We Must Protect Our Precious Bodily Fluids

This is going to be wildly off topic, but I was tickled enough to warrant a quick post on the matter.

I'm the kind of guy who always has a plan... and contingencies to those plans.  Though I do not hold myself to strict guidelines of those plans, I always have some sort of 6mo plan, 1yr plan, 4wk plan.  As such, I am always referring to Plan A, Plan B, and so on, to try and keep the horizon for goals on track.

Then, there is always the "terrible plan".  The sort of plan I never seriously intend to follow through on, but makes an intriguing threat.  Plans like "join Miniluv and gank freighters to specifically destroy competing product", or "tell my IRL VP's the truth".

Today's PSA is brought to you by the letter R



Plan R is worse than suicide.  It's a "I'm going down and taking you all with me" plan.  Plan R is the AWOX. Plan R is bombing your boss by ruining your department's reputation with the board.  Plan R is something so insanely stupid, destructive, and suicidal that no clear thinking person would contemplate it beyond a joke.

It's somewhat useful to have the terminology for it though.  Every once in a while you are in an organization or situation where there is absolutely no-win scenario.  Even rarer than that, you may be actively at the bottom of the chain on something particularly nasty.  And though in 99.99% of situations where there are completely reasonable paths to exit, abort, or lose... once in a while you need a FU-bomb of such magnitude that everyone is killed during the fallout.

I joke about Plan R's, but rarely have them.  Plan R is the last of last resorts.  I just hope this PSA will add Plan R to your lexicon, and people will stop giving me clueless looks when I use it as reference.

Also, if you have not consumed Dr Strangelove, you're really doing yourself a disservice.  I put it in my top 10 movies for all EVE pilots.

The Long Bet

Last post in my epic week.  This one is again mostly not EVE.  Be sure to check out the rest of this week's posts:

• Ding - Ship's Ready!: Finished building my first jump freighter
• What is the Final Point: A look into the inspiration behind Prosper
• Brain Damage: A brief musing on why we create
• Cult of Personality: Get to participate in a blog banter.  About corporate leadership

A favorite book of mine is The Nudist on The Late Shift.  It's a collection of short stories from some of the behind-the-scenes cute stories of companies and ideas that actually survived the 90's .com bubble.  Stories about Paypal and Hotmail, and the innovators that made these topics absolutely ubiquitous in our modern day.  A bit different than your standard "how they did it" biography... more silly pub stories than serious analysis.  Go read it.

One story that really stuck with me was about the 10,000 year clock.  Though I was always tickled with the logistics of such an ambitious project (how do you write a manual to last 10,000 years?), the part I really took to heart was their concept of the long bet.  Though I could yammer on and on about specific long bets or how one makes a long bet, I really want to focus in on taking long bets in the technology sector.

One of my favorite classes from school was Dr Anura Jayasumana's Introduction to Computer Networks.  Dr Jayasumana would bookend his classes with big top-level lectures on the bleeding edge of a topic, then work it into the class.  In networks, his research in distributed internet of things was a glimpse into a future full of sensors and autonomous machines quietly crunching behind the scenes; watching, monitoring, alerting us to dangers, and making decisions for us.

At the end of the networks class, he asked us to all make our long bets on what personal computing would look like in 10 years.  I was appalled by the lack of vision my classmates shared in their responses.  "more mobile applications", "smaller, more powerful chips", "sensors monitoring public places".  These can all be filed under "well... duh".  No big, risky, predictions like "the death of the desktop computer and a return to a terminal/mainframe architecture", no "major disruption in services due to the ever-increasing power cost (J/bit) of communication and 'cloud' services (may have paywall)".  Only parrots of what we already know is happening.

Similarly, I find it maddening when the pillars of tech spew out how "innovative" some product is, when it's just another revision of what already exists.  Yes, iPhone/iPod/Blackberry were all innovative in their early revs, but there is no reason to pee yourself in excitement over the iPhone 5.  It kind of boils down to the Henry Ford quote, "If I asked people what they wanted, they would have told me 'a better horse'".  It's not ground breaking if you are just iterating the tech.

Why bring this up?  My streams were a-buzz with news of the PS4 press conference.  And the live-tweets as developer after developer took the stage announcing their offering for the new product only made my heart sink.  Developers carting out old ponies for console release, the today-average hardware offering...

Let me cut to the chase: I think we're going to see more bad news for hardware developers because the age of the console is coming to a close.  Yes, in the last decade, I carted around a phone, iPod, portable gaming system, laptop, etc.  Yes, in my house were each person's desktops, a game console, a VCR (dating myself), DVD player, and they didn't interconnect.  But this was the past... and continuing to "innovate" for that techspace is a recipe for failure.  Mark my words: the day of the console is coming to an end... as is the death of the desktop tower... Enjoy your console/uber-gamer-rig while it lasts, I think this decade is the end of that trend.

As a closing remark, let me tie this back to Prosper; talk is cheap.  Because my personal vision is one of ubiquitous access across all platforms with a centrally hosted "cloud" service, I have structured Prosper to mirror this vision.  The entire design is based off a central hub pushing data out to any spoke that wants it.  From designing the interface to be mobile friendly, to planning for an android app, the system is mean to be universally accessible.  Though some might talk big, they rarely deliver.  The other half of my vision is to build a robust enough "black box" to allow for all the crap work and human mistakes to be automated out, freeing managers from the painful choice "work or play".  Combining both offerings into a solid cloud application should make "Prosper Everywhere"... though we will see if I can afford or actually reach my vision.

What's the point in dreaming if you don't dream big?

Brain Damage

A bit of a follow up between my What is the Final Point post and Engineer Engineer post.  Again, only tangentially aligned to EVE, and not as much elitist-jerk as my previous engineering post.

I have a couple rivals at my IRL job; not for the point of anything malicious, but as a benchmark to check myself against.  In most respects, we are largely equal: similar responsibilities, similar time on the job, similar backgrounds. The thing that bothers/concerns me about my cohorts is they seem to lack something I think is absolutely required for all who call themselves engineers: Brain damage.

Part of what makes an engineer an engineer is the creative spark and an all-consuming thirst for learning.  As is said so succinctly, "I solve problems".  Without a fire in your belly, you aren't going to make it to the title of engineer, you're going to take a path of less resistance.  Only a fool would take the hard way.

So us fools need some way to feed the fire burning within.  I personally spend my creative energy here on the blog and writing Prosper.  One of my bosses restores pinball machines (seriously, he has the best damned man-cave ever).  I have an online friend who makes lightpacks and controls to be the envy of the block come Christmas time.

This isn't to say that creative madness is reserved to engineers, only that I believe most engineers should possess it.  It distresses me when new-graduate engineers completely lack the verve to save the world.  I get it that engineer money is good, but it isn't good enough for the work alone.

What is the Final Point?

After all the digging and collaboration that went into my TheMittani.com article, I was inspired to write a pair of posts.  This first one is dedicated to the long-game and my burning inspiration going into Propser.  The second one (later this week) will be about some broader ideas on a similar subject.

First, some required watching:

This is one of my absolute favorite TED talks.  I also recently picked up Automate This by Christopher Steiner at the suggestion of Blake over at K162Space.  Though I don't consider myself a hardcore code-monkey by any stretch of the imagination, systems and automation absolutely stirs me.  The initial spark for Prosper is right here.

The Beginnings

The beginnings of Prosper are born from two places.  First, an aggravation with the current atmosphere when it comes to EVE data.  Part because my desired data set is pretty laser focused, and the current aggregators each miss the mark in some significant way.  Part because there are huge swaths of the picture missing, or are hosted in disparate places.  The second half comes from an irritation with all the human work that goes into running a successful industrial operation.  Where coordinating more than 10 characters in a truly heavy-industry endeavor becomes a full time job.

Between these two goals, I have more than enough to chew on.  Though I am still working on the data processing part, the dream remains alive and kicking... even if it's painfully slow going.

The Mid-Game

Once the database and T2 tools are up and running and an in-game corp can start being used as beta testers, there is still a ton of work to do.  The end goal should be to enable super-heavy industry in all its forms.  This means being able to support other money makers like research, capitals, T3, industrial contractors, and deep space freight.  As the talent/capital pool grows, a lot of new paradigms for ISK generation outside Jita should become part of the picture.  These will provide new space for new tools and algorithms to facilitate growth.

Of course, the big picture is to open up Prosper to external clients.  Expanding the suite to be pervasive to really allow industrialists at all levels to track their work in one central location.  Also to serve up the kind of data that players really desire so we can stop hearing the whines about "Who will do CCP Diagoras' job".  

The End-Game

Prosper is only a first step in a much larger plan.  If virtual economic data can be automated and manipulated, what is preventing using those schemes on real life systems?  My IRL coworkers make fun of me because of their shallow vision and think it's just about "writing another stock algorithm" as some sort of get-rich-quick scheme.  But that's painfully short sighted.  

Though I have no interest in playing with the all-stars outlined in the video above, there is a ton of new and exciting opportunities in automation.  This project both serves as hobby because I have brain damage and HAVE to solve problems, and as career building through skill acquisition.  Though I can't know now what the future holds, the dream is alive to transcend from virtual economic domination to carving out a space as my own boss one day.