Disqus - Friends of justingsouter

Re: The Disruption Talk

Michael R. Bernstein — Tue, 26 May 2009 13:16:41 -0000

A comment on the 'misalignment of interest' in the last bit.

Corporate VC arms can have a couple of other aims besides the purely financial. Intel's seems to be pretty interested in finding stuff that soaks up CPU cycles, for example. IOW, they are trying to stimulate the growth of their products' complements, and are willing to spend money to run these experiments in parallel.

Google is accomplishing the same thing by providing platforms for cheaper startup experimentation, though.

Another historical aligned interest is to keep an ongoing relationship with employees exiting to create startups that is more arms-length than intrapreneurship (Lucent sought to do this, as I recall) as a sort of alumni network. This was never really necessary in SV, and has probably been obsoleted elsewhere too, given ubiquitous social networking.

Re: Open Platforms and Innovation

Michael R. Bernstein — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 12:58:44 -0000

Also check out Gumstix.

Re: Open Platforms and Innovation

Michael R. Bernstein — Sun, 07 Jun 2009 13:18:39 -0000

Prokofy, you seem to think that those endowments date from the same era as the extension of copyright terms. They don't.

Re: Open Platforms and Innovation

Michael R. Bernstein — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:22:40 -0000

You still seem to be confused. As far as I know, Lessig hasn't tackled the issue of patents at all, and patents don't last that long in any case. Did you mean '100-year-copyright'?

Copyrights and patents are very different.

Re: Open Platforms and Innovation

Michael R. Bernstein — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 10:28:29 -0000

Technically, a VC is almost *always* spending OPM.

Re: Open Platforms and Innovation

Michael R. Bernstein — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:28:40 -0000

The Beanzawave is USB-powered: http://www.fastcompany.com/...

Re: Open Platforms and Innovation

Michael R. Bernstein — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 12:35:02 -0000

Plenty of tax dollars go into venture funds, actually.

And they would most definitely go on doing it even if the returns were (on average) negative. How do you think Vegas stays in business?

Re: Open Platforms and Innovation

Michael R. Bernstein — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 15:27:22 -0000

Hmm. You have a tendency to respond to fact-checking as if it were an ideological challenge.

I made no claim as to whether pouring tax dollars into venture funds was a good idea, I was merely pointing out that, factually, you were mistaken.

Unless you're going to take the position that taxation *is* a voluntary allocation of resources?

Re: Open Platforms and Innovation

Michael R. Bernstein — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 21:15:19 -0000

Pretty much everything you attribute to my opinions ('if you think', 'seem to think', 'ever eager', 'world view', etc.) is almost completely wrong, and certainly not implied by anything in my comments.

Except that you think that any correction offered is an attack on (or attempt at refutation of) your argument or your point of view.

I actually think you have a point, sort of, or would, if it weren't being obscured by the... screeds you're typing up here.

Re: Open Platforms and Innovation

Michael R. Bernstein — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 22:16:38 -0000

Did you mean 'when a VC is in the role of an angel', or were you saying 'angels are a subset of VCs'?

Re: About GovTwit

Michael R. Bernstein — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 15:14:01 -0000

Can I get a data dump of the directory?

Re: Investors’ Business Daily Lied To You!

Michael R. Bernstein — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 20:52:42 -0000

Thanks for the link, Karoli. It is worth noting that the Public Option starts on page 116 of the PDF.

Re: On Richard Stallman - Miguel de Icaza

Michael R. Bernstein — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:38:03 -0000

It seems to me there is still a nasty loophole here: If Microsoft has a patent on the technology, and sells or transfers the patent to SomeOtherCo, the new owner can then sue since they are not bound by Microsoft's promise.

Re: On Richard Stallman - Miguel de Icaza

Michael R. Bernstein — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 11:50:58 -0000

Did I miss something about how Microsoft's pledge is binding on someone that Microsoft sells (note: not licenses, SELLS) the affected patent to? Similar to the wodge of 'Linux' patents that they recently (and inadvertently) sold to the OIN? I'm pretty sure that those patents were sold without any such conditions attached.

Re: Some Things To Be Thankful For This Year

Michael R. Bernstein — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 13:14:27 -0000

"Can a vibrant Internet IPO market be far away?"

Not until we get at least some some minor reform of Sarbannes-Oxley. Until then, exits will continue to be strongly tilted to M&A.

Re: They're almost here! - Nick's Blog

Michael R. Bernstein — Fri, 27 Nov 2009 19:25:57 -0000

I'd appreciate an article on efficiently implementing any sort of collaborative filtering algorithm on GAE. 'Just Overheard It' demonstrated a cool calculate-on-write strategy for aggregate popularity counts with decay, but I'd like to see an equivalently efficient implementation for some kind of collaborative filtering (also know as Collective Intelligence).

Two broad types would be of interest to me:

1) Plain similarity matching: Users who liked X also liked Y

2) Affinity matching: Users whose tastes/opinions are similar to yours

But almost any CF/CI implementation would be illuminating.

Re: Happy Thanksgiving from the Tynan/Gutel Family

Michael R. Bernstein — Sat, 28 Nov 2009 12:01:27 -0000

Happy holidays, John!

Re: Underground Economy: Cybercrime on the Internet

Michael R. Bernstein — Sat, 12 Dec 2009 19:02:45 -0000

Most of the 'cyber-security' consultants, services, and vendors (including most of those with the ear of the government) are selling nothing more than snake oil. Always take what they claim with a huge grain of salt, just as you would anyone advocating for tougher criminal penalties when they make money off the prison-industrial complex.

For some additional perspective, you might take a look at this article about how e-gold got shafted by the feds: http://www.wired.com/threat...

Another good source is Bruce Schneier: http://schneier.com/blog/

His 'doghouse' posts are particularly relevant to this discussion: http://www.google.com/searc...

Re: Coming sooon: The Bluetooth Watch. (Scripting News)

Michael R. Bernstein — Thu, 31 Dec 2009 11:08:26 -0000

I think a watch-sized (say, 1"x1") text-only display would be of limited consumer appeal. Imagine constantly holding the watch up to your face to peer at it to read the whole 140 characters.

OTOH, many alerts can be summarized with a nice custom icon, such as weather alerts, traffic alerts, stock alerts, "You've got Urgent Mail", and so on.

Re: mailbox – Access and manipulate email archives - Python Module of the Week

Michael R. Bernstein — Fri, 15 Jan 2010 08:41:15 -0000

Doug, do you know of an existing script to remove duplicate emails?

Re: Math and the new journalism. (Scripting News)

Michael R. Bernstein — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 08:12:45 -0000

"If people were willing to spend 15 minutes talking with a professional journalist, they are obviously willing to spend 15 minutes telling their version of a story directly to the web."

I don't think this is true for all people, or even most people, or we would see even more content on the web than we currently do.

However, I'll grant that it may be sufficiently true as an approximation (and that the reality will approach the approximation as barriers continue to fall).

Re: Hiring

Michael R. Bernstein — Sun, 02 May 2010 11:02:35 -0000

From my POV, bringing diversity to a team *is* a form of merit.

Re: Hiring

Michael R. Bernstein — Sun, 02 May 2010 11:12:24 -0000

Fred, can you share any data on the diversity of the candidates?

Re: Hiring

Michael R. Bernstein — Sun, 02 May 2010 21:26:18 -0000

Sorry, I was being a bit too glib.

If you are a member of an under-represented group, and you're being considered at all, you have most likely demonstrated additional merit in that you overcame whatever form of systemic bias caused your group to be under-represented in the first place. This is *in addition* to whatever value is assigned to the diversity (of perspective, experience, etc.) you would bring to the team.

Some kinds of diversity are actually *routinely* valued in this way. For example, 'coming up the hard way', ie. overcoming the systemic bias that makes it more difficult for people from working-class backgrounds to enter the professional class.

Re: Hiring

Michael R. Bernstein — Mon, 03 May 2010 09:07:50 -0000

You may read 'being considered at all' as meaning 'having typical qualifications for the position'.