Search Results for: provisional

I feel at ease. For once I am not confused. At least I am less confused than I was earlier. You remember the sequence of posts I wrote about opensource and gatekeepers? [Those new to the conversation can find them here, here, here, here and here, in chronological order. Alternatively you can enter "gatekeeper" into [...]

While many of us may understand the distinction between Because Of and With companies, there are still many unanswered questions as to the right business models to use for Because Of companies. As with most of opensource (and some will say it should be all of opensource, and I tend to concur), Because Of companies [...]

In a recent post titled On Control, I wrote about what happened to LIFE Magazine in 1972; in it I referred to a number of quotes from something called Dirck Halstead’s Platypus Papers. As an aside, I asked if anyone knew where I could find my favourite LIFE photograph, one that has eluded me for [...]

Dennis Howlett commented on a recent post of mine, On Control, where I was musing over Big’s relationship to Control Failure, and arguing that we needed a Better But Not That Big approach. One of the things Dennis said was “Big often means complex. So how do you propose to solve the complexity issues?” That [...]

Do you remember LIFE magazine as it was in the 1960s? Amazing photojournalism. I was fourteen when it closed, and since it was one of my favourite reads and I was one of those fourteen-year-olds, I asked my father why. And he said “It grew too big and too successful“. Now that’s an extreme summary [...]

I’ve always enjoyed the Francis Bacon quotation: If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts; but if he will be content to begin with doubts he shall end in certainties. It seems to mean more to me as I grow older. Odd, that. And it was with this quotation in mind [...]

I came across this post by Guy Kawasaki, commenting on Seth Godin’s latest book, due out sometime this nonth. Do read it, what they speak of is very much in tune with what I was saying in my previous post, even though there are a number of things I disagree with. Here’s what Guy quotes [...]

I’ve been doing some thinking. [It's OK, Malc, I am still taking the tablets :-) ] I was thinking about Doc’s piece on Markets Without Marketing, Hugh’s response and Tara’s response. I was thinking about Nick Lemann’s piece on Amateur Hour in the New York Times, Mitch Ratcliffe’s response and Jay Rosen’s response, as also [...]

Yes, it’s nearly time for the next recap. Tempus f. and all that jazz, but I hope to complete the recap before I go on vacation with the family in early August. So I thought I’d share a few things buzzing around inside my head, see what you think. The first theme is about client-side [...]

[A health warning: This is a very provisional post. I haven't thought through it too deeply, but there's something about it that compels me to write it now.] I’ve always been fascinated by collaborative filtering ever since I read the research papers on Firefly sometime in 1998. I got hooked on it by the time [...]

I’m going to be lazy and use parts of Wikipedia’s summary of The Mythical Man-Month. And make a few assertions as to why we may need to revisit the whole shebang. Yup, another very provisional post. More musing than thinking. The Mythical Man-Month: When we develop for the web, are there really any more large [...]

Many years ago, when I was working at Burroughs Corporation, we were building software for mainframes with dumb terminals. And then, as now, we would get regular complaints from “users” about the system being “slow”. [An aside: An old friend, David Taylor, recently reminded me at a conference that the term "user" now seems reserved [...]

I guess it behooves me to document the genealogy of this particular snowball. I’m privileged to belong to a mail list on internet economics moderated by Gordon Cook of the Cook Report. Gordon referred me to a piece by Peter Nicholson, President, Council of Canadian Academics. You can find the speech here. And Gordon in [...]

Yesterday my predecessor, Al-Noor Ramji, was quoted as saying that Google was BT’s “biggest threat”. You can find the story here. The reaction from many commentators was similar to that experienced by my colleague, Sean Park, when he went public with AmazonBay; they ranged from “you cannot be serious” through to “there’s some truth in [...]