I am an ambitious boy who likes to code Java.
I wonder how to code Mojang applications.
I hear water splashing on the seashore.
I see happiness in the air.
I want superpowers.
I am an ambitious boy who likes to code Java.
I pretend I am flying on the swing.
I feel scared of bridges.
I touch the center of the Earth.
I worry about earthquakes.
I cry when I get insulted.
I am an ambitious boy who likes to code Java.
I understand the meaning of life.
Today is my 60th birthday. When I came to Silicon Valley I was 24. It feels at times like my adult life has paralleled the growth and maturation of the Valley. When I came here there were still orchards. You could buy cherries, fresh from the fields, right on El Camino Real in Sunnyvale. Apricot orchards surrounded Reid-Hillview Airport in San Jose, where I flew in those early days because hangars were already too expensive in Palo Alto. My first Palo Alto apartment rented for $142 per month and I bought my first house there for $47,000. I first met Intel co-founder Bob Noyce when we were both standing in line at […]
This is my response to yesterday’s message from Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize director Mark Winter, who said my objections to his contest design were without merit. Let me make a point here: this isn’t about me receiving $10 million. We all know that’s not going to happen. It’s about designing a contest that actually encourages innovation. Please read on as I explain…
I appreciate your position, Mark, and might have sent the same reply were I standing in your shoes. However I am sure I’ve uncovered exactly the sort of poor contest design that may well doom your effort. As such I will go ahead tomorrow and publish the letter I wrote to Paul Jacobs so my readers can weigh-in on this issue. Certainly […]
This message from the X-Prize Foundation is in response to the letter I published yesterday. They seem to feel the contest is fine as-is and my objections are without merit.
So of course I wrote a letter to Qualcomm CEO Paul Jacobs. This went out January 11th and was delivered on the morning of the 14th. No answer yet.
Dear Mr. Jacobs:
As a professional blogger I’d normally be posting this letter on my web site but this time I’ll first try a more graceful approach. You see I have a beef with your Qualcomm Tricorder X-Prize and I want you to make some changes.
In 2002 my son Chase died of Sudden Infant Death Syndrome (SIDS) at age 73 days. I wrote about it at the time and received great support from the Internet community. My pledge to do something about SIDS manifested […]
As the father of a precocious first grader I can relate somewhat to the children and parents of Newtown. My son Fallon goes to a school with no interior hallways, all exterior doorways, and literally no way to deny access to anyone with a weapon. Making this beautiful school defensible would logically begin with tearing it down. But the school design is more a nod to good weather than it is to bad defensive planning. The best such planning begins not with designing schools as fortresses or filling them with police. It doesn’t start with banning assault weapons, either, though I’m not opposed to that. The best defensive planning starts with identifying people in the […]
One thing about mature markets is they spawn opportunity through pure complexity. What does the press do but sit around discussing the size and depth and pimples on the bum of mature markets? But we spend so much time discussing the implications of what has already happened that we don’t give much space to what’s coming in the form of new ideas. So for the next week or so I’ll be doing a series of columns about new ideas, especially new technologies, that ought to interest us all.
Toward this end I’d like to invite any mad scientists to share with me what they’d like the world to know.
Leading by example I’ll start with a project […]
Some readers may recall one of my predictions for 2012 was the end of this column. It’s time for me to start explaining what that’s all about. Next month will mark 25 years of my doing some version of this column either in print or online. It’s not a record (I’m sure John Dvorak has that) but it is a milestone that I’ve been for some time determined to reach. But having achieved 25 years of continuous service, what then? Well there is no gold watch. In fact my transition is, if anything, forced by the declining economics of the web. Facebook has much the same problem.
Desktop computers are at or […]
Update — Good news! Reader Scott Hall, who owns a card printing web site called Babyshere.com, offered to print our Christmas cards for less than FedEx-Kinkos would have charged. Only a few hours later my cards are now literally in the mail. Thanks, Scott!
Tonight I walked into the Fedex Kinkos store on Calhoun Street here in Charleston, SC to print our Christmas cards, only to have the clerk, Tammy Johnson, reject my order as obscene.
We Cringelys are known for our Christmas cards, I admit, because we make them ourselves and we’re naked. The tradition began by accident and now our cards are so popular friends remind us to send them. Making naked Christmas cards that are tasteful isn’t easy, either, but we […]
