Rosetta
I once encountered a man who had spent the better part of his life dedicated to translating the Holy Bible into a language that could be understood by a particular region of Africa that spoke a certain dialect. You can sign up to volunteer for Reading for the Blind and Dyslexic. You read textbooks onto tape, which are freely made available to those with little or no eyesight. There are lots of ideas in the...
May the Winning One Win
At the turn of the last century, the battle was on to perfect the technology that would power the automobile. A few different means of powering cars were attempted. Naturally, gas-powered engines were one of them. Amongst them, though, was an electric car and even a car powered by a steam engine. (Early inventors seemed to regard cars as "little trains".) The electric car didn't take off because, at the time, a battery that could...
The Market Is Broken
Blogger appears to be having problems. The entries for the last few days didn't get published as hoped and a few I had stowed up got deleted. Problem? Maybe... If you talk to someone who works in the video game industry, they'll tell you that Angry Birds is not that challenging of a game to make. It has its strengths, like the cutesy graphics and sound effects, and it tells a story, but from a...
The Non-Obvious
One of the factors considered in whether or not an invention or an idea is patentable is the concept of non-obviousness. That is, could someone in your profession have conceived of the same idea or been able to solve the problem without a lot of thought? I'm not a lawyer, and I'm not terribly interested in dwelling on legal matters, but I like the implications that the term "non-obvious" belies. I think that good ideas...
Digging for Revolution
Here's a quote I saw painted on a door at a local community college. I've heard it before, and chances are good that you've read it several times before as well. Doesn't matter if you've read it 6,000 times and this is the 6,001st time you've seen it, here it is again: "Art is either plagiarism or revolution." -Paul Gauguin Now that's brilliant in its brevity. I don't care whether or not you even consider...
How's My Driving?
People never respond well to criticism of their actions. There are some people with the patience of saints who will hear you out if you start telling them what they're doing wrong. They might even listen to you. But in response to nothing but criticism, they'll probably end up not liking you, even secretly. Why on earth, then, is it standard practice for people to call and complain to a manager when they have a...
Dispensable Income
After paying for taxes, rent, food, and other necessities of life, the money you have left to spend is often referred to as "disposable income". The insinuation of this widely pervasive phrase is simple: that you should dispose of it. This smacks of an inclination to be a consumer: go down to the Sharper Image and buy the vibrating pad for a chair that massages your butt. I have no problem with electric butt massagers,...
Company Mission Statement: The Serenity Prayer
When I first got to college, Napster was all the rage. It was around that time that Lars Ulrich came out and started publicly deriding the company for letting people download their music, or the music of any other artist, without their consent and without paying for it. At the time, I heard the question a lot: "Is it wrong to download music?" I didn't realize it at the time, but this was the wrong...
Shuffle
True randomness doesn't always feel random. People swear up and down that their iPods, when placed on shuffle, favor certain songs over others. This isn't device error, but user error. The iPod doesn't keep track of the songs it played before. After each song ends, it just scans the list and picks another track at random. Since it's ignorant of which song played five songs ago, that song is fair game...as are any other songs...
Half and Half
I learned the following "fact" several times while I was in school: in the first year of your life, right after you're born, you are capable of learning a certain amount of information. With learning to walk and motor functions, there is a lot to take in. In the second year of your life, you can only learn half that much. And the year after that, in your third year, half as much as the...