Reviews and Links for July 2012

Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017

The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes

4/5

A personal anti-adventure, gripping and poignant and pedestrian.

 

The Children of the Sky (Zones of Thought, #3) by Vernor Vinge

0/5

Solid, unexpected third installment. Don't read if you haven't read the first two.

 

Links

'robot revolution would end quickly, because the robots would all break down or get stuck against walls' - http://t.co/X4AFepMI

RT @GeoCollective: Daniel @RavenEllison speaking at National Geographic on the importance of #geography and #guerrillageography http://t ...

Aspam, Aomori, Japan - looks like Blade Runner. http://t.co/UePboKyJ

Cloud Atlas trailer http://t.co/etJealdX (on the plus side, lots of reasons for this to be great, on the minus side... Tom Hanks :( ) #fb

[text: “what the fuck, it worked the first time”,... http://t.co/chCeMv8M

Chow Down (at Chick-fil-A): http://t.co/cOuZViuC via @youtube

4 of 5 stars to The Sense of an Ending by Julian Barnes http://t.co/lV8ZrNHL

I side 90% with Jill Stein... http://t.co/zCNzugqD

Naples, Florida, USA snapshot from Catfood WebCams on Android. http://t.co/HACOmEhr

Testing a webcam share from Android... http://t.co/Ha94fZoW

Photo http://t.co/GnDGvPPZ

Rolling up social APIs: https://t.co/qrXnqX7T #todo @myEN

Thanks for the Cash Mr. Bubble Man: http://t.co/ZonD58yD

With More Original Programming On The Way, Netflix TV Viewing Is On The Rise http://t.co/Q8oCNZUv -- missing the point, lack of content

Hubble discovers new Pluto moon http://t.co/kRB95fLu -- Promote Pluto back to a planet immediately!

Amanda Palmer's awesome stop-motion music video [NSFW]: http://t.co/XfGBC9NY

ITHCWY: Hummingbird http://t.co/CHtA5fV3

Clegg: House of Lords is 'flawed' http://t.co/qp6MuKPO -- yes, do this: http://t.co/QNPyzu8X

ITHCWY: Twitter's API has got too painful for me: I've developed a bunch of stupid, niche and vaguely promising… http://t.co/J6Y0EZ62

IT class warfare — It’s not just IBM http://t.co/bK0Nr2lG

Naming Pets http://t.co/syC0kgWa

BBC News - Brian Cox: bank bailout costlier than UK science 'since Jesus' http://t.co/1RSN5g5Z -- amaaaaazzzziiiinnnnngg

"A conversation with my 12 year old self" (video) http://t.co/zYOEKDnN -- freaky

ITHCWY: Shrubbery: A missed opportunity to demand that violators shall provide... another shrubbery! (At the Old… http://t.co/lBSQaDmI

Probably the Higgs: http://t.co/yspWoQlv

Spring cleaning in summer http://t.co/269vRG1O - Google kills iGoogle. It was naff, but it drove a lot of @CatfoodSoftware business. Sad.

Cisco's cloud vision: Mandatory, monetized, and killed at their discretion http://t.co/OkBkKAsA via @extremetech @CiscoSystems

A better idea for House of Lords reform: http://t.co/WXhNgHF4 Agree? vote for http://t.co/svIg4nuG #lordsreform

ITHCWY: House of Lords - time for Legislative Service?: I've mulled the idea of having an upper chamber randomly… http://t.co/6C5cQjz2

You Might Be A Smanker If… http://t.co/L91rDvqV

Cisco locks customers out of their own routers, only lets them back in if they agree to being spied upon and monetized http://t.co/2QIdw42P

Bouncy, bouncy druids, not available outside the UK: http://t.co/mw7XcKth

Division http://t.co/2tIh8IXM via @RavenEllison

Patent troll http://t.co/AY3FIg8W

Operated by the knights who say NI! http://t.co/TkMndo7c

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Reviews and Links for June 2012

Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017

The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides

3/5

A love triangle set in the turmoil of post-graduation. Well written but left me a little cold, I just didn't care for the characters or the sudden resolution.

 

Links

An important update from the International Earth Rotation Service http://t.co/n5VcLNH3 <- warning,="">

Seeing Beyond the Human Eye: Video of beautiful scientific and artistic photography http://t.co/aZsFEfh1

ITHCWY: Mission:Explore Food - Get It Now: I posted a few months ago about my brother's crowd funded book, Mission… http://t.co/1A2FEkHN

Kate's #MEF151 looks hard! http://t.co/Qo4N4weY #fb

Pyura Chilensis, the living rock http://t.co/54moGgML

Ghosts With Shit Jobs: http://t.co/CjDH5mz6 #fb

Google's Nexus 7 tablet image leaks onto the Web http://t.co/nuLji4zz via @CNET - holy crap that's a big bezel #io12

Robot Hand beats you at Rock-Paper-Scissors every time. http://t.co/W4K1zAeq (Robot hand crushes rock, robot hand crushes scissors...)

Moon Landing http://t.co/oHFSCowO

Patent 'trolls cost $29bn a year' http://t.co/VQRiKFtb

Facebook Just Changed Your Email Without Asking http://t.co/z9QRi3qP

#Bernal now has a Solar Pump http://t.co/e40lcNLY

House of Lords reform: Nick Clegg's crazy plan is a pay day for has-beens and never-wozzers via @Telegraph http://t.co/kDjbqTFh

Future of ATA = more dishes. Not that expensive. What about it @NancyPelosi ? #SETIcon http://t.co/uobbZ065

Meeting moons at #SETIcon http://t.co/MXykt1QK

RT @erinbiba: http://t.co/Ahh0IhXq - a directory of ways for YOU to participate in space exploration. (Build a rover, get your name on a ...

Is Jupiter helpful to life on Earth? In some ways yes, in some ways no. #SETIcon http://t.co/pG1U3mf3

http://t.co/mZWx5FIr Turing Suicide in doubt?

Gaia corollary: http://t.co/9lPllPbT #SETIcon (re global organism)

Intelligent life: it's all about the unknown unknowns #SETIcon http://t.co/Goo7ngUq

Gorgeous start to the second full day of #SETIcon 2. http://t.co/f0bbwW4V

Was God required for the Big Bang panel rather unfairly stacked 100% against God #SETIcon http://t.co/Keg164Vo

How to find aliens: advice from NASA, SETI and the EMH. #SETIcon http://t.co/HAHZrbv6

ITHCWY: SETIcon 2: I'm at SETIcon 2 this weekend. It's a mix of science, sci-fi, religion and general speculation… http://t.co/jifR8Ang

http://t.co/FZo6GzxJ #todo #SETIcon @myEN Kepler archives opening in October

Success of Kepler Mission is staggering. Discovering water worlds, planets everywhere. #SETIcon http://t.co/4EytfDks

On the cusp of routine spaceflight - at #SETIcon http://t.co/iUU6GgEz

I'm reading Mission:Explore Food on @graphicly! http://t.co/z0iqfQKJ

Far-Fetched Scams Separate the Gullible from Everyone Else http://t.co/M8SyoAvH

Scout: get notified every time Congress proposes legislation with keywords you care about http://t.co/OlU04P45

Exoplanets http://t.co/CAu4C9v9 #fb

Falsehoods programmers believe about time - riff on the malleability of computer time http://t.co/sznLoFlH

JustAnswer Becomes http://t.co/U0xZtr5Z, Raises $25 Million Series A http://t.co/r5IQzmFZ via @techcrunch #PearldotcomLaunch

VatorNews - JustAnswer rebrands as Pearl, raises $25M http://t.co/MTveL1qB via @po_st #PearldotcomLaunch

http://t.co/U0xZtr5Z Has Professional Advice, for a Price http://t.co/RnyqID2G via @mashable #PearldotcomLaunch

Andy Kurtzig Raises $25M To Take Expert Services Online With http://t.co/U0xZtr5Z - http://t.co/PPFhu3q8 #PearldotcomLaunch

JustAnswer Becomes Pearl, Comes Out From Under the Radar http://t.co/5l3UTZ1M #PearldotcomLaunch

A Pearl (.com) Comes Out of http://t.co/LZa65dD3 http://t.co/tUhBuEhe via @HuffPostTech #PearldotcomLaunch

Customer Story - Dr. David Helps Nick Recover from Brain Hemorrhage: http://t.co/HK59IUw2 via @pearl.com #PearldotcomLaunch

RT @Pearldotcom: http://t.co/x1sGSaBc is now in beta, come check us out at http://t.co/ePbqZPiU! #PearldotcomLaunch

RT @MissionExplore: Mission:Explore Food – Video yourself doing one of the missions from the book and get a free copy http://t.co/TpkoBOaY

ITHCWY: Near-plurality of idiocy: "In the 30 years since Gallup started asking people whether they believe humans… http://t.co/9f5FoX9Z

BBC News - Alan Turing: why the tech world's hero should be a household name http://t.co/5eqmNyXY

ITHCWY: Petrol & Marks & Spencer: I recently got back from a trip back to the UK. Every time I go back these days… http://t.co/cV0N8tY7

+1 Error Code 451: an HTTP error for censorship http://t.co/OoA942o8

#todo @myEN Mobile-Friendly Pet Locator PetHub Closes $1.3 Million Seed Round http://t.co/DtkMMSoj

Bridge birthday thing... http://t.co/bBEc7TiC

Brrrr-earnal http://t.co/dD4FiXrv

Defensive Patent License: judo for patent-trolls http://t.co/h6Eq82kr

3 of 5 stars to The Marriage Plot by Jeffrey Eugenides http://t.co/aJwE7cIz

Check out this presentation : How to stop sucking and be awesome instead http://t.co/fqW1ZTG5 via @slideshare

Transit of Venus AND Sutro Tower Serendipitously Photographed from Bernal Hill http://t.co/bZAogCf8

Office has laid on EURO 2012 coverage. http://t.co/8dDStstW

Ridiculously nice walk with Rudy. http://t.co/u6E9H1Gg

ITHCWY: Playmobil http://t.co/bIuMirqh

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Reviews and Links for April 2012

Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017

APIs: A Strategy Guide by Dan Woods

3/5

Works as a good checklist of the various business, legal, technical, marketing and strategic considerations you should think of when launching an API. Not a huge amount of depth in any one area though.

 

Pharmacology by Christopher Herz

4/5

A tale of legal and illegal drugs in San Francisco from the perspective of Sarah, a transplant from the mid-west in town to make money to send back to her sick father and expose the evils of the pharmaceutical industry. Reads like Sarah sat down next to you in a cafe and poured out her entire life story before you even knew what hit you.

 

Links

Interesting, but the first book I tried was wrong: http://t.co/gUPyhpjM (The Interpreter in Look to Windward)

ITHCWY: Go-arounds: LEGO and Legislative Service: LEGO: I wrote in January about LEGO's[1] misogynistic latest LEGO… http://t.co/s2PlMzGn

ITHCWY: Kindle: Figure out sorting!: I love my Kindle. Loved it since seeing the screen for the first time after… http://t.co/zimbDLpz

ITHCWY: Catfood: Cleat 1.10: I've just released an updated version of Cleat that supports geolocation and… http://t.co/SESV9VH7

4 of 5 stars to Pharmacology by Christopher Herz http://t.co/SgGZR4Lz

I still don't like the Oxford Comma, but... http://t.co/oJB50wGw

ITHCWY: Prophylactic: Absolutely no chance of scurvy tonight. http://t.co/RpX1z78M

Artist Captures Dog vs. Gopher Confrontation on Bernal Hill http://t.co/OlUgGHOG - It could be Rudy...

Graffiti - Public - Other_enter_additional_details_below/101 Elsie St San Francisco, CA 94110, USA http://t.co/c9P7xkjx #bernal-heights!

Lego tries to get less sexist http://t.co/WD9lmRuK - and previously: http://t.co/Psc5ZNua

"It’s the product development version of the Hunger Games" - http://t.co/wNA0DHWy via @uservoice

SciFi in HiFi! - Sean Young's video of the making of Dune - Boing Boing http://t.co/BXTACFpj via @BoingBoing

Shocking, but need to distinguish between standardized tests and shit standardized tests: Florida standardized... http://t.co/c8488XDw

+1: Introducing the Innovator's Patent Agreement http://t.co/naK9hYxw via @twitter

Extraordinary: The real criminals in the Tarek Mehanna case http://t.co/GOqxgIJ2

They are deadly serious about not taking photos at @#spamalotsf http://t.co/5di7viuy

JSON Formatter & Validator: http://t.co/L220TCHf

ITHCWY: California Slender Salamander http://t.co/EvNlFOnS

Patent Law 101: What’s Wrong And Ways To Make It Right http://t.co/6QnLLHL7 via @techcrunch

ITHCWY: Even Shitier - Citibank Remortgage Scam: Citibank contacted us in December offering to remortgage our house… http://t.co/mxGi3j6K

ITHCWY: Baby Yellow Spiders: A chair in our garden has produced a bumper crop of baby Cross Orbweaver spiders. Very… http://t.co/0VBjSvPq

Wow: http://t.co/N4tbm77Y Rear Window loop via @jwz

Final Plan for Bernal Hill Trail Restoration Unveiled: http://t.co/bp3uFOZu - from @bernalwood

RT @Pearldotcom: Our new site is coming soon! Get on the list to be notified about launch details: http://t.co/75ddUi63

ITHCWY: Sod Searle And Sod His Sodding Room: Marcus du Sautoy, writing on BBC News, brings up Searle's Chinese Room… http://t.co/FmcVPbzC

ITHCWY: California, I can save you billions with a small and reasonably priced computer program...: California just… http://t.co/Ro96lk3J

California, I can save you billions with a small and reasonably priced computer program... http://t.co/iDZEbAQ9 -> @JerryBrownGov

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Reviews and Links for November 2011

Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017

Reamde by Neal Stephenson

5/5

Intelligent and humorous if highly contrived thriller set loosely around an MMORPG. Loved it.

 

Embassytown by China Miéville

4/5

Highly original tale of colonists cohabiting with some very unusual aliens with a very unusual language. It reads like J.G. Ballard and Nicholson Baker decided to collaborate on some SciFi.

 

The Affair (Jack Reacher, #16) by Lee Child

3/5

Not bad, returns to when Reacher was in uniform and tells the story of how he left the Army (the answer may surprise you). As with the last few in the series it all comes a little too easily and you wish there was at least one worthy opponent. I'm hooked though so as long as Child keeps writing them I'll keep reading.

 

Professional Android 2 Application Development by Reto Meier

3/5

Solid foundation and covers the platform you need to target to reach the majority of Android devices.

 

Links

RE: Feel free to use the code, no attribution required.  http://t.co/IJTcOz3p

BBC News - 7 questions on computer programmes http://t.co/XKylU7WT (more of a history / pop culture quiz)

Scooby-Doo and Secular Humanism: http://t.co/4h8M8kkK

4 of 5 stars to Embassytown by China Miéville http://t.co/kPwIrmDF

ITHCWY: Occupy Intellectual Ventures: Send them a troll. Now. http://t.co/VorWmZpz

Wow, My Flout score is -7 on @floutdotme! Get yours at http://t.co/1Sl8ei72

troll the troll! send a troll doll to intellectual ventures. http://t.co/S09ML14T via @nathtone

Walking through doorways causes forgetting, new research shows: http://t.co/JBbJXAaD

+1: Why Software Projects are Terrible and How Not To Fix Them: http://t.co/kE7WWix5

Hilarious, I had to Google how to power off Windows 8. Didn't figure it our until the third link: http://t.co/X1wrkh7R #fail

Building a Useful Task Board: http://t.co/icc8y4cU - only this should be a large monitor and an #API

#API Design Webinar http://t.co/rbDwus37 from @theamiableapi - some very valuable nuggets

Wow. Going to have to get this as a poster just to fully grok it: http://t.co/Z6iie3K5

ITHCWY: PolyLineM support in Catfood.Shapefile: I’ve just updated Catfood.Shapefile, my ESRI Shapefile parser for… http://t.co/ll50wcEi

Cal band at justanswer http://t.co/QOLcbe7e (missed this while at lunch)

Citogenesis: http://t.co/EH5K2xLg

Extensive document dump on Microsoft's shallow anti-Android bullying: http://t.co/tdEhMNLh #patents from @groklaw

Toast sandwich is UK's 'cheapest meal' http://t.co/0LG9zNOl (can't possibly be true - not factoring in cost of electricity!)

Analysis: The Darwin Economy: http://t.co/pSDkxupL

So True: What Your Favorite Map Projection Says About You: http://t.co/dW8pl2uK

Bootstrapped Company Behind iDrive, iBackup Is Fed Up With Patent Trolls: http://t.co/DP6KFLxH

The Real Cost of Patent Trolls: http://t.co/1Cu4C6cV via @bfeld

Flying rhinoceros: http://t.co/MIhWtT3L

Cool: 1% Of Nothing Launches To Get Startups Donating Equity: http://t.co/ZNy7HcZl

3 of 5 stars to Professional Android 2 Application De... by Reto Meier http://t.co/UqCtaJ3Z

'Have the people who designed this protocol really never made the twenty mile drive to San Francisco?' - http://t.co/wWk77ZpQ

Explaining 'Jobs' to Rudy Giuliani: http://t.co/ek78XEe9

ITHCWY: Catfood: Klout and Follower: Klout is building PageRank for people. You get a score between 0-100 based on… http://t.co/rGyYkY9q

Catfood Follower 1.40: http://t.co/79xDac4F via @CatfoodSoftware

Old friends... No CDTV though! At #CHM http://t.co/WGw6VOOL

How much did I used to want one of these! http://t.co/lHhnY0AG

At #CHM for Norvig v Horvitz. Will punch anyone who mentions Searle's Room. http://t.co/wPRO8tYa

Don't do it, like defining π as 4: BBC News - Changes to the world's time scale debated http://t.co/hFkrZi4g

RESTful API Design, Second Edition http://t.co/uZthmj9c #API from @landlessness

Rudy wishes I hadn't just shown him: "Saber-toothed squirrel" from the dinosaur days - Boing Boing http://t.co/Wf7Y0ttH

Marked as to-read: The Lean Startup by Eric Ries http://t.co/MC9M0Iti

Ex-Google Reader Product Manager Posts Scathing Review Of Reader Redesign | TechCrunch http://t.co/DscEAHTw

Google indexing via POST: http://t.co/oM2JmHqI (P.S. may not grok your robots.txt, suggests bending over)

Writing helpful API documentation « The Amiable API http://t.co/rx9QdKyk #API

Oakland PD confused: An Open Letter to the Citizens of Oakland From the Oakland Police Officers Association http://t.co/W5LIBY7D (me too)!

Study: why parents help their underage kids pretend to be 13 in order to use Internet sites - Boing Boing http://t.co/aoUSw5wu

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(All Reviews)

Occupy Intellectual Ventures

Updated on Thursday, November 12, 2015

The startup costs are too damned high

Updated on Friday, February 24, 2017

Startup Legal and Technology Costs

The Startup Genome people have launched a complicated tool to benchmark your Startup against others.

I’ve developed a simpler model. It used to be you spent too much money on Sun and Oracle. Now it’s fighting off patent trolls.

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(Published to the Fediverse as: The startup costs are too damned high #politics #patents #sun #oracle Startups used to spend too much money on Sun and Oracle and now spend too much money on patent lawsuits. )

How to fix software patents

Updated on Thursday, November 12, 2015

In 1790 Thomas Jefferson became the first patent examiner and issued a grand total of three patents. 220 years later the US Patent Office has a backlog of over 1.2 million applications. Internet and software industries are created and destroyed in the time it takes the average patent to issue.

Here's how a startup can easily turn to the dark side:

  1. Investors pressure a startup to file patents in an attempt to make the business defensible.
  2. Tens of thousands of dollars of billable hours result in ‘System and method for displaying a text based colloquial greeting to the populace of a planetary body’.
  3. Startup fails but notices that other companies have implemented their ‘Hello, World’ IP and a patent troll is born.

Software patents are especially frustrating as it's the idea — usually the easiest part of the business — that gets patented. Because patent law doesn't require actual implementation, let alone success, it's as if you could patent “cancer drug” and then sue pharmaceutical companies each time a new treatment rolled out.

It's tempting to call for an outright ban on software patents, as Vivek Wadhwa did recently. This doesn't work because so much technology is software based and because somewhere in that 1.2 million backlog there probably are a few genuinely novel ideas. 

The first part of the fix is to stop examining the patents at all.

This may sound crazy, but think about copyright. You don't need to pay a bunch of lawyers to represent you before the copyright office and prove that this really is the first time a particular novel has been written, or that you were in fact holding the camera when you snapped that photo. Copyright is automatic.

A patentable invention isn't a specific work of art and so some registration system is required. My suggestion is that you upload a PDF and pay a registration fee of around $1,000. It's small enough not to discourage startups and large enough to prevent abuse. USPTO would timestamp the PDF, store it for eighteen months and then publish it.

The obvious flaw would seem to be opening the floodgates to even more patent trolls. That's where the second part of the fix comes in — shift the burden of proof of validity to the company that owns the patent. You can still sue, but the first step is a rigorous and expensive exam process. 

This system makes it easy to obtain a patent but changes the nature of the patent to an insurance policy in case your idea really is as clever as you think it is. It also makes it much harder to use a patent offensively. Resources are more efficiently used to evaluate the novelty of a patent when it is enforced, rather than to do the impossible task of evaluating millions of ideas that never will be.

Full disclosure: I'm co-inventor of several software patents that I hope will never be used against you. I also recently lost a product (Cucku Backup) as a result of settling a patent infringement lawsuit and I hope that never happens to you either!

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(All Politics Posts)

(Published to the Fediverse as: How to fix software patents #politics #patents #jefferson #uspto #trolls #copyright A fix for the patent system - scrap up front examination and remove the assumption that any patent is valid. Easier to get a patent, harder to use if offensively. )