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Smeed's law
- supahfly_remix 17y agointeresting...I wonder if there is a similar law for Internet traffic. Is the overall network congestion is determined by the amount of "sluggishess" (appropriately defined) that the average user experiences?
- albertcardona 17y agoBack in the dialup days, waiting for a web page to load for over 1 minute was about it. More than that, and one would either move on or treat the medium different: for example, instead of interacting with the webpage, one would set it to load and go do something else, and come back later. Or give up. There was an alternative, though: going down to the internet cafe to get fast access. The existence of the alternative affected one's perception of the "slowness", just as being stuck in traffic in LA made me wish for a proper subway system. No quantification, just anecdotal observations.
- pavel_lishin 17y agoHave we invented psychohistory yet? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychohistory_(fictional)
- jjs 17y agoI think that people in low-population areas often drive more recklessly because they assume that nobody else will be on the road, and they're usually right. (And they tend to have a larger distance to go to get to anything interesting).
- pj 17y agoDyson's quote said, "Smeed interpreted his law as a law of human nature." If this is true, then this formula should appear outside the world of driving. Has it been applied anywhere else? I did a quick search and found nothing. I wonder if it applies to flying, rail travel, employment related fatalities, medical related fatalities, etc...