Interesting Links for 15-11-2011
Nov. 15th, 2011 11:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
andrewducker- How Barnet Council tried to criminalise all bloggers
- Amazon Owns the Web in More Ways Than You Think
- Stalking – in person or online – to be made an offence.
- Alan Turing, Alan Garner, Walt Disney and The Wicked Witch
- The trouble with video games isn't the violence. It's that most of the characters are dicks
- New system of intelligent management of street lighting enables 80% savings in energy
- PC sales down by 11% in third quarter of 2011. Blip, or are PCs dying?
- Income Tax/NI to be merged, and people to have online access to their tax records.
- Barnes & Noble reveals Microsoft's patent strategy against Android
- Wine could be sold in recyclable paper bottles.
- Sir Jimmy Savile's coffin encased in concrete. Presumably to prevent him from initiating the zombie apocalypse.
- Congress: Trading stock on inside information?
- How the BBC's HD DRM plot was kept secret … and why
- Harry Potter Director Bringing Doctor Who to Big Screen (with its own continuity - I approve)
- A mod for Skyrim that replaces the spiders with bears. I'd like one of these for real life.
- Massive networks of stripes appear in Chinese Desert
- Bruce Wayne's medical records
- Intel 4004, the first CPU, is 40 years old today
- Is reading on the loo bad for you?
- High childhood IQ linked to subsequent illicit drug use
- Conflict mineral laws haven't helped Congolese.
- BBC drops Frozen Planet's climate change episode to sell show better abroad (read, to the USA)
Tags:
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- computergames,
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no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 11:10 am (UTC)I think this would make life dangerous.
(*) Warning -- not actually true of spiders.
I think Jimmy has been encased in concrete to put him permanently beyond use by dissident republicans.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 11:13 am (UTC)And thus terribly, terribly cute.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 11:14 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 11:16 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 01:12 pm (UTC)For the bears, certainly.
(so...assuming a spherical bear, should one try HCP or FCC?)
no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 01:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-18 08:13 pm (UTC)Y'know, in case the bears are now creeping you out.
It requires the first mod.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 11:10 am (UTC)Then again, I am still in shock from the sheer bloody awfulness of Tintin.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 12:08 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 12:19 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 01:02 pm (UTC)Found poetry
Date: 2011-11-15 11:50 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 12:48 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 12:53 pm (UTC)I would read the last article and rant about climate change deniers but I'm not currently in a foul mood and would like to stay that way. I think my blood pressure will thank me.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 04:20 pm (UTC)Hm. I'm familiar with the idea that newspaper columnists are often thoughtprovoking or gratuitously provoking by apparently idly proposing a contrary train of thought to what their presumed readers normally think (either what the columnist thinks, or the opposite), couched in very provocative language. It often reads something like "Hey, I propose that when we say widgets are awesome, they're as good as all that, but no-one would read that, so instead I'll say widgets are POSITIVELY AWFUL."
I think what stands out here is the sheer density of the article taken up with it. He proposes (I assume contrary to his usual opinions):
* Videogames are wussy
* Wussy is bad
* Gay is bad
* Sexual submission/dominance is bad
* Dumb plotting that makes the character look like a jerk is "the" major problem with videogames.
His actual point seems to be buried somewhere in the last element, but it's somewhat hard to see. I think it's true that traditional videogame logic ("OK, the player has to do X, so here's an unbelievably flimsy excuse") that we get used to feeds in to the cheapening of violence in many videogames, but I'm not sure if it's actually much worse than either alone or not. And I'm losing my sense of perspective: I'm not sure if you linked to it because you were interested in his underlying point, or in how he was rather crass in making it...
no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 04:24 pm (UTC)And I don't think he had a point, per se. He was just riffing in an amusing manner, which is what I usually read him for.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 09:35 pm (UTC)Also, the link about PC sales - what is a PC sale? Is it buying a whole pre-built PC? Or a case? Or a component? I've not bought a whole PC at once for some years, as I recall. I've bought components though.
no subject
Date: 2011-11-15 11:48 pm (UTC)But now I can't tell. I think macho=homoerotic is a stereotype that has often been used very negatively, but now isn't, but I'm naturally cautious of using negative stereotypes humorously, because even if it IS used positively, it can still perpetuate the stereotype. But I definitely can't tell, so I'll trust others' judgement on it.