Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
“I ask because it'd seem like a business wouldn't want to use something where they couldn't see the code (for instance).” Because employers and employees are different people, and the individuals that would want to see the code details (and could interpret and act on them) tend to be employees (i.e. specialists in organization), it is common for those employees or their superiors to look at the issue in terms of risk reduction. Risk can be reduced by buying/licensing a product with a support agreement or buying insurance of some sort. There’s a way to pass the buck. There are situations in which this is terrible behavior, like when lives could be a risk if a failure occurs. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
On 07/13/2015 07:39 PM, Russell Standish wrote: What I see is that proprietry software is just the visible tip of the iceberg, but its largely open source underneath. Me too. I'd be interested to see some sort of analysis of software pathways, chains of software packages that were hit when a large sample of use cases were exercised. I'd guess that pretty much any use case that involves the internet relies on open source somewhere in the chain. The only proprietary package I use on a regular basis is Quickbooks. I don't think I need to see the chains invoked when I, say, download a tax table update or submit payroll for a direct deposit. But I would like to see the chain invoked when I, say, Save to PDF. I'd also like to know which tools they use to make their data files sharable across multiple clients. I can imagine those chains are all proprietary and licensed ... but I have no idea. On that same front, Gary's right about that last 20%. But user-facing software has a much harder last 20% than what happens behind the scenes _because_ those occult tools are allowed to be very focused, tight, and single purpose, whereas user-facing tools have to handle, ameliorate, shunt, faciliate the myriad things a general intelligence can/will do. User facing tools have to deal with morons and geniuses, whereas internal tools can get away with well-defined contracts. Another factor, I think is the old saw that we humans only want to pay for things we can see/touch ourselves. This may be more true of Americans than elsewhere (based on how much we bitch about our relatively low taxes). But I think it's fairly natural to object to, say, hidden fees at banks or for childless couples funding schools through property taxes. So, it may not be so much that proprietary software pays to do that last 20% of work, so much as that nobody will pay for anything but the user-facing equipment. -- glen ep ropella -- 971-255-2847 FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
For many front end developers, jQuery/jQueryUI is what they mean when they say I know JavaScript. And with more apps (mobile) moving to web frameworks (React, say) Node.js/Linux for services, I'd say there's a healthy bunch of OpenWare out there. Totally agree that the user-facing parts are all in-house. -- Owen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
I think the issue with that last 20% of user facing software is that it's very expensive to run the marketing campaigns to persuade users that it's really, really good when in fact it sucks, especially when your competitors are working very hard at marketing their own brands of sucky user interfaces. Most software is very hard to use, you only get good at it by investing your own time in learning the ins and outs of tons of stuff that doesn't make much sense, and if you take some time off from using it you will lose the hardest earned skills and find yourself making the same noobie mistakes all over again as you rediscover how it works. All the fanbois are right, all the other fanbois are deluded to think their preferred software is intrinsically better. That said, it is quite amazing how much of the web is powered by open source. It would be instructive to have a browser plugin that checked for open source javascript inclusions and showed a little scoreboard for each web page visited. Scroll down to the Examples section at backbonejs.org and look at who uses it to build websites, though the list is probably sorely out of date.. -- rec -- On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 11:24 AM, Marcus Daniels mar...@snoutfarm.com wrote: On that same front, Gary's right about that last 20%. But user-facing software has a much harder last 20% than what happens behind the scenes _because_ those occult tools are allowed to be very focused, tight, and single purpose, whereas user-facing tools have to handle, ameliorate, shunt, faciliate the myriad things a general intelligence can/will do. User facing tools have to deal with morons and geniuses, whereas internal tools can get away with well-defined contracts. Although there is open source software for office and accounting, I can't imagine wanting to spend my free time on such a thing.It is just boring and depressing to think about.I don't think it has anything to do with it being hard. Hard is New Horizons.. Meanwhile, as Gary points out, the commercial World of Boring circles the wagons around music streaming and participation in mobile app markets, banking, and other such things so that they can control prices.The software is coupled to the protocols and one would have to buy-in (with $$$) to see how the pieces fit together and make free alternatives. What a hassle. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: speculative Q
On 07/14/2015 02:58 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: Sometimes I think circles such as yours and the people Glen is talking about just must be kept apart from one another, if they don’t avoid each other naturally.That’s about as close I get to advocating community for community’s sake. http://phys.org/news/2013-11-first-ever-survey-do-it-yourself-biology-myths.html -- ⇔ glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: speculative Q
“ BTW, the difference is that I've rarely actively looked for something new - it always seems to land in my lap.” Sometimes I think circles such as yours and the people Glen is talking about just must be kept apart from one another, if they don’t avoid each other naturally.That’s about as close I get to advocating community for community’s sake. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
Motivation is such a subjective thing. Like most people, I like to work on things that are at least a little challenging intellectually, but sometimes, just seeing the end result and knowing that I did it is reward enough to make the tedium bearable. A few years back, I did a bunch of very tedious work that synchronized video of conference speakers with their slide presentations NM INBRE. The idea was to create a Flash presentation that showed the video of the speaker, but displayed static images (taken from the PPT presentation) representing the auditorium's screen. This saved a lot of bandwidth compared to streaming a composite video of both the speaker and the actual screen, and in the 2006 timeframe, really was necessary. So, I had “capture” video from tape from two sources (speaker and screen); scrub through the two resulting videos, recording slide translation timings; export and trim images for each slide; compress video into appropriate formats; import images and video into Flash, and enter the timings that I recorded; etc etc. All that multiplied by 10 or more speakers, it took me over a month to complete. Kind of like mowing your lawn with a pair of fingernail clippers. I automated as much as I could, but given the number of tools that I had to deal with, I really didn’t have time to automate very much. So, I just became a robot for a month or so. But the end result was very nice for the time, and despite lack of intellectual challenges, was one of my proudest accomplishments that I was able to make myself stick to it. In fact, I even did the same robot work again the next year. I’ve always been meaning to get to automating that type of work... On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 2:19 PM, Marcus Daniels mar...@snoutfarm.com wrote: Interesting vs. boring is orthogonal. So, there's interesting-hard and boring-hard. I'll accept money for either type of work, though I much prefer interesting-hard ... obviously. How about engaging, imaginative, educational, or surprising work vs. detail work. Doing detail work may be delayed gratification or it can no purpose other than to respond to extrinsic motivation.Remove the extrinsic motivation (money), and it is boring and depressing. Ok, if one is tasked with making an app to print checks, it could be educational to learn how to put widgets on a screen or to do page layout. What that discovery process is over, either another naïve person is needed or extrinsic motivation. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: speculative Q
Glen, I have always had a similiar experience, albeit on a different path. Every computer program I've written, maintained, upgraded, or assessed has been intrinsically part of a real-world process. The fun thing for me has been understanding the real-world business, mission, process, or system. Over the course of roughly fourty years, I've learned about a huge variety of industry, military, and business activities. Just in the last 10-15 years I've learned about pipelines, gas, awl bidness, 'lectric utilities, and railroads. What's even more amazing to me is that things I learned 30 years ago keep coming back up - GPS is a neverending resource I keep calling back up for control systems, Smart Grid, mobile phones, radios, ships, and all kinds of other systems. BTW, the difference is that I've rarely actively looked for something new - it always seems to land in my lap. Sometimes, my hobbies have rolled over into my work. About 15 years ago, I was gamemastering a group of folks in an apocalyptic cold war game called Twilight 2000 set in post WWIII Poland. Part of the game is set in Oswiecim, long-known for it's chemical industry making insecticides and poison gas. So I read up on poison gasses and branched into biowarfare to make the game as realistic as possible. A few months later, I was asked to assess a bio-agent detection system. Imagine the customer's surprise when I walked in talking their jargon from my reading for an RPG. Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Old-Timer V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 NIPR: rcpa...@sandia.gov SIPR: rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.gov (send NIPR reminder) JWICS: dopa...@doe.ic.gov (send NIPR reminder) On Jul 14, 2015, at 2:40 PM, glen wrote: Both of these comments touch on something that irritates me quite a bit. Because I have a chip on my shoulder and enjoy confrontation, I regularly apply for jobs even when I'm only a tiny bit interested in changing jobs. (Plus, who knows? Maybe someone will make a really good offer.) In doing so, I often apply for jobs for which I'm over qualified. I don't get paid much for what I _am_ qualified to do. So, it wouldn't be much of a hit to take a job for which I'm over qualified. These jobs almost always have something educational about them. I regard the education as part of the compensation. I'm willing to take a lot less money in exchange for the chance to learn-on-the-job. The interviewers never seem to understand that point. When it comes down to the practicals of offering me a job, they often get caught by my inadequate answers to the question Why would you want to do these jobs, for this salary? Why give up what you have already? I don't know ... YOLO? It happens so often, perhaps I should be less enthusiastic about whatever projects I'm working on at any given time. Maybe if I'm all grumpy about the sh!t I have to do, I'd get less complaints about me being over qualified for some other job ... which obviously I'm not. My incompetence knows no bounds. I've never had a boring job, from selling carpet water proofing door-to-door, to sacking groceries, selling electronic parts at the university store, flowcharting assembly code for obsolete avionics, etc. There are always boring tasks to every job, but the jobs have never been boring in their entirety. In any case, it seems to me like incentive is always weaker than motivation, regardless of the dimensions involved. But, then again, I'm a white male from a middle-class household in the US. So, surely that biases me. On 07/14/2015 01:05 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote: Motivation is such a subjective thing. Like most people, I like to work on things that are at least a little challenging intellectually, but sometimes, just seeing the end result and knowing that I did it is reward enough to make the tedium bearable. A few years back, I did a bunch of very tedious work that synchronized video of conference speakers with their slide presentations NM INBRE. The idea was to create a Flash presentation that showed the video of the speaker, but displayed static images (taken from the PPT presentation) representing the auditorium's screen. This saved a lot of bandwidth compared to streaming a composite video of both the speaker and the actual screen, and in the 2006 timeframe, really was necessary. So, I had “capture” video from tape from two sources (speaker and screen); scrub through the two resulting videos, recording slide translation timings; export and trim images for each slide; compress video into appropriate formats; import images and video into Flash, and enter the timings that I recorded; etc etc. All that multiplied by 10 or more speakers, it took me over a month to complete. Kind of like mowing your lawn with a pair of fingernail clippers. I automated as much as I could, but given the number of tools that I had to deal with, I
Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
Both of these comments touch on something that irritates me quite a bit. Because I have a chip on my shoulder and enjoy confrontation, I regularly apply for jobs even when I'm only a tiny bit interested in changing jobs. (Plus, who knows? Maybe someone will make a really good offer.) In doing so, I often apply for jobs for which I'm over qualified. I don't get paid much for what I _am_ qualified to do. So, it wouldn't be much of a hit to take a job for which I'm over qualified. These jobs almost always have something educational about them. I regard the education as part of the compensation. I'm willing to take a lot less money in exchange for the chance to learn-on-the-job. The interviewers never seem to understand that point. When it comes down to the practicals of offering me a job, they often get caught by my inadequate answers to the question Why would you want to do these jobs, for this salary? Why give up what you have already? I don't know ... YOLO? It happens so often, perhaps I should be less enthusiastic about whatever projects I'm working on at any given time. Maybe if I'm all grumpy about the sh!t I have to do, I'd get less complaints about me being over qualified for some other job ... which obviously I'm not. My incompetence knows no bounds. I've never had a boring job, from selling carpet water proofing door-to-door, to sacking groceries, selling electronic parts at the university store, flowcharting assembly code for obsolete avionics, etc. There are always boring tasks to every job, but the jobs have never been boring in their entirety. In any case, it seems to me like incentive is always weaker than motivation, regardless of the dimensions involved. But, then again, I'm a white male from a middle-class household in the US. So, surely that biases me. On 07/14/2015 01:05 PM, Gary Schiltz wrote: Motivation is such a subjective thing. Like most people, I like to work on things that are at least a little challenging intellectually, but sometimes, just seeing the end result and knowing that I did it is reward enough to make the tedium bearable. A few years back, I did a bunch of very tedious work that synchronized video of conference speakers with their slide presentations NM INBRE. The idea was to create a Flash presentation that showed the video of the speaker, but displayed static images (taken from the PPT presentation) representing the auditorium's screen. This saved a lot of bandwidth compared to streaming a composite video of both the speaker and the actual screen, and in the 2006 timeframe, really was necessary. So, I had “capture” video from tape from two sources (speaker and screen); scrub through the two resulting videos, recording slide translation timings; export and trim images for each slide; compress video into appropriate formats; import images and video into Flash, and enter the timings that I recorded; etc etc. All that multiplied by 10 or more speakers, it took me over a month to complete. Kind of like mowing your lawn with a pair of fingernail clippers. I automated as much as I could, but given the number of tools that I had to deal with, I really didn’t have time to automate very much. So, I just became a robot for a month or so. But the end result was very nice for the time, and despite lack of intellectual challenges, was one of my proudest accomplishments that I was able to make myself stick to it. In fact, I even did the same robot work again the next year. I’ve always been meaning to get to automating that type of work... On Tue, Jul 14, 2015 at 2:19 PM, Marcus Daniels mar...@snoutfarm.com wrote: Interesting vs. boring is orthogonal. So, there's interesting-hard and boring-hard. I'll accept money for either type of work, though I much prefer interesting-hard ... obviously. How about engaging, imaginative, educational, or surprising work vs. detail work. Doing detail work may be delayed gratification or it can no purpose other than to respond to extrinsic motivation.Remove the extrinsic motivation (money), and it is boring and depressing. Ok, if one is tasked with making an app to print checks, it could be educational to learn how to put widgets on a screen or to do page layout. What that discovery process is over, either another naïve person is needed or extrinsic motivation. Marcus -- ⇔ glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
Interesting vs. boring is orthogonal. So, there's interesting-hard and boring-hard. I'll accept money for either type of work, though I much prefer interesting-hard ... obviously. How about engaging, imaginative, educational, or surprising work vs. detail work. Doing detail work may be delayed gratification or it can no purpose other than to respond to extrinsic motivation.Remove the extrinsic motivation (money), and it is boring and depressing. Ok, if one is tasked with making an app to print checks, it could be educational to learn how to put widgets on a screen or to do page layout. What that discovery process is over, either another naïve person is needed or extrinsic motivation. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
I was taking a broader swipe at how much of society and the economy is setup to pigeonhole people into being one thing. Find a role, stick with it, don't shoot too high or too low. Stability and identity, as an aim in itself. The need for community is to create a platform for parting with conservative values to explore other values, values a community can just invent. Unfortunately, the people that seek out these communities can become burdens on the community's mission if they seek comfort in the group rather than add momentum to its purpose.No, I don't care about the people who know how to do things finding common ground with corporate drones.It's not about good and evil or safety and danger.It's about the purposeless and ordinary draining the will and attention of the unique and interesting.Universities, labs, DIY biology groups at least protect that to some extent but each have their pluses and minuses. -Original Message- From: Friam [mailto:friam-boun...@redfish.com] On Behalf Of glen Sent: Tuesday, July 14, 2015 6:24 PM To: The Friday Morning Applied Complexity Coffee Group Subject: Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q I'd (probably wrongly) interpreted Marcus' comment to mean something about keeping the corporate drones (who can't imagine doing work for anything other than incentive) away from people who have the knowledge to create weapons of mass destruction, particularly biological weapons ... hence, the article about DIYBio myths. It was a little bit of agreement with a little bit of disagreement combined. BTW-FWIW, since we're talking about motivation vs. incentive, I just saw this in my inbox: The Ethics of Whistleblowing with Edward Snowden http://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/ethics-whistleblowing-edward-snowden John: A lot of people see you as a hero. But others, intelligent ones too, have called you a narcissistic traitor ... How do you see yourself at this point? Snowden: I don't think about myself. I don't think about how I'm going to be perceived, because it's not about me. It's about us. This is the type of thing that makes me think Snowden is, at least, disingenuous, if not worse. He's clearly not afflicted with any of the major psych disorders that prevent him from reflective thought. Hence, he _does_ think about himself and how he'll be perceived. If he'd just answer the damned question honestly ... like Hell yeah, I think about myself and how I'm perceived! I think about how my fellow US citizens view me. I think about how/whether they want to know the information I leaked, whether a jury of my peers would convict me if presented with the evidence ... Etc. If he'd answer that way, I might start to trust him. Instead he answers with this pseudo-altrustic nonsense, public-relations/politician-speak. Ugh. On 07/14/2015 04:43 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote: So, I'm not getting the relevance of the DIYBio movement to Marcus' comment. Are you suggesting that it is an example of community for community's sake? On Jul 14, 2015, at 4:15 PM, glen wrote: On 07/14/2015 02:58 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: Sometimes I think circles such as yours and the people Glen is talking about just must be kept apart from one another, if they don’t avoid each other naturally.That’s about as close I get to advocating community for community’s sake. http://phys.org/news/2013-11-first-ever-survey-do-it-yourself-biology -myths.html -- ⇔ glen -- ⇔ glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] [EXTERNAL] Re: speculative Q
Glen, So, I'm not getting the relevance of the DIYBio movement to Marcus' comment. Are you suggesting that it is an example of community for community's sake? Ray Parks Consilient Heuristician/IDART Old-Timer V: 505-844-4024 M: 505-238-9359 P: 505-951-6084 NIPR: rcpa...@sandia.gov SIPR: rcpar...@sandia.doe.sgov.gov (send NIPR reminder) On Jul 14, 2015, at 4:15 PM, glen wrote: On 07/14/2015 02:58 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: Sometimes I think circles such as yours and the people Glen is talking about just must be kept apart from one another, if they don’t avoid each other naturally.That’s about as close I get to advocating community for community’s sake. http://phys.org/news/2013-11-first-ever-survey-do-it-yourself-biology-myths.html -- ⇔ glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com smime.p7s Description: S/MIME cryptographic signature FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
I'd (probably wrongly) interpreted Marcus' comment to mean something about keeping the corporate drones (who can't imagine doing work for anything other than incentive) away from people who have the knowledge to create weapons of mass destruction, particularly biological weapons ... hence, the article about DIYBio myths. It was a little bit of agreement with a little bit of disagreement combined. BTW-FWIW, since we're talking about motivation vs. incentive, I just saw this in my inbox: The Ethics of Whistleblowing with Edward Snowden http://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/ethics-whistleblowing-edward-snowden John: A lot of people see you as a hero. But others, intelligent ones too, have called you a narcissistic traitor ... How do you see yourself at this point? Snowden: I don't think about myself. I don't think about how I'm going to be perceived, because it's not about me. It's about us. This is the type of thing that makes me think Snowden is, at least, disingenuous, if not worse. He's clearly not afflicted with any of the major psych disorders that prevent him from reflective thought. Hence, he _does_ think about himself and how he'll be perceived. If he'd just answer the damned question honestly ... like Hell yeah, I think about myself and how I'm perceived! I think about how my fellow US citizens view me. I think about how/whether they want to know the information I leaked, whether a jury of my peers would convict me if presented with the evidence ... Etc. If he'd answer that way, I might start to trust him. Instead he answers with this pseudo-altrustic nonsense, public-relations/politician-speak. Ugh. On 07/14/2015 04:43 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote: So, I'm not getting the relevance of the DIYBio movement to Marcus' comment. Are you suggesting that it is an example of community for community's sake? On Jul 14, 2015, at 4:15 PM, glen wrote: On 07/14/2015 02:58 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: Sometimes I think circles such as yours and the people Glen is talking about just must be kept apart from one another, if they don’t avoid each other naturally.That’s about as close I get to advocating community for community’s sake. http://phys.org/news/2013-11-first-ever-survey-do-it-yourself-biology-myths.html -- ⇔ glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
I'd (probably wrongly) interpreted Marcus' comment to mean something about keeping the corporate drones (who can't imagine doing work for anything other than incentive) away from people who have the knowledge to create weapons of mass destruction, particularly biological weapons ... hence, the article about DIYBio myths. It was a little bit of agreement with a little bit of disagreement combined. BTW-FWIW, since we're talking about motivation vs. incentive, I just saw this in my inbox: The Ethics of Whistleblowing with Edward Snowden http://www.philosophytalk.org/shows/ethics-whistleblowing-edward-snowden John: A lot of people see you as a hero. But others, intelligent ones too, have called you a narcissistic traitor ... How do you see yourself at this point? Snowden: I don't think about myself. I don't think about how I'm going to be perceived, because it's not about me. It's about us. This is the type of thing that makes me think Snowden is, at least, disingenuous, if not worse. He's clearly not afflicted with any of the major psych disorders that prevent him from reflective thought. Hence, he _does_ think about himself and how he'll be perceived. If he'd just answer the damned question honestly ... like Hell yeah, I think about myself and how I'm perceived! I think about how my fellow US citizens view me. I think about how/whether they want to know the information I leaked, whether a jury of my peers would convict me if presented with the evidence ... Etc. If he'd answer that way, I might start to trust him. Instead he answers with this pseudo-altrustic nonsense, public-relations/politician-speak. Ugh. On 07/14/2015 04:43 PM, Parks, Raymond wrote: So, I'm not getting the relevance of the DIYBio movement to Marcus' comment. Are you suggesting that it is an example of community for community's sake? On Jul 14, 2015, at 4:15 PM, glen wrote: On 07/14/2015 02:58 PM, Marcus Daniels wrote: Sometimes I think circles such as yours and the people Glen is talking about just must be kept apart from one another, if they don’t avoid each other naturally.That’s about as close I get to advocating community for community’s sake. http://phys.org/news/2013-11-first-ever-survey-do-it-yourself-biology-myths.html -- ⇔ glen -- ⇔ glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
On 07/14/2015 10:24 AM, Marcus Daniels wrote: Although there is open source software for office and accounting, I can't imagine wanting to spend my free time on such a thing.It is just boring and depressing to think about.I don't think it has anything to do with it being hard. Hard is New Horizons.. Well, you're a much better programmer than I am, even easy things are hard for me. I tend to think of hard as synonymous with work. Interesting vs. boring is orthogonal. So, there's interesting-hard and boring-hard. I'll accept money for either type of work, though I much prefer interesting-hard ... obviously. Interestingly, there are also interesting-easy tasks; and whether one should pay others to do interesting-easy tasks is an interesting question. (Hah! 4 uses of the same term in the same sentence! My gift to the compressors.) Meanwhile, as Gary points out, the commercial World of Boring circles the wagons around music streaming and participation in mobile app markets, banking, and other such things so that they can control prices.The software is coupled to the protocols and one would have to buy-in (with $$$) to see how the pieces fit together and make free alternatives. What a hassle. Yeah, it blows my mind what people will pay for. There's also this article: http://www.fool.com/investing/general/2015/07/13/apple-inc-continues-to-dominate-smartphone-profits.aspx Furthermore, of the world's eight largest smartphone makers, Apple captured 92% of operating profits in Q1, according to data compiled by Canaccord Genuity (via The Wall Street Journal). I can't, for the life of me, imagine buying an Apple product except when some client/project demands it. What are these people thinking? 8^) -- ⇔ glen FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
Re: [FRIAM] speculative Q
On that same front, Gary's right about that last 20%. But user-facing software has a much harder last 20% than what happens behind the scenes _because_ those occult tools are allowed to be very focused, tight, and single purpose, whereas user-facing tools have to handle, ameliorate, shunt, faciliate the myriad things a general intelligence can/will do. User facing tools have to deal with morons and geniuses, whereas internal tools can get away with well-defined contracts. Although there is open source software for office and accounting, I can't imagine wanting to spend my free time on such a thing.It is just boring and depressing to think about.I don't think it has anything to do with it being hard. Hard is New Horizons.. Meanwhile, as Gary points out, the commercial World of Boring circles the wagons around music streaming and participation in mobile app markets, banking, and other such things so that they can control prices.The software is coupled to the protocols and one would have to buy-in (with $$$) to see how the pieces fit together and make free alternatives. What a hassle. Marcus FRIAM Applied Complexity Group listserv Meets Fridays 9a-11:30 at cafe at St. John's College to unsubscribe http://redfish.com/mailman/listinfo/friam_redfish.com
