Re: Funding & Grateful Dead Marketing

["Lloyd R. Prentice" <pai@xxxxxxxx>]

Whew... I feel like I'm on a roller coaster.

There's been very unsettling news on this list; and some incredibly
exciting ideas.

Excuse me while I try to clarify my thoughts. First the big nasties...

1) Re: Christophe's experience with Chuck and iTV...

I know Chuck and like him. But I've never worked with him and know
nothing about his deal with Christophe and little about his arrangements
with iTV. I do know that he has a passion for finding the absolutely
minimal solution to the problems of computing. You can think of this as
a very ascetic aesthetic -- like the monk who goes days without food as
a spiritual exercise. From what I can tell, this has been both the focus
and the bane of his life. 

I'm deeply saddened to hear about Christophe's experience. As in
everything, I'm sure that there are two sides to the story; but clearly
Christophe was hurt badly and this shouldn't be. This is just a guess,
but I suspect that the bad outcome was the result of a rather naive
engineer (Chuck), with a total focus on producing his dream chip, trying
to get the resources he needed without careful thought of the potential
long-term consequences to all involved. I suspect that none of us like
lawyers very much, but the one thing lawyers can do, if used before the
fact and properly, is to minimize the chances of one or the other party
to an agreement getting hurt in the way that Christophe was. From the
little I know, Chuck was evidently hurt very badly in the business
dealings surrounding the Shaboom chip. I certainly hope that he didn't
consciously or unconsciously project this experience onto Christophe.

Many of us know about Chuck's special genius for cutting to the heart of
a technical problem and coming up with a counter-intuitive, but often
brilliant, solution. As with any creative person, many of his ideas
don't work out in practice. But enough do to command respect. In fact,
the more I use Forth and other languages, the more I find that many of
Chuck's ideas that I'd once thought were simply goofy, turn out to be
very good. But I had to come around the barn to see it. I mentioned to
Christophe that Chuck seems to the one who has been hurt most by his bad
ideas and benefited least from his good ones. 

Chuck does have an enviable record as a chip designer with Novix and
Shaboom, even though neither were market-killers. I believe that he can,
given enough time and money, deliver what he promises with the '21
series. But I also believe that he has bitten off a very difficult
problem and that there may not, in the end, be enough time and money. As
to 21 bits vs. 32, I believe that 21 bits was always seen, at least
within iTV, if not by Chuck, as a bootstrapping step toward
higher-bandwidth chips. As I understand it, iTV has a 32-bit version in
their business plan.   

Chuck has been somewhat diefied within the Forth community. I've never
felt that this was a particularly good idea for either the community or
for Chuck. We need to welcome his ideas, but submit them to rigorous
critical test. If we disagree, we need to respond with cogent technical
reasons for disagreement -- AND TRY TO GO BEYOND THEM WHILE RETAINING
THE SPIRIT. Long ago I argued with Chuck that he was cutting the video
specs for his processors too fine. I thought then and still do that
interfacing with a television set rather than monitor is a bad idea.
People demand high graphic quality and can see in a second when they
don't have it. I believe that I could have found a viable market for the
P21 had the graphics been more stable.

So what does all this mean to us? We can be inspired by Chuck's vision
and creative ideas; but we shouldn't follow them slavishly. We can
respect his technical accomplishments irrespectively of reports
regarding his business practices or ethics. But, as people inspired by
the MISC concept, we should never depend solely upon Chuck to deliver
the solutions we're looking for. We should look to ourselves for that.

2) Re: Humboldt bank...

I contributed to Jeff's vacation fund through his website. If the money
went to the bank rather than Jeff, I'm going to be very upset. But, like
you, I don't know all the facts and will withhold judgement until I do.
This is another case where a good lawyer can make all the difference. If
you're reading this, Jeff, please get some legal help with this problem
-- and fast.

The problem for the MISC community is this: Jeff's website and store is
the single most valuable resource this community has to generate greater
interest in MISC. If the credibility of the store is lost through
Humboldt Bank's actions, or Jeff's for that matter, then this community
loses a great deal. We also have to acknowledge that Jeff is going
through a very difficult period right now and, in my view, deserves the
support we can provide. 

***********


And now the exciting stuff...

As I mentioned earlier, I believe that a solid, fairly priced reference
system with good support software, and a growing number of exciting
applications, are essential toward making the case for MISC.

Several outstanding ideas have come up to point the way:

-- possibility of test boards for F21
-- P21 functionality in an FPGA
-- Simon's BYOP kit
-- Simon's milling machine controller
-- Patriot Scientific's Shaboom chip

And we shouldn't forget that Dr. Ting still has a potload of P21s that
he mortgaged his house for; if they could only be repurposed into a
reliable, documented kit or learning tool...

Questions: What's the best path to bring the reference system and
applications into being? How can we best coordinate our thoughts and
efforts to develop these and other ideas/resources into an exciting
proof-of-concept platform(s) and applications?

I've had gnawing thoughts about this, but they'll have to wait while I
go off to earn my keep elsewhere.

As to the newsletter, the consensus so far is that there's ya'll can
generate plenty of content; several people offered concrete ideas. Let
me think more about how best to pull this together. I didn't catch who
said it, but I fully agree that...

>Its up to us to be the proper FORTH marketing machine.

Best wishes,

Lloyd R. Prentice