Interesting Links for 11-01-2012

[andrewducker]

• The Biggest Change in DNS Since Dot-Com
  (tags: internet names )
• Positive-Case-For-The-Union Watch
  (tags: scotland independence uk funny )
• Olivia’s Invention Workshop (one of those new girl-friendly Lego sets)
  (tags: women lego )
• The Myth of The 12-Year Old McDonald's Burger That Just Won't Rot (Now with Science!)
  (tags: science food mcdonalds )
• Patients to access NHS records via web by 2015
  (tags: healthcare web nhs uk )
• The Restart Page - How many do you recognise?
  (tags: reboot technology windows mac computers )
• Virgin Media to double the speed of customer broadband
  Looks like I'll be going to 60Mbps for free!
  (tags: virgin broadband internet )

Comments

[simont]

Looks like I'll be going to 60Mbps for free!

Ha, I'll believe that when I see it. I just attempted to get myself upgraded from 10Mbps to 30Mbps, and despite no end of faffing with a new modem, signing new pieces of paper, reacquiring a year of contract lockin and so on, I have yet to actually see an improved download rate from any site I've tested.

[andrewducker]

I doubt any individual site will give you a download speed about 2MBps - I've not encountered one, no matter what speed connection I'm on.

I have been able to have multiple downloads going that were each huge though.

[simont]

I tried that too, but no joy there either.

I'm hoping that they're still just shuffling paper around and will actually bump my speed in another week or so once my signed contract finds its way into the right pair of hands. If there turns out to be an actual technical difficulty, I'll be rather less hopeful that it'll ever be sorted out!

[andrewducker]

They don't actually have the faster speeds in my area yet. You can check yours here. If you look under "When will I get them?" then there's a PDF with the planned exchange upgrades.

[philmophlegm.livejournal.com]

What speed do you get if you test at http://www.uswitch.com/broadband/speedtest/?gclid=CKr6ycX7x60CFYEmtAod8A8Biw ?

[octopoid-horror.livejournal.com]

I'm paying Virgin for 30mb, and at 4 in the afternoon on a weekday, I get 28.4. Tasty :-)

[andrewducker]

Right now I'm getting 3.2/0.2 - but I'm fairly sure that I'm currently capped by Virgin for downloading oodles of stuff this afternoon. I'll try again when I haven't been doing that...

[andrewducker]

This morning - 13.8 down and 0.5 up. Much better! (Looking forward to doubling that up speed in March, and then going up to 60MB in October.)

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

Ah yeah, I was looking at that lego catalogue the other day, there's a whole range of girl friendly lego now, it's all very depressing.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

Are they all as bloody awful as that one?

[andrewducker]

I think that one's great. Lots of sciencey stuff in it, blackboards, jars in different colours, etc. The only thing that makes it any different from other lego kits is the figure.

[momentsmusicaux.livejournal.com]

It's all pink and pastel colours for no good reason. The lego figure isn't one. And it's not real lego any more -- just lots of specialized pieces; nothing you can actually build for yourself with.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

This is actually the good one. The others were things like 'Pet Patrol', or 'Little Home Baker', that comes complete with a range of lego brooms and cooking pots. Or 'hair salon'.

Ugh. Livejournal seems to be down again, it's taking me repeated attempts to try and post this.

[andrewducker]

I don't see why. They discovered that girls weren't playing with the lego that they had nearly as much as boys were, asked a bunch of them why, and then made the stuff they asked for. And they're doing awesome things like women scientists. Sounds good to me.

[gonzo21.livejournal.com]

For every woman scientist, there's a Butterfly Beauty Salon:

http://shop.lego.com/en-GB/Butterfly-Beauty-Shop-3187

Or as my partner put it when browsing the catalogue, 'How come boys get all this cool stuff, but girls get stuck with a beauty salon?'

[andrewducker]

Some people want to play with beauty salons. Really, they do.

Now, in an ideal world, there would be both male and female figures in the beauty salon, and in the space shuttle kit. And hopefully Lego will do more of that. But the fact that there wasn't a beauty salon at all was pretty fucking appalling.

[recycled-sales.livejournal.com]

Surely the idea isn't to convert girls who already play with lego, it's to entice those that don't into giving it a go, with a view to them buying the non-gender specific kits later.

When I grew up there was a variety of themed lego kit, but there were always the boxes of bricks that you could make whatever you wanted with.

[bemused-leftist.livejournal.com]

I bet the MacDonald's burger would dissolve in Pepsi, though.

[andrewducker]

Someone on Vice.com was doing a test of this, but their post vanished after a few days. I'd love to see how long it takes a mouse to dissolve in orange juice, for instance.

[lizzie-and-ari.livejournal.com]

"I'd love to see how long it takes a mouse to dissolve in orange juice"

You're weird.

:)

[strangemeetings.livejournal.com]

The 'lego for girls' thing has been around for ages -- I remember playing with scala/ belleville in the mid/late 90s, which both had larger figures and the same pastel-coloured bricks/controversially domestic themes as the new stuff.

To add to the debate up the thread, I liked and played with the 'girly' stuff (as well as all the standard lego), and appear to have turned out fine/feminist/career-minded despite it ;).

Even earlier (late eighties/early nineties) I had a duplo dolls' house, although that was in standard rather than pastel colours, and I've no idea whether it was marketed specifically at girls.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, I have a loathing for the idea that one can't be a feminist and like playing with traditionally girly things. The important thing is to have a choice, and not to try and push values onto people.

[strangemeetings.livejournal.com]

Ditto. It's awful if girls are forbidden from playing with 'boy's toys' (or boys aren't allowed dolls), but honestly? Lots of girly stuff is awesome fun.

Maybe I've turned out ok cos my favourite lego theme was the Indiana Jones rip off one that they did before they got the Indiana Jones licence, though ;).

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

Having defended Lego's decision to produce loads of "girl-friendly" kits and most of Andrew's wider points, I do have to point out that they have apparently followed it up with a massive sexism fail, as follows.

If you are a child who likes Lego then you can sign up to recieve the Lego Club magazine, a free quarterly mag with comic strips and games, a bunch of thinly-veiled advertising obviously, but it's not too bad, and the kids enjoy having their own magazine in the post.

Today is Lego Club day, and an awful lot of girls whose parents ticked the "girl" box on the form have recieved "New Lego Girls Club" magazine, full of Lego Friends and Lego City stuff, whilst their brothers recieved "Lego Club" magazine - note the absence of "Boys" in the title - full of Lego City, Indiana Jones, Ninjago, Star Wars etc. Mumsnet is NOT HAPPY. http://www.mumsnet.com/Talk/am_i_being_unreasonable/1381119-To-be-really-annoyed-with-Lego-Club
NB that this is all according to Mumsnet (I don't know from personal experience because we only got one for Tiny, who is a boy, so today's was the normal edition) - I can't find any reference to it on the website.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, that's just wrong. I bumped into a similar thing out shopping yesterday, where the outdoors shop had "Sweaters" and "Women's Sweaters". Not nearly as bad in scale, but that kind of thing just bothers me.