Meanwhile elsewhere in Russia, forensic scientists investigating the Tunguska Event of 1908 have discovered the remains of what may be a large wooden rabbit near the epicenter of the blast. Dmitri Bedeverov, lead project scientist, stated that this "trojan rabbit" evidence may rule out the competing "holy hand grenade" theory of what may have caused the blast....
I mean, there'll probably be hundreds, if not thousands, of flowers that DON'T change color for every mine detected. What then? I mean, like, there are going to be FLOWERS EVERYWHERE!
They should have made them edible, too. Solve world hunger and the land mine problem in one fell swoop....
From Davies' article: An alternative possibility is that life started on Mars and spread to Earth inside material blasted into space by the impact of comets crashing into the Martian surface.
I've heard this said a number of times, but never the converse: Life started on Earth and spread to Mars inside material blasted into space.... Why? Is this not possible, given relative gravities or orbits or something else? Or is this possibility less interesting than the Mars -> Earth scenario?
... sorry, can't find a story link right now but one report I read on Apple's financial conference call mentioned the drop in profit margins over the last quarter was due to higher than expected warranty service expenses. Hmmm...
Can you imagine how much one of those Alan Shepard golf balls would fetch if someone could bring one back? Or how much a (factory-refurbished) Lunar Rover might go for?
Okay, so that would mean that NASA would actually have to get people there and back to fetch the stuff, but it's not like the feds haven't spent money before they've collected it before....
I remember all the shrieking back when Apple started charging for the yearly OS updates, then people began to realize just how much progress Apple was making with each of the updates and many of those folk (including me) started to accept that the cost may be worth it (and then some). I'm hoping the same holds true for the iLife apps -- if everyone is going to have to start contributing some $$$ for them, we should be assured of a fairly quick upgrade cycle with some significant improvements for each new donation.
HOWEVER, since these are no longer free, I think it's reasonable for Apple to start supporting DVD writers other than built-in Superdrives. Quite frankly, I don't have a couple grand to drop on a new G5. I'd love to spend a few hundred, tho, on a DVD burner... and I'd be more than happy to kick out an extra $50 for the latest iLife suite. Apple might want to think about talking to some third-party drive manufacturers about bundling drives and iLife for sale at the Apple Store. I imagine there are a good number of others out there like me who aren't in the market for a new desktop (so Apple isn't going to cut its throat by doing this) but would be willing to purchase a bundle like this (getting Apple some extra cash and making their 3rd-party developers happy).
... otherwise, I really don't see the need to pay for an upgrade where many of the major changes benefit people with DVD burners.
MS: Where would you be without me? (gollum gollum). I saved us. It was me. We monopolized because of me!
HP: Not anymore.
MS: What did you say?
HP: Apple looks after us now. We don't need you.
MS: What?
HP: Leave now and never come back.
MS: No!
HP: Leave now and never come back!
MS: Arrrgh!
HP: LEAVE NOW AND NEVER COME BACK!
[HP is panting and looking around and realises MS is gone.]
HP: We told him to go away! And away he goes Preciousss. Gone, gone, gone, HP is free!
Re:Yes, but measuring webserver market share is ha
on
2003: Year of Apache
·
· Score: 1
On the other hand (having had a hand in building a number of large-scale intranets), proprietary servers like Weblogic often make a better fit for the needs corporations have for their intranets rather than their public sites. I'd expect the market share of Domino, Weblogic and the like to jump rather dramatically if intranet servers could be surveyed.
... is available at CNET At one point, she holds up a prototype of the "HP Digital Music Player".
[Interesting how she starts off on how HP decided to look to Apple instead of build their own, then later says something like "why did Apple come to us?" as a prelude to what HP offers to the partnership. Who came to whom?]
As others have pointed out, this goes beyond licensing -- Apple is going to manufacture the HP iPods as well. That means they can control HP's cost per unit. The only way for HP to "compete" and try to cut the price point out from under Apple is to cut their own throats.
Besides that, the iPod controls better than 30% of the mp3 player market (and 70% of the revenues) at its current price point. Does anyone out there think HP/Compaq wants to loose money to gain part of the mp3 player pie, or do you think they want to hitch their wagon to a device that not only leads the field, but sells with something like a 30% profit margin as well?
If those analyst-estimates of the profit margin on the iPod are accurate, you have to wonder just how much of that margin Apple is giving up to HP. For the $300 15GB iPod, that means Apple's cost is about $210. How generous would the deal have to be for HP to bite? Even if Apple split the profit margin down the middle (which seems mighty generous to me), that puts HP's cost per unit at $255. In addition, HP will have some costs (shipping, storage of inventory, marketing, etc.) that will likely be greater than Apple has (especially at the start of this deal), so add a little more to their cost (say $260). So, if Apple gave HP a sweetheart of a deal and HP wanted to make absolutely no money from the deal, then HP might be able to offer its iPod for a price low enough to grab customers.
But why would they want to do that, when the iPod sells like hotcakes at its current price point?
Seems to me that if HP is going to compete with anyone, it's with Dell... and Apple is already doing that rather successfully. If HP follows Apple's lead on this, I'd wager they'll grab more customers from Dell than they would from Apple, and I doubt they'd have to drop the price of the HP iPod to do so.
People throw out "think for yourself" when what they often mean is "listen to me -- disagree with the view I am railing against".
A good test of the sincerity of that sentiment is when you choose to agree with whomever it is you are supposed to be thinking for yourself about. Do the people screaming "think for yourself" acknowledge this or blow you off as some sort of mindless hack?
Case in point: most of the comments modded up above this one (I haven't read further below yet) are ones that blast any notion that GTA might have crossed the line with the "Kill the Haitians" comment, even to the point of factual inaccuracies about what the responsibilities of the courts are and what they are capable of doing (courts do not MAKE laws!). There are even responses to other posts that, from what is written in those responses, indicate the reference post was in favor of the legal action being taken. However, the pro-legal-action posts haven't been modded up.
I guess by agreeing they aren't thinking for themselves and, therefore, aren't all that interesting or insightful.
Its gotta be one of the biggest mistakes people make out there. I also hate "needless to say", which means "for anyone of normal intelligence, this is painfully obvious... so I'd better spell it out for you". That phrase is not unlike an insult, so why use it (unless you want to be insulting)? Their two of the worst... can't people use the English language anymore? Sheesh!!
Dr. Dobb's article just plain wrong
on
Web 'Rules' Changing?
·
· Score: 5, Interesting
James Kalbach's article points out how poorly understood the "7 +/- 2" "rule" is in general, but he seems to ignore that since its publication in 1956 psychologists have learned quite a bit about this "limitation" on information processing abilities. His suggestions are old news on this front and, instead of debunking 7 +/- 2, confirm its importance.
Let's start off with an example from where the research was perhaps first applied -- telephone numbers (George Miller, the researcher who "discovered" this number, worked for Bell Labs). US telephone numbers, since 1947, have followed the 3-3-4 format: 3 numbers for the area code, 3 for the exchange and 4 for the line number. Add the 1 in front of any number for dialing long distance and you've got an 11-number sequence. Does this violate the 7 +/- 2 "rule"? Not really, for a number of reasons:
First and foremost, this "rule" is a description of a limitation of our short term memory's (STM) ability to hold data. What constitutes a datum, however, can be quite flexible.
Forget about the 1 for long distance. We all know it needs to be there. It's a true rule -- to the point that most (if not all) cell phones do not even require you to punch it in, they'll dial it for you when needed. So, in some cases, procedures related to the information you are trying to remember can reduce the demands on STM's processing, and in others the demands can be off-loaded onto technology devices that can assist our processing of the information.
Area codes reduce the load of 3 digits to 1. You've probably got quite a few area codes stored in your long term memory (LTM). Even if you can't recall them all off the top of your head, you can recognize familiar ones amd may even place them geographically without much trouble once you see them again. These familiar area codes allow you to "store" these 3 digits in STM as 1 datum.
Exchanges, before faxes and cell phones and modems created the explosion in demand on phone numbers, used to mean a lot more than they do now. They were originally linked to telephone switching equipment and had names identifying them. Growing up, my home phone number wasn't 582-xxxx but LUzon 2-xxxx. The first two letters of the exchange name corresponded with the digits. So, like area codes, exchanges reduced the demand from 3 digits to 2 and possibly even one -- back when I was 10, there was a LU 1 and LU 2 in my area, but nothing else.
Given these factors, a local phone number can have a demand on your STM as little a 5 "bits" of data for a local call. Still, you might think that with auto-dial features of phones these days, does this format really matter anymore? Well, maybe not to the technology in our phones that stores the information for us, or to the telephone switching technology that accepts and routes and connects our calls, but if someone gives you a phone number to remember you'll have a much easier time of it if you at least recognize the area code, even if all you need to do is walk to the phone and dial (as opposed to memorizing it). That 3-3-4 pattern helps us cluster the data and retain it in STM longer than if we'd try to hold a ten-digit sequence without any clustering or recognizable pattern.
The point being that 7 +/- 2 is not a design "rule" that has anything to do with the underlying technology but, rather, how human brains work. Kalbach and others either have forgotten or never knew that the "7 +/- 2" pieces of info have nothing to do with what the technology can handle and everything to do with what one person can juggle in STM while trying to do something meaningful with that info.
Chunking or clustering data is something we do naturally, without conscious effort, to reduce demands on our information processing. Use of cultural conventions (like requiring the 1 for long distance) that everyone familiar with a task can learn can also reduce these demands. By reducing these demands, you can help people
Slashdot Mirror
Now they just need to hire Terrible Terry Tate to ensure workers make the transition.
You still using Courier, Richard?! Get ready for the Pain Train ... WOOOOOO!!!
Meanwhile elsewhere in Russia, forensic scientists investigating the Tunguska Event of 1908 have discovered the remains of what may be a large wooden rabbit near the epicenter of the blast. Dmitri Bedeverov, lead project scientist, stated that this "trojan rabbit" evidence may rule out the competing "holy hand grenade" theory of what may have caused the blast....
Nixon going to China?
You mean, no one has written Solitaire for Linux yet? What more does the average office worker need?
Hmm ... you think they might be using an eMac?
I mean, there'll probably be hundreds, if not thousands, of flowers that DON'T change color for every mine detected. What then? I mean, like, there are going to be FLOWERS EVERYWHERE!
They should have made them edible, too. Solve world hunger and the land mine problem in one fell swoop....
Man, I thought I was going to see some nasty Goatse-thing but then ... horror of horrors!! GEORGE BUSH!! AHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!
That was rude, man...
... can no power corrupt absolutely?
I thought Bob Seger said that...
Then turn it off, forchrissakes! That's what voice mail is for!
From Davies' article: An alternative possibility is that life started on Mars and spread to Earth inside material blasted into space by the impact of comets crashing into the Martian surface.
I've heard this said a number of times, but never the converse: Life started on Earth and spread to Mars inside material blasted into space.... Why? Is this not possible, given relative gravities or orbits or something else? Or is this possibility less interesting than the Mars -> Earth scenario?
... sorry, can't find a story link right now but one report I read on Apple's financial conference call mentioned the drop in profit margins over the last quarter was due to higher than expected warranty service expenses. Hmmm...
Can you imagine how much one of those Alan Shepard golf balls would fetch if someone could bring one back? Or how much a (factory-refurbished) Lunar Rover might go for?
Okay, so that would mean that NASA would actually have to get people there and back to fetch the stuff, but it's not like the feds haven't spent money before they've collected it before....
The way he pays for everything else ... by cutting taxes, of course!
I remember all the shrieking back when Apple started charging for the yearly OS updates, then people began to realize just how much progress Apple was making with each of the updates and many of those folk (including me) started to accept that the cost may be worth it (and then some). I'm hoping the same holds true for the iLife apps -- if everyone is going to have to start contributing some $$$ for them, we should be assured of a fairly quick upgrade cycle with some significant improvements for each new donation.
HOWEVER, since these are no longer free, I think it's reasonable for Apple to start supporting DVD writers other than built-in Superdrives. Quite frankly, I don't have a couple grand to drop on a new G5. I'd love to spend a few hundred, tho, on a DVD burner ... and I'd be more than happy to kick out an extra $50 for the latest iLife suite. Apple might want to think about talking to some third-party drive manufacturers about bundling drives and iLife for sale at the Apple Store. I imagine there are a good number of others out there like me who aren't in the market for a new desktop (so Apple isn't going to cut its throat by doing this) but would be willing to purchase a bundle like this (getting Apple some extra cash and making their 3rd-party developers happy).
... otherwise, I really don't see the need to pay for an upgrade where many of the major changes benefit people with DVD burners.
MS: Where would you be without me? (gollum gollum). I saved us. It was me. We monopolized because of me!
HP: Not anymore.
MS: What did you say?
HP: Apple looks after us now. We don't need you.
MS: What?
HP: Leave now and never come back.
MS: No!
HP: Leave now and never come back!
MS: Arrrgh!
HP: LEAVE NOW AND NEVER COME BACK!
[HP is panting and looking around and realises MS is gone.]
HP: We told him to go away! And away he goes Preciousss. Gone, gone, gone, HP is free!
On the other hand (having had a hand in building a number of large-scale intranets), proprietary servers like Weblogic often make a better fit for the needs corporations have for their intranets rather than their public sites. I'd expect the market share of Domino, Weblogic and the like to jump rather dramatically if intranet servers could be surveyed.
Lock'em up and make them eat ... SPAM!
... is available at CNET At one point, she holds up a prototype of the "HP Digital Music Player".
[Interesting how she starts off on how HP decided to look to Apple instead of build their own, then later says something like "why did Apple come to us?" as a prelude to what HP offers to the partnership. Who came to whom?]
As others have pointed out, this goes beyond licensing -- Apple is going to manufacture the HP iPods as well. That means they can control HP's cost per unit. The only way for HP to "compete" and try to cut the price point out from under Apple is to cut their own throats.
Besides that, the iPod controls better than 30% of the mp3 player market (and 70% of the revenues) at its current price point. Does anyone out there think HP/Compaq wants to loose money to gain part of the mp3 player pie, or do you think they want to hitch their wagon to a device that not only leads the field, but sells with something like a 30% profit margin as well?
If those analyst-estimates of the profit margin on the iPod are accurate, you have to wonder just how much of that margin Apple is giving up to HP. For the $300 15GB iPod, that means Apple's cost is about $210. How generous would the deal have to be for HP to bite? Even if Apple split the profit margin down the middle (which seems mighty generous to me), that puts HP's cost per unit at $255. In addition, HP will have some costs (shipping, storage of inventory, marketing, etc.) that will likely be greater than Apple has (especially at the start of this deal), so add a little more to their cost (say $260). So, if Apple gave HP a sweetheart of a deal and HP wanted to make absolutely no money from the deal, then HP might be able to offer its iPod for a price low enough to grab customers.
But why would they want to do that, when the iPod sells like hotcakes at its current price point?
Seems to me that if HP is going to compete with anyone, it's with Dell ... and Apple is already doing that rather successfully. If HP follows Apple's lead on this, I'd wager they'll grab more customers from Dell than they would from Apple, and I doubt they'd have to drop the price of the HP iPod to do so.
... did I miss anything?
People throw out "think for yourself" when what they often mean is "listen to me -- disagree with the view I am railing against".
A good test of the sincerity of that sentiment is when you choose to agree with whomever it is you are supposed to be thinking for yourself about. Do the people screaming "think for yourself" acknowledge this or blow you off as some sort of mindless hack?
Case in point: most of the comments modded up above this one (I haven't read further below yet) are ones that blast any notion that GTA might have crossed the line with the "Kill the Haitians" comment, even to the point of factual inaccuracies about what the responsibilities of the courts are and what they are capable of doing (courts do not MAKE laws!). There are even responses to other posts that, from what is written in those responses, indicate the reference post was in favor of the legal action being taken. However, the pro-legal-action posts haven't been modded up.
I guess by agreeing they aren't thinking for themselves and, therefore, aren't all that interesting or insightful.
Humor? Nah. Sarcasm? Definately, once again.
Its gotta be one of the biggest mistakes people make out there. I also hate "needless to say", which means "for anyone of normal intelligence, this is painfully obvious ... so I'd better spell it out for you". That phrase is not unlike an insult, so why use it (unless you want to be insulting)? Their two of the worst ... can't people use the English language anymore? Sheesh!!
James Kalbach's article points out how poorly understood the "7 +/- 2" "rule" is in general, but he seems to ignore that since its publication in 1956 psychologists have learned quite a bit about this "limitation" on information processing abilities. His suggestions are old news on this front and, instead of debunking 7 +/- 2, confirm its importance.
Let's start off with an example from where the research was perhaps first applied -- telephone numbers (George Miller, the researcher who "discovered" this number, worked for Bell Labs). US telephone numbers, since 1947, have followed the 3-3-4 format: 3 numbers for the area code, 3 for the exchange and 4 for the line number. Add the 1 in front of any number for dialing long distance and you've got an 11-number sequence. Does this violate the 7 +/- 2 "rule"? Not really, for a number of reasons:
Given these factors, a local phone number can have a demand on your STM as little a 5 "bits" of data for a local call. Still, you might think that with auto-dial features of phones these days, does this format really matter anymore? Well, maybe not to the technology in our phones that stores the information for us, or to the telephone switching technology that accepts and routes and connects our calls, but if someone gives you a phone number to remember you'll have a much easier time of it if you at least recognize the area code, even if all you need to do is walk to the phone and dial (as opposed to memorizing it). That 3-3-4 pattern helps us cluster the data and retain it in STM longer than if we'd try to hold a ten-digit sequence without any clustering or recognizable pattern.
The point being that 7 +/- 2 is not a design "rule" that has anything to do with the underlying technology but, rather, how human brains work. Kalbach and others either have forgotten or never knew that the "7 +/- 2" pieces of info have nothing to do with what the technology can handle and everything to do with what one person can juggle in STM while trying to do something meaningful with that info.
Chunking or clustering data is something we do naturally, without conscious effort, to reduce demands on our information processing. Use of cultural conventions (like requiring the 1 for long distance) that everyone familiar with a task can learn can also reduce these demands. By reducing these demands, you can help people