Comment Re:Silent to me, at least (Score 2) 371
A hearing aide you say?
"Sir" [taps you on shoulder]
"There's a conversation you may be interested in" [furiously working at semaphore/sign language/scribbling on paper]
A hearing aide you say?
"Sir" [taps you on shoulder]
"There's a conversation you may be interested in" [furiously working at semaphore/sign language/scribbling on paper]
It does sound like a badly done odd-one-out list, doesn't it?
"For 10 points, which of these are people who may actually be able to cure your cancer? Surgeons, homeopaths, oncologists, Chinese doctors, nutritionists and spiritual healers."
That's why most startups don't do real business anymore: their model is to hype an idea and be bought up early, by a large corporation with its own protective patent portfolio.
Topical case in point: Facebook buys Instagram photo sharing network for $1bn. Instagram was launched in 2010, has 13 employees and has just been bought out at a minimum rate of around $30 million per employee per year. That's an astonishing yield and all without actually taking the business to the full term.
They're brilliant aren't they? They crop up everywhere now. The BBC uses them with gay abandon and whilst I'm sure that they're just using them in their traditional sense (i.e. to delineate a quote) the results can often be hilarious.
Here's another amusing example from today on the BBC: 'Cloaking' a 3-D object from all angles demonstrated. You can just hear the derisive journalist as he writes the headline...
"Conversion, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the human will." -- Virginia Woolf, "Mrs. Dalloway"