I love the paper - don't read into the negative comments. I find that a lot of online feedback (more so on Reddit and much less so on HN (usually)) tends to be opinionated and misinformed by quite a bit these days. Fantastic work and fantastic read.
The whole report shows that it was a company being run by bearcats and middle-managers who focused on sales rather than product. The detailed out exactly what was coming and why it was great and their general response is atrocious. Some of the highlights of the presentation which stood out to me (on page 12):
1. "Work closely with T-Mobile"
Your competitor just launched a superior product and your response is to 'work closely' with T-Mobile?? Are you kidding me?.
2. "Prioritize touch UI development, simplifying basic functionality and PC suite development very high."
Response here was spot on and highlighted that they needed to hire a new chief UI-designer and work on prioritizing touch development -- this should have been number 1 without a question and it looks to me like they put it on the back-burner.
4. "Analyse what could be Apple’s next release of “iPhone mini” to mass market price points and plan counter-measures for it."
Anytime you're focusing on your 'response' to a competitor, you're behind in the game (by miles) and you've lost already -- especially if you're responding with 'counter-measures.' Once again - are you kidding me?
5. "Kill market for such an expensive device by filling mid-range with own/Google/Yahoo experiences"
Incredibly stupid response -- you're planning to kill something the market may demand massively by...filling your product / experience with 3rd party integrations. Idiocy at its very finest.
6. "Accelerate Nokia's own free push e-mail project and make it less hidden within the company."
This is a great sign of a company being run by middle-managers - secret projects with no evidence that they will push your product boundary nor satisfy consumer demand and why in the world would you keep anything here 'secret' - sheer idiocy.
7. "Investigate and play hard in possible IPR infringements"
Another sign of a company being run by idiots.
8. "Drive key partnerships to highlight Nokia's superior strength in the market, keeping things in perspective."
Wow - use partnerships (i.e. relationships / sales) to counter a superior product. These guys sure are on the ball /sarcasm.
10. "Highlight potential weaknesses of the iPhone"
Whenever you respond to a threat and one of your highlights is to once again 'talk' your way our of it by highlighting your competitors' weaknesses -- it's usually an indication that your organization is being run by middle-managers or absolute morons.
I disagree. The best employees are the employees who don't need to be managed. They figure what out what needs to be done and walk into the business (from day one to the last day they are there) thinking like owners. Google in its very early days operated without managers. Some of the most successful companies / start-ups delivered what they delivered not due to management, but due to having a few highly-motivated individuals who were dead set in delivering something outstanding to the world. They didn't need to be micro-managed into doing what they did - they figured out what needed to be done and figured out how to get there.
The last paragraphs really are beautifully written:
"When he ascends to his attic, she does not cling to his coat tails. When he wishes to be alone, she completely eliminates herself from his life. She spares him disharmonious contacts and protects the serenity of his mind with the devotion of a vestal virgin guarding the sacred fire.
It is by no means impossible that with a less-sacrificing mate, Einstein would not have made the discoveries which link his name with the immortals. Thus love, that moves the sun and all the stars, sustains in its lonely path the genius of Albert Einstein."
I 100% agree - I just wanted to add that processed food also plays a huge role. Our ancestors didn't eat canned fish dipped in high calorie oils or snacks / junk food with no fiber. White bread is used commonly throughout many households but whole-grains are a lot healthier. Eating food which has a high degree of high fructose corn-syrup or sugar with no added fiber has a detrimental effect on health and is not something that our bodies are used to. The high-glycemic index spikes our bodies go through when you combine these factors does a ton of damage to our health and yes - I believe it does have a role in triggering auto-immune reactions. Type 1 diabetics as an example are diabetic due to their own immune systems falsely labelling the pancreas beta-cells as enemies and triggering an auto-immune response -- the reason I believe this happens is due to the high-inflammatory reaction our pancreas go through when we eat extremely highly processed foods (i.e. high sugar / glycemic index items with high insulin spikes & lacking fiber). I don't have a lot of data to prove any of this - so this is my hypothesis but I can confirm that ever since I started staying away from processed foods, I've been in amazing health and I feel much better than when I was slightly over-weight and consuming processed junk.
Vitamin D (or lack of it) plays a vital and huge factor:
"A prospective study of dietary intake of vitamin D found women with daily intake above 400 IU had a 40% lower risk of MS. [53] In a study among healthy young adults in the US, White men and women with the highest vitamin D serum levels had a 62% lower risk of developing MS than those with the lowest vitamin D levels. [54]"
"Another prospective study in young adults from Sweden also found a 61% lower risk of MS with higher serum vitamin D levels; [55] and a prospective study among young Finnish women found that low serum vitamin D levels were associated with a 43% increased risk of MS. [56] In prospective studies of persons with MS, higher vitamin D levels have been associated with reduced disease activity and progression. [57,58]"
"Collectively, the current evidence suggests that low vitamin D may have a causal role in MS and if so, approximately 40% of cases may be prevented by correcting vitamin D insufficiency. [59] This conclusion has been strengthened substantially by recent evidence that genetically determined low levels of vitamin D predict higher risk of multiple sclerosis."
"While this may largely be due to genetic differences, some studies suggest that T1D rates are lower in sunnier areas. Early evidence suggesting that vitamin D may play a role in T1D comes from a 30-year study that followed more than 10,000 Finnish children from birth: Children who regularly received vitamin D supplements during infancy had a nearly 90% lower risk of developing type 1 diabetes than those who did not receive supplements. [61]"
"A prospective study among healthy young adults in the US found that White individuals with the highest levels of serum vitamin D had a 44% lower risk of developing T1D in adulthood than those with the lowest levels. [63]"
"The Vitamin D and Omega 3 trial (VITAL), a randomized double-blind placebo-controlled trial following more than 25,000 men and women ages 50 and older, found that taking vitamin D supplements (2,000 IU/day) for five years, or vitamin D supplements with marine omega-3 fatty acids (1,000 mg/day), reduced the incidence of autoimmune diseases by about 22%, compared with a placebo. Autoimmune conditions observed included rheumatoid arthritis, psoriasis, polymyalgia rheumatica, and autoimmune thyroid diseases (Hashimoto’s thyroiditis, Graves’ disease). [80]"
'Greene isn't a paragon of scholarship either though - again, superficially, for many years now he's been a popsci celebrity rather than a real, actual, string theorist' - Working at Cornell and Columbia, doing research on string theory and writing best-selling books on physics today qualifies a person as a pop-sci physicist? What would you have grouped Einstein as when he was working at the patent office? No really - serious question.
I 100% agree with you - I don't buy anything about string theory and I believe it has almost nothing to do with the state of reality, but the attempt itself is honorable and the mathematics behind it is beautiful and can be used to advance our understanding of the universe. If it also inspires others to get into physics and discover new things about reality - it's an overall win for humanity so kudos to any string theorists out there :)
