All my blog posts and articles
Check out Targeted Copyright Enforcement: Deterring Many Users with a Few Lawsuits(from Freedom to Tinker: “One reason the record industry’s strategy of suing online infringers ran into trouble is that there are too many infringers to sue. If the industry can only sue a tiny fraction of infringers, then any individual infringer will know that he is very unlikely to be sued, and deterrence will fail.” (from: ...
I wrote the other day about the ‘amusing’ dust-up between the RealClimate blog and Levitt and Dubner, authors of Super Freakonomics. Well today I see in the Wall Street Journal, a defense of Levitt and Dubner, but it’s an odd one. It actually supplies no facts (unlike the article I sited) just a criticism of ‘pro-climate-change’ (forgive the generalization) people ...
“GPS satellites tell us where we are, but what tells them where they are?”. Good question. This article answers it. 
I can’t vouch for the accuracy, but it is fun to see a major league cat-fight errupting between academics. Here’s the conclusion:
“May I suggest that if you should happen to need some friendly help next time you take on the topic of climate change, or would like to have a chat about why aerosol geoengineering might not be a cure-all, or just need a critical but informed opponent to bounce ideas off of, you don’t have to go very far….” (from An Open Letter To Steve Levitt)
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I have believed that Amazon is a much bigger deal than people realize. Not only are they the ultimate retailer that seem to have everything, at better prices, more conveniently offered, than anyone else, but, the technology (in software and process) that they have invented and built is extremely unique and impossible to replicate. In other words, there’s a lot more to Amazon than most people think. In my opinion. Well something happened yesterday, and their stock shot up 25% in one day. Let’s see what happens next week. Is there a rumor that I didn’t see?
Check out It’s Not My Company(from Feld Thoughts🙂 ** "While I’ve got plenty of rights as an investor, I’m very aware that I’m “an investor.” If you are a CEO or an entrepreneur, I can’t imagine anything more annoying than hearing one of your investors refer to the business as “his company.” Now, if the investor owns more than 50% of the company, I guess this is a legitimate legal perspective, but it’s still an incredibly demotivating position to tak" (from: **It’s Not My Company)
I couldn’t agree more. I have many VC friends and acquaintences (there is a difference 🙂 and I always mentally smirk when I hear them talking about ‘my companies’ and words to that effect.
Did you know of the Lexington Public Library’s role in the founding of DEC (Digital Equipment Corporation) and so part of the creation of the computer revolution we’ve been living through the last 50 of so years? “Other than our lunch hour visits to the Lexington Public Library to study their collection of business books, our experience had been limited to making budgets for engineering expenses at Lincoln. These did not, of course, include things like overhead, income, sales expense, accounts receivable, cash flow, balance sheets, etc.” (from Harlan Anderson’s blog)
Harlan Anderson was one of the founders of DEC.
I am traveling on my usually favorite Airline; and of course everyone knows that they are suffering, right? And yes, the flight to L.A. is ridiculously inexpensive. But still, let’s say these raised my eyebrows:
When I checked in, I looked at the seat assignment chart and there were no free seats (I wanted to switch to an aisle seat.) Over the P.A. they said, more than once, that the plane was totally totally full. Yet when the doors closed, there were at least 8 empty seats visible to me from where I was sitting, including two whole rows. Don’t they have, like, computers, to keep track of who is on the plane and how many seats it has? They don’t serve food on the plane anymore. O...
I want to do an electricity audit for my house. I am looking for a web site that lets me complete a survey of all my electricity consuming devices and estimates my KWh. I suspect there may be many of these, is there one you recommend? I know it’s really easy to do ‘by hand’, but I think there must be someone who did the research of how much power a Staples paper shredder uses when it’s on but not in use, and on, and on and on.
If you get it, you may want to get it: Create UML Diagrams from the command line
As David W. says, there’s a lot that’s been written in response to the provocative article by Larry Lessig. I haven’t yet read all of it, but what I’ve seen is very provocative (in a good sense.)All the pointers you might need can be found here: Larry Lessig: Beyond Transparency, and Net Triumphalism from Joho the Blog: "Plenty is being written already trying to parse, understand, and come to terms with Larry Lessig’s article “Against Transparency” in the New Republic. Ethan Zuckerman does his usual outstanding job in clarifying ideas sympathetically. ...
I attended BIF-5 (The Business Information Factory’s Annual Summit) last week, a great and stimulating experience. One of the speakers was Alan M. Weber taking some topics out of his new book, Rules of Thumb. Some of what he said actually led me to buy his book at the mini bookstore they had set up there. (More some other time on the tradeoffs of paying full price for a book on the spot versus waiting a day and a half and getting it for much cheaper from Amazon.) I was reading this article this morning: “Looking at Life as One Big Subscription”...
Check out Premature Evaluation?: Obama Wins Nobel Prize(from The BRAD BLOG: “The Norwegian Nobel Committee has decided that the Nobel Peace Prize for 2009 is to be awarded to President Barack Obama for his extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples. The Committee has attached special importance to Obama’s vision of and work for a world without nuclear weapons.” (from: Premature Evaluation?: Obama Wins Nobel Prize)
I say, hooray for us! Hooray for the USA. Why can’t we just be proud that our president was given this hono...
Sergey Brin of Google has an op-ed in today’s New York Times, making the case for Google Books: ...
Interesting commentary on a new book by Harvey Silvergate called “Three Felonies a Day”. The article also touches on the notion that “Under the English common law that we inherited, a crime requires intent.”, saying: “Sometimes legislators know when they make false distinctions based on technology. An “anti-cyberbullying” proposal is making its way through Congress, prompted by the tragic case of a 13-year-old girl driven to suicide by the mother of a neighbor posing as a teenage boy and posting abusive messages on MySpace. The law would prohibit using the Internet to “coerce, intimidate, harass, or cause substantial emotional distress to a person.” Imagine a law that tried to apply this control of speech to letters, editorials or lobbying” (from Wall Street Journal)
We saw the “Jersey Boys” musical in Chicago last night. It’s a lot of fun, even though the sound system at the “Bank of America Theatre” wasn’t up to par. Actually it was pretty awful. The music is great and the story is interesting. Who knew that Joe Pesci had some connection with the Four Seasons?
It makes we want to find a good memoir from one of the Four Seasons describing what it was like. Can you recommend one?
I wrote about the Mint/Intuit deal the other day. Being an avid user, I had mixed feelings about this development. I came across this good post about the transaction, which puts a decidedly negative spin on it: “Mint was a key leader of the next generation of game changers. And now it’s property of Intuit — the poster-child for the last generation. What a loss. Is that the best the next generation can do? Become part of the old generation? How about kicking the shit out of the old guys? What ever happened to that?” (from ...
Just found out that the WebInno group is back in session after a summer hiatus. This is one of the best open meetings for techies and entrepreneurs to meet and talk and see each other’s stuff. Here’s the official blurb: “The Web Innovators Group (WebInno) is comprised of people engaged in internet and mobile innovation in the Boston area. We aim to support entrepreneurs, visionaries, and creative thinkers in the field by holding events which foster community interaction.
Our regular meetings provide a forum for entrepreneurs from self-funded/early-stage startups to present new services to their peers, as well as an opportunity for...
