Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

datapointed.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 115 posts

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#91

Post by DanBC »

twoodfin wrote: post #63
jasonkester wrote: post #2

Back when Starbucks first exploded to such ludicrous levels that you'd sometimes find two of them sharing a single parking lot, the expectation became that there would always be a Starbucks nearby. So much so that when I tried to drive from Phoenix to Los Angeles early one morning, I was surprised, then baffled, then amazed, then outraged that there was no Starbucks at all on I-10. I spent nearly 4 hours driving with…

Starbucks' expansion was interestingly "clumpy". Not surprising, I guess, when you realize they have to deal with the same supply chain issues as anyone else in a similar space. They didn't open a freestanding store in Tulsa until 2002, years after seemingly every other corner in Manhattan had one.

Starbucks knew that local competition helped them.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#92

Post by itmag »

patio11 wrote: post #71
twoodfin wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starbucks' expansion was interestingly "clumpy". Not surprising, I guess, when you realize they have to deal with the same supply chain issues as anyone else in a similar space. They didn't open a freestanding store in Tulsa until 2002, years after seemingly every other corner in Manhattan had one.

Starbucks also has a very sophisticated siting operation which predicts demand similar to how an oil company predicts oil. For green fields, you measure proxies, look at formula based on historical data, and guess. If you sink one well and hit a gusher, though, your expectation of profitable exploitability in the vicinity goes WAY up, so you start going nuts. You'd think that two Starbucks across the street would can…

You'd think that two Starbucks across the street would cannibalize each other

Speaking of that, would they operate as two competing entities? Or would they help each other out? Ie lend each other supplies, direct overflow customers across the street, refrain from price wars, things like that.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#93

Post by twoodfin »

itmag wrote: post #92
patio11 wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Starbucks also has a very sophisticated siting operation which predicts demand similar to how an oil company predicts oil. For green fields, you measure proxies, look at formula based on historical data, and guess. If you sink one well and hit a gusher, though, your expectation of profitable exploitability in the vicinity goes WAY up, so you start going nuts. You'd think that two Starbucks across the street would can…

You'd think that two Starbucks across the street would cannibalize each other Speaking of that, would they operate as two competing entities? Or would they help each other out? Ie lend each other supplies, direct overflow customers across the street, refrain from price wars, things like that.

Freestanding Starbucks stores aren't franchises, so they have every incentive to coordinate for maximum benefit. I'd be surprised if SBUX management had set up any incentives for it to work any other way.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#94

Post by aptwebapps »

bane wrote: post #66
tocomment wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He should have said "raises the question". " begs the question".means assuming the conclusion of your argument.

Nobody uses it with that meaning anymore, the phrase has taken on a different meaning. This happens with language, definitions shift, nuance is added, old meanings fall away. If you use the phrase with the original Latin meaning, you'd likely just confuse your listener. It hasn't had that definition in the common parlance for probably the last couple of centuries -- or at least since Latin stopped being necessary for…

>Nobody uses it with that meaning anymore, the phrase has taken on a different meaning.

Nobody you know, maybe. I remember hearing Tony Blair use it (in the original sense) in Parliament once and I know I've read it several times in British publications.

I wonder if it is still properly used in the UK, then?

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#95

Post by bane »

aptwebapps wrote: post #94
bane wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Nobody uses it with that meaning anymore, the phrase has taken on a different meaning. This happens with language, definitions shift, nuance is added, old meanings fall away. If you use the phrase with the original Latin meaning, you'd likely just confuse your listener. It hasn't had that definition in the common parlance for probably the last couple of centuries -- or at least since Latin stopped being necessary for…

>Nobody uses it with that meaning anymore, the phrase has taken on a different meaning. Nobody you know, maybe. I remember hearing Tony Blair use it (in the original sense) in Parliament once and I know I've read it several times in British publications. I wonder if it is still properly used in the UK, then?

I think I remember the Blair usage, and it was notable because it was probably one of the very few usages of the phrase in the original meaning. But it's commonly used in the modern meaning even in UK newspapers.

A piece on it with some numbers on usage

http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/mind-your-language/2010/may/...

"After more than 35 years in journalism I can recall precisely one occasion when "begs the question" was used to describe a logical fallacy, by the philosopher and sometime Guardian columnist Julian Baggini."

The Telegraph has something like 147 usages in the modern meaning and none I could find in the old, I found 1 usage in the old meaning in about 70 in the new meaning in the Financial Times, there's a couple usages in The Times in the modern sense and none in the old.

Here's the singular usage of it in the old sense across these three publications

http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/e6f9f436-b788-11df-8ef6-00144... (interestingly I believe Caldwell is an American)

If there's more usages in the older sense then I just missed them it's so rare.

I've never actually heard it said out loud in the old meaning and the only time I'm even aware that there was a prior usage of the phrase is when some pretentious, pedantic, proscriptivist with a dangerously improper understanding of how languages work gets involved and tries to correct how other people use the phrase with a hopeless archaic usage that's long since fallen out of fashion.

I don't think I've ever heard the phrase "raises the question" in my entire life. I'd say that phrase, now that I roll it around on my tongue a bit, sounds hopeless awkward and nonsensical. You can't actually "raise" a question, you can raise awareness about a question. You can "ask" a question, or you can have a situation that requires a question be asked -- e.g. the situation can "beg" the question be asked. But raising a question doesn't really make any sort of sense in any possible usage. At any rate, if "raise" is meant to be used in the same way that one can "raise" awareness, then the meaning is still different than begging a question be asked. For example,

"I would like to beg for your awareness about the plight of the African tree frog."

has a more urgent meaning than

"I would like to raise your awareness about the plight of the African tree frog."

I don't just want you to have some slight exposure to the frog, it is of great importance to me that you learn about this frog and his plight. It's so important that I'll beg you to learn about it. Something that is reserved only for people in a desperate situation.

If these meanings of the two words are considered, than a situation can "beg" or "raise" questions with the same sort of urgency qualities as a person.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#96

Post by itmag »

twoodfin wrote: post #93
itmag wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You'd think that two Starbucks across the street would cannibalize each other Speaking of that, would they operate as two competing entities? Or would they help each other out? Ie lend each other supplies, direct overflow customers across the street, refrain from price wars, things like that.

Freestanding Starbucks stores aren't franchises, so they have every incentive to coordinate for maximum benefit. I'd be surprised if SBUX management had set up any incentives for it to work any other way.

Interesting.

Even if they were franchises, there might still be some game-theory advantage to cooperating. After all, a happy customer at one Starbucks is going to be positive toward all Starbuckses.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#97

Post by bane »

wyclif wrote: post #88
bane wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am right. There's no reason why specific disciplines can't have their own meaning to words and phrases. Vector, moment, impulse, circuit, computer, etc. all have historic uses that are largely forgotten today or have different meanings in different contexts. Just because a usage is old, or specific to a certain context doesn't mean that usage should be universal or part of the common tongue. Arguing that language i…

You reply as if you think I don't know what a descriptivist is. I do. The problem is that I'm not arguing that "language is fixed, and should never change." That is a rather severe misreading of the above link. The point is that people commonly misunderstand the original usage, not that the usage has changed.

I don't think anybody misunderstands the original usage.

I think that most people don't care in the slightest how something Aristotle wrote in Greek was translated into Latin and then awkwardly translated from Latin into English in the 1500s, into an archaic predecessor of modern English that is almost but not quite intelligible to the modern ear. Prior Analytics is not the Bible, it doesn't have to be quoted verbatim in whatever translation you favor to keep Aristotle from smiting you with thunderbolts or some such.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#98

Post by pessimizer »

vacri wrote: post #56
tocomment wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He should have said "raises the question". " begs the question".means assuming the conclusion of your argument.

Common usage has it the other way around - 'begs the question' does mean 'raises the question', simply because that's how it's used. That philosophical jargon has it differently doesn't change that.

I'm usually sympathetic to that argument, but the origin of 'begs the question' is philosophical jargon, and the misuse of it perpetually reproduces itself from people hearing it being used properly, not understanding what is being said, and trying to parse the phrase to figure out what it means.

Since the phrasing is anachronistic, there's really no chance that they'll come up with 'asks you to accept as true' for 'begs,' and 'the conclusion' for 'the question.' But honestly, if you mean to say 'brings up the question' you should just say it, instead of reaching for an anachronistic pithy phrase or buzzword.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#99

Post by eftpotrm »

graywh wrote: post #15
T-hawk wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Apollo 13 holds the record for farthest distance from Earth, because in its aborted mission, it swung farther around the moon at higher altitude rather than dropping into lunar orbit. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_13#Mission_notes

But there were 3 of them together in the capsule.

Apollo 13 holds the record for furthest men have been from the earth.

If we're looking for the furthest any inividual has been away from the nearest second human, we're looking at command module pilots. I think that record goes to Michael Collins, from memory.

Furthest from nearest humans on the earth's surface is probably unknowable; my bet would be on a liferaft somewhere in either the Pacific or Southern oceans about 100 years ago, and the poor individual concerned not making it.

Re: How Far Can You Get From McDonald's?

#100

Post by pessimizer »

bane wrote: post #85
wyclif wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Get it right. http://begthequestion.info/ Shouldn't we accept that words change in meaning over time? True, words like "cool" and "gay" gained new meaning via a process of modern association with their understood meanings, but BTQ abuse rises from a misunderstanding of its original use. It would be as though people started using "the die is cast" to mean dying, simply because the word "die" is in there, without any k…

I am right. There's no reason why specific disciplines can't have their own meaning to words and phrases. Vector, moment, impulse, circuit, computer, etc. all have historic uses that are largely forgotten today or have different meanings in different contexts. Just because a usage is old, or specific to a certain context doesn't mean that usage should be universal or part of the common tongue. Arguing that language i…

You are wrong.

>Nobody uses it with that meaning anymore, the phrase has taken on a different meaning.

I hear it used in its original meaning as often as I hear it being used in the other way. Losing the original meaning would be a bad thing, because it describes something that is difficult to describe, whereas 'asks me to ask this following question" is just a wordy, empty transition when usually the entire phrase should be replaced with "so."

>[So,] just how far away can you get from our world of generic convenience? And how would you figure that out?

better?

Post reply on HN