You can make some pretty good alcohol from honey, which is already known during the hunter/gatherer phase of civilization. Technically not beer, but as quite a few similar properties, especially when it comes to drinking safety.
And that's why Google bought Youtube. Without Google's pockets, video uploading or user-generated content sites in general would be in deep, deep trouble, and as common and popular as limewire, emule, TPB, etc.
Google needed another platform to sell advertisements, and it protected user-generated content sites in the process. Sometimes, things DO work out.
Careful there, you might break your back will all the patting you're doing to yourself there.
I'm arguing that the evidence that warming was occurring was not that strong until the late 1990s. It has leveled off since then but looking back at the last 100 yrs of records it looks like we should expect a couple decades of warming followed by a few of stability.
I smell a "it hasn't warmed since 1998" argument here. You're being oddly unspecific, but I suspect that's just your rather weak attempt at obfuscating the argument. I won't go into the details of why picking an outlier in any series as an anchor is retarded or an attempt to outright lie about trends, and I'll just point out that even your weakened and obfuscated argument is wrong: * you're doing what you accuse climatologists of doing: fitting a curve to existing data and repeating it, without any relationship to underlying physics * all physical indicators are pointing towards fewer plateaus, as all systems responsible for generating heat and trapping it on earth are increasing. There are a few buffers, but they're buffers, not negative feedbacks.
The attitude I observe on slashdot is that it was wrong to ever be skeptical of this trend. This is unscientific.
You need to learn the difference between being a skeptic (not believing what someone tells you without additional support), and cranking out arguments that have been disproven decades ago, and sometimes a century ago.
Now it is commonly accepted that the earth has warmed but the argument has moved towards whether or not this trend will continue which involves many more assumptions than just whether or not the data on warming is reliable. This is the normal progression of science, it is not a problem.
The normal progression of science involves, and actually requires, the use of scientific arguments. The deniers are resorting to arguments that are so blatantly wrong, and which have been repeatedly shown to be wrong, that it is ego driving the public discussion in the US, not science. See for example people still trotting out the volcano argument, or that 1998 was somehow a good anchor point to start trend lines.
China has had an obsession with territory since the beginning (you can go about 3000 years at a minimum for that). Territory trumps everything in their mind. They have good strategic reasons, as well: NK is useful buffer against SK and US influence, it fragments SK power, provides access to specific sea and land areas in the scope of a Vassal state, etc. And, as you pointed out, provides some distraction for the US.
Make no mistake: NK is not a friend of China. But China will not tolerate anyone messing with its protectorate, either.
Actually, if you look at the behavior, it's pretty rational. Their behavior has been pretty standard in the last few years. Before a big conference: ratchet up rhetoric -> During conference: ratchet down rhetoric in exchange for food and other random guarantees -> rinse, repeat. There are two ways out of this: ignore NK rhetoric, which only works to a point. Once they put their missiles on ships for exports, their doing more than just talking big. The other way is to take NK at their word, which also only works to a point - are we really going to nuke NK? NK knows both limits pretty well, because they've been playing them quite astutely.
Now, could NK actually be crazy and do something stupid? No one really knows - another beauty of the NK foreign relationship game. Personally, I would ignore NK completely, cut them off from the world, and make it clear to China that they're risking their harmonious society because one of their buffer zones is the equivalent of a schoolyard bully with a gun. The only way we're going to "solve" NK is by making it China's problem. And then that brings up the question of how SK will look at NK essentially becoming a Chinese territory.
The only foreign policy problem that's worse than the NK question is the Palestinian question. And not by a huge amount.
And it shows that our current president has no respect for the American Constitution.
As opposed to who - GWB who flat out lied to everyone under the sun to get the Iraq war started? At least Obama had the decency to not piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. The Republican party, who has decided to abdicate its responsibility to govern and instead is just doing the opposite of whatever Obama is doing (which was particularly hilarious during Libya). Ron Paul, who is trying to kill the government's ability to actually enforce the Constitution?
It sounds to me like you'd rather have somebody obey the letter of the law while violating its spirit, rather than the other way around. Yeah, that'll end well.
Congress would not have agreed with Obama had he tried to propose a We love Puppies day. The Republicans, with their principled obstructionism and criticism of every Obama action, reaped what they sowed.
The Republicans, with GWB and Cheney, have opened a can of worms that they no longer control. The US is fucked until both parties are able to take a step back and actually govern together. And unfortunately, the Republicans will have to blink first.
Mali? Mali, of all the places, where the isn't a single American boot on the ground or in the air? Libya was for once a required war that prevented much greater suffering. If you want to know what would have happened without that intervention - which was supported by the UN, largely carried out by NATO forces, and was over in weeks - look at Syria. And Yemen is a war now? Holy crap, by that measure Oakland is a warzone and LA is the longest on-going war since the 100-year war.
They aren't big, flashy wars, they aren't wars, they aren't even police actions by any measure of the word. Not to mention that one of them was necessary, and the second one you mention is barely a drone action.
And by that time, the Republicans will be endorsing drone strikes as fully legal, and anyone who is against them is committing treason, aiding and abetting the enemy, etc. What's your point again?
THREE new wars? Holy crap, you're part of the problem: total and utter fucking ignorance. Could you please list out those three new wars, so I can figure out which moronic site you got that list from?
You're also not getting much sympathy from me about Americans being killed without due process. It happens every day - it's called resisting arrest. Except no one cares if some poor crack head gets shot in the head by cops in LA.
And finally, random killings is exactly what you get when you declare ware on a concept. Or did you forget this entire "War on Terrorism?, "War on Drugs" and other idiocy? In a war, you shoot first, then check for due process after everyone's dead. You wanted a war? You got one. And now you're whining about it....
I'm much more worried about people shooting me in the street because I'm part of a group they think is going to take over the world, and where they are the last chance for civilization to survive. You know, the ACTUAL way that the Nazis gained power in Germany. But you wouldn't know anything about that.
So, what you're saying is that close to a billion muslims are apostates who should be killed off immediately, and a few million are the true Islamists, privy to the sole word of god?
Holy shit, and this gets modded up? I shouldn't be surprised - this is a common thought that keeps coming up. But it is illogical (a tiny percentage of people do not get to dictate literary truth), wrong (the Koran is far more literature than the Bible ever claimed to be) and quite frankly, nothing but an invitation to genocide.
By the way, that site thereligionofpeace or something similar (don't care to look up its URL and give it more hits) is NOT the authoritative answer for what's in the Koran. Stop reading the sites of Christian culture warriors.
As someone who grew up in France and currently works in the US, I probably have a bit more perspective on what you saw than... well, most of either the French or the Americans on the planet.
You strike me as a particular type of American who invariably has terrible experiences with the French. Specifically, you: * think that buying stuff makes you entitled to be an ass. As in, not respecting local parking rules, and then trying to bully the french employee into submission by pulling out the "I'm the customer" card. * think that service is something that comes automatically with buying a product. It doesn't. As others pointed out, you probably thought that calling up their tech support at 6PM local time was going to result in any sort of activity, even though you didn't purchase 24x7 support. * think that people taking vacations is a sign of lazines, and that you, being the client, should be able to control who goes on vacation and when. * think that complaining about culturally accepted behavior in France is going to get you anywhere in France.
In short, you come in expecting the French to act like Americans, are surprised that they don't, and get angry when they get angry that you expect them to act like Americans. Sorry to say, but until you fix your cultural ignorance, you're always going to have a bad time with the French. In your case, I would avoid France entirely. It also explains your better experience with the Germans: they are much better merchants, and put up with a lot more shit from people wanting to give them money - as long as you follow their rules.
That said, the French do have their problems, and quite a few people pointed them out. Not the least is the shit career progression after High School and without a degree from one of the Grandes Ecoles - it's why I went to the US to get started.
It says so right in the paper. It uses pre-assigned scores for specific words, tabulates the words, runs a basic normalization function on the words, and presto! Paper.
No, it doesn't even mean that. It means that people in a tropical paradise use the word happy more often in their twitter posts than people in other states. It has little correlation with actual happiness - or at least, a completely unknown correlation. And even the causation is incredibly suspect. In other words, this is a bullshit study with no informational content.
Yeah, I'm bitter, because I get to support these same useless tools in our company and get to field questions around "so how does this work" and "so you mean this is completely useless" and "why do you sell such useless crap?"
The study just did a search for specific words, tabulated the results, and said that because happy words mean happy posters and unhappy words (and swear words) mean unhappy people, that their study was a study on happiness.
Complete bullshit. I have yet to even see a study that determines what percentage of happy words correlate with an actually happy post (Classic example: "Steak overdone. Not happy"), and extrapolate from there to overall numbers. Instead, it's just some people making shit up so that they can sell their tools to executives who are looking for some numbers.
This is nothing but a complete waste of time, and of money.
Pure democracy fails, fails quickly, and terrifyingly transitions through ochlocracy to some form of autocracy.
You seem to think this is a guaranteed transition, with time frames no more than one or two generations. Care to show at least some examples? Specifically, examples where the transition into autocracy was terminal? Once you're into examples, feel free to demonstrate how it is not just examples, but a rule.
There is a reason that our Republic has 'undemocratic' elements.
You - just like almost every American it seems - seem to conflate direct democracy with any democratic system. There are multiple other approaches, and generally, a democracy is considered one if it has democratic decision making systems in the key components of the government. The elements you refer aren't so much undemocratic as they are designed to keep the democratic system from being gamed by small interests that do not represent the will of the populous.
Marketing very specifically targets the fuzzy side of the human personality to influence decision making. In other words, Marketing is: "Join the market leader to transform your business." Marketing is about creating interest, creating basic awareness, and instilling the idea that you need something. Ever notice how ads rarely even tell you what a product does? That's by design. Actually selling the product requires moving from interest to a decision that you need to spend money on it now.. And while Sales starts with very much the same thing as marketing, it at some point has to transition into addressing specific needs of the person in front of you.
So, again - marketing is a tool you use to sell your product. So is support, PR, R&D, and, by definition, sales. But it isn't HOW you sell.
You realize that one of the key purposes of marketing is to determine if a product is even marketable right?
HELL no. In my experiences, marketing people have no idea whether a product is marketable. The best they can do is figure out if a product is similar to another already successful product, and then tell you whether your new product will fit into the known market. That's it. They're fundamentally incapable of judging new markets, or even under-served markets.
Are you sure you will even have customers?
That should hopefully be the impetus behind even creating the product in the first place. Relying on marketing afterwards is putting the cart before the horse.
What features in your product are they most concerned with?
Customers can't tell you what they need. At best, they'll tell you what they want. Good marketing shapes the want, and leaves the need to product management.
Why would they choose your product over a competitors?
That's the job of the sales team.
Are there even any competitors yet, or are you establishing a new market? Which companys could potentially become competitors?
That's all competitive analysis, and has little to nothing to do with marketing. Your sales team needs to be doing this.
A sales executive would probably be more useful at this point.
Pretty much. Get a good sales exec, and worry about marketing once you have your sales team in place.
Yeah... about that. I'm currently on the technical side of the marketing equation (I support software that is big in marketing and sales analytics). And the problem is forever the same: how do you know what marketing resulted in a sale? Yes, you can tie a lead to a specific campaign, and track that lead through to the sale, but the reality is that it is never that clear cut. That email campaign someone responded to? Might have just come at the right time, when they were looking to buy anyway. That web page someone landed on before buying a product? Again, it's hard to quantify how they actually made the decision. This is especially true for marketing that creates mindshare, but not a direct sale. Do Superbowl ads work? Based on how much money is spent on them, they better. But I don't think many things can be tracked to them, especially big budget items that don't have a good time correlation with marketing campaigns.
Marketing is still faced with the problem that 50% of it is effective, but no one knows which 50% it is.
The argument that the field is largely non-technical and therefore some how foreign to you is both wrong and unimportant.
Errm, what? Good marketing IS a very non-technical field. Look into what goes into a good marketing campaign, and none if it is tied to a technical field. And his realization is absolutely important, because it means that he knows his weaknesses.
What you should focus on is hiring people who understand the field
So far, so good....
and can use, shape, and sell your mass marketing product
Errm, again - what? Use? I've yet to see a marketing person understand how to use the product they sell. Same for Sales people. I would argue that it seems actually to be somewhat detrimental to their business. And you're also assuming that this is a mass-market product.
In other words this challenge is the same as any other business, learning how to successfully grow your business.
Marketing is a tool to grow business. It's not HOW you grow your business. You grow your business by convincing more people that they need your product. I hope you see the difference.
General purpose: the ability to perform most of the common tasks in an effective manner. Now look up what the average car usage is, what the 90th percentile usage is, what the common ranges are, and what the common behavior is for 500-mile drives. Is it the right car for EVERYONE? No, and no one is arguing that. But it is very, very good for all but a few types of drives, which some people might never go through in their entire life.
The only difference is that Ferrari owners don't pat themselves on the back about how environmentally responsible they are by owning one.
I take it you also complain that if a solution isn't perfect, no one should even attempt solving a problem? Electric cars have a much higher environmental upside than gas-powered cars. The very simplest use-case where that applies is for anyone with solar cells: the car essentially becomes the giant-ass battery that is needed to make ubiquitous solar cells really, really useful. Whether someone is smug about that has nothing to do with the car, and all to do with the person.
You still haven't made a case for why the car is bad.
Jealous much? The Tesla isn't targeted at people who spend $10k on a car. It is targeted at people who pay between $50k and $100k on a car. At that point, it is a VERY competitive car.
And I accomplish more environmentally by living close enough to my workplace to commute by bicycle.
Congratulations. We're talking about cars, not about bicycles.
The Tesla is an expensive toy for enviro-posers.
Do you also complain about people buying Ferraris being performance-posers?
Slashdot Mirror
You can make some pretty good alcohol from honey, which is already known during the hunter/gatherer phase of civilization. Technically not beer, but as quite a few similar properties, especially when it comes to drinking safety.
And that's why Google bought Youtube. Without Google's pockets, video uploading or user-generated content sites in general would be in deep, deep trouble, and as common and popular as limewire, emule, TPB, etc.
Google needed another platform to sell advertisements, and it protected user-generated content sites in the process. Sometimes, things DO work out.
I can only hope that you're appearance here means you've left Ars behind. It's a lot easier to ignore you here than there.
Careful there, you might break your back will all the patting you're doing to yourself there.
I'm arguing that the evidence that warming was occurring was not that strong until the late 1990s. It has leveled off since then but looking back at the last 100 yrs of records it looks like we should expect a couple decades of warming followed by a few of stability.
I smell a "it hasn't warmed since 1998" argument here. You're being oddly unspecific, but I suspect that's just your rather weak attempt at obfuscating the argument. I won't go into the details of why picking an outlier in any series as an anchor is retarded or an attempt to outright lie about trends, and I'll just point out that even your weakened and obfuscated argument is wrong:
* you're doing what you accuse climatologists of doing: fitting a curve to existing data and repeating it, without any relationship to underlying physics
* all physical indicators are pointing towards fewer plateaus, as all systems responsible for generating heat and trapping it on earth are increasing. There are a few buffers, but they're buffers, not negative feedbacks.
The attitude I observe on slashdot is that it was wrong to ever be skeptical of this trend. This is unscientific.
You need to learn the difference between being a skeptic (not believing what someone tells you without additional support), and cranking out arguments that have been disproven decades ago, and sometimes a century ago.
Now it is commonly accepted that the earth has warmed but the argument has moved towards whether or not this trend will continue which involves many more assumptions than just whether or not the data on warming is reliable. This is the normal progression of science, it is not a problem.
The normal progression of science involves, and actually requires, the use of scientific arguments. The deniers are resorting to arguments that are so blatantly wrong, and which have been repeatedly shown to be wrong, that it is ego driving the public discussion in the US, not science. See for example people still trotting out the volcano argument, or that 1998 was somehow a good anchor point to start trend lines.
In which meaning do you use the word "need" here?
China has had an obsession with territory since the beginning (you can go about 3000 years at a minimum for that). Territory trumps everything in their mind. They have good strategic reasons, as well: NK is useful buffer against SK and US influence, it fragments SK power, provides access to specific sea and land areas in the scope of a Vassal state, etc. And, as you pointed out, provides some distraction for the US.
Make no mistake: NK is not a friend of China. But China will not tolerate anyone messing with its protectorate, either.
Actually, if you look at the behavior, it's pretty rational. Their behavior has been pretty standard in the last few years. Before a big conference: ratchet up rhetoric -> During conference: ratchet down rhetoric in exchange for food and other random guarantees -> rinse, repeat. There are two ways out of this: ignore NK rhetoric, which only works to a point. Once they put their missiles on ships for exports, their doing more than just talking big. The other way is to take NK at their word, which also only works to a point - are we really going to nuke NK? NK knows both limits pretty well, because they've been playing them quite astutely.
Now, could NK actually be crazy and do something stupid? No one really knows - another beauty of the NK foreign relationship game. Personally, I would ignore NK completely, cut them off from the world, and make it clear to China that they're risking their harmonious society because one of their buffer zones is the equivalent of a schoolyard bully with a gun. The only way we're going to "solve" NK is by making it China's problem. And then that brings up the question of how SK will look at NK essentially becoming a Chinese territory.
The only foreign policy problem that's worse than the NK question is the Palestinian question. And not by a huge amount.
And it shows that our current president has no respect for the American Constitution.
As opposed to who - GWB who flat out lied to everyone under the sun to get the Iraq war started? At least Obama had the decency to not piss on my leg and tell me it's raining. The Republican party, who has decided to abdicate its responsibility to govern and instead is just doing the opposite of whatever Obama is doing (which was particularly hilarious during Libya). Ron Paul, who is trying to kill the government's ability to actually enforce the Constitution?
It sounds to me like you'd rather have somebody obey the letter of the law while violating its spirit, rather than the other way around. Yeah, that'll end well.
Congress would not have agreed with Obama had he tried to propose a We love Puppies day. The Republicans, with their principled obstructionism and criticism of every Obama action, reaped what they sowed.
The Republicans, with GWB and Cheney, have opened a can of worms that they no longer control. The US is fucked until both parties are able to take a step back and actually govern together. And unfortunately, the Republicans will have to blink first.
Mali? Mali, of all the places, where the isn't a single American boot on the ground or in the air? Libya was for once a required war that prevented much greater suffering. If you want to know what would have happened without that intervention - which was supported by the UN, largely carried out by NATO forces, and was over in weeks - look at Syria. And Yemen is a war now? Holy crap, by that measure Oakland is a warzone and LA is the longest on-going war since the 100-year war.
They aren't big, flashy wars, they aren't wars, they aren't even police actions by any measure of the word. Not to mention that one of them was necessary, and the second one you mention is barely a drone action.
And by that time, the Republicans will be endorsing drone strikes as fully legal, and anyone who is against them is committing treason, aiding and abetting the enemy, etc. What's your point again?
THREE new wars? Holy crap, you're part of the problem: total and utter fucking ignorance. Could you please list out those three new wars, so I can figure out which moronic site you got that list from?
You're also not getting much sympathy from me about Americans being killed without due process. It happens every day - it's called resisting arrest. Except no one cares if some poor crack head gets shot in the head by cops in LA.
And finally, random killings is exactly what you get when you declare ware on a concept. Or did you forget this entire "War on Terrorism?, "War on Drugs" and other idiocy? In a war, you shoot first, then check for due process after everyone's dead. You wanted a war? You got one. And now you're whining about it....
I'm much more worried about people shooting me in the street because I'm part of a group they think is going to take over the world, and where they are the last chance for civilization to survive. You know, the ACTUAL way that the Nazis gained power in Germany. But you wouldn't know anything about that.
So, what you're saying is that close to a billion muslims are apostates who should be killed off immediately, and a few million are the true Islamists, privy to the sole word of god?
Holy shit, and this gets modded up? I shouldn't be surprised - this is a common thought that keeps coming up. But it is illogical (a tiny percentage of people do not get to dictate literary truth), wrong (the Koran is far more literature than the Bible ever claimed to be) and quite frankly, nothing but an invitation to genocide.
By the way, that site thereligionofpeace or something similar (don't care to look up its URL and give it more hits) is NOT the authoritative answer for what's in the Koran. Stop reading the sites of Christian culture warriors.
As someone who grew up in France and currently works in the US, I probably have a bit more perspective on what you saw than... well, most of either the French or the Americans on the planet.
You strike me as a particular type of American who invariably has terrible experiences with the French. Specifically, you:
* think that buying stuff makes you entitled to be an ass. As in, not respecting local parking rules, and then trying to bully the french employee into submission by pulling out the "I'm the customer" card.
* think that service is something that comes automatically with buying a product. It doesn't. As others pointed out, you probably thought that calling up their tech support at 6PM local time was going to result in any sort of activity, even though you didn't purchase 24x7 support.
* think that people taking vacations is a sign of lazines, and that you, being the client, should be able to control who goes on vacation and when.
* think that complaining about culturally accepted behavior in France is going to get you anywhere in France.
In short, you come in expecting the French to act like Americans, are surprised that they don't, and get angry when they get angry that you expect them to act like Americans. Sorry to say, but until you fix your cultural ignorance, you're always going to have a bad time with the French. In your case, I would avoid France entirely. It also explains your better experience with the Germans: they are much better merchants, and put up with a lot more shit from people wanting to give them money - as long as you follow their rules.
That said, the French do have their problems, and quite a few people pointed them out. Not the least is the shit career progression after High School and without a degree from one of the Grandes Ecoles - it's why I went to the US to get started.
It says so right in the paper. It uses pre-assigned scores for specific words, tabulates the words, runs a basic normalization function on the words, and presto! Paper.
This is nonsense on multiple levels.
No, it doesn't even mean that. It means that people in a tropical paradise use the word happy more often in their twitter posts than people in other states. It has little correlation with actual happiness - or at least, a completely unknown correlation. And even the causation is incredibly suspect. In other words, this is a bullshit study with no informational content.
Yeah, I'm bitter, because I get to support these same useless tools in our company and get to field questions around "so how does this work" and "so you mean this is completely useless" and "why do you sell such useless crap?"
The study just did a search for specific words, tabulated the results, and said that because happy words mean happy posters and unhappy words (and swear words) mean unhappy people, that their study was a study on happiness.
Complete bullshit. I have yet to even see a study that determines what percentage of happy words correlate with an actually happy post (Classic example: "Steak overdone. Not happy"), and extrapolate from there to overall numbers. Instead, it's just some people making shit up so that they can sell their tools to executives who are looking for some numbers.
This is nothing but a complete waste of time, and of money.
Grammar Nazis, UNITE! Form: MEGRAMMARTRON!
Dude. Punctuation - it's your friend. As is grammar and spelling. I still don't know what you mean by the last half of your giant sentence.
Pure democracy fails, fails quickly, and terrifyingly transitions through ochlocracy to some form of autocracy.
You seem to think this is a guaranteed transition, with time frames no more than one or two generations. Care to show at least some examples? Specifically, examples where the transition into autocracy was terminal? Once you're into examples, feel free to demonstrate how it is not just examples, but a rule.
There is a reason that our Republic has 'undemocratic' elements.
You - just like almost every American it seems - seem to conflate direct democracy with any democratic system. There are multiple other approaches, and generally, a democracy is considered one if it has democratic decision making systems in the key components of the government. The elements you refer aren't so much undemocratic as they are designed to keep the democratic system from being gamed by small interests that do not represent the will of the populous.
Marketing very specifically targets the fuzzy side of the human personality to influence decision making. In other words, Marketing is: "Join the market leader to transform your business." Marketing is about creating interest, creating basic awareness, and instilling the idea that you need something. Ever notice how ads rarely even tell you what a product does? That's by design. Actually selling the product requires moving from interest to a decision that you need to spend money on it now.. And while Sales starts with very much the same thing as marketing, it at some point has to transition into addressing specific needs of the person in front of you.
So, again - marketing is a tool you use to sell your product. So is support, PR, R&D, and, by definition, sales. But it isn't HOW you sell.
You realize that one of the key purposes of marketing is to determine if a product is even marketable right?
HELL no. In my experiences, marketing people have no idea whether a product is marketable. The best they can do is figure out if a product is similar to another already successful product, and then tell you whether your new product will fit into the known market. That's it. They're fundamentally incapable of judging new markets, or even under-served markets.
Are you sure you will even have customers?
That should hopefully be the impetus behind even creating the product in the first place. Relying on marketing afterwards is putting the cart before the horse.
What features in your product are they most concerned with?
Customers can't tell you what they need. At best, they'll tell you what they want. Good marketing shapes the want, and leaves the need to product management.
Why would they choose your product over a competitors?
That's the job of the sales team.
Are there even any competitors yet, or are you establishing a new market? Which companys could potentially become competitors?
That's all competitive analysis, and has little to nothing to do with marketing. Your sales team needs to be doing this.
A sales executive would probably be more useful at this point.
Pretty much. Get a good sales exec, and worry about marketing once you have your sales team in place.
Yeah... about that. I'm currently on the technical side of the marketing equation (I support software that is big in marketing and sales analytics). And the problem is forever the same: how do you know what marketing resulted in a sale? Yes, you can tie a lead to a specific campaign, and track that lead through to the sale, but the reality is that it is never that clear cut. That email campaign someone responded to? Might have just come at the right time, when they were looking to buy anyway. That web page someone landed on before buying a product? Again, it's hard to quantify how they actually made the decision. This is especially true for marketing that creates mindshare, but not a direct sale. Do Superbowl ads work? Based on how much money is spent on them, they better. But I don't think many things can be tracked to them, especially big budget items that don't have a good time correlation with marketing campaigns.
Marketing is still faced with the problem that 50% of it is effective, but no one knows which 50% it is.
The argument that the field is largely non-technical and therefore some how foreign to you is both wrong and unimportant.
Errm, what? Good marketing IS a very non-technical field. Look into what goes into a good marketing campaign, and none if it is tied to a technical field. And his realization is absolutely important, because it means that he knows his weaknesses.
What you should focus on is hiring people who understand the field
So far, so good....
and can use, shape, and sell your mass marketing product
Errm, again - what? Use? I've yet to see a marketing person understand how to use the product they sell. Same for Sales people. I would argue that it seems actually to be somewhat detrimental to their business. And you're also assuming that this is a mass-market product.
In other words this challenge is the same as any other business, learning how to successfully grow your business.
Marketing is a tool to grow business. It's not HOW you grow your business. You grow your business by convincing more people that they need your product. I hope you see the difference.
General purpose: the ability to perform most of the common tasks in an effective manner. Now look up what the average car usage is, what the 90th percentile usage is, what the common ranges are, and what the common behavior is for 500-mile drives. Is it the right car for EVERYONE? No, and no one is arguing that. But it is very, very good for all but a few types of drives, which some people might never go through in their entire life.
The only difference is that Ferrari owners don't pat themselves on the back about how environmentally responsible they are by owning one.
I take it you also complain that if a solution isn't perfect, no one should even attempt solving a problem? Electric cars have a much higher environmental upside than gas-powered cars. The very simplest use-case where that applies is for anyone with solar cells: the car essentially becomes the giant-ass battery that is needed to make ubiquitous solar cells really, really useful. Whether someone is smug about that has nothing to do with the car, and all to do with the person.
You still haven't made a case for why the car is bad.
Jealous much? The Tesla isn't targeted at people who spend $10k on a car. It is targeted at people who pay between $50k and $100k on a car. At that point, it is a VERY competitive car.
And I accomplish more environmentally by living close enough to my workplace to commute by bicycle.
Congratulations. We're talking about cars, not about bicycles.
The Tesla is an expensive toy for enviro-posers.
Do you also complain about people buying Ferraris being performance-posers?