May 2008
9 posts
My data belongs... to whoever has it
Last Friday I read, with significant bemusement, a lively debate between Arrington, Scoble, and others related to the recent Friend Connect/Facebook Connect/Data Availability announcements by Google, Facebook, and MySpace. (For the full debate, read deep into the comments…) The beginning of Arrington’s post - that the announcements, and the Facebook/Google “scruffle” (as...
Pure entertainment IS a purpose
Though I’m all for games of all sorts - chess, poker, puzzle hunts, etc. - the articles in the last day or two about GWAP (“Games With a Purpose”) struck me as odd. (GWAP includes things like the ESP game, which is supposed to use human input to advance automated image search, and various CAPTCHA-improving exercises.) … but I find odd the implication that games...
Abstract vs. concrete
This article, from my daily science digest, is an interesting one. It describes an Ohio St. experiment suggesting that using “real-world examples” - like measuring cups or pizza slices or trains heading toward each other - actually inhibits mathematics teaching. Students who were taught abstract principles only performed better than those taught using concrete examples - and also did...
Web 2.0: not a sector and not an activity
I can be amused by semantic debates, especially in cases where people somehow confuse semantics with some kind of universal, moral truth. One prime example is the age-old question “what qualifies as a sport”? … which is clearly a purely definitional question that somehow nevertheless inspires heated passion about the level of required physical skill/exertion or the presence of a...
Great Urban Race: recap
Game season is starting with a bang.* A few days ago I posted about Coed Astronomy’s leisurely mini-game, in which Meat Machine participated on April 19th. Last Saturday, Chris (friend from Stanford and former eBay colleague) and I competed in the Great Urban Race. (… and tomorrow, if we can field our team, Meat Machine will be playing in Shinteki.) The Great Urban Race is sort of a...
Marc A. on dual-class stock structures
Marc Andreessen - currently near, and possibly at, the top of my “favorite bloggers” list - has a fascinating post today praising the virtues of dual-class stock structures. The really short version: they’re good because they allow the founders (or whoever has the voting power) to ignore short-term market noise and incentives and stay focused on long-term objectives, thus...
Patents
Two interesting posts by Brad Feld regarding patents today: the first hoping for a “grass roots movement of experienced software engineers around software patents for defensive purposes only”, even going so far as to make it part of some official contract (whether between the company/patent owner and the USPTO, or between the company and the employee who is named on the patent,...
Game Recap
So, Shri reminded me that I had promised details on the first Game of the year (Coed Astronomy’s “leisurely mini-game” on April 19). If you want full information, see this page - I’ll be referring to it in the overview below… We started in Duboce Triangle, a park in San Francisco. Our intrepid team: Melissa (my lovely wife), Chris (a friend from Stanford and eBay),...
Thanks, Shri!
I am indebted to Shripriya Mahesh for many, many things, a relatively minor one of which is this post. This blog is, in fact, primarily the result of her nagging me to start blogging for… well, quite a long time. (Right, Shri?) :) Blogging isn’t a natural act for me, yet - it’s not a kind of conversation to which I’m accustomed - and Shri deserves the credit for pushing...