tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post8850697465341009342..comments2024-03-28T20:50:49.311-07:00Comments on CONTRARY BRIN: Good/bad media... BrinRelevance... and the ten-year anniversary of a disappointmentDavid Brinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comBlogger92125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-66047782983153367042008-01-10T07:56:00.000-08:002008-01-10T07:56:00.000-08:00Dr. Brin,I have to say I'm puzzled by these words ...Dr. Brin,<BR/><BR/>I have to say I'm puzzled by these words of yours:<BR/><BR/><I>Alas, a recurring theme at the conference was atheism, in its recent and ironically militant incarnation, featuring some very rich invective from Daniel Dennett, among others. Counter productive proof that incantatory self-righteousness addiction is not limited to deity-believers.</I><BR/><BR/><BR/>Why is it ironic that the new wave of atheism is militant?<BR/>What part of Dan Dennett's speech at BB2 do you think deserves to be called "invective"?<BR/>What is it that left you with the impression of self-righteousness?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-8344782620656509572008-01-04T16:28:00.000-08:002008-01-04T16:28:00.000-08:00>> Going back to my point about cars; I'd thought ...<B>>> Going back to my point about cars; I'd thought for a long time that we could all have bar codes (updated to RFID for today of course) on our cars. Police would be replaced by everyone having a car tagger device. If someone's driving is scaring you... you zap them with the tagger. People who excessively zap (some old folks too scared to be on the Interstate, for instance) would be ignored. Local people who constantly zap the same person would also be flagged as having a grudge -- but it would still be investigated. However, with those caveats. people getting a certain number of "zaps" a month would then get notices in the mail-box to watch their driving habits.</B><BR/><BR/>I think Gallagher came up with this too. His idea was to issue each driver a child's spring-loaded suction-dart pistol, with each dart bearing a flag reading "STUPID". Every time you see another driver doing something stupid, you shoot a dart at their car. If a cop sees a car with three or more flags on it, he pulls the driver over and gives him a ticket for being an idiot!<BR/><BR/>Yours is a bit more practical, of course... :)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-20370246136201651152008-01-04T13:46:00.000-08:002008-01-04T13:46:00.000-08:00Brin,Perhaps you could NOT do an open source model...Brin,<BR/><BR/>Perhaps you could NOT do an open source model -- but do something more along the lines of a "People's Venture Capital Fund."<BR/><BR/>Write up a good resume of successful projects. A corporate outline of what you plan to do, then some sort of financial commitment gets you X amount of shares net of profits from Y outcome agreement for those who just donate small amounts based upon trust. Write up a non-disclosure agreement, and send it certified mail to those who pony up $100 or more and express a bigger interest. Get a lawyer friend to donate so mind time to make sure it's safe for you, and protects all parties.<BR/><BR/>Most ventures fail because of insufficient funds. You should look at what you think you need and double it. What would it cost you and one other person to get it done having no other income for two years. Make sure you don't put too much money into it -- trying to scrape by will make you less productive in the end.<BR/><BR/>A real VC firm will want at least a 500% increase on investment over a few years to justify their investments that fail. A venture like this might eke out a living or explode -- but you will take more the risks and see less of the benefits with a VC. I'd think you'd could get a much better chance if you just create the VC fund yourself and sell a FIXED amount of shares in the first tranche (round of financing) and guarantee them to be at least 25% of the total shares given.<BR/><BR/>You will need some patentable or copyrightable IP to get another business to put some skin in the game. I have at least a dozen ideas like that floating around -- about 14 years ago I was bouncing around some ideas with some fellows I was working for when we were trying to create a new system of trading that didn't require transfers of capital between countries. I'd suggested that we take the bidding system and start everything local -- basically, I spelled out for them EBAY about 4 years before it started (so maybe that's more than 14 years -- I can't tell time). But of course, nobody listens to the smart-aleck kid who works for them. I also came up with an active "search agent" called a drone that used a bit-torrent like networking scheme that would create intelligent agents out of simpler, hive-like functions, I also came up with a concept for "network compression" that I've yet to see used -- though I haven't looked too hard. Anyway --whether or not you NEED IP to get it going isn't the point, that idea about "making things look cool" -- is what it is all about. <BR/><BR/>In marketing, there are about 5 hot buttons. It's best if you hit all; Making a difference, making a bundle, recognition, sex, and friendships. OK, best if you hit 4. There are three types of learning -- and that means "a person with money making things happen" and those are Kinesthetic, Auditory, and Visual. So you can TELL some people a great idea, but at about 70% of the population has to SEE it. That's why I make a living with Kiosks and Presentations. You often don't have the chance to let people see the fancy marble at your company -- that's why people spend money on brochures, sexy web sites and multimedia, it's the digital equivalent of status.<BR/><BR/>So that's how I see my business; as a Status Producer. And I can tell you, about half of your money will go to lawyers, and a good 40% will go to building status with the pitch. That's just to get the interest of someone who will take the lion's share of the money. You could create a total fake demo of how it works without one line of code, and get more interest than if you made a working prototype that moved around stick figures. As far as I can tell, that is the nature of the world.<BR/><BR/>Let us know what we can do to help.Fake_William_Shatnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09027049743048836086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-50871478495916109042008-01-04T11:36:00.000-08:002008-01-04T11:36:00.000-08:00So, $500,000 is your dollar figure? Well, I'll see...So, $500,000 is your dollar figure? Well, I'll see what I can do. ;)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-75158162967543824812008-01-04T10:37:00.000-08:002008-01-04T10:37:00.000-08:00Milton thanks. If you download the power-point Gu...Milton thanks. If you download the power-point Guided Tours at http://www.holocenechat.com you'll see that an awful lot of effort has been put into "eye candy" to explain the tools and concepts. <BR/><BR/> I did have help with these from a number of young techies who "got it" and had enthusiasm... but little else to offer. Also included are some screen shots from the crude-but working demo.<BR/><BR/>At the urging of several folks, I have just been drafting out an even simpler slide show, emphasizing the size of the social-net and VR and other markets waiting to be plucked by anyone eager to "take their lunch."<BR/><BR/>If you want to critique this new one (after seeing the others) drop me a line at davidbrin@sbcglobal.net and I'll send it over. But I am drafting this more out of momentum than enthusiasm, anymore.<BR/><BR/>thanks <BR/>dbDavid Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-25357165162495526962008-01-04T00:26:00.000-08:002008-01-04T00:26:00.000-08:00David,Commenting on your Holocene product (this is...David,<BR/><BR/>Commenting on your Holocene product (this is from the pov of a long time internet software engineer/ now in management).<BR/>This is a revolutionary product hence you are faced with certain problems re VC and people with deep pockets..<BR/>1. VCs are normally not revolutions and I don't trust them to grasp revolutionary products either. You need a pitch (a dumbed down pitch that they can understand).<BR/>2. The pitch should give concrete "business" benefit that they can grok.<BR/>3. The pitch need to be short and to the point (I think your Powerpoint prezo are too much of a "forest", didn't show enough of the "trees" for VC to hang their thoughts onto.<BR/><BR/>Some suggestions to for a better pitch:<BR/><BR/>1. Drastically simplify your prezo to maybe a series of simpler prezos, each one addressing a specific use case to demonstrate why Holocene is BETTER than existing solutions (maybe a side by side comparision: "here a conversation in IM", here's an equivalent conversation in Holoscene, notice you can now do X & Y which you couldn't do in IM").<BR/><BR/>2. You commented on not wanting to commit additional resources to put in "eye candie" which is completely understandable, but there's another alternative:<BR/><BR/>Get someone who can do a "mock up" (common skill in web app land), maybe using FLASH to make a movie to show what HOLOCENE in action would LOOK LIKE and show that to the VC. It's much easier to do that then changing the app to do the same thing.<BR/><BR/>3. COme up with a specific business application (i.e. "here a group of sales professional from diverse geographical location engaging in a sales strategy discussion") then have a FLASH movie demoing what the screen would look like in such a conversation, then highlight all the advantage of your approach comparing with existing solutions.<BR/><BR/>MY BOTTOMLINE:<BR/>There are many cool technologies that are revolutionary which do not make it through the VC, not because of lack of merit, but because technologist can't make that killer sales pitch to them to help them "get it". We might pooh pooh that, but as my VC buddy tells me, they read upward of about a hundred proposals a day, if they can't grok the idea within 3 pages of a PP prezo, then they can't be arsed to spend more time on it. I would be a shame if we can't find a better "killer prezo" to get their attention, and from what I read so far that might be the issue here...<BR/>(feel free to contact me offline and I'll be glad to offer more).Msoonghttps://www.blogger.com/profile/10008303275708741187noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-56563976586709036842008-01-03T22:15:00.000-08:002008-01-03T22:15:00.000-08:00Doug, we have scoped out a nested set of possible ...Doug, we have scoped out a nested set of possible costs/outcomes.<BR/><BR/>For half a million we would end forever the 1969-era alternating-scrolling "chat" format, selling modules to 2nd Life and/or anyone interested in not being left in a cloud of dust. Included would be a basic site creation kit, allowing anyone (for $39.95) to create sites that let users allocate attention far better and converse like human beings, with a greater than ten second attention span.<BR/><BR/>A million would let us incorporate all currently fashionable knicknacks, like avatars, kiosks, and such, and blow away every static site/service, from MySpace to Second Life.<BR/><BR/>Along the way, meetingware and collaboration-ware for businesses, allowing them to flexibly merge contributions from team members, both synchronously (in real time) and asynchronously (offline improvements on a document or prototype or plan).<BR/><BR/>There are strong possibilities in gaming and VR, but, frankly, I doubt more than a million would be useful. The prospects for a self-supporting income stream are so strong, I doubt more than than could be spent before self-support would make further investment irrelevant.<BR/><BR/>The combination of minuscule cost, short time scales, minimal risk and strong IP should seem a no-brainer. But there comes a point where a guy has to admit: maybe I am the no-brainer, here.<BR/><BR/>Enough. And this time I mean it.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-46329644653974761762008-01-03T22:05:00.000-08:002008-01-03T22:05:00.000-08:00Wow, a truly thought provoking relevance-tsunami f...Wow, a truly thought provoking relevance-tsunami from Marc. And cool 11 yr old perspectives, Mark. And Tony, yes, there are a zillion implementations of Holocene ideas possible, in many dimensions and formats. I had the cash and time to make the simplest possible one... expecting confidently that people would say - hey that’s never been done before! Let me at it!<BR/><BR/>Har.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-69469139640682823212008-01-03T21:54:00.000-08:002008-01-03T21:54:00.000-08:00Just how much money would it take to hire some und...Just how much money would it take to hire some underpaid Indian programmers to write up a "really cool" version of the software, anyway? If you state a dollar amount, I just might be able to raise it. (I'm young, idealistic, have way too much time on my hands, and can't tell the difference between the possible and the impossible. Therefore, if you give me a dollar figure and ask nicely, there's a good chance I could actually get the money.)Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-84126121671628975082008-01-03T21:40:00.000-08:002008-01-03T21:40:00.000-08:00Flogged horses are part and parcel of trying to pr...Flogged horses are part and parcel of trying to predict the future. You get too far out in front of the horse and the whip will just drive it the wrong way. 8)<BR/><BR/>The problem my customers face (the support techs and their employers) is that they can't allocate their attention sensibly. They spend too much time deciding what needs their limited time when they need to be helping someone or fixing something instead. That failure leads to lost value which can be calculated. A good UI for a ticketing system, therefore, addresses the loss and creates competitive advantage. ROI's can be calculated.<BR/><BR/>I understand the exhaustion though. Unless you plan to license the patent outright, creating the company that sells the application is the only money path and that involves a ton of work. The Brin fan club would probably lynch anyone who convinced you to do that. We rather like what you write. 8)Alfred Differhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01170159981105973192noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-36415330110965358062008-01-03T20:00:00.000-08:002008-01-03T20:00:00.000-08:00Holocene: I think I get it. Conceptually very in...Holocene: I think I get it. Conceptually very interesting conversation ideas.<BR/><BR/>Adiffer makes a good point about the site not addressing a problem to be solved, but rather a solution. Having said that, just look at the crap sites that TechCrunch shows - the trick to getting attention is about pitching to influencers and hoping to get something viral going.<BR/><BR/>My thought for a problem to be solved that this software could address is managing blog conversations. In other venues, there is a lot of fun in "comment stalking" essentially running to where someone of interest is joining or starting a conversation. I could easily see that your software would be very useful in this regard, streamlining the conversation switching and helping navigate the user to where the interesting conversations are happening at that moment. There is a lot of interest in exploiting "social graphs" at the moment, and again, your ideas mesh nicely into this arena. <BR/><BR/>I'm sorry you are so dispirited about the results to date, but perhaps you were premature only now is environment ready to accept your ideas.Alex Tolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01556422553154817988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-73424586040416120712008-01-03T17:16:00.000-08:002008-01-03T17:16:00.000-08:00True, SVG isn't essential, but it would enhance th...True, SVG isn't essential, but it would enhance the interface.<BR/><BR/>I have no idea what SVG/CSS support improvements have occurred since IE6 (anything would be an improvement!), but IE can support SVG via an Adobe plugin. Which is ironic, considering my thought was to lower the entry bar by getting away from plugin dependencies. Oh well, I guess the thought still works for other browsers.Tony Fiskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14578160528746657971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-84394995266674607452008-01-03T16:18:00.000-08:002008-01-03T16:18:00.000-08:00I don't see why you'd strictly need SVG -- which i...I don't see why you'd strictly need SVG -- which is good, because it'll probably be another decade before IE supports it. It's pretty amazing what can be done with only the DOM these days. On the other hand, Flash is probably more compatible, ironically.David McCabehttps://www.blogger.com/profile/16603857353437134459noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-3535956690810988992008-01-03T15:50:00.000-08:002008-01-03T15:50:00.000-08:00Marc, I believe the current version of HC uses fla...Marc, I believe the current version of HC uses flash.<BR/><BR/>I've been mulling on whether or not a variation using SVG, PHP (or whatever serverside language) and javascript would be feasible. I've certainly seen some nice demos of this sort of thing.<BR/><BR/>And, since we still appear to be flogging a dead horse, I'd like to drop the user perspective into the plane for a more true to life interface.Tony Fiskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14578160528746657971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-84157002146878873832008-01-03T15:41:00.000-08:002008-01-03T15:41:00.000-08:00For those that missed the spelling, that would be ...For those that missed the spelling, that would be the other Mark, er, Marc.<BR/><BR/>For those that are interested in something a bit lighthearted, I posted my 11 year-old's five page pamphlet she made for a current events class on the Democrats running for President over at <A HREF="http://www.dailykos.com/story/208/1/3/15733/08551/592/429593" REL="nofollow">dailykos</A>. Interesting to see the world from the eyes of a smart 11 year old.Xactiphynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08254344563346437079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-13948960691656038282008-01-03T13:58:00.000-08:002008-01-03T13:58:00.000-08:00Brin,I almost forgot.There is a lot of need for go...Brin,<BR/><BR/>I almost forgot.<BR/><BR/>There is a lot of need for good writing on the Indie circuit. I do some work in Video and there is a really great site for budding film-makers on a budget, it might be a source for getting a script out that might be impossible in the simplified CGI-fest of Hollywood; www.hdforindies.com<BR/><BR/>>> Better than research for how big Social Networking sites potential is -- just look at the purchase of FaceBook. You can then extrapolate the number of users to the total dollar value. This gives you a per-user cost. I think it's about $10 a head. In unrelated news, it cost Fox News about $20 per subscriber to push themselves onto cable -- about ten times the average rate (demand?).<BR/><BR/>>> Our company uses meeting exchanges like WebEx and GotoMeetings. This is becoming pretty commonplace in the business world -- we also have a lot of meetings to keep everyone excited (biggest use is going to be in commission sales with a large and spread-out work force. You could get some real money if you solved a few things; Ease of Use.<BR/><BR/>People want to talk and show at the same time. Some of these companies require a separate deal for voice, and/or an 1800 number for teleconferencing. Various participants need some usability on lower bandwidth. The ability to EASILY vote on things within the sharing session is useful. <BR/><BR/>Apple's latest Leopard OS, seems to allow this in iChat automatically, and you can just drag and drop files to another person's screen. YOU SEE the desktop, and you can control it. The DEMO is the action. As good as this is, it requires rights -- it might be better to have a virtual desktop that people can control but that isn't real (make sense?) -- something that everyone hosts and you just update the motion changes of the mouse (this is much like how computer games can have super fast response -- everyone hosts the 3d game, but they just send the data of how the characters move and fire, etc.,).<BR/><BR/>Something that could tie into skype would get a leg up.<BR/><BR/>The biggest issue is downloading and installing software on a system. At our company you CANNOT install anything without going through major hurdles. So cached files are fine -- executables are forbidden. Think about the barriers of proxies and such, so that if you want something like this to get acceptance in the corporate world, it has to compute in the web browser and certain things must be hosted.<BR/><BR/>Flash or CSS2, maybe CSS3? Whatever it is, it has to allow for caching of files, and then updating the file -- not sending a screen grab, to beat the competition in bandwidth (bandwidth is being artificially throttled in this country to justify "solving" this problem and ending all the pesky truth on the internet -- many other countries have much faster and cheaper internet access than the US). Someway to detect if an image is original and not in the cache, and to determine if something is important or not, so that those with fast connections get it, and those on modems can skip it.<BR/><BR/>But Apple's Leopard is the one to compare to -- everything else is cumbersome in relation. It just doesn't scale to multiple users very well.<BR/><BR/>Look at some techniques in the world of file sharing for sending large cache files. A company called "Pando" software is using a bit-torrent technique to send gigabyte or larger email attachments. You upload the file to them, and they give you a link. Then, various computers in the network get an encrypted chunk in exchange for participation, and even if you computer is off, you can send a 15k email that has a download link of a 2 gig attachment streamed from many computers at once (I haven't used it yet). But the idea here is, that some virtual meeting place you set up, can use all the computers involved as a peer-to-peer network. They can share those bits that they have downloaded with other peers so that everyone need not get the file from the host.<BR/><BR/>>> Anyway, if you need any help on anything, ask away. I remember being almost kicked out of one of the countries first creative problem solving courses in college for having "too many ideas, slow down a bit." I gave them 225 ideas for a paper clip in 30 minutes and the class combined had 75 -- most of which were ideas I discarded as "un-useful." OK, enough bragging. I'm just a frustrated race horse being used to plow a field of clay, if you get what I mean.Fake_William_Shatnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09027049743048836086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-1190418102154895382008-01-03T13:09:00.000-08:002008-01-03T13:09:00.000-08:00Brin,I was visualizing a bit on your last explanat...Brin,<BR/><BR/>I was visualizing a bit on your last explanation of Halocene...<BR/>... I was picturing a Digg-style voting system on conversations. The best way to socially accept eavesdropping on an otherwise thoughtful conversation is to give people credit for their thoughts.<BR/><BR/>But DIGG does this completely wrong. If you compare SlashDot to Digg -- you see that a limited and trusted group of "voters" does a much better job of promoting thoughtful comments, over the shouting match that is Digg. The problem is; if you don't value your own votes -- who else should? I'm all for Democracy, but between Digg and Slashdot, merit seems to follow the opinions of thoughtful people.<BR/><BR/>What I'm proposing is a better comment moderation system coupled with the virtual presence A-synchronous interaction you are suggesting. I've suggested the same sort of system to create safer drivers on the road and remove spy cameras and highly paid yet cranky State Troopers.<BR/><BR/>The car analogy works great as well as the moderation system; <BR/>You have anonymous participation, but only registered voting.<BR/>For a short period of time, registered voters can moderate on the quality of comments. They cannot also contribute at the same time.<BR/>>> A modification of the slashdot system; frequent negative votes from different voters, or positive votes from different voters, can change the status of the Contributor. Multiple votes from one source (someone with a grudge), only counts if there is some consensus, otherwise they would be ignored as a grudge (or as a buddy if positive).<BR/>Individuals can mod up or down a specific contributor.<BR/>>> A modification of the slashdot system; new accounts are provisional, and are labeled as such.<BR/>The point is, that contributing over time as a thoughtful member is rewarded.<BR/><BR/>>> Limiting the number of votes someone has, also reduces the "LOL" factor of just voting for someone saying an obvious and emotionally satisfying comment of little value -- as seems to be the best way to get a score of 251 Diggs.<BR/><BR/>>> Also, I further suggest that a tally of moderations for a specific contributor from a specific moderator be tracked to avoid the "cliquish" effect that many social networking sites seem to promote. If you and ten of your friends join a group, you can rule -- because you always give the other 9 moderation points, and -9 to anyone that argues with them. Unless someone quickly makes a popular comment, they get buried by a small group of thugs. The answer to this is voter to moderator tracking, that would successively reduce the value of a vote for the same person by the same people. If too many votes are cast pro or con for a specific person, then the moderator gets a warning. They can lose moderation privileges for buddy or grudge like behavior.<BR/><BR/>>>> Visually, you can incorporate social-networking preferences by the user however, in how "close" a speaker is at first. People can create friend and foe lists and conversations populated by them would be weighted by those factors in addition to general moderation. Instead of moving things further away, you could consider that negative votes move them down, while positive elevate them.<BR/><BR/>>>> Going back to my point about cars; I'd thought for a long time that we could all have bar codes (updated to RFID for today of course) on our cars. Police would be replaced by everyone having a car tagger device. If someone's driving is scaring you... you zap them with the tagger. People who excessively zap (some old folks too scared to be on the Interstate, for instance) would be ignored. Local people who constantly zap the same person would also be flagged as having a grudge -- but it would still be investigated. However, with those caveats. people getting a certain number of "zaps" a month would then get notices in the mail-box to watch their driving habits. I'm not sure how best to deal with someone who consistently annoys other drivers -- it would be interesting to collect the data and provide warnings and see how it goes from there. Most people want to be good, so I'd think this would moderate MOST behavior.<BR/><BR/><BR/>>>> Another modification. As I'm into building kiosks that pull data from the web and then animated the information or respond to data in a certain way, you might do something with Yahoo Pipes or Google Filters to automatically latch onto conversations reference information. It's obvious that wikipedia might help expand on an obscure term if you hover over it, but you also might help show cross-referencing data as well. If someone mentions something like "War on terror" you would search for a modifier like; "war on terror is failing" so the search would find RSS feeds that support that view. While someone saying; "war on terror is successful" would get the latter. Over time, a conversation might have a trend, such that the person who originally said, it's working out, would trend down because it would be harder to find support for that. However, such a system would depend upon an honest media -- maybe in another 20 years when we sort out our current descent in the USA we might revisit that. Or just be the dictator and say; "we think BBC is honest -- forget CNN" and tell them to take a hike if they don't like it. It works for the bad guys, eh?<BR/><BR/><BR/>>>> Money. If you want to make more money, buy up stocks on companies that supply seeds [not investment advice]. Things like Burpee will start seeing a lot of interest soon. Even if our current CorpGov is intent on selling security, and China is getting our manufacturing -- everyone still needs to eat. And with a 25% increase in the Producer Price index last year (somehow sat upon, but it usually leads by a year consumer prices) and about a 40% increase in the winds,.. growing things to eat will once again be very popular.<BR/><BR/>My rant last year was for Liberals to buy Gold, and Conservatives to buy all those wonderful stocks the MSM tells them to buy. With Oil up $100 per barrel, and gold fast shooting up over $860 an oz -- I don't know if it's because the dollar is less or the value is more. You would have made over 30% if you just had Canadian money the past two years.<BR/><BR/>So, for the trends -- just look at all the musicals they had during the great depression if you want to look at what sells when things suck. Escapism of magic and fairies -- especially singing fairies, will outsell well-made dystopian future stories like Blade Runner. The Postman was awesome, for instance, but nobody is going to like that book if they have to live it, right? I don't have great advice for making a bundle of cash being part of the solution. In the Scandinavian countries where things are getting better -- it might work. Translate your books into Norwegian, Chinese, or Spanish?<BR/><BR/>Last year I emailed all my friends a few articles about Bill Gates and that guy who owns Berskshire Hathaway moving their money out of US currencies and I titled it; "The Smart Money is Leaving." Of course, since I don't have enough money to "invest" I'm not really a capitalist yet so I can't follow my own advice. Mitt Romney, apparently knows capitalists, and that's why he is getting some heat over helping them offshore their money and not showing income in the USA. Perhaps you can get your 1% proceeds of Postman sent to a PO Box in Chile, call it research expense and just look poorer on paper.<BR/><BR/>If it were my vote, I'd say you deserve to be richer than Crichton. While Sphere was a nice short story, Uplift War rocks! You have more concept in background in that story than Crichton has in his whole career. I'm just glad that Golden Compass even got made. Even though I enjoyed Tolkein -- I never thought his ideas translated into what one would want for modern government. We'd have to go out and fight trolls and wooden tree Ants every generation and hope that our king didn't just go plain loopy, as most of them seemed to in LOR, which King fans seem to ignore the plethora of bad rulers in their pax worship.Fake_William_Shatnerhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09027049743048836086noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-4876398649605412792008-01-03T05:30:00.000-08:002008-01-03T05:30:00.000-08:00For the prediction registry:From John Robb blog:As...For the prediction registry:<BR/><BR/>From <A HREF="http://globalguerrillas.typepad.com/johnrobb/2008/01/volunteers-vs-p.html" REL="nofollow">John Robb blog</A>:<BR/><BR/><BR/>As oil hits $100 a barrel, it's worth reviewing where you get insight into the oil industry. In the energy marketplace, the volunteers at the <A HREF="http://www.theoildrum.com/node/3439#more" REL="nofollow">Oil Drum</A> beat the pants off of the high priced pros (and by extension the mainstream media) at <A HREF="http://www.cera.com/aspx/cda/public1/home/home.aspx" REL="nofollow">CERA </A>(Cambridge Energy Research Associates). The product comparison isn't not even close across all areas of measurement: data, insight, and accuracy (as in CERA's projections on oil production are so "off" it's laughable).Naumhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06741963276339044331noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-29981178156997364162008-01-03T00:52:00.000-08:002008-01-03T00:52:00.000-08:00How many seasons would 'Uplift' need?While the fir...<I>How many seasons would 'Uplift' need?</I><BR/><BR/>While the first trilogy would probably be best as movies, the second trilogy would make an excellent tv series, assuming the CGI was good and cheap enough to pull it off.<BR/><BR/>I've recently come to the conclusion that a good tv series is better than a good movie.Xactiphynhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08254344563346437079noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-6455486688497025792008-01-02T22:38:00.000-08:002008-01-02T22:38:00.000-08:00I think 'Earth' would fare better as a mini-series...I think 'Earth' would fare better as a mini-series.<BR/><BR/>How many seasons would 'Uplift' need?<BR/><BR/>Speaking of which, is that CGI competition still on the cards?Tony Fiskhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14578160528746657971noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-6466585750092210412008-01-02T21:49:00.000-08:002008-01-02T21:49:00.000-08:00"Want more depression? See Sir Ridley Scott grouse..."Want more depression? See Sir Ridley Scott grouse that Sci-fi films are as dead as Westerns."<BR/><BR/>What we need are good scripts of good novels. I would LOVE to see the Harlan Ellison version of "I Robot" done.<BR/><BR/>The problem with SciFi today is that it isn't even SciFi, just standard plots with backgrounds. <BR/><BR/>The western was revived with interesting treatments - e.g. "Little Big Man", and more recently I would argue that "The Unforgiven" by Eastwood was a very good genre example.<BR/><BR/>I can see that SciFi flicks could easily be restored by just focusing on good stories and intelligent scripts. <BR/><BR/>BTW, I think it would be very hard to make "Earth". It is such a sprawlingly large book that much would have to be excised for a 2 hr. movie.Alex Tolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01556422553154817988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-66264204232976926262008-01-02T21:46:00.000-08:002008-01-02T21:46:00.000-08:00atolly, this is about a PROCESS by which four very...atolly, this is about a PROCESS by which four very different arenas pursue four different kinds of "product"... but with uncanny similarities<BR/><BR/>For a rather intense look at how "truth" is determined in science, democracy, courts and markets, see the lead article in the American Bar Association's Journal on Dispute Resolution (Ohio State University), v.15, N.3, pp 597-618, Aug. 2000, "Disputation Arenas: Harnessing Conflict and Competition for Society's Benefit." <BR/><BR/>Or at: http://www.davidbrin.com/disputationarticle1.htmlDavid Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-53027314067667506042008-01-02T21:40:00.000-08:002008-01-02T21:40:00.000-08:00David Brin - interesting "rant" in the Beyond Beli...David Brin - interesting "rant" in the Beyond Belief meeting. Could you expound a little on why you think that there are 4 "error correcting" systems? I was particularly struck that you included law - how is that error correcting and over what time frame were you thinking?Alex Tolleyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01556422553154817988noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-89892253274712295552008-01-02T10:25:00.000-08:002008-01-02T10:25:00.000-08:00In a few years, all of these ideas will be out the...<I> In a few years, all of these ideas will be out there, incorporated in products, and then this bitter old man will emerge with his patents and sue everybody in sight. What will all the open source guys say? “Evil!” Yeah, right. But I spent ten years offering it. </I><BR/><BR/>All you would have to do to silence them is arrange things with your defendants creatively, and then be open about the money generated thereby.<BR/><BR/>Anyone who isn't satiated after that body of information is not worth listening to anyway.Rob Perkinshttps://www.blogger.com/profile/15618647194288598056noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-8587336.post-75019056647930406902008-01-02T01:10:00.000-08:002008-01-02T01:10:00.000-08:00"t" I am glad MRAPS are saving lives. But they ca..."t" I am glad MRAPS are saving lives. But they cannot turn worth a damn, they flounder off-road, they are utter fuel pigs, and can be heard blocks away. In fact, they can achieve very little more than helping troops survive their street patrols. That's great. But try maneuvering. Try using them for some OTHER war-fighting purpose. Above all, they are part of the destruction of US Army capabilities while our budget is torn to shreds.<BR/><BR/>The ARCHITECHS "new hummer" design was entirely new. Four independent hybrid-electrics, on each wheel, silent mode, well-protected, super-maneuverable (turning 180 inside its own footprint)... a dozen innovations... too bad the show never ran. I'd love for the troops to see it.<BR/><BR/>adiffer - I know I am not a good salesman or market developer. I was naive to think that "doing an order of magnitude better than Second Life or MySpace and stealing THEIR markets" might be enough to interest some folks. Especially since the IP is protected and the initial investment would be trivial. <BR/><BR/>I haven't a clue what this naivete means and it is starting to concern me less and less. If nobody shows up who wants to get rich by helping to develop these fundamental concepts, I will finish my current novels, then find partners who want to get rich by suing folks. Because these capabilities WILL come into play. Sooner or later.<BR/><BR/>And now I am tired of this. My eldest was a baby when I started trying to wake people up. Now I'm teaching him to drive. There comes a time when a guy has to recognize a tar baby for what it is. Hell, I regret even bringing it up, this time.<BR/><BR/>Thanks all, for your interest.David Brinhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14465315130418506525noreply@blogger.com