Embracing Chaos

I’m glad the music industry is finally allowing legal sales of music online without DRM. Before this, the situation was absolutely screwball. Consumers had three choices for getting music onto the electronic devices: Buy the CD and rip it Illegally download it through a peer-to-peer network or sketchy Russian service Buy the DRM’d track legally The first option sucked because it either involved driving to a brick and mortar store or waiting for somebody else to drive the CD to your house. There’s no instant gratification. Then there’s the hassle of converting the CD to electronic format. The biggest problems…

...full article

Sorry for going dark for a little while there. As expected, starting a new job while taking a full load of classes at school has been challenging. Also unsurprisingly, the Google job is very engaging. I’ll describe a bit of what it’s like on the inside and also how this affects the kinds of things I write about here. I spent my first week in Mountain View at the Googleplex. My entering class of “Nooglers” were subjected to inane videos and boring HR discussions. But a couple hours into it we powered up our laptops and within 15 minutes I’d…

...full article

The UW Business School recently got a name: Foster. Michael G. Foster to be exact. Although just “Foster” is perhaps more fitting since 3 generations of the Foster family have contributed to making this possible. Just how much does it cost to get a prominent business school named after you? About $50 million. Here’s how it went down. It all started way back in 1928 when Albert Foster graduated from UW Business School. Not too long later, he founded the brokerage firm A.O. Foster & Co. which was successful enough to enable his family to get into the philanthropy business….

...full article