“The idea that you should let a fire burn, and destroy valuable forest, was so counter-intuitive that it took the U.S. Forest Service a hundred years to realize the problem and to change the strategy and let the fire burn.” Jared Diamond —Why Do Some Societies Make Disastrous Decisions?Edge) Hit “page down” three times to…
“I expect this course to be challenging, but that’s not what I want. I want just to be able to write better.” — anonymous freshman comp studentTough Lesson: Good Writing is HardMy Files)
“Mosaic wasn’t the Web’s first browser. It wasn’t even, as it’s so often been described, the first browser to sport a graphical user interface. Tim Berners-Lee’s “WorldWideWeb” was the first graphical point-and-click browser, followed by Pei Wei’s Viola browser.|But for most people, Mosaic was the easiest browser to use. It installed easily, and allowed people…
“A company is making two versions of the same product… One has a little more gold and foil on it, but they’re essentially the same. One is $14.95; the other is $18.95.” Not surprisingly, the $14.95 item is selling better. It’s also the lower-profit product.|”Then a competitor comes in with a third product. Again, it’s…
Robert Frezza writes: I ran across an interesting passage in a book about the native peoples of Siberia called “The Shaman’s Coat.” In the 19th and early 20th centuries, a lot of well-educated Polish revolutionaries were exiled to eastern Siberia where they acquired a certain reputation among the natives. As one of them put it:…
“For all the glitz surrounding the unveiling Monday of Apple Computer’s new music service, a quick look suggests that it’s a solid, but hardly revolutionary, addition to the market….The integration between the one-click purchase service, Apple’s iTunes music jukebox software and the iPod player goes well beyond what any other music service has done. It…
One of several paintings that were, according to a spam I received Sunday, stolen from a museum in Manchester, England. WARNING: Picasso, Van Gogh, Gauguin have been stolen in UKE-Mail) When I went online to check the validity of this spam I found a BBC story which reports “The paintings – Van Gogh’s The Fortification…
“Writing for the Web is not the same as writing for print. People read differently on the Web. They scan read?jumping quickly from one piece of content to the next. People are much more action-orientated on the Web. They get online to get something done. Words should always be driving actions.” Know your reader Take…
“For years Slashdot has had an abundance of game related content. Unfortunately, we’ve also had limited space to post those stories. We strive to cover a wide range of tech news, and this often means passing on a good game story because something else is more important. But today I get to announce the creation…
“The pundits are blogging. The journalists are blogging. And now the candidates are blogging.| Who needs television? Let’s just eliminate the middleman….Candidate gives speech. ABC News reports speech. ABC’s Note blogs speech. Then candidate blogs his own speech, knocking down any negative interpretation by other bloggers. And we blog the whole incestuous process.” —Modem MadnessWashPost…