Jeff Bezos, in 2000 (via Kyle Baxter):
If done right—and it could take 2 years or more—we’ll end up with a patent system that produces fewer patents (fewer people will bother to apply for 3 or 5 year patents, and fewer patents means less work for the overworked Patent and Trademark Office), fewer bad patents (because of the pre-issuance comment period), and even the good patents won’t last longer than is necessary to give the innovator a reasonable return (at Internet speed, you don’t need 17 years).
See also Lukas Mathis’ list.
Ryosuke Niwa (via Jonathan Rentzsch):
This week, I committed WebKit changes r92823 and r93001. They’re perhaps the most important changesets I’ve ever committed to the WebKit codebase because these changesets made WebKit not to produce wrapping style spans on copy and paste and class="Apple-style-span" anymore. In fact, these are two changes I’ve always wanted to make ever since I started working on the WebKit’s editing component in the summer of 2009.
Cleaner markup—yay!
Buzz Andersen:
I’m as much of an Apple fanboy fanboy as anyone, but the more Steve Jobs idolatry spreads through the business world, the more I’m tempted to remind people of stories like this, where the headstrong founder’s bull-headed sensibilities and refusal to listen stymied the efforts of his frequently brilliant staff.
Kevin Montrose (via Reddit):
This led to the situation where question bodies are safe to embed directly, but question titles are not; user about mes, but not display names; and so on. Ideally, everything would be safe to embed directly except in certain rare circumstances.
This mistake is a consequence of how we store the underlying data. It just so happens that we encode question titles and user display names “just in time”, while question bodies and user about mes are stored pre-rendered.
I’d love to see more articles like this.
Kathy Sierra (via Daniel Jalkut):
Of the four products I appear loyal to, none have ever given me an extrinsic reward. No punch cards, frequent-purchasing discounts, or Exclusive Access VIP Status (Now! With Better Badges!). No leaderboards, no contests, no discounts. But all have given me something far more valuable: enduringly rewarding experiences.
They have upgraded my personal skills, knowledge, and capabilities. They have made my life better. They have made ME better. THAT is the ultimate customer reward. When you give your users that, you still won’t have loyalty, but you’ll have something sustainable, robust, and honorable.
