Danny's Tech: Where West and East Intersect

Thursday, August 31, 2006

VC: money ready to be thrown at you

Here's a list of companies which would get funding if people start them:
The 20 smartest companies to start now: Howard Schultz, Steve Case, Vinod Khosla, and other major investors are sharing their best startup ideas. And they're willing to give a collective $100 Million to the entrepreneurs who can make them happen.
Pretty cool stuff they are looking for (I haven't read them all yet).

Entertaible: LCD TV horizontal

"Entertaible concept: combination of electronic gaming and traditional board games": the mind boggles on the possibilities for gaming: Which is why I love TabletPC for the potential (but never have the time to do any real development) for hands on interactivity. Being a multiplayer environment (much like traditional board games) would allow a level of interactivity not possible with real boards (you can't cheat or have all the pieces missed up, but you can do replays, undo's and redo's). And for games which are time sensitive (I don't know of any but it could be new thing: first one to touch gets to pay/answer the question, etc), touching may open up new possibilities.

You can also come up with coordination games where one has to follow another or be synchronized and work together (e.g., you can have 2 flywheels which have to rotate the opposite directions at the same speed by 2 different players).

[Unfortunately, to protect these kinds of ideas with copyright is much harder than patent since patent gives much broader protections while copyright have to be detailed and explicit of the inventions. And even then it'll only protect the words, not products implemented by the ideas.]

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Wednesday, August 30, 2006

Usability and better programming

The two articles seem to go together:
"Race Is On to Woo Next-Gen Developer"
and
"Sci-Fi: A New Kind of OS"

OS proposed is HAL-9000 like tool which adapts to your working style and filter your tool selections based on how you work. I would think it should be per application level all coordinated by OS. With hypervisor, you can even do it across multiple OSes!

The next-gen developer tooling: make programming easier especially in the area of dynamic languages. Things like CASE tools were to do just that in the 80's [and 90's] but they never really took off (i-Logix Statemate was the closest thing to such an ideal but its price made it unnoticed). Dynamic languages like Smalltalk should have done just what they are talking about in the article but due to licensing and price, it never had a chance. Java [and Eclipse] have the potential but it seems all too haphazard [not something I can really put my finger on -- just my feelings].

See also eweek's "The Future of Programming: Less Is More" especially about LOP (language oriented programming) where you can mix and match different languages in one programming environment. Not too far from what I've been blogging.

So you mix it all together and you get adaptive programming environment where you get prompts and suggestions on where to go or what to do next and use different languages as appropriate to the problem you want solved (even suggesting an alternative translation(s) to a different language(s)).

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

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Answers next to Knowledge

Apparently, Yahoo's Answers is right after Wikipedia in terms of popularity: "The secret to Yahoo Answers' success: The search giant has stumbled lately, but its popular Q&A service shows that getting people to create their own content can really pay off." I guess I didn't know about it but it makes sense: peer-to-peer networking is taking off, be it online gaming or music/video sharing or money sharing. A MySpace for Q&A's.

FON: free/cheap Wifi HOT or NOT?

"Web maverick shakes up status quo again: Skype and Kazaa pioneer Niklas Zennstrom pulls a promising new Wi-Fi startup out of his hat." He had 2 hits so far. Will FON be just as hot? Only time will tell but wifi network may have a potential. When I travel, I hate the hassle of using wifi at airports or hotels, so something cheap (or free) and easy to use would be welcomed. Unfortunately in the US just as cell phone coverage can be flaky, wifi is probably worse than cell. Sigh...

Friday, August 25, 2006

Meta-Social networking: ranking, money and critics glory

LA Times explains "Where Everyone Is a Critic: Yelp.com enables ordinary customers to tout or trash. For owners of restaurants and shops, it's no longer business as usual." But they do point how it works well in San Francisco but may not extend to other cities.

There are many web sites where long time contributor has weight in opinions, worth, etc. EBay has the feed back points, Amazon has reviewer rank.

Having orthogonal ID would be nice. I can gain trust in one location which would "carry over" to other sites. Likewise, I can block or ignore IDs which I disagree or find objectionable. And if I feel like it, I can promote a set of IDs [much like I can have my ipod listen lists I share] and even financially support IDs I like [one time pay or monthly payment]. I can also pay for an idea of a person regardless of where that idea placed [comment, blog, email]: this would be book proposal [which can result in discount of the book, profit sharing of book sales, etc] or a new feature or bug fix of a software [with open source software, there is no "real" profit sharing]. One can see the IDs compared in a hot or not type of ranking -- and even filter the rankings based on what the criteria were used to rank.

You can also have LinkedIn type of ring of trust which can be built up across the network, even into the online gaming/virtual worlds. Real and virtual can easily blend. There is the risk of bots and AI quackery ingraining themselves into this ring, as well.

Copyright, 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Tuesday, August 22, 2006

Linux goes for lightweight OS

"Linux heavies plan lightweight virtualization: Novell and Red Hat have concrete plans to build "container" virtualization into their Linux products." This is to allow one OS to be shared across multiple partitions so that only read/write data are made unique [these are called containers -- only one and the same OS runs inside each partition] rather than both OS and data per partition [which allows different OS per partition].

If you're confused than my apologies for not writing it up well. Comment or email and I'll try again, latter].

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Labels:

Online Advice and Training

I got an invite from Kasamba to become an expert there and found it very interesting: people have different rates and then you get rated by your customers.

Having real dollars is good for the expert but not necessarily for customers since there are some risks involved in paying unmet persons.

However, reading "Online Advice: Remote--and Reassuring: More investors are finding savvy guidance on the Net" makes me think that there is something about online consulting. There are the email and forums but there is also the live chat [like Kasamba] hands on advice too.

With the startup I have in mind, an addition would be: an online training course could be made available with multiple customers signing up and then can interactively ask questions. Live session would be more expensive than non-live viewing. Email/forums can be used to get questions answered after the live sessions. Maybe the live customers may have to pay up front but if others find it useful the live customers might make some royalty too [for their questions and/or answers as part of participating in the live session]. I guess having a prepaid system [more you prepaid the more discount you get] will make it easier to spend one's system "tokens" [whatever the internal payment currency is].

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Monday, August 21, 2006

MS Office Challenger

Red Herring has "17 MS Office Killers: Upstarts are taking on the A-Team of the desktop software world: Microsoft Office. Do they have a chance?"

And I say, good luck. I don't expect any winners any day soon since a company has to offer seamless usage of the MS docs. Price alone won't do it as IBM Lotus and Corel's Wordperfect and others (Sun's Star Office) have tried and didn't go anywhere.

For me, it'll have to be much better than Office but seamlessly import and export it since others will never quit using Office anytime soon.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved

Thursday, August 17, 2006

Bugs: secrets over safety and unempowerment

"Flaw finders to software makers: It's payback time Bug hunters have listened to software firms about how to make flaws public. Now it's time for those companies to give them something back, they say."

It's unfortunate that bug reporting has become a "responsible" activity rather than for the safety of the common folks. And it's unfortunate that current software [by most vendors] is locked in by the software creator and in-accessible by the users.

Why can't the user become empowered to fix the problems they want to fix, when they want to, not at the pace of the software makers [who usually charges money for "bug fix/upgrade" as if bug fixes were something user should have to pay for. Just as we have many bug finders, why not allow many fixers? [which is precisely the open source model]

But then agian my business model proposal would do exactly that: pay for the bug fix(es). Unlike these companies, however, my model would make clear to the users what they are paying for: bug fix or feature addition and total dollars "invested" would reflect what the customers really want. I guess the users can set time limits and other controls and can always back out at any time until a "real" contract is in place [I'll fix/make this feature for the fixed amount: the money is committed and my time will be committed as well].

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Xen: first virtualization product

It's about time. "XenSource's first product due next week: Start-up's XenSource Enterprise is designed to put a pretty face on open-source virtualization."

I was wondering how they were going to make money. Selling product license it is. Maybe my business model won't work at all? Hmm.

Labels:

Wednesday, August 16, 2006

Mac UI: reinventing the wheel half way

The Devil's Advocate - Mac UI Ain't All That: The Future & History of the User Interface (with Snazzy New UI Videos) by John Kheit - August 15th, 2006

Seems like a good start on the problems with Mac UI [User Interface] as I have already pointed out before.

However without completely rethinking from the requirements and dumping everything we currently have now, I doubt if we can get a real usable interface. But, in my opinion, good tools create great interface and until the tools are in place, the UI changes wouldn't be much more than cosmetic bit twiddling.

When I say dumping, I mean dump: no more files and folders and disk drives. I shouldn't have to worry about where my data are stored and how. If I crash my computer for some reason, I should turn it back on and everything should be as it was. Even if my harddrive [HDD] is wiped out: maybe a flash drive can boot off the network and I can still use it slowly off of some network drive until a new HDD is replaced -- which would then automatically be reformatted and reinstalled, much like adding a replacement drive on a RAID5 system. And don't give me grief about my data being no longer valid: If I write my doc in Word 5 and then take it to a system with Word 2000, why should I care? I still own my data/document, don't I? Since when did Microsoft claim ownership of my words? I didn't give M$FT any permission to own my words at all [and don't give me none of this click through agreements].

And as for privacy, the data should be encrypted automagically and no one but me should have easy access to them. No one should be able to plant any fake data [or "plant evidence"] nor read my secrets without my permission. [and all transactions would be logged so that any problem can be easily audited by me.] Similar rights would be handy for parents of a minor and that "privilege" would be automatically revoked when that child turns of age [set by the parent(s), of course].
Update 9:30PM: A friend pointed out Mac's FileVault but it's not quite I had in mind: it's got to be the default behavior: the first person to use it automatically gets custom private key generated [which would be put on some secure token like a smart card and multiple copies can be made for backup] and HDD gets encrypted with that the new public key. [actually it can be
encrypted with AES for performance and the key can be regenerated every few days or weeks and reencrypted with the new key (again, much like RAID5 "refilling"). Backups should be encrypted with something stronger than AES since it is more permanent data.] For parental control, the private key would belong to the child but the parental private key(s) would override the children's until of age (or something like it). [Actually too late now to think all that straight]

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

GnuPG: privacy for Windows

If you want to use encryption on Windows [or Linux for that matter] for free, use GPG and Thunderbird + enigmail.

It's pretty easy to use the Thunderbird interface. I installed enigmail, setup my gpg path (I use cygwin on Windows so I pointed the path to the cygwin bin area). And then it's automagically decrypts my emails! [I have not tried to encrypt yet...]

To use gmail with GPG check out this: Gmail, PGP, and the End to End Solution

Here is my DannyHSDad public key.

-----BEGIN PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----
Version: GnuPG v1.4.2.2 (FreeBSD)

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qGcsgQbJtzA6XDC5OSJvEFkf4fOCHG3vBt4TwUF9NzDIRgh8E5qqETRXivf0ptBm
2jJoy61VkeBkPI/SKC60fwNEINbG+EpUbkh/PXlbRijISymYULQjRGFubnkgSFMg
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-----END PGP PUBLIC KEY BLOCK-----


Email me for fingerprint to verify the key.

--
Also: Here's something I found which I have talked to few folks about: using gmail for backup space...

Greatest Software "ever" ... NOT!

InfoWeek has the top 12 software ever made [as of August 2006]. Along with top 5 runner up.

Only time will tell but I have a feeling that we're just getting started. There are too many unresolved problems in computer science [usability, programmability, traceability, debuggability, maintainability] to name top software yet.

Maybe the top 17 software with the state of tools as of 2006. Once we solve a lot of the basic software problems, then we can move on to creating great software. I think that we're still working out the kinks of the language of mathematics before we can get to Newtonian physics let alone Relativity and Quantum Mechanics.

I do love how they did explain the start of open source movement long before the internet: via magnetic tape exchange. Which is how I got to know C programming at my college by getting a C compiler "free" from one of the tape exchanges [back when Pascal and BASIC were the main teaching languages at least at my college].

However, I'm a bit disappointed that Java up ended Smalltalk but that's OK. Xerox blew it and never did recover. And one moves on...

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Mob vs Individuality of the web

"Poking a Stick Into The 'Hive Mind': To Lanier, the 'wisdom of crowds' delivers a reflection of the lowest common denominator."

Talks of the mob mentality people can get into with the web [specifically wikipedia] unlike the individually which should have flourished. Like the 60's movement vs Mao's Cultural Revolution.

Personally, I don't see how 60's is no more mob effect since those who were "rebellious" were identifiable by their clothing [t-shirt & jeans], hair [long], music [rocknroll] and behavior [smoking pot], etc.

Oh well...

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday, August 13, 2006

Xbox gamers roll their own...eventually

Well, sounds like Microsoft is starting to do the kind of thing I've been blogging about for the past few months: "Play your own Xbox game: Microsoft plans free tools for enthusiasts to make own games, but at first only other hard-core gamers will be able to share the creations."

They plan to gradually roll it out but what I had in mind is along the lines of my interest. However, I still believe that starting with children is the way to go [homeschoolers are my initial target market since my sons would the perfect guinea pigs -- I mean test subjects].

As I mentioned to my friends tonight, I want a tool/system which is independent of hardware and language: I want my tool to be able to generate machine code, compiled language [like C/C++] or against interpreter [like JVM or Smalltalk VM]. I also want any and all the low level changes be reflected back to the high level language unlike almost all the languages of today which are one-way functions. The ideal is to create an open source tool which people can take to colleges and professional work where they can improve their performance without disrupting or redoing what they have to deal with at school or job. With a good solid free tool, you can go to your work, download and be up and running in few minutes and then get your personal settings saved somewhere off site [at your own web site, on a USB drive, etc.] that you retrieve and save off.

Unlike MSFT, I want to target from children programmers to pros like yours truly.

The problem is making money to pay for my bills and care for my families. I don't like the normal way of selling licenses [annual or permanent] since that raised the barrier of entry. Open source is to me the best way but how to get money for something open and free? I'm thinking now that paying for bug fix and feature enhancement is the way to go: this way, once the business builds up, that money (or bids) can be contracted/sub-contracted out to other programmers, etc.

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Worthless Media: wired lied too

Wired has a confessional: "Wired News Writer Faked Info". Even a hit magazine/news site cannot avoid getting writers who fake their articles. In the world of pure ether, fake emails and fake stories are so easy to contribe, as evidenced by all those blogs out there [I'm not exempt, either, of course].

What can be done to prevent fakes? I really don't know.

One thing nice about software business (esp. open source ones), there is nothing fake: either you have real code or not. And the code works or not. Very easy to verify....

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Tuesday, August 08, 2006

Going cheap: broken HDD

Our HDD died on my yesterday. Rather than buying a new drive or a new computer, I decided to reuse a HDD from another computer which I had taken out but not put back [since we're in between moves]. At least I got the computer up and running with latest patches [yes I use Windows] and virus protection by the end of today. And to think I just setup this computer [which was used exclusively by my eldest son] with my wife's data just because we put her computer in storage [in between our move].

In case you've noticed, we do have many computers...

Monday, August 07, 2006

Biometric Passports Cracked

"Biometric passports cracked: A German security consultant says he can clone RFID chips" -- so much for "more secure" passports.

As someone who's been there working in security business [smart card version of Java Card JVM development], it's no news to me. It's all matter of time and high tech tools and eager crackers mean things will be broken quicker than what the developers originally anticipated.

I think Metcalfe's law has more power than most people are willing to give credit for esp. when it comes to open source and breaking security.

AJAX open source tools reviewed

I guess AJAX is hot and now there are several open source projects up and running worthy of reviews: "Surveying open-source AJAX toolkits: Packages from Dojo, Zimbra, Yahoo, Microsoft, Google, and OpenRico/Prototype showcase the variety of libraries available to AJAX developers"

Sounds like a good start of AJAX tools but I still think programming is too complex for most of us.

I hate current programming system: I can't always figure out what is going on until I try to run and even then it's not clear if it is working correctly. And then I don't know how to fix the problem to get to do what I want to do. Why haven't we progressed in programming since the FORTRAN/BASIC/C days? Smalltalk seemed like a right step but it never went far.

So we get this complex mess called C++ and multi-flavor of Java (J2EE anyone?). And AJAX is even more complex: mishmash of various languages make it up so if something goes wrong you're really end up the creek (with lost paddle and leaking canoe).

Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved.

Sunday, August 06, 2006

Fun for Teens

"Fun Isn't Fun Enough for Teens: Times/Bloomberg poll suggests 12- to 24-year-olds are bored with their entertainment options."

Seems that the teens are more into interactive entertainment, not just games but networking via internet and cell phones. Which is why MySpace is so popular! And online games are drawing in many people.

So, how can open source software development tap into all this interest and energy? My game dev network proposal might be the way but I don't know exact way to get there. Sigh.

Friday, August 04, 2006

Windows: Its staying power

Or why software once establish has a hard time being rooted out: "Linux expert switches to Windows".

This is a problem I've touched on before, but I don't see any easy solutions since so much data is dependent on the software which manipulates the data: which I believe is the problem with object oriented programming: data and code are married to each other so any other code cannot easily use that data. Which is too often the problem when new systems are introduced to replace old systems and catastrophe results since the two are incompatible and the new system is scraped or partially used (please see "Risks" link on your right for examples). Reminds me of the Bible verse:
Neither do men pour new wine into old wineskins. If they do, the skins will burst, the wine will run out and the wineskins will be ruined. No, they pour new wine into new wineskins, and both are preserved. [Matthew 9:17]
Copyright 2006, DannyHSDad, All Rights Reserved

Game tools for children overview

Here's a nice summary of various game tools out in the marketplace: Gamelearning's tools for making games. They summerize Stagecast well and puts in plug for their product: GameMaker's Apprentice. I'll order it and see how it goes with my sons....

Wednesday, August 02, 2006

Pain of DSL

I've just moved to my parents' place and setup my DSL connection today. What a pain! I thought I could just hook up my vonage box and wifi router to the DSL modem and be up and running.

No, I had to create account with AT&T SBC Yahoo first and then make that user/password permanent on the DSL modem [I found the hints in some news group and the PDF manual I found by googling the modem model name and number: with that I was able to directly connect to the modem via web interface and make the modem login at power up time]. The most frustrating was when I can connect directly from my notebook to DSL modem without any problem but when I connected via the router, it won't resolve the domain names. After every power off/on tries (except maybe once), it would never let me go to web pages or ping known sites. I tried spoofing MAC address, changed the IP address ranges of the router, I tried mixing and matching my Vonage box and router differently but nothing seemed to matter.

When I put in the DNS server numbers (2 of them) into the router, things seemed to work finally!