Interesting Links for 24-12-2011

[andrewducker]

• The world's lowest-tech iPhone speaker looks gorgeous.
  (tags: iphone apple music design )
• World Champion Masturbator, Masanobu Sato, Expands On His Favorite Hobby
  (tags: masturbation video )
• iWatchz - Wear your iPod nano like a watch.
  (tags: ipod watch apple )
• Dutch TV is the first to show cannibalism by the show host!
  (tags: cannibalism tv )
• Frame-by-frame analysis of the first Hobbit trailer
  (tags: TheHobbit trailers )
• 3D Printing is a billion dollar industry and is almost ready to explode into the mainstream
  (tags: 3d printing Technology )
• Rolling stuff down hills in Skyrim.
  (tags: games physics ComputerGames )
• NHS board bans smoking in grounds. I do not approve.
  (tags: smoking nhs scotland )
• Obama's abysmal record on civil liberties
  (tags: barackobama rights usa epicfail )
• The world's 42nd fastest supercomputer does not exist (and is owned by Amazon)
  (tags: amazon computing )
• Helen Mirren wants to play The Doctor.
  (tags: HelenMirren drwho )
• LJ on their new comment system: IT'S BETTER. STOP WHINING. LA!LA!LA!LA! YOU LOVE IT REALLY!
  (tags: livejournal epicfail )
• John Carmack on the value of static code analysis
  (tags: code development johncarmack )

Comments

[autopope.livejournal.com]

As Big Brother infected us from the Netherlands, I expect future reality TV shows in the UK to be brightened up by the prospect of the contestants eating one another. This would actually be a significant improvement ...

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

It's like we're living in the kind of dystopian near-future that I read about in slightly hackneyed sci-fi books when I was younger! Televised combat to the death must surely be next.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

That's the main news channels every night, live from Kabul or Baghdad.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

They seem to shy away from showing actual combat but rather drool over that aftermath a lot of the time.

Until we're watching cage fights between condemned criminals on nanotech optical HUDs, it won't feel like the future.

[chess]

The coverage of Libya seemed to be less shy, there were definitely actual launches of those shoulder-mounted rockets and stuff blowing up on screen on the BBC; and the coverage of the protests is all about the police violence, although I'm not sure how much that gets through to the mainstream media because I've been avoiding its coverage thereof to keep my anger levels down :).

[poisonduk.livejournal.com]

Why don't you approve of the smoking ban in hospital grounds!? I welcome it. NHS Scotland bend over backwards to provide quit smoking help to any patients. Having watched a mother die from lung cancer and having to fight through a smoke blanket at the entrance to the Western General to go hold her hand whilst she struggled to breathe, I wholeheartedly support all hospitals banning smoking within their grounds. I appreciate it's an addiction, no different to alcohol or drugs, but think any steps taken to make it more difficult should be gladly received!

[andrewducker]

Because I disapprove of anything that makes it harder for elderly relatives to visit sick people. My grandmother spent a lot of time visiting my grandfather before he died, and she wouldn't have been able to if she'd been banned from smoking on the grounds. The last thing I want is to make life _more_ stressful for people when they're having a shit time of it already.

[firecat]

The appalling non-accessibility of hospitals would be a good place to start, if you ask me. (Maybe that's only true around here, though.)

[andrewducker]

Anything which makes it harder for sick people to be visited by their loved ones is absolutely not ok by me.

[andrewducker]

I know about passive smoking. If they can enforce "not smoking on the property" then they can enforce "only smoking in the shelters", which would be absolutely fine by me.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

To me, smokers clustered around the doorway to their place of work or a bar, puffing away before going back in to whatever they were doing, look fairly similar to dodgy old guys sitting in a park looking shady and drinking cans of special brew or cheap cider.

The banning of smoking in lots of places has done wonders for making it look more like the addiction that it is.

[andrewducker]

Oh yes. And I'm generally in favour of the smoking ban in pubs, etc. This just feels like a step too far when we still have loads of smokers, who are more commonly elderly and likely to be spending time around hospitals.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Am I correct in thinking that the number of smokers in the UK has dropped in recent years? I'm sure I saw something along those lines... I wonder how the drop in smokers versus the rise in prices affects the tax revenues from it.

[andrewducker]

That would be an interesting graph.

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

Although I presume the loss of revenue from that and the (hoped for) decline in alcohol consumption would be offset by the lessened cost of healthcare.

But, to be bleak about things, I wonder how the costs incurred by the health problems brought on by smoking and drinking match against the costs of simply living longer because you don't smoke and drink. Mortality is complicated, someone find an actuary and a health insurance assessor!

[laplor.livejournal.com]

With the level of allergies I have, I had a lot of trouble running the gauntlet of smokers at the hospital doors before smoking on hospital grounds was banned here.

I am biased though, both of my parents died of diseases directly related to their constant smoking - which was also a contributing factor to the allergies and asthma that may eventually kill me.

[andrewducker]

Oh, I also think that people should stop smoking, and they shouldn't be doing it by the hospital doors. But the answer to the latter is to ensure that they use the provided shelters, and the answer to the former is long-term education.

[autopope.livejournal.com]

I'm with Andrew on this. (And I'm a non-smoker with occasional asthma who hates cigarette smoke.)

It's also going to cause some smokers to discharge themselves from hospital prematurely, at risk of their lives.

At least providing free nicotine patches would be a minimum step ...!

[chess]

(and to the visitors as well - it seems that there is supposedly 'extensive quit smoking help' available to the patients already, but probably not to the visitors...)

[skreidle.livejournal.com]

I got a simple black silicone iWatchz band with my new Nano last month for my birthday. :) I do like some of the classier bands, but I can't quite see paying as much as they want for 'em!