Double your T-Mobile “Even More Plus 500″ minutes from 500 to 1000 for FREE

With the T-Mobile Even More Plus 500 plan, you get an additional 500 minutes over and above your 500 contract minutes every month for Call Forwarding.  You effectively have 1000 minutes on your plan, T-Mobile just doesn’t advertise it that way.  In fact T-Mobile representatives have been instructed to let people know they could just turn on call forwarding and pick up their calls on another phone if they’re about to run out of minutes on their plan for the month, that way T-Mobile doesn’t have to dole out as many bonus minutes.

Fortunately, it turns out that with Voice 0.3.0 as available on the Nexus One (which does some more funky stuff with your phone and network settings than previous versions, e.g. dialing the hashcode to replace your voicemail number at the network level), some of the time or most of the time if you use your Google Voice number as your primary number, the Voice app actually sets up your phone to use Call Forwarding minutes with T-Mobile — and you don’t actually end up using contract minutes at all!  I discovered this because I was about to go over my minutes based on calls I made before buying a Nexus One, and asked T-Mobile for bonus minutes, but later found that the minutes I used from that time and after upgrading to a Nexus One on actually came off my Call Forwarding allocation that I didn’t even know I had.

With Voice 0.3.0 on Android-2.1, you can add a shortcut to the home screen that toggles between the three “Use Google Voice for all calls?” settings (Use for all calls, use for no calls, use for International calls only).  This gives you quick access to either your normal calling minutes (the 500 on your contract) or your Google Voice minutes (your extra 500 forwarding minutes), assuming you’re OK with the caller ID changing between calls.  Thus you get 1000 minutes a month if you’re OK with working with the subtle caveats of switching back and forth.

I say “most of the time” Google Voice uses your forwarding minutes, because I have seen it use non-forwarding minutes on my bill, and I don’t know what caused the difference.  But anyway if you’re running out of minutes one month you can in theory just switch over to your original cellphone number and voila, you get 500 more minutes.  If you’re over on your Google Voice / Forwarding minutes and people call you, you might have to not pick up the phone and call the person back on your cell number so you don’t go over.  Be aware that T-Mobile takes minutes off your plan for both leaving messages on voicemail *and* checking voicemail as far as I know (scoundrels), so your GV number should be your primary number, that way if people call your GV number and you’re out of forwarding minutes, they’ll leave you a message but it (hopefully!!) won’t count as additional forwarding minutes, because Google handles the Voicemail call and it doesn’t even go through the T-Mobile network once you decline the call (I think / I hope.  Though the fact that they replace the voicemail provider at the network level by dialing the hashcode might actually mean this is not true.  Anybody know?).

Note that bonus minutes do not apply to Call Forwarding minutes, so if you go over your 500 minutes with Google Voice, there’s nothing T-Mobile can do (will do?) to help you. This is true whether or not you use the hack described here to double your minutes, as long as you are using your GV number as your primary number.  I suspect this is going to cause a lot of people a lot of problems really soon, because T-Mobile frequently gives out bonus minutes but they can’t/won’t if you have gone over using Google Voice, meaning some people will get slapped with really nasty bills for going over while using Google Voice.

Anyway with free T-Mobile to T-Mobile minutes, free nights and weekends, 500 contract minutes and 500 Call Forwarding minutes, I think that Even More Plus 500 is actually going to work for me now!  That certainly was not the case before I discovered this, I typically need to use a lot more on-peak minutes in a month than 500.

NOTE: You should watch your bill closely to make sure that this actually works and is all correct, both in general and for your account specifically.

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Off-contract is the way of the future.  Take back control from your carrier.

Follow me on Twitter : http://twitter.com/LukeBos

Donate some of the money I just saved you via paypal ;-p :  <my first name, Luke><dot><first five letters of my last name, Hutchison><at>gmail.com

My Android stuff (original multi-touch hack, etc.) : http://lukehutch.wordpress.com/android-stuff

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My Android multi-touch controller, ported to Eclair

Cyanogen has ported my multi-touch code to the Android 2.0 / Eclair API, enabling much simpler implementation of multi-touch apps on top of the new Eclair multi-touch api.  If you’re implementing MT apps, trust me, you don’t want to do it without this Java class   The Eclair build includes both the official Linux kernel API for multi-touch, as well as changes to the MotionEvent class to support multiple touch points.  You can use these directly to implement multi-touch apps on Android without any additional code, but dealing with the huge amount of noise in the event stream on touch up / touch down events is a hard problem.  And re-implementing the boilerplate code for pinch-zoom over and over again is pointless, because it’s not as straightforward as you might think (you have to transform back and forth between two different coordinate spaces, etc.). Anyway my code helps with those problems, and to easily implement multi-touch apps on Eclair all you need is the patched version of my MultiTouchController.java class (see update below). (This is the class used in cyanogenmod to implement multi-touch scaling in the browser and the gallery.)  This class dramatically simplifies the logic necessary to implement dual-touch scaling (pinch zoom) as well as other dual-touch operations involving the distance between the touch points and their orientation.  There is also a *lot* of finicky behavior on current capacitive touchscreens on touch up / touch down events (e.g. one axis but not the other axis will suddenly jump to an ordinate of zero while the coordinate still reflects the correct location).  This code takes care of cleaning up the event stream pretty dramatically so you get stable and useful dual-touch information, has lots of useful helper methods and classes, and has a high-speed integer sqrt for calculating the distance between the touch points.  Anyway, thanks for porting the code, cyanogen [if anyone's paying attention, it means cyanogenmod is basically now Eclair]. I hope this Java class is useful to somebody — please drop me a line if you use it to implement multi-touch in your own projects. UPDATE [2010-01-16]: The latest code for both the controller and the demos is available here:

MT Controller: MultiTouchController.java

MT Demos (should work out-of-the-box on an unpatched Droid or Nexus One): MTVisualizer.apk |  MTMapsDemo.apk |  MTPhotoSortrDemo.apk Note that MTVisualizer is also posted as a free app in the Android Market.

MT Demos, source code: MTDemos.zip

UPDATE [2010-02-01]: List of applications that make use of the MT Controller — see these for more examples of how to incorporate the MT Controller class into your own code:

• The replacement browser in the cyanogenmod replacement firmware (and before that, JesusFreke) — also possibly other firmwares like dwang5
• David Byrne’s fractal viewing app Fractoid, available free in the Android Market and with source available under the GPL.  David is the first person who has emailed me to say he’s using my code in an actual app shipping in the Market, thanks David!  Fractoid is really nicely done, the code is clean, and the pinch-zooming works really well.  It’s probably the best example of pinch-zoom out there right now because it zooms to exactly the pinched size, unlike the browser that can only zoom in-out by certain increments and constantly re-flows when you’re zooming.  Try out Fractoid and let David know what you think!

UPDATE [2010-02-02]: Google releases an OTA update for the Nexus One that includes pinch-zoom in the three apps that make sense (Browser, Maps, Gallery3D).

Unfortunately however, I looked at the multitouch code used in these apps with baksmali — and it appears that all three MT controller implementations are different.  Also they don’t zoom around the correct point (the center of the pinch).  My multitouch controller does the correct transformation between screen coordinates and object coordinates to get the center of the zoom correct, and makes writing apps like this much easier — they could have saved themselves some time and work

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– Please donate if you use and like multi-touch on cyanogenmod (or previously on the JesusFreke ROMs) — it will encourage me to keep working on cool stuff!

The CHEAP way to pay for a Nexus One — Don’t Eat The Marshmallow Now

What T-Mobile doesn’t want you to know about the hidden costs of the 2-year Nexus One contract, or “don’t eat the marshmallow now”

[2010-02-01 MAJOR UPDATE -- double your minutes from 500 to 1000 per month for free -- see update 10 below, or full post here.]

T-Mobile is messing with everybody’s minds by telling them they can have the phone now for $180 on a 2-year contract — you think you’ll save money in the long run as well as up front that way.  There’s no free lunch.  In the long run you may end up paying hundreds more if you buy the phone on contract.  Basically we have a classic case of the Stanford Marshmallow Experiment about delayed gratification — $180 now, and pay a lot later, or $530 now, and save a lot of money later?

DON’T GET THE GOOGLE NEXUS ONE PHONE ON CONTRACT (even if you already have a contract with T-Mobile), YOU’LL LOSE A LOT OF MONEY.  Here is all the math to prove it:

KEY POINTS:

• You can get out of paying for your current G1 contract by switching to the Even More Plus 500 non-contract plan (*not* the Even More 500 contract plan, it’s different).  Conversion is $35.  The only contractual obligation remaining is the early termination fee if you ditch T-Mobile entirely (see below).
• Even More Plus 500 is a no-contract plan and will save you a lot of money over most other plans, and certainly you will save over a hundred dollars compared to the Even More 500 with the exact same plan features if you purchase the Nexus One.
• You can save “even more” if you get Google Voice and use GV for all your SMS, and then request they take SMS off your account ($10/mo), converting your plan to the (undocumented) Even More Plus 500 Talk+Web (rather than the default Even More Plus 500 Talk+Text+Web) plan.

TOTAL COST OF OWNERSHIP (TCO) ANALYSIS:

• The N1 is $180 on 2-yr contract or $530 off-contract.  You’ll end up paying (with taxes etc.) about $88/mo for the 79.99 2-year contract (Even More 500).  So 180+88*24 = $2292.
• If you get the phone off-contract and pay T-Mobile for the Even More PLUS 500 plan ($60/mo) that has the *same features* as Even More 500 but is non-contract (after a $35 conversion fee), it’s about $67/mo after taxes etc., or 530+67*24+35 = 2173, saving $119.  (You can see how they picked the $530 and $180 price points though, they’re close in TCO.)
• However if you get the Even More Plus 500 non-contract plan and then ask them to cancel the text messaging bundle (-$10/mo) and then you use Google Voice for all SMS, you only pay about $56/mo after taxes, or 530+56*24+35=$1909, saving $383.  (You do pay 20c for each SMS to/from your non-GoogleVoice number, if you ever get any — so change your cell number and get everyone to use your GV number).
• There is a (530-180)+119 = $469 difference between the *perceived* additional cost to the consumer of buying the phone outright (it’s $350 more) and the actual additional savings to the consumer of buying the phone outright (you save $119 in TCO) without even using the Google Voice trick to further reduce costs.  This gives you a measure of how deceptive the phone price marketing really is, because the *only* reason someone would sign up for the contract version is so that they (supposedly) save money.  That’s a $19.50 difference in perceived cost per month of your plan, amortized across the 24 months.

Basically they’re taking people for a ride by making them think they’re going to get a good deal by avoiding the apparently large up-front cost of the phone and signing up for a 2-year contract.  The Even More Plus 500 Talk+Text+Web plan gives you *exactly* the same features as the Even More 500 Talk+Text+Web 2-year contract.  However the Even More 500 contract won’t let you change features like canceling SMS — and you’re stuck with a huge early Nexus One early termination fee of $350.  Add that to your expected cost if you ever think you’ll leave T-Mobile in the next two years.

So if you’re on a T-Mobile contract, e.g. you bought a G1 phone a year ago, get Google Voice, pay the $35 fee to convert to Even More Plus 500, cancel the SMS bundle, buy the phone outright and start using Google Voice for all SMS.  You’ll save hundreds of dollars in the long run.  But even without Google Voice, you’ll save a third of the price of the phone by going off contract.  (I know you can’t easily sign up for Google Voice right now, but wait a little while, anywhere from weeks to a few months, and you will be able to when GV+Gizmo opens for public consumption.)

Note that if you switch to Even More Plus: (1) T-Mobile will never let you switch back to a contract again, without canceling and signing up anew; (2) you still have to pay early termination fees for old contracts (for the G1 etc.) if you do cancel your account; and (3) you are not eligible for equipment upgrades — but you would only get a partial discount on a new phone after 22 months anyway, and you’d have to renew a 2-year contract again at that point.  After the above analysis though — why would you care about any of these restrictions?

Off-contract is the way of the future.  Take back control from your carrier.

Follow me on Twitter — http://twitter.com/LukeBos

Donate some of the money I just saved you via paypal ;-p : <my first name, Luke><dot><first five letters of my last name, Hutchison><at>gmail.com

My Android stuff (original multi-touch hack, etc.) – http://lukehutch.wordpress.com/android-stuff

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UPDATES:

1. I forgot to mention that the Even More Plus plan allows you to choose to amortize the up-front cost of the phone across 22 months (like what you do on a contract, just without the contract), so you don’t actually have to pay the cost up-front if one-off cost is your reason for wanting to choose a contract.  (That must only true for phones purchased from T-Mobile though, so you’ll have to wait a week until T-Mobile (supposedly) offers N1s for sale themselves at the same two pricepoints.)
2. If you’re worried about the 500 minutes (yes, it’s *tiny*), and the cost of overage charges each month, which could be astronomical, realize that you get free unlimited in-network (Tmo-to-Tmo) anytime minutes and free nights and weekends on the Even More Plus 500 plan — *and* (I’m sure Google is banking on this, or they wouldn’t have let Tmo get away with a 500 minute contract only) when the Google Voice + Gizmo5 combo is released, this whole conversation is going to become a moot point.  Maybe you’ll cancel your voice plan entirely then; I might.  More discussion below in the comments.
3. [slightly different topic:] Google ate shipping cost for the Nexus One but asked for sales tax, while Amazon and others are still deftly skirting around it. I’m curious what favors Google wants from Capitol Hill as a result of playing it as straight as possible. I suspect this has something to do with the court case AT&T pulled against them recently complaining about connection charges for rural numbers.  Google needs to get regulatory approval to continue business as usual before releasing Google Voice + Gizmo5, since one of their schticks is that they don’t operate a real phone company so the rules don’t apply.
4. I haven’t done the analysis for the upgrade price, but if you qualify for an upgrade then the phone is $329 with a 2-year contract.  I suspect this only kicks in at T-Mobile’s usual minimum upgrade threshold of 22 months into a 2-year contract period, but I don’t know for sure.  If this is an option for you, it should be easy enough to do the numbers.
5. dproy (Dan Poulsen) made the following great point in a comment below: “Why pay the $35 fee to convert to Even More Plus 500? Just stay on your G1 contract and put the SIM in a Nexus One you buy outright. For my current plan (although not available anymore) MyFaves 300 and T-Mobile G1 Unlimited Web + 400 Messages I pay ~$60/month after taxes with the 14% UC Berkeley affiliation discount.”  Depends if you care about being off-contract or not I guess.  However T-Mobile will indefinitely honor what they call “grandfathered plans” — plans where you got a great deal a decade ago and never touched your plan since.  If you have a great deal and you’re not better off with a newer plan, think twice.
6. @stede tweeted: @LukeBos also looks like with the new Tmo plans even outright buying a MyTouch for $400 is cheaper than ’saving’ $250 by paying $20/mo more.
7. @ron1n tweeted: @LukeBos I’m so happy to see someone else did the math. Take a look at my blog on this: http://bit.ly/58ap3G
8. @TheRealEdwin tweeted: @LukeBos someone wrote a similar post about costs. You should take a look. http://nosugrefneb.com/1896
9. bc wrote the following in a comment, I wanted to highlight it: ”I just got off the phone with T-Mobile. I ordered the Even More Plus plan w/ 500 minutes, unlimited text, unlimited data for $59.99. I told the rep I did not need the texts. No problem, $10 less bringing my total down to $49.99 with 500 anytime, free nights/weekends, free T-Mobile to T-Mobile, and unlimited data. Month to month service, no contract. There is a $35 activation fee. SIM is free. $11 for overnight shipping.  The point here is that you don’t need to call back and request the SMS portion to be removed. Two different reps I spoke with today both said it is no problem, and it was done. My original goal, as posted at, http://nosugrefneb.com/1896#comment-8969 , was to get a no contract unlimited data for $39.99. There were a lot of problems on T-Mobile’s end regarding that. What I ended up doing is paying $10 extra but having the backup of 500 minutes until the VOIP solutions are ironed out. On a month to month plan and with how easy it was to remove the texts, I wouldn’t be surprised if I could remove the minutes down the road.  So, there’s one way to do it. Nexus and SIM arrive tomorrow.”
10. 2010-02-01 MAJOR UPDATE: Double your minutes from 500 to 1000 for FREE. (Full post here.)  It turns out that some of the time or most of the time, if you use Google Voice as your primary number (at least with Voice 0.3.0 as available on the Nexus One), the Voice app actually sets up your phone to use Call Forwarding minutes with T-Mobile.  This is an additional 500 minutes over and above your 500 contract minutes, so you effectively have 1000 minutes on your plan, T-Mobile just doesn’t advertise it that way.  With Voice 0.3.0 on Android-2.1, you can add a shortcut to the home screen that toggles between the three “Use Google Voice for all calls?” settings.  This gives you quick access to either your normal calling minutes (on your contract) or your Google Voice minutes (your extra 500 forwarding minutes).  I say “most of the time” Google Voice uses your forwarding minutes, because I have seen it use non-forwarding minutes on my bill, and I don’t know the difference in the call details.  But anyway if you’re running out of minutes one month you can just switch over to your other calling system and voila, 500 more minutes — you just might have to not pick up the phone and call people back on the other number so you don’t go over.  Be aware though that T-Mobile takes minutes off your plan for both people leaving messages on voicemail *and* you checking voicemail as far as I know, so have people primarily call your GV number, that way if you’re out of forwarding minutes and they leave you a message, it (hopefully!!) won’t count as additional forwarding minutes, because Google handles the Voicemail call and it doesn’t even go through the T-Mobile network once you decline the call (I think).
11. I got my T-Mobile bill and they are indeed charging me $25 for data — the T-Mobile rep that set it up for me and promised me I’d save $10 was wrong.  I’m still saving a lot of money on my TCO for the Nexus One, especially after dropping the SMS portion of the bill, but I’m saving $5 less/mo than I would.  I’m going to raise a stink with them and see what they say, because it doesn’t make any sense to be charged $5 more for the data portion of the bill when I drop SMS — “bundle pricing” notwithstanding.
12. [2010-02-08] Gadgetopolis has a slightly different analysis but comes to the same basic conclusion.

Really simple batch job scheduling / workqueue for Linux via xargs

I just discovered a really simple way to create a workqueue on Linux that someone else might find useful.  If you have a bunch of jobs to run that all require different parameters and that potentially take different amounts of time to complete, it’s difficult to schedule them in a way that makes maximum use of the available cores short of using some sort of batch scheduling system, which is overly complicated for a lot of prototyping purposes.  It turns out that the xargs command has builtin workqueue scheduling that is really easy to use.

basic syntax (assuming you want to run the program ‘command’ with one parameter, and that you want to have four processes running at any one time):

echo param1 param2 param3 param4 param5 param6 | xargs -n1 -P4 command

will run

command param1 &      # & => background
command param2 &
command param3 &
command param4 &

then when the first command of those four completes, it will run

command param5 &

then command param6 &, etc.

If your command requires two parameters, do:

echo param1a param1b param2a param2b [etc.] | xargs -n2 -P4 command

If you have a quad-core processor with hyperthreading, you could do -P8, etc.

You can also obviously store the params in a file and do cat file | xargs … .

The nice thing about this approach over batch scheduling for prototyping is that if you hit Ctrl-C, it kills all the child processes.

I haven’t experimented yet to find the optimal way to generate a separate logfile for each child process, but I also just discovered PPSS which is a more powerful system for achieving the same thing as xargs, and supports separate logfiles: http://code.google.com/p/ppss/

I hope this is as useful to someone else as it is going to be to me!!

Balloon Boy

So I can’t stop laughing about Balloon Boy… some of the dialog between TV commentators while this was going on is just hilarious.

Be the first to buy my Balloon Boy design on Zazzle:

This design by somebody else is great too

Connecting the Dots: Verizon and Google — *much* bigger than a couple of phones

The Web is buzzing today with the news that Google and Verizon are entering a partnership to release Android-powered cellphones on the Verizon network, with the first two phones being released this year.  I suspect there is a lot more going on to this deal than just another carrier signing on to carry Android handsets.

Eric Schmidt, left, CEO of Google, holding the HTC Hero, and Lowell McAdam, CEO of Verizon Wireless, holding the Motorola Sholes (both unreleased)

Anyone remember the airwave auctions?  A recap: with Analog TV expiring in the US due to federal mandate, the 700MHz frequency band was about to be vacated.  This frequency band is particularly valuable because it can travel through thick concrete walls with comparative ease, bounce off interfaces between atmospheric layers to travel over mountains, and travel long distances without significant atmospheric attenuation.  Google threw down the gauntlet by offering to place an initial bid of $4.64B for a block of the spectrum if the FCC would enforce four specific openness provisions upon that block of spectrum: open applications, open devices, open services and open networks.  Verizon bid more than $9M and won most of the the coveted “C block” and parts of the A and B blocks, and AT&T mopped up most of the rest of the available spectrum.  Google seemed to have “lost” the auction by being vastly outbid by Verizon — but really emerged as one of the biggest winners, because they never intended to buy the spectrum, just to have the openness provisions enforced.  Google announced their intentions and the openness provision on 20 Jul 2007, they unveiled the Android platform on 5 Nov 2007, and the auction closed on 28 Jan 2008.  Verizon (after initially fighting Google over the openness provisions, at least publicly) started displaying a commitment to openness right around the time they won the license block, and that openness has continued with the current press release:

On a conference call with analysts and journalists Tuesday, Lowell McAdam, Verizon Wireless’s chief executive, said the first two Android-powered phones would be available this year. He also said that they will include Google Voice, a calling application that generated controversy when it was rejected for Apple’s device.

“You either have an open device or not, and this will be open,” Mr. McAdam said.

Eric Schmidt, Google’s CEO, hailed Verizon’s data network and scale and said that the carrier’s openness “was, frankly, enormously surprising, given the history and the old-line nature of telcos.”

He added: “In Verizon, somehow, the leadership has decided to embrace a very different philosophy, which works very, very well with the Internet.”

Fast forward 9 months to 25 Sept 2008, and another intriguing piece of the puzzle emerges: a patent, originally filed by Google in March 2007, is published publicly, and claims

A method of initiating a telecommunication session for a communication device include submitting to one or more telecommunication carriers a proposal for a telecommunication session, receiving from at least one of the one or more of telecommunication carriers a bid to carry the telecommunications session, and automatically selecting one of the telecommunications carriers from the carriers submitting a bid, and initiating the telecommunication session through the selected telecommunication carrier.

This is simply one of the most brilliant, industry-disrupting ideas to emerge in a long time, and it perfectly dovetails with Google’s planned openness provisions.  The patent applies what Google has learned through AdWords to the economics of mobile communications.  Most importantly, this patent indicates Google’s desire to innovate in the wireless space, starting with upending current business models.

One more important point to take into account: rumors have abounded for a long time that Google is building, or planning to build, a nationwide wireless network of some kind.  These rumors are pretty unsubstantiated, and don’t fit with Google’s usual patterns of behavior (giving away for free potential income streams just to promote greater use of the Web and therefore greater income from ads: giving away Gmail, PicasaWeb, the Android platform etc., not taking a cut on Android Market purchases, and not even forcing Gmail-over-IMAP users to view ads).  The rumors are also overly short-sighted for Google’s usual pattern of world domination: Google is not likely to build just a nationwide wifi network, that would be far too short-sighted in several different ways…

And now we have the announcement between Verizon (which, incidentally, is still not a member of the Open Handset Alliance, perhaps just a technicality) and Google:

Integral to this agreement is a commitment by the companies to devote substantial resources to accelerate delivery of leading-edge innovation that will put unique applications in the hands of consumers quickly. The two industry leaders will create, market and distribute products and services, with Verizon Wireless also contributing the breadth of its nationwide distribution channels. Consumers will be able to purchase products resulting from the collaboration in Verizon Wireless retail and online stores.

So, in brief, we have:

1. Google raises the stakes on an auction of the perfect frequency-band for next-gen wireless communications, and gets the FCC to enforce openness provisions.
2. Google unveils the Android open handset platform.
3. Verizon wins the auction and expresses its commitment to openness.
4. Google applies for a patent on open wireless communications (specifically for playing off wireless providers against each other), indicating a move to start innovating in the wireless space.
5. Google has “probably” been interested in building a wireless network of their own, of some kind, for a long time.
6. Google and Verizon announce that they are entering into a partnership together to develop next-generation mobile devices, products and services.

All that’s left is to connect the dots: does anyone other than me think this all points much more going on than just the release of Android phones on Verizon’s network?

Hint: when somebody thinks that Google is doing something, they’re almost inevitably right about the fact that Google is doing it, but they’re completely wrong about the scope of it — Google always thinks much bigger than the rumor-mongers can imagine.  (Case in point: compare all the gPhone rumors that were out there for years with what Google actually had in mind with Android…)

 

 

 

Please donate to support continued development of awesome features for Android (like multitouch zoom)!

SU article

A fairly decent short piece on Singularity University on CNET.

Singularity University: “South Park meets Harvard Business School”

South Park meets Harvard Buliness School, article in FT.

Moore’s Law — law of nature or artifact of belief?

“Secondly, even a cursory glance reveals the astounding regularity of Moore’s line. From the earliest points its progress has been eerily mechanical.  Without interruption for 50 years, chips improve exponentially at the same speed of acceleration, neither more nor less. It could not be more straight if it had been engineered by a technological tyrant. Yet, we are to believe that this strict nonwavering trajectory came about via the chaos of the global marketplace and uncoordinated ruthless scientific competition. The line is so straight and unambiguous that it seems curious anyone would need convincing by Moore and Mead to “believe” in it. The question of faith lies in whether one believes the force of this “law” lies within the technology itself, or in a self-fulfilling social prophecy. Is Moore’s law inevitable, a direction pushed forward by the nature of matter and computation, and independent of the society it was born into, or is it an artifact of self-organized scientific and economic ambition?” — The Technium

Parachutes and exponential curves

“You have to learn to make the parachute on the way down” — Peter Diamandis at Singularity University describing the need to extrapolate the current trends and start building something that requires a piece of technology that won’t exist for 5 years, but that you absolutely count on existing at that point in time.

(My new favorite quote.)