Interesting Links for 20-11-2013

• How Facebook is using you for advertising.
  (tags: facebook advertising )
• How I Lost Faith in the Pro-Life Movement
  (tags: abortion politics feminism women )
• Tram line helps seal computer firm office deal
  (tags: trams business edinburgh )
• Cameron 'should start liberal party', apparently.
  (tags: libdem conservatives politics uk )
• Genetic Russian Roulette (Here, have some things to worry about if you're going to have children)
  (tags: children genetics behaviour education )
• The Hyper-Efficient, Highly Scientific Scheme to Help the World's Poor
  (tags: economics statistics poverty research )
• Coal continues to dominate global carbon emissions
  (tags: coal globalwarming co2 )
• I'm fairly sure that wearing any of these is grounds for divorce
  (tags: clothes ewwwwwwwww )
• Gut Bacteria Might Guide The Workings Of Our Minds
  (tags: bacteria brains personality )
• Scotland's future: Your 10 independence questions
  (tags: independence scotland )
• English Has a New Preposition, Because Internet
  (tags: language internet english )

What I don't like about voice control

I was chatting to Nick about voice control on the Kinect/XBox One - and the fact that when either of us is alone we don't tend to speak much, if at all - so the thought of talking to the machinery feels very odd.

And I realised the other reason I don't like it - the failure mode of typing is that I hit a wrong key, with a recovery action of "stare at the keyboard and make sure I press the right one next" but the failure mode of voice control is that nothing happens, and the recovery mode is "Try again repeatedly, with no real idea of what you need to do differently to make it work".

I find "things not doing what they're supposed to" incredibly frustrating - it's one of the main drivers of my computing knowledge - struggling for ages with computers, until I've fixed whatever the problem was, is a great way to learn how they work. But a voice interface is mushy and vague, it's not something I _can_ understand without seeing all sorts of diagnostics which just aren't available to the users. Which, largely, means it's just not for me.