From Wikipedia’s “Clarke’s three laws” (2 November 2006):
Arthur C. Clarke formulated the following three “laws” of prediction:
1. When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
2. The only way of discovering the limits of the possible [...]
Posted on November 3rd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society | Comments Off
Memories are passive fragments.
— Scott Granneman
Related posts
Architecture & the quality without a name
A living story, tattooed on flesh
A grammarian’s haiku
3500 forgotten cans
You always remember your first time
Posted on October 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Musings, Writing Ideas | Comments Off
From Paul Graham’s “Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas” (April 2005):
Trevor Blackwell presents the following recipe for a startup: “Watch people who have money to spend, see what they’re wasting their time on, cook up a solution, and try selling it to them. It’s surprising how small a problem can be and still provide a [...]
Posted on July 13th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business | Comments Off
From Paul Graham’s “Why Smart People Have Bad Ideas” (April 2005):
It’s much easier to sell services than a product, just as it’s easier to make a living playing at weddings than by selling recordings. But the margins are greater on products.
Related posts
How to start a startup
Wynton Marsalis on recognizing your place
Why Microsoft is threatened by [...]
Posted on July 13th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business | Comments Off
From Paul Graham’s “How to Start a Startup” (March 2005):
People who don’t want to get dragged into some kind of work often develop a protective incompetence at it.
Related posts
Why infosec is so hard
The shift from interior to exterior lives
The most volatile compound known to man
The Internet makes (sloppy) writers of nearly everyone
The incompetent don’t know [...]
Posted on July 7th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, business | Comments Off
From Paul Graham’s “How to Start a Startup” (March 2005):
You need three things to create a successful startup: to start with good people, to make something customers actually want, and to spend as little money as possible. Most startups that fail do it because they fail at one of these. A startup that does all [...]
Posted on July 6th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business | Comments Off
From “Beauty Is Our Business: A Birthday Salute to Edsger W. Dijkstra“:
David Gelernter said in “Machine Beauty - Elegance and the Heart of Technology“:
Beauty is more important in computing than anywhere else in technology because software is so complicated. Beauty is the ultimate defense against complexity.
Related posts
The Vitruvian Triad & the Urban Triad
Web design contrasted [...]
Posted on June 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, business | Comments Off
From Nicholas Thompson’s “Who Needs Keys?” (Legal Affairs: November/December 2004):
… the main principles of hacking, which state that information should circulate as widely as possible, and that breaking into systems is acceptable if you cause no harm.
Related posts
The origins of 2600
Failure every 30 years produces better design
Your job? Waiting in line for others.
Writers take a [...]
Posted on June 4th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, Technology, Wash U: Tech in Changing Society, Webster U: InfoSec Management, history, security | Comments Off
From “Fuzzy maths” (The Economist: 11 May 2006):
Google seems to use betas as dogs sprinkle trees - so that rivals know where it is.
Related posts
The strictest of teachers
The most volatile compound known to man
The military’s 8 P’s
The final moment of tragedy
The differences between language in art & politics
Posted on June 1st, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Language & Literature, Technology, business | Comments Off
From The New York Times‘ “Form Follows Function. Now Go Out and Cut the Grass.“:
Failure, [Henry] Petroski shows, works. Or rather, engineers only learn from things that fail: bridges that collapse, software that crashes, spacecraft that explode. Everything that is designed fails, and everything that fails leads to better design. Next time at least that [...]
Posted on May 16th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Uncategorized | Comments Off
From The New Yorker’s “The Disappearing Poet” (4 July 2005):
There is no more volatile compound known to man than that of decorum and despair. — Anthony Lane, on Weldon Kees
Related posts
Word of the day: pareidolia
Why so many Google projects & betas?
Why infosec is so hard
Weldon Kees, polymath
Troops like sugar soaked in water
Posted on May 14th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Language & Literature | Comments Off
From Noam Eppel’s “Security Absurdity: The Complete, Unquestionable, And Total Failure of Information Security“:
A cyber-criminal only needs to identify a single vulnerability in a system’s defenses in order to breach its security. However, information security professionals need to identify every single vulnerability and potential risk and come up with suitable and practical fix or mitigation [...]
Posted on May 12th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, Webster U: InfoSec Management, security | Comments Off
From Paul Graham’s “The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn“:
1. Release Early.
The thing I probably repeat most is this recipe for a startup: get a version 1 out fast, then improve it based on users’ reactions.
By “release early” I don’t mean you should release something full of bugs, but that you should release something minimal. [...]
Posted on May 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Technology, business | Comments Off
From Paul Graham’s “The Hardest Lessons for Startups to Learn“:
We take it for granted most of the time, but human life is fairly miraculous. It is also palpably short. You’re given this marvellous thing, and then poof, it’s taken away. You can see why people invent gods to explain it. But even to people who [...]
Posted on May 11th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book | Comments Off
From Brian Hayes’ “The Post-OOP Paradigm“:
Christopher Alexander [a bricks-and-steel architect] is known for the enigmatic thesis that well-designed buildings and towns must have “the quality without a name.” He explains: “The fact that this quality cannot be named does not mean that it is vague or imprecise. It is impossible to name because it is [...]
Posted on April 4th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, On Writing | Comments Off
From The Register’s “How ATM fraud nearly brought down British banking“:
And there wasn’t time for the banks to fix the problem if anyone went public with it. Their MTBU was too short. MTBU? That’s “Maximum Time to Belly Upâ€Â, as coined by the majestic Donn Parker of Stanford Research Institute. He found that businesses that [...]
Posted on January 5th, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: business, security | Comments Off
From Garr Reynolds’ “Gates, Jobs, & the Zen aesthetic“:
A key tenet of the Zen aesthetic is kanso or simplicity. In the kanso concept beauty, grace, and visual elegance are achieved by elimination and omission. Says artist, designer and architect, Dr. Koichi Kawana, “Simplicity means the achievement of maximum effect with minimum means.” …
The aesthetic concept [...]
Posted on January 2nd, 2006 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, Teaching, Technology, business | Comments Off
From Matt Asay’s “Words to live by“:
This was one of the few things I learned at Stanford Law School: you never want to have to enforce a contract, because the clear interpretation of a contract becomes much less clear the minute both sides stop agreeing on that interpretation.
Related posts
MTBU: Maximum Time to Belly Up
Your job? [...]
Posted on December 19th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, business | Comments Off
From Bruce Schneier’s “Should Terrorism be Reported in the News?” in Crypto-Gram (15 May 2005):
One of the things I routinely tell people is that if it’s in the news, don’t worry about it. By definition, “news” means that it hardly ever happens. If a risk is in the news, then it’s probably not worth worrying [...]
Posted on December 12th, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: Commonplace Book, security | Comments Off
From Ben Jones’ Benblog, in February 2003:
Ben on breaking up with a girl: “Archer said last night that getting over a girl is like getting over a cold. You just wake up one day, after the lingering affects are over, and vaguely remember that you were sick.”
Related posts
Why so many Google projects & betas?
Why infosec [...]
Posted on November 22nd, 2005 by Scott Granneman
Filed under: overheard | Comments Off