langreiter.com plain, simple: 2002-05-10

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2002-05-10

CREATED BY chris • LAST EDITED BY chris 8232 days AGO

On the art of software pricing: "[Borland] purchased another company named Analytica, which marketed a program called Reflex. Reflex had previously sold only 1200 copies in 9 months when it was priced at $495. At $99.95, Borland sold 100,000 copies in 9 months."

2002-05-10-softPricing

Why voice interfaces will always suck: '"It turns out speaking uses auditory memory, which is in the same space as your short-term and working memory," [Ben Shneiderman] adds. What that means, basically, is that it's hard to speak and think at the same time.'

2002-05-10-vointSuck

'In 1981, [Dan Weinreb] worked at the [[create MIT AI Lab]], and his girlfriend worked for the folks who wrote [create VisiCalc]. Using the MIT Lisp machine, he wrote an implementation of VisiCalc in Lisp, and improved the commercial product by utilizing the mouse (which at that time was not in widespread use on PCs). He writes, "I did it just to show how easy it was to write VisiCalc if you already have Lisp plus a graphics library and window system—though I'm sure Dan Bricklin and Bob Frankston (cocreators of VisiCalc) were perfectly aware of this."' [ Ø L-ODOR • ]

2002-05-10-lispiCalc

What to do with 40 billion dollars? — "No other nonfinancial firm has more liquid money at its disposal [than Microsoft], and only a handful of banks do. It's more cash than Ford, ExxonMobil and Wal-Mart have combined, and nearly four times as much as Intel, the tech company with the next largest cash balance. It is enough to buy the entire airline industry -- twice." [ Ø UNICAST • ]

2002-05-10-msMoney

earl on the end of [create Compaq] as we know it: