Sadly, the SciAm article is about a research study on expressive writing, not blogging. While the two may share some characteristics in common, they are not the same. How the writer (and SciAm) managed to wrangle this into an article about blogging is beyond me.
Worse, the study had a nearly 50% drop-out rate, meaning a good minority of people didn't have any interest in expressive writing. And with a small N, the results are hardly generalizable.
Virtual reality enables us to create a powerful and persuasive stimulus: the virtual self. Using digital photographs, we can create avatars that have a striking resemblance to the self. We can then manipulate the virtual self in myriad ways that would be difficult or even impossible in the real world. The virtual self can modify its appearance or perform a behavior that the real self cannot, thus serving as a novel type of model. According to social cognitive theory, models can be valuable stimuli for encouraging the imitation of particular behaviors. Thus, we are investigating how using self-models and virtually manipulating social cognitive constructs such as identification, self-efficacy, and vicarious reinforcement can influence imitation, particularly in the context of health and consumer behaviors. Is seeing the virtual self engage in a healthful activity more or less effective than a virtual other? When an avatar shows positive benefits of using a product in the third person, does the consumer then go out and buy that product? Can behaviors be encouraged by seeing the virtual self model health-related rewards and punishments such as weight loss, weight gain?
The Proteus Effect
Cyberspace grants us great control over our self-representations. At the click of a button, we can alter our gender, age, attractiveness, and skin tone. But as we choose our avatars online, do our avatars change us in turn? In a series of studies, we've explored how putting people in avatars of different attractiveness or height change how they behave in a virtual environment.
Out of the three links to "research" provided, only one links to an actual published paper (the other two are to research papers not in peer reviewed journals).
So, yeah, in a lab with undergraduate students, some of this stuff may be true. Out in the real world, with real adults working 9 to 5 jobs, with family and kids, maybe not so much....
Well, gee, if you search for only websites that offer "suicide methods" (as most of the researcher's search terms were constructed), it's not surprising you're going to find exactly that -- a lot of websites that are biased toward providing suicide methods.
The researchers stacked the deck at the onset by carefully defining their search terms to focus exclusively on "suicide methods" (not reasonable other search terms, like suicide crisis, support, help, etc.) The one non-biased search term ("suicide") shows zero pro-suicide websites in the top 10 search results on the 4 search engines the researchers used.
After jumping through two blogs (neither of which are the actual story), you'll come to Motorists.org -- the National Motorists Association -- and find the story, dated March 26, 2008 (3 weeks ago). Reading the story, you'll see they cite six different local newspaper articles, some dating back more than a year ago:
So while indeed this is interesting, it is not particularly "new" nor "news." Cities have been doing this for over a decade, and they occasionally get caught, but more often than not, they do not. They will continue to push for the cameras since they generate virtually "free" revenue (free in the sense of little manpower and little initial investment cost).
Actually, it's the psychiatrists who publish the DSM, the American Psychiatric Association.
The DSM makes no differentiation, nor does it attempt to, about the causation of a disorder. So, in fact, the DSM does NOT "describes those with real, biologically based dysfunctions in one of more brain processes involved in attentional processing." The DSM doesn't care where a disorder comes from, it only provides behavioral checklists for clinicians to reliably (or not so reliably) diagnose the same symptoms across different people.
See also my commentary on this particular badly-crafted editorial on "Internet addiction disorder:"
I didn't notice that, but I would encourage moviegoers to stay until they *very* end of the credits... There's a whisper at the end. Spoiler of what the whisper says (when played backwards, no less):
This technique is a type of functional neuroimaging technology that offers a relatively non-invasive, safe, portable, and low-cost method of indirect and direct monitoring of brain activity. By measuring changes in near-infrared light, it allows researchers to monitor blood flow and blood oxygenation in the front cortex (only) of the brain. It is still a new technique, so it is not yet widely used in research, but it shows promising results in studies done to-date.
The MSNBC commentator called it a pseudo-science because that's exactly what it is.
There are exactly zero citations in MEDLINE and PsycINFO for a peer-reviewed study done on normal people using this technique. There's one where it was used to help people with schizophrenia learn emotional cues in others. The only other citation was a book chapter (which isn't a study).
So yes, when you have little or no science in the psychological and medical databases to back up your psychological technique, we call that a pseudo-science -- it's not a real, proven technique.
And because of this, it definitely should NOT be used at airports. There is a great deal of science showing how lousy humans are at detecting lying, including nonverbal cues.
It is biased in favor of their preconceived conceptions about these issues. That's why it was published as a simple "report," not anything that enjoyed peer-review or even a formal literature search. Joe's Crab House could produce just as good a report using MEDLINE.
They were confused about where the concept of "Internet addiction" came from, suggesting it was observed "in the wild" first, when, in fact, it came from a small self-selecting sample study (e.g., Do you think you have a problem with X? Great, take our survey on X!).
They were confused about drawing reasonable conclusions from the research literature (e.g., there is little conclusive evidence for Internet addition, gaming addiction, etc.), and then producing recommendations directly contradicting these conclusions (e.g., these non-existent disorders should be included in the next revision of the DSM).
Ars Technica is a technical website. Their analysis of the report is hardly helpful. Instead, read mine at Psych Central:
The difference is that on HotOrNot, it doesn't work. On HotOrNot, you can cast votes for a picture in one of two ways. The first way is to go directly to the URL for someone's picture; the second way is to load the front page, where a random picture from the database is selected at random, and vote for whatever picture comes up. The catch is that the votes that you cast by going directly to someone's picture, are simply ignored in calculating the average score for that photo.
Really? Nowhere in the HotOrNot FAQ ( http://www.hotornot.com/pages/faq.html ) does it mention that only certain votes are counted. In fact, the FAQ addresses a question about friends clicking on your photo:
10. I know my friends have voted on my picture already, but I don't see any votes when I log in to check my score! What's going on?
Votes are not tabulated instantly, they are counted every hour or so. Check your picture rating again later.
Randomization wouldn't work on digg, because I'd say about 90% of the submissions are spam/junk or repeats. If you make me wade through that 90% randomly in order for me to vote on something I think is interesting, I'm going to stop voting altogether. Me and hundreds of thousands of others, I suspect.
Addiction to pornography (or the Internet) is not a recognized mental disorder, nor is there any diagnosis for it that an insurance company would reimburse you for. While the media continues hyping these things, the science and research still says these are not legitimate or recognized separate disorders.
So this guy doesn't have a leg to stand on from the mental health standpoint. If he has PTSD, that's a separate issue, but it certainly wouldn't be a legitimate reason for viewing porn at work.
Sounds like he's trolling for dollars and publicity. And lookee here, he's getting at least the latter!
I'm not convinced that the questions asked were the best kind to ask in a Q&A community. Frankly, anything that is purely factual seems best answered by Google or Wikipedia and far more easily/quickly.
Typing these queries into Google found answers to all of them (removing the results from the Q&A sites and related to the article) in the first 10 results.
I guess people really have gotten so lazy that sifting through a few search results is more work than waiting for a human being to go and do the same thing for you, and then copying and pasting the results into an "answer" on one of these Q&A sites (which is what a large number of the most active Q&A members do on most of these sites).
I mean, gosh, if I asked 7,000 people who spent hundreds of hours following NASCAR every year, do you think I might find similar symptoms? Would these folks be afflicted with "NASCAR addiction"?
Or, what if we asked the same thing of teens wrt to talking/keeping in touch with friends...? Would they be suffering from the dreaded "social addiction disorder"?
Warning signs of hype, not news:
1. Self-selected sample. Bias is inherent in the dataset, therefore very little can be said about the dataset.
2. Survey research. Survey research is the weakest form of empirical research (next to single case study narratives). Any time someone takes a survey, very little can be discerned from the survey's results without carefully examining the questions asked, of whom, during what time period, etc. etc. The question, "Are you going to vote for President Bush or one of his opponents?" in the 2004 Presidential election is a very good example of an inappropriately biased question.
3. No peer-reviewed journal cited. Given the fact that no journal is cited in the aritcle suggests this wasn't exactly a peer-reviewed study, like those for cancer research or diabetes treatments. Instead, it appears to be a private survey, without any reference to where one could actually read the full "study." (Yes, I checked the group's website - nada.)
Anyways, I'm preaching to the choir here. There may indeed be people who gamble too much, who watch too much NASCAR, and teens who talk on the phone or IM their friends too often, but none of this is "addiction" nor is it worthy of a news article or a Slashdot mention.
.... 'a combination of rapidly increasing stock prices, individual speculation in stocks, and widely available venture capital.'....
1. Where are the "rapidly increasing stock prices"? Look at practically any.com NASDAQ stock that isn't Google and you won't find it. Most.com companies have had their stock languish. Look at Yahoo! Still meeting quarterly expectations, yet the stock hasn't budged in years, even with their popular Answers service, even with their Web 2.0 acquisitions. Stuck in neutral, like almost every.com stock.
2. "Individual speculation in stocks"? Sorry, again, I'm not seeing this. Other technology companies and stocks that rely on the Internet to provide a barometer for future growth have been stagnant and significantly underperforming the broader S&P.
3. "Widely available venture capital"? It might be out there somewhere, but after just going through a round of pitches for a friend's profitable.com, one with even greater growth potential for the next 5 years, he didn't get any serious bites. In the late 1990s, all you needed was a freakin' business plan to get your $1 or $5MM. Now he went and showed *profits* (not just revenues) year after year for the past 3 years and VCs just shrug and say, "Sorry." So yeah, there may be money out there, but it's certainly not as widely available as it was in the late 1990s.
We're not in a bubble, and if it's the beginning of a bubble, it's at the very beginning of a much more cautious investment pattern that has little resemblence to the last one.
It all comes down to the author suggesting people knew stuff about the future of Myspace that the shareholders didn't know. But with quotes like this from the report:
"I bet if you extrapolate the numbers into Calender 06 (using 4thQ of our FY05 as the main driver) and include 3-5mm in cost savings the ebitda is in the 40-50mm range. Can someone please take a look at that asap. We will be valued off of calender 06 numbers."
"Deutsche assumed that by 2008, Myspace would generate $100 million in revenue for that year."
And the fact the company was purchased for $580mm (according the PC Magazine article), shows that the company's valuation/sales price was appropriate.
Standard fare for M&A is 3-4x current year's revenues for a company. You can't value a company based upon what it *might* do next year (because every company likes to be very optimistic about *next* year's revenues!). So if Myspace was set to do somewhere between $60-100mm in 2006, then they got somewhere between 5.8x to almost 10x their revenues. These are already extraordinary numbers.
To suggest they should've gotten 20x or 25x 2006 revenues is a number nobody would believe.
And the reason for a "quick" close? A deal isn't done until it's done. All parties usually like to close as quickly as possible on a deal because it means neither side will get cold feet. Of course both sides also allow time for due diligence, a part of which is valuation.
But valuation of companies is more "art" than it is a science. Outside of the 3-4x revenue rule, valuations can be all over the map (hi Google!).
2002, eh? So this really isn't "news" in 2006, is it? I mean, it's been four years since the publication of that study, and a lot of analysis has been done since then about it and the previous results. The HomeNet study has already had enough holes drilled into it that I doubt many researchers give any validity to the idea that the Internet is socially isolating any longer.
Offhandedly suggesting things like "social networking" (which barely existed in 2002 as a unique phenomenon) could have contributed to the change in perceptions isn't very "tasty" or "research." It could have just as well been the increase in users (no, sorry, not "everybody" has access to the Internet still), or some other unknown variable not yet studied. With just a few hundred people enrolled in both studies from one lone geographic location in the U.S., I'd hardly feel comfortable making robust generalizations about all U.S. Internet users.
The second citation is actually dated 2001 in the PDF linked, and talks about the timeframe for that data collection -- 1998-1999. Hardly a time where there was any social networking going on, or where "everyone" was on the Internet.
Satellite radio is a perfect economic model to replicate -- lots of content bundled together to appeal to the largest audience possible.
One show for one month at $7 is an economic model that is ultimately ridiculous. If I want to listen to a dozen shows a week, you're asking me to pay $84/month?!? No way will people do that, it simply doesn't scale.
Heck, a lot of websites tried this model and most of them fell on their face and relented to the free model. People will pay for stuff they like, but it has to be reasonable to that person's life. I pay $13/month for dozens of music and talk channels on satellite, and don't have to worry about the FCC. If you can beat that online, please do.
Umm, you can certainly be ignorant of history if you'd like, or you could look up the book leak that occurred in January, 2001 on Google by the author's editor:
1. Not something scientifically-accepted yet. 2. Is not less expensive. 3. Is not more accurate. 4. Does not take less time. 5. Involves more professionals, a needle and blood draw, and likely more inconvenience for the client/patient in most circumstances.
The problem with hybrids isn't their short-term fuel efficiency (which we didn't need 150 folks to document, out of tens of thousands sold). The problems are:
1. Premium cost over traditional fuel combustion engine (ranging from $3,000 - $5,000 over the same non-hybrid car).
2. Long-term reliability and replacement costs of hybrid system (especially the batteries). 5 or 10 years from now, are these cars going to be proven as reliable as their traditional combustion-engine brethern? Or are they going to be visiting the shop more often to fix issues in their hybrid systems, replace their batteries (which do have a pre-determined lifetime), or whatever??
The answers will come in time, but not from the data of 150 measly vehicles.
PS - The dork who compared a 40-year old car to a modern vehicle just doesn't get it. Modern vehicles meet modern safety standards, including such luxuries as airbags, enhanced structures that help prevent serious bodily injuries, and a little more leg room. Yes, if I built a go-cart, I could probably also get 50-60 MPG. But I wouldn't be stupid enough to drive it on I-95.
"Internet addiction" is still not a recognized diagnosis in any part of the world, and certainly not in the U.S. To create a new diagnosis in the mental health field takes usually decades worth of solid research. "Internet addiction" has less than a decade's worth at this point, and only one or two solid studies that point to *something* (but what, exactly, is still not known because of the studies' methodological flaws).
It's too bad people take this hokum as real. Might as well start having "book addiction" and "TV addiction" and "communication addiction," because any normal activity, done too often, can then be termed an "addiction." For more reading on what's really going on with this diagnosis/disorder, check out my article at:
I know we're going to hear mostly naysayers here, saying "Well, gee, they couldn't even make it 15 miles this year, what's the chance of anyone actually winning in a year's time!?"
I think there's a good possibility that someone can win it. Think about it. This past year, none of the teams had any first-hand, direct experience with this course or the challenge. So now every team has all of the experience and data from this year's challenge, and could not only see what went wrong with their team's entry, but the problems faced by every other team (motorcycle entry notwithstanding).
I think the computing power is there. If the teams learned anything from this year, it should be that GPS isn't sufficient in and of itself. You need to far more creative. Every system should have 2 or 3 redundant subsystems.
I think it can be done, and I think there are enough creative people working on the problem that it wouldn't surprise me to see a winner next year.
Slashdot Mirror
Sadly, the SciAm article is about a research study on expressive writing, not blogging. While the two may share some characteristics in common, they are not the same. How the writer (and SciAm) managed to wrangle this into an article about blogging is beyond me.
Worse, the study had a nearly 50% drop-out rate, meaning a good minority of people didn't have any interest in expressive writing. And with a small N, the results are hardly generalizable.
Shame on SciAm.
More here:
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/06/09/scientific-american-lets-stretch-research-to-make-it-sexy/
http://vhil.stanford.edu/projects/
Out of the three links to "research" provided, only one links to an actual published paper (the other two are to research papers not in peer reviewed journals).
So, yeah, in a lab with undergraduate students, some of this stuff may be true. Out in the real world, with real adults working 9 to 5 jobs, with family and kids, maybe not so much....
Well, gee, if you search for only websites that offer "suicide methods" (as most of the researcher's search terms were constructed), it's not surprising you're going to find exactly that -- a lot of websites that are biased toward providing suicide methods.
The researchers stacked the deck at the onset by carefully defining their search terms to focus exclusively on "suicide methods" (not reasonable other search terms, like suicide crisis, support, help, etc.) The one non-biased search term ("suicide") shows zero pro-suicide websites in the top 10 search results on the 4 search engines the researchers used.
Read my full response at the BMJ:
http://www.bmj.com/cgi/eletters?lookup=by_date&days=1#193559
--
Psych Central
psychcentral.com
After jumping through two blogs (neither of which are the actual story), you'll come to Motorists.org -- the National Motorists Association -- and find the story, dated March 26, 2008 (3 weeks ago). Reading the story, you'll see they cite six different local newspaper articles, some dating back more than a year ago:
http://www.motorists.org/blog/red-light-cameras/6-cities-that-were-caught-shortening-yellow-light-times-for-profit/
So while indeed this is interesting, it is not particularly "new" nor "news." Cities have been doing this for over a decade, and they occasionally get caught, but more often than not, they do not. They will continue to push for the cameras since they generate virtually "free" revenue (free in the sense of little manpower and little initial investment cost).
Actually, it's the psychiatrists who publish the DSM, the American Psychiatric Association.
The DSM makes no differentiation, nor does it attempt to, about the causation of a disorder. So, in fact, the DSM does NOT "describes those with real, biologically based dysfunctions in one of more brain processes involved in attentional processing." The DSM doesn't care where a disorder comes from, it only provides behavioral checklists for clinicians to reliably (or not so reliably) diagnose the same symptoms across different people.
See also my commentary on this particular badly-crafted editorial on "Internet addiction disorder:"
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2008/03/18/whats-that-smell-internet-addiction-disorder-in-the-news/
I didn't notice that, but I would encourage moviegoers to stay until they *very* end of the credits... There's a whisper at the end. Spoiler of what the whisper says (when played backwards, no less):
http://cloverfield.despoiler.org/index.php?title=Miscellaneous#The_Whisper
This technique is a type of functional neuroimaging technology that offers a relatively non-invasive, safe, portable, and low-cost method of indirect and direct monitoring of brain activity. By measuring changes in near-infrared light, it allows researchers to monitor blood flow and blood oxygenation in the front cortex (only) of the brain. It is still a new technique, so it is not yet widely used in research, but it shows promising results in studies done to-date.
http://psychcentral.com/lib/2007/what-is-functional-optical-brain-imaging/ for pictures.
The MSNBC commentator called it a pseudo-science because that's exactly what it is.
There are exactly zero citations in MEDLINE and PsycINFO for a peer-reviewed study done on normal people using this technique. There's one where it was used to help people with schizophrenia learn emotional cues in others. The only other citation was a book chapter (which isn't a study).
So yes, when you have little or no science in the psychological and medical databases to back up your psychological technique, we call that a pseudo-science -- it's not a real, proven technique.
And because of this, it definitely should NOT be used at airports. There is a great deal of science showing how lousy humans are at detecting lying, including nonverbal cues.
--
Get your psych on: http://psychcentral.com/
Too bad the AMA didn't produce a quality report.
a ma-weighs-in-on-gaming-and-internet-addiction/
It is biased in favor of their preconceived conceptions about these issues. That's why it was published as a simple "report," not anything that enjoyed peer-review or even a formal literature search. Joe's Crab House could produce just as good a report using MEDLINE.
They were confused about where the concept of "Internet addiction" came from, suggesting it was observed "in the wild" first, when, in fact, it came from a small self-selecting sample study (e.g., Do you think you have a problem with X? Great, take our survey on X!).
They were confused about drawing reasonable conclusions from the research literature (e.g., there is little conclusive evidence for Internet addition, gaming addiction, etc.), and then producing recommendations directly contradicting these conclusions (e.g., these non-existent disorders should be included in the next revision of the DSM).
Ars Technica is a technical website. Their analysis of the report is hardly helpful. Instead, read mine at Psych Central:
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2007/06/14/
Really? Nowhere in the HotOrNot FAQ ( http://www.hotornot.com/pages/faq.html ) does it mention that only certain votes are counted. In fact, the FAQ addresses a question about friends clicking on your photo:
Randomization wouldn't work on digg, because I'd say about 90% of the submissions are spam/junk or repeats. If you make me wade through that 90% randomly in order for me to vote on something I think is interesting, I'm going to stop voting altogether. Me and hundreds of thousands of others, I suspect.
Addiction to pornography (or the Internet) is not a recognized mental disorder, nor is there any diagnosis for it that an insurance company would reimburse you for. While the media continues hyping these things, the science and research still says these are not legitimate or recognized separate disorders.
So this guy doesn't have a leg to stand on from the mental health standpoint. If he has PTSD, that's a separate issue, but it certainly wouldn't be a legitimate reason for viewing porn at work.
Sounds like he's trolling for dollars and publicity. And lookee here, he's getting at least the latter!
--
If you need to ask, I can't answer.
I'm not convinced that the questions asked were the best kind to ask in a Q&A community. Frankly, anything that is purely factual seems best answered by Google or Wikipedia and far more easily/quickly.
Typing these queries into Google found answers to all of them (removing the results from the Q&A sites and related to the article) in the first 10 results.
I guess people really have gotten so lazy that sifting through a few search results is more work than waiting for a human being to go and do the same thing for you, and then copying and pasting the results into an "answer" on one of these Q&A sites (which is what a large number of the most active Q&A members do on most of these sites).
I mean, gosh, if I asked 7,000 people who spent hundreds of hours following NASCAR every year, do you think I might find similar symptoms? Would these folks be afflicted with "NASCAR addiction"?
Or, what if we asked the same thing of teens wrt to talking/keeping in touch with friends...? Would they be suffering from the dreaded "social addiction disorder"?
Warning signs of hype, not news:
1. Self-selected sample. Bias is inherent in the dataset, therefore very little can be said about the dataset.
2. Survey research. Survey research is the weakest form of empirical research (next to single case study narratives). Any time someone takes a survey, very little can be discerned from the survey's results without carefully examining the questions asked, of whom, during what time period, etc. etc. The question, "Are you going to vote for President Bush or one of his opponents?" in the 2004 Presidential election is a very good example of an inappropriately biased question.
3. No peer-reviewed journal cited. Given the fact that no journal is cited in the aritcle suggests this wasn't exactly a peer-reviewed study, like those for cancer research or diabetes treatments. Instead, it appears to be a private survey, without any reference to where one could actually read the full "study." (Yes, I checked the group's website - nada.)
Anyways, I'm preaching to the choir here. There may indeed be people who gamble too much, who watch too much NASCAR, and teens who talk on the phone or IM their friends too often, but none of this is "addiction" nor is it worthy of a news article or a Slashdot mention.
1. Where are the "rapidly increasing stock prices"? Look at practically any
2. "Individual speculation in stocks"? Sorry, again, I'm not seeing this. Other technology companies and stocks that rely on the Internet to provide a barometer for future growth have been stagnant and significantly underperforming the broader S&P.
3. "Widely available venture capital"? It might be out there somewhere, but after just going through a round of pitches for a friend's profitable
We're not in a bubble, and if it's the beginning of a bubble, it's at the very beginning of a much more cautious investment pattern that has little resemblence to the last one.
It all comes down to the author suggesting people knew stuff about the future of Myspace that the shareholders didn't know. But with quotes like this from the report:
."
"I bet if you extrapolate the numbers into Calender 06 (using 4thQ of our FY05 as the main driver) and include 3-5mm in cost savings the ebitda is in the 40-50mm range. Can someone please take a look at that asap. We will be valued off of calender 06 numbers
"Deutsche assumed that by 2008, Myspace would generate $100 million in revenue for that year."
And the fact the company was purchased for $580mm (according the PC Magazine article), shows that the company's valuation/sales price was appropriate.
Standard fare for M&A is 3-4x current year's revenues for a company. You can't value a company based upon what it *might* do next year (because every company likes to be very optimistic about *next* year's revenues!). So if Myspace was set to do somewhere between $60-100mm in 2006, then they got somewhere between 5.8x to almost 10x their revenues. These are already extraordinary numbers.
To suggest they should've gotten 20x or 25x 2006 revenues is a number nobody would believe.
And the reason for a "quick" close? A deal isn't done until it's done. All parties usually like to close as quickly as possible on a deal because it means neither side will get cold feet. Of course both sides also allow time for due diligence, a part of which is valuation.
But valuation of companies is more "art" than it is a science. Outside of the 3-4x revenue rule, valuations can be all over the map (hi Google!).
2002, eh? So this really isn't "news" in 2006, is it? I mean, it's been four years since the publication of that study, and a lot of analysis has been done since then about it and the previous results. The HomeNet study has already had enough holes drilled into it that I doubt many researchers give any validity to the idea that the Internet is socially isolating any longer.
Offhandedly suggesting things like "social networking" (which barely existed in 2002 as a unique phenomenon) could have contributed to the change in perceptions isn't very "tasty" or "research." It could have just as well been the increase in users (no, sorry, not "everybody" has access to the Internet still), or some other unknown variable not yet studied. With just a few hundred people enrolled in both studies from one lone geographic location in the U.S., I'd hardly feel comfortable making robust generalizations about all U.S. Internet users.
The second citation is actually dated 2001 in the PDF linked, and talks about the timeframe for that data collection -- 1998-1999. Hardly a time where there was any social networking going on, or where "everyone" was on the Internet.
Satellite radio is a perfect economic model to replicate -- lots of content bundled together to appeal to the largest audience possible.
One show for one month at $7 is an economic model that is ultimately ridiculous. If I want to listen to a dozen shows a week, you're asking me to pay $84/month?!? No way will people do that, it simply doesn't scale.
Heck, a lot of websites tried this model and most of them fell on their face and relented to the free model. People will pay for stuff they like, but it has to be reasonable to that person's life. I pay $13/month for dozens of music and talk channels on satellite, and don't have to worry about the FCC. If you can beat that online, please do.
Umm, you can certainly be ignorant of history if you'd like, or you could look up the book leak that occurred in January, 2001 on Google by the author's editor:
w se_thread/thread/49f68445a988706/79408a599e70b220? lnk=st&q=steve+kemper+book+proposal+ginger&rnum=38 &hl=en#79408a599e70b220
http://groups.google.com/group/alt.conspiracy/bro
Copies of the trailers:
http://www4.segway.com/10mph-low.mov
http://www4.segway.com/10mph-med.mov
http://www.10mph.com.nyud.net:8090/
From my view as a psychologist...
b lood-test-for-anxiety-does-this-help-anyone/
This research/test is:
1. Not something scientifically-accepted yet.
2. Is not less expensive.
3. Is not more accurate.
4. Does not take less time.
5. Involves more professionals, a needle and blood draw, and likely more inconvenience for the client/patient in most circumstances.
I don't see the benefits, sorry.
Read my full analysis and comments here:
http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2005/10/10/
The problem with hybrids isn't their short-term fuel efficiency (which we didn't need 150 folks to document, out of tens of thousands sold). The problems are:
1. Premium cost over traditional fuel combustion engine (ranging from $3,000 - $5,000 over the same non-hybrid car).
2. Long-term reliability and replacement costs of hybrid system (especially the batteries). 5 or 10 years from now, are these cars going to be proven as reliable as their traditional combustion-engine brethern? Or are they going to be visiting the shop more often to fix issues in their hybrid systems, replace their batteries (which do have a pre-determined lifetime), or whatever??
The answers will come in time, but not from the data of 150 measly vehicles.
PS - The dork who compared a 40-year old car to a modern vehicle just doesn't get it. Modern vehicles meet modern safety standards, including such luxuries as airbags, enhanced structures that help prevent serious bodily injuries, and a little more leg room. Yes, if I built a go-cart, I could probably also get 50-60 MPG. But I wouldn't be stupid enough to drive it on I-95.
--
D'oh
See the article about Concept Centaur in next month's Popular Science magazine for more information and photos:
0 ,20967,710982,00.html
http://www.popsci.com/popsci/generaltech/article/
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"Internet addiction" is still not a recognized diagnosis in any part of the world, and certainly not in the U.S. To create a new diagnosis in the mental health field takes usually decades worth of solid research. "Internet addiction" has less than a decade's worth at this point, and only one or two solid studies that point to *something* (but what, exactly, is still not known because of the studies' methodological flaws).
It's too bad people take this hokum as real. Might as well start having "book addiction" and "TV addiction" and "communication addiction," because any normal activity, done too often, can then be termed an "addiction." For more reading on what's really going on with this diagnosis/disorder, check out my article at:
http://psychcentral.com/netaddiction/
I know we're going to hear mostly naysayers here, saying "Well, gee, they couldn't even make it 15 miles this year, what's the chance of anyone actually winning in a year's time!?"
I think there's a good possibility that someone can win it. Think about it. This past year, none of the teams had any first-hand, direct experience with this course or the challenge. So now every team has all of the experience and data from this year's challenge, and could not only see what went wrong with their team's entry, but the problems faced by every other team (motorcycle entry notwithstanding).
I think the computing power is there. If the teams learned anything from this year, it should be that GPS isn't sufficient in and of itself. You need to far more creative. Every system should have 2 or 3 redundant subsystems.
I think it can be done, and I think there are enough creative people working on the problem that it wouldn't surprise me to see a winner next year.