Interesting Links for 03-12-2013

[andrewducker]

• The 10 Worst Product Names in PC History
  (tags: computers names marketing )
• Toast sandwich - why was I not previously aware of this?
  (tags: food bread )
• If I didn't already have a Nexus 5 I'd be very tempted by the Moto G - £135 is dirt cheap!
  (tags: mobile_phones android )
• A sensible Assisted Suicide act is about to be put before the Scottish

Comments

[bart_calendar]

It's astounding how wrong that guy was about the future of the web.

[andrewducker]

Yeah, but I remember a lot of people being very wrong at the time.

I still remember an awful lot of people talking about how Wikipedia was never going to catch on too!

[makyo]

I'm not sure I can entirely blame him. I grew up during the 1980s home computer explosion, when we were constantly being told that lots of things were about to change unimaginably because very soon now everyone would have, say, a VIC-20. In particular, traditional lessons would be a thing of the past, with everyone learning from carefully-tailored educational software. A lot of this has clearly now come to pass, but after fifteen years of that kind of hype not remotely coming true, I think we can forgive 1995 Cliff Stoll for being sceptical.

He's quite an interesting chap, actually. His book The Cuckoo's Egg was a very readable account of his successful attempt to catch some East German students who were hacking into the computer he was in charge of. (I've also read most of Silicon Snake Oil but I didn't think it was quite as good.)

[andrewducker]

Oh yes, I don't blame him. And he's right that a CD-ROM doesn't replace a teacher. And neither does Wikipedia. But it does replace a lot of basic "looking things up", and gives those that need academic research a lot of pointers as to where to start their research.

[avva]

Ha, I looked up the toast sandwich recipe in the 1861 book mentioned on Wikipedia (it's free on Google Books and quite fascinating), and what the Wikipedia article doesn't mention is that it's found in the "Invalid Cookery" chapter. It's a dish especially useful when nursing invalids, apparently - together with Nourishing Beef Tea, Egg Wine, Stewed Rabbits in Milk and Eel Broth, among others.

[andrewducker]

Aaah, that is interesting. Makes sense, as it'll be about as mild as you can get!

[randomchris]

It certainly doesn't sound like valid cookery to me.

[simont]

"Invalid Cookery" surely belongs in a companion article to the "writers' error messages" link above...

[xenophanean]

Wonder if the differences in men and women's brains are purely natural, or influenced by roles played in society?

[andrewducker]

I'd be astounded if it wasn't both.

There's going to be a bunch of self-reinforcing systems in play here, where hormones influence different people in different ways, and the mass of people moving in one direction carries individuals with it, and that then self-perpetuates.

(And we know that what you do influences your brain structure)

[xenophanean]

It's an important question. If male/female brains just *are* wired in certain ways, it could validly be used as an excuse for why certain jobs have more of one or other of the genders. If not, that reasoning is circular.

[andrewducker]

I agree that it's an imporyant question.

Just not one that anyone has an answer to, or much prospect of finding one in the near future.

[rhythmaning]

Thanks for the link! :)

[rhythmaning]

I'm glad the tram made it to Haymarket.

I'm trying to imagine the looks of panic on oh, just about everyone associated with it if, in some unforeseen circumstances, it had failed to do so...!

[andrewducker]

Oh yes :->

That's the problem with transparency/testing in public, people can see all the things that go wrong...