And if they do that, how long will they make a profit, before a competitor with more aggressive marketing and infrastructure takes over their market share?
Well, no one said it was easy to stay on top. The point is that once they have built their brand and have diversified their product lines to a sufficient extent, they can dial back a lot of these expenditures. It's extremely expensive to launch new product lines.
I mean, you make it sound so easy... just use "more aggressive marketing and infrastructure to take over the market share". In practice, it's not that easy. Ask competitors of Wal-Mart (or Microsoft, for that matter).
By the way, it's not as if Amazon is hiding any of this strategy. Read their financial reports.
Amazon can turn a profit any time they want... all they have to do is turn off the marketing machine and stop spending so much on infrastructure.
But the reason they have won is that they won the branding war (which is the only war worth winning). They knew that they had to spend giant dollars to rise above the noise of every clown598.com.
Say what you want about Amazon, but they have succeeded brilliantly in diversifying from books. In five years Amazon will be the Wal-Mart of the web.
You're not "looking" at it the right way (pun intended). If I face forward and move my eyes up and down, left and right, I can tell distance to any object in the room. If I tilt my head sideways, I can do the same thing.
The point is that stereoscopic vision gives you the ability to tell the distance between two points.
Your point would be valid if I couldn't aim my eyes up and down and focus on an object outside of the horizontal plane. But since I can "swivel the plane", so to speak, two eyes can focus on any object and tell the distance.
If you're still not convinced, then give me an example of range information that cannot be measured by two eyes, but could be by three eyes.
Thinking about it, I will say this... it's possible that with three eyes you might get a little better peripheral depth perception on the vertical plane. If your eyes are aimed straight ahead, and something comes at you from above, it may be that you could get slightly more accurate depth information about something at the edges of your range of vision. Note, however, that you can still tell the distance with two eyes, it's just a little less accurate. I mean, I manage to duck just fine if something swings at me.
Vision is primarily designed to give fine information on what the eyes are aimed at, and coarse information at the periphery (like movement, etc). I don't think accuracy is really needed all the much.
To answer your original question (why not three eyes), I think the potential small advantages of peripheral depth perception don't outweigh the added complexity of processing a third eye. It's hard enough for the brain to process two eyes, imagine the complexity of merging three images! For evolution to make three eyes work well would require a huge advantage in survivability. It's like asking why don't we have four arms? That would be hugely useful (especially when soldering), but the advantages of four arms don't outweigh the added brain complexity that the coordination would require (and the probably loss of some other ability... brains are only so big).
I know a lot of people like the Hellmouth series, but it read to me as this incredibly self-indulgent therapy session by Katz trying to exorcise his own demons.
I mean, my high school experience sucked too, but I just don't feel this big need to cast blame everywhere. My inability to fit in was because of my own social limitations. When I worked to overcome them, suddenly life started improving a lot.
Unfortunately, Katz' story is just another symptom of blaming everything in society except yourself for your own problems.
There's no such thing as "depth in one plane"... the measurement of depth is the same in any plane, defined as the distance from the observer to a distant object.
Or, to put it another way, what information would be gleened from three eyes that you don't get from two eyes? If I turn my head sideways, I can still perceive the same distances.
Come to think of it, the way that is detected might also be a manifestation of touch due to membranes pressing against certain sensors (either from within or from without) harder than they otherwise should at 1 atmosphere.
I think you're right. It's the expansion/contraction of the air pushing on the membranes, just like I might feel pressure in my stomach from too much gas.:)
Put on a blind fold, spin her around in a chair (with feet off the floor), and see if she can still point north. Repeat several times.
If she can, then tie a magnet to her head, and repeat the experiment. The Earth's magentic field is extremely weak, so the magnet should throw it off.
Frankly, I think that she's probably using dead reckoning rather than a magnetic sense. I seem to recall studies on this that showed that humans don't have a magnetic sense.
I could be wrong... anybody have reference to any studies? It would be interesting to know.
I personally would only count the mechanism rather than the particular information content. For example, I wouldn't count air-pressure because (I believe) that is caused by movement of the hairs on your skin, which is activating the mechanism of touch.
That's why I would count balance, because it's a separate mechanism that is making a measurement not covered by the other senses.
Now, as you point out, what we call "touch" does seem to make a lot of different measurements. I don't know enough about how nerves work to know if there are different sensors for each type of measurement, but they're all lumped into "touch".
I would argue against counting the "muscular position sensors", since they are internal sensors. When most people think of "senses", they are referring to mechanisms that return information about the outside world. Otherwise, you could count all kinds of internal sensors, like the oxygen/nitrogen balance in the blood.
Rhetorical question... No, I'm serious. You're probably right that it's not a particularly "sexy" sense since there is not much texture to the information it conveys. Still, it's incredibly important to normal functioning.
It's commonly repeated that humans have five senses... touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smell.
However, I contend that humans have six senses, but for some reason, one gets no respect. The sixth, of course, is balance. You could also call it a sense of gravity. Think about it.
Any theories on why we have the popular notion of only five senses? I've never come up with a good one myself.
The movie wasn't even that good. It wasn't a bad movie by any stretch, and it's Star Wars, and that's cool all by itself, but who is really pining away to watch this movie on DVD?
Do any of you think this was a great movie and really want to own it?
First someone creates an open source Ralph Lauren Polo... I would just hold my face up to my computer, hit the button, and BAM! Ready to go out on a date!
Then, of course, Ralph Lauren files a lawsuit against the web sites distributing the Polo source code. "If everyone can distribute Polo for free, then there will be no in-scent-ive to create new fragrances!" The judge issues a restraining order and bans any code that duplicates copyrighted smells.
Meanwhile, the "smelz" underground grows like wildfire, and the industry is helpless to stop it. A version of Napster appears to trade pirated "snifz".
It's only a matter of time. Don't forget you saw it here first.
Most of this interview was completely worthless, but the fact that someone is working on a new printing API is really good news.
The lack of solid, consistent and reliable printing under Linux has been a huge hole. Hopefully they'll do it right, and it will be up to the standards of Windows.
Considering that 95%+ of online news is simply reprinted newspaper news (particularly from the associated press), what does this really mean? It seems to me that it's just an equivalent measure of positive stories in the paper press.
I will say that there is probably quite a bit of influence from the "new media" like Drudge. How much influence I think is impossible to say, and I don't think this study does anything to measure it.
I find the more interesting question is whether TV news is gaining less influence. The last 30 years has seen a huge surge in the power of national TV news. Are we seeing a return to people getting more information from printed sources? If so, I can't help but think this is a positive thing. I tend to think that people's brains are more engaged when they are reading something than when they have hysterical blow-dried anchors feeding information in just the right tone of voice.
I think a lot of people are going to have a knee-jerk reaction that they don't like it simply because of the reference to DIVX. However, I think this is a great idea.
If I could get a disk for $2.50 (or the average rental price), and not have to return it, this is a big win. I hate returning video tapes.
Note that this is not meant to be a replacement for the ability to buy permanent DVDs, which was the big problem with DIVX.
Every culture is exclusive, just some cultures are bigger than others. I think it's incredibly rude to march into someone else's "clubhouse" and insist they change to suit the outsider. It's not as if there aren't a lot of discussion groups out there with a lot of different personalities.
And just to reiterite my previous post, I don't think there is any excuse for rudeness. However, I enjoy the vitality of Slashdot. But it's not for everyone.
Does every ice cream flavor have to be vanilla? Is it OK if some people enjoy coffee ice cream, even though we are "excluding" those who hate coffee ice cream?
First, let me say that the chip looks mighty cool. However, I was very disappointed in their not releasing industry standard benchmarks.
While I understand their wanting to show their big power advantage, trying to mix two totally different measurements such as power consumption and performance into a single rating is the height of marketing bulls**t. But OK, if they want to, that's fine.
But not at the exclusion of real performance benchmarks. Show me the components that went into the bulls**tmarks or whatever your new benchmark is.
At one point during the Q&A, someone made this point, and the engineer dude (can't remember his name) said that a 667mhz Crusoe performs like a 500mhz P/III. *cough* I'll believe that a software-based emulator can get 75% of native hardware performance when I see real benchmarks. Until then, all this handwaving makes me very, very suspicious.
All this having been said, the screens flashed by pretty quickly, so clearly it's not a dog. But Transmeta: if the performance is good DON'T HIDE THE NUMBERS.
First of all, how does Katz know that Slashdot is primarily white and male? I haven't seen any surveys that indicate that fact. Oh, he "just knows"... hmmm. Sounds like racial stereotyping to me.
But my main point is that he's making the assumption that Slashdot is somehow at the top of pyramid, and other groups are somehow excluded. He goes on to say that many females join female mailing lists.
Slashdot has a certain culture. These "female mailing lists" (whatever they are) are a different culture. I don't choose to involve myself in these mailing lists, because I don't find them appealing. Will Katz write an editorial saying that the female mailing lists must stop all talk of feminine deoderant because it makes the males uncomfortable?
If someone doesn't prefer Slashdot culture, SO WHAT? Why does every group have to be palatable to every other group?
The arrogance of Katz is presuming that Slashdot is so important to the modern world that anyone who is excluded must be at some devastating societal disadvantage. Well, with all due respect to Slashdot, it's just not that important. It's only one among a lot of sources of information, with many different cultures.
P.S. This is not excuse rudeness on Slashdot. There is rarely an excuse for rudeness, but I happen to like the open honesty.
Seriously, you can't believe that exposure doesn't lead to sales (and lack of exposure results in fewer sales). Just look at Coke.
When Coke advertises, they try and create a "lifestyle" around the product, so that when you see it in the supermarket or whatever, you identify with the product enough to buy it (note that Coke traditionally has not advertised on taste).
But what exposure does Linux gain from this? The average person is going to focus on the humorous fact that a normal individual paid the bill for giant Microsoft -- but The Advocacy is attuned to any news regarding Linux, so naturally you focus on that fact. There is zero positive press for Linux out of this.
Note, by the way, that the average person sees this as humorous, and does not carry any anger like The Advocacy would like.
If the story read (to use your example), "Michael, sipping on a Coke, described how he paid the bill for Microsoft", would you say that Coke would get a slew of new business? "Maude, that there Michael guy is a good joe! If he's a Coke drinker, then by God I'm gonna drink Coke, too!"
Maybe if the story was something like, "Michael used his Linux operating system to repair the Microsoft mail system" or something, there might be some slight tie-in, but the merits of Linux had nothing to do with the story.
If you review the links in one of the subthreads, you will find that he did make several comments. The one I remembered was, "I would ask that when they make out a check they consider how much revenue would have otherwise been lost had this been down for another day or two...". The articles that were linked had a bit more context that make him seem less greedy.
I'm not trying to make any unwarranted accusations. Frankly, I was hoping some ideas would be posted on verifying legitimacy. You have the benefit of knowing him. All I know is that he's some guy who has managed to keep his name in the press far longer than I would have expected, and that makes me suspicious of his motives.
If he's doing this all for charity, then more power to him. You have to admit that it's not exactly unknown for flakes to capitalize on a windfall of publicity.
I suppose some people might move from Hotmail over this, but it wasn't down long enough to really affect much. No one uses a free e-mail to get 100% uptime, and I even doubt it was down long enough to bounce received messages.
As for ads, unless they are at 100% ad space utilization (unlikely), the ads are simply made up at another time.
Finally, Linux got zero new users over this. People change platforms when there is a good reason (like some superior application), not when a particular advocate happens to pay a bill.
Slashdot Mirror
And if they do that, how long will they make a profit, before a competitor with more aggressive marketing and infrastructure takes over their market share?
Well, no one said it was easy to stay on top. The point is that once they have built their brand and have diversified their product lines to a sufficient extent, they can dial back a lot of these expenditures. It's extremely expensive to launch new product lines.
I mean, you make it sound so easy ... just use "more aggressive marketing and infrastructure to take over the market share". In practice, it's not that easy. Ask competitors of Wal-Mart (or Microsoft, for that matter).
By the way, it's not as if Amazon is hiding any of this strategy. Read their financial reports.
--
Amazon can turn a profit any time they want... all they have to do is turn off the marketing machine and stop spending so much on infrastructure.
But the reason they have won is that they won the branding war (which is the only war worth winning). They knew that they had to spend giant dollars to rise above the noise of every clown598.com.
Say what you want about Amazon, but they have succeeded brilliantly in diversifying from books. In five years Amazon will be the Wal-Mart of the web.
--
You're not "looking" at it the right way (pun intended). If I face forward and move my eyes up and down, left and right, I can tell distance to any object in the room. If I tilt my head sideways, I can do the same thing.
The point is that stereoscopic vision gives you the ability to tell the distance between two points.
Your point would be valid if I couldn't aim my eyes up and down and focus on an object outside of the horizontal plane. But since I can "swivel the plane", so to speak, two eyes can focus on any object and tell the distance.
If you're still not convinced, then give me an example of range information that cannot be measured by two eyes, but could be by three eyes.
Thinking about it, I will say this... it's possible that with three eyes you might get a little better peripheral depth perception on the vertical plane. If your eyes are aimed straight ahead, and something comes at you from above, it may be that you could get slightly more accurate depth information about something at the edges of your range of vision. Note, however, that you can still tell the distance with two eyes, it's just a little less accurate. I mean, I manage to duck just fine if something swings at me.
Vision is primarily designed to give fine information on what the eyes are aimed at, and coarse information at the periphery (like movement, etc). I don't think accuracy is really needed all the much.
To answer your original question (why not three eyes), I think the potential small advantages of peripheral depth perception don't outweigh the added complexity of processing a third eye. It's hard enough for the brain to process two eyes, imagine the complexity of merging three images! For evolution to make three eyes work well would require a huge advantage in survivability. It's like asking why don't we have four arms? That would be hugely useful (especially when soldering), but the advantages of four arms don't outweigh the added brain complexity that the coordination would require (and the probably loss of some other ability... brains are only so big).
--
I know a lot of people like the Hellmouth series, but it read to me as this incredibly self-indulgent therapy session by Katz trying to exorcise his own demons.
I mean, my high school experience sucked too, but I just don't feel this big need to cast blame everywhere. My inability to fit in was because of my own social limitations. When I worked to overcome them, suddenly life started improving a lot.
Unfortunately, Katz' story is just another symptom of blaming everything in society except yourself for your own problems.
--
There's no such thing as "depth in one plane"... the measurement of depth is the same in any plane, defined as the distance from the observer to a distant object.
Or, to put it another way, what information would be gleened from three eyes that you don't get from two eyes? If I turn my head sideways, I can still perceive the same distances.
--
Come to think of it, the way that is detected might also be a manifestation of touch due to membranes pressing against certain sensors (either from within or from without) harder than they otherwise should at 1 atmosphere.
I think you're right. It's the expansion/contraction of the air pushing on the membranes, just like I might feel pressure in my stomach from too much gas. :)
--
Put on a blind fold, spin her around in a chair (with feet off the floor), and see if she can still point north. Repeat several times.
If she can, then tie a magnet to her head, and repeat the experiment. The Earth's magentic field is extremely weak, so the magnet should throw it off.
Frankly, I think that she's probably using dead reckoning rather than a magnetic sense. I seem to recall studies on this that showed that humans don't have a magnetic sense.
I could be wrong... anybody have reference to any studies? It would be interesting to know.
--
I personally would only count the mechanism rather than the particular information content. For example, I wouldn't count air-pressure because (I believe) that is caused by movement of the hairs on your skin, which is activating the mechanism of touch.
That's why I would count balance, because it's a separate mechanism that is making a measurement not covered by the other senses.
Now, as you point out, what we call "touch" does seem to make a lot of different measurements. I don't know enough about how nerves work to know if there are different sensors for each type of measurement, but they're all lumped into "touch".
--
I would argue against counting the "muscular position sensors", since they are internal sensors. When most people think of "senses", they are referring to mechanisms that return information about the outside world. Otherwise, you could count all kinds of internal sensors, like the oxygen/nitrogen balance in the blood.
--
Rhetorical question... No, I'm serious. You're probably right that it's not a particularly "sexy" sense since there is not much texture to the information it conveys. Still, it's incredibly important to normal functioning.
--
It's commonly repeated that humans have five senses... touch, taste, sight, hearing, and smell.
However, I contend that humans have six senses, but for some reason, one gets no respect. The sixth, of course, is balance. You could also call it a sense of gravity. Think about it.
Any theories on why we have the popular notion of only five senses? I've never come up with a good one myself.
--
The movie wasn't even that good. It wasn't a bad movie by any stretch, and it's Star Wars, and that's cool all by itself, but who is really pining away to watch this movie on DVD?
Do any of you think this was a great movie and really want to own it?
--
but as far as I know, scents can't be patented/copyrighted...
Ah, that's what they said to Apple when they filed their "look and feel" lawsuits. Ralph just has to file the equivalent "whiff and stink" lawsuit!
---
First someone creates an open source Ralph Lauren Polo... I would just hold my face up to my computer, hit the button, and BAM! Ready to go out on a date!
Then, of course, Ralph Lauren files a lawsuit against the web sites distributing the Polo source code. "If everyone can distribute Polo for free, then there will be no in-scent-ive to create new fragrances!" The judge issues a restraining order and bans any code that duplicates copyrighted smells.
Meanwhile, the "smelz" underground grows like wildfire, and the industry is helpless to stop it. A version of Napster appears to trade pirated "snifz".
It's only a matter of time. Don't forget you saw it here first.
---
Indeed. And I might add, I am not convinced that they even know what they're looking for when analyzing the data.
I think this project is a complete waste of time and resources. Even more of a waste than RC5/64, and that's saying something.
Isn't there some project out there that actually has some scientific usefulness?
---
Most of this interview was completely worthless, but the fact that someone is working on a new printing API is really good news.
The lack of solid, consistent and reliable printing under Linux has been a huge hole. Hopefully they'll do it right, and it will be up to the standards of Windows.
---
Considering that 95%+ of online news is simply reprinted newspaper news (particularly from the associated press), what does this really mean? It seems to me that it's just an equivalent measure of positive stories in the paper press.
I will say that there is probably quite a bit of influence from the "new media" like Drudge. How much influence I think is impossible to say, and I don't think this study does anything to measure it.
I find the more interesting question is whether TV news is gaining less influence. The last 30 years has seen a huge surge in the power of national TV news. Are we seeing a return to people getting more information from printed sources? If so, I can't help but think this is a positive thing. I tend to think that people's brains are more engaged when they are reading something than when they have hysterical blow-dried anchors feeding information in just the right tone of voice.
---
I think a lot of people are going to have a knee-jerk reaction that they don't like it simply because of the reference to DIVX. However, I think this is a great idea.
If I could get a disk for $2.50 (or the average rental price), and not have to return it, this is a big win. I hate returning video tapes.
Note that this is not meant to be a replacement for the ability to buy permanent DVDs, which was the big problem with DIVX.
---
"from the small-clean-almost-as-good-as-cold-fusion dept."
I've been waiting for a portable fuel cell for 10 years. Motorola says they're still 5 years off. Forgive me if I don't dump my laptop just yet...
---
Every culture is exclusive, just some cultures are bigger than others. I think it's incredibly rude to march into someone else's "clubhouse" and insist they change to suit the outsider. It's not as if there aren't a lot of discussion groups out there with a lot of different personalities.
And just to reiterite my previous post, I don't think there is any excuse for rudeness. However, I enjoy the vitality of Slashdot. But it's not for everyone.
Does every ice cream flavor have to be vanilla? Is it OK if some people enjoy coffee ice cream, even though we are "excluding" those who hate coffee ice cream?
---
First, let me say that the chip looks mighty cool. However, I was very disappointed in their not releasing industry standard benchmarks.
While I understand their wanting to show their big power advantage, trying to mix two totally different measurements such as power consumption and performance into a single rating is the height of marketing bulls**t. But OK, if they want to, that's fine.
But not at the exclusion of real performance benchmarks. Show me the components that went into the bulls**tmarks or whatever your new benchmark is.
At one point during the Q&A, someone made this point, and the engineer dude (can't remember his name) said that a 667mhz Crusoe performs like a 500mhz P/III. *cough* I'll believe that a software-based emulator can get 75% of native hardware performance when I see real benchmarks. Until then, all this handwaving makes me very, very suspicious.
All this having been said, the screens flashed by pretty quickly, so clearly it's not a dog. But Transmeta: if the performance is good DON'T HIDE THE NUMBERS.
---
First of all, how does Katz know that Slashdot is primarily white and male? I haven't seen any surveys that indicate that fact. Oh, he "just knows"... hmmm. Sounds like racial stereotyping to me.
But my main point is that he's making the assumption that Slashdot is somehow at the top of pyramid, and other groups are somehow excluded. He goes on to say that many females join female mailing lists.
Slashdot has a certain culture. These "female mailing lists" (whatever they are) are a different culture. I don't choose to involve myself in these mailing lists, because I don't find them appealing. Will Katz write an editorial saying that the female mailing lists must stop all talk of feminine deoderant because it makes the males uncomfortable?
If someone doesn't prefer Slashdot culture, SO WHAT? Why does every group have to be palatable to every other group?
The arrogance of Katz is presuming that Slashdot is so important to the modern world that anyone who is excluded must be at some devastating societal disadvantage. Well, with all due respect to Slashdot, it's just not that important. It's only one among a lot of sources of information, with many different cultures.
P.S. This is not excuse rudeness on Slashdot. There is rarely an excuse for rudeness, but I happen to like the open honesty.
---
Seriously, you can't believe that exposure doesn't lead to sales (and lack of exposure results in fewer sales). Just look at Coke.
When Coke advertises, they try and create a "lifestyle" around the product, so that when you see it in the supermarket or whatever, you identify with the product enough to buy it (note that Coke traditionally has not advertised on taste).
But what exposure does Linux gain from this? The average person is going to focus on the humorous fact that a normal individual paid the bill for giant Microsoft -- but The Advocacy is attuned to any news regarding Linux, so naturally you focus on that fact. There is zero positive press for Linux out of this.
Note, by the way, that the average person sees this as humorous, and does not carry any anger like The Advocacy would like.
If the story read (to use your example), "Michael, sipping on a Coke, described how he paid the bill for Microsoft", would you say that Coke would get a slew of new business? "Maude, that there Michael guy is a good joe! If he's a Coke drinker, then by God I'm gonna drink Coke, too!"
Maybe if the story was something like, "Michael used his Linux operating system to repair the Microsoft mail system" or something, there might be some slight tie-in, but the merits of Linux had nothing to do with the story.
---
If you review the links in one of the subthreads, you will find that he did make several comments. The one I remembered was, "I would ask that when they make out a check they consider how much revenue would have otherwise been lost had this been down for another day or two...". The articles that were linked had a bit more context that make him seem less greedy.
I'm not trying to make any unwarranted accusations. Frankly, I was hoping some ideas would be posted on verifying legitimacy. You have the benefit of knowing him. All I know is that he's some guy who has managed to keep his name in the press far longer than I would have expected, and that makes me suspicious of his motives.
If he's doing this all for charity, then more power to him. You have to admit that it's not exactly unknown for flakes to capitalize on a windfall of publicity.
---
I suppose some people might move from Hotmail over this, but it wasn't down long enough to really affect much. No one uses a free e-mail to get 100% uptime, and I even doubt it was down long enough to bounce received messages.
As for ads, unless they are at 100% ad space utilization (unlikely), the ads are simply made up at another time.
Finally, Linux got zero new users over this. People change platforms when there is a good reason (like some superior application), not when a particular advocate happens to pay a bill.
---