Deloitte’s study on the coming growth in the number of millionaires, released yesterday, has attracted some comment. (Eg “Good Graph Friday: Where millionaires love to live” lifeinc; “Millionaire nation: Canada tops G7 rich list” financialpost.) The most obvious question, which I have not noticed anyone asking, is how much of this growth is just a [...]
A classic marketing gambit is to sell the razor cheap and to make money on the blades. A more up-to-date example is HP printers. Non-HP cartridges for my laser printer cost less well under half the HP price and seem to be of comparable quality. The particular example that caught my attention is the much-advertised [...]
[Jane McGonigal (33), a researcher in computer games at the Institute for the Future, a Palo Alto futurology think tank founded in 1968, back in the days when such nonsense was fashionable] Try the Amazon review page for Reality is Broken, Penguin 2011, ISBN 1594202850, 400pp. Most reviews are raves, 5*. A few are terrible. [...]
I ran into this banner ad recently. I tend to be fairly blind to banner ads, but I noticed this one just before the countdown timer on the right was approaching zero. I continued to look at it, curious to see what it would do when it reached zero. Would I get gloating comments about [...]
What do you do if you are a second-rate theorist but wannabe famous? The answer used to be: tough, try your luck as a rock musician instead. These days it is not so simple. Several factors have come together: (1) the idea that it is only fair that everyone should be allowed to delay their [...]
