Interesting Links for 7-1-2011

[andrewducker]

• Why government can't stop big bonus payments
  (tags: pay government bonus banking)
• Diabetes Defeated by a Microchip? Silicon Pancreas To Treat London Patients in 2011
  (tags: diabetes technology TheFuture cybernetics)
• Magnetic declination - see the animated GIF of shifting magnetism near the bottom. Very impressive.
  (tags: maps geography compass navigation declination)
• How to write good code (now pinned up next to my desk)
  (tags: code xkcd funny development programming comic)
• Sniffing women's tears reduces sexual arousal in men.
  (tags: behavior chemistry crying psychology research)
• Eastern European nations begin seizing private pensions
  (tags: pensions europe wtf)
• Android is insecure.
  (tags: android google mobile_phones)
• Apple unwraps app store for Macs. I wonder if Steam should be thinking about branching out to non-gaming apps...
  (tags: steam macintosh apple computers)
• Incentives to sue to be banned - I had no idea this was allowed in the first place. WTF?
  (tags: law uk)
• New solar panel tech is half the price of existing systems, and environmentally friendly (No data on how long to market though)
  (tags: energy solarpower electricity technology)
• WikiLeaks’ Assange Threatened Lawsuit Over Leaked Diplomatic Cables. (He's clearly not the most balanced of people)
  (tags: wikileaks JulianAssange)
• Fezzes Aren't Cool - Mark Waid on why the eleventh Doctor is awesome.
  (tags: drwho MarkWaid)
• Twenty stupid laws.
  (tags: funny law)

Comments

[pseudomonas]

It is though that due to readily available and very low-cost materials the manufacturing price will be around 50 percent less than the current lowest cost thin-film solar cells, and will match the unsubsidised cost of electricity generated from fossil fuels.

Wow. I wonder how firm the evidence is on this.

[andrewducker]

Indeedy.

Also, how scalable, and how long it will take to get it on the market.

[pseudomonas]

Anything that *actually* offers power at ≤ price of fossil fuels will get on market as soon as possible. The question is whether this actually does, and whether the cost of the land on which to place the panels has been included in this.

[pseudomonas]

assuming that it's actually used for power gen on a reasonable scale, rather than just in small panels on buildings, I guess - but even then you have installation and maintenance costs.

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

"..until he ate fish custard and I was instantly sold on the genius of Matt Smith."

And that's pretty much the moment I was instantly put off him. Give me the subtle oddness of Jon Pertwee any day.

Then again I've liked the new series as a whole much less than the classic series. I've just been watching some early Sylvester McCoy, including a bit in Paradise Towers that I remember haunted me for ages as a kid. That I enjoyed, and it wasn't even remotely as good as some of the Jon Pertwee/Tom Baker stories.

That said, I could never rank the different Doctors since they each bring something unique to the role (except to say that Tom Baker is clearly the best, or maybe Patrick Troughton, or...), and Matt Smith is not without some charm.

[a-pawson.livejournal.com]

The rebooted programme (Ecclestone onwards) bears little resemblance to the show before that. But that's not really surprising - television has changed dramatically since 1989. I doubt very much if even a series comprised of the very best of the Pertwee/Baker stories would be popular with a mainstream audience in 2011.

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

It's true, and it's a terrible shame -- even if Doctor Who got a bit 80s-tastic at times!

There are some stories (The Invasion, The War Games, The Silurians, The Daemons, The Green Death, The Talons of Weng Chiang, Horror of Fang Rock, and others) which really stand the test of time, but they'd all be dismissed these days as "too slow", or "the monsters are just guys in rubber suits" (feh!).

These days we get super-fast paced action, the latest CG special effects (if you care for that sort of thing), slick dialogue (if there's time for any), emotionally charged drama, and it's all a bit... I don't know, tiring perhaps. Maybe I'm getting old too quickly :P

[khbrown.livejournal.com]

I'd agree in part.

Over the past year or so I've watched pretty much all the first through fourth doctors material that is extant. One of the things that really comes through is just how slowly paced many of the stories are. In part it's probably worse when watching six episodes back-to-back rather than in 25 minute bursts as would have been the case at the time, but not just that.

But then, reading the production history, I think that the BBC didn't help either by their penny-pinching approach towards the show, as with the first Jon Pertwee season, all earth-bound and with three seven part stories. Equally, however, some of these stories had interesting ideas - on the one hand Inferno goes on too long but on the other it investigates parallel / alternate futures in a way that the supposedly time travel based series rarely did.

The cheap and cheerful effects are part of the charm of it to me. They tried.

[bracknellexile.livejournal.com]

XKCD's been a bit hit and miss recently, but today's one was just spot on. I'm tempted to print and pin to the wall too - and send it to my boss.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

New solar panel tech is ... announced every few weeks, as a prototype. I'm hopeful that in a few years one or more of these will come to market and make a big impact, but right now it seems mostly research and continual churn. Churn as the impression that now isn't the time to invest, next year's one is going to be much better.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I'm hopefuly but sceptical. Advances do appear all the time, and I know that PV is slowly improving, but we never seem to get the sudden large improvements that are promised.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

It's interesting to read that Assange had little interest in censoring the names of civilians when the Afghan war documents were leaked.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, the more I hear about him, the less I like.

[robhu.livejournal.com]

I guess the thing is to focus on the leaks and follow the Assange news in the same way one might read Hello magazine.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, I don't think issues of his personality or behaviour should influence how we feel about the leaks themselves.

[anton-p-nym.livejournal.com]

I never liked Assange; he gave off some creepy vibes even before this whole mess, vibes that made me think there were more to the charges against him than just governmental vindictiveness.

I like the idea of a site allowing whistleblowers to post evidence of their claims without risk of repercussions, though.

-- Steve won't let that influence his opinion of the site... he can still appreciate art made by rat-bastards. (Good thing, too, or there'd be a lot less art to appreciate.)

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Android security -- fuck. How the hell does it work anyway? And also, WTF post-2.3? This sort of fix should be released as an update to EVERY version that is still current.

[andrewducker]

I totally agree.

My next phone (if it is Android), will most definitely be one with a stock OS on it, without any additional stuff from either the manufacturer or the network operator. That way I'll be able to upgrade it without waiting for the changes to flow through the system.

The current setup is a disaster waiting to happen.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

The way forward may be to
1) buy the hardware that you want
2) Re-install stock OS

[andrewducker]

I'm covered by my phone company's insurance at the moment, and am a tad worried that installing a different OS might violate the warranty.

I'll have to have a check...

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

I can't believe you are spreading anti-dacryphilia propaganda.

They have feelings too you know and their sexuality is just as valid as your cis-based patriarchal heterosexual binary gender sexuality!

Why, I know many very normal and adjusted people who have to hide their sexuality just because of articles like this, you bastard!

[andrewducker]

When I'm world dictator, I'll give them something to cry about!

[bart-calendar.livejournal.com]

And submissive dacryphiliacs suddenly flock to your blog like it's porn.