Are we really still at the point in "Landscape and Urban Planning" research that we need to verify that walking in the woods chills you out and helps you focus more than walking down a busy street?
Lots of science is about looking at "no shit, Sherlock" phenomena. The hope is you can find principles beneath the commonsense aspects. Ideally, you see the commonsense and allow yourself to get puzzled by it.
For example, physicists can't tell you much about what goes on outside your window; it's too complex. They isolate little things in highly controlled environments which remove as much as possible. ("Experiments".)
Yes, but the majority of what I wrote applies to new systems too. What a user wants is the exact configuration of their old system to be on their new system. By that I mean installed apps, services, data, registration info, passwords, whatever they have littering their desktop etc. This is still beyond painful, not to mention having to learn new UI etc.
Cooperating is strongly dominated by defecting in Prisoners Dilemma. This is an obvious and very basic game theory result.
Game Theory models strategic situations and doesn't offer insight outside what is modeled. If you think there should be communication supporting cooperation in the game, that game is NOT the Prisoners Dilemma and is in fact another game.
The Prisoners Dilemma is a model that is stacked very much against cooperation. Think about it, the prisoners are held in separate rooms and not allowed to communicate at all in the original story.
It gets presented as an obvious and basic game theory result, but it only makes sense if you don't believe in the basic tenants of game theory, amongst which is the claim that it is a theory of maximizing rational actors.
There is no moral choice-making for maximizing rational actors, and both actors in the PD have exactly the same information, including the fact that the other individual is a maximizing rational actor. As such the off diagonal elements of the payoff matrix are irrelevant to any rational decision making because any two rational actors with the same goal will always make the same choice in the same situation. To do anything else would be irrational.
So within the frame of the theory both players know with certainty that because the game is being played by maximizing rational actors that the other player will always do exactly what they do. This is true no matter what they do: the other player will always reach the same conclusion. Rationality dictates it, if rationality means anything at all.
It is only when you smuggle in the possibility of an irrational choice on the part of one of the players that the off-diagonal elements become relevant, because one player can for unaccountable reasons choose to do something irrational, which a maximizing rational actor would never do.
Game theory is not about people. It's about rational actors who want to maximize their payoff. For such entities there is no dilemma, since only the diagonal elements of the matrix matter, and cooperation is the obvious maximizing strategy.
Unfortunately, game theory under this constraint becomes very boring. There is probably a salvagable variant of it that remains interesting, but I'm honestly not sure what it's a theory of. "Semi-rational not-very-smart actors"? That would describe humans reasonably well, I guess. It certainly describes me. Or maybe the decision-maker being analyzed could be considered a rational actor and the rest of the players irrational, although that would be equivalent to playing against a random number generator.
Iterated Prisoners dilemma is less clearly stacked in favour of defecting, although I assume that the actors' memories would fall under "communication":
I always found it interesting that the Prisoner's Dilemma is so context-free. For a lot of criminals, doing a moderate amount of jail time is far preferable to being a snitch. No point in getting out early if you're facing vicious repercussion from your peers.
If I duplicated you and made you play a PD against your duplicate and then sent you off to different corners of the universe to enjoy the spoils, would you cooperate or defect?
I really like the Dover book Mathematics for the Nonmathematician by Morris Kline. It adds historical perspective, makes you think, and teaches basic and understandable proofs.
I have a Samsung Captivate, an iPhone 4 and a Nexus S (developer phone) all purchased in Q4 2010. Nexus S updated until 4.1, iPhone is still current with iOS 7 and the Captivate got ONE update (manually via USB) from 2.1 to 2.2... the Software Update NEVER updated.
I had this same experience. In 2010, I decided to buy the Captivate over the iPhone 4 after reading a bunch of reviews online. IIRC, I bought it right when it was released, which almost exactly coincided with the release of Froyo. After four or so months of putting up with a laggy interface, cheap (feeling) build quality, and no software updates in sight, I sold it and finally bought that iPhone 4, which I used for the next 3 years.
Recently, I decided to give Android another try and went with the Galaxy S4 when that came out. I was pleased with how far the OS had come since Eclair, but it still felt less responsive than even my 3-year-old iPhone. As for the build quality, that's my biggest regret in buying a Samsung product again. It's hard to beat the feel of an Apple device, but at least the Nexus 4 and HTC One are trying.
That's called retreating 'upmarket' and it usually (historically) fails. IBM is the exception.
As clichéd as the Innovator's Dilemma is now, I find very few folks who have actually read it and processed all the strategies, and case studies in the book.
Spinning off a wholly independent entity that can compete at the new price level/market is Christensen's recommended approach. It's all in the book.
Just about the only one worth reading. And the one[0] [in just about the whole of the news industry] with the best track record as far as making testable and correct predictions.
