Posts Tagged philosophy
“Rabbits FTW” – The Mark Cuban Stimulus Package Needs Meat
Posted by admin in carbon, entrepreneurs on 23Feb09
Most of my (non-work-related) thinking these days circles around how we, as a species, a culture, or a geographical collection of human flesh, can make a smooth recovery from our petroleum addiction. I read a fair bit on the subject, from the “Post-Petroleum Survival Guide and Cookbook”
As is often the case with the large, complex issues facing humanity, most of our effort is (dare I say it?) wasted on trying to fix the wrong things. Like changing our lightbulbs. Even changing our cars is, most of the time, the wrong thing. Why? Read the rest of this entry »
When to Pause, When to Push
Posted by admin in entrepreneurs on 12Feb09
It’s now 11pm on Wednesday night. Tomorrow morning, at 10am, I will be presenting my Project Plan to execute $6M worth of custom software development over the next 36 months.
That Project Plan doesn’t really exist yet.
It’s been a busy week. LAST night, at 11pm (roughly), I filed a Notice Of Intent, to bid on a DIFFERENT multi-million dollar, multi-year contract. Oh, yesterday was also my oldest daughter’s 6-year-old birthday.
There’s a point, in here, somewhere. We’ll wind our way towards it.
Technically, these days I’m an “Information Worker”. What I think that means, is that I get paid for thinking about things. At least, that’s how I choose to interpret it. My clients probably prefer to think I get paid for the OUTPUT of my thinking – but I’m all too keenly aware of how directly the quality of my output, is related to the quality of my thinking. Read the rest of this entry »
<N> Reasons Why Open Standards, more than Open Source, Really Matter
Posted by admin in entrepreneurs on 10Feb09
There have been some great articles on the dangers of, either no standards, or closed standards. However, no one has really talked about how almost EVERYTHING we have accomplished as a race of people, has been to the credit of open standards of information exchange and interface. So let’s take a walk back through the ages, and look at the wonderful things that open standards have brought us.
1. Numbers
Regardless of the language they use, or even the character set they use for writing it, most countries on the planet now use the “decimal positional notation” for all numbers and mathematics. This public, open standard for notation has allowed the development of relatively friction-free international commerce, and was the successful basis for… Read the rest of this entry »
Ruby on Rails causes Global Warming
Posted by admin in carbon, entrepreneurs on 31Oct08
I use a laptop. Which means, as I peck away at my keyboard in the waning hours of the evening, I can smell the slow charring of my wool pants (mixed with the redolent odor of singed leg hair) as the tiny fan embedded in my computer tries desperately to keep this multi-thousand-dollar device, from melting into a pile of slag.
As a self-taught engineer, I tend to notice the glaringly-obvious – perhaps more than many of my well-educated peers. And there’s one obvious lesson in this – if solid state electronics are getting HOT, they’re wasting using a fair amount of power.
In a nuclear reactor somewhere out there, an atom died for the pixels on my screen. Another few drops of precious oil, or a few tons more gasified coal, were spilt for those extra minutes of Microsoft Word (or perhaps “Grand Theft Auto 4″).
Moore’s Law has shown us how the steady change of computing SPEED (doubling), and COST (halving), has reliably powered our advancing Information Age. Yet nothing in Moore’s Law has halted the seemingly inexorable increase in ENERGY requirements, of these most devious of machines.
This is not a problem that we’ve address head on – in our subsidized energy economy, there has been no real motivation to do so. In fact, as our dependency on computing infrastructure has deepened, we’ve made it WORSE. Here’s how it works: Read the rest of this entry »
5 Ways to Make People Do What You Want
Posted by admin in entrepreneurs on 15Feb08
Ever since we came down from the trees and started waving around our opposable thumbs, humans have been struggling with “ethics”. At its core, the idea is very simple – if I can make you do what I want, should I?
There are dozens of aphorisms around this theme:
- Might makes right
- The ends justify the means
- The meek shall inherit the Earth
And, of course, my personal favorite: The Golden Rule.
Now, there are a couple of problems with the Golden Rule – firstly, it’s often misquoted, which gives it an ugly twist. Before we dive into where things go wrong, here’s the version I prefer: Read the rest of this entry »
If it’s revolutionary, it’s probably confusing
Posted by admin in entrepreneurs on 31Oct07
The reason, I think, that the history of human development has been one of evolution, and not revolution, is simple: anything radically new, is by definition hard to explain. That’s because it lacks context – there’s nothing else quite like it. Explanations are easiest by comparison.
And so we compare the revolutionary to the soup de’ jour, and the explanation dumbs our revolution down – a little bit each time, until we reach that magical threshold where it’s no longer indigestible, because the tide in the sea of collective understanding has come in.
