Curt Doolittle

Author: Curt Doolittle

  • BIZ: EATING YOUR DOG FOOD We are getting fairly close to being able to use our p

    BIZ: EATING YOUR DOG FOOD

    We are getting fairly close to being able to use our product Oversing to run our own business. Just another month or two.

    At Microsoft we had this saying “eat your own dog food” which means “Use our own products”.

    The thing is, you should WANT to use your own product.

    It’s the same thing with CEO’s. If you’re going to build products, you should WANT THEM. For yourself. ‘Cause you’ll obsess over them.

    I love Oversing. I think it is the most awesome product that’s ever been built for the services market. And if I didn’t, then I wouldn’t build it. And I wouldn’t want to use it.

    You can’t obsess over something you don’t want and love. You can only obsess over the money it makes, or the happiness of the customers you want to keep, or the people you want to work with.

    But if you’re selling a product, your first obsession needs to be teh product. You should build products for yourself. If you have good taste. Customers will want it too. And while I agree that you can make products for customers, based upon customer demand, if you aren’t creating that demand, then you’re not obsessing enough about your product.

    Obsession is a beautiful thing.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-23 00:39:00 UTC

  • HUMOR: lowbrow

    HUMOR: lowbrow

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-22 23:50:00 UTC

  • POSSIBLE TAX RATES. The reason Europeans are poorer than americans is taxes

    http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/08/no-we-cant-return-to-the-sky-high-tax-rates-of-postwar-america/ON POSSIBLE TAX RATES.

    The reason Europeans are poorer than americans is taxes.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-22 14:10:00 UTC

  • AND WHY LIBERTARIANS SHOULD ENTER POLITICS

    http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2013/08/bitcoin_and_the.htmlBITCOIN. AND WHY LIBERTARIANS SHOULD ENTER POLITICS.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-22 14:01:00 UTC

  • WE CANT GET TO DENMARK. (Diversity) “There is no way the United States can mimic

    http://www.aei-ideas.org/2013/08/great-gatsby-the-chart-at-the-core-of-obamanomics/WHY WE CANT GET TO DENMARK.

    (Diversity)

    “There is no way the United States can mimic the outcomes of Denmark in the way Danes have made that accomplishment: a geographically small country, ethnically homogenous, with high levels of trust, and a labour market notably more structured is not a guide for American public policy.”

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-22 13:56:00 UTC

  • WHY NATURALISM? (GEM) The reason I advocate epistemic naturalism in all fields o

    WHY NATURALISM?

    (GEM)

    The reason I advocate epistemic naturalism in all fields over platonism in all fields, is not ideological or preferential or even metaphysical. It’s because I think that epistemic naturalism is as important as are objective truth, contract, the rule of law, the balance of powers, accounting, money and prices, for the survival and prosperity of man. Truth is truth. Expediency is expediency. Causality is different from consequence. And if people do not know that, they believe in magic.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-22 03:28:00 UTC

  • This is right up your alley

    This is right up your alley…

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-22 00:58:00 UTC

  • SILLY: POSITIONS The entire staff is conducting a heated debate. It’s not over a

    SILLY: POSITIONS

    The entire staff is conducting a heated debate. It’s not over anything architectural. Anything algorithmic. Or about performance. Or durability. But over the icons that should represent Individual, Group, Role and Position, in our software.

    It’s absurd. But, its so funny I don’t want to stop it. So I send them a set of icons with sexual positions. And now I’m waiting to see who checks their email first. 🙂

    BUT SERIOUSLY

    I remember having this same conversation, at Microsoft, about the icons in Microsoft Access. And way back then, thinking, ‘there is nothing in this room with any empirical support’. And ‘how come we never have these heated discussions about things that matter?’

    Humans are fascinating creatures.

    lol

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-20 07:44:00 UTC

  • TECH STUFF Never liked Java. its just the COBOL of today. Love PHP productivity.

    TECH STUFF

    Never liked Java. its just the COBOL of today.

    Love PHP productivity. Love the entirely javascript UI. Python maybe, for more algorithmic solutions. Php for data driven solutions.

    If we weren’t so far along, I’d make the shift to from jQuery to ExtJS, and insulate Laravel entirely from the front end. And split the teams. Its too costly spread the UI, even with MVC architecture. Too unproductive.

    Senscha renders horrid UI out of the box and jQuery is the toy if aesthetes, so it looks so much better.

    But converting jQuery ideas to extJS implementations would be a better trade off at current tech levels.

    Problem (opportunity) is that OO JS programmers are rare.

    So, if anyone wants to know what skill is most valuable. I’m still in the JS camp.

    Not sure about Objective C long term. Pattern says no.

    But Java project experience is such a sorting and filtering mechanism I understand why its a good enterprise risk mitigation strategy.

    But for my money, css/js/php | python/mysql is pretty hard to argue with.

    And JS really is maturing nicely.

    One more generation of the performance race and its looking pretty good.

    Nothing terribly insightful. But what I’m not saying might be. 🙂

    Cheers

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-20 06:39:00 UTC

  • I’d feel differently, perhaps, if I had ever met a bureaucrat whose incentives w

    I’d feel differently, perhaps, if I had ever met a bureaucrat whose incentives were to help the customer rather than engage in rent seeking. I haven’t. The people who deal with the tradesmen and permits are much better than the rest. But none of them is anywhere near the service provider of the worst discount store, or the best coffee shop.

    If you spend any time with government at all (I was in the justice department) it’s pretty clear that aside from perhaps judges and short term members of the house of representatives, that everyone’s a rent seeker. Everyone. And they want expansion of powers so they have access to expansion of rents.

    I don’t know yet how I feel about condo and neighborhood associations, but from what I’ve been able to collect (and it’s not easy) a town of ten thousand people is probably the maximum scale where bureaucrats act anything like citizens rather than rent seekers.

    Once you’re out of the city-state, everything collapses rapidly into corruption. In america, corruption is systemic and procedural, and takes advantage of the fact that the voting process cannot correct a bureaucracy. The competition to a bureaucracy is the court, not the vote.

    I actually prefer the corruption here in the east. I dont mind increasing the payroll of policemen and bureaucrats if they provide service for it. I do mind increasing the budget of the bureaucracy when they DONT give service for it.

    Russian friends always told me this was true but I couldn’t put my arms around it. They’re right. It’s MORE CORRUPT in America than in the east. It’s just that the corruption in systemic, not interpersonal.

    The rule of law is good government. Bureaucracy is bad government. The problem of government is bureaucracy.

    If a government wants to conspire to achieve my preferred ends, then it is not a government that’s hired labor. If it wants to conspire to use the products of my labor to achieve ends I disapprove of, then that is not government that is slavery.

    I am having a hard time defining good government. Unless government is hired labor under the law, rather than dictators in charge of the law.

    Source date (UTC): 2013-08-20 03:34:00 UTC