Yes but this one is marketed towards people who aren't gay or japanese schoolgirls.
Not that there's anything wrong with either of those two groups, but there is an overall impression (on the west coast, at least) that SMS messaging has only been adopted by those groups (and some early adopter-types), and it has acquired the usual stigma as a result (personal observation). If this company came up with a novel interface idea that was useful aside from its novelty, well good for them.
Any other biologists out there who find the "doing x to get a mate is stupid" concept particularly amusing? It's not pathetic, it's sexual selection--the same reason men buy fancy flashy cars or go to the gym or worry about going bald. Women are the selective gender in humans, which is consistent with their differential investment in offspring. [pushes hornrim glasses up nose, sniffs, adjusts pocket protector] Men shouldn't fail to compete because it's pathetic or silly or not conducive to some zen-like purity of motivation. Compete, dammit, or the jocks win.
I know a PHB who hired two seinors instead of one senior once: They were really good at repairing damaged fishing nets but could do little about the job at hand. Later he tried hiring three senors, but all they did was play guitar in mariachi suits with big hats. Finally he had to hire a junior whose noledge new no ledges.
Same PHB (an MBA!) was replaced by a PhD scientist who could spell. I can't tell you how much life around the office has improved since that day.
I didn't mean for a cheap laugh at the expense of our ice-encrusted neighbors to the north to turn into a serious discussion of economic indicators, but since we're already on our way...
The Human Development Report website lists the HDI rank for Canada as #8 and the US as #7 for 2003. The other data listed (Canada's HDI index in 2001=.937; US's HDI index in 2001=.937) would indicate that Canada's probably not pulling away in the rankings to the degree you say she is. Maybe these aren't the numbers you meant...
But more germane to this discussion (remember, there was at one time a research-related component up there), scroll down to the "R&D/GDP", "patents per million people", and "scientists & engineers per million" numbers lower on the economic indicators page. Note the nearly 7 times as many patents granted per capita (hopefully some of those patents are actually meaningful and useful), 1.5 times as much R&D expenditure per GDP (and it's a much larger GDP), and 1.4 times as many scientists & engineers per capita. That adds up to a whole lot of science goin' on. Socialized medicare is great and awesome and all, but the development of new medical techniques and medications come out of a country that gives the NIH an annual budget (in 2004) of $28 billion, not to mention the other publicly- or privately-endowed funding agencies for the sciences. It all adds up to huge expenditures on R&D: 271.8 billion for all R&D.
To tie this back to what dfasdf was saying about all those groovy entrepeneurs in Canada: those entrepeneurs aren't doing a whole hell of a lot for the country's science output, although I'm sure mosel-saar-ruwer would contend that your entrepeneurs aren't compelled to put on cheap blackface vaudeville impersonations of nineteenth-century slaves in the southern US in exchange for their daily bread. Woo capitalism, woo freedom! Right, mosel-saar-ruwer?
Yeah, sorry about my earlier wisecrack; I really love Canada, but it's a pretty easy target. As Robin Williams put it, "Canada's like a loft over a really great party." There was, however, a point in there: Canada doesn't have the magnificent research machinery in many areas of science that the US does, and so there is nowhere near the degree of technical innovation or research sophistication coming out of Canada, even after normalizing for population.
There's also an undeniably higher standard of living in the US (despite our unhealthy lifestyles=>lower life expectancy prolem), despite all your entrepeneurs and touks, but that's another issue...
Right, we all lack the balls to go out and do independent scientific research outside of an institutional setting--because it's so damn cowardly and slavish to do underpaid scientific research in a laboratory instead of free-lance "street science," which I've heard is the latest entrepeneurial rage. Uh huh...
Unfortunately, here in the real world (you should visit sometime; email me and I'll give you driving directions), much of science absolutely requires the institutional backbone and funding that established laboratories provide. There are some aspects of science that can be capitalized on, and more power to those that make hay with 'em!, but even those niches would be impossible without a tremendous amount of supporting research coming out of universities and other (largely publicly-funded) institutions. So, gosh darn it, we'd still be back in the 1940's--or even more primitive--if it were all up to entrepeneurs. The over-educated, devoted people who bring you modern medicine, biology, physics, computer science, chemisty, and so forth shouldn't be continually underpaid just because they don't own the damn company.
And so long as you're comparing much of the world to ignorant slaves for their working for or in collaboration with larger institutions, maybe you should take that logic a bit further (to its logical conclusion)--why submit yourself to the rule of law at all? If you're such a freedom-loving rebel, unwilling to let anyone boss you around (because it's soooo slavish), then why buy things when you could steal them? Why not just shoot that jerk who cut you off on the freeway? Screw 'em! Nobody's gonna boss you around, right?
Or maybe some of us are willing to be employed rather than employers because we recognize that the specialized skills that we possess require an appropriate environment in which to be employed, and that we are no more slaves for doing so than you are the arbiter of what constitutes religion, you whackjob.
This is why Canada is still a 3rd-world country...
Seriously, though, does any significant scientific research ever happen in Canada, or is the country's only scientific contribution still the space shuttle payload arm?
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eat shit and die, windows luser.
Yes but this one is marketed towards people who aren't gay or japanese schoolgirls.
Not that there's anything wrong with either of those two groups, but there is an overall impression (on the west coast, at least) that SMS messaging has only been adopted by those groups (and some early adopter-types), and it has acquired the usual stigma as a result (personal observation). If this company came up with a novel interface idea that was useful aside from its novelty, well good for them.
Any other biologists out there who find the "doing x to get a mate is stupid" concept particularly amusing? It's not pathetic, it's sexual selection--the same reason men buy fancy flashy cars or go to the gym or worry about going bald. Women are the selective gender in humans, which is consistent with their differential investment in offspring. [pushes hornrim glasses up nose, sniffs, adjusts pocket protector] Men shouldn't fail to compete because it's pathetic or silly or not conducive to some zen-like purity of motivation. Compete, dammit, or the jocks win.
I know a PHB who hired two seinors instead of one senior once: They were really good at repairing damaged fishing nets but could do little about the job at hand. Later he tried hiring three senors, but all they did was play guitar in mariachi suits with big hats. Finally he had to hire a junior whose noledge new no ledges.
Same PHB (an MBA!) was replaced by a PhD scientist who could spell. I can't tell you how much life around the office has improved since that day.
I didn't mean for a cheap laugh at the expense of our ice-encrusted neighbors to the north to turn into a serious discussion of economic indicators, but since we're already on our way...
The Human Development Report website lists the HDI rank for Canada as #8 and the US as #7 for 2003. The other data listed (Canada's HDI index in 2001=.937; US's HDI index in 2001=.937) would indicate that Canada's probably not pulling away in the rankings to the degree you say she is. Maybe these aren't the numbers you meant...
But more germane to this discussion (remember, there was at one time a research-related component up there), scroll down to the "R&D/GDP", "patents per million people", and "scientists & engineers per million" numbers lower on the economic indicators page. Note the nearly 7 times as many patents granted per capita (hopefully some of those patents are actually meaningful and useful), 1.5 times as much R&D expenditure per GDP (and it's a much larger GDP), and 1.4 times as many scientists & engineers per capita. That adds up to a whole lot of science goin' on. Socialized medicare is great and awesome and all, but the development of new medical techniques and medications come out of a country that gives the NIH an annual budget (in 2004) of $28 billion, not to mention the other publicly- or privately-endowed funding agencies for the sciences. It all adds up to huge expenditures on R&D: 271.8 billion for all R&D.
To tie this back to what dfasdf was saying about all those groovy entrepeneurs in Canada: those entrepeneurs aren't doing a whole hell of a lot for the country's science output, although I'm sure mosel-saar-ruwer would contend that your entrepeneurs aren't compelled to put on cheap blackface vaudeville impersonations of nineteenth-century slaves in the southern US in exchange for their daily bread. Woo capitalism, woo freedom! Right, mosel-saar-ruwer?
My god, man! RTFA! Or just read some of the friggin' post history.
Yeah, sorry about my earlier wisecrack; I really love Canada, but it's a pretty easy target. As Robin Williams put it, "Canada's like a loft over a really great party." There was, however, a point in there: Canada doesn't have the magnificent research machinery in many areas of science that the US does, and so there is nowhere near the degree of technical innovation or research sophistication coming out of Canada, even after normalizing for population.
There's also an undeniably higher standard of living in the US (despite our unhealthy lifestyles=>lower life expectancy prolem), despite all your entrepeneurs and touks, but that's another issue...
Right, we all lack the balls to go out and do independent scientific research outside of an institutional setting--because it's so damn cowardly and slavish to do underpaid scientific research in a laboratory instead of free-lance "street science," which I've heard is the latest entrepeneurial rage. Uh huh...
Unfortunately, here in the real world (you should visit sometime; email me and I'll give you driving directions), much of science absolutely requires the institutional backbone and funding that established laboratories provide. There are some aspects of science that can be capitalized on, and more power to those that make hay with 'em!, but even those niches would be impossible without a tremendous amount of supporting research coming out of universities and other (largely publicly-funded) institutions. So, gosh darn it, we'd still be back in the 1940's--or even more primitive--if it were all up to entrepeneurs. The over-educated, devoted people who bring you modern medicine, biology, physics, computer science, chemisty, and so forth shouldn't be continually underpaid just because they don't own the damn company.
And so long as you're comparing much of the world to ignorant slaves for their working for or in collaboration with larger institutions, maybe you should take that logic a bit further (to its logical conclusion)--why submit yourself to the rule of law at all? If you're such a freedom-loving rebel, unwilling to let anyone boss you around (because it's soooo slavish), then why buy things when you could steal them? Why not just shoot that jerk who cut you off on the freeway? Screw 'em! Nobody's gonna boss you around, right?
Or maybe some of us are willing to be employed rather than employers because we recognize that the specialized skills that we possess require an appropriate environment in which to be employed, and that we are no more slaves for doing so than you are the arbiter of what constitutes religion, you whackjob.
Yes, a terrible 3rd-world country with a life expectancy exceeding the United States'.
Sure, if you call that "living"....
This is why Canada is still a 3rd-world country... Seriously, though, does any significant scientific research ever happen in Canada, or is the country's only scientific contribution still the space shuttle payload arm?