Decision-making
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The global AIDS pandemic furnishes a case study for many of the themes addressed throughout the course. While in the developed West the disease largely afflicts concentrated high-risk groups such as intravenous drug users and the sexually promiscuous, in Southern Africa it is much more a generalized disease of poverty. In countries such as Botswana and Swaziland, the economic and social consequences of the disease have created a vicious...more
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Estrin talks about the personal connectivity cycle. The cycle of connecting people is the notion of people being able to connect to each other and connect to information anywhere. This means true mobility and ubiquitous, high bandwidth connectivity, she says. The enablers of this cycle are economic and behavioral. From an IT demand perspective, she explains, the real win is in the consumer devices and services and not in the IT...more
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May 2, 2008 lecture by Krzysztof Gajos for the Stanford University Human Computer Interaction Seminar (CS547). User Interfaces delivered with today's software are usually created in a one-size-fits-all manner, making implicit assumptions about the needs, abilities, and preferences of the "average user" and the characteristics of the "average device." Krzysztof Gajos argues that personalized user interfaces, which are adapted to a persons...more
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The bubonic plague is the measure by which succeeding epidemics have long been measured. Its extreme virulence, horrible symptoms, and indiscriminate victim profile all contributed to making plague the archetypical worst-case scenario. For these same reasons, the plague is also an ideal test case for the thesis that epidemic diseases play a major role in shaping human history. Over the course of its three pandemics, the plague had major...more
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Bush and 9/11 Put AIDS on the Back Burner - And a New Social Venture is Born
Stanford / Entrepreneurship
Francis talks about how after 9/11, the government became interested in vaccines. Vaxgen shifted to making a small pox vaccine and an anthrax vaccine and has been very successful in these pursuits. Unfortunately, AIDS was not named as an immediate concern and was but on the back burner. Due to the unwillingness of both the government and private businesses to provide funding, Francis has now decided that the AIDS vaccine cannot be...more
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eBay is in 28 countries and the company is looking into cost effective ways to enter new markets, says Reedy. PayPal will attack Europe next year. Typically, eBay, being global, can enter new countries easily; in the case of PayPal it will take more effort. When making an acquisition eBay lets the business strategy define the process or platform. Over time they look for ways to move the country onto the platform as long as it does not put...more
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Google Analytics' Group Product Marketing Manager Brett Crosby recalls how two brutal blows to his enterprise - losing a huge client in the 11th hour and the tragedy of 9/11 - forced him to reevaluate and streamline. Offices closed, jobs were cut, and salaries were strapped for maximum efficiency. Having the wind knocked out of them also simplified overblown contracts and software, and switched their strategy from making money to market...more
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Jeff Hawkins encourages students to do something they believe in. Business is hard and every company will have its trouble, the only way one gets through these times is if they you a cause and you believe in it. This passion gives momentum to see the bad times through. In his experience, people who started a company for the sake of starting a company failed when the hard times came upon them. At Palm the passion was the product, selling...more
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Today's lecture concludes Professor Freeman's discussion of the four phases of the Revolutionary War. America's victory at the Battle of Saratoga in 1777 marked the end of the third phase of the war, and led to a turning point in the conflict: France's decision to recognize American independence and enter into an alliance with the fledging nation. Although the British made one final attempt at reconciliation in 1778 with the Conciliatory...more
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This lecture continues the discussion of the HOMO/LUMO view of chemical reactivity by focusing on ways of recognizing whether a particular HOMO should be unusually high in energy (basic), or a particular LUMO should be unusually low (acidic). The approach is illustrated with BH3, which is both acidic and basic and thus dimerizes by forming unusual "Y" bonds. The low LUMOs that make both HF and CH3F acidic are analyzed and compared...more
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We analyze three games using our new solution concept, subgame perfect equilibrium (SPE). The first game involves players' trusting that others will not make mistakes. It has three Nash equilibria but only one is consistent with backward induction. We show the other two Nash equilibria are not subgame perfect: each fails to induce Nash in a subgame. The second game involves a matchmaker sending a couple on a date. There are three Nash...more
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If the people who set the prices are the same people who set the production levels, then it's not really a market, and true supply and demand are a farce. David Rothkopf, author of Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They are Making, says that Europe is leading the planet in green energy technology thanks to government subsidies, including biofuels and wind energy. Rothkopf is optimistic that the US will eventually adopt...more
