6 ms·

Slashdotter on the value of ideas versus execution

100 points by alex_c 18y ago

DenisM 18y ago
Remarkably poor writing for someone who has invented a good half of modern technology.
- brandnewlow 18y ago
  I don't get that criticism at all. It's a Slashdot comment. He's going to spellcheck it? Either he did the stuff he says he did, or he didn't. The people reading his post can figure out what he's trying to say.
  - DenisM 18y ago
    I think you are reading too much into my comment.
    - DenisM 18y ago
      I see that knee-jerk downmodders came out in force today. Welcome (back) to Slashdot! :-)
      - eb 18y ago
        He disagreed and responded to your comment -- I don't think he's reading too much into it. Your reply is being downvoted because it's an ad hominem and it adds nothing to the discussion. http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
        DenisM 18y ago
        Adhom is "you're an idiot and therefore your opinion is wrong". What I said is "you are reading into my comment way more than I put into it, you are wrong". Or is pointing out that someone is wrong an automatic adhom now? Seriously?
        eb 18y ago
        Your comment does not state that you believe he was wrong. You should be more specific, it doesn't read the way you think it does. Where do you think it rates on the DH scale?
        DenisM 18y ago
        Uhm. I think it was quite direct - it suggested that he reads into my comment more than I put into it. I guess I could have said "you are wrong I didn't imply any cticism", instead I said "may you be reading too much into my comment?" which I see as less conrontational. I fail to see a crime in this, an it's quite amusing that at least 8 different people piled on to downmod. I can't see a rational reason for this type of behavior.
        DenisM 18y ago
        And by the way, do you retract your ad-hom accusation or do you stand by it?
      - m0nty 18y ago
        I notice you edited your initial response to remove that rather imperious "hm?" from the end of it. "I think you are reading too much into my comment, hm?"
        DenisM 18y ago
        Ahem. May I ask you if it's possible that you atribute to "hm?" much more negaitve (and different) meaning than I put into it? Hm?
  - thras 18y ago
    No. The first thing that I noticed about him was that he had bad grammar, even for Slashdot. The poster responded to a questioner and blamed it on learning disabilities. Chances are, if this guy is unable to present himself in an articulate manner on Slashdot, he can't in front of a VC either. Yes, this is exactly the sort of thing that can prevent success. As can dressing badly. As can being short and fat. Or ugly, if you're a woman. Fair? No. But intelligence isn't distributed fairly either. If you want to sell yourself, then you have to fix as many of these problems as you can. There's no way around that. If you can't spell, then use Microsoft Word and its grammar checker on everything you ever write. Go on a diet. Get someone else to pick out your clothes. Etc.
    - azanar 18y ago
      That was quite judgmental. And it might not even be wrong; I am also bothered to all hell by bad grammar as well, and noticed that about his comment. But I'm not ready to presume that he will remain as uncollected and scattered when given the chance to make lengthy preparations for something slightly more important than a Slashdot post. That you launch into a litany of other things that have nothing to do with this guy's Slashdot comment (clothing, physical fitness, etc) suggest a major chip on your shoulder. You imply that, amongst other things, shortness and physical unattractiveness are problems that need to be fixed; how exactly do you propose people fix these problems? This comment smells of either a self-validating or apologetic cheer toward people who hyper-focus on image at the expense of all other metrics. If you believe what you write here, and aren't just resigned to thinking this is how the rest of the world works, I wonder how many people you've misjudged as a result.
      - GHFigs 18y ago
        Do you deny that being inarticulate, unkept, short, obese, or unattractive can be barriers to success in business? If so, elaborate on that. If not, please explain why those same things should not be considered problems that ought to be addressed. Wouldn't it be advisable to treat the issue like any other and apply the full weight of your intelligence and experience to come up with a good solution?
- lisp_padawan 18y ago
  That's rather unfair I feel since being good at technical creation doesn't necessarily mean good at communication. How many novelists are going to write you a version of VOIP in 1987?? Come on, there's genuine discussion to be had here but it doesn't revolve around his rather flaky prose style - it's not as though we couldn't UNDERSTAND him!
  - gommm 18y ago
    It's not a problem if he works with someone else who has the social skills and prose style to look good to VCs... The impression you give of yourself when looking for funding is as important as your idea.
lionheart 18y ago
Can anybody confirm any of his claims? I would think that somebody who came up with that many new products could get something to market. On the other hand, he could be one of those stereotypical tech geniuses who completely suck at business.
- whacked_new 18y ago
  http://www.dnull.com/~sokol/jres.html http://www.dnull.com/~sokol/jres.html He seems to be in the mad scientist category. Apparently he didn't go to college. It could be that he was so far beyond normal schooling that he decided it wasn't worth the time. But as do many exceptional people, it becomes hard to communicate and appeal to normal folk.
  - snprbob86 18y ago
    Judging from his home page, he doesn't have any taste. I know that I am preaching to the choir, but success in business is about making something people want. I think that if he found himself a designer to partner with, he would have been far more successful. Disclaimer: Yes, I know my own homepage is hideous, so I am a hypocrite. At least my blog has a standard Blogger theme and my resume is attractive (currently Facebook-style because I was considering applying last year).
    - cturner 18y ago
      > Judging from his home page, he doesn't have any taste. Go and have a look at the website for blue sky mining companies some times. Lack of neato art hardly implies bad fundamentals (in fact many of the mining pages are so bad I half suspect it's a badge of honour).
- jhancock 18y ago
  its hard to know the right answers here. life-ling entrepreneurs have lots of stories to tell. I do feel that "access to capital" is the thing that makes or breaks most. I think this is a good part of the OP's opinion.
thinkcomp 18y ago
Perhaps I'm the only one who thinks so, but running a sustainable business is rarely accomplished by relying upon a popular aphorism that is itself a false dichotomy, which, were it even true, would still not shine very much light on the many complexities of "success." I find this saying particularly irksome because "execution" is a catch-all term that people use to place blame where it often doesn't belong. (The biotech company Fluidigm had to cancel its IPO recently. Did its executives "fail to execute" a plan to guard against declining economic conditions? Really now.) There are far better ways to analyze successes and failures in business.
- alex_c 18y ago
  I agree, and I think the author of that comment agrees as well. If anything, he's arguing that even waving a magical "execution" wand around isn't enough for success, let alone just having a valuable idea. I wrote that title because the context of the discussion is a student worried about having his ideas stolen.
mbreese 18y ago
I think that he missed one big problem he had... timing. All of the ideas that he listed, based upon the dates he gives, were well ahead of their time. Meaning, while they were technically possible, there was no market for them, or the scale wasn't there. For example, he lists a CCTV DVR in 1997. There simply wasn't a market for DVRs in 1997. DVDs were just coming out then, and most people had VCRs. If you wanted to break into the video recording market, you had to unseat the VCR. Good luck with that. Then on top of that, hard drives cost many times more than they do now ($/GB), so in order to have any sort of usable hard drive space, you would effectively price yourself out of the consumer market. Now, fast forward a couple of years, and you suddenly have a lot of people without VCRs who would like to record shows and lower hard drive costs. The market was primed for a TiVo to show up (actually, I'd argue that TiVo was still a little early and just barely survived, but that's my unfounded opinion). Of course, the other major problem that he alludes to was that a lot of his technology was designed for the adult industry, which may be somewhat difficult to put on a resume or get investors to take seriously.
- m0nty 18y ago
  Also, wearable computers with VR goggles in 1984? I find that hard to believe, unless it was so primitive as to be almost useless. I suppose you could have used a TRS-80 with a B&W LCD display, but the resolution would have been really poor, and functionality limited. I'm not saying he didn't do it (who knows?) but it's hard to believe he had a practical product.
  - nailer 18y ago
    Patent filings require a proper grasp of language. He's apparently self-filed quite a few. Surely he should be able to understand basic English?
    - robfitz 18y ago
      he mentioned this in a later reply. he's aware of it and always has other people heavily review and revise everything official. not that i actually looked at the patent apps, so i could be off.
chaostheory 18y ago
his post is reminiscent of captain crunch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper
iankt68 18y ago
What this guy REALLY REALLY needs is a "Steve Jobs" friend. I think he is technically brilliant, but so was Steve Wozniak, and Apple was really built through the marketing/business/social skills of Steve Jobs. Ultimately, for a successful technology company you need both kinds of personality. Those who can schmooze AND play hardball and those who can invent brilliant things. Just my 1.44346 cents (US)
- 11ren 18y ago
  "Technical success needs technical skills; business success needs business skills."
- davi 18y ago
  From what I've read, Jobs was the hard-charging, demanding, hard-to-get-along-with type, whereas Wozniak was a mellow, easy-going, just-let-me-solder-in-peace type. But imagine if Wozniak had also been a hard-charging alpha dog type. We might not have an Apple, because Jobs and Wozniak would have broken up as a technology 'couple' early on in their work. Maybe something like this contributed to the original poster's failure to hit a home run in his decades of work. This jibes with something it's taken me a long time to learn: sometimes, "going along to get along" really is the optimal path.
- biohacker42 18y ago
  What you is say is probably true, but I also absolutely agree with the original poster. Having access to resources, that mostly means funding, is a HUGE deal. And often that access is a function of seemingly random things like your physical location and who your friends/business associates are.
  - jemmons 18y ago
    Umm... How do you think you get funding? This is the primary difference between the technically-minded and the business-minded. The technical think wealth is who you know or what you're born to -- it's firmly outside their domain. The business-savvy create wealth. That's their job.
a8w9f 18y ago
This is the first guy I've come across since reading P.T. Barnum's The Art of Money Getting (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=310056 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=310056) who seems to fit the description of the "unlucky man": The Rothschilds have another maxim: "Never have anything to do with an unlucky man or place." That is to say, never have anything to do with a man or place which never succeeds, because, although a man may appear to be honest and intelligent, yet if he tries this or that thing and always fails, it is on account of some fault or infirmity that you may not be able to discover but nevertheless which must exist. The actual (?) Rothschild quote. More mercenary and off-topic: Never have anything to do with an unlucky place, or an unlucky man. I have seen many clever men, very clever men, who had not shoes to their feet. I never act with them. Their advice sounds very well, but they cannot get on themselves; and if they cannot do good to themselves, how can they do good to me?
- sethg 18y ago
  I'm reminded of the story that one of our VPs told, of a manager who had received far more applications for a certain job than he had time to look through. So he took half of the resumes that had piled up on his desk and said: "These people are unlucky. We do not want to hire unlucky people." And he threw those resumes in the trash, unread.
  - Locke 18y ago
    IIRC, that was a scene in the British version of The Office.
    - markessien 18y ago
      That story almost certainly comes from an old book, I read it a long time ago.
time_management 18y ago
As soon as Microsoft or Real Video or some other big company with deep pockets took notice, that was the end for me. Sad. Copyrights were designed to protect small authors from the massive publishing houses, with whose distribution the small author could never compete. Patents were founded on the same principle. It's pretty upsetting that these are now being used by the large corporations to establish hegemony, whereas the "little guy" almost certainly doesn't have the money necessary to hold his own ground.
- Retric 18y ago
  I don't think patents should protect people when the solution is obvious. Take a DVR 20,000+ people probably thought up the idea of using HDD to store tv programs it was just a question of when a cheep HDD would become large enough. Push / Pull email to hand held devices is a stupid patent. What should be protected is novel solutions to problems. Take a product that's in production and make it better by changing it's shape slightly so you get more leverage and that's worthy of a patent.
ph0rque 18y ago
Maybe he should open-source some of his ground-breaking inventions, and earn fame (if not money) that way...
fallentimes 18y ago
It takes two, baby.
noonespecial 18y ago
I think, conversely, this proves its about execution. Assuming that at least some of his claims are a bit exaggerated (with respect to how far along his products were). Executing an idea "almost" just invites a person with better execution and followthru tho come along and "finish" your product in a way that better suits the markets. The rest of the article is just an example of learning the lesson about trademarks and patents over and over. If you intend to sell a product, there is a certain amount of homework that you're going to have to do establish yourself. Even if you don't outright trademark (cheap and easy) or patent (more expensive and difficult), at least take some steps to prove that you got there first. This arguably falls into the "execution" category as well. Its also interesting to me that I've actually heard this story several times before. I think most geeks who travel well have met a "tech Forrest Gump" who's story inserts himself in some way into nearly all of the important technical developments of the last decade, always with an "if only" attached. An amusing listen for an evening at the bar.. but you don't want one for a cube-mate!
- cmos 18y ago
  We've all been cornered by Mr. (or Mrs) Unfortunate, where they start by saying how they invented blah product years before it's time and then Big Company stole it. I had the great-uncle Jimmy who invented the backlit buttons on a telephone, only to have it 'stolen' by AT&T years later. Ideas are cheap. We all have them. Looking through his resume it would appear he had a lot of fun, doing what he enjoyed. Yet today all he can muster up is some post blaming everyone else for his apparent failures and disappointments. I would think he's made a good living doing all this impressive work. How lucky is he that he can make a living doing what he, hopefully still, is passionate about? If he really wants it, he'll find his "Jobs" or "Cuban" to help make it a reality, though chances are they couldn't stand to be around him. Rule number one is don't blame others, no matter how obvious or right you may be. Rule number two is avoid assholes. My Unkle Jimmy never had another great invention. He was too bitter.
tptacek 18y ago
I dunno, everyone. I buy that he had the first audio hardware for PCs and got killed by Creative. But: * Anycast dates back to 1993, a year before he claims to have "invented" Hopscotch and Digital Island, both of which failed, and neither of which were as technically sophisticated as FastForward or even Akamai. * Webcams: at least 1995. * Enumera looks nothing like a "blade server", and it was P4-based, so I'm not seeing how he invented the Cell Processor. * His "ECIP" protocol is not the first use of FEC codes on the Internet; you could have gotten Reed-Solomon out of the comp.compression FAQ before then. And I feel like maybe Raj Jain "invented" selective acknowledgement. Also: why do you even use SACK in an FEC protocol? * You can find HTTP cache servers on Google Groups from 1995, a year before he claims to have invented them, and you can find discussions of them dating back to '93. * "Streaming MP3" wasn't so much invented (streaming video and audio dates back further than the mbone and Internet Talk Radio in 1992) as it was popularized by Shoutcast. The fact that you once hooked an MP3 up to a socket does not make you the inventor of podcasting. You all think his problem is he needed a Steve Jobs (funny, I think that's Steve Ballmer's problem right now too). Can I gingerly suggest that his problem is that he's a crackpot?
- aaronblohowiak 18y ago
  Perhaps not gingerly, but thoroughly and convincingly? yes. Thanks. I love me some tech history, especially in rebuffing egotistical claims.
- jacobolus 18y ago
  > You can find HTTP cache servers on Google Groups from 1995, a year before he claims to have invented them, and you can find discussions of them dating back to '93. The CERN httpd did caching in 1993 or maybe even before. And the Harvest Cache (now called Squid) was started at least by 1994. > [...] As a result, FTP and HTTP servers find themselves swamped with requests for the same popular files, like the demand for images of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet which saturated NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's wide-area network links in July 1994. As a result, there has been an attempt to retrofit caches for internet information system servers like the popular CERN proxy-http cache. One recently developed cache which deserves further examination is the Harvest cache, which boasts improved performance of an order of magnitude over the CERN cache and even over popular http daemons like Netscape's Netsite and NCSA's 1.4 httpd.
abstractbill 18y ago
It looks to me like this guy is attempting to create waves, rather than just riding them. Creating a technology wave, before the world is ready for it, doesn't appear to work.
mrtron 18y ago
In about 1990, when I was very young I had a great idea. I had just read a book 'How Things Work', which was a huge hardcover book with great pictures showing how many things work. I came across the generator page and since my father was a mechanic I figured it would be a good idea to put one on the axle of a car. So, I took this idea to my father and we made a quick little proof of concept model, but he explained to me that generators create resistance and it would result in a net energy loss. But, being a bright young kid I figured it could be used just during braking so it would help slow the car down AND produce power! I never made any money on the idea, and regenerative braking is being used by most hybrids now.
zmimon 18y ago
His post reads like an advertisement for the E-Myth book ... (http://www.e-myth.com/pub/htdocs/emr_ch1 http://www.e-myth.com/pub/htdocs/emr_ch1)

100 points by alex_c 18y ago

DenisM 18y ago

Remarkably poor writing for someone who has invented a good half of modern technology.

brandnewlow 18y ago
I don't get that criticism at all. It's a Slashdot comment. He's going to spellcheck it? Either he did the stuff he says he did, or he didn't. The people reading his post can figure out what he's trying to say.
- DenisM 18y ago
  I think you are reading too much into my comment.
  - DenisM 18y ago
    I see that knee-jerk downmodders came out in force today. Welcome (back) to Slashdot! :-)
    - eb 18y ago
      He disagreed and responded to your comment -- I don't think he's reading too much into it. Your reply is being downvoted because it's an ad hominem and it adds nothing to the discussion. http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html
      - DenisM 18y ago
        Adhom is "you're an idiot and therefore your opinion is wrong". What I said is "you are reading into my comment way more than I put into it, you are wrong". Or is pointing out that someone is wrong an automatic adhom now? Seriously?
        eb 18y ago
        Your comment does not state that you believe he was wrong. You should be more specific, it doesn't read the way you think it does. Where do you think it rates on the DH scale?
        DenisM 18y ago
        Uhm. I think it was quite direct - it suggested that he reads into my comment more than I put into it. I guess I could have said "you are wrong I didn't imply any cticism", instead I said "may you be reading too much into my comment?" which I see as less conrontational. I fail to see a crime in this, an it's quite amusing that at least 8 different people piled on to downmod. I can't see a rational reason for this type of behavior.
        DenisM 18y ago
        And by the way, do you retract your ad-hom accusation or do you stand by it?
    - m0nty 18y ago
      I notice you edited your initial response to remove that rather imperious "hm?" from the end of it. "I think you are reading too much into my comment, hm?"
      - DenisM 18y ago
        Ahem. May I ask you if it's possible that you atribute to "hm?" much more negaitve (and different) meaning than I put into it? Hm?
- thras 18y ago
  No. The first thing that I noticed about him was that he had bad grammar, even for Slashdot. The poster responded to a questioner and blamed it on learning disabilities. Chances are, if this guy is unable to present himself in an articulate manner on Slashdot, he can't in front of a VC either. Yes, this is exactly the sort of thing that can prevent success. As can dressing badly. As can being short and fat. Or ugly, if you're a woman. Fair? No. But intelligence isn't distributed fairly either. If you want to sell yourself, then you have to fix as many of these problems as you can. There's no way around that. If you can't spell, then use Microsoft Word and its grammar checker on everything you ever write. Go on a diet. Get someone else to pick out your clothes. Etc.
  - azanar 18y ago
    That was quite judgmental. And it might not even be wrong; I am also bothered to all hell by bad grammar as well, and noticed that about his comment. But I'm not ready to presume that he will remain as uncollected and scattered when given the chance to make lengthy preparations for something slightly more important than a Slashdot post. That you launch into a litany of other things that have nothing to do with this guy's Slashdot comment (clothing, physical fitness, etc) suggest a major chip on your shoulder. You imply that, amongst other things, shortness and physical unattractiveness are problems that need to be fixed; how exactly do you propose people fix these problems? This comment smells of either a self-validating or apologetic cheer toward people who hyper-focus on image at the expense of all other metrics. If you believe what you write here, and aren't just resigned to thinking this is how the rest of the world works, I wonder how many people you've misjudged as a result.
    - GHFigs 18y ago
      Do you deny that being inarticulate, unkept, short, obese, or unattractive can be barriers to success in business? If so, elaborate on that. If not, please explain why those same things should not be considered problems that ought to be addressed. Wouldn't it be advisable to treat the issue like any other and apply the full weight of your intelligence and experience to come up with a good solution?
lisp_padawan 18y ago
That's rather unfair I feel since being good at technical creation doesn't necessarily mean good at communication. How many novelists are going to write you a version of VOIP in 1987?? Come on, there's genuine discussion to be had here but it doesn't revolve around his rather flaky prose style - it's not as though we couldn't UNDERSTAND him!
- gommm 18y ago
  It's not a problem if he works with someone else who has the social skills and prose style to look good to VCs... The impression you give of yourself when looking for funding is as important as your idea.

lionheart 18y ago

Can anybody confirm any of his claims? I would think that somebody who came up with that many new products could get something to market. On the other hand, he could be one of those stereotypical tech geniuses who completely suck at business.

whacked_new 18y ago
http://www.dnull.com/~sokol/jres.html http://www.dnull.com/~sokol/jres.html He seems to be in the mad scientist category. Apparently he didn't go to college. It could be that he was so far beyond normal schooling that he decided it wasn't worth the time. But as do many exceptional people, it becomes hard to communicate and appeal to normal folk.
- snprbob86 18y ago
  Judging from his home page, he doesn't have any taste. I know that I am preaching to the choir, but success in business is about making something people want. I think that if he found himself a designer to partner with, he would have been far more successful. Disclaimer: Yes, I know my own homepage is hideous, so I am a hypocrite. At least my blog has a standard Blogger theme and my resume is attractive (currently Facebook-style because I was considering applying last year).
  - cturner 18y ago
    > Judging from his home page, he doesn't have any taste. Go and have a look at the website for blue sky mining companies some times. Lack of neato art hardly implies bad fundamentals (in fact many of the mining pages are so bad I half suspect it's a badge of honour).
jhancock 18y ago
its hard to know the right answers here. life-ling entrepreneurs have lots of stories to tell. I do feel that "access to capital" is the thing that makes or breaks most. I think this is a good part of the OP's opinion.

thinkcomp 18y ago

Perhaps I'm the only one who thinks so, but running a sustainable business is rarely accomplished by relying upon a popular aphorism that is itself a false dichotomy, which, were it even true, would still not shine very much light on the many complexities of "success." I find this saying particularly irksome because "execution" is a catch-all term that people use to place blame where it often doesn't belong. (The biotech company Fluidigm had to cancel its IPO recently. Did its executives "fail to execute" a plan to guard against declining economic conditions? Really now.) There are far better ways to analyze successes and failures in business.

alex_c 18y ago
I agree, and I think the author of that comment agrees as well. If anything, he's arguing that even waving a magical "execution" wand around isn't enough for success, let alone just having a valuable idea. I wrote that title because the context of the discussion is a student worried about having his ideas stolen.

mbreese 18y ago

I think that he missed one big problem he had... timing. All of the ideas that he listed, based upon the dates he gives, were well ahead of their time. Meaning, while they were technically possible, there was no market for them, or the scale wasn't there. For example, he lists a CCTV DVR in 1997. There simply wasn't a market for DVRs in 1997. DVDs were just coming out then, and most people had VCRs. If you wanted to break into the video recording market, you had to unseat the VCR. Good luck with that. Then on top of that, hard drives cost many times more than they do now ($/GB), so in order to have any sort of usable hard drive space, you would effectively price yourself out of the consumer market. Now, fast forward a couple of years, and you suddenly have a lot of people without VCRs who would like to record shows and lower hard drive costs. The market was primed for a TiVo to show up (actually, I'd argue that TiVo was still a little early and just barely survived, but that's my unfounded opinion). Of course, the other major problem that he alludes to was that a lot of his technology was designed for the adult industry, which may be somewhat difficult to put on a resume or get investors to take seriously.

m0nty 18y ago
Also, wearable computers with VR goggles in 1984? I find that hard to believe, unless it was so primitive as to be almost useless. I suppose you could have used a TRS-80 with a B&W LCD display, but the resolution would have been really poor, and functionality limited. I'm not saying he didn't do it (who knows?) but it's hard to believe he had a practical product.
- nailer 18y ago
  Patent filings require a proper grasp of language. He's apparently self-filed quite a few. Surely he should be able to understand basic English?
  - robfitz 18y ago
    he mentioned this in a later reply. he's aware of it and always has other people heavily review and revise everything official. not that i actually looked at the patent apps, so i could be off.

chaostheory 18y ago

his post is reminiscent of captain crunch http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Draper

iankt68 18y ago

What this guy REALLY REALLY needs is a "Steve Jobs" friend. I think he is technically brilliant, but so was Steve Wozniak, and Apple was really built through the marketing/business/social skills of Steve Jobs. Ultimately, for a successful technology company you need both kinds of personality. Those who can schmooze AND play hardball and those who can invent brilliant things. Just my 1.44346 cents (US)

11ren 18y ago
"Technical success needs technical skills; business success needs business skills."
davi 18y ago
From what I've read, Jobs was the hard-charging, demanding, hard-to-get-along-with type, whereas Wozniak was a mellow, easy-going, just-let-me-solder-in-peace type. But imagine if Wozniak had also been a hard-charging alpha dog type. We might not have an Apple, because Jobs and Wozniak would have broken up as a technology 'couple' early on in their work. Maybe something like this contributed to the original poster's failure to hit a home run in his decades of work. This jibes with something it's taken me a long time to learn: sometimes, "going along to get along" really is the optimal path.
biohacker42 18y ago
What you is say is probably true, but I also absolutely agree with the original poster. Having access to resources, that mostly means funding, is a HUGE deal. And often that access is a function of seemingly random things like your physical location and who your friends/business associates are.
- jemmons 18y ago
  Umm... How do you think you get funding? This is the primary difference between the technically-minded and the business-minded. The technical think wealth is who you know or what you're born to -- it's firmly outside their domain. The business-savvy create wealth. That's their job.

a8w9f 18y ago

This is the first guy I've come across since reading P.T. Barnum's The Art of Money Getting (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=310056 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=310056) who seems to fit the description of the "unlucky man": The Rothschilds have another maxim: "Never have anything to do with an unlucky man or place." That is to say, never have anything to do with a man or place which never succeeds, because, although a man may appear to be honest and intelligent, yet if he tries this or that thing and always fails, it is on account of some fault or infirmity that you may not be able to discover but nevertheless which must exist. The actual (?) Rothschild quote. More mercenary and off-topic: Never have anything to do with an unlucky place, or an unlucky man. I have seen many clever men, very clever men, who had not shoes to their feet. I never act with them. Their advice sounds very well, but they cannot get on themselves; and if they cannot do good to themselves, how can they do good to me?

sethg 18y ago
I'm reminded of the story that one of our VPs told, of a manager who had received far more applications for a certain job than he had time to look through. So he took half of the resumes that had piled up on his desk and said: "These people are unlucky. We do not want to hire unlucky people." And he threw those resumes in the trash, unread.
- Locke 18y ago
  IIRC, that was a scene in the British version of The Office.
  - markessien 18y ago
    That story almost certainly comes from an old book, I read it a long time ago.

time_management 18y ago

As soon as Microsoft or Real Video or some other big company with deep pockets took notice, that was the end for me. Sad. Copyrights were designed to protect small authors from the massive publishing houses, with whose distribution the small author could never compete. Patents were founded on the same principle. It's pretty upsetting that these are now being used by the large corporations to establish hegemony, whereas the "little guy" almost certainly doesn't have the money necessary to hold his own ground.

Retric 18y ago
I don't think patents should protect people when the solution is obvious. Take a DVR 20,000+ people probably thought up the idea of using HDD to store tv programs it was just a question of when a cheep HDD would become large enough. Push / Pull email to hand held devices is a stupid patent. What should be protected is novel solutions to problems. Take a product that's in production and make it better by changing it's shape slightly so you get more leverage and that's worthy of a patent.

ph0rque 18y ago

Maybe he should open-source some of his ground-breaking inventions, and earn fame (if not money) that way...

fallentimes 18y ago

It takes two, baby.

noonespecial 18y ago

I think, conversely, this proves its about execution. Assuming that at least some of his claims are a bit exaggerated (with respect to how far along his products were). Executing an idea "almost" just invites a person with better execution and followthru tho come along and "finish" your product in a way that better suits the markets. The rest of the article is just an example of learning the lesson about trademarks and patents over and over. If you intend to sell a product, there is a certain amount of homework that you're going to have to do establish yourself. Even if you don't outright trademark (cheap and easy) or patent (more expensive and difficult), at least take some steps to prove that you got there first. This arguably falls into the "execution" category as well. Its also interesting to me that I've actually heard this story several times before. I think most geeks who travel well have met a "tech Forrest Gump" who's story inserts himself in some way into nearly all of the important technical developments of the last decade, always with an "if only" attached. An amusing listen for an evening at the bar.. but you don't want one for a cube-mate!

cmos 18y ago
We've all been cornered by Mr. (or Mrs) Unfortunate, where they start by saying how they invented blah product years before it's time and then Big Company stole it. I had the great-uncle Jimmy who invented the backlit buttons on a telephone, only to have it 'stolen' by AT&T years later. Ideas are cheap. We all have them. Looking through his resume it would appear he had a lot of fun, doing what he enjoyed. Yet today all he can muster up is some post blaming everyone else for his apparent failures and disappointments. I would think he's made a good living doing all this impressive work. How lucky is he that he can make a living doing what he, hopefully still, is passionate about? If he really wants it, he'll find his "Jobs" or "Cuban" to help make it a reality, though chances are they couldn't stand to be around him. Rule number one is don't blame others, no matter how obvious or right you may be. Rule number two is avoid assholes. My Unkle Jimmy never had another great invention. He was too bitter.

tptacek 18y ago

I dunno, everyone. I buy that he had the first audio hardware for PCs and got killed by Creative. But: * Anycast dates back to 1993, a year before he claims to have "invented" Hopscotch and Digital Island, both of which failed, and neither of which were as technically sophisticated as FastForward or even Akamai. * Webcams: at least 1995. * Enumera looks nothing like a "blade server", and it was P4-based, so I'm not seeing how he invented the Cell Processor. * His "ECIP" protocol is not the first use of FEC codes on the Internet; you could have gotten Reed-Solomon out of the comp.compression FAQ before then. And I feel like maybe Raj Jain "invented" selective acknowledgement. Also: why do you even use SACK in an FEC protocol? * You can find HTTP cache servers on Google Groups from 1995, a year before he claims to have invented them, and you can find discussions of them dating back to '93. * "Streaming MP3" wasn't so much invented (streaming video and audio dates back further than the mbone and Internet Talk Radio in 1992) as it was popularized by Shoutcast. The fact that you once hooked an MP3 up to a socket does not make you the inventor of podcasting. You all think his problem is he needed a Steve Jobs (funny, I think that's Steve Ballmer's problem right now too). Can I gingerly suggest that his problem is that he's a crackpot?

aaronblohowiak 18y ago
Perhaps not gingerly, but thoroughly and convincingly? yes. Thanks. I love me some tech history, especially in rebuffing egotistical claims.
jacobolus 18y ago
> You can find HTTP cache servers on Google Groups from 1995, a year before he claims to have invented them, and you can find discussions of them dating back to '93. The CERN httpd did caching in 1993 or maybe even before. And the Harvest Cache (now called Squid) was started at least by 1994. > [...] As a result, FTP and HTTP servers find themselves swamped with requests for the same popular files, like the demand for images of the Shoemaker-Levy 9 comet which saturated NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's wide-area network links in July 1994. As a result, there has been an attempt to retrofit caches for internet information system servers like the popular CERN proxy-http cache. One recently developed cache which deserves further examination is the Harvest cache, which boasts improved performance of an order of magnitude over the CERN cache and even over popular http daemons like Netscape's Netsite and NCSA's 1.4 httpd.

abstractbill 18y ago

It looks to me like this guy is attempting to create waves, rather than just riding them. Creating a technology wave, before the world is ready for it, doesn't appear to work.

mrtron 18y ago

In about 1990, when I was very young I had a great idea. I had just read a book 'How Things Work', which was a huge hardcover book with great pictures showing how many things work. I came across the generator page and since my father was a mechanic I figured it would be a good idea to put one on the axle of a car. So, I took this idea to my father and we made a quick little proof of concept model, but he explained to me that generators create resistance and it would result in a net energy loss. But, being a bright young kid I figured it could be used just during braking so it would help slow the car down AND produce power! I never made any money on the idea, and regenerative braking is being used by most hybrids now.

zmimon 18y ago

His post reads like an advertisement for the E-Myth book ... (http://www.e-myth.com/pub/htdocs/emr_ch1 http://www.e-myth.com/pub/htdocs/emr_ch1)