Indeed. Coincidentally, I recently compared a white Three Musketeers bar that I had stashed in about 1987 to its modern silver equivalent, and the new one was both subjectively smaller to the eye, and also objectively smaller by about 20% in terms of the grams listed on the two packages.
Thanks for the suggestions. Based on the inspiration I received here, I ended up man-handling it until it pulled out of the wall. Turns out it was only anchored into sheetrock with those expanding plastic thingies, so it wasn't that hard to just pull out. In retrospect, I should have tried that years ago, but I was looking for the subtle approach.
I have a similar problem with toilet paper. The rolls nowadays are narrower than the old standard, and I have one old holder in the basement that has a wedge-it-between-the-springy-ends design that only works with the previous width. Who is the narrow-minded idiot who decided to reduce the roll width?
Problem is, I can't figure out where the hidden screws are in the old holder so I can remove and replace it. So, how's a guy supposed to pinch a roll before pinching a loaf? The whole things a pain in the ass...
You're right that most people consider a variety of factors when buying a commodity product such as gasoline. Brand may even play into that a little - after all, the people who sell gasoline certainly advertise to maintain their brands. But the fact that brand didn't appear in your list illustrates the fact that brand is pretty small among those factors. Commodity business have to differentiate themselves by practical factors such as the ones you list as well as price (for most people.)
In my own case of brand loyalty, I prefer Coke, but I don't regard it as a hardship when I end up with Pepsi instead. And whenever I ask for "Sprite" at a restaurant and they ask if it's OK to instead give me whatever similar product they happen to have on tap, I always say "yes."
Looks like we differ in our definitions of what is and isn't a "commodity business." Coke and Pepsi are examples of what I would describe as non-commodity businesses. For example, why would "New Coke" have ever been such a fiasco if the problem was adding "New" onto the name rather than changing the formula (or "formuler", as Mr. Krabbs would say) of a product people were specifically attached to. Likewise, Coke and Pepsi each have their loyal followings due to the fact that they are not the same product. But what brand of soybeans are any of us loyal to?
It's true that brands are sometimes used to differentiate commodities, e.g. brands of gasoline, but who among us here doesn't just buy the cheapest gas they can find? (Then again, I'm sure somebody here will argue with that - maybe you're right after all.:-)
As a brand, HP means nothing more to people anymore than "some company that makes printers."
Speaking of HP as a brand, I'm sure many here remember when HP meant "the best test equipment money could buy" (except for oscilloscopes, of course.) That sort of reputation for a brand is rare indeed. However, after going into computers, making printers, merging with Compaq, etc., they spun off that business and renamed it "Agilent." Later, Agilent became "Keysight" after they split that into a test equipment business and a medical equipment business, the latter of which retained the Keysight name. But whatever they're calling their test equipment business now, I think they've lost significant brand value, regardless of the value of the products that Keysight actually makes.
Evidently, they thought the "HP" brand in computers - or more likely printers - was so strong that they would retain that for those products at the cost of losing the top brand in the test equipment business - which, of course, is the business that Messrs. Hewlett and Packard originally created.
Today, the PC business is a commodity business that nobody wants to be in anymore for that very reason. I suspect the printer business eventually will be a commodity business, if it isn't already. Of course, brands don't much matter in commodity businesses.
Sayonara, "HP," my old pal - you were a good brand while you lasted...
No, no - that's much too obvious. Do bombers really use suitcases nowadays? That's just so 20th century...
Instead, if he really wanted to get attention, he would have disguised his clock as a clock. That way, they would think it was a bomb disguised as a clock. Now that would get attention.
Although your version has a certain roguish charm, I prefer the elegance of the original: "The bearing of a child takes nine months no matter how many women are assigned."
...and also a bunch of passengers who walk around the ship carrying tablets, pressing buttons, and getting themselves killed in interesting ways.
Word to the wise: if you do get picked as an astronaut for The Red Planet, be sure you don't wear a red shirt. And don't even get any red dust on your shirt while you're there, just in case...
I bet he plans to surreptitiously allocate just a few days of his to sentence to each of his fellow prisoners. Of course, they would NOT appreciate that if they knew but if it's done carefully, they won't know. Heck, they won't even notice the difference.
With his sentence fully processed in distributed form by his peers, I predict he'll be out in no time.
If this catches on, I bet the car companies will be doing it soon. Imagine a scheme in which you pay a monthly fee for the use of a car, though you never actually own the car. If they put their minds to it, I bet the car folks could even get people to pay some sort of large, up-front fee for the car they'll never own. (Sweet!) And as an inducement, the deal might include all maintenance, for free. Not only would you save a lot of money that way, you'd never have to worry about replacing the battery. Best part: you never have to buy a car again!
Actually, I thought it was about me being powered on or not. And I was kindda looking forward to speaking with Siri in the afterlife. Until you ruined it...
Though much has made about "the potential of URLs" for searching, aka PageRank, my own experience as someone who used AltaVista up to the moment he discovered Google was that Google was the first full-text web search engine - or at least the first one I experienced.
Prior to Google, all the search engines simply indexed extracts of pages, primarily meta-data such as a page's own description of itself. That led to frequent disconnects between the preview content provided by the search engine and the actual content of the resulting page. Sometimes, I would search on a quoted term, see that on the search results, then not find it on the page. Very frustrating. Though I preferred AltaVista at the time, the other major search engines of that time all had the same problem and were all pretty comparable in terms of user experience.
Upon first using Google, it quickly became clear that Google was different. You could actually tell from the user experience that it was a full-text search, unlike all the others. Basically, the problem above never happened. Although PageRank may also have been an important part of its success, the difference between full-text search and what the others were providing at the time was so compelling that it just didn't matter: there simply wasn't any comparison from the user's point of view.
Now, (and for many years past) all of the major search engines provide full-text search so we just take it for granted now. They probably also all use something like PageRank, which probably isn't to hard to implement once somebody has thought of it. Personally, I find it hard to tell the difference between them now, though I still prefer Google, probably simply because of having had a long and happy experience using it. (Oh, except for when they shut me off once years ago for doing too many queries via a Python script...)
anyone not know this already?.. it seems pretty obvious
Yeah, aren't you just sick and tired of articles about being tired and sick? To be fair, though, this was news to me: maybe I've read things like this before, but if so the concept probably just didn't sink in, what with all the fatigue-driven-illness I've been experiencing lately...
At my former employer, I once worked with a foreign national named Vignesh who was very good at what he did and was very pleasant to work with. He did a great job, and everybody liked him - he was just the kind of employee (er, "associate") that every employer would want.
One day, my wife pointed out a job ad from our employer that related to the specific field I was in. When I read it, it seemed to be a very specific description of Vignesh's job. I though, "Oh no! - They're trying to replace Vignesh!"
Later, I found out that they were advertising his job for legal reasons to be able to say that no American could fill it. The gimmick was to describe his job so specifically that virtually nobody but Vignesh had the exact expertise to fill that exact job today. Of course, anyone with related expertise in his field could step into his job and come up to speed in a reasonable time. But no one could be hired who already knew the exact things he knew today.
I was happy for him that he got to keep his job, and I can understand that my (former) employer would want to do whatever they could to keep him. But this story does illustrate how the system can be gamed. I bet other employers do the same thing.
Righteo. Specifically, assuming Google's PageRank algorithm is at work, a more "popular" candidate presumably would get linked more. So, is the popularity creating the links, or are the links producing the popularity?
As someone whose websites have experienced link spamming (by misguided bots that weren't smart enough to realize that my sites aren't popular enough to bother with), I can imagine a future political scandal in which some politician - or more likely a bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed aide - gets caught hiring a bot farm for this very purpose. For those who would like to play: maybe Hilliary Clinton's former email administrator could get that set up for you. (Chris Christie, are you listening?)
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Indeed. Coincidentally, I recently compared a white Three Musketeers bar that I had stashed in about 1987 to its modern silver equivalent, and the new one was both subjectively smaller to the eye, and also objectively smaller by about 20% in terms of the grams listed on the two packages.
Thanks for the suggestions. Based on the inspiration I received here, I ended up man-handling it until it pulled out of the wall. Turns out it was only anchored into sheetrock with those expanding plastic thingies, so it wasn't that hard to just pull out. In retrospect, I should have tried that years ago, but I was looking for the subtle approach.
I'm bearing a lot of stress from the implications of this new finding. The prospect of passing this stress to my child stresses me.
In that vein, when you do have a child, don't be surprised if the poor little thing starts crying practically the moment it's born.
I have a similar problem with toilet paper. The rolls nowadays are narrower than the old standard, and I have one old holder in the basement that has a wedge-it-between-the-springy-ends design that only works with the previous width. Who is the narrow-minded idiot who decided to reduce the roll width?
Problem is, I can't figure out where the hidden screws are in the old holder so I can remove and replace it. So, how's a guy supposed to pinch a roll before pinching a loaf? The whole things a pain in the ass...
Nothing can replace the wisdom or common sense of a discerning and skeptical human being.
I follow your point, but all my instincts tell me to doubt it.
You're right that most people consider a variety of factors when buying a commodity product such as gasoline. Brand may even play into that a little - after all, the people who sell gasoline certainly advertise to maintain their brands. But the fact that brand didn't appear in your list illustrates the fact that brand is pretty small among those factors. Commodity business have to differentiate themselves by practical factors such as the ones you list as well as price (for most people.)
In my own case of brand loyalty, I prefer Coke, but I don't regard it as a hardship when I end up with Pepsi instead. And whenever I ask for "Sprite" at a restaurant and they ask if it's OK to instead give me whatever similar product they happen to have on tap, I always say "yes."
But what about buying from:
4) Shell, even though it costs more, because Shell is the brand that sells the very best gasoline.
Looks like we differ in our definitions of what is and isn't a "commodity business." Coke and Pepsi are examples of what I would describe as non-commodity businesses. For example, why would "New Coke" have ever been such a fiasco if the problem was adding "New" onto the name rather than changing the formula (or "formuler", as Mr. Krabbs would say) of a product people were specifically attached to. Likewise, Coke and Pepsi each have their loyal followings due to the fact that they are not the same product. But what brand of soybeans are any of us loyal to?
It's true that brands are sometimes used to differentiate commodities, e.g. brands of gasoline, but who among us here doesn't just buy the cheapest gas they can find? (Then again, I'm sure somebody here will argue with that - maybe you're right after all. :-)
As a brand, HP means nothing more to people anymore than "some company that makes printers."
Speaking of HP as a brand, I'm sure many here remember when HP meant "the best test equipment money could buy" (except for oscilloscopes, of course.) That sort of reputation for a brand is rare indeed. However, after going into computers, making printers, merging with Compaq, etc., they spun off that business and renamed it "Agilent." Later, Agilent became "Keysight" after they split that into a test equipment business and a medical equipment business, the latter of which retained the Keysight name. But whatever they're calling their test equipment business now, I think they've lost significant brand value, regardless of the value of the products that Keysight actually makes.
Evidently, they thought the "HP" brand in computers - or more likely printers - was so strong that they would retain that for those products at the cost of losing the top brand in the test equipment business - which, of course, is the business that Messrs. Hewlett and Packard originally created.
Today, the PC business is a commodity business that nobody wants to be in anymore for that very reason. I suspect the printer business eventually will be a commodity business, if it isn't already. Of course, brands don't much matter in commodity businesses.
Sayonara, "HP," my old pal - you were a good brand while you lasted...
No, no - that's much too obvious. Do bombers really use suitcases nowadays? That's just so 20th century...
Instead, if he really wanted to get attention, he would have disguised his clock as a clock. That way, they would think it was a bomb disguised as a clock. Now that would get attention.
This is a start for them getting the source code for everything without having to hack into servers.
Why you so mean? We promise Supreme Leader Obama we no do that anymore.
Inactive map seems pointless.
I dunno...it proves that spell checkers work.
I personally like to hire people who is willing to tell me I am wrong so I can learn.
I is willing - can I have the job?
(sorry, couldn't resist. :-)
Although your version has a certain roguish charm, I prefer the elegance of the original: "The bearing of a child takes nine months no matter how many women are assigned."
Word to the wise: if you do get picked as an astronaut for The Red Planet, be sure you don't wear a red shirt. And don't even get any red dust on your shirt while you're there, just in case...
I bet he plans to surreptitiously allocate just a few days of his to sentence to each of his fellow prisoners. Of course, they would NOT appreciate that if they knew but if it's done carefully, they won't know. Heck, they won't even notice the difference.
With his sentence fully processed in distributed form by his peers, I predict he'll be out in no time.
Yes, but only if it's designed by Jonathan Ive.
If this catches on, I bet the car companies will be doing it soon. Imagine a scheme in which you pay a monthly fee for the use of a car, though you never actually own the car. If they put their minds to it, I bet the car folks could even get people to pay some sort of large, up-front fee for the car they'll never own. (Sweet!) And as an inducement, the deal might include all maintenance, for free. Not only would you save a lot of money that way, you'd never have to worry about replacing the battery. Best part: you never have to buy a car again!
Actually, I thought it was about me being powered on or not. And I was kindda looking forward to speaking with Siri in the afterlife. Until you ruined it...
Though much has made about "the potential of URLs" for searching, aka PageRank, my own experience as someone who used AltaVista up to the moment he discovered Google was that Google was the first full-text web search engine - or at least the first one I experienced.
Prior to Google, all the search engines simply indexed extracts of pages, primarily meta-data such as a page's own description of itself. That led to frequent disconnects between the preview content provided by the search engine and the actual content of the resulting page. Sometimes, I would search on a quoted term, see that on the search results, then not find it on the page. Very frustrating. Though I preferred AltaVista at the time, the other major search engines of that time all had the same problem and were all pretty comparable in terms of user experience.
Upon first using Google, it quickly became clear that Google was different. You could actually tell from the user experience that it was a full-text search, unlike all the others. Basically, the problem above never happened. Although PageRank may also have been an important part of its success, the difference between full-text search and what the others were providing at the time was so compelling that it just didn't matter: there simply wasn't any comparison from the user's point of view.
Now, (and for many years past) all of the major search engines provide full-text search so we just take it for granted now. They probably also all use something like PageRank, which probably isn't to hard to implement once somebody has thought of it. Personally, I find it hard to tell the difference between them now, though I still prefer Google, probably simply because of having had a long and happy experience using it. (Oh, except for when they shut me off once years ago for doing too many queries via a Python script...)
anyone not know this already?.. it seems pretty obvious
Yeah, aren't you just sick and tired of articles about being tired and sick? To be fair, though, this was news to me: maybe I've read things like this before, but if so the concept probably just didn't sink in, what with all the fatigue-driven-illness I've been experiencing lately...
At my former employer, I once worked with a foreign national named Vignesh who was very good at what he did and was very pleasant to work with. He did a great job, and everybody liked him - he was just the kind of employee (er, "associate") that every employer would want.
One day, my wife pointed out a job ad from our employer that related to the specific field I was in. When I read it, it seemed to be a very specific description of Vignesh's job. I though, "Oh no! - They're trying to replace Vignesh!"
Later, I found out that they were advertising his job for legal reasons to be able to say that no American could fill it. The gimmick was to describe his job so specifically that virtually nobody but Vignesh had the exact expertise to fill that exact job today. Of course, anyone with related expertise in his field could step into his job and come up to speed in a reasonable time. But no one could be hired who already knew the exact things he knew today.
I was happy for him that he got to keep his job, and I can understand that my (former) employer would want to do whatever they could to keep him. But this story does illustrate how the system can be gamed. I bet other employers do the same thing.
Good point. :-) Maybe it's time for me to give him a little more leeway in that area.
Zero tolerance policies cause more problems than they are worth - ALL the time.
I'm sensing that you have a policy of zero tolerance for zero tolerance policies. Maybe it's time for a little leeway in this area.
First "Correlation is not causation" post!
Righteo. Specifically, assuming Google's PageRank algorithm is at work, a more "popular" candidate presumably would get linked more. So, is the popularity creating the links, or are the links producing the popularity?
As someone whose websites have experienced link spamming (by misguided bots that weren't smart enough to realize that my sites aren't popular enough to bother with), I can imagine a future political scandal in which some politician - or more likely a bright-eyed-and-bushy-tailed aide - gets caught hiring a bot farm for this very purpose. For those who would like to play: maybe Hilliary Clinton's former email administrator could get that set up for you. (Chris Christie, are you listening?)