Interesting Links for 21-02-2012

[andrewducker]

• Technological progress not slow or steady, but superexponential
  (tags: technology thefuture )
• Why not pipe the water from north to south England?
  (tags: water drought uk )
• Steam/Valve’s Gabe Newell talks wearable computers, why consoles should open up, and game ownership
  (tags: steam software computer_games copyright drm )
• Dutch

Comments

[danieldwilliam]

I think transporting water around the UK is going to be very, very, very expensive and we'd be better served spending the money on demand reduction.

Or relocating some of our industry and population to parts of the country with water.

[danieldwilliam]

It is unclear to me how men not seeing the advert on Oxford Street will make them aware of gender discrimination.

[andrewducker]

They'll be aware that they're being discriminated against for being men!

Personally, I think it's a stroke of genius - very few people will see the actual ad, huge numbers more have heard about it via the free advertising it's getting on the news services.

[danieldwilliam]

Sorry, what I'm not clear about from the article is how I, approaching the advert as a man, will be aware that I am not seeing it in all its glory. What will I experience that will make me aware that, were I not a man (90% of the time) I would see something different / better?

[andrewducker]

I believe that you have to deliberately choose to interact with the billboard, and then it either plays its video, or tells you that if you want to know more you'll have to visit a website.

[undeadbydawn]

dear games website:

the most likely result of you needlessly splitting an article over several pages is that I will only read the first page. Which is fucking irritating. Stop it.
Back to the point, though - I remember a flood of angry letters to the Official PS Mag when FFIX was given 9/10 for being 'too much like other FF games', while the most recent Tomb Raider sequel was given a perfect 10/10. I was also bloody furious about it, primarily because it was editorially inconsistent. If you're punishing a good game for being a sequel, you should punish a mediocre game for being a sequel.

the video ad: would serve mostly to remind me why I don't have a TV, and why I rip DVDs. Clever enough to be entirely self-defeating. The one thing I will not do is remember to [or pull my phone out and] check a website because a bus-stop told me to.

[undeadbydawn]

recent best estimates are that 60% of water piped in England is lost via damaged pipes.

fixing the infrastructure [which is massively expensive] would do rather a lot to cure existing drought levels, with no need for piping in from the north.
Scotland also sells rather a lot its surplus supply to England already.

[my data is almost certainly out of date, can't be bothered checking]

[alitheapipkin]

I don't know the actual figures o losses but I seem to remember that Seven Trent Water, who serve my parental home, got fined last year for failing to meet targets to reduce losses from damaged pipes despite increasing prices to cover infrastructure improvements.

[d_c_m]

Losing weight twice as difficult as diets claim. Plus, of course, temporary diets are really bad for you, and don't work long term

Oh great....