Category: rePosts

One time, we were in Bulacan shooting one of the Shake, Rattle & Roll episodes. We were both seated in our directors’ chairs in the middle of a vast rice field under the light of a full moon that turned the waters around us into silver. We were waiting for the lighting set-up to be finished and this, as you know, can take hours in open fields. And there we were with our feet soaking in bangus-infested waters drinking coffee and discussing Sondheim, Monty Python, Mick Jagger and Philip Glass. Escudero would point out at intervals Aldebaran, Cassiopeia and the Pleiades just as Joel Torre did in Oro and he told me, “Peque, isn’t this the life? Where else in the world does anybody have a chance at this? To be sitting in the most unexpected places in the Philippines in the most unexpected hours of the day and talking? Talking and soaking it all in. It doesn’t get any better than this.”
via “Courage in the face of mediocrity.” A eulogy for Don Escudero by Peque Gallaga | JessicarulestheUniverse.

The secret is to treasure the people who do their best and not the least they could do.  I’m lucky to say that most of my teammates are like this.
 

Reason 2: according to Scrum ‘people do the best they can’ if you give them enough freedom. What the hell is this based upon? They don’t. They will probably do the least they can because in general most software developers are underpaid, especially compared to their managers. That’s why they want to become managers or software architects as soon as possible, since they can then still be lazy without anyone noticing and the added bonus that they are getting better paid.
via Why Scrum will never work « Maurits thinks aloud.

 
I have this suspicion that long term the rising cost of innovation because of the broken ip/patent system is going to be more costly than the rising cost of healthcare in the us. If we factor in the lost innovation because of these patent trolls. Down with the patent trolls.

But this expanded distribution is also putting our business at risk: there are people in this new market who claim a right to a part our hard work. Either by patent or copyright infringement, developers are finding this new cost of litigation to be onerous.
The scary part is that these infringements can happen with any part of our products or websites: things that you’d never imagine being a violation of someone else’s intellectual property. It feels like coding in a mine field.
From our experience, it’s entirely possible that all the revenue for a product can be eaten up by legal fees. After years of pouring your heart and soul into that product, it’s devastating. It makes you question why the hell you’re in the business: when you can’t pay salaries from product sales, there’s no point in building it in the first place.
So, just as in the days of magnetic media, the independent developer now finds him or herself at a point where it is again becoming very expensive to distribute their products to a mass market. This time the retail channel itself is very cheap, but the ancillary costs, both financially and emotionally, are very high.
And, of course, only large companies and publishers can bear these costs. My fear is that It’s only a matter of time before developers find the risks and expenses prohibitive and retreat to the safety of a larger organization. We’ll be going back to square one.
Over the years many of the top selling apps have been created by independent developers, starting with Steve Dementer and Trism at the App Store launch, and continuing to this day with titles like Tiny Wings by Andreas Illiger.
Losing that kind of talent and innovation to a legal system is the real crime.
via furbo.org · The Rise and Fall of the Independent Developer.

Do yourself a favor read the whole damn thing.
 

There is no meaningful treatment. No cure. There is one medication, Rilutek, which might make a few months’ difference. It retails for about $14,000 a year. That doesn’t seem worthwhile to me. If I let this run the whole course, with all the human, medical, technological and loving support I will start to need just months from now, it will leave me, in 5 or 8 or 12 or more years, a conscious but motionless, mute, withered, incontinent mummy of my former self. Maintained by feeding and waste tubes, breathing and suctioning machines.
¶ No, thank you. I hate being a drag. I don’t think I’ll stick around for the back half of Lou.
¶ I think it’s important to say that. We obsess in this country about how to eat and dress and drink, about finding a job and a mate. About having sex and children. About how to live. But we don’t talk about how to die. We act as if facing death weren’t one of life’s greatest, most absorbing thrills and challenges. Believe me, it is. This is not dull. But we have to be able to see doctors and machines, medical and insurance systems, family and friends and religions as informative — not governing — in order to be free.
¶ And that’s the point. This is not about one particular disease or even about Death. It’s about Life, when you know there’s not much left. That is the weird blessing of Lou. There is no escape, and nothing much to do. It’s liberating.
via The Good Short Life With A.L.S. – NYTimes.com.

Google+ doesn’t want to pull anyone into a walled-garden the way Facebook wants. Instead, they want to go with us wherever we go. It’s subtle, but it’s clear. Facebook is saying, “come do what you need to do here,” while Google+ is saying, ‘take us with you and let us help you with what you need to do wherever you need to do it.”
via 7 Reasons Why Google+ Will Succeed (and 1 reason why it will very likely fail).

Something similar to Dave Winer’s “People come back to places that send them away“
 

They raise three big worries. First, information overload can make people feel anxious and powerless: scientists have discovered that multitaskers produce more stress hormones. Second, overload can reduce creativity. Teresa Amabile of Harvard Business School has spent more than a decade studying the work habits of 238 people, collecting a total of 12,000 diary entries between them. She finds that focus and creativity are connected. People are more likely to be creative if they are allowed to focus on something for some time without interruptions. If constantly interrupted or forced to attend meetings, they are less likely to be creative. Third, overload can also make workers less productive. David Meyer, of the University of Michigan, has shown that people who complete certain tasks in parallel take much longer and make many more errors than people who complete the same tasks in sequence.
via Schumpeter: Too much information | The Economist.

The more important question is: what are we trying to do here? What’s the goal?Here’s what I propose as a better standard: when you go to bed at night, are you extremely excited about what you’ve done that day and what’s coming up the next day? Do people tell you about all the awesome things they are doing, in part because of something you’ve created?Are you making art, whether you think of yourself as an artist or not?Whatever your dream is, are you living it?If freedom is one of your highest values, are you experiencing enough freedom in your life?These are some standards I prefer to use. These things are what matters. It’s not just about what works. Because sometimes, it can work… but that doesn’t mean it works.
via The Art of Non-Conformity » Just Because It Works… Doesn’t Mean It Works.