Interesting Links for 9-9-2011

[andrewducker]

• The Cognitive Neuroscience of Liberals and Conservatives
  (tags: psychology politics neuroscience conservatives liberal usa)
• Delivering fast boot times in Windows 8.
  (tags: windows8 windows operatingsystems technology computers)
• Nuclear power is still popular in the UK
  (tags: nuclear power energy uk society)
• Gene linked to fat storage capacity
  (tags: genetics health weight fat)
• On fantasy, technology, and what so many writers get wrong. And where _do_ Elves make Lembas?
  (tags: elves lembas lotr technology fantasy writing)
• How to tell if your kitty loves you
  (tags: kittens death funny comic)
• How open is Mozilla? (About as open as you can get. Possibly opener.)
  (tags: mozilla firefox opensource transparency)
• Amazon setting up lockers where you can pick up parcels (in central London)
  (tags: amazon uk london)
• End of UK local dialling in sight as numbers run out
  (tags: uk telephone telecoms)
• In the Shadow of Saturn - an amazing photo (with Earth as a tiny blue dot)
  (tags: photo saturn astronomy)

Comments

[birguslatro]

That Amazon 'solution' is no solution at all. The solution is for the lockers to be at people's homes. If it's possible to receive money more or less securely from an ATM machine, it's equally possible for a delivery person to insert a parcel securely into a box at the door to people's homes.

Why postal services aren't all feverishly working out how to perfect this is beyond me. They're all losing business due to people switching from paper to electronic mail, while at the same time people are buying more and more stuff online to be delivered direct to their door. And the latter falls down because letter boxes weren't designed to securely accept parcels. Upgrade the letter boxes to secure 'parcel boxes' and the postal service becomes highly useful again.

[andrewducker]

I'm not sure where they'd put something like that near me.

[birguslatro]

As part of the front door?

[andrewducker]

I can't see the post office carving holes in everyone's front doors. Or there being a cheap method for putting a unique locker by everyone's home. Far better to have them in a centeral, but local, location.

There's a shopping centre about a five minute walk from here. Putting a bunch of lockers there would make them handy for several thousand people.

[birguslatro]

You'd be charged for it, of course. (Unless whoever invents it first would consider it worth it to offer it free.) And what you'd be paying for is the convenience of having things delivered safely to your door. As having central locations for unique lockers have been around for decades, and possibly centuries. They're called PO Boxes and you could get one near you for a small yearly fee, I'm sure.

My guess is only Americans will 'get' this. It's why they were the first with drive-in movies, drive-thru check-outs, pizzas delivered cooked to your front door and, of course, ATM machines. (Just guessing for each of those, but I'm sure it's mostly right.) Service matters, and there's money in it.

[andrewducker]

The problem there for me is that the last parcel I got from Amazon was a foot by two feet in size. How, exactly, are they going to post that through a hole in my door without allowing access to passing criminals?

I shouldn't have to reserve a PO Box for my general use. The whole point of the Amazon approach is that when a parcel arrives it is put into an empty box, and I collect it from there. I have access to that box for as long as it has my parcel in it, and then it will be used for the next person. One box per person would be horribly inefficient.

[birguslatro]

How, exactly, are they going to post that through a hole in my door without allowing access to passing criminals?

It's one of the technical problems that have to be worked out. It'd need a hole to receive the parcel, which would then be checked by machine and accepted or rejected as the case may be. ie. Place parcel in hole. Door on hole closes. Machine checks parcel and either says 'Thank you.' and moves parcel to another compartment before opening the hole door again, or it just opens hole door and says 'Take it back please - I'm not expecting this.'

Size will always be a problem, as there'll always be a parcel that's bigger than your box's door. So expect different box sizes to suit different needs and budgets. And the early adopters will be people who want the convenience of such a service and damn the expense.

[http://users.livejournal.com/la_marquise_de_/]

Ah, lembas. The marquis solved this one years ago. Round the back at Rivendell and Lothlorien and all other elven habitations are the hydroponics gardens, run by Very Serious Elves called things like Nigeldor and Jonathandil. They back you into corners at parties to talk about organic hemp and hand-loomed buckwheat socks, and the Elrond types groan and run away (and lock them in cupboards).

[anef.livejournal.com]

Makes sense to me.

[strawberryfrog.livejournal.com]

retelling the Wars of the Roses in all but name

... Namecheck on all but name to A Game of Thrones?

[spacelem.livejournal.com]

I like nuclear power. Nothing about how an outdated and flawed design was hit by an earthquake, and a tsunami, and melted down several times, and still no one died made me think that it was in any way worse than, say, any other form of power generation with their orders of magnitudes higher deaths per Tera Watt.

I was amazed at so many people failed to notice how completely safe NP is after all that. Sadly, it seems that the only party that supports NP these days is Conservative. Meh.

[ajr.livejournal.com]

No-one's died yet. More than a few people were subjected to massive exposures, to which time will tell if they develop cancers from it.

There also seems to be a lot of FUD in Japan about NP and Fukushima at the moment. There a a good article in the Guardian Weekend yesterday.

[kurosau.livejournal.com]

Man, that lembas article is doing my head in. I think I always react negatively to articles like that, given the sheer amount of assumption they make. It's pre-industrial, not pre-mechanical, he doesn't say that Elves don't grow grains or collect the natural grains that don't occur on farmland, and when you're talking about nations that persisted for a thousand years, I think it's safe to assume that they had the machining capabilities to craft their current level of technology.

Granted, other writers hand wave, I'm sure, but this just doesn't work as an analysis of Tolkien. You don't have to mention everything explicitly to make it work, but you do need to create the illusion of a breathing world that'll support the assumption that things like button making equipment exists. And if there's anyone who made for a convincing world builder, Tolkien is it.