Adeo Ressi

Here is a presentation from Casual Connect Seattle 2008:

At 3:00 AM in a lounge while listening to live music on July 31st, 2008, my friend, Pierre, leaned over and said: “I have some bad news. JudgeCal is dead.”

In shock, and asked what happened, and I learned that he had been found dead in his apartment. A terrible sinking feeling came over me that he was alone, and I ran downstairs and hopped in a cab. After getting home, I called the morgue, which was closed, and then called the police precinct near his house.

“There are no reports, sir, of a Mark Chamberlain being brought in since July 20th anywhere in the city,” the officer said. Mark was the name that he had given up as a 15-year old kid on the street. JudgeCal matched his Judge Dredd tatoo and image as judge, jury, and executioner.

Of course, I was now hoping that this was all some type of bad hoax or new show. Awaking fully clothed and in shock the next morning sprawled on the bed, I grabbed some coffee and called the morgue. It was finally open, and I got transferred around a couple times as I asked for Mark Chamberlain.

“Nobody by that name has come in.”

I was about to hang up with the morgue when she asked, “maybe he was unidentified. Can you describe him?” I responded that he had a lot of tatoos on his arms and blond hair. She said, “platinum blond?”

A lot of people contribute to who you are, some in big ways, some in small ways, and some in other ways. Cal, as I liked to call him, was an “other way” contributor for me. He opened my mind. He helped me get back into gadgets and technology by showing his favorite video games or his radio frequency scanner. He always told the truth, and he always had your back. My first ride on the Nautilus at Burning Man was with Cal, just like my first all night video game deathmatch.

Across the thousands of people that come through my life, I have many great memories with JudgeCal. We were friends for just under 15 years, and I regret not having seen him in about a year.

IN MEMORY OF =JUDGECAL=

Born April 21, 1968. Passed July 25, 2008. =JUDGECAL’S= mission and GREAT WORK has been to awaken the sleeper in all of us. It is time to take up THE cause and BE responsible for our collective actions in an individual way.

FOR ANYONE THAT WANTS TO ATTEND FUNERAL SERVICES, PLEASE JOIN THIS MAILING LIST.

Most people do not realize that (a) I have some VCs that are friends and (b) I actively work towards private space exploration. Here are some links from a recent tour designed to introduce the Silicon Valley business to NASA. Enjoy!

“I Have Seen the Future of Space Exploration…And It Looks Like Web 2.0″

– Blog Post

– Photos

The gloves are off, the great monopoly formerly known as Microsoft.

Almost every day since the publication of an article titled, “Microsoft, You Suck”, I have received ignorant comment SPAM from Microsoft employees posting using Microsoft IP addresses and Hotmail accounts. These “comments” come in two forms: (1) calling me stupid and (2) pointing out the many “great needs” for Microsoft products. Despite a flood of poorly worded and insulting comment SPAM, I remained silent, even approving some of the corporate drool to appear as comments on the site.

Hey, Microsoft, I may be stupid, but you are the “stupidester,” using the language from one of your unpublished comments. Why?

FIRST: You actually have minions crawling the internet to post idiotic comments using words like “stupidester” INSTEAD OF FIXING YOUR BUG-LADEN, OVERWEIGHT, AND POORLY DESIGNED PRODUCTS! In case you missed it from your ivory tower, “the customer is king,” and, by the way, the have a lot of better options that your bloatware: Apple and Ubuntu are two. Every single person at Microsoft should be focused on fixing the products, not defending a mistake. Smart people apologize, fix the mistakes, and move on. Stupid people don’t even realize that they made a mistake…

SECOND: It is possible that the remaining smart Microsfters know that Vista and Office 2008 are both bloated mistakes, harping to a forgone era like the landline in telecom. These “smart people” can justify all mistakes by showing the vast sums of money these ghastly error-prone products generate, which they do, since they are produced by a monopoly, just like the phone companies of old. So, given ALL of the great sums of money that your crapware generates, your stock must generate equity returns, right? Wrong. Microsoft stock has not generated equity value in approximately 10 YEARS! It’s like you added no value to the world since 1998, joining a sad cast of characters that includes the artist formerly known as Prince. The great monopoly formerly known as Microsoft. Embarrassing.

THIRD: Let us not forget the awe-inspiring intelligence behind the product itself: Vista and Office 2008. We can all agree that writing software is hard. One would hope that you would be the BEST IN THE WORLD AT IT. Sadly, a loose federation of volunteer programmers has kicked your ass in the operating system world: Ubuntu. It works with most hardware, has a lot of whizz-bang features, but, best of all, the entire operating system and every application that you would ever want are 100% free. Even if it were bloated and crash-prone, which it is not, the fact that it is free makes it better than the overpriced Vista. But, wait, Ubuntu even runs Windows application for FREE using Wine. Go ahead. Comment SPAM me with messages pointing out the many problems with a UNIX based operating system, but add a little more consumer-facing polish and you have the Leaopard OS, which is also kicking your ass. It’s not about numbers, Mr. Softie, it’s about trend lines, and your trend lines suck.

FOURTH: So, according to trend lines, you’re losing the browser war. So, you’re losing share in the operating system market. You can’t seem to get your online offerings off the ground. BUT, great companies would still want to be acquired by this monopolistic cash hoarding beast, right? Wrong. Struggling public companies (Yahoo!) and start-ups alike (Xobni) are turning down your acquisition offers paid in cash at a premium. Hey, you did manage to acquire “the Enron of Scandinavia.” But, I digress, a little start-up turned you down for a cash offer. Huh?

The sad and scary part of all of this is that there is so much more to say about the stupid mistakes that you have made. Call me stupid all you want, but I have a really low bar to cross with you as a role model before your insults will really concern me.

Now, instead of diving into more obvious tales of stupidity, let’s take a look at your “smart” arguments defending Microsoft bloatware, which all circle around “needing to work offline.” You need to work on an airplane, right? Professionals need to work in the field, right? Of course they do, but that is a terrible argument to defend bloated local applications that store files in giant proprietary formats.

Using Google Gears, FireFox 3, or the new Adobe products, any developer can easily create web applications with a healthy offline experience to serve professionals in the field. But, architecting applications with offline access is not even necessary in the vast majority of cases. When was the last time that the average working professional traveled to a region where there was absolutely no cellular access? AND, where there is cellular access, there is ultimately connectivity. Soon enough, this will include planes. Soon enough, laptops will have chips that provide them with access to the cellular networks everywhere else. Technology evolves. Microsoft does not, apparently.

I know many smart people at Microsoft, and I respect them, too. Before you insult me, make a good product and build a half decent company. Back to the work of building great things… You should join me, Microsoft.

Here is a copy of a presentation made at the Space Investment Summit in Washington DC discussing, space, venture capital, and building a funding environment. Enjoy!

The blog post about the Microsoft Bloatware has generated some interesting comments, including on which said: “you are an idiot” (not published). Let me be clear: Windows Vista and Office 2008 are a disaster that will require a major recovery effort on the part of Microsoft. These two bloated and dysfunctional programs are the equivalent to GM making the strategic decision in 2008 to shift all production to SUVs, trucks, and Hummers. Microsoft, WAKE UP!

A revolution has begun to make something better. Every piece of software that you need is 100% FREE. For example, I am running a MacBook AIR with all open source applications to do my real business. A better operating system than Vista is also 100% FREE, Ubuntu. I have run Ubuntu for months without a crash, whereas Vista can barely stay on for a week without a crash. The nail in the coffin is someone who makes great and cheap hardware with all open source software. Imagine a MacBook AIR for $750, and everything is free.

To argue the importance of badly engineered operating systems and poorly crafted business application suites as “necessary for offline work” is like arguing the importance of the Cassette Deck for “the business of music” in 2008. You need a good browser with offline storage, a lightweight operating system, and a strong cloud. Microsoft, welcome to the Web 2.0 and Open Source worlds. The writing is on the wall, and your name is not there.

This is an excellent overview on how to get funded, leveraging some of the best advice from TheFunded.com.

“Get Funded for Your Dream”

Adeo Ressi at The Next Web Conference 2008 from Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten on Vimeo.

“The Truth According to Wikipedia” is an excellent documentary on truth in the digital age. Who or what is right, and who or wha is wrong? Enjoy!

An Open Letter appeared on TheFunded.com here that has five ideas on how to improve the venture capital industry. The recommendations make sense, and I recommend that both entrepreneurs and venture capitalists take a look at them. The success of TheFunded.com is evidence that changes are needed in venture capital.

So, today, I have finally made a once-and-for-all decision to abandon all bloatware, starting with the beastly suites of Microsoft software and operating systems. For a small number of really cool features, you endure (a) crashing, (b) slow performance on high-end hardware, (c) byzantine configuration menus, and (d) “the old way of doing things.” There is nothing new or cool or forward-thinking about any of the Microsoft products, and using their products feels like doing work, versus having fun - even if you are doing something on a computer that is fun.

At this point in time, you can find most of the best Microsoft tools have been replicated in a Web 2.0 incarnation, and these Web 2.0 tools are actually better that the bloatware that they replace. There are amazing project management tools, blogging tools, word processors, email solutions, etc. AND these new tools are, in most cases, free. Why would any company buy overpriced computers and software for employees that are likely to fail to store valuable data locally in bloated files and bloated applications?

Wouldn’t you rather have small computers and lightweight online applications that store data centrally, in the cloud? If an employee leaves, at least the organization retains the knowledge. Why have Outlook, when you could have SalesForce.com? Why have Project when you could have ViewPath.com? The world has changed. This is not to say that Microsoft is evil or has bad people, but they are certainly following a dead end. AND they have lost me as a customer.