"For the world's economy, of course, trillions of dollars are now at stake in pursuit of emissions reductions based on the flawed science that these leaked emails have helped lay bare."
From what I've read about them the emails lay little bare about the science - more about the politics of trying to keep down the FUD-slingers and easily-publicized, some-what contrary findings.
Further, a huge increase in funding does not constitute evidence that it is being used for "flawed science".
The future of powerful data and analysis of climate changes is in sad shape if (unsigned) articles in WSJ.com by persons of unknown scientific credentials become the guides for world policy.
"The team says that an exposure to the plasma of only about 12 seconds reduces the incidence of bacteria, viruses, and fungi on hands by a factor of a million - a number that stands in sharp contrast to the several minutes hospital staff can take to wash using traditional soap and water."
And what of those bacteria/viruses that do survive. Don't we run the risk of creating "super bugs on steroids" - letting only the really fittest survive?
What do you mean by "simple math captchas"... where the distorted characters display something like "2 + 3 =" - and I'm supposed to type 5 or five?
Or are you simply using a simple math question (un-captcha'd)?
I've been experimenting with my own db of questions that can be answered with a word - including simple arithmetic and simple reasoning such as "Which is warmer? Hot or cold?" - and finding almost no spammer cares enough about my sites to develop a decoding table for comment submission [that would of course change if I were Amazon, etc.]
All of this is moot, of course, if some spammer were to care enough about auto-registering/emailing my site to get porn-visitors to solve the questions/captchas in order to "see more".
Yes, data are helpful. Regularly updated data: more so - because they would enable us to see whether/when spammers are adjusting their methods to accommodate our latest obfuscations.
You could add to your (self-answering) question "...would cannibalize their laptop sales..." the phrase: "...and that has perhaps 1/3 the profit margin?"
Apple's decision making looks to me more like (as with the MB Air), "can we develop a high-margin product that will draw NEW (ex-Windows) customers (and maybe some wowee press coverage)?"
As has been argued around the business web, Jobs' absence/incapacity for better part of a year - while Apple continued to develop dramatically better than the rest of the industry - may have been helpful as a demonstration of what the organization can do on its own.
Maybe, but one year you might not need the kind of complete change of direction that he managed to pull off earlier and which made the company what it is today.
While Apple could probably be very successful with their current direction for quite some time, if the market changes under them the lack of Jobs might become more apparent.
Sure, that requires Jobs. However, Apple has a pretty clear direction that Jobs established and If all that Apple does from now on is to keep the direction calibrated and keep the pace that he set then Apple will do very very well in the long run.
Another data point is Jobs' absence from 1985 to 1997. The stock rose incredibly for 2 years ($2 to $14), then flat for 6 years, then fell for 4 years (to $3.4).
It's utterly ridiculous to extrapolate from this, because so many other factors influence stock price and business performance - but it's more or less what you would expect of an organization supporting a brilliant leader, and is a tantalizingly similar data point with respect to Jobs presence.
This has surely been discussed endlessly elsewhere, but I think it's impossible for an autocrat to cultivate an autocratic successor - why would Jobs put up with another autocrat (and why would the autocratic successor put up with him?) I think this is a slightly different angle from the "cult of personality" aspect.
But I have a real UX concern when I land at a site and... WTF: I can't even tell what it is about, what services it offers, is there any possibility that I might be a target audience?
Attractive landing page, but totally flumoxing.
[edit]PS: Okay, now I give in and click on "overview". That page has the phrase "a single place to collaborate..." A simple tag line like that is needed on masthead.
Plus [it's flash-based, is it?], I'd like to highlight copy and copy the phrase "a single place to collaborate". Well, that's not going to happen: text not in html :( ::something to think about UI-wise::
From what I've read about them the emails lay little bare about the science - more about the politics of trying to keep down the FUD-slingers and easily-publicized, some-what contrary findings.
Further, a huge increase in funding does not constitute evidence that it is being used for "flawed science".
The future of powerful data and analysis of climate changes is in sad shape if (unsigned) articles in WSJ.com by persons of unknown scientific credentials become the guides for world policy.