Kitty Hawk 2.0

technology

One of my favorite quotes from a great video titled “The Future of Money”:http://vimeo.com/16025167.

bq. “The Wright brothers weren’t thinking about all the infrastructure required to make commercial aviation happen, they were thinking ‘How do we make this thing fly?'”

It’s easy to look back over the industrial revolution and believe that somehow, this time things are different. Then you hear someone say something like this, and you realize that we’re all standing around Kitty Hawk, just trying to get this thing off the ground. The truly great things are yet to come.

The new patent troll economy

technology, ,

bq. “Microsoft pays patent fees; film at eleven”:http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/10/08/microsoft_patents_acacia/

Normally, this story wouldn’t even be news — patent deals are cut all the time — but there’s an obvious strategy being developed here. Microsoft has identified patents as the most effective attack against anyone seeking to profit from FOSS. Rather than attack FOSS directly, you dump as much money as you can in to littering the intellectual property space for a given product with patent mines. Step on a patent mine and all of the sudden you’re paying Microsoft (or someone else) for sitting on their ass and building a patent portfolio rather than innovating with any real products.

Under the old rules of engagement, patents were the equivalent of nuclear warheads. No one really wanted to use them, but they were good for making sure that your buddies across the street didn’t fire off a salvo of patent suits in your direction. The problem for FOSS is that software patents are ideologically reprehensible to most of the people involved, therefore patents are not sought, and the intellectual property battlefield falls in to the hands of the patent trolls and big corporations.

As things stand today, we’re looking at a future where patents become a large market in and of themselves. Big corporations will push for international cooperation for patent enforcement, and up-and-coming companies who benefit from FOSS are going to face significant new risks. The biggest losers will be consumers. Virtually all of the new internet giants stand on the shoulders of FOSS. It’s only matter of time before the patent trolls find ways to attack everyone using their “IP”.

Ballmer’s opportunity cost

technology

Comments on: “Ballmer Dismisses Android. Oh, This Will Come Back to Bite Him”:http://nextparadigms.com/2010/08/02/ballmer-dismisses-android-oh-this-will-come-back-to-bite-him/

While this is mostly just a take-down piece about Ballmer and his lack of vision, there is some new insight here that I’m not sure I’ve read elsewhere. At least not written explicitly:

bq. “…when he’s [Ballmer] done nothing but extend their old business, Windows and Office, which is fine, but there are a lot of other CEO’s who could’ve done that just as well or better. Businesses don’t last forever. It takes someone special, a visionary, to create new growth opportunities in the company.”

Some time ago, there was a little storm around how poorly Ballmer had done as Microsoft CEO, mostly because of the flat-line stock. There were some good rebuttals showing growth in profits under his direction, which seemed to shock everyone in to believing that maybe he didn’t do all that badly. Everyone seemed to kick the dirt and say, “Well, we all know stocks aren’t the best indicator of success or failure of a company. While Microsoft is doing fine from financial perspective, Wall Street simply doesn’t recognize it.”

But let’s back up a moment and realize that Wall Street isn’t interested in what you’re doing today. Stocks are bought and sold based on what people thing you’re going to do tomorrow; next quarter; next year; five years from now.

Apple’s recent growth can be attributed, in large part, to iPad sales. This is a new market. Speaking from Microsoft’s market perspective, this is money that, at best, would not have been spent elsewhere. At worst, it was money that consumers might have spent on a netbook. I’ve seen research both ways, and honestly, neither side is terribly convincing.

The bottom line is that while Ballmer has managed to squeeze a little more life out of Windows, he hasn’t moved Microsoft forward. That’s inexcusable for a company with the engineering and capital resources Microsoft has.

Finding motivation

personal,

In reply to the “HN thread”:http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1561845 for “Teenagers and Poor Business Sense”:http://joshpearce.posterous.com/children-have-bad-business-sense:

bq. Can I ask a question? I hope that this doesn’t come across as just another self obsessed post on the internet, but why am I different from the norm?

bq. I am 18 and in some ways I do match the targets the author puts forward, but no one in this environment taught this to me. Instead, I had to go out and find people I could learn from, My parents take me to be a failure, because I want to get the job done in as perfect a manner as possible and I constantly think about making things or doing something better. It takes me longer to do stuff and I fall down more than anyone else I know of, but I like it.

bq. My life would have been definitely easier if I could tow the line, but I can’t do it. I just know that my integrity is precious to me and there is nothing in the world I would sell it out for. I admit it’s not a smart thing to do, but at least when I am dying I won’t have any regrets.

bq. The interesting question is why am I so different? I am not special or anything at all. So, what taught me such stuff?

That’s a tough question to answer without knowing you, your family, and your history very well. I spend a lot of time thinking about questions exactly like this, because I make the assumption that if I know what motivated me to take pride in my work, I can apply those same motivations to others.

This is where I think the author is dead wrong. How the hell is a teenager supposed to “engage the economy at an early age.” Seriously? The economy is a collection of principles at work, but at very large scale, and by consequence, inaccessible to anyone without strong foundational understanding of the concepts. How is a teenager supposed to relate to that? I think the author “gets it”, but reaches the wrong conclusion.

Early in the piece, he points out that the industrial revolution transitioned our nation from one of rugged independence to monotonous conformity. Ok, so by his assumption we’ve been beaten in to submission. We are one of many. A worker bee with no self-importance beyond accomplishing the specific tasks we are assigned. Before you can take pride in your work, you have to take pride in yourself. You have to learn the basics of achievement and self-reward. In other words, you have to know what it feels like to be internally happy about your accomplishments.

For me, this came in two forms: fair work and pay at a relatively early age, and playing an instrument in the school band program.

Although I have since abandoned religion, I would not trade my childhood experience at a church for anything in the world. Beginning at the age of around 10 years old, my sister and I began helping my mother clean our church. It was completely optional, but our alternative was sitting around bored out of our minds waiting on my mother to finish her work. So we both decided to participate pretty much by default. Our work was always simple. We’d follow my mom around doing simple tasks like replacing trash can liners and cleaning glass. She worked with all the dangerous chemicals and kept a close eye on us to make sure we were safe and doing a good job. This was a big church, and we were distracted children, so the task would take us somewhere in the area of 3-4 hours. My mom gave us each $20, which was pretty good pay for the early to mid-eighties. The $20 was important to us, but we learned something more powerful. Something by example. My mom took pride in her work, and we followed her very closely. If something wasn’t right, my mom didn’t yell at us, she would show a little disappointment, and because of our close relationship, we wanted our mom to be happy. We’d fix it just to see her smile. Powerful lessons: A) You learn to be happy by making those close to you happy. If you aren’t close to anyone, your chances of finding happiness are less. B) Reward comes in many forms, not all of which are monetary.

I started in band in the 7th grade, but it took until some time in the 9th grade for me to really appreciate it deeply and begin to recognize the value it would have in the general scope of my life. In the early years, I learned how good it felt to master my instrument. Later, as I moved in to marching band, I learned how awesome it felt to work together in a group of 200+ people to simultaneously play incredible music AND create beautiful forms on the field. The applause at the end was the icing on the cake, but the goosebumps usually came during the performance when you realize you just nailed a difficult passage of music, or your lines were dressed so perfectly they look like corn rows. This gratification is _internal_, not external, and it’s the single greatest motivator in my life. Powerful lessons: Mastery is a great source of empowerment and confidence. Abandoning arts in our schools is a _terrible_ mistake. Learning self-motivation is one of the single greatest lessons you should take away from primary school.

All of this starts with a close relationship with your children. The amount of influence you have in your child’s life is well established by an early age (5-7 by my experience). If you haven’t established a strong influence by that point, you’re facing an uphill climb. Rather than asking your teenager to engage in the economy, or some other abstract externalized mechanism, begin at the beginning. The economy is the result, not the genesis. Teach your children the internal gratification of accomplishment. Don’t think that everything requires a reward. Mastery shouldn’t be limited to video games. The ability to do something — anything! — and be proud of it is a key factor that will deliver success in business and in life.

The browser isn’t going anywhere

technology, ,

Berislav Lopac thinks that “the browser is going away, and native applications connected to web-server backends are the future”:http://berislav.lopac.net/post/615858128/the-future-of-web-browser. I feel the opposite. I think native applications are headed the way of the cli. The browser is the great equalizer. Think about it like this: what barriers prevent you changing operating systems today? What barriers prevented you from changing operating systems 10 years ago? Our daily computing lives are dominated more and more by web-based applications. We can use these applications anywhere. It’s one of the primary reasons mobile and tablet devices have finally gained traction.

Not too long ago, our mobility between operating systems didn’t matter much. No one really cared if they could easily switch from Windows to Linux, because switching didn’t achieve a specific goal that they were interested in. That is, the tasks they could accomplish were too similar. The introduction of mobile and tablet devices has created a new incentive for operating system mobility. Users want to be untied from their desks, and they want to bring their experience with them.

The browser is already an application platform. It is its own execution environment. Ironically, Microsoft’s early vision of the web browser was that it would be a platform to which native-like applications could be pushed over the wire. ActiveX and proprietary browser features were an attempt to leverage existing developer toolsets in a browser environment. This failed (for a large number of reasons), but the persistence of IE6 in corporate environments is a testament to just how close they were to succeeding. As browser standards advance, we’ll see a surge in the development of fully in-browser frameworks that use design patterns like MVC. I don’t mean V and C in the browser and model on the server. I mean M, V, and C within a browser, where the model reaches out (sometimes) to a server for data-sync or specific execution. Apple’s guidelines for iPhone web apps are a great example. Their entire framework is built atop an open-source browser, which is seeing widespread adoption in the mobile and tablet space.

The balance between client and server based processing runs like the tides. Not every application will become a web application, but the number and broad importance of native applications will diminish. Web standards will continue to advance, supporting more native-like applications in the web browser. Projects like “Fluid”:http://fluidapp.com/developer/ will allow users and developers to package browser-based apps in launchable containers on the desktop, while mobile devices will continue with the existing trend of abstracting away the difference between mobile and native apps (see iOS and Android handling of web app shortcuts on homescreens). Browser application frameworks like “Sproutcore”:http://www.sproutcore.com/ will put new tools in the hands of developers that advance the way we think and build “web apps”.

The future of the web browser is bright.

Ed Bott: Shining the light of truth on flash

technology,

To say Ed Bott’s “piece calling Flash the new Vista”:http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/sorry-adobe-flash-is-the-new-vista/2139 was — uh — not well received by Adobe would be putting it kindly. That effort, in itself, was worthy of praise. Ed’s “response to the discussion”:http://www.zdnet.com/blog/bott/how-secure-is-flash-heres-what-adobe-wont-tell-you/2152 it generated was nothing short of Superman journalism.

Get some, Ed!

Stock Market Plunge: Greek action at a distance?

world,

Pardon me, but these explanations are horseshit. When you look at the dip, the rebound, and the speed with which it happened, there are only two plausible explanations. One is automated trading; the other is that it was a planned event. If the Greek crisis were the cause, then what explains the rebound? The Greek explanation doesn’t hold water, because analysts and traders have seen it coming for ages (in market terms). It is not a surprise. Just look at the currency moves we’ve seen over the last couple of weeks. Stocks move a whole order of magnitude quicker than currency. The Greek wave hit the stock market long ago. I just don’t buy it.

There was a HUGE transfer of value yesterday. A lot of people sold stocks at a huge discount, and a lot of other people picked them up at a bargain. I’m having a hard time believing that the cause was natural human action.

HTML5 and your future

technology, ,

Browser plugins are a security risk. There “are arguments”:http://www.infoworld.com/d/security-central/are-all-browser-plug-ins-security-risk-449, of course, but I say, why take a risk that need not be taken? If business development has taught me one thing, it is that success is not about taking risks, it’s about mitigating them better than everyone else.

“This HTML5 demo”:http://www.craftymind.com/2010/04/20/blowing-up-html5-video-and-mapping-it-into-3d-space/ shows just how powerful HTML5 is. Click anywhere on the video while it is playing and prepare to have your mind blown. This kind of thing is difficult in Flash, and yet the author has achieved this effect using only his standard IDE that was never designed to support this type of special effect.

If I were Adobe, I’d be working very, very hard at a transitional toolkit that maps the Flash ActionScript DOM and scripting language to a JavaScript/HTML5 combo, all wrapped up in a slick, Flash-like IDE. Today we have Safari, Firefox, and Chrome browsers that support enough HTML5 to do cool stuff like this. By lagging behind, Microsoft only risks more defection from their browser platform, and Adobe could pull a major upset by rolling tools that incorporate open standards. It was tear down the wall between Flash developers and standards advocates, opening the door for a whole lot of innovation built on top of tools that Adobe controls.

Jet engine + ash cloud = big mess

technology, ,

Popular Science has a nice write-up on the “effects of volcanic ash on jet engines”:http://www.popsci.com/science/article/2010-04/why-cant-planes-fly-through-volcanic-ash-because-nasa-tried-once. The scariest thing I read in the article is the fact that pilots often can’t tell that they’re about to fly through an ash cloud. Couple that with the fact that the ash can actually melt inside the engine and collect on the components and you’ve got a regular old Twilight Zone episode on your hands.