Shaun Micallef (Australian comedian) recently intro'ed a TV show "Talkin' 'Bout Your Generation" with something roughly as follows.
"In 1979, the CD or Compact Disc was invented, and none too soon: it finally provided a use for CD Towers which had been invented 20 years prior."
Ikea has a few solutions that clip onto the side of a desk or screw in underneath to keep cables off the floor. Got a few of these going in the office recently and it's worked well:
The bearded ones disguised as men.
"If another use can be found for them, great."
Says someone called NecroPuppy!
"...why don't you and the other bicyclists in your area get together, and make a political difference?"
Relax, I don't even have a bike.
I'm just saying that the comment that the idea would not receive support and encouragement is short-sighted. I never suggested that it was a great idea or would make cyclists safer, just that it was novel and that many people out there would like the concept.
It's novel, and I bet there *has* been widespread interest and encouragement - I've seen this discussed and sent around (with positive sentiment) many times over recent months.
There can be no winner.
If they accept online text-based comments, they get trash from birfers and the like.
If video responses, they get trash and criticism of creating an expensive barrier to entry.
If paper comments, they get pre-printed junk and criticism of wasting paper.
A solution is not to go to the masses (where it is the unemployed loons who have all the spare time), but to have a summit to which people (from all areas) are invited. Take away as much of the tribal clumping as possible, and bring it back to raw, individual ideas. That will still cop a lot of criticism (see Rudd's 2020 summit here in Australia), but so will any alternative.
Fence off a suburb as a paintball war zone.
Hate to see that guy when he *is* trying to be racist. Wow.
"It's pretty clear that he considered it a joke at the beginning, and then he went bat-shit insane."
No, and then he realised that there really was a load of money to be made.
On a more serious note, what are the chances of bringing back a Woolly Mammoth? The ticket sales for that at a zoo (or a series of exhibitions at major capitals around the world) would bring in incredible amounts of money to finance further research in related fields.
And it's not dissimilar to region-encoding on DVD players - artificially limiting a product to engineer more revenue (in that case, for a related industry).
What MS are doing is called 'versioning' in marketing terms and it's something they have done for years. The concept is that a company provides a range of product/service options (budget to premium) and lets the customer choose what level of customer they consider themselves to be.
Bennett, TL;DR.
On the high volume as mentioned by the parent, it's that they can't handle it profitably. If you set up a site designed to make money from user-generated content, be prepared to support it professionally, or don't bother.
Agree completely and especially for local newspapers. They need to be making advertising accessible to the many local companies who would love to get in front of nearby customers but I think they're missing a significant opportunity.
Does insurance cover anything these days?
Math is like love -- a simple idea but it can get complicated. -- R. Drabek
