isham research

Payne's Laws

  1. - censored -
  2. Size is important - small boobs are more sensitive (1965)
    Ask a doctor. A fixed number of nerve endings spread over a larger area means fewer per square centimetre. Forget bazookas - those little things that barely rise from the chest are worth HOURS of attention in terms of nerve endings per square centimentre per second. Per hour.
  3. He who writes the rules wins the benchmark (1980)
    Finanzamt Charlottenburg in Berlin - IBM proposed a 3033S and wrote a benchmark that completely fitted within the 512 byte (correct - 1/4 kilobyte) high speed buffer, making it run as fast as a 3033U
  4. The amount of fluff found at any time in any given navel is a constant (1985)
  5. The likelihood of a strategic alliance succeeding is given by the product of its partners' commitments, not their sum (1987)
    AD/Cycle. Two amazing things - first that IBM would make a company like Bachmann part of such a critical strategy, and second that they managed to sell the "alliance" as some sort of benefit when it was actually the strategy's greatest weakness. There have been several versions of this law, including one using the number of partners as a determinant - but this one survived. The whole concept of strategic alliances didn't - seen one lately?
  6. If it's free on the Internet anywhere, it's free everywhere (1989)
    Originally an observation to someone planning on setting up another search engine. Back then, searching was an expensive subscription service - then DEC launched AltaVista as a free service to showcase the 64 bit Alpha chip. Searching has been no-revenue ever since - so why is Google worth $80 billion?
  7. Domestic freezers eventually fill with unpalatable food (2000)
    Take a look in your own. How much could be described as "tasty"? You're preserving the food industry's throwouts
  8. Annoying a webmaster is always a bad idea (2002)
    Try it
  9. If it's under the covers, it doesn't matter much which cover it's under (2004)
    This was a fairly advanced comment on virtualisation, except we're not there yet
  10. All web designers should be forced to use 9600 baud links (2005)
    The result of a calculation showing that downloading the home page from http://www.audi.de into the Opera browser of a Nokia 9210i Communicator would take 23 hours and cost around £40
  11. If an exiled dissident tells you something no one else tells you about the country that exiled him, he is lying (2005)
    The Collapse of Saddam's Secret Subway. Applies to companies as well as countries

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