The Amp Hour #6 — Open Hardware and The Creative Economy
Posted by Chris Gammell on August 30, 2010 in Radio Show |
Another episode in the bag! We admittedly didn’t talk about straight electronics as we have in the past but we covered recent happenings in both the open source and (micro) and commercial (macro) electronics industries. Check out some of the links discussed in todays show below!
The Amp Hour #6 -- Open Hardware and The Creative Economy [ 59:12 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download (778)- Shoutouts and Upcoming Events:
- See a nerd with a tripod at the Electronex Electronics show coming soon to Sydney, Australia? It’s Dave! Snap a picture of him and send it to us and we’ll be sure to give you a shoutout on the air!
- Another Dave sighting! The most recent edition of the Element-14 Journal features Dave’s DMM “test and toss” acrobatics on a waterfall. Just watch out for the screwy formatting!
- Dave highlights the Mitch Altman and LadyAda talks about open source hardware and starting a company. Check them out at The Next Hope.org among their many videos.
- Chris finally found out that MAKE magazine has a video podcast. How’d I miss that one? Check out tips and tricks, as well as fun project ideas. Just don’t say their video podcast is better than Dave’s ….
- We have a new logo! Link to us from your page and we’ll love you! (Be sure to let us know about it as well!)
- Another great podcast will return soon! Solder Smoke, a podcast concentrating on HAM radio, has been on a break as Bill Meara is moving back from Rome. But he shall rule the airwaves again soon. We look forward to bouncing ideas around with him!
- Matt Mets has a funny new poster combining resistors and a double rainbow, as seen on the viral YouTube video. Purchase the poster direct from him and hang it up in your lab!
- Yet another podcast of sorts was found with Jeri Ellsworth. This feed is mostly her chatting with people via uStream while she’s working in her lab. Join in on the conversation and even use a Dave Jones bot as your voice!
- There’s an open hardware summit coming up in NYC, right before the next Maker Faire. They will be discussing the Open Source Hardware V 0.3 definition. Dave doesn’t like that the new definition does not allow the use of the Non-Commercial Creative Commons license option. How can the individual release and sell their open hardware product/kit and not fear being undercut by a bigger player? Isn’t that why the Creative Commons contains such a license option?
- Jobs Moving To Asia? Duh.
- Chris is pondering learning mandarin as a job skill. Is there any possible downside to this?
- Samsung forecasted to pull ahead of Intel in terms of chip sales. Not too surprising given that Samsung accounts for 1/3 of S. Korea’s GDP.
- A blog from EDN discusses how US policy is allowing jobs to easily jump overseas by not investing in companies and education. Chris says it’s ten years too late to try and act, Dave says 20.
- Apparently it’s a 70:1 applicants to job ratio in the UK. We don’t quite believe it, at least not legitimate applicants. Nor is it that bad in the US or AUS.
- A Quick Talk About The Kindle
- Dave is smitten with the 3rd version of the Kindle.
- Apparently the company is doing well, Lab126 out of Cupertino, CA has over 50 job openings on their page! Need a job? Give ‘em a shout!
- The e-ink technology has come a long way!
- The Creative Economy
- Is the future economy based only on creativity? Chris mentions a talk he heard recently by Phil McKinney about the Creative Economy and how knowledge is now a commodity.
- Dave thinks that applicable skills are just as important as the creative aspect and that not a lot of students coming out of Universities have those skills these days.
- (Not mentioned in episode) Talks recently at NI week in Austin seem to reinforce this idea, that individuals and their contributions will drive future economic development.
- Dumb Ideas
- Pulling energy from the clouds?! Yeah right!
- Reminds Chris of when EEstor was trying to pull the wool over people’s eyes with their bogus claims about the EESU technology. (It was actually 1.5 years ago, not 2.5 as Chris thought out loud).
- These horrible ideas are nearly as bad as giving guidance on financials and then making or missing them in the chip industry. Not worth it, execs! Give it a break!
- Just for fun — Dave’s Pillow Fort Studio Setup!
That’s all for this week. One last reminder to please link to us using our new logo and associated code on your facebook pages or website. Please leave any feedback or questions about this episode in the comments below and any suggestions for future episodes at our suggestions page. Thanks for listening!
PS. One or two people might have caught our post before it went live again (we see 3 downloads before publishing the second time). I totally forgot to cut out our sound check and a couple of flubs. Hold on to that recording, it’ll be worth a fortune some day 
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Note. Maybe you should record the podcast in dual channel mode, so you could adjust volume of Dave or Chris before publishing. Maybe format a little as well since Chris has much more Bass sound.
Just an idea maybe even worth of looking up to.
or maybe a stereo version, so you both can be heard at the same time too
Eep, sorry! We’re still tweaking our method and our microphone placement. I was trying out a new mic last night and was probably a little too close to it so my voice sounded boom-y.
The reason that Open Hardware must not have a non-commercial clause is the same that Open Source and Free Software do not have it.
By limiting something to non-commercial use only it is forever limited to the toy category and that’s a seriously bad for the future and reusability of the design.
The main advantage of working in Open (Source|Hardware) is that there is a large amount of shoulders to stand on.
Having random limitations in the licenses of the stuff you are trying to build on is a pain in the ass.
Now, if you want to keep your design closed (as in it’s a dead end as far as other developers are concerned) then feel free to stick a non-commercial clause on it, but don’t go calling it Open Source or Open Hardware.
70:1 application to job ration isn’t that special in Europe. I have experienced 200:1 at the end of the 90th.
It’s validating to hear others in the electronics field think that learning Mandarin is a useful skill to have in the back pocket. If anyone knows of Mandarin language tutorials geared towards electronics, give us a heads up, otherwise i might consider trying to make some very clumsy elementary videos.
I’ve lapsed in my effort to catch up on evcast podcasts in the last year. Those guys were always trying to get the good oil on EEstor from anyone and everyone they thought might spill the beans
Ooof, it’s going to be a long slog ahead of me though. I have some tips from a friend who is an expat in Beijing right now about learning, but even with those, you still gotta go out and learn and do and practice and practice and practice. And then probably move there.
I haven’t used it, but most pod-casters swear by this easy to use free app that will help balance the levels of a 2 person podcast.
http://www.conversationsnetwork.org/levelator
HTH
gg
That sounds awesome (pun intended), thanks George!
Dave.
The same reasoning Dave gave as #1 for not getting a patent, don’t bother using CC-NC – it won’t protect your design anyway. Are you really going to spend the money to sue someone in China when they rip you off?
Use CC-BY. Get all the derivatives and knock-offs driving business back to you. Continue to innovate, create new designs, and be seen as a generous good guy, and niche expert to beat the competition.
Exactly, the people who are likely to adhere to a copyright license are the same people who are likely to cooperate and feed enhancements back to you.
If I see a neat trick used by someone who tells me “you can use this trick, but not for what you want”, then I’m certainly going to use the trick, but I’m not going to tell him about it.
I’m more than happy to feed enhancements back to people, but not if they get all pissy about it.
Yeah, I agree with this logic and even called Dave out on it I think. But we weren’t really talking about China, we were talking about the kit business which is getting more competitive. The only real problem pops up when kit makers start undercutting each other–which hasn’t happened yet. If it does, things will get sticky. Luckily, many of those same kit makers are the ones putting the standard together so we can hope everyone will continue to play nice.
Two words, Dave: anechoic foam. It isn’t that horribly expensive (especially slightly used) and, if you don’t mind me saying, less frightening than your cushions.
There is definitely a huge downside to learning Mandarin, or any other language that is not closely related to your mother tongue, which I’m assuming to be English. Learning an unrelated language will be such a big suck in time and effort that you’ll likely give up before even learning enough to say “how many coulombs in an amp-hour”.
Unless you plan on moving to a Mandarin speaking area (and not all of China speaks Mandarin on the street), I think learning Mandarin as a business skill is a total waste of time. Your return on time invested is better spent elsewhere.
This is coming from someone that had hoped to get a cushy ex-pat position in China (or anywhere else, as long as it’s cushy).
Really? Not even trying?
I would agree with Fluxor. I love learning new languages, but Chinese was one that was way beyond me. If you’re going to learn a language, do it because you love the culture or really enjoy exploring other languages. It’s too hard to learn a language as just “another skill” because the results will not be worth the time you invest, likely.
On the other hand, if you know you’ll have to interact with someone or many people who speak Mandarin, that might be sufficient incentive.
I’d say go ahead and try if (a) you need this skill for work right now or in the near future, (b) your significant other speaks Chinese, or (c) one of your major life goals is to move to Taiwan or the People’s Republic.
Think about any Chinese speaker that you may be dealing with on an occasional basis in your job (if any). It is most likely they are university educated with years of English learning behind them. Your Chinese will no doubt be years behind their English, meaning the conversation will no doubt end up being in English for the sake of sanity of both parties.
Of course, if you’re a language-savant, go right ahead!
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