Engineer2Entrepreneur

The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

Link: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity.

The first basic law of human stupidity asserts without ambiguity that: Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation.

The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person.

A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or to a group of persons while himself deriving no gain and even possibly incurring losses.

Non-stupid people always underestimate the damaging power of stupid individuals. In particular non-stupid people constantly forget that at all times and places and under any circumstances to deal and/or associate with stupid people always turns out to be a costly mistake.

A stupid person is the most dangerous type of person.

The corollary of the Law is that:

A stupid person is more dangerous than a bandit.

This is cute but I have seen this kind of stuff too often to discount it completely.

Sturgeon's Law and the Perato Principle reinforce each other here.

It didn't take me long into my engineering career to figure out that trying for foolproof was an impossible task. They are just so ingenious.

I found that striving for fool-resistance was an achievable goal. At my first job out of college at one point I wrote a program to take the list of battery plates and how many there were and sorted them into batteries. They were figuring them out by hand and having lots of leftover plates.

Each battery could hold a certain number of plates and the total weight needed to be within a particular percentage. This was not a hard exercise though it took a few passes to minimize waste.

The real work came in formating the output so the workers could easily and quickly understand which plates from which bin when into which battery. Eventually each battery became its own page with a page for leftover plates at the end that was specifically labeled as leftover plates.

There is also a difference between stupidity and ignorance. People who are ignorant, don't know something. Stupid people don't WANT to know something and that is a very big difference.

Ignorance is curable, stupidity well...

iPod Garage : iPod, iTunes, and Music : News, Commentary, and Reviews : Switch to the iPod Garage - Apple Kills the iPod

Link: iPod Garage : iPod, iTunes, and Music : News, Commentary, and Reviews : Switch to the iPod Garage - Apple Kills the iPod.

Apple has done the unthinkable, instead of milking their cash cow, like a typical bureaucratic would, Apple killed it

4 Ways to Make Podcasting Part of Your Business

If you are part of or own a business one of the best things you can do for yourself is to teach your clients how to be experts in using your products or services. One of the best ways to do that is with a podcast.
There are 4 main ways to do that:
How to segments
Answer questions from your clients
Industry News and Commentary
Interviews

The more you can teach your clients the better. The better they can use your products the more they will recommend it to their friends and colleagues. The more their friends see them use your product expertly the more likely they will buy your product or service.

The thing of it is is that it take 600-1000 hours of study to become expert in something. Interestingly most people spend between 500-1000 hours in their car every year. Smart people, the people who will be going places are listening to audiobooks, making good use of that time to build their own knowledge base.

This is where your podcast comes in. If you provide a short specific how-to do a particular task with your product you'll give them something to learn on the way to work in the morning that they are likely to be able to use that very day.

Now I don't expect you to provide that much material to your clients all at once all by yourself. Something you could do is find a book that someone else has written about your product and turn that into an audiobook.

Another thing you can do is provide a Frequently Asked Question podcast. Answering many of the most common questions asked to your support staff. You could even do a Rarely Asked Questions podcast with questions only asked a few times by recently.

You can also do a top 10 list. The Top 10 things people do wrong when buying a digital camera.

Since you'll need a blog to publish the podcast you can also use the blog to ask for topics your listeners want to hear more about.

Industry news is another source of material: Use Trade Magazines and Google News as a starting point. This gives you something to talk about on those days that you can't thinking of anything to talk about.

Interviews are a great way to make a podcast. Have someone interview you or you can interview major players in the industry. It doesn't require a great interviewer, you could have a local community college journalism student come interview you. He'd love it as a resume builder and you can use it in your podcast.

Finally Commentary on the state of the industry or current affairs is a great thing to talk about. People like to have an overview of what is happening.

People just don't have time anymore to wade through piles of vaguely related material, a highly focused podcast is a great thing that allows then to learn something that may give them a competitive advantage over their competition. But it can't be buried in a huge pile of information, be focused.

To keep from burying them keep your podcasts short and too the point. It is better to be too short then too long. If they get bored they can and will fast forward to the next thing on their playlist.

In conclusion, teach your clients the things they need to be successful and they will keep listening. There are 4 main ways to do that:
How to segments
Answer questions from your clients
Industry News and Commentary
Interviews

Thank you and until next keep teaching.Download 4_ways_to_make_podcasting_part_of_your_business.mp3

Wired 13.10: Return of the King

Link: Wired 13.10: Return of the King.

Peter Jackson's remake of King Kong hits the big screen in December. But for the last year, he's been giving eager fans a behind-the-scenes look at the world he built for the big ape. Posted while the cameras were still rolling, these extraordinary online diaries break every closed-set taboo in Hollywood.

You know, if King Kong does well, and I don't doubt that it will. Things will change rather dramatically for lots of things, since anyone with Internet access can do the very same thing.

Hurricane Rita Evacuation Story

Link: Instapundit.com - .

We headed Northeast on the Beltway, hit I-10 toward Beaumont. By 10:30 a.m., we had not even gotten 1/2 way there (an hour drive on a regular day), so I decided to take the first open exit and head North. EVERY gas station on I-10 was out yesterday morning by 9:00 a.m., but miraculously, the stations 15 miles off the freeway had gas--must be something about supply and demand. We headed North & East--away from the mass of Houston/Galveston evacuees--for some time, until we hit a Texas Dept. of Public Safety roadblock on a Northbound road. The DPS officer simply said the "road is closed" without explanation, and told us to head BACK to Beaumont and join the parking lot/freeway. I asked him why the road was closed (locals could still use it) and that it made no sense to head back and add to the problem (I was 30 miles North of I-10) at this point, but he said he was just "told" the clear road due north was closed. I explained that he was in essence risking my family's life, since stuck on the road with a 20 foot flood surge, would be suicide. He didn't care and when I said it was idiotic to shut down good roads to force people onto a jammed evacuation routes, he said what was idiotic was to have to talk with people like me.

Yeah, I'm not surprised. Bureaucratic inefficiency at it's worst. It isn't even worth talking to them, sadly, they are just following orders.

I've written before, don't even bother with the official evacuation routes, they'll be jammed to a stop in an hour or less.

A GPS is a great thing but make sure it has all the maps on board because you might not have time to stop and update from a computer. It is better to have a good map or five of your most likely escape routes, all the way. Expect your route to be blocked, whether by an official, washed out bridge or avalanche, just expect to have to go around things.

Oh, he got to his evacuation point just fine.

Escape From Houston - How I fled Rita. By Mimi Swartz

Link: Escape From Houston - How I fled Rita. By Mimi Swartz.

And so, Sam, Chuy, and I drove toward the coast, out Main Street and on to 90A, where there was, indeed, no traffic. At all. Somewhat further on we sped past a beat-up scarlet Nissan with the words "Rita, go away bitch" spray-painted on the back window. Fifteen minutes later, we hit gridlock.

She had a pretty good plan, use minor highways and roads to get through as much of the city as she could.

She tells a story of how she used a GPS device to reroute away from the Interstate and how she ended up taking her son and dog through small towns she had not been to in a long time.

If you are looking to evacuate your city you need to have your escape route not be the Interstate, almost no one plans for these things, they just take the first route that comes to mind: The Interstate. It is also a habit, they use it everyday to get to work.

You are planning ahead you take a different road to work to see how it is during rush hour (as close to an evacuation as you can get) and often it is rather quiet.

I have a routed planned to my wife's parents house using nothing but state highways. and good maps that will let us use even smaller roads.

Which road would you take?

Houston on the Move

Moving 1.5 million people is really hard. While running some errands today, including trying to get some gas, two gas stations were empty. I heard on the radio how one lady had been and still was on I45 for 18 hours and she hadn't even left Houston city limits yet, they are more then a little worried about riding our the hurricane in their car.

Riding a Cat4 out in your own home is one thing, doing it sitting in your car parked on the Interstate is quite another.

There are going to be several lessons learned from this, probably the wrong ones.

If there are large numbers of deaths due to people being stuck in their cars during landfall, then people will learn that they are better off staying at home then leaving during a mandatory evacuation. This is the wrong lesson the right lesson is to leave before the mandatory evacuation order comes down so you can use the roads. Make your decision 72 hours before projected landfall and you should be fine.

Another better lesson to learn is to plan your escape route such that you do not use the Interstate, everyone who doesn't plan ahead will use the first idea that pops into their head and the Interstate will be number one on the hit parade. I would not be surprised at all if the county roads and state highways are basically empty right now all around Houston.

If you are prepared you will not fear. I already have scoped out some state highways that will get us a long way from here in case of an evacuation. You should do the same before the disaster comes to you.

Mac News: Education : Henrico School District Faces Life After Macs

Link: Mac News: Education : Henrico School District Faces Life After Macs.

The laptops cost the schools US$1,131 apiece for a four-year total cost of $17.9 million. Students pay a $50 user fee. Laptop Specifications:

214.4-inch display

21.30 GHz Processor

230 GB Hard Drive

2768 MB PC2100 DDR SDRAM

Heck that is a great deal for schools, or anyone. Though a nearly 18 FOOT screen on a laptop does seem a bit excessive, it does make that SUV useful again as you strap it to the roof, I hope it comes with a trailer.

The processor is great: 5x faster then anything else available on the market today.

I guess someone made a few typos.

WILLisms.com: THE CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS.

Link: WILLisms.com: THE CARNIVAL OF THE CAPITALISTS..

The Carnival of Compassion 1:1

Link: MedSim: The Blog.

There is a new Carnival in town.