The words that cost $10 million – ‘These People F_cked Me Over’

‘These People Fucked Me Over’
[Via Daring Fireball]

Say what you want about Carol Bartz’s performance as Yahoo CEO, but I love her straight-talking attitude:

“The board was so spooked by being cast as the worst board in the country,” Bartz says. “Now they’re trying to show that they’re not the doofuses that they are.”

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The former CEO of Yahoo had a non-disparagement clause in her contract. By calling the Board ‘dofusses’ and saying they “f_cked me over” she most likely lost the rest of her contract – worth $10 million.

UPDATED: Perhaps none of us need jobs

Work in a Post-Jobs World | CNN
[Via danielmiessler.com]

But there might still be another possibility — something we couldn’t really imagine for ourselves until the digital era. As a pioneer of virtual reality, Jaron Lanier, recently pointed out, we no longer need to make stuff in order to make money. We can instead exchange information-based products.

We start by accepting that food and shelter are basic human rights. The work we do — the value we create — is for the rest of what we want: the stuff that makes life fun, meaningful, and purposeful.

This sort of work isn’t so much employment as it is creative activity. Unlike Industrial Age employment, digital production can be done from the home, independently, and even in a peer-to-peer fashion without going through big corporations. We can make games for each other, write books, solve problems, educate and inspire one another — all through bits instead of stuff. And we can pay one another using the same money we use to buy real stuff.

via cnn.com

Strange. Compelling. Strangpelling.

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An interesting idea. As te first figure in the image below shows, productivity has continued to increase since 1980 at almost exactly the same rate as it has since 1947 – and actually the same rate as since 1800.

But in the 30 years since 1980, that increased productivity and the large amount of monetary wealth it represents, has not been passed onto people with jobs, as it had in the previous 30 years. Their wages have stayed stagnant while the wealth of the country continues to increase exponentially.

What if that increased productivity is instead captured to provide basic human needs – such as food, dwellings and health? What would it mean for the economy and to the very meaning of jobs if everyone had a stipend for being a citizen and the work one did was to get access to the things we love to have?

Looks like fantasy right now but are there any ‘real’ approaches to examine?

Juliet Schor’s book, Plenitude, examines some aspects of this idea. Things like shorter working hours – which has been done – change how people not only allocate their time but what they actually do with it.

I think we are moving more towards something like this. I mean, if things continue on their way, robots and technology will eventuakky be able to provide everything except jobs. They will have all of the jobs.

So we had better find something for people to do, and to get paid for, before the time when there are no more jobs.

And just perhaps this will create a more sustainable world than what we are doing now.

[UPDATE: Here is a nice video displaying some of aspects of Plenitude]

“Give us back our iPhone. Give it back now!”

Apple’s New Stolen iPhone 5 Ad, “What We’ll Do To You When We Find You…” [Humor]
[Via Cult of Mac]

“We will find you and redefine the experience of genital torture.”

Don’t mess with Lars Vortiz, president of Apple’s internal Torture Division!

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All 21st century companies should have a Torture Division ;-)

Google goes evil

by L. Marie

Google gets its hands dirty
[Via Brainstorm Tech: Technology blogs, news and analysis from Fortune Magazine » Apple 2.0]

Android’s purveyor crossed a line when it sold arms to be used against Apple

U.S. patent No. 6,473,006, “a method and apparatus for zoomed display of characters entered from a telephone keypad,” has a long and tangled history.

It was originally filed, according to FOSS Patents‘ Florian Mueller, by a company called Phone-com, which assigned it to Openwave, which sold it to Purple Labs, which sold it to Myriad, which sold it to Google, which sold it to HTC last week for a price Google has declined to disclose.

On Wednesday, 6,473,006 turned up in a pair of lawsuits — one filed at the U.S. International Trade Commission in Washington, the other in a federal court in Delaware — filed by HTC against Apple (AAPL).

The iPhone, HTC claims, has violated this patent that came to HTC by way of Google, Myriad, Purple Labs, Openwave and Phone-com.

HTC, of course, is suing Apple because it was sued last year by Apple  – the first of many complaints Apple would  bring against the manufacturers of devices running Google’s (GOOG) Android operating system. Apple claimed at the time that HTC had violated 20 of its patents.

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As the article makes clear, Apple is suing over patents on innovations it created and developed. That is how the patent system is supposed to be used.

Enhance innovation for the benefit of society.

HTC is suing using patents it bought fifth-hand through Google. It never created this technology nor developed it. This is not how the patent system is supposed to be used.

Hamper innovation for the benefit of non-inventors.

Google may be making something that looks like a good tactical decision but it is a bad strategic one. Now it is nothing more than a sustaining of patent trolling using surrogates to accomplish its business needs.

Apple – directly suing those who it believes violate the creative innovative intellectual property it produces. Google – getting others to sue those who it believes violate the creative intellectual property it purchases.

There are some problems with the use of patents in the tech field. I personally believe that patents in this area should hold for only 5 years after issuance.

And buying patents  by corporations that had absolutely no creative input into them in order to use them against the direct innovative creations of others is one of the problems. It serves society poorly to allow patent trolls or those not directly involved in the creation and development of the patent to hold the same power as those doing the creating.

Baseball umpires become less biased

by MelvinSchlubman

Umpires show ethnic bias in ball/strike calls—unless they’re feeling watched
[Via Ars Technica]

There’s a lot of behavioral literature that indicates we tend to like people who we think belong to the same group as us, and behave favorably towards them—even though we’re not aware of doing so. Another, unrelated set of research indicates that we’re all prone to behaving better if we think someone’s watching us—even a static photo of a pair of eyes is enough to cause people to shape up. These two threads have been brought together in a rather unusual package by a detailed statistical analysis that looks at a somewhat unusual topic for research: baseball umpires and the pitchers they sometimes torment.

Calling balls and strikes would seem to be one of the last bastions of the low-tech world; it’s all up to the judgement of the lone umpire behind home plate, and there’s no instant replay. But that impression would be badly wrong. In recent years, every stadium in the major leagues has been equipped with a QuesTec system that compares umpires’ ball and strike calls to an objective, computer-validated standard. Deviate too far from what the system says you should be calling, and you’ll automatically have your performance reviewed. This provides the ultimate “someone is watching you” experience for the umpire. As a control, the researchers behind the study took advantage of a five-year period in which the system was only installed in half the stadiums in baseball, creating a set of monitored and unmonitored games.

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Since this bias disappears when the umpires are watched by technology and every ball part now employs that technology, this may be a moot point.

But the interesting thing in the article was that the senior umpires who act as crew chief show now bias, even when unwatched. At least by technology.

So it may be an experience thing. But it does seem that, for whatever reason, MLB is reducing the bias of umpires in their calls of balls and strikes.

Which is a good thing.

Apple’s iTunes U could be the future of education

Apple’s iTunes U hits 600 million education downloads
[Via AppleInsider]

Apple’s iTunes U, an initiative encouraging schools to offer print, audio and video downloads of their eduction programs almost entirely free to the public, has hit a new milestone of 600 million downloads.

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Why sit in a hall with 600 other students? Learn from the best online and then have small, facilitated meetings to hone the lessons. Carl Wieman’s work indicates that students do better with these small groups and it would probably be cheaper in the long run.

We will make up for our lack of revenue by sheer volume

by nateOne

Android app volume to pass App Store but iOS developers to lead in revenue
[Via AppleInsider]

A new report suggests that all Android app markets combined will soon outpace the app downloads of Apple’s iOS App Store, but a parallel report notes that piracy and malware republishing continue to destroy Android app developers’ ability to actually make money.

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Nice business model. Sell more of something that costs you money.

A previous report from these same guys stated how Symbian and Blackberry would be eating tremendously into iOS’s market. Both of them are now gone, so it might be worth giving only a few grains of salt to this report.

Not only do developers make a ton of money compared to Android, but they are ripped off much less. In the Android world, people simply copy and paste applications tht cost money into thrid-party app stores where people can now download them for free. This piracy returns no value to developers. Not only do they get no money but they also can have greater support demands or need for more servers, costing them money.

In addition, these third party sites can take the original app and add their own malware that can do just about anything. Then when a user downloads it from the free, third party site, their phone can be made to do almost anything. None of it good. Some malware has been downloaded over 250,000 times before it was removed. This malware returns no value to users.

The so-called walled garden of iOS not only protects users but also provides a much better return for developers. The AppStore is like a shopping mall with tight security. The Google Marketplace is like a swap meet while the third party Marketplaces are like buying stuff out of the trunk of someones car.

Copy cats continue to flounder

Apple wins permanent ban on Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany
[Via AppleInsider]

A German district court ruled on Friday that Samsung cannot sell its Galaxy Tab 10.1 in Germany because it infringes on the design of Apple’s iPad 2.

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It does not seem a good business plan to simply copy someone else’s design. Now Samsung can not even deliver its tablet to other European countries through its German subsidiary.

With Australia still out of bounds and Japan on thr horizon, Samsung may have a hard time selling this tablet.