You missed my point entirely. The OP was stating that twitter provided instant communication. I was giving various examples of services that provided the same thing. Text messages can be sent to a distribution list of people, and many technologies have done the same things as twitter.
You don't need a web developer to update a web page. Technology has gone way beyond that. You will be left in the dust if you think one tech is the solution to everything instant and everythign else requires a web developer. Just as you don't need a "twitterer" to update your twitter page. Any person in an organization can navigate a php/ajax/java interface, type a few words, paragraphs etc, and you have a PROFESSIONAL update to a website. You can even have this information put in an RSS feed and now I have accomplished far more than twitter just as easy.
You seem to be taking most of my comments out of context. I never said anything about not needing instant communication. The whole point of my post was that thousands of ways of instantly communicating exist. Many of them much better suited than twitter is for the goal.
Do you REALLY want to be alerted about impending doom via twitter and not some other service? My university offers a text message program for campus alerts. Class canceled? Shooter on the loose? You get an alert via text message. I think text alerts clearly beat out twitter in this area and they are more standardized and more universal and more likely to be true. My whole point is that twitter is no better and often worse than the alternatives. You even mentioned RSS yourself. Why not use that tech alone rather than twitter?
Twitter's best application is not for people but for businesses looking to get free traffic in this hype war. Since millions of people go to twitter to look at shit, marketers are using it to capture that crowd. Essentially all Twitter does is allow time square to be in everyone's living room. You get to look at all the pretty advertising of celebs and businesses, and the advertisers get to subject you to it.
The real question though is what would happen if it instantly disappeared? Would the same information be able to be posted elsewhere with equal ease? I believe so, and that why I say twitter is not innovative or special.
Text Messages, phone calls, facebook 'status', blogs, etc. Many things solve the problems you propose twitter is solving.
It really is all about celebrities and marketing. Twitter has no real uses as the whole instant communication/posting thing has been solved for ages. Companies like NASA and conferences like TED don't need to instantly update over mobile devices. Someone from those organizations should have access to a real computer and they can create a real post to a website/blog.
The real question is why anyone sees twitter as new or innovative. People like me hate twitter because it allows people to say twit, twat, tweet when there was no reason for it to happen. Regular People: get a facebook and update your status. Only your friends care about you anyway and why do you want strangers to read your stuff. Businesses: Get a professional website and use modern technology to make it easy to update. Use AJAX if it needs to be instant. Celebrities: Keep using twitter, the idiots that follow you will love your every update and it will make you rich and them dumb and poor.
Twitter may have a future once they start offering it as a full service social networking site (and I am willing to bet it will soon convert to that). But the current service is nothing new, nothing innovative, nothing anyone should care about. The reason it is so big is because of wonderful marketing and the person who created it having lots of connections to hype it up. Without the celeb's, tv shows, and constant 'product placement' this fad would have died a quick death. Now it is around and popular enough to be able to re-brand before everyone realizes the idea is nothing more than a facebook status.
My point exactly. The most polished thing we have on this planet IMO is still just 'good enough'. I would debate these iPod problems being any more widespread than any other vendor of similar devices. I have 'known' hundreds of iPods and the most common way they were decommissioned was theft/physical trauma/water and never a defect of hardware. That being said when I talk about apple in this situation I am not talking hardware. They don't make hardware so they can't make it any better than their vendors. I am talking about their interfaces and designs because that is the part they contribute to their product. Maybe if apple was a chip and battery manufacturer as well then they could control quality to their desired level, but once again Apple is just 'getting by' with what they have.
This whole article is worthless because essentially nothing will ever be perfect and thus everything will be at some degree of 'good enough' regardless of the effort put in.
'Good enough' is relative. Of course if it is not good enough then no one will buy it, but the real question is where is the line? Apple's products are probably the most polished on the market today yet they are still not 'perfect'. Is Apple operating on a good enough principle? It is all about standards. Good enough for me may not be good enough for you. Also, different requirements mean different solutions. Linux is great for people with time and a tech mindset, it allows tinkering and tweaking and is a wonderful solution for many people. Apple is great for people with little time and less of a tech mindset. No need to dig through manuals and mess around with things... just press Go!
Basically I think this is just an article for an articles sake. Humanity has been doing good enough since the dawn of time, and the only thing that has changed is that standards that good enough entails. Nothing is changing, people will continue to sell/buy products that beat the competition for the specified market.
If you want information fast then ask the people that stand to benefit from the article, you will be much more likely to get a quick response. If you think you can contact a random developer or coder and get a response fast you are batshit crazy. Developers have enough to do and the last thing they are worried about is making sure some reporter is going to meet a insanely short deadline when they don't get any direct benefit. The reality is that reporters should not expect anyone to bend over for them. Warn the parties you want information from in advance or suffer the consequences. If you aren't given warning then that is still your problem, don't try and push it on someone else other than those who gave the short deadline. The article is a reflection of the reporter and thus it is no one else is responsible to ensure its quality.
On this note, we need to get away from giving agencies the powers to create law and policies that never get voted on or even reviewed. I think this ties in with the single issue bills. If there is a bill that creates an agency that is then empowered to make all sorts of policies then not much has changed.
Bullshit. Obama seems to be able to push his health care plan along at hyper-speed but has no influence over this? Although you may be technically correct, what you are saying is like saying the board of directors of a company have no control over that company because the CEO makes the decisions. Give me a break, all these people are just as connected with each other as my hands are connected to my body. To say that Pelosi is not part of the administration is merely a technicality.
Removable battery was mentioned in the parent. This should be redundant not insightful. Oh well, can't expect moderators to read posts before modding them can we?
Agreed. I was only pointing out that specific statement as false. If no DMCA was issued then this wouldn't even apply and would be completely irrelevant. If a DMCA was issued then they have to do what the law says regardless of what their TOS says. Regardless of what the facts are, your statement that the TOS could have interfered with the normal process of a DMCA is false. I wasn't saying anything specific to this case.
IANAL but I am virtually certain you can't write anything in a contract (TOS) that contradicts law. In other words:
"Flickr would have had to pass the information on to the user in order to be immune from damages of the content being removed.
I suspect that may depend on the TOS for Flickr. It is possible for Flickr to have a TOS agreement that says they are not liable for any loss of profit any customer may face as a result of images hosted there."
If the law protects a person from damages due to DMCA then Flickr can't legally have someone sign that protection away.
It might be a legit improvement and a strategic move from Microsoft. Windows doesn't care if they are being run in a VM on a Linux box. They still sell support, licenses and all that other good stuff. In fact, VM's might mean more windows installs, more license keys sold, more support requests, and more money for Microsoft. Why would they want to stop paying customers from doing what they want on their box. Hell, Microsoft is probably thrilled that people are running Linux on a licensed copy of Windows in a VM rather than native and they are probably thrilled that windows is being installed on VM's on a Linux host. Win win for Microsoft and Linux. Soon they will both have 100% market share. lol.
The short: People pirate because they can. The long: Pirating is so easy and does so little damage to the media companies that people don't even feel remorse for doing it. Most people think that the prices for media today is far too high and if they were lowered they would likely buy more. I doubt the media companies are really losing much business because the movies people truly want to see still get bought. In other words, if media prices were dropped the companies revenues would likely be similar to what they are now. People would buy more but at a lower price. Most pirates are not exclusive pirates. They still go out to the movies, buy new releases, and buy their favorite bands music. They pirate things that they were less likely to buy.
I don't think the average pirate is trying to prove a point or communicate a message. I think they do it because they want something but not enough to pay the asking price.
Don't buy crap you don't want and don't complain about products. If you don't like the product buy it from someone else. If there is no one else, and your idea of the product you want isn't crazy, start your own business selling that product. I don't think Apple will be any better off if they deviate from their business model, and that business model is based off of delivering a polished experience. Name all the "open" stuff out there that provides the polished experience than apple provides. Linux? PC's? Other crappy phone OS's? I don't even like OS X but I would argue that Apple caters more to the end user than the PC market does. For the average end user Apple products "just work". For techies that want to fiddle with shit and be at the cutting edge then Apple isn't as good, but that isn't the market Apple is going for and Apple doesn't need to make their product so that every single person wants to buy it. In fact, Apple products are mostly for the opposite of tech people. They are "idiot proof" and "just work". I don't walk into a Victoria's Secret store and ask why they aren't selling me what I want(I'm a guy), why do you feel it is ok to do that to other corporations. That isn't 'consumer protection' that is demanding a corporation to make the product you want. You cross that line and capitalism is dead and you have socialism.
No one is holding a gun to your head and saying "buy apple or I will shoot". Just don't buy it if you don't want it.
I agree with this in a manual transfer of the data. If your friend manually sends off your data to people then there is nothing you can do except not give that person your data.
What I have a problem with is the automatic transmission of this data via systems that your friends are not in charge of. I think the facebook example goes beyond the note example because of the way data is stored. Unlike in real life where physical walls block access to data, in the virtual world the "paper" providers are also the "wall" providers. Without safeguards to the "paper" everyone can see it from everywhere. Clearly this puts far more responsibility on the providers of the "e-paper" service than a real paper provider.
The proper way to deal with this is allowing the user to hide the data behind as many 'walls' and 'locked doors' as the user wants.
What about providing a checkbox for users that says "don't give out my information to anyone but friends". I am a facebook user because of what I can only call peer pressure. I would like it if no one had access to my info except friends but facebook lacks that option. I don't care about apps so why can't I remove myself from this pool of data.
"But, every time you install an FB app, it DOES ask you if you wish to allow the app to have full access to your information. So, if you don't feel comfortable, don't click that button! "
The issue here is that if one of my friends trusts an app then they have access to MY data. Why should this be allowed with no way to turn it off. Like I said before, I don't want to participate in the app frenzy of facebook at all. I would be perfectly happy to lose the functionality of the apps for privacy.
"I think it's safe to say that never put anything on Facebook that you wouldn't feel comfortable with the whole world seeing. And that goes for the Internet in general."
If that is what facebook and developers think about millions of people's private messages, photos etc they are going to be in for a huge struggle later. People don't realize their facebook info is up for grabs so easy. Once someone publicly demonstrates how much developers(anyone) have access to and the response from facebook is "you should have known" there is going to be a mass exodus from the service or demand for what I am advocating. The idea that information on the internet should be treated as public information is a flaw in logic and a step back for using the internet for more things(like healthcare). This is about security, permissions etc. You can keep information 'safe' on the net. I know hackers can get the info, but I am talking about not giving it out freely.
As a developer I get what you are saying. You can't provide functional apps without the data. You have to realize though that there are other perspectives, ones that may be more important than what a developer wants. As a customer of facebook, and possibly you and your apps I say I don't like what you want from me. That should be a red flag.
That is misleading. Patents do not just cover random ideas. I can't just patent teleporters right now because I thought of them. Generally the methodology behind how the system works is what is patented so that other similar ideas can still be generated without violating patents. So patents are about the 'code' or methodology used to accomplish something, not just the idea. In order to patent a teleporter I would need to patent a specific way of teleportation and if someone else came up with a different way to accomplish the same goal it would not violate my patent.
Basically patents are very specific and not as broad as you are explaining. It is very possible to have end results be the same as someone's patent but not violate that patent.
When you use the same mouse for 7+ years I think its a worthwhile investment. It's one of few pieces of hardware that can travel through endless computer upgrades. It's also the most precision based input device. I believe that it is very worthwhile to buy the best mouse you can then use the hell out of it. You are going to be touching it every day and if it has any imperfections you are going to be pissed every day.
I have the G5 and have been using it for around 6 years. For less than $10 a year I got an awesome mouse.
I of course am assuming this is a great mouse. This is more a general statement than related to this specific mouse because I have never used it and don't know if it is amazing.
BS, I am sitting at a desk bought from office depot. It and all the ones ones I looked at there are well over 4mm. I just measured the glass in mine and it is 7mm/8mm thick. Double what you are claiming is the max.
These don't work on glass. Or at least the glass I have. I own one and its an amazing mouse though, just a little misleading when it says it can work on anything.
Interesting you would think that. I almost would think it would be the other way around, although its mere speculation. Those claiming first post I would assume are driven by a sense of accomplishment for doing so. I assume it takes some extra effort to get a first post in before someone else and only those with the drive and patience would be making first posts.
I know I like to gather and collect things (like the parent) and I would almost consider getting a first post as 'gathering' a first post. Assuming I was trying to get first posts(can we pretend this is money so it doesn't sound so lame) I would probably spend all day refreshing various sites until I had my chance to get a new first post. I would probably beat out the lazy people who check once a day to try and get a first post. I think this behavior is reflective of the non-marshmallow eating group though considering one is forgoing other opportunities in order to gain first posts.
I could be completely wrong about how first post people work though. This is how I would think if I was trying to make first posts (for one reason or another).
Slashdot Mirror
You missed my point entirely. The OP was stating that twitter provided instant communication. I was giving various examples of services that provided the same thing. Text messages can be sent to a distribution list of people, and many technologies have done the same things as twitter.
You don't need a web developer to update a web page. Technology has gone way beyond that. You will be left in the dust if you think one tech is the solution to everything instant and everythign else requires a web developer. Just as you don't need a "twitterer" to update your twitter page. Any person in an organization can navigate a php/ajax/java interface, type a few words, paragraphs etc, and you have a PROFESSIONAL update to a website. You can even have this information put in an RSS feed and now I have accomplished far more than twitter just as easy.
You seem to be taking most of my comments out of context. I never said anything about not needing instant communication. The whole point of my post was that thousands of ways of instantly communicating exist. Many of them much better suited than twitter is for the goal.
Do you REALLY want to be alerted about impending doom via twitter and not some other service? My university offers a text message program for campus alerts. Class canceled? Shooter on the loose? You get an alert via text message. I think text alerts clearly beat out twitter in this area and they are more standardized and more universal and more likely to be true. My whole point is that twitter is no better and often worse than the alternatives. You even mentioned RSS yourself. Why not use that tech alone rather than twitter?
Twitter's best application is not for people but for businesses looking to get free traffic in this hype war. Since millions of people go to twitter to look at shit, marketers are using it to capture that crowd. Essentially all Twitter does is allow time square to be in everyone's living room. You get to look at all the pretty advertising of celebs and businesses, and the advertisers get to subject you to it.
The real question though is what would happen if it instantly disappeared? Would the same information be able to be posted elsewhere with equal ease? I believe so, and that why I say twitter is not innovative or special.
Text Messages, phone calls, facebook 'status', blogs, etc. Many things solve the problems you propose twitter is solving.
It really is all about celebrities and marketing. Twitter has no real uses as the whole instant communication/posting thing has been solved for ages. Companies like NASA and conferences like TED don't need to instantly update over mobile devices. Someone from those organizations should have access to a real computer and they can create a real post to a website/blog.
The real question is why anyone sees twitter as new or innovative. People like me hate twitter because it allows people to say twit, twat, tweet when there was no reason for it to happen. Regular People: get a facebook and update your status. Only your friends care about you anyway and why do you want strangers to read your stuff. Businesses: Get a professional website and use modern technology to make it easy to update. Use AJAX if it needs to be instant. Celebrities: Keep using twitter, the idiots that follow you will love your every update and it will make you rich and them dumb and poor.
Twitter may have a future once they start offering it as a full service social networking site (and I am willing to bet it will soon convert to that). But the current service is nothing new, nothing innovative, nothing anyone should care about. The reason it is so big is because of wonderful marketing and the person who created it having lots of connections to hype it up. Without the celeb's, tv shows, and constant 'product placement' this fad would have died a quick death. Now it is around and popular enough to be able to re-brand before everyone realizes the idea is nothing more than a facebook status.
I think I will wrap my iPod in custard. It will be cheaper.
That was not the question asked. I have seen many applications use Kb as kilobits, regardless of what the proper SI unit is.
generally Kb = kilobits
and KB is kilobytes
I don't know about this case though.
Whoosh!
My point exactly. The most polished thing we have on this planet IMO is still just 'good enough'. I would debate these iPod problems being any more widespread than any other vendor of similar devices. I have 'known' hundreds of iPods and the most common way they were decommissioned was theft/physical trauma/water and never a defect of hardware. That being said when I talk about apple in this situation I am not talking hardware. They don't make hardware so they can't make it any better than their vendors. I am talking about their interfaces and designs because that is the part they contribute to their product. Maybe if apple was a chip and battery manufacturer as well then they could control quality to their desired level, but once again Apple is just 'getting by' with what they have.
This whole article is worthless because essentially nothing will ever be perfect and thus everything will be at some degree of 'good enough' regardless of the effort put in.
'Good enough' is relative. Of course if it is not good enough then no one will buy it, but the real question is where is the line? Apple's products are probably the most polished on the market today yet they are still not 'perfect'. Is Apple operating on a good enough principle? It is all about standards. Good enough for me may not be good enough for you. Also, different requirements mean different solutions. Linux is great for people with time and a tech mindset, it allows tinkering and tweaking and is a wonderful solution for many people. Apple is great for people with little time and less of a tech mindset. No need to dig through manuals and mess around with things... just press Go!
Basically I think this is just an article for an articles sake. Humanity has been doing good enough since the dawn of time, and the only thing that has changed is that standards that good enough entails. Nothing is changing, people will continue to sell/buy products that beat the competition for the specified market.
If you want information fast then ask the people that stand to benefit from the article, you will be much more likely to get a quick response. If you think you can contact a random developer or coder and get a response fast you are batshit crazy. Developers have enough to do and the last thing they are worried about is making sure some reporter is going to meet a insanely short deadline when they don't get any direct benefit. The reality is that reporters should not expect anyone to bend over for them. Warn the parties you want information from in advance or suffer the consequences. If you aren't given warning then that is still your problem, don't try and push it on someone else other than those who gave the short deadline. The article is a reflection of the reporter and thus it is no one else is responsible to ensure its quality.
On this note, we need to get away from giving agencies the powers to create law and policies that never get voted on or even reviewed. I think this ties in with the single issue bills. If there is a bill that creates an agency that is then empowered to make all sorts of policies then not much has changed.
Bullshit. Obama seems to be able to push his health care plan along at hyper-speed but has no influence over this? Although you may be technically correct, what you are saying is like saying the board of directors of a company have no control over that company because the CEO makes the decisions. Give me a break, all these people are just as connected with each other as my hands are connected to my body. To say that Pelosi is not part of the administration is merely a technicality.
Removable battery was mentioned in the parent. This should be redundant not insightful. Oh well, can't expect moderators to read posts before modding them can we?
Agreed. I was only pointing out that specific statement as false. If no DMCA was issued then this wouldn't even apply and would be completely irrelevant. If a DMCA was issued then they have to do what the law says regardless of what their TOS says. Regardless of what the facts are, your statement that the TOS could have interfered with the normal process of a DMCA is false. I wasn't saying anything specific to this case.
IANAL but I am virtually certain you can't write anything in a contract (TOS) that contradicts law. In other words:
"Flickr would have had to pass the information on to the user in order to be immune from damages of the content being removed.
I suspect that may depend on the TOS for Flickr. It is possible for Flickr to have a TOS agreement that says they are not liable for any loss of profit any customer may face as a result of images hosted there."
If the law protects a person from damages due to DMCA then Flickr can't legally have someone sign that protection away.
It might be a legit improvement and a strategic move from Microsoft. Windows doesn't care if they are being run in a VM on a Linux box. They still sell support, licenses and all that other good stuff. In fact, VM's might mean more windows installs, more license keys sold, more support requests, and more money for Microsoft. Why would they want to stop paying customers from doing what they want on their box. Hell, Microsoft is probably thrilled that people are running Linux on a licensed copy of Windows in a VM rather than native and they are probably thrilled that windows is being installed on VM's on a Linux host. Win win for Microsoft and Linux. Soon they will both have 100% market share. lol.
The short: People pirate because they can. The long: Pirating is so easy and does so little damage to the media companies that people don't even feel remorse for doing it. Most people think that the prices for media today is far too high and if they were lowered they would likely buy more. I doubt the media companies are really losing much business because the movies people truly want to see still get bought. In other words, if media prices were dropped the companies revenues would likely be similar to what they are now. People would buy more but at a lower price. Most pirates are not exclusive pirates. They still go out to the movies, buy new releases, and buy their favorite bands music. They pirate things that they were less likely to buy.
I don't think the average pirate is trying to prove a point or communicate a message. I think they do it because they want something but not enough to pay the asking price.
It's called a wallet. Use it wisely.
Don't buy crap you don't want and don't complain about products. If you don't like the product buy it from someone else. If there is no one else, and your idea of the product you want isn't crazy, start your own business selling that product. I don't think Apple will be any better off if they deviate from their business model, and that business model is based off of delivering a polished experience. Name all the "open" stuff out there that provides the polished experience than apple provides. Linux? PC's? Other crappy phone OS's? I don't even like OS X but I would argue that Apple caters more to the end user than the PC market does. For the average end user Apple products "just work". For techies that want to fiddle with shit and be at the cutting edge then Apple isn't as good, but that isn't the market Apple is going for and Apple doesn't need to make their product so that every single person wants to buy it. In fact, Apple products are mostly for the opposite of tech people. They are "idiot proof" and "just work". I don't walk into a Victoria's Secret store and ask why they aren't selling me what I want(I'm a guy), why do you feel it is ok to do that to other corporations. That isn't 'consumer protection' that is demanding a corporation to make the product you want. You cross that line and capitalism is dead and you have socialism.
No one is holding a gun to your head and saying "buy apple or I will shoot". Just don't buy it if you don't want it.
If the government asks for it, you give it, or have it taken.
I agree with this in a manual transfer of the data. If your friend manually sends off your data to people then there is nothing you can do except not give that person your data.
What I have a problem with is the automatic transmission of this data via systems that your friends are not in charge of. I think the facebook example goes beyond the note example because of the way data is stored. Unlike in real life where physical walls block access to data, in the virtual world the "paper" providers are also the "wall" providers. Without safeguards to the "paper" everyone can see it from everywhere. Clearly this puts far more responsibility on the providers of the "e-paper" service than a real paper provider.
The proper way to deal with this is allowing the user to hide the data behind as many 'walls' and 'locked doors' as the user wants.
What about providing a checkbox for users that says "don't give out my information to anyone but friends". I am a facebook user because of what I can only call peer pressure. I would like it if no one had access to my info except friends but facebook lacks that option. I don't care about apps so why can't I remove myself from this pool of data.
"But, every time you install an FB app, it DOES ask you if you wish to allow the app to have full access to your information. So, if you don't feel comfortable, don't click that button! "
The issue here is that if one of my friends trusts an app then they have access to MY data. Why should this be allowed with no way to turn it off. Like I said before, I don't want to participate in the app frenzy of facebook at all. I would be perfectly happy to lose the functionality of the apps for privacy.
"I think it's safe to say that never put anything on Facebook that you wouldn't feel comfortable with the whole world seeing. And that goes for the Internet in general."
If that is what facebook and developers think about millions of people's private messages, photos etc they are going to be in for a huge struggle later. People don't realize their facebook info is up for grabs so easy. Once someone publicly demonstrates how much developers(anyone) have access to and the response from facebook is "you should have known" there is going to be a mass exodus from the service or demand for what I am advocating. The idea that information on the internet should be treated as public information is a flaw in logic and a step back for using the internet for more things(like healthcare). This is about security, permissions etc. You can keep information 'safe' on the net. I know hackers can get the info, but I am talking about not giving it out freely.
As a developer I get what you are saying. You can't provide functional apps without the data. You have to realize though that there are other perspectives, ones that may be more important than what a developer wants. As a customer of facebook, and possibly you and your apps I say I don't like what you want from me. That should be a red flag.
Apparently someone has edited the article. It did not say that yesterday.
That is misleading. Patents do not just cover random ideas. I can't just patent teleporters right now because I thought of them. Generally the methodology behind how the system works is what is patented so that other similar ideas can still be generated without violating patents. So patents are about the 'code' or methodology used to accomplish something, not just the idea. In order to patent a teleporter I would need to patent a specific way of teleportation and if someone else came up with a different way to accomplish the same goal it would not violate my patent.
Basically patents are very specific and not as broad as you are explaining. It is very possible to have end results be the same as someone's patent but not violate that patent.
When you use the same mouse for 7+ years I think its a worthwhile investment. It's one of few pieces of hardware that can travel through endless computer upgrades. It's also the most precision based input device. I believe that it is very worthwhile to buy the best mouse you can then use the hell out of it. You are going to be touching it every day and if it has any imperfections you are going to be pissed every day.
I have the G5 and have been using it for around 6 years. For less than $10 a year I got an awesome mouse.
I of course am assuming this is a great mouse. This is more a general statement than related to this specific mouse because I have never used it and don't know if it is amazing.
BS, I am sitting at a desk bought from office depot. It and all the ones ones I looked at there are well over 4mm. I just measured the glass in mine and it is 7mm/8mm thick. Double what you are claiming is the max.
These don't work on glass. Or at least the glass I have. I own one and its an amazing mouse though, just a little misleading when it says it can work on anything.
Interesting you would think that. I almost would think it would be the other way around, although its mere speculation. Those claiming first post I would assume are driven by a sense of accomplishment for doing so. I assume it takes some extra effort to get a first post in before someone else and only those with the drive and patience would be making first posts.
I know I like to gather and collect things (like the parent) and I would almost consider getting a first post as 'gathering' a first post. Assuming I was trying to get first posts(can we pretend this is money so it doesn't sound so lame) I would probably spend all day refreshing various sites until I had my chance to get a new first post. I would probably beat out the lazy people who check once a day to try and get a first post. I think this behavior is reflective of the non-marshmallow eating group though considering one is forgoing other opportunities in order to gain first posts.
I could be completely wrong about how first post people work though. This is how I would think if I was trying to make first posts (for one reason or another).