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Modern-day inventors—even those in the league of Steve Jobs—will have a tough time measuring up to the productivity of the Thomas Edisons of the past.
That's because big ideas are getting harder and harder to find, and innovations have become increasingly massive and costly endeavors, according to new research from economists at the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research. As a result, tremendous continual increases in research and development will be needed to sustain even today's low rate of economic growth.Nicholas Bloom, a SIEPR senior fellow and co-author of the forthcoming paper, contends that so many game-changing inventions have appeared since World War II that it's become increasingly difficult to come up with the next big idea.
[...] Turning its focus to publicly traded companies, the study found a fraction of firms where research productivity—as measured by growth in sales, market capitalization, employment and revenue-per-worker productivity—grew decade-over-decade since 1980. But overall, more than 85 percent of the firms showed steady, rapid declines in productivity while their spending in R&D rose. The analysis found research productivity for firms fell, on average, about 10 percent per year, and it would take 15 times more researchers today than it did 30 years ago to produce the same rate of economic growth.
https://phys.org/news/2017-06-big-ideas-harder.html
[Source]: https://siepr.stanford.edu/news/productivity-ideas-hard-to-find
[Paper]: Are Ideas Getting Harder to Find?
Do you think that innovative ideas are hard to find ??
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @04:56PM (13 children)
Jobs doesn't really even register on the radar of big ideas people.
If you swing your dick around in silicon valley, even today, you are more likely to find a big idea person.
And y'know what? The ones who aren't full of themselves, cash out early, and move on to the next project are probably still rolling in ideas.
Having said that, plenty of them are just businesspeople capitalizing on the next big idea.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:15PM (7 children)
Jobs wasn't an inventor. He pimped the products of inventors and served as the figurehead and chief whip-wielder over brilliant people, but he was not an inventor.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:28PM
Indeed, Woz did the inventing and Jobs was but the hustler.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by jimtheowl on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:30PM (5 children)
Perhaps it is also harder to find bright people to exploit.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @08:01PM (4 children)
I know that it is trendy to shit all over Edison, but he was an inventor and a very meticulous experimentalist.
The amount of detail in and the level of organization of Edison's laboratory notebooks is astounding. Also, the sheer volume of his notes showed his dedication.
http://edison.rutgers.edu/index.htm [rutgers.edu]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:16PM (3 children)
When Nikola Tesla came around it became obvious where the genius were.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:01PM (2 children)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:04PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:44PM
Inventors are defined by their inventions which are, in turn, judged by their usefulness and novelty.
One can be a prolific inventor of poor quality, unimaginative crap but they would still be an inventor. Inventors can produce inventions by accident, brute force, and insight.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:24PM (3 children)
Yeah, WTF is this stupid article talking about? Jobs was never an inventor or any kind of dreamer or ideas person. He was a salesman. Jobs was exceptionally good at identifying good ideas that would sell well, and pushing his employees to refine the ideas in ways that would make them sell (and making the employees miserable in the process because he was an abusive asshole). He didn't come up with the great ideas, he just acted as a filter really. Give credit where it's due: he really was good at what he did. But he was never any kind of inventor; he was just good at finding inventors and partnering with them, which is something inventors really need anyway because rarely do great inventions go far on their own without some kind of salesperson to get other people to want them.
Edison was an inventor, but not a great one, and mainly got rich off of other inventors' work. Edison had some good ideas to be sure (I think he invented movie projectors), but as Tesla noted he wasted a lot of time and effort on trial-and-error approaches rather than doing any kind of proper analysis, because Edison really had no idea how to do advanced math.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by aclarke on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:08PM (2 children)
You didn't even have to read the article, just the summary, to understand that they're not setting up Steve Jobs as the paragon of inventors. That's why it's written as "even those in the league of Steve Jobs". As in, even the ones who aren't the "greats", like Steve Jobs.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:15PM (1 child)
Steve Jobs was never an inventor, that's the whole point. He's not just not-the-paragon, he isn't even in that class. TFS tells me that they don't even understand this: "Modern-day inventors—even those in the league of Steve Jobs" Again, Steve Jobs was never an inventor. He didn't invent anything at all. He was many things, including a brilliant salesman, but he was never any kind of inventor.
(Score: 2) by jelizondo on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:56PM
Sorry to burst your bubble but Jobs indeed invented the greatest thing: the persona of Steve Jobs the inventor!
He was a con man and a ruthless, thieving bastard but people at large perceive him as the great inventor of the Universe, the Internet and everything within.
(Score: 2) by krishnoid on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:40PM
What the ... hey! Oh my god, put that back! I'm calling HR!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:04PM
Great ideas are still there, but with current day societies (and obligations one has to them) it is virtually impossible to properly execute them in a timely manner.
And the last alinea is a bit of market-liberalism BS... companies hardly do innovative development any more these days. They just iterate over the old ideas in just a slightly different (more fancy) way.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by nobu_the_bard on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:06PM (8 children)
No they aren't, come on. Stuff has been crazy for like two solid decades easily.
I mean, a handful of examples, without getting into good/bad/right/wrong/etc: laptops, cellphones, tablets, self-driving cars, private space flight, ubiquitous GPS access.
I think the problem is people remember the hits and forget about the gaps between. Music and movies and books and poetry are the same way, that's why people always complain modern stuff isn't as good. Probably everything is that way. We don't need a new practical cellphone that obsoletes everything that came before it every month.
Harder to find! It was always hard!
Good to see some are trying though. A few will succeed, but I hope benefit from all their efforts, however incremental.
(Score: 5, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:17PM
If you want to bend a socio-economic angle into the topic, it has always been hard for small-time inventors to be competitive with well resourced competitors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philo_Farnsworth comes to mind, but even in Eli Whitney's day and before, those with resources could usually outmaneuver some poor schmo with an idea and a simple patent attorney.)
Is it worse today? Sure it is, corporations are bigger, people are relatively smaller (in terms of economic power), and the entrenched interests haven't stopped digging in for a second.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:36PM (5 children)
I think the problem is people remember the hits and forget about the gaps between. Music and movies and books and poetry are the same way, that's why people always complain modern stuff isn't as good.
This just isn't true. There are rises and falls with different things, and the way the music industry in America works today is very different from how it worked 30+ years ago. That's why you don't see anything like Led Zeppelin today with any significant commercial success, just some shitty pop. It also depends on what you like; if you like Big Band music, then it's objectively false to say "the new stuff is just as good", because there really isn't any new stuff; that kind of music peaked many decades ago. Same thing if you like Baroque music: that peaked several centuries ago. If you like Glam Metal, that peaked in the 80s; no one's making that any more now. So yes, things really do change, and depending on your tastes, some things really were a lot better in the past. Same goes for movies: today's Hollywood movies are really quite different from decades ago, for many reasons: filmmaking techniques have changed, acting methods have changed (go watch stuff from the 30s or 40s), and also the economics have changed a lot. Hollywood is far more risk-averse these days than it used to be, which is why we have so many sequels and prequels and remakes than during the 70s or 80s: they might cost a lot, but they're virtually guaranteed to make a return on the investment, even if it's not as much of a profit as a surprise hit.
We don't need a new practical cellphone that obsoletes everything that came before it every month.
There's a such thing as "maturity". Products and industries mature over time. Back in the early days of cars, there were all kinds of changes, and many things were not standard. They didn't even all have steering wheels! There was a big argument over whether cars should have steering wheels or tillers (!). A lot of people thought tillers were better. All kinds of different engine designs and body styles were tried. Eventually they settled down on the stuff we've had now for the last several decades; the industry and technology because mature. The same thing's happening with cellphones; for a while, there were huge changes every year, and a new phone could do lots of stuff that one from 3 years before couldn't. The iPhone was a big change in the industry, and that "slate" form-factor was quickly copied and became the standard, rather than slide-out keyboards, trackballs, etc. Now they're getting mature; a 3-year-old flagship phone works fine and really doesn't lack much compared to a brand-new phone. This happens in every technology industry.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @07:47PM (4 children)
FM radio, as a counter-cultural outlet, was credited with the shaping of the classic rock icons of the late 60s / early 70s. By 2001, the stations were "owned" to a point that John Lennon's "Imagine" was placed on a "Do Not Play" list following the September 11 attacks.
The internet is even more "free" in the flow of information, music and video, but it's not a focusing influence the way an FM radio station used to be.
Oh, and as for "Glam Metal" - I wouldn't say that nobody is making that anymore, just that they're not making big money from the mainstream distribution channels on it anymore, same for Big Band, Baroque, etc. - the "long tail" served by Amazon and similar retailers keeps these genres available for purchase, and I'm sure there's a venue or two in the world having a "Glam Metal" revival concert this weekend, literally dozens of people will be attending.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday June 06 2017, @08:10PM (3 children)
The internet is even more "free" in the flow of information, music and video, but it's not a focusing influence the way an FM radio station used to be.
Exactly; as I said before, the way the music industry works today is very different. Sure, there's tons of bands and musicians out there doing their own thing, mixing and making their own recordings using PCs or Macs, but it's not the same as when you had record companies' A&R people scouting talent and then developing them and bringing them to the radio. Wikipedia's A&R page [wikipedia.org] is pretty interesting here. Geffen's Gary Gersh signed Nirvana even though alternative wasn't considered commercial, and had to convince others to push the record; imagine how the 90s would be different if he hadn't done all that (for better or worse). John H. Hammond signed Billie Holiday, Bob Dylan, Aretha Franklin and Bruce Springsteen; imagine how different music would be now if that hadn't happened. But now this has changed: "The general move towards more conservative and business-minded signings from the 1980s onwards is seen to be symptomatic of an industry where the most powerful figures are no longer music fans or people with musical backgrounds, but business people. Traditionally A&R executives were composers, arrangers and producers ... but an A&R with musical ability and knowledge has become a rarity." So as I said before, the music business is entirely different now. This just isn't a case of "you only remember the good stuff and forget about the crap"; things really are different now. At the very least, if you do really believe that great, innovative new music is still being made somewhere, because of how different the music business is, it's pretty hard to find it. It's a lot easier hearing something new that you like when it's on the radio in a time when everyone listens to the radio and the music is promoted commercially, rather than now when you have to go looking for it because it's made in someone's basement and there's no promotion at all. And this still ignores the issues of professional vs. amateur production: there's a lot more to recording music and making it sound good than just setting up some microphones and hitting "record" on some software program.
Oh, and as for "Glam Metal" - I wouldn't say that nobody is making that anymore, just that they're not making big money from the mainstream distribution channels on it anymore, same for Big Band, Baroque, etc. - the "long tail" served by Amazon and similar retailers keeps these genres available for purchase, and I'm sure there's a venue or two in the world having a "Glam Metal" revival concert this weekend, literally dozens of people will be attending.
Citation needed. I seriously doubt *anyone* is actually making any new glam metal any more. Sure, you'll see old bands/musicians from past eras play concerts of their old stuff, or you might see cover bands playing someone's old stuff, but that doesn't count, just like doing "Hamlet" at your local community theater doesn't count as "making Middle English plays". No one's actually making new stuff, with fans actually buying and listening to it.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @08:32PM
I don't have "the goods" on Glam Metal, but the Journey story (Arnel Pineda replacing Steve Perry) is a pretty strong example of cultural icons echoing around the globe - before he was discovered Arnel didn't just sing Journey songs, he was a huge fan and did great homage, but it's not a stretch at all to think that somewhere there's a group that does a little more than just cover songs. I forget the name, but I saw an AC/DC cover band once - they hit all the covers, but did a couple of their own things in the genre too.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:25PM
That's common theme in many industries. Corporations run by MBAs, generalists, economists etc.. all with a lack of touch what they are really doing. They are essentially running cognitively blind since they won't realize big mistakes or good opportunities.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Wednesday June 07 2017, @07:18PM
Dude, half a second on Google would have gotten you an entire Wikipedia page listing glam metal bands, many of which are still active and producing albums:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_glam_metal_bands_and_artists [wikipedia.org]
But "Glam metal" also isn't a distinct sub-genre the way "doom metal" or "black metal" is. There's a half dozen interchangeable terms, most of which refer more to the appearance of the artists than the actual style of music. People are still producing that style of music, they just call it hard rock or heavy metal or something instead of glam metal. The word "glam" is what died, nothing more than that.
And FYI, people do still make Middle English plays too:
https://www.amazon.com/Two-Gentlemen-Lebowski-Excellent-Tragical/dp/1451605811 [amazon.com]
https://www.backstage.com/review/ny-theater/off-off-broadway/two-gentlemen-of-lebowski/ [backstage.com]
(Score: 2) by HiThere on Tuesday June 06 2017, @10:42PM
It was always hard, but in any field as the field is developed it's harder to find something that someone else hasn't already found. At any point in time there are only a finite number of plausible next steps. Occasionally a "next step" will open up a huge new raft of next steps, but those are unpredictable, and until one of them happens, low hanging fruit is harder and harder to find, so you need to invest in tools to reach higher.
When I first started programming it was dead easy to come up with something new and good. These days, not so much. For awhile html was a wide open field full of easy targets. Then you started to need to add fancier things, like javascript. These days it's apps, but I'm not really convinced that apps really open things up very much. What's needed is a good way to think about programming for multiple CPUs, but the best thing I've found is the Actor model, and that's a bit constrained. (I'm not really counting GPU programming, but maybe I should be...but that seems to involve all the nodes doing the same thing. You can do a lot with that, but it's not the kind of area I want to put my efforts. So talk to someone else about that.)
So the article is correct, but it's also short-sighted. OTOH, breakthroughs sometimes take centuries to show up.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:09PM (1 child)
Truly inventive work involves things that haven't been done before. To an extent, the fact that there are a few billion people with enough leisure time and education to do something "inventive" is making it harder to find unturned stones - back in the days of Newton, Pascal, Galileo, et. al. there were probably only a few dozens of people alive at any given time who had the freedom and resources to both "invent things" and also communicate their ideas to future generations.
But true innovation will become apparent when it happens. Sometimes it will be dusting off an old idea and finding broad, valuable new applications for it. Sometimes it will be based on huge development efforts that lead to world-changing products (self driving car, for example?), and once in awhile something "impossible" like the EM drive will actually pan out and have dramatic consequences.
Meanwhile, our increasingly infinite number of monkeys hammering away at keyboards are bound to cover most of the less inventive topics rather thoroughly.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @07:50PM
Things move along so rapidly nowadays that people saying: “It can’t be done,” are always being interrupted by somebody doing it.—Puck.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by looorg on Tuesday June 06 2017, @05:46PM (6 children)
Hasn't this always been the case? The lamentation of how all the good and easy ideas are already thought or invented. Now we just keep making derivative work and copies of other previously thought of things. That we are somehow stuck. I'm sure that happened before to. I'm fairly sure even Grog the caveman and his friends lamented how that other guy invented the wheel, fire and the pointy stick and all those other easy things and now all that was left was the really hard stuff.
Edison? Wasn't Edison more or less a bastard that stole from actual inventors -- sort of like Jobs.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @06:43PM (5 children)
Oh, come on, Edison slaved in his workshop for years finding thousands of ways _not_ to make a lightbulb. Then he accumulated over 1000 US patents before he died. Surely the 1092 non-lightbulb patents were all direct fruits of his inventive thought, his personal experimental toiling, blood, sweat and tears. The tour guide at the Edison home in Fort Myers said as much to my 2nd grade class, right under the Banyan tree given to him by Mr. Goodyear, it must be true.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 2) by Bot on Tuesday June 06 2017, @08:10PM (4 children)
Edison bought the method to obtain vacuum for better lightbulbs from our fellow Malignani in 1896. The same fellow patented an all-electric car capable of 18km/h and 60km autonomy in 1891.
But I wrote to say that it's full of big ideas, mostly by lone inventors, mostly ending up in a drawer, because the incumbents do not need them.
See the E-cat story as an example. No matter if it works or not, the fact that a supremely strategic idea like that is yet to be deemed valid or bogus is sign of lack of interest. Did not some Swedish patent meddle with cold fusion too, in the 1950s?
Account abandoned.
(Score: 4, Informative) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @08:43PM
I forget who "invented" it, but there's an old patent on a solar energy plant that works by covering acres with a funnel shaped greenhouse and running a turbine in the updraft of heated air. Hugely expensive to build, a little creative maybe, but nobody cared at the time so it didn't go anywhere. Then the inventor is all cheesed 30 years later when somebody actually built one in Australia and didn't pay him for his expired patent... sorry Bud, bad timing, you published too soon to get paid.
Then there are many examples of industry simply ignoring currently valuable patented IP until the inventor gives up on protecting it - hydraulic assist power steering is a clear case of that, there are hundreds more.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:09PM (2 children)
Or rather simply hard to test, due in large part to the suspicious secretiveness of the inventor. I think rather the inability to confirm it at this late date is a strong indication of the bogusness of the E-cat claims.
(Score: 2) by Bot on Wednesday June 07 2017, @04:06PM (1 child)
I was not clear enough. Let's say that guy builds a new kind of atomic bomb. Before he has even finished designing it, the armi and the secret services are already storming his lab.
- "Hey stop I have to patent it!!"
- "National security, lad, we get this and you get to work for us with a nice pay, blackjack and hookers or a fatal road accident, you choose".
Except that the Ecat is even more disruptive to the system than the new kind of atomic bomb. My only rationalization for this is that a lot of stuff has already been discovered and will be released when it yields the maximum of profit/karma/advantage. In the meantime our money is spent on manned aircrafts defending oil fields.
Account abandoned.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 08 2017, @02:53AM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @06:22PM (1 child)
I know there are some who hate when I bring this up... but once again look at figure 2. The blue curve (their index of research efficiency) is basically the inverse of NHST adoption. This is the mass confusion predicted by Ronald Fisher:
Fisher, R N (1958). "The Nature of Probability". Centennial Review. 2: 261–274
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:29PM
I believe you misinterpret the loyal opposition here. The point of NHST is to do science in situations where you have a pile of data and don't know enough to do the usual hypothesis and model building. No one is arguing that p-hacking and other failure modes of NHST don't happen, but the technique has a legitimate use.
What's relevant here is that NHST is supposed to be a temporary technique. You mine your data, find possible correlations, and build models from there. You shouldn't use NHST forever, because both of its flaws - the p-hacking trap and its natural inefficiency, but also because you supposedly have models to test now. The growing use of NHST over the past century indicates that there are a number of fields that simply aren't progressing on to model building, instead stalling at the NHST stage.
I will agree that if you're merely interested in the appearance of doing science rather than actually making progress, then NHST is a great technique for looking busy. So heavy, long term use of NHST is a warning sign that we are doing things seriously wrong.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @06:38PM (2 children)
Pretty soon AI is going to be doing all the thinking anyway. Once AI technology matures, what's left for humans to do? Maybe the arts or sports? The Alphas can do Soma and the Deltas won't care.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @07:59PM
Wanking. Jobs would do fine.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:33PM
AI has some fundamental problems. Think of it as a landscape of mountain tops. If a optimization for the X,Y position with the highest top is sought then it will find the nearest top. It kind of gets stuck there in different ways. While a human can realize there are other higher tops without trying everybody or trying some Monte Carlo testing. The hunch about where to go next is quite unique to humans, even more so to a few of them. When a AI can outperform Steve Jobs or Einstein, I'll rethink this.
What is needed is likely a massive quantum network or something along that theme.
(Score: 1, Spam) by lcall on Tuesday June 06 2017, @06:57PM (9 children)
I humbly suggest my OneModel project, for taking how mankind managed knowledge, to the next level. Due to competing things I haven't got as far as I'd like, but it is a useful product now, and code and concepts are there, as are discussion and (very low-volume) announcements lists. Latest at the moment is on the "wip" github branch where I'm working on the REST api to allow sharing of structured (or not) data between instances as desired.
Many details, FAQs, and download at http://onemodel.org [onemodel.org]
Some quick description:
To organize everything I want to, I wrote and use OneModel (AGPL), creating inside it a calendar with ticklers, lists of gift ideas or other ideas for activities, etc, all sorted by when I want to see them or how I can most easily find them in a hierarchy. I have created a sort of structure for things I might to remember about each person (journal of past interactions, contact info, etc etc) that I also use for my dealings with some businesses so I can revisit who said what when, if needed. And it can auto-provide the structure in for future persons or organizations I add to my contact list, but only when wanted. Same with anything else I want to track.
And it creates a sort of personal journal for me as a side-effect, by exporting everything created (or archived) for date ranges, so my odd random notes fit in also. It lets you optionally mark things as public or private, export things as .txt outlines or an .html mini-web site, and (hopefully) soon exchange info with others if desired. Self- or my-hosted.
Unfortunately, while there is a tutorial, OM still lacks a nice demo video and installation is still manual (some postgres config instructions then "java -jar...") until interest warrants a real installer. I use it for everything (no mobile support yet) and it is extremely efficient for a touch typist, and easy to learn as everything is on the screen in menus generated context-sensitively on the fly.
There was a longer discussion about it previously (https://soylentnews.org/article.pl?sid=16/04/23/0149257), and I've since done the tutorial and been working on the "sharing" (data exchange) features, but the people had a hard time understanding the "demo" site (which I'll put back up if there is real interest), for reasons that escape me: to me, if you read the screen, it should tell you what you need, then some OM docs can inspire on what all can be done: basically making lists of lists with structural non-textual data added in, with an eye to becoming shareable and computable, as described on the web site. It is perhaps best for people who need to make hierarchical lists more efficiently, with tons of efficiency, flexibility, and future headroom.
Users, discussion, and participation would be great. The latest version is in github but I haven't posted the .jar yet (could).
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:17AM (8 children)
Some thoughts:
* Please fix https for your site: http://onemodel.org [onemodel.org] It's pre-Snowden now and no-one can't say they didn't know.
* The site is slightly disorganized. Have a look at some Wikipedia pages on software descriptions for inspiration. A few descriptive screenshots right at the front would be useful to get a intuitive grip on what's about.
* Straightforward download and package requirements + compile and run instructions. Ie test-here-now.. fast.
* Maybe you can run it in a java window right in the browser for quick testing? archive.org manages MS-DOS games so this should be a piece of cake.
(Score: 1) by lcall on Wednesday June 07 2017, @12:39AM (7 children)
Thanks for the comments. My thoughts; I'd appreciate your pointing out what I am missing:
*To me the site is highly organized so I must not appreciate your point, or am deeply embedded in it. Elaboration welcome. I hoped the tabs at top would give top-level navigation from anywhere, and on every page I tried to say first what I thought the "average" likely customer/user would want to know first, 2nd, etc. Screenshots can be found if you click whichever link says "SCREEN SHOT" (yes it's caps) for about 3 clicks, but I thought it would have been ugly on the front page and distracting from the other high-level links that some people might be more interested in to start out.
*You're right no one can say they didn't know. Still, https would make more sense when there is data that needs securing or obscuring. Right now there is nothing confidential or controversial at the site. Is there still a use case, other than to encrypt the world to make life generally/vaguely harder for snoops?
*It really needs a simpler installation experience, but I was thinking more of a traditional installer, and then also a simple web/mobile-experience, but that will take more time.
*Good suggestion. The demo site is almost that: telnet to an address and you're in the app. I am happy to stand it back up (but tomorrow) if you are interested.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Pino P on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:29AM (1 child)
Some ISPs are known to inject data into streams. Comcast, for example, has injected ads into HTML documents delivered through cleartext HTTP. HTTPS makes this sort of tampering trivial for your browser to detect. For this reason, several JavaScript features that are especially sensitive to tampering are available only on either HTTPS or localhost [chromium.org]. Now that Let's Encrypt offers free short-term certificates and SSLs.com offers cheap long-term ones, there's little reason not to run HTTPS for a public site.
But this has caused problems for operators of web servers on a private LAN [pineight.com], which often lack the fully-qualified domain name needed to qualify for a certificate.
(Score: 1) by lcall on Wednesday June 07 2017, @07:54PM
Good point; thanks. I'll raise the priority of this in my todos.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 07 2017, @07:24AM (4 children)
organization) When I look at the description I want some 2-3 screenshots to get a quick grip on what it feels like to operate. And a quick description in 2-3 sentences what it does and thus is worthwhile to spend time on. A further description should quickly describe the important features. How they are used can be hidden in under pages.
https) Important because the MITM shall know nothing. Not even that I'm interested in this product nor what aspect. There are just too many bad actors these days.
installation) My focus was a straight forward "install this like this in 5 minutes", usually as a linked document. Almost like a script but with words and command line examples for copy & paste. So one know OS requirements, packages to install, where to download binary or source, compiler option or makefile and which binary to run to get started. A dedicated installer will risk getting stuck and botch the whole installation. So it should not be the only option.
demo) My thinking was, enter URL, test it out like within 5 seconds. If it seems good, then it might be worth to bother with downloads and compiling.
(Score: 1) by lcall on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:07PM (2 children)
Thanks again for the comments.
organization) Are you basically saying take some of the text from this page (from top, click: About or "More about", then the first link "Features, limitations, internals", or to go directly):
http://onemodel.org/1/e-9223372036854618107.html [onemodel.org]
...and put it on the front page, like around the 4th bullet, or just insert a link to "Features, limitations, internals" directly at the front page? I'll also consider putting the screen shots on the (end of the?) home page, maybe in a couple of days.
https) I'll raise the priority of https in my todos.
install) There is an install doc like that, if one clicks the Download link on the home page (or in the header of any page), then there is an Installation section with links for platforms, where each one is I think as you describe. Though substeps are sometimes a separate links so can be skipped easily if not applicable.
demo) The demo is almost as easy as you describe -- just enter a 1-line short telnet command, type "x" for the password and you're in the app. On Windows one might have to install telnet first. The demo instructions are at:
http://onemodel.org/1/e-9223372036854612561.html [onemodel.org]
In all cases of the web site, as in the OM UI itself especially, I assume one will read the screen.... I tried to put everything there, but maybe it was two clicks too many or something.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Thursday June 08 2017, @10:00AM (1 child)
People will most likely not do telnet. A graphical user interface is what is desired.
(Score: 1) by lcall on Thursday June 08 2017, @01:59PM
Yes. I have much to do.
I guessing there are a few though I think, even in its current state. Some people still use vi and emacs.
I've tried to structure the (AGPL) code so that it won't be very hard to add a GUI when time permits.
(Score: 1) by lcall on Wednesday June 07 2017, @08:09PM
It would be convenient for me but of course not required, to move the discussion to the OM discussion mailing list. Either way, the announcements list is low-volume if interested in future developments:
http://onemodel.org/1/e-9223372036854624132.html [onemodel.org]
(Score: 4, Insightful) by aclarke on Tuesday June 06 2017, @07:19PM
I'm not going to argue with the premise of the article, but I've thought about this in the past and have some points to add. I remember being a fresh face in tech during the first dot com boom and being really worried I'd miss the boat as all the good ideas would be gone and I wouldn't become a billionaire. Well, that's sort of true as I haven't become a billionaire, but there is no lack of good ideas. Good implementation is much harder to find.
First, there's convergence. You can take Uber as an example of this. There were taxis, and smartphone apps, and then there was the "sharing economy". Uber just mashed three ideas together and executed on that. That's not something that would have practically worked 10 years earlier.
There are also enabling technologies. For example, if better battery chemistry is invented, that unlocks a whole range of new inventions that just weren't there before. This points out where the article is true: battery technology was cheaper to improve 20 years ago. Batteries sucked, and Li-ion for example has largely supplanted NiCd and all those other battery types you don't think of any more. Now, we just hear about revolutionary battery technologies "5-10 years away", because true breakthroughs in battery technology are getting more expensive and harder to find.
While (some) R&D may be getting more expensive, markets are also getting bigger. The opportunity to capitalise on an invention is now global, which is one reason why we see some of the world's largest companies profitable on an unprecedented scale. In addition to global markets becoming easier to access, there are more people as well, further increasing market size.
The article uses agriculture as one example:
This is another "battery" example. Most of the low-hanging fruit has been picked in agriculture, so to speak. One shouldn't expect continued high growth in a mature industry. That's not to say that there won't be future breakthroughs that can be applied to agriculture to unlock future R&D increases. One small example is smart lighting mixed with real-time feedback from sensors and machine learning. https://lumigrow.com [lumigrow.com] and https://grobo.io [grobo.io] are two examples here. That's something that just wasn't feasible just a few years ago and is taking lessons learned from one industry and applying it to another.
(Score: 1) by arcz on Tuesday June 06 2017, @07:46PM (3 children)
We killed it with regulations. It's now too expensive to start a small scale business. Most large businesses started as smaller businesses, but now you need far too much capital to start a new business. Innovation does not come from large corporations. Large corporations only want to make money, they will do what makes money. Innovators come up with new inventions and provide a business around that, some fail, some succeed. In our effort to weed out the failures we have also weeded out the future successes. As a society, we have become so risk averse that we cannot innovate. As mean inflation adjusted per capita discretionary income continues to fall, debt continues to rise, and savings continue to diminish, we will inevitably see less and less innovation as people are unable to innovate. Innovation does not happen in the corporate space, innovation happens due to passion and inspiration from individuals with a surplus of capital who can risk some of it to try something new.
(Score: 2) by JoeMerchant on Tuesday June 06 2017, @08:05PM (1 child)
Whiner, all you need to start a small business is a few people who are independently wealthy - not needing income for however long it takes to get the business going, and sufficient investment capital to do the startup activities. Increase your investment capital and you can even afford to pay some of the startup employees. This is really no different than it has been for the last 100 years. Banks will loan you money to get started, if you can convince them your business plan / collateral doesn't exceed their risk appetite.
What's different is that you can't just "open a shop" somewhere in town and expect people to support you. There's not much left in the realm of "unmet needs." Food, clothing, and shelter are already provided very efficiently by existing businesses. Markets with high profit margins have also constructed high barriers to entry.
If you know your market, whether it is local, regional or global, and you can successfully address an unmet need, then you, too can successfully launch a small business. Just like it has been for time immemorial, business startups misjudge the market or undercapitalize on startup and fail. If you want a "sure thing" find a corner with just one drugstore on it, sit in the parking lot and count the customers going into that store, if they have enough traffic you can open a competing store across the street, steal half their customers, and both stores can be profitable. The costs and returns on investment are well established, and banks will finance these kinds of propositions easily. Hardly innovative, but it is done all the time.
🌻🌻 [google.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday June 07 2017, @01:45PM
The trick is to find a need that is not being met very well and do it better.
(Score: 3, Informative) by tibman on Tuesday June 06 2017, @11:59PM
Etsy [etsy.com], Kickstarter [kickstarter.com], indiegogo [tindie.com], tindie [tindie.com]
Create an account and sell whatever you make. This is the bootstrap for your new company.
Maybe you have an idea and don't know how to fabricate? Here is where your first prototype can come from: https://www.ponoko.com/ [ponoko.com] or https://www.shapeways.com/ [shapeways.com]
It's never been easier to create and sell products to people around the world. Seriously.
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @08:22PM (1 child)
Really everything will speed back up once someone comes up with an innovative way to generate innovative ideas efficiently.
I can see the algorithm coming together now:
Inputs: Currently unsolved problems, Currently solved problems, Constant feed of new proven technologies
Outputs: Lists of potential innovations with non starters weeded out
Then we just need teams of QC'ers to evaluate the outputs for viability.
See? There's nothing that can't be automated! Of course, garbage in makes garbage out though.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:45PM
You can get your bot to write this garbage and I'll get my bot to filter it. While we get busy working on how to defeat eachother's bots. Sounds awesome!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @08:29PM (1 child)
I thought the full-duplex radio [technologyreview.com] that came out of Stanford was pretty cool. E-ink still impresses me as something electronic that makes you think it isn't. There is also that low-tech mini-centrifuge [nature.com] that reaches 125,000 rpm. White LEDs for interior lighting are impressive. But the article is probably right. Lone inventors are more likely to be patent-trolls now than contributors to progress, and the set of inventible things may be getting exhausted.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 06 2017, @09:48PM
That's some cool shit bro. I also heard M&Ms is innovating a new color.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by DannyB on Tuesday June 06 2017, @08:37PM
It is Small ideas that are hard to find. Big ideas have to be hidden in the shed out back. Small ideas can be easily concealed under the couch cushions or hidden in a drawer.
When trying to solve a problem don't ask who suffers from the problem, ask who profits from the problem.
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:01AM
Low hanging fruits are taken first. That is kind of natural. But there are things that can be done to improve the situation:
* Stable funding without complicating paper filing.
* Banning of bureaucrats and death by MBA people.
* Mitigate barrier to entry through regulatory compliance help.
* Don't have a fix focus blinder on people with formal academical exams.
More "blue sky" projects. Clean the school of training towards standardized tests instead of independent thinking and creativity. Use real world examples to test and exemplify the utility of knowledge. And definitely remove incomprehensible, irrelevant, un-tested, rote learning, uniformity and fixed learning style education. Many tests require expensive computers and internet connection that suck money from already constrained school budgets. Removing teacher time will not improve results.. And of course fix any hostile social or physical work climate for students.
Things can be done. But it's a question of political will or god/bad actor. More efficient is probably taking initiative by oneself to get things done.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday June 07 2017, @02:35AM
If you want to generate ideas, you can sit down with some sort of writing device and come up with all sorts of ideas. It's not hard. What's hard is (A) knowing enough to know what ideas are good, and (B) following through on turning those ideas into reality.
If you need further proof, talk to about half the people trying to hire freelance developers, who think that they've got a great revolutionary idea that will completely disrupt some market, and all they need is somebody who can throw together the website quick and easy-like, for either equity or something like $500 (which is of course ridiculously underpriced for the level of complexity of what they're asking for). More often than not, the revolutionary idea is something along the lines of "$FAMOUS_WEBSITE, but with some newfangled gizmo that $FAMOUS_WEBSITE either doesn't have for a very good reason, or will have in a couple of months because it's fairly obvious."
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by TheLink on Wednesday June 07 2017, @09:58AM
There are plenty of ideas. Big and small.
The issue is when you don't have the right people or system to efficiently and effectively identify, curate and implement the good ones.
Take the Manhattan project ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manhattan_Project#Origins [wikipedia.org] ). It started with people with power who knew _enough_ and they managed to get some geniuses (e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Robert_Oppenheimer [wikipedia.org] ) who could identify suitable ultra-geniuses ( e.g. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Cognitive_abilities [wikipedia.org] ) and bring them in AND get them to perform well together:
Compare with the German program: http://www.atomicheritage.org/history/german-atomic-bomb-project [atomicheritage.org]
Many knew about splitting the atom and the potential for creating nuclear weapons. The idea was there but it's not so simple to implement it.
But of course it's easier to do it AND more importantly get the _will_ to do it once someone else has proven it's possible AND worth it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_atomic_bomb_project [wikipedia.org]
Of course sometimes you get lots of will and resources to do stuff wrong. Like trying to do missions to Mars _first_ before even doing the necessary _science_ to see if humans and our favorite animals can do well enough in Mars gravity with stuff like this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centrifuge_Accommodations_Module [wikipedia.org]