The ability to pick shit up quickly and solve problems is far more important than the ability to regurgitate arbitrary facts. If I can hand you anything from a broken mail configuration to a broken coffee machine, and you tell me “I know nothing about this, but I’m on it,” you’re somebody I want working with me.
Category: Technology
The recent stream of political items may or may not be coincidental; I honestly can’t tell. But if you’re as tired of hearing about Diebold as I am, please consider a one‐time or monthly donation to the Open Voting Consortium. I can think of no better example of a system that would necessitate community‐owned software.
It’s as though Microsoft invented a car with an opaque windshield — and then devised camera and periscope attachments so you can see where you’re going.
The Del.icio.us Lesson. Yes! I’ve been saying this for months! (Not to other people, mind you. I’ve been saying it inside my own head.) Flickr is another good example: even if nobody else used the site, I’d still find it useful as a photo hosting platform. The network effect doesn’t just happen.
When, seventeen years ago, I designed the Web, I did not have to ask anyone’s permission… Anyone can build a new application on the Web, without asking me, or Vint Cerf, or their ISP, or their cable company, or their operating system provider, or their government, or their hardware vendor.
If Goodin wanted to be reasonable or accurate, he could have written a story titled “Some Guy Double‐Clicked a Trojan Horse Virus for Mac OS X but It Didn’t Actually Spread to Anyone Else”, but what kind of story would that be? OK, it’d be a true story, but it wouldn’t be a good story.
The Bad in Email. For a long time I’ve considered e‐mail a hair’s breadth away from completely broken; I really don’t know why we haven’t started over.
My MacBook Pro arrived today, ahead of schedule, as if to symbolize how goddamned fast this thing is. It can run laps around my iBook. Everyone who uses one of these has been saying how “snappy” and responsive the interface is — “snappy” is the perfect way to describe it. “Snappy” is one of the things I like about Windows XP, despite all its flaws. If this is the future of OS X, then I’m all for it.
My iBook has died. Actually, it’s just got whooping cough, or something like that, and I’m unwilling to expend the energy and/or money to fix it. It’s two years old, and I’ve loved every moment of using it, but a brand‐new MacBook Pro is on its way and should arrive on Tuesday. I’m giddy.
Derek’s tired of “user‐generated content” as a buzzword. In addition to what’s listed here, what pisses me off about this trend is that some startups think that they won’t have to provide any content at all. If your only source of content is the user, then your app’s value is strongly correlated to the size of your userbase. Which means that when you start your application will be worthless. How do you get people to sign up for something that has no worth?