Two words: iPod and iTunes..... I'm not saying they are easy to find one but there are a few lucrative market niches that have been left completely unexploited
Others have pointed out the flaw in your argument there. I think a better criticism of the point in TFA would be to say that new niches are created all the time by the advent of new technologies (e.g. the mp3 player market you hint at). However, even getting there first does not guarantee success - in fact it probably only encourages someone else to come along and do it better - they have an incentive to be better than you, you only had an incentive to put out a working product.
After that, you need to pray that, in the meantime, your code doesn't break anything for any of its millions of users
Never mind that, you'd also need to pray that you correctly guessed the candidates and the way people will actually enter their vote all those years before the election...
90% same genes isn't like 90% same species. We share over 70% with insects and over 50% with plants. Yet, I wanna see someone claim that by dissecting oranges he can help us fight heart diseases.
Ah but you see, you are undermining your own argument - using your numbers, we share at best 50% of genes with the oranges. That's not the 90% we have in common with mice. And I'm sure you'd agree that dissecting mice to fight heart diseases doesn't sound nearly as far-fetched. In fact, with all the drug testing on mice, it's probably a reality.
As the old challenge goes, name 10 famous Belgians.
Amélie Nothomb Hergé Jacky Ickx Charles the Great Adolphe Sax Lara Fabian Jacques Brel Raymond Devos Cécile de France Helmut Lotti
That's on top of my head (and no, I am not Belgian) Just because you don't know any doesn't any doesn't mean they don't exist:) Why do people always call places they have no clue about 'dull'?
I'd be interested in seeing how you would log the searches done using the browser search function as opposed to a hypothetical search box on the website?
I don't get why everyone screams "big brother!" and gets upset
I think you'll find that most of the people who scream "Big Brother!" are actually from the States, have never been to the UK and basically don't know what they are talking about. Especially all those shouting about government interference, when in fact most cameras are private.
Quake 3? That the game where they make you jump around in space using big jump pads as if you were in some kind of friggin' Super Mario jump'n'run just so that your mate who's been perfecting his Railgun skills all month can just pluck you from the sky before you even make it to the yellow armour? You must have been the one with the Railgun if you call that perfect and balanced:)
Some users might have more than one camera, or be borrowing other people's cameras so that would be inaccurate too. But you could normalise the data instead...
Yeah, I wasn't really being serious... as your sibling AC points out, it'd be very hard to define what text can be deemed not to have changed after an edit - for instance, what happens to previously valid sentences that are not changed per se, but moved to a paragraph where they become meaningless? Or sentences in which numerous typos get fixed?
As for the colours, obviously the only way to do it would be to implement some kind of coarse-grained grayscale. That at least will be doable and you can even mine wikipedia for statistics of how many edits an article needs on average before the majority seems to be satisfied with it, which automatically gives you an idea of how many levels your grayscale needs.
I thought the idea was completely bonkers when I posted it, esp. with the potential of rainbow-coloured text appearing everywhere, but thinking about it now, it does have an appeal... especially the question of how to define when text has changed or not will give me something to do on this boring day;)
The wise man needs to express himself more clearly, btw... he meant to say that no colour patterns of any two pages have ever evolved in the same way. Just like no two games of Go have ever been alike, you see...
I propose that it would be better to provide Wikipedia users with a visual cue that enables them to see what assertions in an article have, in fact, survived the scrutiny of a large number of people, and what assertions are relatively fresh, and may not be as reliable.
And I know just the way to implement this! New text starts with font colour #FFFFFF. At every edit, if the text survives, the colour value is decremented by 1. When it hits #000000 it is forever barred from being edited ever again.
It's useful: New text is only really visible to the very enthusiastic editor and easy to ignore by everyone else if they so chose.
It's healthy: all those pretty colours will soon make you forget your gloomy daily life, cheer you up, and will have you stare at them and consequently absorb new information for hours on end.
Plus, many years from now, a wise man will philosophise that no colour patterns of any two wiki pages have ever been alike. Isn't that deep?
Well, you'll still need a HD-DVD player to access the HD-DVD layers... so I don't see how it'll help the XBOX, unless you want to use the new external HD-DVD drive.
Unfortunately, in doing so you altered the timeline, thereby caused an irreparable tear in the space-time continuum, resulting in the imminent destruction of the universe.
Even worse than that - Daleks are coming through that tear again! The doctor's gonna be soooo pissed off....
(...) there should be a compromise of some sort. I don't think it exists (...)
Well, you could turn off the over-the-top settings in KDE, anything that's too much for you. Or you could try XFCE, maybe that's what you're looking for...
Let's not forget that it also had a tendency to develop hairline fissures in the clear plastic shell, could not be upgraded and a heat-sensitive power button that would sometimes shut the machine down. All of which made the asking price even more ridiculous than it already was.
Well, I suppose this means you would also throw power steering, anti-lock braking systems, traction control and so on out of your car because you like it the traditional way. You know, there is a chance that his thing might actually make your life a lot more comfortable... Granted, this is Microsoft, so you'd have a point if you said "not very likely", but you should at least give it a try:)
Using vi isn't a good example of living in the past btw. It may be hideous and horrible and I certainly wouldn't go anywhere near it, but if you know how to use it properly, it's pretty damn useful and will remain so for many years to come. Notepad on the other hand... has it even learned to do syntax highlighting yet?;)
You remind me of a guy a while back. He always restated his assumptions:
One, Mathematics is the language of nature.
Two, Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers.
Three, if you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature. Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics;the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile.
So, what about the stock market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. A natural organism.
My hypothesis: Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well...Right in front of me...hiding behind the numbers. Always has been.
Oh yeah, and he got his data from newspapers. I imagine you could fork out a few cent a day to build your database.
Slashdot Mirror
Others have pointed out the flaw in your argument there. I think a better criticism of the point in TFA would be to say that new niches are created all the time by the advent of new technologies (e.g. the mp3 player market you hint at). However, even getting there first does not guarantee success - in fact it probably only encourages someone else to come along and do it better - they have an incentive to be better than you, you only had an incentive to put out a working product.
Never mind that, you'd also need to pray that you correctly guessed the candidates and the way people will actually enter their vote all those years before the election...
Companies across the globe increase the number of workers per cubicle to three.
He must be new here.
Well, he isn't exactly famous for being a person to be proud of either - but he is famous :)
Amélie Nothomb
Hergé
Jacky Ickx
Charles the Great
Adolphe Sax
Lara Fabian
Jacques Brel
Raymond Devos
Cécile de France
Helmut Lotti
That's on top of my head (and no, I am not Belgian)
Just because you don't know any doesn't any doesn't mean they don't exist
I'd be interested in seeing how you would log the searches done using the browser search function as opposed to a hypothetical search box on the website?
Quake 3? That the game where they make you jump around in space using big jump pads as if you were in some kind of friggin' Super Mario jump'n'run just so that your mate who's been perfecting his Railgun skills all month can just pluck you from the sky before you even make it to the yellow armour? You must have been the one with the Railgun if you call that perfect and balanced :)
Honestly?
If you have to ask, probably enough to warrant buying the book.
Some users might have more than one camera, or be borrowing other people's cameras so that would be inaccurate too.
But you could normalise the data instead...
Yeah, I wasn't really being serious... as your sibling AC points out, it'd be very hard to define what text can be deemed not to have changed after an edit - for instance, what happens to previously valid sentences that are not changed per se, but moved to a paragraph where they become meaningless? Or sentences in which numerous typos get fixed?
;)
As for the colours, obviously the only way to do it would be to implement some kind of coarse-grained grayscale. That at least will be doable and you can even mine wikipedia for statistics of how many edits an article needs on average before the majority seems to be satisfied with it, which automatically gives you an idea of how many levels your grayscale needs.
I thought the idea was completely bonkers when I posted it, esp. with the potential of rainbow-coloured text appearing everywhere, but thinking about it now, it does have an appeal... especially the question of how to define when text has changed or not will give me something to do on this boring day
The wise man needs to express himself more clearly, btw... he meant to say that no colour patterns of any two pages have ever evolved in the same way. Just like no two games of Go have ever been alike, you see...
And I know just the way to implement this! New text starts with font colour #FFFFFF. At every edit, if the text survives, the colour value is decremented by 1. When it hits #000000 it is forever barred from being edited ever again.
It's useful: New text is only really visible to the very enthusiastic editor and easy to ignore by everyone else if they so chose.
It's healthy: all those pretty colours will soon make you forget your gloomy daily life, cheer you up, and will have you stare at them and consequently absorb new information for hours on end.
Plus, many years from now, a wise man will philosophise that no colour patterns of any two wiki pages have ever been alike. Isn't that deep?
Well, you'll still need a HD-DVD player to access the HD-DVD layers... so I don't see how it'll help the XBOX, unless you want to use the new external HD-DVD drive.
Well, as long as he gets the correct sample, everything should be just peachy.
Both sites cite Variety as their source.... so there is only one source
One source to bring them all and in the darkness bind them.
Well, you could turn off the over-the-top settings in KDE, anything that's too much for you. Or you could try XFCE, maybe that's what you're looking for...
Let's not forget that it also had a tendency to develop hairline fissures in the clear plastic shell, could not be upgraded and a heat-sensitive power button that would sometimes shut the machine down. All of which made the asking price even more ridiculous than it already was.
Well, I suppose this means you would also throw power steering, anti-lock braking systems, traction control and so on out of your car because you like it the traditional way. :)
;)
You know, there is a chance that his thing might actually make your life a lot more comfortable...
Granted, this is Microsoft, so you'd have a point if you said "not very likely", but you should at least give it a try
Using vi isn't a good example of living in the past btw. It may be hideous and horrible and I certainly wouldn't go anywhere near it, but if you know how to use it properly, it's pretty damn useful and will remain so for many years to come.
Notepad on the other hand... has it even learned to do syntax highlighting yet?
You remind me of a guy a while back. He always restated his assumptions:
One, Mathematics is the language of nature.
Two, Everything around us can be represented and understood through numbers.
Three, if you graph the numbers of any system, patterns emerge. Therefore, there are patterns everywhere in nature.
Evidence: The cycling of disease epidemics;the wax and wane of caribou populations; sun spot cycles; the rise and fall of the Nile.
So, what about the stock market? The universe of numbers that represents the global economy. Millions of hands at work, billions of minds. A vast network, screaming with life. An organism. A natural organism.
My hypothesis: Within the stock market, there is a pattern as well...Right in front of me...hiding behind the numbers. Always has been.
Oh yeah, and he got his data from newspapers. I imagine you could fork out a few cent a day to build your database.
Well, then I guess European imports in crates marked "spares" would become very popular :)