being able to find solutions where others can’t see them. If you don’t have this skill the others matter far less.
2. Being driven and lazy at the same time - This one surprises some people. Programmers question things and are often “too lazy” to take the long route. The will spend countless cycles trying to simplify the problem and simplify their task. That said they having a burning need to get the job done, they just want to do it as efficiently as possible.
3. Ability to understand other people’s code - This point is essential but cuts some good programmers off from being great programmers. It doesn’t matter how well you can rewrite everything yourself - you need to be able to work with other people’s code on existing projects, lean on opensource in new projects, and learn good techniques from the code base that is already out there.
4. Having a passion for programming - on some level you have to love programming for programming’s sake. I suppose to be truly great at anything you have to love it in most cases.
5. Loving learning for the sake of learning - Programming is a moving target. Unless you love the art of edification you will sink fast. There are no laurels to rest on and no one cares what you did yesterday. Unless you are aware of the techniques on the horizon, you won’t be ready to embrace them when they become relevant.
6. Being good at math - Different people will have different opinions here - but at the very least having a strong grip on pre-Calculus math. I’ve never seen a great programmer without a solid grasp of at the very least algebra and trig.
7. Having good communications skills - This doesn’t mean that they can communicate with anyone and everyone. Specifically this means that they are able to clearly express their thoughts on their own terms. I’ve met plenty of great programmers who couldn’t communicate well with the world at large. However, given someone to talk to who understands the problem domain, they were all able to clearly state the problem and the solutions proposed.
8. Strong debating skills - This follows the same logic as #7.
9. Extreme optimism - Great programmers I have encountered have an insane certainty they can get the job done once they have chewed on it a bit.
10. Extreme pessimism - Great programmers I have encountered have an insane insistence that when they lack the information needed to make a good judgment that they won’t be able to make one at all.

Mobile is dud « Elusive Consumer

Mobile is dud

Wednesday, October 18th, 2006 in All

Last night I was reminded of my conviction that any business model build around mobile is doomed and that advertisers should ignore this medium for the time being.

Last night I was at PaidContent’s successful LDN ContentNext Mixer networking event that had over 350 attendants.

I talked to a number of mobile start-ups everybody I talked was in mobile for some reason). All had good ideas, none where getting traction. Many were desperately trying to find a work around the network operators.

Think about the innovation you’ve seen in the Internet since 1995 (the year Amazon launched and Netscape IPOed). Think of how you use the computer today compared to back then; of all the innovative services that have been launched; about the revolution we have experienced in the way we communicate, share content, find information. To name a few there is: Amazon, Hotmail, online news, eBay, Wikipedia, Yahoo, MySpace, YouTube, Google, Expedia, online banking, Napster, BitTorrent, digg, SecondLife, blogs, email, instant messaging, Skype…

Now think of the innovation you’ve seen in mobiles since 1985 (when mobiles began to be widely available) – and note they had over 10 years head start. Think of how you used your mobile phone then and now : uhh… you probably still use it to make and receive calls and text messages. Okay, to be complete there is a 1% or less sliver of mobile users who are Blackberry users; or who send picture messages, make video calls or watch TV. But, to drive the point home, these services were launched in the last two years or so.

So what happened to all the mobile entrepreneurs? Why haven’t we seen innovation on mobile phones as we say on PCs. The entrepreneurs were snuffed (1). Because they control the network the mobile operators figured they ought to make all the profit from any business using their infrastructure and totally control (own) the user experience (2). I know of three mobile-based start-ups, by friends of mine, all with reasonably good ideas, that fatally partnered with mobile network operators. The exception was – there is always an exception the defines the rule: ringtones.

Mobile network operators were (and are) too greedy. The only entrepreneurial mobile environment is iMode in Japan where DoCoMo charges a lowly 9% commission on sales.

And that’s my point. The only way a mobile-based business can succeed is to avoid, at all peril, the mobile network operators.

Prediction: Until there is widespread WiFi and 3G access to the Internet via mobile phones (in other words, mobile-based business can reach consumers by going around network operators portals) there will be limited opportunities to establish profitable mobile-based businesses. Established companies should steer clear until then.

Observations

(1) The death of innovation in a closed network environment should serve as a warning to US regulators being lobbied by US operators trying to create a two-tiered Internet.

(2) Another, technical reason, is that mobile phones didn’t have a standard operating platform equivalent to Windows and HTML – until the recent arrival of Java enabled phones. However, for years Nokia represented over 60% of the handset market which is big enough a market. So, though the technical conditions for innovation of services on mobile phones was not ideal, it was not unsurmountable.

The Spam Farms of the Social Web

Key words that pay a lot
Google AdWords pricing Search term CPC ($)
teeth whitening 18.66
sedation dentistry 12.80
cosmetic dentistry 12.76
dental plans 9.78
dental implant 6.85
pediatric dentist 6.77
discount dental plans 5.93
oral surgery 4.95
braces 3.39
cavity 1.88

The Parable of the Two Programmers

The Parable of the Two Programmers







The Parable of the two Programmers
Neil W. Rickert
Dept. of Math, Stat., and Computer Science,
University of Illinois at Chicago.




Once upon a time, unbeknownst to each other, the "Automated Accounting
Applications Association" and the "Consolidated Computerized Capital Corpora-
tion" decided that they needed the identical program to perform a certain ser-
vice.

Automated hired a programmer-analyst, Alan, to solve their problem.

Meanwhile, Consolidated decided to ask a newly hired entry-level program-
mer, Charles, to tackle the job, to see if he was as good as he pretended.

Alan, having had experience in difficult programming projects, decided to
use the PQR structured design methodology. With this in mind he asked his
department manager to assign another three programmers as a programming team.
Then the team went to work, churning out preliminary reports and problem ana-
lyses.

Back at Consolidated, Charles spent some time thinking about the problem.
His fellow employees noticed that Charles often sat with his feet on the desk,
drinking coffee. He was occasionally seen at his computer terminal, but his
office mate could tell from the rhythmic striking of keys that he was actually
playing Space Invaders.

By now, the team at Automated was starting to write code. The programmers
were spending about half their time writing and compiling code, and the rest of
their time in conference, discussing the interfaces between the various modules.

His office mate noticed that Charles had finally given up on Space
Invaders. Instead he now divided his time between drinking coffee with his feet
on the table, and scribbling on little scraps of paper. His scribbling didn't
seem to be Tic Tac Toe, but it didn't exactly make much sense, either.

Two months have gone by. The team at Automated finally releases an imple-
mentation timetable. In another two months they will have a test version of the
program. Then a two month period of testing and enhancing should yield a com-
pleted version.

The manager of Charles has by now tired of seeing him goof off. He decides
to confront him. But as he walks into Charles's office, he is surprised to see
Charles busy entering code at his terminal. He decides to postpone the confron-
tation, so makes some small talk then leaves. However, he begins to keep a
closer watch on Charles, so that when the opportunity presents itself he can
confront him. Not looking forward to an unpleasant conversation, he is pleased
to notice that Charles seems to be busy most of the time. He has even been see
to delay his lunch, and to stay after work two or three days a week.




March 20, 1985





- 2 -


At the end of three months, Charles announces he has completed the project.
He submits a 500 line program. The program appears to be clearly written, and
when tested it does everything required in the specifications. In fact it even
has a few additional convenience features which might significantly improve the
usability of the program. The program is put into test, and, except for one
quickly corrected oversight, performs well.

The team at Automated has by now completed two of the four major modules
required for their program. These modules are now undergoing testing while the
other modules are completed.

After another three weeks, Alan announces that the preliminary version is
ready one week ahead of schedule. He supplies a list of the deficiencies that he
expects to correct. The program is placed under test. The users find a number of
bugs and deficiencies, other than those listed. As Alan explains, this is no
surprise. After all this is a preliminary version in which bugs were expected.

After about two more months, the team has completed its production version
of the program. It consists of about 2,500 lines of code. When tested it seems
to satisfy most of the original specifications. It has omitted one or two
features, and is very fussy about the format of its input data. However the
company decides to install the program. They can always train their data-entry
staff to enter data in the strict format required. The program is handed over
to some maintenance programmers to eventually incorporate the missing features.

Sequel:

At first Charles's supervisor was impressed. But as he read through the
source code, he realized that the project was really much simpler than he had
originally though. It now seemed apparent that this was not much of a challenge
even for a beginning programmer.

Charles did produce about 5 lines of code per day. This is perhaps a little
above average. However, considering the simplicity of the program, it was noth-
ing exceptional. Also his supervisor remembered his two months of goofing off.

At his next salary review Charles was given a raise which was about half
the inflation over the period. He was not given a promotion. After about a year
he became discouraged and left Consolidated.

At Automated, Alan was complimented for completing his project on schedule.
His supervisor looked over the program. With a few minutes of thumbing through
he saw that the company standards about structured programming were being
observed. He quickly gave up attempting to read the program however; it seemed
quite incomprehensible. He realized by now that the project was really much more
complex than he had originally assumed, and he congratulated Alan again on his
achievement.

The team had produced over 3 lines of code per programmer per day. This was
about average, but, considering the complexity of the problem, could be con-
sidered to be exceptional. Alan was given a hefty pay raise, and promoted to
Systems Analyst as a reward for his achievement.





March 20, 1985

WoW: watch the industry unfold, take careful notes about what the other guys are doing wrong, and then EXECUTE on a better solution

Class conflict and the state: "National Statistics has today quantified what we've always suspected - that strikes are far more common in the public sector than in the private.It estimates (pdf) that in the last 10 years, the public sector has accounted for 4.2 million of the 5.8 million working days lost through labour disputes. So, although the state represents only one-fifth of all employment, it accounts for 72.2% of strikes.There's a simple reason for this. The state is a monopoly. Monopolies, unlike competitive enterprises, don't care about annoying their 'customers' - because they've got nowhere to go. So, neither workers nor managers in the state sector have much incentive to avoid strikes. Bosses have less incentive to improve workers' morale, and workers have less incentive to co-operate with management.This just corroborates two of my priors. The state is a dysfunctional organization. And the old left were just stupid to believe state ownership would solve the problem of class conflict."

Shareholders and innovation: "... that shareholders have no function in human capital-intensive firms.

But innovation can't be managed from top-down. It relies upon communication, inspiration and dedication. These spring from a sense of fraternity and vocation, not from hierarchy and class conflict. However, shareholders exacerbate the latter - especially if the flotation gave big windfalls to bosses - without contributing any great function. Innovation-intensive companies, then, shouldn't have external, passive shareholders.
Shareholders seem to share this view. In the last 20 years, human capital-intensive innovative sectors - meeja, electronics and software - have under-performed the All-share. By contrast, the three best-performing sectors have been tobacco, banks and miners - industries with big physical capital requirements but little innovation.And since floating in February, Qinetiq's price has dropped 18%, hugely under-performing the market."

The Not-So-Changing Face of Leisure: "Think people today have it easier than their predecessors of 100 years ago? Not so fast. According to a nifty new study, leisure per capita is about about the same now as it was in 1900. How so? Blame a decline in hours worked that has largely been offset by time spent in school, plus average hours spent in home production is slightly higher than it was in the early part of the 20th Century. "

While Europe Slept: "Bruce Bawer talks about his book: I was also shocked to hear people refer to immigrants’ European-born children as “second-generation immigrants.” And their children were “third-generation immigrants.” This summed up an incredibly dramatic difference in the ways Americans and Europeans thought about immigrants. My father’s parents were Polish, but never in my life had it occurred to me to think of myself as a third-generation immigrant or of my father as a second-generation immigrant. The idea was ludicrous. We were Americans, period.My father's parents were Polish. My father was born in England, but lived most of his life in Australia. I'm Australian, period. Read the whole thing, depressing though it may be. (Via Roger L. Simon)"

If only I had an API...:

(I suspect a lot of CRM systems get sold to businesses where the absolute last thing the customer wants is a relationship. Anonymous, transactional commerce, please!)

C: You are a paranoid schizophrenic who spends most of your time confused about which type you should be, convinced that blatantly false things are true because your extreme efficiency leaves no room for sensible error checking. Moreover your terseness encourages people to interact with you badly, providing incomplete and ambiguous instructions for which you nevertheless come up with a legal interpretation, even though most of the time it is completely nonsensical. People come to you because you promise them simplicity, not realising that below the surface you're a rat's nest of issues. In the end you are always abandoned for someone like C++ or Python.

Python: Python cares deeply about you and does its best to make your life easier. Python is willing to try new things to make you happy -- "Sure, I can do generators, if that's what you want" -- and really doesn't mind if you're seeing other languages on the side. It insists upon arranging the cupboard into strict rows, but you stop noticing after a while, and eventually you come to prefer your shelves organized this way. Your friends think this is weird until they start dating Python too.

Ruby: Your older sister is the most popular cheerleader in school, but she's kind of a slut. You think that maybe if you add more features, the boys will like you just as much.

PHP: You've seen what works for Ruby and you think it will work for you too, but you haven't figured out that lipstick doesn't go on your cheeks and you shouldn't brush your hair with a mascara wand.

C++: C++ has seen people in love, and thinks it has everything figured out. C++ thinks it loves you, but it errs on the side of being controlling when it thinks it's being concerned and caring.

Ada: You are far more flexible than C++, and know how to be strict and forgiving at the same time. However, your tendency to wear the bondage and discipline gear all the time, as opposed to when your lover asks you to bring it out, frightens people off. You need to learn to stop calling people "worm" and "slave" in front of their mothers.

Java: You try to be loving, but you were raised by a commune of 60 nervous women who have told you that everything you do is loving, even when it isn't. Your unhelpful behaviors have never been corrected and everything you do is subtly wrong and destructive.

JSP: You are Java's younger sister, working in a strip club to pay for your women's studies degree.

Perl: You're incredibly enthusiastic and you have five different ways of doing anything that anyone could possibly want to do. As a result, you tend to overwhelm people and you leave a bad impression on people who could otherwise benefit from knowing you. You promise people answers to all their questions, but you're not ready for a real relationship. You like to guess what people want, but tend to jump to conclusions. When other people would say "what, really?", you've already gotten out a ball-peen hammer and a tub of beeswax. Because of this, people find themselves speaking to you using a range of expressions and vocabulary even more limited than what they'd use for someone who didn't speak the language at all.

Smalltalk: Smalltalk won't meet you outside Smalltalk's apartment. Smalltalk says that if you really loved it, you wouldn't leave.

OCaml: You know yourself to be fast, smart, and extremely reliable. However, you look kind of funny and nobody really wants to talk to you. You spend most of your time sitting in a public library glaring at people, occasionally yelling "NOBODY HERE APPRECIATES MY GENIUS!" and getting kicked out.

Prolog: You are a deaf and blind synthaesthete, who experiences the world entirely through smells, each of which triggers expansive flurries of poetry and music in your mind. Certain problems are trivial for you, but nobody will ever understand the answers you give them, because your numbering system involves colors that cannot be perceived by humans. Prolog can sometimes have a good time with people, but it's hard for a person to stay with someone who only wants them for their ochre vibrato.

Lisp: Lisp cares about you, but really loves itself more than it will ever love you. Lisp thinks that it's the world's greatest lover, and it is a lot of fun, but it's completely blind to its own inadequacies. Watch out: it flies into a rage if it finds you've been seeing C on the side. Lisp swears up and down that it can be anything and anyone you want, and in a lot of ways it's right, but in the end, it's still Lisp.

Logo: Lisp's adorable 7-year-old niece who likes to play with her toy turtle. On casual conversation, she proves to be disturbingly worldly and well-informed. You resolve not to let your kids play around Lisp's house. Thinking about using Logo in any serious way makes you feel a bit dirty.

Visual Basic: You're a fifteen-year-old girl with her very own computer in her room, pinging random strangers on AIM and claiming to be a 23-year-old girl who wants to cyber with them. However, your efforts fail at convincing people, mostly because you aren't very imaginative and most of the things you're promising them are ideas you ripped off from other sources and changed slightly, leaving them less believable.

ASP.NET: As above, except you're a fifteen-year-old boy.

Objective C: You grew up in a cold and loveless home. Everything you know about love, you learned by listening to Smalltalk and Lisp's sex parties in the apartment next door. Now you have met a sweet young thing named Darwin, and you are eager to please.

Dylan: Sombody sat Lisp down and told it it was too clingy. Now it's bipolar.

Twisted: Twisted Python not only loves you, it loves everyone, in 10ms intervals, on demand. But once you learn to take turns, you don't notice the difference.

E: E is very clear about its hard limits, and there are a lot of them. It tells you up front what you're not allowed to do, and sometimes you end up forgetting what you can do without pissing it off.

lex/yacc: lex and yacc are those twins you have a one-night stand with every couple of years. In the intervening period, you forget all about the neat tricks they can do, and every time you meet up you end up learning them all over again. But they're really rather one-sided, and schizophrenic in the same way C is, so in the end it's good that they're not after you for a long-term relationship.

Haskell: Haskell is pretty, but always uses an elaborate range of prophylactic techniques. By the time you're all in place, the person you're with no longer resembles Haskell. If you've had other lovers, Haskell doesn't like many of the things that you may have come to enjoy doing with them. Haskell will pretend never to have heard of these things, and call you a pervert.

SML/NJ: You cannot take anything away from a relationship with SML/NJ that you did not bring with you. If you leave anything at SML/NJ's apartment when you break up, SML/NJ will leave it on your doorstep without ringing the bell.

Assembler: Assembler has no limits -- none whatsoever -- but you have to make it do what you want. It will not make a move to help you; assembler just lies there.

FORTRAN: FORTRAN isn't a real relationship. Telling people you're happy with FORTRAN is like telling people you'll be happy taking care of your cats for the rest of your life and don't really need another person.

The Strategic/Tactical Use of Openness:

Of course we credit open markets, for their creative fecundity, producing so many innovations that our rivals were overwhelmed. They simply could not copy them fast enough. But worth noting: it is not the corporations that make these markets. Nor the CEO aristocracy. Rather, it is openness itself. If you have it, something like creative markets will happen, no matter how the structure is set up.



In 1945, at the end of WWII, the United States was ten years ahead of the Soviet Union in atomic technology and maybe just a couple in electronics. Spies helped the USSR close that ten year nuclear weapons gap, so we clamped down, classifying that entire field under tight wraps of security. Meanwhile, the field of electronics was left open. Forty years later? Our lead in electronics and cybernetics had grown spectacularly, into a gap of many generations that could never be crossed. Meanwhile, in the area of bombs, everybody agreed that the Soviets were essentially even with us. Conclusion? Any field in which we foster creativity through openness is one that will utilize our civilization’s strengths. Fields that we shut down, by short-term thinking and reflex, will play to the strengths of our opponents.

Shun the Millstone, Shun the Meal:

an iron clad rule that any strike or lockout must last a minimum of three months. Anything less and the workers will feel that they were on an extended vacation...a paid vacation at that, since the union has a war chest from which they can draw. After a few months, though, things will start to hurt. The war chest will empty, bank accounts dwindle, patience wane, nerves fray.

Eschew Sesquipedalian Obsfucation, by Bryan Caplan: "I'm a fan of Rick Harbaugh's work (with Nick Feltovich and Ted To) on counter-signaling. The motivating paragraph of 'Too Cool for School' still blows me away: Contrary to this standard implication, high types sometimes avoid the signals that should separate them from lower types, while intermediate types often appear the most anxious to send the “right” signals. The nouveau riche flaunt their wealth, but the old rich scorn such gauche displays... Mediocre students answer a teacher’s easy questions, but the best students are embarrassed to prove their knowledge of trivial points. Acquaintances show their good intentions by politely ignoring one’s flaws, while close friends show intimacy by teasingly highlighting them. People of moderate ability seek formal credentials to impress employers and society, but the talented often downplay their credentials even if they have bothered to obtain them. A person of average reputation defensively refutes accusations against his character, while a highly respected person finds it demeaning to dignify accusations with a response. "

But the focus group loved it: "John writes in and wants to know why I don't think much of focus groups. A properly run focus group is great. The purpose? To help you focus. Not to find out if an idea is any good. Not to get the data you need to sell your boss on an idea. No! Focus groups are very bad at that. Groupthink is a problem, for one. Second, you've got a weird cross section of largely self-selected people, the kind of people willing to sit in a room with bad lighting to make a few bucks. What focus groups can do for you is give you a visceral, personal, unscientific reaction to little brainstorms. They can help you push something farther and farther to see what grabs people. But the goal isn't to do a vote or a census. Any time your focus group results include percentages, you've wasted an afternoon."

CRM is dead: "
Customer Managed Relationships

Here's the quote from them that Tim shared with me,

'CMR is our version of CRM - just a slight nuance regarding our philosophy that our guests invite us into their lives and ultimately manage our presence/relationship with them.'"

Average: "Okay, it's true. In every category, in every profession, half the people are below average. This matters to marketers. It matters because if you expect your customers to be smarter than average, you've just lost half the potential market. It matters because if succeeding in a project requires exceptional effort, you better realize that not just any team member is going to make it work--actually less than half of the pool might. Same with the consultants, designers and yes, lawyers that you hire. Mass marketing works best when it assumes that everybody in the entire chain is just plain average. Or even a little bit less. Sorry to lower your expectations. Niche marketing, on the other hand, can thrive if it starts with the assumption that average products by average people for average people is just not your thing. Remember, though, that your sales expectations have to be in line with your niche mantra. Be picky. Make great stuff. Work with amazing people. Just don't expect everyone to love what you do."

How Is a Canadian Art-Pop Singer Like a Bagel Salesman?: Jane Siberry has decided to offer her wares to the public via an honor-system payment scheme. She gives her fans four choices:
1. free (gift from Jane)
2. self-determined (pay now)
3. self-determined (pay later so you are truly educated in your decision)
4. standard (today’s going rate is about .99)

Then, cleverly, she posts statistics on payment rates to date

Even more cleverly, Siberry posts the average payment rate for each song as you pull your payment option from the drop-down menu—another reminder that, Hey, you’re more than welcome to steal this music but here’s how other people have acted in the recent past. Methinks Ms. Siberry grasps the power of incentives quite well. This allows for at least a couple of interesting things to happen: people can decide what to pay after they hear the music, and see how much it’s worth to them (it looks like people generally pay the most per song under this option); and it takes the variable-pricing scheme that economists love and puts it in the hands of the consumer, not the seller.

VC Cliché of the Week: "'the success of a company is in inverse proportion to the number of venture capitalists on the board'. "

The Top Ten Lies of Engineers:

If income is defined in terms of the services that are yielded by the products (and services) that we buy, it is much more equal than if it is defined in money terms. The comment compares a Camry to a Lexus. The Lexus is a better car, but it costs three times as much and is it three times better? No. The 18-year-old Macallan (a single-malt Scotch) costs about twice as much as the 12-year-old, but the difference in taste is very slight. This seems a general characteristic of luxury goods. This is the sense in which people of widely different incomes can all consider themselves middle-class without being delusional.

QA's job is simple: they figure out what the software actually does. Developers produce software, and they believe it will do X, Y, and Z. They've set out to write it so it does these things. They worked hard to make it do these things. They believe it will do these things.

But does it?

Some months ago, one of our R&D people had made an off-the-cuff suggestion to a supplier, providing an edge-of-napkin sketch for a new product idea. This idea had little, if anything, to do with us. The supplier, to everyone's surprise, followed up on the suggestion and developed a patented and what appears to be high potential product. And, as it happens, the supplier included our lab rat’s name in the patent. The question asked by our top lawyer, Rigor Mortis, is whether or not the employee has rights to the patent or do these rights, by virtue of a signed employment contract, transfer to the company.

Honorary Tutsis: "From Jared Diamond's Collapse: Especially puzzling, if one believes that there was nothing more to the genocide than Hutu-versus-Tutsi ethnic hatred fanned by politicians, are events in northwestern Rwanda. There, in a community where virtually everybody was Hutu and there was only a single Tutsi, mass killing still took place--of Hutu by other Hutu. While the proprtional death toll there, estimated as 'at least 5% of the population' may have been somewhat lower than that overall in Rwanda (11%), it still takes some explaining why a Hutu community would kill at least 5% of its members in the absence of ethnic motives. Elsewhere in Rwanda, as the 1994 genocide proceeded and as the number of Tutsi declined, Hutu turned to attacking each other. ... All but one of the known victims at Kanama fell into one of six categories. First, the single Tutsi at Kanama, a widowed woman, was killed. Whether that had much to do with her being Tutsi is unclear, because she furnished so many other motives for killing; she had inherited much land, the had been involved in many land disputes, she was the widow of a polygnous husband (hence viewed as a competitor of his other wives and their families), and her deceased husband had alread been forced off his land by his half-brothers. Two more categories of victims consisted of Hutu who wer"

Honorary Tutsis: "From Jared Diamond's Collapse: Especially puzzling, if one believes that there was nothing more to the genocide than Hutu-versus-Tutsi ethnic hatred fanned by politicians, are events in northwestern Rwanda. There, in a community where virtually everybody was Hutu and there was only a single Tutsi, mass killing still took place--of Hutu by other Hutu. While the proprtional death toll there, estimated as 'at least 5% of the population' may have been somewhat lower than that overall in Rwanda (11%), it still takes some explaining why a Hutu community would kill at least 5% of its members in the absence of ethnic motives. Elsewhere in Rwanda, as the 1994 genocide proceeded and as the number of Tutsi declined, Hutu turned to attacking each other. ... All but one of the known victims at Kanama fell into one of six categories. First, the single Tutsi at Kanama, a widowed woman, was killed. Whether that had much to do with her being Tutsi is unclear, because she furnished so many other motives for killing; she had inherited much land, the had been involved in many land disputes, she was the widow of a polygnous husband (hence viewed as a competitor of his other wives and their families), and her deceased husband had alread been forced off his land by his half-brothers. Two more categories of victims consisted of Hutu who wer"

Instead, things like distributed teams and the ability to work from home have a lot more to do with always-on, high speed internet connections and free open-source technologies

It's not that the software has become easier to develop thanks to open APIs and such, but that software can now connect into online services with much more ease. It's those services that are not easily replicated. In other words, the challenge isn't about being able to easily reuse software, but to use the connectivity to tap into resources that can't just be built (such as communities or large data stores).

Planes, trains and automobiles: In Wired, where they report a Honda dealer is handing out “Just Looking” stickers to people entering teh showroom, and the salesmen will leave them alone until they rip their sticker off. The result is a dramatic increase in sales.

Guns vs. Random Bits:
An illustrative example is the Great Firewall of China. The Chinese government has put in place technologies to block their citizens’ access to certain information and to monitor their citizens’ communications. There are privacy-enhancing technologies that could give Chinese citizens access to the open Web and allow them to communicate privately. For example, they could encrypt all of their Internet traffic and pass it through a chain of intermediaries, so that all the government monitors saw was a stream of encrypted bits.

Such technologies work as a technical matter, but they don’t provide much comfort in practice, because people know that using such technologies — conspicuously trafficking in encrypted data — could lead to a visit from the police. Guns trump ciphers.

The Soak:
Ever sat in a meeting with your VP where they were presenting product strategy? Ever sat there, unblinking, shocked and thinking, "This guy, our leader, has absolutely no clue what doing"? That's you in ten years when you've a modicum of success and decided that success is a result of your MY WAY OR THE HIGHWAY policy.

"What's really happening in the blogosphere, it seems to me, is that boobus americanus, after generations in the shadows, has found a cultural opening. The universities, the mainstream media, the bien pensants have had their hollowness proven by the blogosphere, and as a result, the sci-fi fans, chiropractors, cultists, yahoos, know-nothings, food nazis, cryonicists, and all other assorted nuts and crazies feel safe in coming out of the woodwork. "

Why Phishing Works: "Interesting paper. Abstract: To build systems shielding users from fraudulent (or phishing) websites, designers need to know which attack strategies work and why. This paper provides the first empirical evidence about which malicious strategies are successful at deceiving general users. We first analyzed a large set of captured phishing attacks and developed a set of hypotheses about why these strategies might work. We then assessed these hypotheses with a usability study in which 22 participants were shown 20 web sites and asked to determine which ones were fraudulent. We found that 23% of the participants did not look at browser-based cues such as the address bar, status bar and the security indicators, leading to incorrect choices 40% of the time. We also found that some visual deception attacks can fool even the most sophisticated users. These results illustrate that standard security indicators are not effective for a substantial fraction of users, and suggest that alternative approaches are needed."

Daily effects: "Today is the 13th successive Tuesday on which the FTSE 100 has fallen - a fact made all the more remarkable because the market has risen over the last 13 weeks.This draws attention to the possibility that some days are better for the stock market than others. Here are average daily changes in the FTSE 100 since January 1 2005:
Monday = 0.124%
Tuesday = 0.011%
Wednesday = -0.033%
Thursday = 0.042%
Friday = 0.206%
The difference between Friday and Tuesday or Wednesday (and the average of Monday-Thursday) is statistically significant at the 5% level.
This is not a new finding. A famous paper (not webbed) by Josef Lakonishok and Seymour Smidt found that the Dow Jones did far better on Fridays than average between 1897 and 1986; for more on this, see the papers here.And Brian Lucey has found that Friday is also a good day for base metals prices. "

The fact that more and more people, especially children, are becoming obese, indicates that there is obviously some caloric/excercise factor in obesity . . . or some as-yet-unknown infectious agent is playing havoc with everyone's biology. Said infectious agent is obviously transmitted through money, since it infects countries pretty much in line with their per-capita GDP . . . but not big denominations, because the obesity ends up concentrated among the poor.

Seth Godin: Don't Take the Money: "Seth Godin offers a concise and well reasoned argument on when not to go looking for venture capital to fund a new business. Particularly useful is his distinction between freelance and entrepreneurial ventures. The latter aims to create an opportunity where '...you scale and suddenly you own real estate or media properties or technology or a system or a brand that people pay for without you actually doing any incremental work yourself.' That 'no incremental work' qualifier is the entrepreneur's equivalent of the VC's exit. It's only feasible if a self-sustaining institution has been created. In contrast, 'A freelance venture is one where you work to get paid.' In other words, it's a services business of some sort. It scales on people coming to work each day. Not so coincidentally, it's the kind of new business that VCs generally avoid. Running this analysis is especially important these days, even on businesses that superficially seem to be about technology, where the potential to follow the entrepreneurial scaling path suggests taking the product road to market. It's at least worth running the case: 'What would happen if we used this to create a low/no-cost offering that in turn enables a sustainable services business?' If nothing else, you should understand the implications if someone else takes that approach. "