I wonder why Apple included the word “originally” in “Applications must be originally written in Objective-C, C, C++, or JavaScript”? If you are building a platform of unhackable devices then you need to control the gateways to hacking; i.e. the tool chain and the application distribution channel. So the clause above’s purpose is to due [...]
I should come up with a snappy name for this prediction: Doorbells will be cell phones. What I mean by this is that lots of the very very simplest signalling devices, push buttons, switches, etc. etc. are going to work via the cell phone network. Devices which do not need any of the obvious features of [...]
Wednesday, March 10, 2010
I’m still chewing on the idea of guard labor, so a pile of random thoughts I’ve been having. Businesses adapt the ratio between guard labor v.s. productive labor. That ratio varies across firms within industries, from one industry to another, and inside of firms from on department to another. Presumably there is a great deal [...]
I’m reading, savoring actually, a fascinating essay on “guard labor” i.e. people paid to enforce the rules upon others. The TSA, those guys at the front desk of office buildings that check ID cards, the mall cops, the supervisors who’s only role is to be sure everybody keeps their nose to the grind stone, etc. etc. [...]
I’m writing this because Microsoft recently granted a limited license for some awesome intellectual property they acquired two years ago. I want to temper the press accounts that are tending suggest they granted a generous license. Almost immediately upon the wide spread adoption of patents industries fell into gridlock. In a classic game of [...]
Makes sense to me: Knowledge stocks -> Knowledge Flows Knowledge transfer -> Knowledge Creation Explicit Knowledge -> Tacit Knowledge Transactions -> Relationships Zero Sum Mindset -> Positive Sum Mindset Push Programs -> Pull Programs Scalable Efficiency -> Scalable Peer Learning Stable Environments -> Dynamic Environments I’ve not read the book. Three things I might wonder about [...]
In this morning’s batch of bargain shopping news feeds appears this already exhausted offer. For nine dollars Target was selling a gadget from GE that looks like a light switch; you toggle it’s toggle and it then sends a radio signal to a module across the room to turn on a lamp. Since I live in [...]
Rumor is that Google will offer for sale to the general public a phone based on the Android platform, real soon now. Here is what I hope they do. I hope they announce a slew of phones, not just one. That they offer a shop where you can pick any of N Android phones. In [...]
Monday, December 28, 2009
This email I just got informs me that I’m queued up to get twelve cents cashback. I think this maybe a sign that my power shopping habits are a bit out of hand. The vendor, the intermediary, and I will bear far more than twelve cents each to see this through. Two of my [...]
Sunday, December 27, 2009
I was skimming this long long post about the demographics and institutional affiliations of the community of climate skeptics, and deep in the body is this fascinating bit. UPDATE (December 19, 2009): Peter Staats, in the comments, suggested that belief in anthropogenic global warming is entrenched among scientists and will disappear as the older generation [...]
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