Slashdot Mirror
The Artificial Life of the App Store
mikejuk writes "How does the Apple App Store actually work? What is the best strategy to employ if you want to get some users and make some money? There are some pointers on how it all works from an unusual source — artificial life. A pair of researchers Soo Ling Lim and Peter Bentley from University College London, set up an artificial life simulation of the app store's ecosystem. They created app developers with strategies such as — innovate, copy other apps, create useless variations on a basic app or try and optimize the app you have. What they found, among other things, was that the CopyCat strategy was on average the best. When they allow the strategies to compete and developer agents to swap then the use of the CopyCat fell to only 10%. The reason — more than 10% CopyCats resulted in nothing new to copy!"
Perhaps they can simulate how to make slashdot summaries make sense next?
Of course a copycat can be minimum efford maximum profit in a simplified model, but this strongly depends on the calculation of the fitness-function. I think it can be hard to match the real world fitness-function, because some of the factors that are relevant to an actual user are hard to calculate.
In my simulation the best strategy was to take 30% of everyone's revenues.
It died out because not even hippies like to camp out in the winter. The current reboot of it is calling itself "The American Spring" or "the 99% spring" and they're back to protesting now that the weather is warm again.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
I hope that healthcare you can afford results in malpractice and kills you, bourgie scum.
I live in a country that has universal health care, you unfortunate and sad excuse for a human being.
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
Gentlemen, we see here a textbook example of homo sapiens capitalus in it's natural environment: shortly to be the first against the wall when the revolution comes.
Try again. To be in the 1%, you must have an adjusted gross income of $343,927 which would probably equate to an unadjusted family income of over $400,000. Not easily achievable.
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
"Mac OS X is derived from Mach, a BSD [wikipedia.org] variant."
And that's what comes from getting al of your "knowledge" from Wikipedia. First, reread for comprehension. He didn't say Mac OS X, he said Mac OS, as in the original 1984 Mac OS that was NOT based in any way, shape, or form on Unix.
Mac OS 1.0 was based on original work and UI work done on the Lisa OS, and both drew heavily from work licensed from Xerox's work on the Alto (which Xerox later tried to market as the Star).
The original Windows code was based on the interface work done for Mac and Lisa, and released as an add-on to DOS a year after the Mac was released, and two years after Lisa.
Any sect, cult, or religion will legislate its creed into law if it acquires the political power to do so.
Yes, Mac OS/LISA were inspired by what they saw at Xerox PARC. However, if you've read up on those, the people who actually worked at PARC said that LISA/Mac went far beyond what they had done or envisioned.
"the Apple work extended PARC's considerably, adding manipulatable icons, and drag&drop manipulation of objects in the file system (see Macintosh Finder) for example. A list of the improvements made by Apple, beyond the PARC interface, can be read at Folklore.org."
My knowledge doesn't come from Wikipedia, I've been in this industry for 30+ years. I just use Wikipedia to support my statements.
make imaginary.friends COUNT=100 VISIBLE=false
The "not for profit" part of the previous post suggest he would not recoup his costs, nor would he expect to.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
Not lately, but when I attended Rose-HulmanMSRP for Windows 7 retail. (The OEM version isn't for Macs.)
You had to go full retard...
Why would you buy that?
That would assume you have Windows applications already you'd like to run. Which means YOU ALREADY OWN A WINDOWS BOX YOU CAN KEEP USING!
Retard.
The secondary level of mental damage you exhibit, the one that has you going FULL retard, is knowing you CAN run OEM Windows 7 copies under virtualization but insisting people know or care what the license says. Pointing at a license means nothing, especially when as noted you are retarded and cannot understand it anyway.
I had to use the word "retard", but honestly you deserve it. The really sad thing is you will continue to post the same retarded notions in thread after thread after thread even after being corrected. That in the end, the inability to learn from your terrible mistakes, is what earns you the "retarded" label. Or at best, idiot savant since you can type.
I'll grant you the last response, I have done enough to prove to the casual reader of your mental deficiency so there's no further need to read or respond to whatever pours forth from you.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
That's not what it generally means in the US. A "not for profit" here is literally an organization that does some function, usually charitable or community service, that is not intended to make a profit. In fact, I believe they are legally prohibited from making a profit if they wish to maintain their special tax status.