Isaac Moore

"Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive..."

Thu, 14 Mar 2013 22:53:16 -0400

“Critics who treat ‘adult’ as a term of approval, instead of as a merely descriptive term, cannot be adult themselves. To be concerned about being grown up, to admire the grown up because it is grown up, to blush at the suspicion of being childish; these things are the marks of childhood and adolescence. And in childhood and adolescence they are, in moderation, healthy symptoms. Young things ought to want to grow. But to carry on into middle life or even into early manhood this concern about being adult is a mark of really arrested development. When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.”

- C.S. Lewis

Doing it Wrong

Fri, 22 Feb 2013 00:25:36 -0500

I’m going to get straight to the point: Pheed is a quick, hit-and-run money-making scheme. It’s evident from the moment you open the application, but let’s go down a list anyways:

When authorizing with Facebook, sharing every post you make is automatically enabled (with a defaulted checkbox). They’re all about traffic.
When authorizing with Twitter, there’s not even a checkbox for the user to undo. The user isn’t warned at all, their timeline is simply filled with posts they make on Pheed.
You’re forced to subscribe to at least three “featured Pheeds” before you can even complete the sign up process. They’re obviously more concerned with pleasing their advertisers than with their user experience, something Twitter is guilty of, although to a much lesser extent.
They allow users to monetize their content via 30-day subscription charges, which is cool. What isn’t cool, however, is that they take a whopping 50% of the revenue. This is a get-rich-quick scheme.
Sharing is everywhere. There’s probably not a single view in the whole application that can’t be shared from.
Everything is terribly-designed. Like, to a ridiculous extent. It’s just ugly.

I can rant all I want, and you can listen all you want, but go try it yourself. You will look back.

This platform will be left in the dust, with its founders pockets bursting. I’m @ramsey on Pheed. My first and last post is “This platform will fail.”

This platform will fail.

"Ultimately, our constant dissatisfaction with the way things are becomes the driving force behind..."

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 10:24:50 -0400

“Ultimately, our constant dissatisfaction with the way things are becomes the driving force behind everything we do.”

- Google

"There is no question about it now though, Twitter is heading someplace I don’t care to follow..."

Fri, 07 Sep 2012 10:53:11 -0400

“There is no question about it now though, Twitter is heading someplace I don’t care to follow much longer.”

- Gedeon Maheux

"The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do."

Wed, 06 Jun 2012 00:04:46 -0400

“The real problem is not whether machines think but whether men do.”

- B. F. Skinner

Why Installous (and piracy) doesn't hurt developers

Mon, 04 Jun 2012 20:35:16 -0400

I’m going to briefly walk you through this common misunderstanding. The truth behind the matter is, Installous (and piracy) doesn’t harm developers at all. Let us begin. Here’s a rough estimate of the user base of Installous:

As you can see, roughly 85% of these users weren’t going to pay for the application to begin with. This causes no loss to the developer (If someone uses something he had no intentions of paying for from the get-go, why it a loss?). If anything, it is beneficial to the developer of the application. Do you know what the most powerful form of marketing is? Word-of-mouth advertisement. If you can get a good thing going, and users have a good experience, they will tell people. Guaranteed. Now, do you think that just because they didn’t pay for their experience, they’re going to keep quiet about it? Absolutely not. If you have a good product, they will tell their friends. And chances are, they’re not going to pirate it. Only about 10% of all iPhone users jailbreak their devices. And only a portion of those users use Installous to pirate applications. So, 9 out of the 10 people that the pirate tells about the application are going to purchase that application, because their friend, who they trust, vouched for the application. They can safely buy it knowing that it’s a satisfactory experience. This drives sales. For the one unpaid user, the developer gained eight paid users. And the great things about word-of-mouth are these:

It grows exponentially. There’s no limit to the amount of new users that will be introduced to your application because of one pirate. Of those 10 people he told, 10 of them will tell their friends about the application. So on, so forth. Exponential growth.
It goes both ways. If your application really freaking sucks, then that word of mouth will still carry on, but instead of having 10 people learning of your application in a positive light, you will have 10 people learning that your application is crap. And it’s not just some random stranger telling them this; it’s their friend, their family member, someone they trust. They know to watch out for your application with double the emphasis, because someone close to them warned them that they would get burned.

So, that’s the 85% that don’t cause any losses. Now, the 14% that do cause losses. These people were going to purchase your application, but they didn’t, because they could get it for free. Do not get me wrong. These people are petty thieves. I am in no way endorsing piracy. I feel that developers should be rewarded for their work. I’m just stating the facts, which say that piracy doesn’t hurt developers. Now, what we’re dealing with here isn’t real loss, it’s called potential loss. This means that you had a potential buyer, but they decided not to buy your application only because they could get it without paying for it. The developer doesn’t actually lose money (it costs nothing to reproduce digital items, unlike physical items), but they lost money they had coming to them. Now, the reason why this doesn’t actually hurt them is because what I said above still applies. Word of mouth. Let’s say that ‘Bob’ developed an iPhone app. It costs $9.99. ‘Johnny’ was going to purchase it, but didn’t, because he could get it for free. So, ‘Bob’ lost $9.99 . But wait! Johnny likes Bob’s app. It’s really cool. So, Johnny tells all 10 of his friends. Of the 7 of them that decide to check it out, 6 of them purchase it, and one pirates it. So, let’s do the math. By now, Bob has lost $13.99 (Apple takes a 30% cut of all App Store revenue), and has gained $41.96.

$41.96 - $13.99 = $27.97.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. What about the $13.99?! They stole that money from him! No, that’s not actually what happened. You see, although they did prevent him from taking in that money, if Johnny hadn’t pirated the application and shared it with his friends, none of that $41.96 would have been made. This is called a profit. This is why the developer benefits.

And we’re not even done there. You have to include the exponential growth of word of mouth, as well as the additional publicity offered by Installous and Apptrackr.

$27.97 + publicity = $∞

I’d call that a pretty awesome gain. Now, we’re left with 1% of Installous users who use the service legitimately. Of course, they don’t cause any loss at all. So, nowhere in this graph can I see where a developer loses money. Can you?

"There’s work and there’s your life’s work. The kind of work that has your..."

Mon, 07 May 2012 21:15:00 -0400

“

There’s work and there’s your life’s work.

The kind of work that has your fingerprints all over it. The kind of work that you’d never compromise on. That you’d sacrifice a weekend for. You can do that kind of work at Apple. People don’t come here to play it safe. They come here to swim in the deep end.

They want their work to add up to something.

Something big. Something that couldn’t happen anywhere else.

Welcome to Apple.

”

- Apple’s letter to new hirees

"Getting told that “X is the best way to do it” is nice, but finding out the hard way..."

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 22:17:22 -0500

“Getting told that “X is the best way to do it” is nice, but finding out the hard way that “Y really doesn’t work” will make you really understand why “X is the best way” and you’ll never forget it.”

mRNAutomator

Thu, 09 Feb 2012 03:25:00 -0500

Today, we started to learn about DNA duplication, and mRNA and tRNA pairs, as well as the production of Amino Acids. I thought how this all worked systematically was fantastic, and it also made me realize that it could be easily scripted. So, here you go. mRNAutomator automatically returns the mRNA sequence, tRNA sequence, and Amino Acid pair for any given DNA sequence. You can get it here.

To use it, you’ll need to save ‘mRNAutomator.sh’ to your Desktop, and then follow these steps:

If you’re on a Mac, open Terminal. If you’re not, get a real computer.
Run this command:

cd ~/Desktop

3. Run this command:

chmod 755 *.sh

4. Run this command:

bash

5. Enter this, and press ‘Return’:

mRNAutomator.sh

6. Enter a DNA sequence, and enjoy!

"If music be the food of love, play on."

Sat, 04 Feb 2012 16:44:54 -0500

“If music be the food of love, play on.”

- Shakespeare

"Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of scepticism. To be content with..."

Fri, 27 Jan 2012 15:09:00 -0500

“Scepticism is as much the result of knowledge, as knowledge is of scepticism. To be content with what we at present know, is, for the most part, to shut our ears against conviction; since, from the very gradual character of our education, we must continually forget, and emancipate ourselves from, knowledge previously acquired; we must set aside old notions and embrace fresh ones; and, as we learn, we must be daily unlearning something which it has cost us no small labour and anxiety to acquire.”

- Alexander Pope

Apple thinks they still own your iPhone. Tell them they're wrong.

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 09:53:48 -0500

Apple thinks they still own your iPhone. Tell them they're wrong.:

Apple likes to play games with their customers, namely by pretending that your iPhone belongs to them. They restrict your device, and control what you can and cannot do with it. To bypass these restrictions, a group of digital vigilantes produce what are called, ‘jailbreaks’, which allow you full access to your own device, bypassing Apple’s restrictions. Now, jailbreaks require exploits. And Apple likes to patch exploits, by extracting information about software crashes from your device, and sending them back up to Cupertino. These crash reports cause major problems for the progress of jailbreaks, because they allow Apple to find and eliminate any exploits in their code.

Now, I’m not going to get into a rant, but if you support the notion of getting what you paid for, the best thing you can do is to take five minutes and install this utility on your computer. It won’t bloat your system, or take your time, but it will stop Apple from propriatorizing a device that you paid for.

Please, just take five minute and do this.

Kelvin is awesome? Oh wait, it is.

Tue, 22 Nov 2011 17:40:00 -0500

Kelvin is awesome? Oh wait, it is.:

I honestly never thought of units of measurement like this, but Kelvin does make much more logical sense. Why aren’t we using Kelvin?

"Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by..."

Sat, 19 Nov 2011 17:21:28 -0500

“Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

- Mark Twain

What is the future of user interaction?

Tue, 08 Nov 2011 20:09:06 -0500

What is the future of user interaction?:

This is brilliant. This is absolutely brilliant. It’s a whole new perspective on a topic I never even thought twice about. And all of you should read it, because it’s true. And this one person was genius enough to see that.

"The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak."

Tue, 01 Nov 2011 22:36:01 -0400

“The ability to simplify means to eliminate the unnecessary so that the necessary may speak.”

- Hans Hoffman

The other day, I Tweeted briefly about my thoughts on the...

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 09:30:12 -0400

The other day, I Tweeted briefly about my thoughts on the current state of the public eduction system. One of my friends linked me to an RSA Animate video, of a lecture by Ken Robinson. I really have no words to accompany this, it describes my thoughts on the education system as it is better than I ever could.

Please, watch this, and share this.

"Here’s to the crazy ones. The misfits. The rebels. The troublemakers. ..."

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 01:25:30 -0400

“

Here’s to the crazy ones.

The misfits.

The rebels.

The troublemakers.

The round pegs in the square holes.

The ones who see things differently.

They’re not fond of rules.

And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,

disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.

About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They invent. They imagine. They heal.

They explore. They create. They inspire.

They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.

Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.

”

- Apple Computer, 1997

It seemed like the right time to share this.

This is our latest production, shot and edited several weeks...

Wed, 05 Oct 2011 02:53:41 -0400

This is our latest production, shot and edited several weeks ago. It was produced and edited by John Merrill, and directed by Joseph Hutchinson.

"If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor."

Sat, 01 Oct 2011 10:10:48 -0400

“If you are neutral in situations of injustice, you have chosen the side of the oppressor.”

- Desmond Tutu