I’m really blown away by how nice a bit-o-work git is. What Eric von Hippel taught me works both ways. Real innovation requires close contact between a interesting problem and talent. When you encounter innovation it signals an interesting problem and engaged talent. Ignore the story told. Look for that problem and why the talent [...]
One of the many functions that standards (and open source) play is that they provide a forum for cutting through patent thickets so that an industry can grow. But it’s hard. Players that stay out of the standards making process, but who are active in the industry, are well positioned to poison the well. Of [...]
Brett Porter wrote up a nice summary of his first impressions of that new search engine, Cuil. He had exactly the same experience I had, and my wife had. You ego surf only to discover they have a very odd model of your internet presence. Feeling disappointed you then wander off. We learn from this is [...]
Having recovered the lamp the genie offers you a wish. Having rescued his daughter the king grants you a wish. Having suffered the tortures of the damn’d you can slip anything you want into the final draft of the industrial standard. What do you ask for? During his short time at Harvard I gather that [...]
I believe it was Ray Kurzweil, circa 1989, who advised encouraging a private jargon inside your new company. I remember because that was just about the time I was starting to think open would totally trump closed in our industry. The advise seemed to my ears a bit old fashion. But at the same time [...]
I’m not particularly proud of the neologism “upgrade forcer.” It encourages a bad behavior. Product managers can be a desperate lot, particularly when their bonus is riding on how many copies of the upgrade get sold. When times are good sweet new product features will draw users to upgrade. But, as products mature the customers [...]
I have sighted a new urban myth: Electric heating is cheaper than oil heat! Here in Boston people heat with both gas and oil, and the cost per unit of heat between the two has diverged rapidly over the last few years. Those who heat with oil are looking for ways out of their plight. [...]
Monday, February 25, 2008
Standards are often a land war; where members of the standards body act to create de facto standards at the same time they participate in the negotiation of de jour standards. The mix varies. In some contexts the land war dominates. But it’s real politics and certainly tastes dirty. Many standards bodies have clauses in [...]
Tuesday, February 19, 2008
I very much liked this introductory paragraph: Years ago I read an interesting article about the encyclopedia entry for the keyword “Longitude”. According to the article, the entry merely said “See Latitude”. With that short, two-word sentence the encyclopedia author conflated these two concepts as mere orthogonal dimensions, lumped together, each as boring as the [...]
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
I’ve greatly enjoyed much of Richard Gabriel’s writing over the years. Though I’ll admit I haven’t read anything he’s done in the past few year. In any case I happened to I listened to this interview he gave at OOPSLA to Software Engineering Radio. The interviewer wanted to learn about this thing, Lisp, and [...]
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