[C]ontrastive underdetermination involves the quite different possibility that for any body of evidence confirming a theory, there might well be other theories that are also well confirmed by that very same body of evidence.
Monthly Archives: September 2012
Overcoming Bias : How to motivate women to speak up
One problem with asserting that your assertiveness doesn’t indicate bitchiness is that it probably does. If all women know that assertiveness will be perceived as bitchiness then those who are going to be perceived as bitches anyway (due to their actual bitchiness) and those who don’t mind being seen as bitches (and therefore are more likely to be bitches), will be the ones with the lowest costs to speaking up. So mostly the bitches speak, and the stereotype is self-fulfilling.
This model makes it clearer how to proceed. If you want to credibly communicate to the world that women who speak up are not bitches, first you need for the women who speak up to not be bitches. This can happen through any combination of bitches quietening down and non-bitches speaking up. Both are costly for the people involved, so they will need altruism or encouragement from the rest of the anti-stereotype conspiracy. Counterintuitively, not all women should be encouraged to speak more. The removal of such a stereotype should also be somewhat self-fulfilling – as it is reduced, the costs of speaking up decline, and non-bitchy women do it more often.
via overcomingbias.com by Katja Grace
Nancy Baym: "Artist-Audience Relations in the Age of Social Media"
Social media have transformed relationships between those who create artistic work and those who enjoy it. Culture industries such as the music recording business have been left reeling as fans have gained the ability to distribute amongst themselves and artists have gained the ability to bypass traditional gatekeepers such as labels. The dominant rhetoric has been of ‘piracy,’ yet there are other tales to tell. How does direct access to fans change what it means to be an artist? What rewards are there that weren’t before? How are relational lines between fans and friends blurred and with what consequences? What new challenges other than making a living do artists face?
via cms.mit.edu
“To suggest that music is free and social is sort of sacrilege”
Voice-Activated Popcorn Cannon Blasts Kernels Directly Into Your Mouth
via gizmodo.com.au
I say fake.
Update: Popinator popcorn machine turns out to be hoax
Thursday, September 20, 2012
Ubuntu Women Month of Making: Maile Urbancic
Intel: Basestation in the Cloud
Dirrk’s Host
The WinISP project has been terminated by Microsoft as of 12:00PM PDT 9/13/12
Site owners will be able to retrieve content via FTP for one week.
via winisp.net
Wonder if this was part of the reason for winding up DHoV LoU? Dirrk’s site was a pretty critical core contributor to the success…
The Dangerous Seduction of the Lifetime Value (LTV) Formula
This should not be misconstrued as a eulogy for the LTV formula. It has a very important place in business as a way to contrast and compare alternative marketing programs and channels. It is a tactical marketing tool that requires candor and thoroughness in its implementation. The fundamental reason that it is so amazingly dangerous and seductive is its simplicity and certainty. Generic marketing is conceptual. LTV marketing is specific. Building a plan to grow to a million users organically is an order of magnitude more difficult than doing it with the aid of the LTV formula. There is comfort in its determinism, and it is simply easier to do.
Some people wield the LTV model as if they were Yoda with a light saber; “Look at this amazing weapon I know how to use!” Unfortunately, it is not that amazing, it’s not that unique to understand, and it is not a weapon, it’s a tool. Companies need a sustainable competitive advantage that is independent of their variable marketing campaigns. You can’t win a fight with a measuring tape.
Am I An Outlier, Or Are Apple Products No Longer Easy To Use?
Let me repeat my refrain: This. Ain’t. Easy.
Without going into detail, my little rant about Calendar, iPhoto, Address Book, et al goes for iTunes as well. I even bought a piece of software to try to fix iTunes myriad issues (Rinse). I can’t figure out whether or not Rinse has fixed anything, to be honest, and so far, all it’s managed to do is marry the wrong album art to about 100 or so songs which previously didn’t have any imagery. Which is kind of funny, but a tad annoying. And just the fact that there’s a market for something like Rinse kind of makes my point.
The interesting thing here is that the apps aren’t outliers, they’re pretty core Apple or productivity items. We’re all outliers on some dimension, but there is common ground where you think the effort would be made. Email may be declining, but calendars, hardly. They’ve been a disaster for ever and don’t appear to be improving.
Never been an adherent of the Apple “just works” received wisdom. As a self-denominated outlier thought it might “just work” if you “just did what Apple expected you to do,” but this article is suggesting that even if you just do what might be widely expected you would, it won’t.
Google Glass and the Future of Technology
I tried a demo in which a photo appeared – a jungly scene with a wooden footbridge just in front of me. The theme from “Jurassic Park” played crisply in my right ear. (Cute, real cute.)
But as I looked left, right, up or down, my view changed accordingly, as though I were wearing one of those old virtual-reality headsets. The tracking of my head angle and the response to the immersive photo was incredibly crisp and accurate.
That is interesting.
Hamish MacEwan 