amuhtar

Great Story. I think one thing I am realizing with my little daughter is that kids - even at 1.5 years old - are curious and resourceful. My job as a parent is not to make her happy... but to help equip her to fullfil her purpose and passions to the fullest - that's when she'll be happiest.

That's perhaps why my parents stopped giving us an allowance early on.

My dad loves woodworking, and I remember at 5 years old, taking scraps, nailing parts together to make a very crude looking airplane and actually sold (yes, someone actually bought it) it to raise money for something - can't remember what it was. But I do remember the work, I remember getting paid, and I remember the satisfaction and fulfillment in a happy customer (even if he did buy it out of compassion).

If I wanted a toy (birthday/Christmas aside), I had to work for it (not the regular chores). It encouraged me to think... be creative... buy low, sell high. Robert Kiyosaki had similar experiences as a kid in his book "Rich Dad, Poor Dad". - As an aside the Cashflow game is really good and although it may be expensive, it is totally worth it. There is a kids version too.

I did the lemonade... I tried selling baseball cards... As I got older, so grew the ideas. In highschool video games were expensive. I started reviewing them through a couple of companies (now owned by IGN) and got my games for free to review them and write an HTML review page.

In university (ah, the advent of eBay), I started going to garage sales/thrift stores/pawn shops and buying selective items. I'd clean and test the items, put them up for sale. All my "toys" (games, computer parts, my Metcal Station, DVDs, etc) were bought through the sale of items on eBay.

Of course, this is all besides running a Computer Consulting/VAR company, creating applications, websites, and study/work.

Ah, the good old days. Forgive me for rambling... I got caught in the nostalgia.

I agree with the writer of the article in that we are always building on the ideas of others, but I also see the side of the holder of the patent.

When so much is invested (time, money, resources) into R&D, the first mover tends lose in the end. All a competitor needs to know is that it is possible. As Seth Godin has said several times, once something can be put on paper, it can be produced cheaper by someone else.

So, if we are to get rid of patents, then startups and other inventors will need to find creative ways to capitalize/profit on the ideas benefit from being first mover.

The thing I find amazing is not so much that they were able to use colour refracting to overlay invisible messages on bad LCDs... it's looking at the problem in "creative-reversedness" (yes I just made that up).

We all would look at the limited viewing angle as a problem. Not enough people can see the TV, colour is bad, blah blah. But if we were to look at the problem in reverse - Too many people can see the screen from all angles, colour acuracy is not that important for all applications, and so on... we actually define a product that we can fit in the banking, HR, etc roles.

The next feat of genius was looking at what was causing the original problem and then leveraging it to create the new fuctional solution. Many just use the polar lenses, now you can just create a app that overlays invisible ink.

Great job.