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Comment by mikeash | Hacker News Reader

These ideas are all contradictory. What a pointless article. Throw a bunch of random ideas in the air and see what sticks. If B&N fails, you can point to all the ideas they didn't follow and blame the failure on that. If B&N succeeds, you can point to the ideas they did follow (for these ideas cover the entire universe of possible action, so they will end up following some of them just by chance) and claim credit.

Dumb.

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>These ideas are all contradictory.

Yes.

>What a pointless article.

No, you missed the point.

No, YOU missed the point:

Throw a bunch of random ideas in the air and see what sticks. If B&N fails, you can point to all the ideas they didn't follow and blame the failure on that.

That's all TFA is. Most of the "ideas" are so impractical they wouldn't work for a local mom-n-pop bookstore, let alone a giant chain like B&N. If any of these "experts" spent more than ten minutes on their idea I'll eat my hat.

I don't suppose you'd care to tell me what point I supposedly missed? Because just telling me I missed the point without explaining is, well, pointless.

> Over the past several days, commentators have burst forth with a cacophony of competing ideas for your revival. The following list contains some potentially promising options for you to consider:

Which doesn't suddenly give it a point, that just shows they're aware of what they're doing. Spamming suggestions some of which they will fall into by chance is silly.

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