hype7 - Slashdot User

Submission + - Your iPhone Works for the Secret Police (hbr.org)

Submitted by hype7 on Friday June 07, 2013 @12:15PM

hype7 writes: The Harvard Business Review (of all places) is running an article putting the revelations of PRISM and Verizon in the context of the surveillance state that US Government has managed to build — and compares the effort with that of the Stasi under East Germany. From the article: "But as any internet entrepreneur will tell you, relying entirely on people makes scaling difficult. Technology, on the other hand, makes it much easier. And that means that in many respects, what has emerged today is almost more pernicious; because that same technology has effectively turned not just some, but every single person you communicate with using technology — your acquaintances, your colleagues, your family and your friends — into those equivalent informants."

Submission + - Aaron Swartz, and the corruption of America's justice system (hbr.org) 4

Submitted by

hype7

on Monday January 14, 2013 @08:24PM

hype7 writes: "Harvard Business Review is running an article on the criminal justice system, and how what happened to Aaron Swartz isn't just an example of a "rogue prosecutor", but rather, a function of something that Aaron was fighting against — the influence of money in politics. From TFA: I simply don't know how else to explain the huge disparity in how justice was sought in these very different cases — other than regulatory capture. It seems you can get away with laundering money for the drug cartels, so long as you've been generous with the those responsible for appointing district attorneys; or better yet, if your industry has paid to undo all the regulation that prevents you from getting too big to fail. Similarly, when your lobby has been helping Congress draft the laws that govern food, drugs, and cosmetics, you can make sure that the federal sentencing guidelines are only six months should you breach the responsible corporate officer doctrine. This in turn means you can inject unsafe cement into people's spines with relative impunity. But woe betide you if, in the name of openness and sharing human knowledge, you decide to download academic journals. Because that sounds a lot like piracy — and we all know how much has been spent to stamp that scourge out."

Submission + - How corruption is strangling US Innovation (hbr.org) 1

Submitted by

hype7

on Friday December 07, 2012 @08:39PM

hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review is running a very interesting piece on how money in politics is having a deleterious effect on US innovation. From the article:
if you were in any doubt how deep inside the political system the system of contributions have allowed incumbents to insert their hands, take a look at what happened when the Republican Study Committee released a paper pointing out some of the problems with current copyright regime. The debate was stifled within 24 hours. And just for good measure, Rep Marsha Blackburn, whose district abuts Nashville and who received more money from the music industry than any other Republican congressional candidate, apparently had the author of the study, Derek Khanna, fired. Sure, debate around policy is important, but it's clearly not as important as raising campaign funds.
"

Submission + - Who cares if Samsung copied Apple (hbr.org)

Submitted by

hype7

on Monday August 20, 2012 @09:24AM

hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review is running an article that's questioning the very premise of the Apple v Samsung case. From the article: "It isn't the first time Apple has been involved in a high-stakes "copying" court case. If you go back to the mid-1990s, there was their famous "look and feel" lawsuit against Microsoft. Apple's case there was eerily similar to the one they're running today: "we innovated in creating the graphical user interface; Microsoft copied us; if our competitors simply copy us, it's impossible for us to keep innovating." Apple ended up losing the case. But it's what happened next that's really fascinating. Apple didn't stop innovating at all.""

Submission + - Harvard Business Review comes out against SOPA (hbr.org)

Submitted by

hype7

on Wednesday January 18, 2012 @01:08PM

hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review has come out with an article extremely critical of SOPA. As opposed to a battle of "content" vs "technology", they are characterizing it as a battle of "giants" vs "innovators". From the article: "If you take a look at many of the largest backers of SOPA and PIPA — the Business of Software Alliance, Comcast, Electronic Arts, Ford, L'Oreal, Scholastic, Sony, Disney — you'll see that they represent a wide range of businesses. Some are technology companies, some are content companies, some are historic innovators, and some are not. But one characteristic is the same across all of SOPA's supporters — they all have an interest in preserving the status quo. If there is meaningful innovation by startups in content creation and delivery, the supporters of SOPA and PIPA are poised to lose.""

Submission + - Steve Jobs Solved the Innovator's Dilemma (hbr.org)

Submitted by hype7 on Tuesday October 25, 2011 @12:54PM

hype7 writes: With yesterday's release of the Steve Jobs biography, a raft of interesting information has come to light — including Jobs' favorite books. There's one book there listed as "profoundly moving" Jobs — the Innovator's Dilemma by innovation Professor Clayton Christensen. The Dilemma explains how in the pursuit of profit, good managers leave their companies open to disruption. There's a fascinating article over at the Harvard Business Review that explains how disruption works, and how Jobs managed to solve the dilemma by focusing Apple on products rather than profit.

Submission + - Jobs wanted to destroy Android (google.com) 5

Submitted by

hype7

on Thursday October 20, 2011 @09:18PM

hype7 writes: "It's clear that Steve Jobs didn't pull any punches from the interviews for his forthcoming biography. In the latest release from the book, hosted over at AP: "Isaacson wrote that Jobs was livid in January 2010 when HTC introduced an Android phone that boasted many of the popular features of the iPhone. Apple sued, and Jobs told Isaacson in an expletive-laced rant that Google's actions amounted to "grand theft."
In a subsequent meeting with Schmidt at a Palo Alto, Calif., cafe, Jobs told Schmidt that he wasn't interested in settling the lawsuit, the book says.
"I don't want your money. If you offer me $5 billion, I won't want it. I've got plenty of money. I want you to stop using our ideas in Android, that's all I want." The meeting, Isaacson wrote, resolved nothing.""

Submission + - Apple's Siri is as revolutionary as the Mac (hbr.org)

Submitted by

hype7

on Thursday October 13, 2011 @02:48PM

hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review is running an article on Siri, the speech recognition technology inside the new iPhone. They make the case that Siri's use of artificial intelligence and speech recognition is going to change the way we interact with machines. From the article: "the desktop metaphor — that the Mac introduced all those years ago — has long been stretched past breaking point. Novice users often don't know where to begin. The touch paradigm introduced in the iPhone began to change that: it removed the intermediary of the mouse and the cursor. But even still, unnecessary complexity remains...

Siri is going to be the first step in fixing it.""

Submission + - Spotify to bait and switch? (hbr.org)

Submitted by

hype7

on Friday July 22, 2011 @11:37AM

hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review, of all places, is running a story suggesting that Spotify may have to rely on a bait & switch strategy — or might have one forced upon it by the record labels. From the article: "Spotify gets all its content from the same place everyone else does –" the same industry that has forced price increases on other online services once they have become successful. That appears to be at least partly what happened with Netflix last week. At least in the case of the existing a la carte music services, if you don't like the new price, you don't have to buy the new track. In Spotify's world, if you don't like the new price, there goes your music library. Or, if Spotify tries to stand up for its users, the labels can just pull the songs and those songs simply disappear.""

Submission + - Big Content is strangling American innovation (hbr.org)

Submitted by

hype7

on Thursday March 31, 2011 @12:28PM

hype7 writes: "Harvard Business Review is running an article close to many slashdotter's hearts: the problems with "Big Content". They make the argument that all the measures that the movie and music industry are putting in place to protect their business models actually threatens to undermine the innovation engine that the US has built up in the tech space. Very interesting reading."

Submission + - The fall of Wintel and the rise of Armdroid

Submitted by

hype7

on Monday January 17, 2011 @07:22PM

hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review are running a very interesting article on how this year's CES marked the end of the Wintel platform's dominance. Their argument is that tablets are going to disrupt the PC, and these tablets are predominantly going to be running on Google's Android powered by ARM processors — "Armdroid"."

Submission + - The future of Android and Google (hbr.org)

Submitted by

hype7

on Friday November 19, 2010 @05:02PM

hype7 writes: "Given the recent publicity about Android and Google, the Harvard Business Review are offering another interesting perspective. They argue that Google runs a serious risk of losing control of Android, as competitors such as Bing and Baidu move in. It certainly presents an interesting possibility — that Android could win but Google wouldn't see any benefit out of it."

Submission + - Google losing control of Android (hbr.org)

Submitted by

hype7

on Tuesday November 16, 2010 @02:25PM

hype7 writes: "The Harvard Business Review are running an interesting article, questioning whether Android will end up making Google any money in the long run — with the likes of Microsoft and Baidu fighting to take the place of Google's services on Android handsets. It certainly does beg the question — what would the future of Android look like if Google no longer supported it, or if they closed the source off?"

Submission + - Balloon 100,000ft up - with a digital camera

Submitted by

hype7

on Thursday October 15, 2009 @09:21PM

hype7 writes: "An Australian student at Deakin University had a fascinating idea for a final project — to send a balloon up 100,000ft (~30,000 metres) into the stratosphere with a digital camera attached. The university was supportive, and the project took shape. Although there were some serious hitches along the way, the project was successful, and he managed to retrieve the balloon — with the pictures. What's really amazing is that the total cost was so low; the most expensive part was buying the helium gas for approximately AUD$250 (~USD$200)."

Submission + - Apple & EMI to sell DRM-free music

Submitted by

hype7

on Monday April 02, 2007 @02:01AM

hype7 writes: "According to the Wall Street Journal (subscription required), the joint press conference called today by Apple and EMI will relate to the latter's decision to remove DRM from the tracks that are sold online. "In a major reversal of the music industry's longstanding antipiracy strategy, EMI Group PLC is set to announce Monday that it plans to sell significant amounts of its catalog without anticopying software, according to people familiar with the matter. The London-based music company is to make its announcement in a press conference that will feature Apple Inc. Chief Executive Steve Jobs. EMI is to sell songs without the software — known as digital rights management, or DRM — through Apple's iTunes Store and possibly through other online outlets, too." Good for EMI for boldly striding into the future."

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