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Museum of Failure

museumoffailure.com

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Re: Museum of Failure

#51

Post by divbzero »

Along the same vein, several academic journals allow for the publication of negative results:

1. Positively Negative (PLOS One)

2. The Missing Pieces (PLOS One)

3. The All Results Journals

4. ACS Omega

5. F1000Research

6. PeerJ

7. Journal of Negative Results in Biomedicine

8. Journal of Negative Results in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology

9. Journal of Articles in Support of the Null Hypothesis

10. Journal of Pharmaceutical Negative Results

https://www.enago.com/academy/top-10-journals-publish-negati...

Re: Museum of Failure

#52

Post by ridgered4 »

msrenee wrote: post #44
ghaff wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of Blockbuster, it's reasonable to argue that they should have at least taken advantage of their brand (and relationships) to get into the DVD rental by mail business which would have, relatively speaking, not been a big stretch. Though phasing out retail would have been disruptive. Of course, streaming was a whole different game. (As would be original content.) And it's not like Netflix is looking especi…

I swear Blockbuster tried to do a DVD by mail thing. It just never got popular.

Yeah, they definitely did something like this. I recall you could return the DVDs to their stores to speed up the turnaround. And they eventually started a short price war with Netflix. But IIRC they had a lot of debt to begin with and combined with much higher overheard from all the stores it ended predictably.

Re: Museum of Failure

#53

Post by Cyberdog »

justintoon wrote: post #22
Steltek wrote: post #13

Oh man, the Nokia NGage! I still remember the "taco talking" mockery (back when people used phones to make calls). Symbian OS was so much better than the competition. Apps and games were feasible, compared to the j2me wasteland. I remember it for not being a too far fetched idea as I playing with the software on my S60 device more than making calls. https://museumoffailure.com/nokia/

I believe the official term was "sidetalkin'" https://sidetalking.com

I found a picture of myself on that site. I don't remember taking it and I don't remember sending it to this site, but apparently I did both of those things at one point in my life. How bizarre.

https://sidetalking.com/page-1.html - In the red shirt with the game.com.

Re: Museum of Failure

#54

Post by marcosdumay »

msrenee wrote: post #44
ghaff wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the case of Blockbuster, it's reasonable to argue that they should have at least taken advantage of their brand (and relationships) to get into the DVD rental by mail business which would have, relatively speaking, not been a big stretch. Though phasing out retail would have been disruptive. Of course, streaming was a whole different game. (As would be original content.) And it's not like Netflix is looking especi…

I swear Blockbuster tried to do a DVD by mail thing. It just never got popular.

Would you trust them to get DVDs by mail? At least my model of them was that they would do anything to scam me out of late fees.

Re: Museum of Failure

#55

Post by ridgered4 »

beezlewax wrote: post #35
dorfsmay wrote: post #20

Visited last weekend. Interesting for sure. Funny to see how many times and for how long we've been trying to do VR! Some of the "failures" were unfair IMO, like minitel and Block Buster: It's like saying using wind sails on ships was a failure because it was replaced by steam engines.

Pretty sure wind sails are going to be making a comeback soon.

IIRC even after shipping went pretty much whole hog on fossil fuel transport there were some odd duck ships called windjammers, made with modern components like steel hulls and masts but still powered by sail. For awhile they filled a niche of transporting some types of non-time sensitive goods for a very low cost.

Re: Museum of Failure

#56

Post by inanutshellus »

lo_zamoyski wrote: post #30
salmo wrote: post #6

I love this idea. So many failures follow the “first is not best”, then many failed business tales. But most of these are the expected and the analysis is shallow. Snark added is unnecessary. Many are fad products or acknowledged R&D experiments that I wouldn’t necessarily call “failures.” I expected more when having to give my email. A categorized page of bullets with Wikipedia links would be more useful. The detail…

Indeed. An entertaining idea in the abstract, perhaps, but this is just weak sensationalism and poor execution. I don't see anything substantive that explains how something failed. Instead of taking the right attitude of discovering where something ostensibly went wrong, it seems to relish in dismissive ridicule in the style of FailArmy.

I think you nailed it.

The hook is "failure is how you succeed" but they show dead end products with perfunctory blurbs and facile presentations.

I'd've expected these, yes, but also more substantive "failed 'til I didn't" exhibits such as representations of the hundred+ prototypes that James Dyson purported to have made before finally figuring out the bagless vacuum.

Or... photos of Abraham Lincoln and a long, long, long list of his failed attempts to progress before finding himself in the presidency.

Re: Museum of Failure

#57

Post by ahelwer »

manholio wrote: post #42
wongarsu wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Alternatively, we try again and again because there's a lot of promise if we get it right, but so far the technology just isn't there for anything sustainable beyond the novelty factor. This round we got far enough that there are some industry use cases for AR, which shares 99% of its tech with VR. Maybe that will funnel enough money into development to break out of the hype cycle into something sustainable.

I think stereoscopic viewing is fundamentally a bad idea that holds little promise - it's not really 3D, but a parlor trick that gives confusing depth information, the eye must focus at the screen even if the scene is very close or very far. It's too annoying and tiring as a sustainable consumer technology; maybe tools only professionals are required to use, ex. remote surgery gear, with pros and cons well understood…

>the eye must focus at the screen even if the scene is very close or very far

This is just literally untrue. Your eyes focus "into" the VR scene, not at the screens one inch from your eye.

Re: Museum of Failure

#60

Post by neuralRiot »

ahelwer wrote: post #57
manholio wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think stereoscopic viewing is fundamentally a bad idea that holds little promise - it's not really 3D, but a parlor trick that gives confusing depth information, the eye must focus at the screen even if the scene is very close or very far. It's too annoying and tiring as a sustainable consumer technology; maybe tools only professionals are required to use, ex. remote surgery gear, with pros and cons well understood…

>the eye must focus at the screen even if the scene is very close or very far This is just literally untrue. Your eyes focus "into" the VR scene, not at the screens one inch from your eye.

But you cannot focus where you want, so it’s not 3d but layered 2d. In a 3d emulated image you cannot focus on a background object and even if you could the interpupillary distance would be the same and so the focusing one. Our image processing in the brain uses such information to calculate, that’s why you can approximate the dimension of an object and distances in real life but not in a picture even if it is a 3d one.
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