Physics

http://xkcd.com/669/

Uh-oh, Big Doo-Doo

So Google paid Twitter for the ability to search through tweets. In return Microsoft paid Twitter and Facebook for access to search through their content. Why's this post entitled uh-oh, big doo-doo? Because, if you follow the logic of this post from Gizmodo, if Facebook and Twitter are asking for money to search their content, why shouldn't everyone else? This would include newspapers such as the Wall Street Journal, and the New York Post, and I'm sure others as well in the future.

Are we going to have to search with ten different engines depending on what we're looking for in the future? Who knows.

Loved this Article

http://gizmodo.com/5403322/racing-on-carbon-fiber-legs-how-abled-should-we-be

It's part of a series Gizmodo ran called "This Cyborg Life," a series which explored enhancements to the human body. The author, Aimee Mullins, was amputated below the knee before she was a year old. Despite a doctor saying she'd never walk, at the age of 19 she set world records in the 100-meter dash and long jump.

I loved her commentary on being "disabled" and how people view athletes who have undergone various "enhancements," and what actually is an "enhancement."

Hopefully you'll enjoy her essay as much as I did. The Aimee wrote two other articles for the series, which I enjoyed as well, that can be found here:

http://gizmodo.com/5404227/normal-was-never-cool-inception-of-perception

http://gizmodo.com/5401408/is-choosing-a-prosthesis-so-different-than-picking-a-pair-of-glasses

A testament to our very own irrationalities

Cellphones: we all have them. Have you ever thought about the ridiculous prices that cell phone companies force us to pay? My family pays $80-90 a month for like 1000 minutes and 3 lines or something like that, plus the $10 a month extra that my brother and I add on for only 250 measly text messages each. You know how frequently people text nowadays!? 250 really gets you nowhere, and text messages are essentially costless to a carrier!

Anyway, I digress. The NYTimes recently ran an article on cell phone pricing, a topic which even confuses economists. After all, most businesses want to encourage higher usage of their services by offering lower rates for increased usage, a principle cell phone companies diverge on when they charge huge fees for overage.

I found the psychological effects on consumers due to the pricing models really interesting, though. As the article states, "those high charges for going over your allotted minutes, for example, are designed to cause you enough pain that you will switch to a plan with a higher regular fee." That's actually exactly what happened with my mom, as we went crazily over one month (to the tune of around $200) due to completely unforeseen circumstances, and my mom's upped our plan ever since by $30. We never come close to using all of our minutes.

Some other highlights that I really enjoyed from the article:

• "When companies introduce certain discounts — like Sprint's recent offer of free calling to any mobile number — the effect is that customers often switch to more expensive plans."
• "Americans spend more money each month on their wireless bills than people in any other country." (I would just like to add that our cell phone capabilities are also way behind many other developing nations' like Japan)
• Cingular's introduction of Rollover minutes actually ended up encouraging people to buy larger plans. "It turned out that people were happy to buy extra minutes if they knew they could keep them, rather than having them expire."
• Since people have been texting more and talking less, "revenue from voice plans has fallen 31 percent since peaking in 2003. To fill that hole, the carriers raised the price of a text message from 10 cents to 15 cents, and later to 20 cents. These fees provided nice cash, but as with the voice charges, the main purpose was to persuade customers to subscribe to text-message plans" (they totally got me on that one, which I'm still pretty bitter about)
• And then there's this whole thing on the pricing of the iPhone and how consumers essentially screwed themselves (well, just a little) on it which is also pretty interesting. I'll let you read the article for that part.

I loff it

http://brownsharpie.courtneygibbons.org/?p=1156