Ten catastrophes: All-time worst tech industry executive decisions

by Jason Perlow [Source]

John Sculley, Apple Computer: Throwing out Steve Jobs

 

In 1985, Apple Computer was in the midst of a technology transition. In the previous year, the company had just launched its first Macintosh computer, which had replaced the Apple ][ and Apple III line it had been selling successfully for the last several years.

Founder Steve Jobs had recruited former Pepsi-Cola executive John Sculley to act as Apple's CEO, in order to help grow the company. While Jobs was considered to be a charismatic and dynamic employee at Apple and at the Macintosh division which was under his direct leadership, he was also erratic, difficult to work with and temperamental, and it was beginning to put a strain on his relationship with his team members as well as on the Board of Directors of the company.

Facing a sales slump due to overwhelming competition from companies like IBM and Compaq that were selling PCs and clones, Jobs' relationship with Sculley deteriorated which resulted in his ouster from the company he and Steve Wozniak founded.

The 11-year period that Apple continued on without Steve Jobs is universally considered to be a major low point for the company. Without Jobs' vision and guidance, innovation slowed and Apple underwent several leadership changes. Revenue and stock valuation plummeted, the company was on the verge of financial oblivion, and by the mid 1990's the company was in desperate need for a replacement to the aging Macintosh OS. 

In 1996, Apple purchased Steve Jobs' NeXT, which would serve as the foundation for what would become OS X and later on the iOS which powers the iPhone and iPad. Gil Amelio, the current CEO, was ousted in 1997 in a boardroom coup and Steve Jobs returned as Chairman and CEO.

Jobs would guide the company into the release of the iMac, the iPod, OSX and and x86-based Macs, and then later the iPhone, iPad and Apple TV, ushering in a new golden age for Apple.

Related:

Being Steve Jobs’ Boss - Confessions of the last man to manage the singular inventor!

Steve Jobs’ outlook on life at 31 after resigning from Apple [1986].

Metals Like Plastics: Meet the Supermaterial That Could Change Gadgets

ScienceDaily  — Imagine a material that's stronger than steel, but just as versatile as plastic, able to take on a seemingly endless variety of forms. For decades, materials scientists have been trying to come up with just such an ideal substance, one that could be molded into complex shapes with the same ease and low expense as plastic but without sacrificing the strength and durability of metal.

Jan Schroers and his team have developed novel metal alloys that can be blow molded into virtually any shape. (Credit: Image courtesy of Yale University)

Now a team led by Jan Schroers, a materials scientist at Yale University, has shown that some recently developed bulk metallic glasses (BMGs)-metal alloys that have randomly arranged atoms as opposed to the orderly, crystalline structure found in ordinary metals-can be blow molded like plastics into complex shapes that can't be achieved using regular metal, yet without sacrificing the strength or durability that metal affords. Their findings are described online in the current issue of the journal Materials Today.

"These alloys look like ordinary metal but can be blow molded just as cheaply and as easily as plastic," Schroers said. So far the team has created a number of complex shapes-including seamless metallic bottles, watch cases, miniature resonators and biomedical implants-that can be molded in less than a minute and are twice as strong as typical steel.

The materials cost about the same as high-end steel, Schroers said, but can be processed as cheaply as plastic. The alloys are made up of different metals, including zirconium, nickel, titanium and copper.

The team blow molded the alloys at low temperatures and low pressures, where the bulk metallic glass softens dramatically and flows as easily as plastic but without crystallizing like regular metal. It's the low temperatures and low pressures that allowed the team to shape the BMGs with unprecedented ease, versatility and precision, Schroers said. In order to carefully control and maintain the ideal temperature for blow molding, the team shaped the BMGs in a vacuum or in fluid.

"The trick is to avoid friction typically present in other forming techniques," Schroers said. "Blow molding completely eliminates friction, allowing us to create any number of complicated shapes, down to the nanoscale."

Schroers and his team are already using their new processing technique to fabricate miniature resonators for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-tiny mechanical devices powered by electricity-as well as gyroscopes and other resonator applications.

In addition, by blow molding the BMGs, the team was able to combine three separate steps in traditional metal processing (shaping, joining and finishing) into one, allowing them to carry out previously cumbersome, time- and energy-intensive processing in less than a minute.

"This could enable a whole new paradigm for shaping metals," Schroers said. "The superior properties of BMGs relative to plastics and typical metals, combined with the ease, economy and precision of blow molding, have the potential to impact society just as much as the development of synthetic plastics and their associated processing methods have in the last century."

Other authors of the paper include Thomas M. Hodges and Golden Kumar (Yale University); Hari Raman and A.J. Barnes (SuperformUSA); and Quoc Pham and Theodore A. Waniuk (Liquidmetal Technologies).

Journal Reference:

1. Jan Schroers, Thomas M. Hodges, Golden Kumar, Hari Raman, Anthony J. Barnes, Quoc Pham, Theodore A. Waniuk. Thermoplastic blow molding of metals.Materials Today, 2011; 14 (1-2): 14 DOI: 10.1016/S1369-7021(11)70018-9

Bright burning star at the birth of King Charles II was supernova, Cassiopeia A

AFP | Source

Cassiopeia A is the remnant of a once massive star that died in a violent supernova explosion. Picture: NASA Source: Supplied

THE legend that a bright star accompanied the birth of English King Charles II, which was thought to be a portent of a powerful monarch, has been proven by scientists.

One of the abiding legends of Britain's royal family is that the noon-day star appeared at Charles II's birth in 1630, who was to restore the English monarchy after the execution of his father.

"The Most Glorious Star... shining most brightly in a Miraculous manner in the Face of the Sun," was how an English writer, Edward Matthew, described the supposed event in a 1661 pamphlet.

"Never any Starre had appeared before at the birth of any (the Highest humane Hero) except our Saviour."

Accounts of the "royal star" have often been written off by historians as propaganda, coloured with Christ-like ornamentation, to cement Charles II's claim to the throne after his father had been overthrown.

But new evidence, to be put to a meeting of Britain's Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) today, suggests that a new star did in fact attend the royal birth.

The star could have been a supernova called Cassiopeia A, say Martin Lunn, former curator of astronomy at the Yorkshire Museum in northern England, and Lila Rakoczy, a US-based independent scholar.

Cassiopeia A was a massive star that eventually collapsed in upon itself and blew apart. Its dramatic flare of light took 11,000 years to cross the cosmos, finally reaching Earth in the 17th century, they say.

Today, the former star is familiar to every radio-astronomer as a seething X-ray ember that is no longer visible to the naked eye.

Numerous but sketchy sources point to a celestial sighting in the 17th century, according to the researchers. These observations, though, stretch over 30 years and cluster in the latter part of the century.

Lunn and Rakoczy take a new look at the evidence and calculate that the supernova could indeed have been seen on May 29, 1630, the day when the future Charles II was born.

"The number and variety of sources that refer to the new star strongly suggest that an astronomical event really did take place," Lunn said.

"Our work raises questions about the current method for dating supernovae, but leads to the exciting possibility of solving a decades-old astronomical puzzle."

The idea is being presented at an RAS conference in Llandudno, Wales, gathering around 500 astronomers and space scientists, the Society said in a press release.

The 1642-1651 English civil war focussed on a revolt by parliament against the monarch's claim to have a divine right to rule.

The parliamentary forces, known as Roundheads, executed King Charles I in 1649 and routed the army of his son in 1651.

Charles II returned from exile in 1660 and became dubbed "the Merry Monarch" for his pleasure-loving ways after the era of puritanism.

But he accepted that the monarch reigns with the consent of parliament, the principle that underpins British democracy today.

In 2006, a team of astronomers estimated that a "guest star" noted by Chinese chroniclers in 185 AD was a supernova whose remnants, RCW 86, still glow today in non-visible parts of the energy spectrum.

A supernova spotted in 1572 by the Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe lingered for 18 months.

Its appearance was traumatic for many astronomers at the time, for it destroyed the notion, set in stone by Aristotle, that the Universe was fixed and unchanged. It reputedly was the inspiration for the terrifying celestial portent in Shakespeare's "Hamlet".

 

Dr. Brian May on Freddie Mercury's creativity + Happy birthday, Freddie Mercury

Freddie Mercury Google Doodle

 

 

 

by Brian May [founding member of Queen] @ googleblog.blogspot.com

 

I was first introduced to Freddie Mercury—a paradoxically shy yet flamboyant young man—at the side of the stage at one of our early gigs as the group “SMILE.” He told me he was excited by how we played, he had some ideas—and he could sing! I'm not sure we took him very seriously, but he did have the air of someone who knew he was right. He was a frail but energised dandy, with seemingly impossible dreams and a wicked twinkle in his eye. A while later we had the opportunity to actually see him sing ... and it was scary! He was wild and untutored, but massively charismatic. Soon, he began his evolution into a world-class vocal talent, right in front of our eyes.

Freddie was fully focused, never allowing anything or anyone to get in the way of his vision for the future. He was truly a free spirit. There are not many of these in the world. To achieve this, you have to be, like Freddie, fearless—unafraid of upsetting anyone's apple cart.

Some people imagine Freddie as the fiery, difficult diva who required everyone around him to compromise. No. In our world, as four artists attempting to paint on the same canvas, Freddie was always the one who could find the compromise—the way to pull it through. If he found himself at odds with any one of us, he would quickly dispel the cloud with a generous gesture, a wisecrack or an impromptu present. I remember one morning after a particularly tense discussion he presented me with a cassette. He had been up most of the night compiling a collage of my guitar solos. "I wanted you to hear them as I hear them, dear," he said. "They're all fab, so I made them into a symphony!"

To create with Freddie was always stimulating to the max. He was daring, always sensing a way to get outside the box. Sometimes he was too far out ... and he'd usually be the first to realise it. With a conspiratorial smile he would say "Oh ... did I lose it, dears?!" But usually there was sense in his nonsense—art in his madness. It was liberating. I think he encouraged us all in his way, to believe in our own madness, and the collective mad power of the group Queen.

Freddie would have been 65 this year, and even though physically he is not here, his presence seems more potent than ever. Freddie made the last person at the back of the furthest stand in a stadium feel that he was connected. He gave people proof that a man could achieve his dreams—made them feel that through him they were overcoming their own shyness, and becoming the powerful figure of their ambitions. And he lived life to the full. He devoured life. He celebrated every minute. And, like a great comet, he left a luminous trail which will sparkle for many a generation to come.

Happy birthday Freddie!

Posted by Dr. Brian May, CBE. Guitarist.

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Infographic: Labor Day

With all the hot dogs and beer, it’s easy to forget the labor part of Labor Day. Here, a look at the labor force, past and present, starting with 1971, when the microprocessor was introduced and we began our crawl away from manufacturing and toward the service-driven economy of today. | By Rachel Z. Arndt

[Illustraton by Francesco Franchi] [Source]

Music Industry: Release day economics

uniformmotion:

Our new record was ‘officially’ released today. This means that you’ll find the digital version on various different Digital music stores like iTunes, AmazonMP3 and eMusic, and you’ll be able to stream the music from services such as Spotify and Deezer.

The physical versions (CD and Vinyl) are only available from our Bandcamp site and at gigs. 

Unfortunately, you will not find our record in any record stores. The reason for this is because we do not have a record label, which means we have no access to distribution. Without a distributor, you cannot sell your CD’s in record stores. If you work for a distributor and you’re interested in carrying our CD or Vinyl, or both, feel free to contact us! 

If you choose to purchase our music or use one of the ‘legal’ streaming services, here’s an overview of where the pennies go. 

SPOTIFY: 

With Spotify, we’ll get 0.003 EUR/play. 

If you listen to the album all the way through, we’ll get 0.029 EUR.

If you listen to the album 10 times on Spotify, we’ll get 0.29 EUR

If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 2.94 EUR

If you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get 29.47 EUR!

If you use the free version of Spotify, it won’t cost you anything. Spotify will make money from ads. If you use any of the paid versions, we have no idea how they carve up the money. They only disclose this information to the Major record labels…

DEEZER:

Deezer seems to pay a little more.

We’ve been getting 0.006 EUR/play from them. That’s 0.052 EUR/album play. If you listen to the album 10 times on Deezer, we’ll get 0.52 EUR. If you listen to it a hundred times, we’ll get 5.2 EUR. If you listen to the album 1,000 times (once a day for 3 years!) we’ll get a whopping 52 EUR! 

If you use the free version of Deezer, it won’t cost you anything and Deezer will make money from the ads. If you use any of the paid versions, we have no idea how they carve up the money either.

AMAZON MP3:

You’ll pay 7.11 EUR to download the MP3’s. We will get 4.97 EUR of that. That’s a 70-30 split.

iTUNES:

The album will cost you 8.91 EUR to buy from Apple.

There’s a 70-30% split there too, so we will keep 6.28 EUR/album.

That being said, it costs us 35 EUR/year to keep an album on iTunes, Spotify, and Amazon (105 EUR per year for all 3 of our albums!) so we don’t make any money until 24 people have bought a digital copy of the album on iTunes, or 150 single songs, or if we get tens of thousands of listens on Spotify! In most cases, it’s actually more economically viable not to sell the music at all.

But what about if you buy the Digital version directly from us?

DIGITAL:

We allow people to pay what they want for the digital version. If you choose to pay 5 EUR, Paypal takes 0.37 EUR, Bandcamp takes 0.75 EUR. Uniform Motion keeps 3.88 EUR. it doesn’t cost us anything to have a page on bandcamp.

If you decide to pay nothing, well, we get nothing, but at least you didn’t give money indirectly to major record labels, which seems to be the case with Spotify!!

CD: 

If you buy a CD, directly from us for 10 EUR, Paypal takes 0.515 EUR, Bandcamp takes 1.5 EUR. So there’s slightly less than 8 EUR left for us. But hold on a second, it costs a fair bit to make the CD.

The CD itself costs 1.2 EUR, the booklet costs about 50 cents, the CD packaging is 1.8 EUR and the sticker on the front costs 35 cents.

That’s a total of 3.65 EUR

So in reality, there’s 4.34 EUR left for us.

VINYL:

If you buy a 12” Vinyl from us at 15 EUR, Bandcamp takes 2.25 EUR, Paypal takes 0.646 EUR so there’s 12.10 left. The cost of the Vinyl itself is 3.06 EUR

The labels cost 1.3 EUR. For a total of 4.36 EUR

So there’s 7.75 EUR left for us.

However, we had to press 250 of these (because that’s the minimum order), so it’s very unlikely we’ll make any money on them.

We need to sell 72 copies before we break even on the vinyl edition. We’ve sold about 30 so far.

If we break even, we’ll lower the price a little bit. :)

 

Irwin Jacobs: Qualcomm founder talks about the future of wireless technologies

JASON PONTIN @ technologyreview.com conducted an interesting Q/A session with Qualcomm founder Irwin Jacobs. Mr. Jacobs offered some inside details on the business side of things and provided guidance for future applications as well.

Qualcomm provided Google with the Snapdragon chip, to launch a phone that didn't require contracts with carriers. The business model didn't work. Why not? What other models might reduce the heavy weight the carriers exert upon innovation?

Google didn't press it very hard because they were then competing with other manufacturers who were making Android phones. And so between not being marketed actively and having more limited distribution and support, that model did not work. But there are certainly situations where you can buy phones retail and then sign up with an operator for the service. We'll see how that develops. There are also other models such as the one that Kindle started, and others have followed, where when you order a book using your Kindle, the information goes out over a cellular network, the book comes back over a cellular network, but you don't pay separately for it—it's just buried in the price of the book. We'll see a number of different business models, driven by competition, driven by the various applications.

What can the wireless industry do to keep up with and manage the unprecedented demands being placed on the network by the growth of mobile video?

The interest of subscribers in video became apparent in South Korea when we first launched some of the 3G services. Video on phones is just going to continue to increase. I don't think users are going to broadcast so much as want video on demand. And that does load the network down quite a bit. That's the reason we developed our MediaFLO technology [a service from Qualcomm that lets mobile carriers stream videos on cell phones]: we wanted a separate frequency band to provide a forward link that carries the videos to the phone. I suspect that additional forward-link-capacity spectrum will be made available and used to support video. The other way one gets spectrum is by having additional base stations. What we'll see is the network evolving to have more and more access points. Some may be in your home. But the spectrum's limited, so we'll have to do things such as reuse the same spectrum.

The mobile market is by no means now limited just to phones. How will Qualcomm change as tablets and other devices become increasingly common?

The key issue with these new devices will be that they'll need chips that use very little energy and provide a lot of computing power. We recognized this early on, and we set up a whole group to research the problem. That's where Snapdragon came from. Those chips were initially only in phones but are now moving up into other devices. This is an important area for Qualcomm, because I believe that tablets will probably become the major computing devices for most people.

Augmented reality has been a significant investment for Qualcomm. Why do you think that augmented reality will be such an important function on our mobile devices?

There are lots of interesting new capabilities. Say I'm in a foreign country: there's a street sign I can't read, so I hold up my phone, and it translates the sign for me. We're beginning to see other examples show up. You might do product comparisons in a shop. You could locate friends who are willing to be located when you approach an area. Since my memory is not as good as it once was, particularly for faces, one I like very much is the possibility of a phone's camera seeing a face and whispering in my ear who that person is.

Continue Reading here.

How Mobile Phones Jump-Start Developing Economies

BY ANTONIO REGALADO @ technologyreview.com

 

Ubiquitous handsets introduce mobile payments to those who lack bank accounts.

 

Virtual wallet: A store in Quito, Ecuador, is one of dozens in the country testing Mony, a way for merchants and suppliers to exchange money by text message. Most Ecuadorians have cell phones but lack bank accounts and must spend time traveling to pay bills in cash. 

Credit: Mony/YellowPepper

 

As one of the fastest-spreading technologies in history, the mobile phone has been transformative for the billions of people in the developing world who never had a landline or an Internet connection. One of the most unexpected benefits is its ability to deliver banking services.

Veronica Suarez, like some 2.5 billion other adults on the planet, has no bank account of her own. Suarez and her husband run a small grocery store in Quito, Ecuador, a city of about 1.4 million people on a plateau ringed with dormant volcanoes. In the past, she would often spend half a day traveling to pay bills in cash. But since June, she has been testing a mobile banking service called Mony, which is run by the Panama-based startup YellowPepper Holding. Now she can simply type out text messages that zap payments to the phones of the delivery men who bring cases of Coca-Cola and boxes of vegetable oil to her shop. That could enable her to save travel time, reduce the risk of getting robbed, and run her business more efficiently.

Continue reading here.

 

 

The Supernova's Secrets Cracked at Last?

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK

Hank Childs / Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory

Most stars end their lives in a whimper — our own sun will almost certainly be one of them — but the most massive stars go out with an impressive bang. When that happens, creating what's known as a Type II supernova, the associated blast of energy is so brilliant that it can briefly outshine an entire galaxy, give birth to ultra-dense neutron stars or black holes, and forge atoms so heavy that even the Big Bang wasn't powerful enough to create them. If supernovas didn't exist, neither would gold, silver, platinum or uranium. The last time a supernova went off close enough to earth to be visible without a telescope, back in 1987, it made the cover of TIME.

Given the Type II supernovas' cosmic importance, you might think astronomers would have figured out how they work — and in a general way, they have. But when it comes to the most critical few moments of the detonation process, says Princeton theorist Adam Burrows, you'd be wrong. "We've been working on this for about 50 years," he explains, "but every time we think we've nailed it, the answer turns out to be ambiguous or wrong." (There's an entirely different kind of a supernova by the way, called a Type I, which astronomers don't fully understand either, but that's a different story.)

Thanks to a new, powerful supercomputer simulation, though, reported in the current Astrophysical Journal, Burrows and a group of colleagues at Princeton and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, in California, are convinced they're getting closer. "We're not there yet," he says, "but victory is in sight."

 

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,2021122,00.html#ixzz1WgCATqIp

A Gene to Explain Depression

ALICE PARK @ healthland.time.com

ATSUSHI YAMADA

 

 

As powerful as genes are in exposing clues to diseases, not even the most passionate geneticist believes that complex conditions such as depression can be reduced to a tell-tale string of DNA.

But a new study confirms earlier evidence that a particular gene, involved in ferrying a brain chemical critical to mood known as serotonin, may play a role in triggering the mental disorder in some people.

Researchers led by Dr. Srijan Sen, a professor of psychiatry at University of Michigan, report in the Archives of General Psychiatry that individuals with a particular form of the serotonin transporter gene were more vulnerable to developing depression when faced with stressful life events such as having a serious medical illness or being a victim of childhood abuse. The form of the gene that these individuals inherit prevents the mood-regulating serotonin from being re-absorbed by nerve cells in the brain. Having such a low-functioning version of the transporter starting early in life appears to set these individuals up for developing depression later on, although the exact relationship between this gene, stress, and depression isn't clear yet. 

 

 

Read more: http://healthland.time.com/2011/01/03/a-gene-to-explain-depression/#ixzz1Wg9RvFWW

Walter Mosley: The Older You Are, The More You Live In The Past

Big Think Editors @ bigthink.com

Walter Mosley is the author of more than 34 critically acclaimed books, including the major bestselling mystery series featuring the character Easy Rawlins. His work has been translated into 21 languages and includes literary fiction, science fiction, political monographs, and a young adult novel.

"A lot of people get upset at young people," says Novelist Walter Mosley, "They say, 'Young people aren’t living up to their potential. Young people are interested in things which are shallow, which are meaningless, which are unimportant. But the truth is, is that the older you are, the more you’re thinking is historical, and the more historical things become—especially in our world today, where things change so quickly because of technology, the more they’re invalid."

Aspiring writers shouldn't measure their success in dollars and cents or fame, says Mosley, but rather in their ability to entertain people with their writing. "Mark Twain, Charles Dickens, you know, Victor Hugo. I mean all of these people, they’re popular writers. They’re writing to the broadest range of people," explains Mosley. "Yeah, it’s great literature, but it was popular literature when it was written.  And that’s the case with almost all of the literature that survives starting from Homer. You know? It’s the adventure; it’s the story; it’s the fight; it’s people falling in love; it’s people with deep, you know, personality disorders who succeed anyway; you know, beyond themselves. That’s what great literature is."  

Continue reading here.

 

30-second snapshot: the U.S. and China

Big Think Editors @ bigthink.com [Source]

 

China is shaping up to be one of America's primary competitors in the future global economy. The infographics below provide an entry-level fact base for putting the growing rivalry into perspective.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Source]

 

The Trouble with 'Healthy' Kid Foods

BY KATHLEEN KINGSBURY

Most parents already know that sugary sodas and greasy potato chips are not the healthiest food choices for children. But what about the hundreds of other widely available and kid-friendly packaged foods — pastas, frozen dinners, granola bars — that at least appear to be more wholesome?

A new Canadian study suggests that even these foods — most of which make nutritional claims on their packaging — aren't all they profess to be. University of Calgary researchers analyzed the nutritional benefit of more than 360 such products, often marketed as "fun foods," which are aimed at children either through kid-friendly package graphics or tie-ins with children's TV shows and movies. Three-quarters of these foods, for example, came in packages bearing cartoon images. Researchers did not include junk food in their analysis, but they found that nearly 90% of kid products still did not meet established nutritional standards. What's more, 62% of the foods that researchers deemed to be of "poor nutritional quality" made positive nutritional claims on the package — such as being low-fat, containing essential nutrients or being a source of calcium. "If a parent sees a product that makes specific nutritional claims, they may assume that the whole product is nutritious," says author Charlene Elliott, a communications and culture professor at the University of Calgary. "Our study has shown that that is definitely not true in the vast majority of cases."

Read more: http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1823509,00.html#ixzz1WgAzJG4f

X-Men Family Tree [Infographic]

Cool Looking Infographics about the relationships between the different x-men, can you identify them all? I couldn't....

via

Being Steve Jobs' Boss - Confessions of the last man to manage the singular inventor!

Businessweek.com had done an indepth feature on former PepsiCo and Apple President John Sculley, who was the last man to manage Steve Jobs! It's one of the more insighful stories i have read about the duo. I posted some insights that John Sculley had about working with and managing Steve Jobs below.

 

Jobs and Sculley in New York City, 1984 DIANA WALKER/CONTOUR/GETTY IMAGES

 

Steve Jobs was 28 years old in 1983 and already recognized as one of the most innovative thinkers in Silicon Valley. The Apple (AAPL) board, though, was not ready to anoint him chief executive officer and picked PepsiCo (PEP) President John Sculley, famous for creating the Pepsi Challenge, to lead the company. Sculley helped increase Apple's sales from $800 million to $8 billion annually during his decade as CEO, but he also presided over Jobs' departure, which sent Apple into what Sculley calls its "near-death experience." In his first extensive interview on the subject, Sculley tells Cultofmac.com editor Leander Kahney how his partnership with Jobs came to be, how design ruled—and still rules—everything at Apple, and why he never should have been CEO in the first place.

 Sculley reminisces about his experience:

What makes Steve's methodology different from everyone else's is that he always believed the most important decisions you make are not the things you do, but the things you decide not to do. He's a minimalist. I remember going into Steve's house, and he had almost no furniture in it. He just had a picture of Einstein, whom he admired greatly, and he had a Tiffany lamp and a chair and a bed. He just didn't believe in having lots of things around, but he was incredibly careful in what he selected.

 

 

 

Everything at Apple can be best understood through the lens of designing. Whether it's designing the look and feel of the user experience, or the industrial design, or the system design, and even things like how the boards were laid out. The boards had to be beautiful in Steve's eyes when you looked at them, even though when he created the Macintosh he made it impossible for a consumer to get in the box, because he didn't want people tampering with anything.

 

 

Apple is famous for the same kind of lifestyle advertising now. It shows people living an enviable lifestyle, courtesy of Apple's products. Hip young people grooving to iPods.

 

 

I don't take any credit for it. Steve's brilliance is his ability to see something and then understand it and then figure out how to put it into the context of his design methodology—everything is design.

 

 

An anecdotal story: A friend of mine was at meetings at Apple and Microsoft on the same day. And this was in the last year, so this was recently. He went into the Apple meeting (he's a vendor for Apple), and as soon as the designers walked in the room, everyone stopped talking, because the designers are the most respected people in the organization. Everyone knows the designers speak for Steve because they have direct reporting to him. It is only at Apple where design reports directly to the CEO.

 

 

Later in the day he was at Microsoft. When he went into the Microsoft meeting, everybody was talking and then the meeting starts and no designers ever walk into the room. All the technical people are sitting there trying to add their ideas of what ought to be in the design. That's a recipe for disaster.

 

 

Everyone around him knows he beats to a different drummer. He sets standards that are entirely different than any other CEO would set.

 

He's a minimalist and constantly reducing things to their simplest level. It's not simplistic. It's simplified. Steve is a systems designer. He simplifies complexity.

 

The reason why I said it was a mistake to have hired me as CEO was Steve always wanted to be CEO. It would have been much more honest if the board had said, "Let's figure out a way for him to be CEO. You could focus on the stuff that you bring, and he focuses on the stuff he brings."

I'm actually convinced that if Steve hadn't come back when he did—if they had waited another six months—Apple would have been history. It would have been gone, absolutely gone.

 

Continue reading here.

Steve Jobs’ outlook on life at 31 after resigning from Apple [1986].

 

 

 

 

How Nouriel Roubini Foresaw The Financial Crisis

Big Think Editors @ bigthink.com

 

New York University economics professor Nouriel Roubini famously predicted the most recent global financial crisis well before most of his peers did. He says he did this simply by looking at the data and considering it in the context of past bubbles. Roubini recently spoke with Big Think about how to see what’s really happening—even when most people don't agree with you.

The economic bubble (and burst) can be a lesson in avoiding group think, explains Roubini.  “The issue is not why myself or a few others got them, but why most the people, not just economists, don’t see them coming,” he says of the data of a looming economic collapse that should have set off more alarms.  The key problem, he says, is when there is a an economic bubble, “everybody lives in a bubble ... They don’t live in reality and they delude themselves.”
 
To see a bubble from the inside, Roubini adds, it’s important not to get blinded by your own incentive. "It’s very hard to be independent and speak the truth, even if you can be very smart," he says, if your pay is tied to the results you are expected to produce.  Independence from the results provides a clearer picture, he notes.

 

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A Way to Make the Smart Grid Smarter

Kevin Bullis @ technologyreview.com states that new solid-state power-management devices will charge cars fast and make the power grid more flexible and efficient.

Smart Transformer: A prototype of a smart solid-state transformer from the Electric Power Research Institute. It’s smaller and more versatile than today’s transformers. The module on the left converts high-voltage alternating current from the grid to direct current. On the right is an inverter that converts that power to the 120-volt AC that comes out of standard wall outlets. To the right of the outlets are two more power interfaces, one for 240-volt AC power and one for 400-volt DC. 
Credit: EPRI

New semiconductor-based devices for managing power on the grid could make the "smart grid" even smarter. They would allow electric vehicles to be charged fast and let utilities incorporate large amounts of solar and wind power without blackouts or power surges. These devices are being developed by a number of groups, including those that recently received funding from the new Advanced Research Projects Agency for Energy (ARPA-E) and the National Science Foundation.

As utilities start to roll out the smart grid, they are focused on gathering information, such as up-to-the-minute measurements of electricity use from smart meters installed at homes and businesses. But as the smart grid progresses, they'll be adding devices, such as smart solid-state transformers, that will strengthen their control over how power flows through their lines, says Alex Huang, director of a National Research Foundation research center that's developing such devices. "If smart meters are the brains of the smart grid," he says, "devices such as solid-state transformers are the muscle." These devices could help change the grid from a system in which power flows just one way—from the power station to consumers—to one in which homeowners and businesses commonly produce power as well.

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How to Train Your Own Brain

Lauren Gravitz @ technologyreview.com posts about a new way to create and interpret real-time brain scans could help addicts control their cravings.

Brainstorm: This fMRI scan highlights areas that are most active during two thought processes: One (SMA) is active when subjects think about tennis, the other (PPA) lights up when they imagine roaming through a familiar space.
Credit: Anna Rose Childress, University of Pennsylvania

Technology might not be advanced enough yet to let people read someone else's mind, but researchers are at least inching closer to helping people to read and control their own. In a study presented last week at the Society for Neuroscience meeting in San Diego, scientists used a combination of brain-scanning and feedback techniques to train subjects to move a cursor up and down with their thoughts. The subjects could perform this task after just five minutes of training.

The scientists hope to use this information to help addicts learn to control their own brain states and, consequently, their cravings.

Scientists have previously shown that people can learn to consciously control their brain activity if they're shown their brain activity data in real time—a technique called real-time functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). Researchers have used this technology effectively to teach people to control chronic pain and depression. They've been pursuing similar feedback methods to help drug users kick their addictions.

But these efforts have been difficult to put into practice. Part of the problem is that scientists have had to choose which part of the brain to focus on, based on existing knowledge of neuroscience. But that approach may miss out on areas that are also important for the particular function under study.

In addition, focusing on a limited region adds extra noise to the system—much like looking too closely at just one swatch of a Pointillist painting—the mix of odd colors doesn't make sense until you step back and see how the dots fit together. Psychologist Anna Rose Childress, Jeremy Magland, and their colleagues at the University of Pennsylvania have overcome this issue by designing a new system of whole-brain imaging and pairing it with an algorithm that let them determine which regions of the brain are most centrally involved in a certain thought process.

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Steve Jobs' outlook on life at 31 after resigning from Apple [1986].

I came across one of Steve Jobs' lesser known excerpts / Quotes, it gives real insight into his outlook on life at least in his younger years. The following is excerpted from a piece Joe Nocera wrote about Steve Jobs for Esquire in 1986, when Steve Jobs was 31, he had just resigned from Apple and was starting his new company NeXT.

Jobs at NeXT. Photo via waybeta.com

 

“Whenever you do any one thing intensely over a period of time,” he says, “you have to give up other lives you could be living.” He gives a shrug that implies that this is a small price. “You have to have a real single-minded kind of tunnel vision if you want to get anything significant accomplished,” Again, the same it’s- worth- it shrug. “Especially if the desire is not to be a businessman, but to be a creative person...

But isn’t he a businessman?

“My self- identity does not revolve around being a businessman, though I recognize that is what I do. I think of myself more as a person who builds neat things. I like building neat things. I like making tools that are useful to people. I like working with very bright people. I like interacting in the world of ideas, though somehow those ideas have to be tied to some physical reality. One of the things I like the most is dropping a new idea on a bunch of incredibly smart and talented people and then letting them work it out themselves. I like all of that very, very much.” There is a note of excitement in his voice. “I’ve had lots of girlfriends,” he adds. “But the greatest high in my life was the day we introduced the Macintosh.”

And Apple?

“Apple,” he says slowly, searching for the right analogy, “Apple is like an intense love affair with a girl you really, really like, and then she decides to drop you and go out with someone who’s not so neat.” Lewin, who is sitting next to Jobs, immediately chuckles at the seeming absurdity of the comparison, and that makes Jobs chuckle too. But Jobs truly did love Apple; in a weird way it seems right that he should compare it to a passionate affair.

Mostly he speaks about Apple with more sorrow than anger. There was a time when he thought he would always be connected to it— taking sabbaticals from time to time, but always coming back. Coming home. He clearly regrets that that possibility no longer exists.

He will not say anything at all about Sculley, nor will Sculley speak publicly about Jobs; not long ago the Apple president, under contract to write his autobiography, simply could not bring himself to “tell all” about how he bested Jobs. But both men are obviously saddened by their falling out.

One mutual friend recently bumped into a limo driver who occasionally drives both men. “Whenever Sculley or his wife gets in the car,” the driver said, “the first thing they ask is, ‘How’s Steve?’ ”We have almost arrived in San Francisco. “I think I have five more great products in me,” Jobs says, and then goes off on a long, rambling discourse on the joys of working on computers at this particular moment in history. He compares it to what it must have been like to work for Henry Ford when the automobile was still in its infancy and the technological boundaries were there to be broken. “It must have been the most incredible feeling,” he says, “to know that this was going to change America. And it did!” He grins suddenly. “If we can create the kind of company I think we can, it will give me an extreme amount of pleasure.”

 

The New York Times has graciously made the full piece -- reprinted as Chapter 2 in Nocera's 2008 Book Good Guys and Bad Guys -- available here. Embedded below as well.

Nocera_Ch2[1].pdf Download this file

Why Are Modern Cars So Expensive?

 Mike Allen @  Popular Mechanics points out that cars have never been cheap, but with the ubiquity of computers and electronics, taking a car to the shop is more expensive than ever.

The Price of Progress

Then: Tapered Roller Wheel Bearing Set
Cost: $20
Now: Sealed Wheel Bearing Set
Cost: $150

Sealed tapered roller bearings are not only structurally stronger, they also don't require periodic greasing or fussy clearance adjustments. And they allow the manufacturer to streamline the production—no mess or adjusting, just slap the cartridge onto the spindle in seconds. Upside for the consumer: They generally last the life of the car. 

Then: Key
Cost: $2.99
Now: Key Fob
Cost: $299 and up

The compelling reason for high-end key fobs is antitheft. The better fobs use a rolling code with millions of passwords that change with every start. Remote and proximity unlocking are just gravy. Seeing as how it's considered a luxury item, you pay through the nose. Work-around: Look in the aftermarket or on eBay for replacements, although you may still require the dealer to program it. 

Then: Traditional Mineral-Based ATF
Cost: $2.99/qt
Now: Synthetic ATF +5
Cost: $7.99/qt

Higher underhood temperatures, locking torque converters with more heat-producing friction and the lowered maintenance expectations of consumers make car manufacturers specify synthetic fluid for use in their automatic transmissions. And many vehicles use as much as 12 to 14 quarts. Upside: The expensive stuff is supposed to last for the life of the vehicle. 

Then: Your Right Foot
Cost: Free
Now: ABS Controller
Cost: $600 and up

ABS controllers contain not only a lot of complicated electronics, but delicate high-pressure pumps to cycle the brakes off and on and eliminate locked wheels under braking. Rarely, a skillful driver can match the ABS's prowess, but who has that presence of mind in a panic stop? Aside from the controller, there are tone wheels and sensors that also need occasional replacement. 

Then: Sealed-Beam Headlight
Cost: 4.79
Now: Composite HID Lamp
Cost: $300 and up

Oddly enough, sealed-beam headlights were mandated in the 1940s to ensure that the reflectors didn't corrode and reduce lighting efficiency. Modern composite headlamps are generally much brighter and far less likely to be broken by a stone and usually integrate the turn signals. But they're very expensive to replace and can collect condensation and eventually haze over, requiring periodic polishing.

 

Read more: The Price of Modern Car Mechanics – Car Repair Price - Popular Mechanics 

 

The 20 fastest-growing U.S. imports from China 2010-2011

Source

Why Life Is Physics, Not Chemistry

Physics Arxiv Blog @ MIT

 The idea that life boils down to chemistry is being usurped by a much more ambitious idea, says two of the world's leading biophysicists.

 Nigel Goldenfeld and Carl Woese at the University of Illinois suggest that biologists need to think about their field in a radical new way: as a branch of condensed matter physics. Their basic conjecture is that life is an emergent phenomena that occurs in systems that are far out of equilibrium. If you accept this premise, then two questions immediately arise: what laws describe such systems and how are we to get at them.

Goldenfeld and Woese say that biologists' closed way of thinking on this topic is embodied by the phrase: all life is chemistry. Nothing could be further from the truth, they say.

They have an interesting analogy to help press their case: the example of superconductivity. It would be easy to look at superconductivity and imagine that it can be fully explained by the properties of electrons as they transfer in and out of the outer atomic orbitals. You might go further and say that superconductivity is all atoms and chemistry.

And yet the real explanation is much more interesting and profound. It turns out that many of the problems of superconductivity are explained by a theory which describes the relationship between electromagnetic fields and long range order. When the symmetry in this relationship breaks down, the result is superconductivity.

And it doesn't just happen in materials on Earth. This kind of symmetry breaking emerges in other exotic places such as the cores of quark stars. Superconductivity is an emergent phenomenon and has little to do with the behaviour of atoms. A chemist would be flabbergasted.

According to Goldenfeld and Woese, life is like superconductivity. It is an emergent phenomenon and we need to understand the fundamental laws of physics that govern its behaviour. Consequently, only a discipline akin to physics can reveal such laws and biology as it is practised today does not fall into this category.

continue reading here.

Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1011.4125: Life Is Physics: Evolution As A Collective Phenomenon Far From Equilibrium

 

 

 

 

Is this the start of the second dotcom bubble?

There are 10 tell-tale signs that a bubble is being blown:

■ 1. The arrival of a "New Thing" that cannot be valued in the old way. Dumb-money companies start paying over the odds for New Thing acquisitions.

■ 2. Smart people identify the start of a bubble; New Thing apostles make ever more glowing claims.

■ 3. Startups with founders deemed to have "pedigree" (for example, former employees of New Thing companies) get funded at eye-watering valuations for next to no reason.

■ 4. There is a flurry of new investment funds catering for startups.

■ 5. Companies start getting funded "off the slide deck" (that is, purely on the basis of their PowerPoint presentations) without actually having a product.

■ 6. MBAs leave banks to start up firms.

■ 7. The "big flotation" happens.

■ 8. Banks make a market in the New Thing, investing pension money.

■ 9. Taxi drivers start giving you advice on what stock to buy.

■ 10. A New Thing darling buys an old-world company for stupid money. The end is nigh.

Is this the start of the second dotcom bubble?

IBM: Graphene as it is won't replace silicon in CPUs

Ben Hardwidge @ bit-tech.net

A single graphene sheet measures just one atom-thick, potentially paving the way tiny transistors.

IBM has revealed that graphene can't yet fully replace silicon inside CPUs, as a graphene transistor can't actually be completely switched off.

In an interview for a forthcoming Custom PC feature about chip-building materials, Yu-Ming Lin from IBM Research - Nanometer Scale Science and Technology told us that 'graphene as it is will not replace the role of silicon in the digital computing regime.'

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via ScribeFire

New Device May Revolutionize Computer Memory

Researchers from North Carolina State University have developed a new device that represents a significant advance for computer memory, making large-scale “server farms” more energy efficient and allowing computers to start more quickly.

Traditionally, there are two types of computer memory devices. Slow memory devices are used in persistent data storage technologies such as flash drives. They allow us to save information for extended periods of time, and are therefore called nonvolatile devices. Fast memory devices allow our computers to operate quickly, but aren’t able to save data when the computers are turned off. The necessity for a constant source of power makes them volatile devices.

But now a research team from NC State has developed a single “unified” device that can perform both volatile and nonvolatile memory operation and may be used in the main memory.

Researchers have developed a single “unified” device that can perform both volatile and nonvolatile memory operation, with applications that could affect computer start times and energy efficiency for internet servers.

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More information:

“Computing with Novel Floating-Gate Devices”

Authors: Daniel Schinke, Neil Di Spigna, Mihir Shiveshwarkar and Paul Franzon, North Carolina State University

Published: Feb. 10, IEEE’s Computer

Abstract: The authors report on the design, operation, and architectural implications of single and double floating-gate devices for non-traditional applications enabling low-power FPGAs and analog-to-digital converters, and propose a unified nonvolatile/volatile memory device.

Story of Stuff | Annie Leonard

From its extraction through sale, use and disposal, all the stuff in our lives affects communities at home and abroad, yet most of this is hidden from view. The Story of Stuff is a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns. The Story of Stuff exposes the connections between a huge number of environmental and social issues, and calls us together to create a more sustainable and just world. It'll teach you something, it'll make you laugh, and it just may change the way you look at all the stuff in your life forever. http://storyofstuff.org 

Is There Anything Good About Men?

Professor Roy F. Baumeister gave this interesting talk way back in 2007. Prof. Baumeister mentions Larry Summer and his comments about the Lack of female Physics Professors at Harvard:

Stereotypes at Harvard

            I said that today most people hold more favorable stereotypes of women than men. It was not always thus. Up until about the 1960s, psychology (like society) tended to see men as the norm and women as the slightly inferior version. During the 1970s, there was a brief period of saying there were no real differences, just stereotypes. Only since about 1980 has the dominant view been that women are better and men are the inferior version.

The surprising thing to me is that it took little more than a decade to go from one view to its opposite, that is, from thinking men are better than women to thinking women are better than men. How is this possible?

            I’m sure you’re expecting me to talk about Larry Summers at some point, so let’s get it over with! You recall, he was the president of Harvard. As summarized in The Economist, “Mr Summers infuriated the feminist establishment by wondering out loud whether the prejudice alone could explain the shortage of women at the top of science.” After initially saying, it’s possible that maybe there aren’t as many women physics professors at Harvard because there aren’t as many women as men with that high innate ability, just one possible explanation among others, he had to apologize, retract, promise huge sums of money, and not long afterward he resigned.

            What was his crime? Nobody accused him of actually discriminating against women. His misdeed was to think thoughts that are not allowed to be thought, namely that there might be more men with high ability. The only permissible explanation for the lack of top women scientists is patriarchy — that men are conspiring to keep women down. It can’t be ability. Actually, there is some evidence that men on average are a little better at math, but let’s assume Summers was talking about general intelligence. People can point to plenty of data that the average IQ of adult men is about the same as the average for women. So to suggest that men are smarter than women is wrong. No wonder some women were offended.

            But that’s not what he said. He said there were more men at the top levels of ability. That could still be true despite the average being the same — if there are also more men at the bottom of the distribution, more really stupid men than women. During the controversy about his remarks, I didn’t see anybody raise this question, but the data are there, indeed abundant, and they are indisputable. There are more males than females with really low IQs. Indeed, the pattern with mental retardation is the same as with genius, namely that as you go from mild to medium to extreme, the preponderance of males gets bigger.

            All those retarded boys are not the handiwork of patriarchy. Men are not conspiring together to make each other’s sons mentally retarded.

            Almost certainly, it is something biological and genetic. And my guess is that the greater proportion of men at both extremes of the IQ distribution is part of the same pattern. Nature rolls the dice with men more than women. Men go to extremes more than women. It’s true not just with IQ but also with other things, even height: The male distribution of height is flatter, with more really tall and really short men.

Again, there is a reason for this, to which I shall return.

            For now, the point is that it explains how we can have opposite stereotypes. Men go to extremes more than women. Stereotypes are sustained by confirmation bias. Want to think men are better than women? Then look at the top, the heroes, the inventors, the philanthropists, and so on. Want to think women are better than men? Then look at the bottom, the criminals, the junkies, the losers.

            In an important sense, men really are better AND worse than women.

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Twitter's Biz Stone On Starting A Revolution

Fresh Air from WHYY Transcript

 

A visualization of how many tweets were sent on New Year's Eve 2010 in the United States.

Twitter's Biz Stone On Starting A Revolution:

On his reaction when the Internet was blocked during the recent Egypt protests

"Sadly, we've seen this happen. We've seen our services shut down before, but it was shocking to see the entire Internet shut down [in Egypt]. We'd talked about this before privately amongst ourselves. You can shut down a service and yet people will find ways to communicate. But we joked amongst ourselves [that] you'd have to shut down the entire Internet, you'd have to shut down the entire mobile phone structure if you really wanted to stop people from communicating. And then suddenly, we have news that the Internet is being shut down. And that was just an amazing thing to think about. Because you're not just shutting down communication between people who may or may not be opposing your regime, you're shutting down everything — commerce, all communication among individuals, emergency communication, everything. That's just mind-blowing to me."

 

"How a revolution comes to be is a mystery to me," he says. "It's important to credit the brave people that take chances to stand up to regimes. They're the star. What I like to think of services like Twitter and other services is that it's kind of a supporting role. We're there to facilitate and to foster and to accelerate those folks' missions."

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