Create a Heirarchical Temporal Memory Platform

This one speaks best for itself:

"Numenta was formed to develop and promote a technology called Hierarchical Temporal Memory, or HTM. We are confident that the principles underlying HTM are the same principles that govern much of the operation of the human neocortex; thus, HTM enables the creation of machines that have some of the capabilities of the human brain. We see HTM as a fundamental new computing methodology able to solve longstanding problems in artificial intelligence and machine learning. Be sure to read the white paper on our web site that describes the basics of HTM and what it can do.

We believe that the potential applications for HTM are broad and far-reaching; yet we know that our small company can only work on a piece of this application potential. Consequently, our goal is to create an industry built on HTM, opening up the platform to the world of creative developers. To this end, we have created a set of software tools that allows anyone to experiment with HTM, to apply HTMs to different problems, and to extend the tools. We call this set of tools the Numenta Platform for Intelligent Computing or NuPIC, and we have made it available for anyone to download under license."

The First Occasional No-Duh Award (FONDA)

Too late for you to win The FONDA, as this edition's recipient is Mark Cuban, for a 10 years-too-late realization that it's the massive symmetric bandwidth, stupid ... and a trailing, stale, derived pseudo-proclamation that The Internet is Dead and Boring, a reality that I've been challenging Stanford undergrads with in the Shadow/Mentor program for some time, now. Just scroll down a bit for more variations on the theme, if you like.

But let Billionaire Boy proclaim such things, and all of a sudden it's a topic of discussion. The myths about the power of pure ideas and thought leadership are just that - myths; at least in America. Ideas are worth jack here -- it's cash and cajones to execute ideas that count.

Although I suppose I should be flattered if BB has been lurking at TLTBF to keep up; pardon just a bit of non-billionaire counter-banter as we recall that BB made his billions on glam-ware like everyone else during the very time that we were explaining to Sand Hill Rd. the UNIQUE and CRITICAL post-Telecom-Act environment that would have enabled us to TRANSFORM and OWN the wholesale Ethernet First Mile bandwidth platform (ETTH) by 2008.

As ranted here many times before, we still have late 90's business plans that effectively nailed this projection to 2008. But nooo ... there was a "glut" and "what would anyone ever do with such bandwidth?" Nice job, geniuses; really good work. You're such valiant visionaries. Now that you finally get it, it's too late ... unless you want to spend THOUSANDS of times more than it would have cost you in the first place, while feebly attempting to take on a fully re-constituted telecom oligarchy, now exporting the same squelching influence long secured in the homeland.

Nope, it just ain't happening in America. We gave you first shot at it and you blew it, so we're building it EVERYWHERE ELSE in the world, instead. 100Mbps is only $20 to $40 /mo. in many global markets and One Gigabit to Forty Gigabit fiber optic ETTH is emerging in many global markets ... but just not YOURS, America.

Wake up, America, you live in a Second or Third World Bandwidth nation and you did it to yourselves. Just because things are "faster than they were" does not mean they are as fast, affordable, or secure as they SHOULD HAVE BEEN.

Ah, now that was a polemical rant if ever I've read one! Feel better? You bet!

Take Ad Supported "free" Music and Media Downloads to Scale

Um, well, not exactly the newest idea in the world; besides, if you consume the advertising, it's not FREE now, is it? Nevertheless, companies like SpiralFrog and QTrax once again have old media's panties in a bunch and there is renewed banter about which of these services might be first to achieve sustainable, profitable, markets of scale and universal kitchen-table brand awareness such as a Yahoo, Google, or Ebay.

So given that their panties are already in a bunch, isn't it just about time to go for the full wedgie and distance ourselves from the old media playground bullies altogether? Why should they continue to collect their fat paychecks from a machine that no longer delivers the audience that it delivered a quarter century ago? The answer is, they shouldn't, and won't for very much longer, despite (or perhaps because of) the increasingly disingenuous and presumptuous anti-piracy jihad against media consumers.

In Is P2P Ready for Sponsored Downloads? on eMarketer.com, we see yet another clear example that old media's terrorist jihad against defenseless college student music downloaders is as disingenuous as it is exploitive of people who are in such a captive situation as being shackled by student debt and confined to a college campus.

The suggestion that music can be free, even if supported by ads, tends to draw controversy. Prince recently drew fire by giving away copies of his latest CD in copies of the UK Mail on Sunday — never mind that The Mail paid him do to so.

Case in point: the artist, formerly and now re-known as Prince, created a product and sold that product to a customer. So what's the problem? The problem is an increasingly irrelevant and obsolete regime attempting to hold artists and new distribution technologies hostage to Cold War model for media management, distribution, and monetization.

R.I.P.: The Desktop

Yeah, yeah, yeah, the desktop is still PERVASIVE but it's a walking ZOMBIE. Others have long written far more responsibly and less hyerbolically about this trend, but this is a site that earns its stripes through highly probably hyperbole, so it' safe to assert: there is no long term future in the stand-alone "local desktop" rubric. It is a lifeless shell of it's former glorious self. It has served humanity well, and ought not be derided for running its leg of the computational relay race as best it was able.

However, go take a look at the demo site for Mail.Zoho.Com; particularly the "Bureau" view, a name and dashboard view which I hope they will keep into full production. Or for an advanced full-blown web desktop, try Desktop Two (hey Adobe Corp and BSD developers, we really *need* flashplayer9 and up to date adobe reader plugins for the most innovative early adopter group -- *ix geeks -- to help you jump start adoption, man!) So, it may take a few more years to breath its last gasp, but it's officially time to re-re-re-redeclare ALT.DESKTOP.DIE.DIE.DIE is imminent.

Zoho's FIRST here is to provide a viable, scalable, working prototype of a client-side office WebTop. Others have done bits and pieces, and these sites have clearly built upon the shoulders of giants; however, it is now Too Late To Be First to bring almost 20 years of supportive efforts together as a single, compelling, easy-to-use WebTop environment. I'm thrilled that there are many others working to keep Zoho honest, but there just appears to be nothing missing here.

Zoho seems to have Nailed It.

By 2012, just give me BANDWIDTH and a BROWSER and I should have all the client-side computing resources I'd ever need, right at my fingertips! If that sounds aggressive, or too soon, realize that 2012 would be nearly two decades from the time the idea of WebTop initially emerged!

Cudos again to Sun Microsystems, who made the official First Call on this one with their Java WebTop framework, so long ago! Some of the earliest usenet mentions of "Java" and "WebTop" date back to the summer of 1996!

THE WEB *IS* THE OS!

THE NETWORK *IS* THE COMPUTER!

FINALLY!

too.late