How much of the hype behind this company centered on the fact that its leader was a young, attractive, blonde woman from Stanford?
How much actually focused on the product and the likelihood of it succeeding?
Our news today is more entertainment than fact.
Well at this point the primary story is the meta story about how otherwise sophisticated investors put in tons of money behind the the young, attractive, blonde woman even though they were shown very little evidence. That meta story is both entertaining and fact based.
What is missing from the article is an actual comparison between people with and without GPS. Yes there are anecdotes of people driving way off with GPS, but are there not also cases of people without GPS going completely the wrong way? That sort of comparison is necessary before arriving at the conclusion "forget the GPS device".
If you are offended by a woman wearing a spaghetti strainer on her head, perhaps you should critically examine some of your own beliefs and whether your religion really offers a compelling source of information about the mysteries of the world.
In the latest quarterly report they reported about $500 million in revenues and about $630 million in cost (including administrative and R&D) for a total loss of $130 million.
Pretty incredible raking in half a billion on online advertisement and still make a loss.
For camera I would recommend a mid-high end compact. Look for ease of use and fast autofocus, not for megapixels or many features. I would not get a DSLR if you have not had one before.
For storage there are any number of options but if you are serious about durability get m-disc and recorder; this is a special type of DVD that is predicted to last for a thousand years.
You have no idea how this works, does you? How much you pay for a service has nothing to do with how much it costs to provide a service. It's a matter of how much the market will bear. Why else do you think there are rubes out there still paying for text messages?
In competitive markets what the market will bear is driven by the cost to provide the product. This is true even if you are required by law to by the product. The auto insurance market is very competitive ("15 minutes will save you...")
The problem isn't the system, or the money, or the tests...it's the parents. All the money and great teachers and fabulous facilities do is set the stage for learning. If the parents can't do their part, it will - by and large - be wasted.
So you would explain the signficant differences in states by different parent behavior? That doesn't seem very plausible.
Sony-Ericsson actually DID release iPhone-like devices (e.g. P800,P900) before Apple. They did not sell very well, at least not compared to iPhone. They just weren't as slick. And Microsoft isn't exactly known for releasing very slick products either - so even if they had released it it is far from obvious that they had been successful.
Redbox for newer release movies, and Vudu for when I've got to watch it now
I used to do same, then I realized the saving in redbox vs Vudu really was not worth it. If you drive a few miles to nearest red box (back and forth, twice) you probably spent a dollar on gas, for a total price delta of less than $2. And you spent thirty minutes of your life to get this saving.
There are 3 such games: Craps, Blackjack and Baccarat. Poker is promoted so heavily, because it makes the Casinos so much lucre.
It may be true that they make more money on poker, but it is still an easier game to beat, because you primarily fight other players and not the house.
In black jack, only the most extremely skilled players under very unusual conditions can generate a positive average return based on their strategy.
In poker, there may be one player at every table of 10 (i.e. 10%) that shows a positive average return based on their strategy.
Not a game - or entertainment or luck. Just calculation of reall odds and risk.
Luck is a huge component, as the winner himself said he was ready to walk away with a $400k loss which could have happened had the cards come out differently.
Only if you have an infinite amount of time and an infinite loss tolerance (or if you cheat) can you avoid the impact of luck.
Just a clarification.
There is an international program called Global Entry, that is $100.
You can get invited to the domestic program PreCheck either by being a frequent flier or being part of Global Entry. I am a frequent flier and participated in PreCheck, did not cost me anything. I did not pay $100 to join the Global Entry program.
And btw, they still randomize more thorough searches.
I think in general it is very difficult to have two groups of separate people, one who understands the problems, and another who understands how to write code.
IN theory you let the users write down a list of specifications, but it rarely works into problems. You always run into trade-offs and conflicts involving functionality vs complexity for example, only somebody who understands both the software and the problem situation can resolve this well.
I agree with you that the best solution is to have the users learn how to code, or possibly let the coders learn how to run the business. Unfortunately I think it is rare to find the right combination of talent. And certainly users without coding talent are not going to declare themselves incompetent to manage in business with increasing software content. And coders are all too comfortable letting somebody else specify what to code and not taking ownership for a product that actually adds value.
When discussing why it took so long to invent wheels it is interesting to note that the luggage with wheels was invented in 1972 by a Mr Sadow, who initially had a hard time selling his idea to luggage manufacturers. If you went to a station or an airport before this time you would have seen everyone lifting or perhaps dragging their bags. In retrospect wheels and wheeled bags seem obvious, but it is not obvious before you have seen a lot of other people use it.
Including people. Point is, "zero" is not a reasonable basis on which to evaluate new risks and technologies. A reasonable basis of comparison is current technologies. Sure, computers can get hacked, but people can get tired and make mistakes, or defect for that matter. Not to mention they are very costly to train and keep trained (and support after they retire). There is little doubt that the cost/benefit/risk equation for bomber aircraft has shifted significantly in favor of robots.
Of course Sony tried to maximize their profits before Whitney Houston passed away as well. It was just that then the demand pattern was different and the optimal price was lower.
Most people seem generally OK with the notion that companies set prices to maximize their profits. It is only in those special situations where supply- or demand- side events causes the profit-maximizing price to shift upward that there are cries of greed, manipulation, etc. The old price sets a mental frame as to what is "normal" or "fair" and the new price becomes "abnormal" and "unfair".
Maybe it is true that 10x1 min high-intensity training is just as good as 20, 30 or even 40 minutes of easier training.
But for most people I am not sure if it is any more fun or easier to commit to.
As a pretty serious long distance runner (running Boston Marathon this spring), I don't doubt that intervals can make me faster and I will do some before the race, but that is easily the worst part of my training. It is just very unpleasant to run at >90% of max capacity. I even prefer 15 mile long runs over intervals.
Range is also a huge aspect. If they get it to work they will may get a range that is an order of magnitude greater than conventional artillery (~hundreds of miles rather than tens of miles). Which means you can cover two order of magnitudes greater area with a gun and stay rather safe from potential counterattacks. Difficult to underestimate the strategic signficance of this.
It is true that you can get same range with cruise missiles but they are two orders of magnitudes as costly per pop... And can get shot down.
selecting for the bottom-clumpers is certainly VERY DIFFERENT from having gravity serve as the "selection pressure."
No it is not. Selective pressure just means that individuals have different survival rates depending on some variable. This is exactly what happened. Sure it would have been more elegant if they had a volcanic heat vent kill off the floaters but selecting them by hand will set up the same pressure. The key point is that they picked them based on actual physical behaviors and characteristics, and in doing so they set in place incentives for genetic drift and, yes, for new mutations to take hold.
INTERESTING evolution would be a group of mutations that lead to a multicellular outcome. That's NOT what these guys 1) demonstrated happened (multicellular DNA base-pair-causing mutations) or 2) proved was the actual genetic cause at the molecular-biology level.
Not sure why you are so convinced that A) No mutations took place and B) this makes the result not interesting. Claerly A) is complete speculation on your part, and as to B) the editors of PNAS apparently disagree.
It amazes me how many people support the restriction of our rights (or resist anyone upsetting the status quo) because a bunch of fucking assholes crashed hijacked planes into buildings 10 years ago.
What amazes me even more is how many people make this very argument, but then vote for a mainstream politician whose voting record clearly shows he or she is working hard to restrict our rights.
Other than a few rare exceptions, this does not merely describe Obama. It also describes nearly anyone capable of acquiring the funding and the political backing it takes to win a federal election.
What I find so strange is that so many people make this very argument, yet they still go out and vote for the same standard statist candidate. For example probably most tea partiers will vote for the republican nominee and most in the occupy movement will vote for Obama (even though he is the biggest recepient of Wall Street money and all his economic people are closely tied to Wall Street). If one really believes that the mainstream candidates are the same, then one realizes that it is much better to "waste" one's vote on an independent/smaller candidate. And if enough people do this then there will be real change.
Whatever you think..taxes should not be used for behavioral manipulations.
Taxes are for funding the govt services we all need...that should be it...period.
Almost all taxes manipulate behavior, it is just that we are more used to some type of taxes than to others. Intrinsically it is no more manipulative to tax a scarce polutant vs taxing work, investment and real estate like we do today.
I would rather say that since we need some taxation to support certain government function, let's tax the things with the least negative (or even positive) manipulative effects. Taxing gas would come well ahead of taxing work in that argument.
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How much of the hype behind this company centered on the fact that its leader was a young, attractive, blonde woman from Stanford?
How much actually focused on the product and the likelihood of it succeeding?
Our news today is more entertainment than fact.
Well at this point the primary story is the meta story about how otherwise sophisticated investors put in tons of money behind the the young, attractive, blonde woman even though they were shown very little evidence. That meta story is both entertaining and fact based.
Yet another battery breakthrough article for what is essentially a lab demo. .
Actually it sounds like it is not even a lab demo, but a theoretical estimate.
What is missing from the article is an actual comparison between people with and without GPS. Yes there are anecdotes of people driving way off with GPS, but are there not also cases of people without GPS going completely the wrong way? That sort of comparison is necessary before arriving at the conclusion "forget the GPS device".
If you are offended by a woman wearing a spaghetti strainer on her head, perhaps you should critically examine some of your own beliefs and whether your religion really offers a compelling source of information about the mysteries of the world.
In the latest quarterly report they reported about $500 million in revenues and about $630 million in cost (including administrative and R&D) for a total loss of $130 million.
Pretty incredible raking in half a billion on online advertisement and still make a loss.
For camera I would recommend a mid-high end compact. Look for ease of use and fast autofocus, not for megapixels or many features. I would not get a DSLR if you have not had one before.
For storage there are any number of options but if you are serious about durability get m-disc and recorder; this is a special type of DVD that is predicted to last for a thousand years.
You have no idea how this works, does you? How much you pay for a service has nothing to do with how much it costs to provide a service. It's a matter of how much the market will bear. Why else do you think there are rubes out there still paying for text messages?
In competitive markets what the market will bear is driven by the cost to provide the product. This is true even if you are required by law to by the product. The auto insurance market is very competitive ("15 minutes will save you...")
The problem isn't the system, or the money, or the tests...it's the parents. All the money and great teachers and fabulous facilities do is set the stage for learning. If the parents can't do their part, it will - by and large - be wasted.
So you would explain the signficant differences in states by different parent behavior? That doesn't seem very plausible.
Sony-Ericsson actually DID release iPhone-like devices (e.g. P800,P900) before Apple. They did not sell very well, at least not compared to iPhone. They just weren't as slick. And Microsoft isn't exactly known for releasing very slick products either - so even if they had released it it is far from obvious that they had been successful.
Redbox for newer release movies, and Vudu for when I've got to watch it now
I used to do same, then I realized the saving in redbox vs Vudu really was not worth it. If you drive a few miles to nearest red box (back and forth, twice) you probably spent a dollar on gas, for a total price delta of less than $2. And you spent thirty minutes of your life to get this saving.
"For Americans, I would assume it's because we associate fantasy with the Old World because that's where most of our myths and legends originate."
Yes, but we associate wrong because modern American English actually sounds more like old English than does modern British English.
There are 3 such games: Craps, Blackjack and Baccarat. Poker is promoted so heavily, because it makes the Casinos so much lucre.
It may be true that they make more money on poker, but it is still an easier game to beat, because you primarily fight other players and not the house.
In black jack, only the most extremely skilled players under very unusual conditions can generate a positive average return based on their strategy.
In poker, there may be one player at every table of 10 (i.e. 10%) that shows a positive average return based on their strategy.
Not a game - or entertainment or luck. Just calculation of reall odds and risk.
Luck is a huge component, as the winner himself said he was ready to walk away with a $400k loss which could have happened had the cards come out differently.
Only if you have an infinite amount of time and an infinite loss tolerance (or if you cheat) can you avoid the impact of luck.
Just a clarification. There is an international program called Global Entry, that is $100. You can get invited to the domestic program PreCheck either by being a frequent flier or being part of Global Entry. I am a frequent flier and participated in PreCheck, did not cost me anything. I did not pay $100 to join the Global Entry program. And btw, they still randomize more thorough searches.
I think in general it is very difficult to have two groups of separate people, one who understands the problems, and another who understands how to write code.
IN theory you let the users write down a list of specifications, but it rarely works into problems. You always run into trade-offs and conflicts involving functionality vs complexity for example, only somebody who understands both the software and the problem situation can resolve this well.
I agree with you that the best solution is to have the users learn how to code, or possibly let the coders learn how to run the business. Unfortunately I think it is rare to find the right combination of talent. And certainly users without coding talent are not going to declare themselves incompetent to manage in business with increasing software content. And coders are all too comfortable letting somebody else specify what to code and not taking ownership for a product that actually adds value.
When discussing why it took so long to invent wheels it is interesting to note that the luggage with wheels was invented in 1972 by a Mr Sadow, who initially had a hard time selling his idea to luggage manufacturers. If you went to a station or an airport before this time you would have seen everyone lifting or perhaps dragging their bags. In retrospect wheels and wheeled bags seem obvious, but it is not obvious before you have seen a lot of other people use it.
There's nothing that can't be hacked!
Including people. Point is, "zero" is not a reasonable basis on which to evaluate new risks and technologies. A reasonable basis of comparison is current technologies. Sure, computers can get hacked, but people can get tired and make mistakes, or defect for that matter. Not to mention they are very costly to train and keep trained (and support after they retire). There is little doubt that the cost/benefit/risk equation for bomber aircraft has shifted significantly in favor of robots.
Of course Sony tried to maximize their profits before Whitney Houston passed away as well. It was just that then the demand pattern was different and the optimal price was lower.
Most people seem generally OK with the notion that companies set prices to maximize their profits. It is only in those special situations where supply- or demand- side events causes the profit-maximizing price to shift upward that there are cries of greed, manipulation, etc. The old price sets a mental frame as to what is "normal" or "fair" and the new price becomes "abnormal" and "unfair".
Maybe it is true that 10x1 min high-intensity training is just as good as 20, 30 or even 40 minutes of easier training.
But for most people I am not sure if it is any more fun or easier to commit to.
As a pretty serious long distance runner (running Boston Marathon this spring), I don't doubt that intervals can make me faster and I will do some before the race, but that is easily the worst part of my training. It is just very unpleasant to run at >90% of max capacity. I even prefer 15 mile long runs over intervals.
Range is also a huge aspect. If they get it to work they will may get a range that is an order of magnitude greater than conventional artillery (~hundreds of miles rather than tens of miles). Which means you can cover two order of magnitudes greater area with a gun and stay rather safe from potential counterattacks. Difficult to underestimate the strategic signficance of this.
It is true that you can get same range with cruise missiles but they are two orders of magnitudes as costly per pop... And can get shot down.
selecting for the bottom-clumpers is certainly VERY DIFFERENT from having gravity serve as the "selection pressure."
No it is not. Selective pressure just means that individuals have different survival rates depending on some variable. This is exactly what happened. Sure it would have been more elegant if they had a volcanic heat vent kill off the floaters but selecting them by hand will set up the same pressure. The key point is that they picked them based on actual physical behaviors and characteristics, and in doing so they set in place incentives for genetic drift and, yes, for new mutations to take hold.
INTERESTING evolution would be a group of mutations that lead to a multicellular outcome. That's NOT what these guys 1) demonstrated happened (multicellular DNA base-pair-causing mutations) or 2) proved was the actual genetic cause at the molecular-biology level.
Not sure why you are so convinced that A) No mutations took place and B) this makes the result not interesting. Claerly A) is complete speculation on your part, and as to B) the editors of PNAS apparently disagree.
It amazes me how many people support the restriction of our rights (or resist anyone upsetting the status quo) because a bunch of fucking assholes crashed hijacked planes into buildings 10 years ago.
What amazes me even more is how many people make this very argument, but then vote for a mainstream politician whose voting record clearly shows he or she is working hard to restrict our rights.
Other than a few rare exceptions, this does not merely describe Obama. It also describes nearly anyone capable of acquiring the funding and the political backing it takes to win a federal election.
What I find so strange is that so many people make this very argument, yet they still go out and vote for the same standard statist candidate. For example probably most tea partiers will vote for the republican nominee and most in the occupy movement will vote for Obama (even though he is the biggest recepient of Wall Street money and all his economic people are closely tied to Wall Street). If one really believes that the mainstream candidates are the same, then one realizes that it is much better to "waste" one's vote on an independent/smaller candidate. And if enough people do this then there will be real change.
Whatever you think..taxes should not be used for behavioral manipulations.
Taxes are for funding the govt services we all need...that should be it...period.
Almost all taxes manipulate behavior, it is just that we are more used to some type of taxes than to others. Intrinsically it is no more manipulative to tax a scarce polutant vs taxing work, investment and real estate like we do today.
I would rather say that since we need some taxation to support certain government function, let's tax the things with the least negative (or even positive) manipulative effects. Taxing gas would come well ahead of taxing work in that argument.
A good guess is that, going forward, all new Mars landers will have either a wiper system or the ability to compress Martian atmosphere ...
The new rover Curiosity currently en route to Mars has nuclear power.