keeping simple

Category: software business

  • Amar G. Bose on business

    B: Research in this country is going down. Prior to World War II, the United States was rather poor in research; that’s why radar was invented in England and Germany. We learned the value of research in World War II. But today the quickest way to save your bottom line is to cut off research.…

  • Afghanistani mountain village ponders Microsoft business tactics

    From Rory Stewart’s book the places in between about his absurd/wonderful walk accross Afghanistan in 2002: That night we stopped in Dahan-e-Rezak, Dr. Habidullah’ mothers village. This was my first night in a tribal hill village. … Everyone in Rezak was descended from a single grandfather. There were six houses and seventy people in the…

  • The embedded enterprise

    It is now possible to put together sophisticated and powerful embedded and control systems that are mostly composed of pre-existing working software. One of the demonstrations we showed at AMD’s recent embedded workshop was a small two processor (4 core) box running RTLinux and Windows XP. Embedded development teams for RTCore based products can mirror…

  • Single core cell phone solution and marketing vs engineering

    FSMLabs is finally able to discuss the single core cell phone handset solution we developed with Infineon Technologies last year. This system is cool technology – literally – since it allows parts count reduction on the handset and that reduces power consumption and that reduces heat production. More to the point, in a volume driven…

  • GreenHills, foreigners, and the gummi bear threat

    When GreenHills launched their anti-Linux offensive, they crossed a line – and I doubt they even knew it. To cast doubt on the value of Linux in critical applications, GreenHills tried to create a scare about the nationality and “loyalty” of engineers working on Linux. This is stupid on three levels. First, software security is…

  • Above all, the SUSPENSE: Wind River’s DSO with Robert Mitchum and hippies! (updated)

    I’ve been meaning to write about DSO – WindRiver’s attempt to define synthetic “standards” (see the linuxdevices article for technical detail and a more serious approach). “Is DSO hype or substance?” asked Wind River CEO Ken Klein during the sponsored address, and sought to persuade the engineers in the audience that it is indeed substance…

  • Auragen computers remembered

    In the early 1980s, I worked for a start-up called Auragen Computers based in Fort Lee, New Jersey. We were making a 68K based fault tolerant UNIX based on a smart idea by Sam Glazer. Most of the software engineers lived in New York City and commuted out. Start-ups with New Yorkers have a different…

  • The long haul in the embedded software business.

    Chris Lanfear from VDC systems asks FSMLabs has the product line, but lacks the market presence and awareness that other companies have invested in with venture-backed capital. We believe the company has largely bootstrapped itself over the years and while this conservative approach has a number of benefits, it is difficult to achieve the market…

  • PowerPoint and RocketScience II

    PowerPoint and RocketScience II

    In a previous note I objected to venture capitalist Guy Kawasaki’s requests (demands) for shallow and glib sales pitches in PowerPoint, but Professor Edward Tufte is also asking for sales pitches, just ones with more sober disguise. When you read “My other models for NASA are Feynman’s lectures on physics, and the A3 page (or…

  • Power Point, Rocket Science and dangers of compelling stories

    In American English, you can say that something is not too difficult by saying “it’s not rocket science.” We don’t have a good idiom for saying the opposite – that something is hard to understand, not bullet-pointable. Edward Tufte dislikes PowerPoint because it can be used in a way that obscures critical data under a…