Imaginary Problems

In response to a problem posed by Jaisen Mathai, a Yahoo engineer, TechCrunch offered a solution. But is the problem real? The problem is stated as:

What can we do with failed startup intellectual property that might help the community?

In expanding on this problem, they state:

But there’s a problem: all this intellectual property is still “property” and is owned by someone, even after a startup goes bankrupt. If the company has raised any venture capital, or has any creditors, they own the property after the bankruptcy. In a very few instances that IP is sold off to return some money to creditors. This is exactly what happened with Edgeio, for example, a company that I co-founded and which failed late last year. Most of the IP assets were sold to third parties, and the proceeds went to pay off those who were entitled to the assets. [emphasis added]

The formulation of the problem is wrong from the start. There is no problem with intellectual property being owned. In fact if it wasn't owned, its unlikely it would have been created in the first place (open source software being the exception). But the intellectual property was created for one and only one purpose, to create value and wealth that did not exist prior. What TechCrunch implicitly assume in the formation of the problem is that intellectual property is not real property to begin with.

Later TechCrunch offers a solution:

But I can see how this could change. Creditors and investors could agree up front, via a standard clause added to agreements, that any IP that isn’t obviously valuable on its face would be turned over to a third party for a quick analysis and determination of its value (financial and otherwise). That third party could decide to sell anything of value, keeping a percentage of the sale (and giving them an incentive to find value when it’s there), and simply release the code for anything that may be interesting but has little immediate commercial value.

That third party would need to be funded, though, and the income from asset sales probably wouldn’t cover the operating expenses. Perhaps this would be a good project for a university, or group of universities, to support. Student developers and faculty may find academic reasons to pursue it. And they would certainly be giving back to the community as well. [Emphasis added]

I applaud the use of private organizations to facilitate the transfer of intellectual assets from failed startups to new organizations. However, if the value from the sale of intellectual property is so low, why waste time with this third party? Why fund something that offers so little value. If these assets are so easy to recreate, where is the problem?

The answer is that there is no problem. This is exactly how markets work. Sometimes, things of value get abandoned. But more often, businesses are aware of the value of their assets and attempt to squeeze every dollar from it. Whether or not a business wants to donate assets that are worthless to them to some non-profit organization is a legitimate suggestion, but certainly not one that should occupy the minds of most start-ups nor most creditors. Often, it simply isn't worth it.

Philosophy of Education

This summer I plan on conducting a thorough review of education philosophies (one of my goals for 2008). Below are the books and subjects I plan on reading. Does anyone have further suggestions?

Philosophy of education study plan

Plato

• Republic

Montessori

• The Montessori Method

Piaget

• Inhelder, B. and J. Piaget (1958). The Growth of Logical Thinking

from Childhood to Adolescence. New York: Basic Books

Steiner

• The Education of the Child

Froebel

• FROEBEL'S CHIEF WRITINGS ON EDUCATION

Dewey

• Democracy and Education (1916)

• How We Think (1910)

Peikoff

• Philosophy of Education lecture series

Great Books of the Western World
Trivium/Quadrivium
Taking Children Seriously
Unschooling

As I review each book and subject, I'll write up my analysis here.

My purpose in life

Is it that important to identify the purpose of your life? Absolutely! As Ayn Rand says:

Man cannot survive, like an animal, by acting on the range of the moment. An animal's life consists of a series of separate cycles, repeated over and over again, such as the cycle of breeding its young, or of storing food for the winter: an animal's consciousness cannot integrate its entire lifespan; it can carry just so far, then the animal has to begin the cycle all over again, with no connection to the past. Man's life is a continuous whole: for good or evil, every day, year and decade of his life holds the sum of all the days behind him. He can alter his choices, he is free to change direction of his course, he is free, in many cases, to atone for the consequences of his past-but he is not free to escape them, nor to live his life with impunity on the range of the moment, like an animal, a playboy or a thug. If he is to succeed at the task of survival, if his actions are not to be aimed at his own destruction, man has to choose his course, his goals, his values in context and terms of his lifetime. (Ayn Rand, VOS, p. 26)

In other words, he needs a purpose.

Steve Palina suggests you can discover the purpose to your life in about 20 minutes to an hour. Although I disagree with Steve on a number of issues, he generally has useful things to say about purpose, goals, consciousness, awareness, and productivity. Well, I decided to try his method, in part because they reminded me of Nathaniel Branden's sentence completion exercises, which I have found helpful before. (FYI, I have a very negative opinion of Branden in general, particularly the way he treated Rand and continues to misrepresent Objectivism, but some of his psychological practices has been useful in my life.)

Steve was right, within 30 minutes I had converged on my purpose in life. While I was not crying, like he suggested I should be, I was overwhelmed with emotion at the acknowledgment of the correctness of this purpose.

This purpose is: To say at the end of my life that I lived rationally, productively, and proud to the best of my abilities.

When the full context of that statement finally sunk in, I knew that I had found the answer. That is my purpose. That is what tantalizes and tickles my passions in both a fiercely emotional and intellectual manner.

After discovering my purpose, I stumbled upon various other passions that helped me to define my mission statement:

Three primary passions drive my actions: to love only what is worth loving, to discover the answers to the mysteries around me, and to bring order into my life.

To love only what is worth loving is founded on the principle of justice. I have always been ruthless in my drive to pick friends that are worth my effort. I have always been ruthless in loving only those items that facilitate my joy and happiness. Wasting time and effort on things that do not deserve it endangers my own happiness and long term survival. A corollary to this principle is to hate only what is worth hating. To hate something requires significant effort and should be reserved to things that genuinely hurt my life and values. Such hatred should be reserved to only those things that deserve that hatred. I would much rather spend my time and effort loving things than hating things.

At heart, I am a scientist. I love to learn how and why things work. This is the reason why I studied physics as an undergrad and why I later earned a doctorate and continue to conduct research. I want to learn. I love to learn. And I love to explain what I’ve learned to others. I cannot see myself in any other position. One of the reasons why I choose to study MIS for my PhD is because the field is so dynamic and ever changing, requiring a continuous study of the state of the art. This is an environment in which I thrive.

And lastly, I want order in my personal life. By this, I mean I enjoy well organized environments, but especially environments that flow with my habits and expectations in a reasonable and productive manner. To me, order facilitates high productivity by eliminating all the miscellaneous odds and ends that slow down work towards my goals. If I have to spend minutes or hours looking for something I need, that time is wasted. In a well ordered environment, the search is extremely fast and efficient so I can spend time on things of greater value.

While I have many lesser passions as well, these three are the primary values that I have used throughout my life. The primary passions may change over time, but it is most unlikely they will be inconsistent with my purpose in life.

Microsoft Live FolderShare

This week I've installed Microsoft's Live FolderShare on several of my computers and have been extremely pleased with it so far. This program utilizes P2P files-sharing technology that allows you to share any folder on your computer with a folder on any other computer. All documents are synchronized (either automatically or at your discretion) so that duplicate copies are maintained on both computers. All you need is an Internet connection (preferably broadband). Its currently in Beta, and open to the first 10,000 users.

The program has allowed me to overcome two persistent issues I've continuously struggled with over the past couple years. First, I always conducted my document backups by saving files on my school's network drive. While that practice was useful while I'm on campus, I had no means of accessing the files from home. With Foldershare, backups are made automatically when I make a change.

My second issue was with transferring files from my laptop to my office computer and back again. I used to send myself emails or use my thumb drive to transfer these files. The main drawback of this system of transfer was ensuring that the documents I was working with is the latest version. Now, versions are identical on both computers. Any changes on one computer is immediately reflected on the other. I tested this feature by saving a document on my office computer. I then turned to my laptop, which was connected through wirelessly to the same network, logged in, and viewed the shared folder. The document was already there. In less than 15 seconds, the entire word document had been transfered.

While I have tried out the "share with others" option, I'm guessing it works identically. As long as your colleagues have Live FolderShare installed on their computers, you both work on the same document. According to Microsoft

Sharing with friends, co-workers, and family is easy when you add and update files in a shared library. Large files? Not a problem - FolderShare can sync files up to 2 GBs in size. And it works on both Mac and PC.

I'm not sure what will happen if you both try to work on a document at the same time. But hopefully you will receive some sort of message/error if you do.

Microsoft suggests they will try to integrate applications into this FolderShare program in the future. How exactly that will be done, I'm unsure, but very curious to find out. If anyone knows more about this, please let me know.

Nerdy without being a dork

I'm an Uber Cool Nerd King. Take that world!

Rot and decay - Anthem revisited

It is amazing the accuracy of Ayn Rand's vision in Anthem. Exhibit 1: Former Detroit Public Schools Book Depository. My God! Can you imagine the irrationality and incompetency necessary for thousands and thousands of books and school supplies to be left to rot and decay.

While the pictures have made the rounds on the Internet, they are less than a year old. The photographer, while willing to admit outrage at the Detroit public schools, seems perplexed that libertarians and Objectivists would use his pictures to show the ultimate failure of public school systems. I'm not sure on what websites these photos have been used, as I have not seen them before, I do understand that they shouldn't be used without explicit permission. That's why I have not posted one of the photos here, even though it would blend nicely with my post. Never-the-less, pictures speak louder than words. These pictures so accurately capture the waste and incompetence that public schools bring to education, that there is nothing more that needs to be said.

Dr. Drake

As of last Friday, I am now a Doctor. I have successfully defended my dissertation.

Woo Hoo!