In probability theory, the birthday problem, or birthday paradox[1] pertains to the probability that in a set of randomly chosen people some pair of them will have the same birthday. In a group of at least 23 randomly chosen people, there is more than 50% probability that some pair of them will both have been born on the same day. For 57 or more people, the probability is more than 99%, and it reaches 100% when the number of people reaches 366 (by the pigeonhole principle, ignoring leap years). The mathematics behind this problem leads to a well-known cryptographic attack called the birthday attack.

A graph showing the approximate probability of at least two people sharing a birthday amongst a certain number of people.
Contents [hide]
1 Understanding the problem
2 Calculating the probability
3 Approximations
3.1 A simple exponentiation
3.2 Poisson approximation
3.3 Approximation of number of people
3.4 Probability table
4 An upper bound
5 Generalizations
5.1 Cast as a collision problem
5.2 Generalization to multiple types
6 Other birthday problems
6.1 Reverse problem
6.1.1 Sample calculations
6.2 First match
6.3 Same birthday as you
6.4 Near matches
6.5 Collision counting
6.6 Average number of people
7 Partition problem
8 Notes
9 References
10 External links
[edit]Understanding the problem

The birthday problem asks whether any of the 23 people has a birthday matching any of the others — not one in particular. (See "Same birthday as you" below for an analysis of this much less surprising alternative problem.)
In a list of 23 people, comparing the birthday of the first person on the list to the others allows 22 chances for a matching birthday, but comparing every person to all of the others allows 253 distinct chances: in a group of 23 people there are 23×22/2 = 253 pairs. The approximate probability that two people chosen from the entire population at random have the same birthday is 1/365 (ignoring Leap Day, February 29), presuming all birthdays are equally probable.[2] Although the pairings in a group of 23 people are not statistically equivalent to 253 pairs chosen independently, the birthday paradox becomes less surprising if a group is thought of in terms of the number of possible pairs, rather than the number of individuals.
[edit]Calculating the probability

To compute the approximate probability that in a room of n people, at least two have the same birthday, we disregard variations in the distribution, such as leap years, twins, seasonal or weekday variations, and assume that the 365 possible birthdays are equally likely. Real-life birthday distributions are not uniform since not all dates are equally likely.[3]
It is easier to first calculate the probability p(n) that all n birthdays are different. If n > 365, by the pigeonhole principle this probability is 0. On the other hand, if n ≤ 365, it is

where "!" is the factorial operator.
The equation expresses the fact that for no persons to share a birthday, a second person cannot have the same birthday as the first (364/365), the third cannot have the same birthday as the first two (363/365), and in general the nth birthday cannot be the same as any of the n-1 preceding birthdays.
The event of at least two of the n persons having the same birthday is complementary to all n birthdays being different. Therefore, its probability p(n) is

The approximate probability that no two people share a birthday in a group of n people.
This probability surpasses 1/2 for n = 23 (with value about 50.7%). The following table shows the probability for some other values of n (This table ignores the existence of leap years, as described above):
n p(n)
10 11.7%
20 41.1%
23 50.7%
30 70.6%
50 97.0%
57 99.0%
100 99.99997%
200 99.9999999999999999999999999998%
300 (100 − (6×10−80))%
350 (100 − (3×10−129))%
366 100%
[edit]Approximations

The Taylor series expansion of the exponential function

A graph showing the accuracy of the approximation
provides a first-order approximation for ex:

The first expression derived for p(n) can be approximated as

Therefore,

An even coarser approximation is given by

which, as the graph illustrates, is still fairly accurate.
[edit]A simple exponentiation
The probability of any two people not having the same birthday is 364/365. In a room of people of size N, there are C(N, 2) pairs of people, i.e. C(N, 2) events. The probability of no two people sharing the same birthday can be approximated by assuming that these events are independent and hence by multiplying their probability together. In short 364/365 can be multiplied by itself C(N, 2) times, which gives us

And if this is the probability of no one having the same birthday, then the probability of someone sharing a birthday is

[edit]Poisson approximation
Using the Poisson approximation for the binomial,

Again, this is over 50%.
[edit]Approximation of number of people
This can also be approximated using the following formula for the number of people necessary to have at least a 50% chance of matching:

This is a result of the good approximation that an event with 1 in k probability will have a 50% chance of occurring at least once if it is repeated k ln 2 times.[4]
[edit]Probability table
Main article: Birthday attack
#bits hash space
size
(2^#bits) Desired probability of at least one hash collision (p)
10−18 10−15 10−12 10−9 10−6 0.1% 1% 25% 50% 75%
32 4.3 × 109 2 2 2 2.9 93 2.9 × 103 9.3 × 103 5.0 × 104 7.7 × 104 1.1 × 105
64 1.8 × 1019 6.1 1.9 × 102 6.1 × 103 1.9 × 105 6.1 × 106 1.9 × 108 6.1 × 108 3.3 × 109 5.1 × 109 7.2 × 109
128 3.4 × 1038 2.6 × 1010 8.2 × 1011 2.6 × 1013 8.2 × 1014 2.6 × 1016 8.3 × 1017 2.6 × 1018 1.4 × 1019 2.2 × 1019 3.1 × 1019
256 1.2 × 1077 4.8 × 1029 1.5 × 1031 4.8 × 1032 1.5 × 1034 4.8 × 1035 1.5 × 1037 4.8 × 1037 2.6 × 1038 4.0 × 1038 5.7 × 1038
384 3.9 × 10115 8.9 × 1048 2.8 × 1050 8.9 × 1051 2.8 × 1053 8.9 × 1054 2.8 × 1056 8.9 × 1056 4.8 × 1057 7.4 × 1057 1.0 × 1058
512 1.3 × 10154 1.6 × 1068 5.2 × 1069 1.6 × 1071 5.2 × 1072 1.6 × 1074 5.2 × 1075 1.6 × 1076 8.8 × 1076 1.4 × 1077 1.9 × 1077
The white squares in this table show the number of hashes needed to achieve the given probability of collision (column) given a hashspace of a certain size in bits (row). (Using the birthday analogy, the hash space would be of size 365 (row); one desired to know the number of people that will give a 50% chance (column) of a collision; the number of people is the white square where the row and column intersect.) For comparison, 10−18 to 10−15 is the uncorrectable bit error rate of a typical hard disk [2]. In theory, MD5, 128 bits, should stay within that range until about 820 billion documents, even if its possible outputs are many more.
[edit]An upper bound

The argument below is adapted from an argument of Paul Halmos.[5]
As stated above, the probability that no two birthdays coincide is

This can be seen by first counting the number of ways 365 birthdays can be distributed among n people in such a way that no two birthdays are the same, then dividing by the total number of ways 365 birthdays can be distributed among n people:

Interest lies in the smallest n such that p(n) > 1/2; or equivalently, the smallest n such that p(n) < 1/2.
Replacing 1 − k/365, as above, with e−k/365, and using the inequality 1 − x < e−x, we have

Therefore, the expression above is not only an approximation, but also an upper bound of p(n). The inequality

implies p(n) < 1/2. Solving for n we find

Now, 730 ln 2 is approximately 505.997, which is barely below 506, the value of n2 − n attained when n = 23. Therefore, 23 people suffice.
This derivation only shows that at most 23 people are needed to ensure a birthday match with even chance; it leaves open the possibility that, say, n = 22 could also work.
[edit]Generalizations

[edit]Cast as a collision problem
The birthday problem can be generalized as follows: given n random integers drawn from a discrete uniform distribution with range [1,d], what is the probability p(n;d) that at least two numbers are the same?
The generic results can be derived using the same arguments given above.

The birthday problem in this more generic sense applies to hash functions: the expected number of N-bit hashes that can be generated before getting a collision is not 2N, but rather only 2N/2. This is exploited by birthday attacks on cryptographic hash functions and is the reason why a small number of collisions in a hash table are, for all practical purposes, inevitable.
The theory behind the birthday problem was used by Zoe Schnabel[6] under the name of capture-recapture statistics to estimate the size of fish population in lakes.
[edit]Generalization to multiple types
The basic problem considers all trials to be of one "type". The birthday problem has been generalized to consider an arbitrary number of types.[7] In the simplest extension there are just two types, say m "men" and n "women", and the problem becomes characterizing the probability of a shared birthday between at least one man and one woman. (Shared birthdays between, say, two women do not count.) The probability of no (i.e. zero) shared birthdays here is

where we set d = 365 and where S2 are Stirling numbers of the second kind. Consequently, the desired probability is 1 − p0.
This variation of the birthday problem is interesting because there is not a unique solution for the total number of people m + n. For example, the usual 0.5 probability value is realized for both a 32-member group of 16 men and 16 women and a 49-member group of 43 women and 6 men.
[edit]Other birthday problems

[edit]Reverse problem
For a fixed probability p:
Find the greatest n for which the probability p(n) is smaller than the given p, or
Find the smallest n for which the probability p(n) is greater than the given p.
An approximation to this can be derived by inverting the 'coarser' approximation above:

[edit]Sample calculations
p n n↓ p(n↓) n↑ p(n↑)
0.01 0.14178√365 = 2.70864 2 0.00274 3 0.00820
0.05 0.32029√365 = 6.11916 6 0.04046 7 0.05624
0.1 0.45904√365 = 8.77002 8 0.07434 9 0.09462
0.2 0.66805√365 = 12.76302 12 0.16702 13 0.19441
0.3 0.84460√365 = 16.13607 16 0.28360 17 0.31501
0.5 1.17741√365 = 22.49439 22 0.47570 23 0.50730
0.7 1.55176√365 = 29.64625 29 0.68097 30 0.70632
0.8 1.79412√365 = 34.27666 34 0.79532 35 0.81438
0.9 2.14597√365 = 40.99862 40 0.89123 41 0.90315
0.95 2.44775√365 = 46.76414 46 0.94825 47 0.95477
0.99 3.03485√365 = 57.98081 57 0.99012 58 0.99166
Note: some values falling outside the bounds have been colored to show that the approximation is not always exact.
[edit]First match
A related question is, as people enter a room one at a time, which one is most likely to be the first to have the same birthday as someone already in the room? That is, for what n is p(n) − p(n − 1) maximum? The answer is 20—if there's a prize for first match, the best position in line is 20th.
[edit]Same birthday as you

Comparing p(n) = probability of a birthday match with q(n) = probability of matching your birthday
Note that in the birthday problem, neither of the two people is chosen in advance. By way of contrast, the probability q(n) that someone in a room of n other people has the same birthday as a particular person (for example, you), is given by

Substituting n = 23 gives about 6.1%, which is less than 1 chance in 16. For a greater than 50% chance that one person in a roomful of n people has the same birthday as you, n would need to be at least 253. Note that this number is significantly higher than 365/2 = 182.5: the reason is that it is likely that there are some birthday matches among the other people in the room.
It is not a coincidence that ; a similar approximate pattern can be found using a number of possibilities different from 365, or a target probability different from 50%.
[edit]Near matches
Another generalization is to ask how many people are needed in order to have a better than 50% chance that two people have a birthday within one day of each other, or within two, three, etc., days of each other. This is a more difficult problem and requires use of the inclusion-exclusion principle. The number of people required so that the probability that some pair will have a birthday separated by fewer than k days will be higher than 50% is:
k # people required
1 23
2 14
3 11
4 9
5 8
6 8
7 7
8 7
Thus in a group of just seven random people, it is more likely than not that two of them will have a birthday within a week of each other.[8]
[edit]Collision counting
The probability that the kth integer randomly chosen from [1, d] will repeat at least one previous choice equals q(k − 1; d) above. The expected total number of times a selection will repeat a previous selection as n such integers are chosen equals

[edit]Average number of people
In an alternative formulation of the birthday problem, one asks the average number of people required to find a pair with the same birthday. The problem is relevant to several hashing algorithms analyzed by Donald Knuth in his book The Art of Computer Programming. It may be shown[9][10] that if one samples uniformly, with replacement, from a population of size M, the number of trials required for the first repeated sampling of some individual has expected value , where

The function

has been studied by Srinivasa Ramanujan and has asymptotic expansion:

With M = 365 days in a year, the average number of people required to find a pair with the same birthday is , slightly more than the number required for a 50% chance. In the best case, two people will suffice; at worst, the maximum possible number of M + 1 = 366 people is needed; but on average, only 25 people are required.
An informal demonstration of the problem can be made from the List of Prime Ministers of Australia, in which Paul Keating, the 24th Prime Minister, is the first to share a birthday with another on the list.
James K. Polk and Warren G. Harding, the 11th and 29th Presidents of the United States, were both born on November 2.
Of the 73 male actors to win the Academy Award for Best Actor, there are six pairs of actors who share the same birthday.[11]
Of the 67 actresses to win the Academy Award for Best Actress, there are three pairs of actresses who share the same birthday.[12]
Of the 61 directors to win the Academy Award for Best Director, there are five pairs of directors who share the same birthday.[13]
Of the 52 people to serve as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, there are two pairs of men who share the same birthday.[14]
[edit]Partition problem

A related problem is the partition problem, a variant of the knapsack problem from operations research. Some weights are put on a balance; each weight is an integer number of grams randomly chosen between one gram and one million grams (one metric ton). The question is whether one can usually (that is, with probability close to 1) transfer the weights between the left and right arms to balance the scale. (In case the sum of all the weights is an odd number of grams, a discrepancy of one gram is allowed.) If there are only two or three weights, the answer is very clearly no; although there are some combinations which work, the majority of randomly selected combinations of three weights do not. If there are very many weights, the answer is clearly yes. The question is, how many are just sufficient? That is, what is the number of weights such that it is equally likely for it to be possible to balance them as it is to be impossible?
Some people's intuition is that the answer is above 100,000. Most people's intuition is that it is in the thousands or tens of thousands, while others feel it should at least be in the hundreds. The correct answer is approximately 23.
The reason is that the correct comparison is to the number of partitions of the weights into left and right. There are 2N−1 different partitions for N weights, and the left sum minus the right sum can be thought of as a new random quantity for each partition. The distribution of the sum of weights is approximately Gaussian, with a peak at 1,000,000 N and width , so that when 2N−1 is approximately equal to the transition occurs. 223−1 is about 4 million, while the width of the distribution is only 5 million.[15]
[edit]Notes

^ This is not a paradox in the sense of leading to a logical contradiction, but is called a paradox because the mathematical truth contradicts naïve intuition: most people estimate that the chance is much lower than 50%.
^ In reality, birthdays are not evenly distributed throughout the year; there are more births per day in some seasons than in others, but for the purposes of this problem the distribution is treated as uniform.
^ In particular, many children are born in the summer, especially the months of August and September (for the northern hemisphere)[citation needed] [1], and in the U.S. it has been noted that many children are conceived around the holidays of Christmas and New Year's Day[citation needed]. Also, because hospitals rarely schedule C-sections and induced labor on the weekend, more Americans are born on Mondays and Tuesdays than on weekends[citation needed]; where many of the people share a birth year (e.g. a class in a school), this creates a tendency toward particular dates. Both of these factors tend to increase the chance of identical birth dates, since a denser subset has more possible pairs (in the extreme case when everyone was born on three days, there would obviously be many identical birthdays). The birthday problem for such non-constant birthday probabilities was tackled by Murray Klamkin in 1967. A formal proof that the probability of two matching birthdays is least for a uniform distribution of birthdays was given by D. Bloom (1973)
^ Mathis, Frank H. (June 1991). "A Generalized Birthday Problem". SIAM Review (Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics) 33 (2): 265–270. doi:10.1137/1033051. ISSN 00361445. OCLC 37699182. Retrieved 2008-07-08.
^ In his autobiography, Halmos criticized the form in which the birthday paradox is often presented, in terms of numerical computation. He believed that it should be used as an example in the use of more abstract mathematical concepts. He wrote:
The reasoning is based on important tools that all students of mathematics should have ready access to. The birthday problem used to be a splendid illustration of the advantages of pure thought over mechanical manipulation; the inequalities can be obtained in a minute or two, whereas the multiplications would take much longer, and be much more subject to error, whether the instrument is a pencil or an old-fashioned desk computer. What calculators do not yield is understanding, or mathematical facility, or a solid basis for more advanced, generalized theories.
^ Z. E. Schnabel (1938) The Estimation of the Total Fish Population of a Lake, American Mathematical Monthly 45, 348–352.
^ M. C. Wendl (2003) Collision Probability Between Sets of Random Variables, Statistics and Probability Letters 64(3), 249–254.
^ M. Abramson and W. O. J. Moser (1970) More Birthday Surprises, American Mathematical Monthly 77, 856–858
^ D. E. Knuth; The Art of Computer Programming. Vol. 3, Sorting and Searching (Addison-Wesley, Reading, Massachusetts, 1973)
^ P. Flajolet, P. J. Grabner, P. Kirschenhofer, H. Prodinger (1995), On Ramanujan's Q-Function, Journal of Computational and Applied Mathematics 58, 103–116
^ They are Spencer Tracy and Gregory Peck (April 5), Rod Steiger and Adrien Brody (April 14), Paul Lukas and John Wayne (May 26), Emil Jannings and Philip Seymour Hoffman (July 23), Robert De Niro and Sean Penn (August 17) and Ben Kingsley and Anthony Hopkins (December 31).
^ They are Jane Wyman and Diane Keaton (January 5), Joanne Woodward and Elizabeth Taylor (February 27) and Barbra Streisand and Shirley MacLaine (April 24).
^ They are Norman Taurog and Victor Fleming (February 23), William Wyler and Sydney Pollack (July 1), Robert Redford and Roman Polanski (August 18), William Friedkin and Richard Attenborough (August 29) and George Stevens and Steven Spielberg (December 18).
^ They are John Major and The Earl of Derby (March 29) and Spencer Perceval and The Viscount Goderich (November 1).
^ C. Borgs, J. Chayes, and B. Pittel (2001) Phase Transition and Finite Size Scaling in the Integer Partition Problem, Random Structures and Algorithms 19(3–4), 247–288.
[edit]References

E. H. McKinney (1966) Generalized Birthday Problem, American Mathematical Monthly 73, 385–387.
M. Klamkin and D. Newman (1967) Extensions of the Birthday Surprise, Journal of Combinatorial Theory 3, 279–282.
M. Abramson and W. O. J. Moser (1970) More Birthday Surprises, American Mathematical Monthly 77, 856–858
D. Bloom (1973) A Birthday Problem, American Mathematical Monthly 80, 1141–1142.
Shirky, Clay Here Comes Everybody: The Power of Organizing Without Organizations, (2008.) New York. 25–27.
[edit]External links

Coincidences: the truth is out there Experimental test of the Birthday Paradox and other coincidences
http://www.efgh.com/math/birthday.htm
http://planetmath.org/encyclopedia/BirthdayProblem.html
Weisstein, Eric W., "Birthday Problem" from MathWorld.
Maple vs. birthday paradox
A humorous article explaining the paradox
The birthday problem spreadsheet
SOCR EduMaterials activities birthday experiment

When George Washington was a young man, he copied out a list of 110 “Rules of Civility and Decent Behavior in Company and Conversation.” Some of the rules in his list dealt with the niceties of going to a dinner party or meeting somebody on the street.

“Lean not upon anyone,” was one of the rules. “Read no letter, books or papers in company,” was another. “If any one come to speak to you while you are sitting, stand up,” was a third.

But, as the biographer Richard Brookhiser has noted, these rules, which Washington derived from a 16th-century guidebook, were not just etiquette tips. They were designed to improve inner morals by shaping the outward man. Washington took them very seriously. He worked hard to follow them. Throughout his life, he remained acutely conscious of his own rectitude.

In so doing, he turned himself into a new kind of hero. He wasn’t primarily a military hero or a political hero. As the historian Gordon Wood has written, “Washington became a great man and was acclaimed as a classical hero because of the way he conducted himself during times of temptation. It was his moral character that set him off from other men.”

Washington absorbed, and later came to personify what you might call the dignity code. The code was based on the same premise as the nation’s Constitution — that human beings are flawed creatures who live in constant peril of falling into disasters caused by their own passions. Artificial systems have to be created to balance and restrain their desires.
The dignity code commanded its followers to be disinterested — to endeavor to put national interests above personal interests. It commanded its followers to be reticent — to never degrade intimate emotions by parading them in public. It also commanded its followers to be dispassionate — to distrust rashness, zealotry, fury and political enthusiasm.

Remnants of the dignity code lasted for decades. For most of American history, politicians did not publicly campaign for president. It was thought that the act of publicly promoting oneself was ruinously corrupting. For most of American history, memoirists passed over the intimacies of private life. Even in the 19th century, people were appalled that journalists might pollute a wedding by covering it in the press.

Today, Americans still lavishly admire people who are naturally dignified, whether they are in sports (Joe DiMaggio and Tom Landry), entertainment (Lauren Bacall and Tom Hanks) or politics (Ronald Reagan and Martin Luther King Jr.).

But the dignity code itself has been completely obliterated. The rules that guided Washington and generations of people after him are simply gone.

We can all list the causes of its demise:

• Capitalism. We are all encouraged to become managers of our own brand, to do self-promoting end zone dances to broadcast our own talents.

• The cult of naturalism. We are all encouraged to discard artifice and repression and to instead liberate our own feelings.

• Charismatic evangelism with its penchant for public confession.

• Radical egalitarianism and its hostility to aristocratic manners.

The old dignity code has not survived modern life. The costs of its demise are there for all to see. Every week there are new scandals featuring people who simply do not know how to act.

For example, during the first few weeks of summer, three stories have dominated public conversation, and each one exemplifies another branch of indignity:

• Mark Sanford’s press conference. Here was a guy utterly lacking in any sense of reticence, who was given to rambling self-exposure even in his moment of disgrace.

• The death of Michael Jackson and the discussion of his life. Here was a guy who was apparently untouched by any pressure to live according to the rules and restraints of adulthood.

• Sarah Palin’s press conference. Here was a woman who aspires to a high public role but is unfamiliar with the traits of equipoise and constancy, which are the sources of authority and trust.

In each of these events, one sees people who simply have no social norms to guide them as they try to navigate the currents of their own passions.

Americans still admire dignity. But the word has become unmoored from any larger set of rules or ethical system.
But it’s not right to end on a note of cultural pessimism, because there is the fact of President Barack Obama.
Whatever policy differences people may have with him, we can all agree that he exemplifies reticence, dispassion and the other traits associated with dignity.

The cultural effects of his presidency are not yet clear, but they may surpass his policy impact. He may revitalize the concept of dignity for a new generation and embody a new set of rules for self-mastery.

David Brooks writes for The New York Times.

The problem with companies who have built their business around free is that it is far from free to remain successful.

The more success you have in delivering free, the more expensive it is to stay at the top. The more success you have, the more important it is to management to remain successful. The more important remaining successful is to management, the more money they will spend, the more chances they will take, the more infrastructure they will build, the more people they will hire. All of the things that will prevent them from staying lean , mean and flexible. All of the things that distract them from innovating within their core competency.

Lets look at the rule that eventually KILLS all freemium based content plays:

There will always be a company that replaces you. At some point your BlackSwan competitor will appear and they will kick your ass. Their product will be better or more interesting or just better marketed than yours, and it also will be free. They will be Facebook to your Myspace, or Myspace to your Friendster or Google to your Yahoo. You get the point. Someone out there with a better idea will raise a bunch of money, give it away for free, build scale and charge less to reach the audience. Or will be differentiated enough, and important enough to the audience to maybe even charge more. Who knows. But they will kick your ass and you will be in trouble.

For Google, who lives and dies by free, we dont know who their BlackSwan company will be. But we all know it will happen don’t we ? The only question is when. Of course Google knows it as well. Which is exactly why they invest in everything and anything they possibly can that they believe can create another business they can depend on in the future. They are spending incredible amounts of money in search of the “next big Google thing”. When their BlackSwan competitor appears, they won’t be in a position to compete with the newly presented model, particularly if its free based because their ecosystem has bloated to the point where they can no longer create anything for free.

Google is not unique. The same happens to all companies based on free.

The same will happen to Facebook, Twitter, pick any company who lives off of free.

Its not that they can’t make money offering free. They can , have and will. The problem is that they know that its literally impossible to be the king of the mountain forever. But that won’t stop them from trying. And that is exactly what will kill them.

Their better choice would be to run the company as profitably as possible, focusing only on those things that generate revenue and put cash in the bank. More importantly, when you see your BlackSwan company appear and you know they will kick your ass, rather than ramping up to try to compete, get out. Sell. Or maximize cash and pay your shareholders every penny you have.

Like every company in the free space, your lifecycle has come to its conclusion. Don’t fight it. Admit it. Profit from it.

Which is exactly what MySpace should do. Rather than trying to reinvent itself to compete better with Facebook, they should do the exact opposite. They should try to optimize whatever monetization opportunities it has. Cut costs to the bone. Maximize revenue per user. Think purely in terms of business. Squeeze every nickel out of it that they possibly can, knowing its going to die a long, slow death. Meanwhile, they have the opportunity to take that money and invest it where they think some young company is preparing to become Google/Facebook/Whoever’s black swan. They can invest alone, or along side others. It doesnt matter. What does matter is recognizing that they have a better chance of beating Facebook by investing in a company they think can pre empt Facebook than by trying to reconfigure MySpace to be that company.

When you succeed with Free, you are going to die by Free. Your best bet is to recognize where you are in your company’s lifecycle and maximize your profits rather than try to extend your stay at the top.

Link to Photo

http://maturemarketexperts.wordpress.com/2009/02/25/steve-jobs/

Instead he adopted the do anything to win mode.

Couple that with having to watch the Republican party doing everything possible to discourage and suppress voting and I am now at the point of officially leaving.

If there were ever a single issue I think could demand my vote it is our right to vote (and for that vote be counted). When a political party has it best chance of winning with fewer voters, then I know which party not to vote for.

2008

• Apr: Industry Loss: Don England of Livewire passed away. Don served as Livewire’s Vice President of Sales and Business Development since joining the company in early 2006.

  Don served as Livewire’s Vice President of Sales and Business Development since joining the company in early 2006. He spent the prior 25 years in a variety of roles beginning his career as a systems analyst with NCR. Don’s largest contributions were in the Point of Sale industry, serving as Vice President of Sales and International Operations with ParTech Incorporated and General Manager of Triversity Corporation.

  Don will be missed.

• Apr: KioskCom in Vegas seemed just a bit smaller than the 2007 show and it is sporting the new "Self Service Expo" tag. I checked with Lawrence. He said 2008 was most definitely larger than 2007 and here are the numbers...

  28% more registrants (3,941), 20% more attendees (2,880) and 12% more pre-qualified buyers (1,598). And should also factor in that over 800 requests for admission were denied b/c the people were non-exhibitng sellers.

• Apr: HP enters the kiosk and self-service market and teams with KIOSK Information Systems.
  

2007

• May: Slabb rises from the ashes and becomes Phoenix systems?
• Apr: Annual KioskCom in Vegas. This year it used the "self-service" mantra and also pointed to its coverage of digital signage (which isn't interactive if its digital signage right?).
• Feb: Touchvision goes under
• Flextronics buy WebRaiser and Dave G. goes to work for Flex
• Major Projects: Amtrak, ARMP, Fujitsu, Dave & Busters, AT&T, Speedway

2006

I'd almost see 2006 as the year that a lot of people left the industry for one reason or another.

A couple of the smaller niche players saw changes. Compar went the route of bankruptcy. They had a quite a few things going so it a significant disruption within the business partner arena.

Protech has always been a small producer of outdoor kiosks. That line is a spinoff from their main business. In 2006 their leader Peter K. left the company. Protech is noted of late for Subway and I heard numbers as high as in the hundreds of installed units. The truth is closer to 50 I think. The new owners probably looked at the business and decided to build on that and move into kiosks in general. We all know tough that can be.

That story is not far off of Meridian who no longer has David P. and is also looking to build a brand.

Another repositioner is/was Slabb. Cy Birg apparently got some significant funding and expanded in many directions, Europe out of Amsterdam being one of the more often noted. Slabb is now competing in many markets but time will tell if it meets expectations. It's an unusual situation. Now its April 2007 and they are restructuring.

Ceroview -- gone after many years.

King -- another restructuring in 2006.

Compar -- another fatality

WebRaiser -- folded into Flextronics and not sure for how much. Hasn't been much heard from WebRaiser since then (or flextronics).

Esprida formed -- Shamira Jaffer and Co. spun off the remote monitoring ala Catapult. Hard to keep track of the changes Touchpoint has gone thru over the year.

But he is the first one I've ever watched wake up.

When I crawled out of my tent that chilly morning, he lay a few yards away, flopped near the water's edge, barefaced under the sky. Soon the two of us were lined up with the others for coffee from the camp stove.

We had covered 13 miles of the Rio Grande in our rafts the previous day, then camped at the mouth of a canyon, 400-foot limestone walls suddenly jutting into the sky. After dinner, we circled the campfire — eight customers, three river guides and Hancock, strumming and singing about "bare footprints on the desert sand" and "blue moonlight on the Rio Grande."

This is a man who has made more than a dozen albums, whose tunes have been sung by Willie Nelson and Emmylou Harris, who has played the Texas governor's mansion and David Letterman's show, who generally sleeps at home with his wife and kids.

But Hancock, 62, is also a river rat. On and off for 20 years, he has been joining raft trips run by local outfitter Far Flung Expeditions, which runs two or three musical Big Bend trips every year with homegrown artists.

For me, the Texas scenery was a big selling point, but it was the Texas soundtrack that closed the deal. For my money, there isn't another state outside of Louisiana that can match Texas as an incubator of a sovereign musical culture, one that's especially rich when it comes to lyrics. Joe Ely, Jimmie Dale Gilmore, Townes Van Zandt, Steven Fromholz, Kinky Friedman, Lyle Lovett, Hancock — and this list could be much longer. They're mostly not names you hear on the radio, but they are voices worth hearing.

Now, as the sun threw a morning blush onto the rock- strewn slopes, the guides rustled up breakfast. The rest of the campers came shambling from their tents. Hancock, laconic and perpetually bemused, shared the small talk and also some not-so-small talk involving architect Buckminster Fuller, mystic G.I. Gurdjieff and the teachings of Buddhism.

When we reached the top of a hike to high ground, he dramatically extended an arm to frame the desert panorama below.

"This," Hancock said, adopting a tone of mock authority, "is actually a perfect example of what can happen."

Who could argue?

It has craggy mountains, cactus-studded slopes, miles of meandering Rio Grande and a couple of born-again ghost towns at its edge, but Big Bend ranks among the National Park Service's least-visited parks, and that won't change anytime soon.

The summers are infernally hot. Except for a handful of days a year, rafters can expect nothing more challenging than a Class III rapid. And if you're from outside Texas, getting here means flying to Midland or El Paso, then driving about five hours while deer, rabbits, coyotes, skunks, armadillos and javelinas scamper and shuffle in and out of your high beams.

On my highway drive from petroleum-scented Midland, I dodged each of those species at least once, along with another, less recognizable furry blur — perhaps the mythical chupacabra. By the time the hills began to undulate and I reached the cheek-by-jowl towns of Terlingua and Study Butte, I had already seen more raw Texas than most outsiders care to.

But there is a payoff.

Remote, gorgeous spots

As the Rio Grande makes it way south and east through the Chisos Mountains — marking the Texas-Mexico border as it goes — the river frequently dwindles to 30 feet wide and as little as a foot deep, but the canyon walls leap up toward heaven. Most days, a child can cross the river in the right spot. But that same river can take a rafter to spots that are remote, rugged and gorgeous enough to satisfy even a well-seasoned desert traveler.

On the day we put in, the water was running 300 cubic feet per second, a flow so scant that the outfitter almost put us into canoes, which are better than rafts in shallow water. But we stuck with rafts and put in at Lajitas, about 10 miles outside Terlingua.

First, we drifted past boulders and tamarisks, a sipping horse here, a sunning turtle there. Then the earth began to ripple and rise on either side of us.

Of three major canyons that cradle the Rio Grande as it passes through Big Bend, the deepest is Santa Elena, an 8-mile passage that's inaccessible by road. And that was the heart of our itinerary, the stretch of water that awaited under those sudden 400-foot cliffs.

After we'd floated awhile, my raftmate Pamela Daggett of Austin got quiet.

"This is making me weep," she whispered.

In wonder and languor, we drifted along, four rafts in a deep declivity in the middle of nowhere. Guides Patrick Harris, Sandi Turvan and Darren Wallace told us about the 22 kinds of bats found in the canyon, the 1,200 kinds of plants, the 450 bird species. Fellow rafter Kelly Schievelbein of Seguin, who had thoughtfully packed premixed Smirnoff cosmopolitans for the river, offered nips.

Hancock rowed alongside us in a raft freighted with supplies, pausing frequently to pull out a camera and shoot close-ups of weird-looking rocks.

Despite the ideal weather, we spotted just one other rafting group. (In spring and fall, the temperatures along the river usually run 70 to 90 degrees by day, 45 to 60 overnight. Our trip was at the low end of that range.)

Everyone aboard was from Texas except me, and Jon and Jodi Houlon, a Philadelphia couple, and most everyone had been hearing for years about the wonders of Big Bend, or listening to Butch, or both.

What, someone asked, inspired the Philadelphians to travel so far? Jon Houlon, lawyer by day and frontman by night for a band called John Train, explained how he had discovered Butch Hancock's music about 25 years ago as a high school student in Maryland. Houlon ordered an album. And because Hancock was then running his own label on a shoestring, he recalled, "I was getting these cassettes in the mail from a trailer park in Austin. My mom was like, 'What is this?' "

Legendary Texas group

Raised on a farm in Lubbock, Hancock wrote some of his first songs while driving tractors. Then in the early 1970s, he and his Lubbock buddies Joe Ely and Jimmie Dale Gilmore formed a group — a legendary group in Texas music circles — called the Flatlanders.

They never set the charts on fire, but through three decades of musical, financial and spiritual ins, outs, ups and downs, all three Flatlanders have forged careers as songwriters and performers, frequently recording one another's material, often joining for reunion gigs and albums.

Hancock's songs have always been dense with wordplay, their melodies plaintive, the guitar work plain, the whole package peppered with twangy riddles. In "West Texas Waltz," he finds rhymes for both "Renaults" and "arthritis." In "Boxcars," he says that "if you ever seen the cold blue railroad tracks / Shinin' by the light of the moon / If you ever felt the locomotive shake the ground / I know you don't have to be told / Why I'm goin' down to the railroad tracks / And watch them lonesome boxcars roll."

Inevitably, given that Hancock works with an acoustic guitar, plays harmonica and will never be mistaken for an opera singer, he has often been compared to Bob Dylan. But what's so Texan, or Zen, about Dylan?

Anyway, Hancock moved in 1997 to Terlingua, where he lives with his wife, son and two stepdaughters in a sprawling, curvaceous, solar-powered home that he's building, room by room, from concrete, beer cans and recycled materials. They share the property with four Airstream trailers and many, many pets, because his wife, Adrienne, is a serial rescuer.

That first night on the river, Hancock sang 17 songs, including one he introduced as "another true story from West Texas, which is like a triple oxymoron." He wrapped up with the love song "Bluebird" (an old favorite that Emmylou Harris has covered) and a war song from last year called "When the Good and the Bad Get Ugly."

Then he thanked us for our applause, pointed up and invited us to join him spotting meteorites. The headliner, in other words, was deferring to other stars. And in such a brilliant sky, with no competing light source for miles, the gazing was priceless.

The canyon swallowed us the next morning. Floating farther and farther in, we ate lunch in Mexico, which is a fancy way of saying we pulled off the river on the right side instead of the left. We skipped stones by the score, scrambled up a fern canyon for a mile or so, drained a few beers, saw nobody.

By nightfall on our second camp, still miles from the end of the canyon, the looming walls had reduced the starry sky to a thin twinkling strip directly above us. Hancock's lyrics bounced around the canyon like bats on the wing, which were present in great numbers, as well. And when I rose from my folding chair at the campfire to stretch my legs, there stood my shadow on the far wall, 75 feet high and flickering. Bright or dim, a handsome canyon.

"I thought it was going to be pretty, but it's just breathtaking," said fellow rafter Dottie Hall.

Hancock played a little longer that second night — about 25 songs, including a couple by Dylan and at least three by Townes Van Zandt, including the one everybody knows, "Pancho and Lefty."

For a few minutes he handed the guitar to Houlon, who couldn't resist playing Johnny Cash's "Big River." Somebody pulled out a bottle of whiskey. Soon it was 11 o'clock.

"I don't want to go to sleep," Houlon said, "because then it'll be tomorrow."

But in the end he did, and it was. We broke camp, eased back into the slow flow and watched the cliffs stretch up to about 1,400 feet, then dwindle to nothing. We skipped a few hundred more stones into Mexico. (Somebody, check a satellite photo, and I'm sure you'll discover that Texas lost territory between Nov. 29 and Dec. 2.)

Then we turned a corner, and it was all over. The sky, that narrow sliver overhead from the night before, was big again. A telephone pole rose in the distance. You could see trails along the shore. Cars. People.

Damn, I thought. And then I remembered a line that Hancock muttered somewhere along the river, saying he was saving it for the right song: "What a world this mess is in."

The Details

GETTING THERE: From Denver International Airport (DEN), American, Continental, Frontier, Southwest and United offer connecting service (change of planes) to Midland, Texas. Restricted round-trip fares begin at $305. From Midland, it's about a five-hour drive to Terlingua.

HOW TO GET ON THE RIVER: Far Flung Outdoor Center: Terlingua/Study Butte; 800-839-7238, farflungoutdoorcenter.com. Two music trips are scheduled so far this year: Butch Hancock (November dates pending) and singer-songwriter Slaid Cleaves (Oct. 24 to 26). Cost is $629 per person, plus tax. The company also offers river trips with stargazing, food and wine themes, and jeep tours.

Other companies that operate in Big Bend include Big Bend River Tours, 800-545-4240, bigbend rivertours.com.; and Desert Sports, 888-989-6900, desertsport stx.com., which also offers hiking and mountain biking.

STAY: Big Bend Motor Inn, 800-848-BEND, bigbendmotor inntx. This is an all-purpose operation, with 49 rooms, a cafe and convenience store, an RV park, a campground, a golf course, an additional 37 rooms at the Mission Lodge across the street, and $2 showers for adventurers emerging from the park. Not much atmosphere but great logistics. Rates $87.15 to $163.45, tax included. (The top price rents a duplex that sleeps six.)

La Posada Milagro, 432-371-3044, laposadamilagro.com. This inn is a reclaimed ghost-town building. Four rooms, of which one has a private bath and shower. It's impractical and overpriced: no TVs or phones, low ceilings. But it's also so atmospheric that you might consider it for a special occasion. Rates $145 to $210.

DINE: The Starlight Theatre, 432-371-2326, starlighttheatre .com. This reclaimed building is the nerve center of reborn Terlingua. The "theatre" serves dinner from 5 to 10 nightly, with frequent live music. Main dishes $10.95 to $29.95 (for a 20-ounce ribeye steak).

MORE INFO: Brewster County Tourism Council, visitbigbend .com.

Dave Gravis -- latest stuff on myspace is best he has ever done.
Joel Weiskopf - Devoted To You -- very nice piano jazz ballads
Jon Mayer -- So Many Stars -- piano jazz with very nice ballads
Jethro Tull -- Best of Acoustic
John McLaughlin - 2 set best of "Essential"
Bruce Hornsby
Camp Meeting
Sony Legacy
2007

Arthur Bliss: Orchestral Study #3 Op 16
English Northern Philharmonia / David Lloyd-Jones
Naxos 553383

Christoph Gluck: Dance of the Blessed Spirits
Academy of Ancient Music / Christopher Hogwood
Lisa Beznosiuk, flute
L'Oiseau-Lyre 410553

Camille Saint-Saens: Rhapsodie d'Auvergne Op 73
Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Andre Previn
Jean-Philippe Collard, piano
EMI 49757

Ned Rorem
Leon Fleisher Plays
# 3 Barcarolles: No.1
# 3 Barcarolles: No.2
# 3 Barcarolles: No.3

Old and Lost Rivers
premiered by the Houston Symphony, conducted by Sergiu Comissiona, on May 10, 1986. The Houston Symphony commissioned Old and Lost Rivers as part of their 1986 Fanfare Project. The project was conceived by the composer, who was at that time the Symphony's Composer-in-Residence; twenty other composers participated.
http://www.tobiaspicker.com/recordings.html#5sacredtrees

Don Ross
http://www.gobyfish.com/Home.html
Extraordinary acoustic guitarist in league with Hedges
Passion Session 1999

Movies

• The Reader -- amazing
  
• Charley Wilson's War - especially funny being from Houston
  
• Revolver -- the most involving movie to date. A study of ego and how it affects us, and rules us. Watch a second time with dialogue playing and the commentary running. Some devastating moments.
  
• Before the Devil Knows You're Dead -- hard to watch since it shows an imploding family but very good.
  
• Fracture -- very good. Reminded me of Chinatown.
  
• Day of the Dog -- not very good.
  
• number 23 -- so so movie
  
• Black Snake Moan -- great movie with great blues but very upfront
  
• The Painted Veil -- romantic drama set in interior China. Ed Norton and Naomi Watts. Very good movie.
  
• Everything is Illuminated -- interesting movie that had me thinking about it for days afterwards. It has a tragicomic irony built into it (like Jean De Florette).
  
• Akeela and the Bee
  
• Christmas in the Clouds -- American Indians make movies too. This one has Graham Greene and Rita Coolidge in it. Terrific music at end.
  
• Illusionist -- interesting movie.
  
• Mrs. Palfrey at the Claremont - great movie
  
• Simon Birch
  
• The Way Home -- 2002 movie of the year in Korea. About a youngboy who has to live with his grandmother for awhile.
  
  ]]> 2008-01-26T21:50:51Z 2008-01-26T22:50:42Z tag:www.keefner.com,2008:/mt-static//2.127 2008-01-26T22:50:42Z
  Single malt scotch used to be something that I avoided. Sometimes we'd do Irish whiskey with beer and I could never remember anything the morning after (that's when I switched to beer). Anyway, seems that I am developing a...
  keefner www.keefner.com craig@keefner.com Scotch
  Single malt scotch used to be something that I avoided. Sometimes we'd do Irish whiskey with beer and I could never remember anything the morning after (that's when I switched to beer). Anyway, seems that I am developing a taste for it after all. ]]> Scotch - a perspective by a ex-Texan, ex-Okie

  Some definition of terms might be a good starting point for this. Real scotch drinkers know about "nosing" and then they taste. Both are considered skills to be developed and honed.

  Nosing

  
  
  • pour some whisky in a nice glass and put a little water in with it (water releases the bouquet so to speak).
    
  • Cover the glass with the palm of your hand and shake firmly.
    
  • Put your nose deep into the glass and take two sharp sniffs
    

  For tasting you add the water and swirl the mix in your mouth before either spitting out, or swallowing.

  I draw a lot of fire for taking extra water with my scotch or having on ice. 95% of the time that fire is coming from people who do not regularly drink scotch but read some Diners Delight article in some magazine. Fact is good scotch is best enjoyed in every which way. With a 72 Glenrothes I tend to have a few drops of water and straight up. Maybe if they drank more they'd understand :-)

  I'm not a big fan of most Syrah so I never tell people how/what to drink in that regard.

  
  
  Nice Scotch in order I have

  
  
  • Glenrothes Select Reserve -- once a quarter
    
  • Aberlour 12 year double cask - once a month
    
  • Jon, Mark & Robbo's Rich & Spicy -- everyday choice
    
  • GlenLivet 14 French Oak
    
  • Macallan Fine Oak & Macallan in general $$$$$
    
  • Glenlivet 12 year old -- everyday choice
    
  • Balvennie 12 year double-wood $$$$$
    
  • Famous Grouse -- very inexpensive and not bad $
    

  And I also have the opportunity to try scotches (some not available anymore) that are in the 300-800 dollar range. Sips...Special thanks to Mr. Snyder is that regard.
  

  
  Exotics - Once a Year
  

  
  
  • Glenrothes 1972
    
  • Balblair 1966
    
  • Macallan 21
    
  • Glenmorangie 1975 Port Oak (one of last bottles left)
    
  • Glen Garioch 15 year
    

  Every once in awhile I am over at a co-worker/friends house and he has quite the assortment of very high end Scotch (40 and 50 year old). Now that's scotch!

  ]]> 2007-11-23T23:32:48Z 2007-11-23T23:31:08Z tag:www.keefner.com,2007:/mt-static//2.140 2007-11-23T23:31:08Z
  Paintings from Joyce Keefner. Joyce is works mostly in oil and is currently living in Arkansas. She was raised in Eastern Oklahoma. Images 13 thru 24....
  keefner www.keefner.com craig@keefner.com Modern Culture Paintings from Joyce Keefner. Joyce is works mostly in oil and is currently living in Arkansas. She was raised in Eastern Oklahoma. Images 13 thru 24.]]>

  

  

  

  

  
  

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  Paintings from Joyce Keefner. Joyce is works mostly in oil and is currently living in Arkansas. She was raised in Eastern Oklahoma. Images 13 thru 24....
  keefner www.keefner.com craig@keefner.com Modern Culture Paintings from Joyce Keefner. Joyce is works mostly in oil and is currently living in Arkansas. She was raised in Eastern Oklahoma. Images 13 thru 24.]]>

  

  

  

  

  

  ]]> 2007-11-23T23:37:51Z 2007-11-23T21:33:16Z tag:www.keefner.com,2007:/mt-static//2.141 2007-11-23T21:33:16Z
  Paintings from Joyce Keefner. Joyce is works mostly in oil and is currently living in Arkansas. She was raised in Eastern Oklahoma. Images 1 thru 12....
  keefner www.keefner.com craig@keefner.com Modern Culture Paintings from Joyce Keefner. Joyce is works mostly in oil and is currently living in Arkansas. She was raised in Eastern Oklahoma. Images 1 thru 12.]]>

  

  

  

  

  
  

  ]]> 2007-11-23T23:38:31Z 2007-11-23T15:05:09Z tag:www.keefner.com,2007:/mt-static//2.138 2007-11-23T15:05:09Z
  Paintings from Joyce Keefner. Joyce is works mostly in oil and is currently living in Arkansas. She was raised in Eastern Oklahoma. Images 1 thru 12....
  keefner www.keefner.com craig@keefner.com Modern Culture Paintings from Joyce Keefner. Joyce is works mostly in oil and is currently living in Arkansas. She was raised in Eastern Oklahoma. Images 1 thru 12.]]>

  

  

  

  

  

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