What the world is reading

Gadget guru Adam Turners blog says theres life yet in a video store. Technology will eventually kill off the bricks-and-mortar video rental stores but not as fast as some people think it will. After all,it took 10 years for DVD players to outnumber DVDs despite the obvious advantages. Turner points out that online movie rentals rely on three thingsfast internet connection,playback hardware and user interestall of which arent a possibility for Australia in the near future. Having said that,says Turner,The writing is on the wall for video rental stores. They need to evolve or die. But it will be five to 10 years before everyday Australians completely turn their backs on DVD rentals.

The Guardian

The Sun wont win election for Ed Miliband

British Labour politician Roy Hattersley writes that Labour Partys chances of victory depend on giving the people a new view of society rather than courting Rupert Murdochs newspapers. Over the last 30 years,Rupert Murdoch has waited to see which party is racing ahead and then given it his newspapers support, writes Hattersley. He writes that Labour leader Ed Miliband has to find a way of triumphing without adjusting its policies to meet the prejudices of instinctively antagonistic newspaper proprietors.

The Dawn

Managing oil price risk

With petrol prices increasing and with Pakistan relying heavily on oil imports,Hammad Siddiqi,professor of economics at the Lahore University of Management Sciences,asks,Shouldnt the debate be about finding a feasible way of managing this risk,instead of focusing on a subsidy from the government? Siddiqi proposes a strategy that will allow the government to fix oil prices for up to a year without costing anything to the government. The means of doing that are already in place in the form of cash-settled futures, the columnist writes. Siddiqi,however,warns that by doing so they would give up on gains if the oil prices reduce but points out that the cost of giving up such gains is small as compared to the benefit of eliminating oil price uncertainty.

The Telegraph

Wearable technology will be the death of good manners

Guy Stagg writes about his aversion to augmented reality glasses. These glasses pick up on the things you look at and then stream information about them into your field of vision. So if you stare at a poster for a gig,the glasses could find some tickets. Augmented reality glasses give you an idea of Googles vision for societya high-fiving,campus-casual,plugged-in world where everyday feels like a holiday, writes Stagg. His problem with the technology: nobody has any manners. Technology has been fighting a pitched battle with politeness for the last century8230;It imagines a world where everyone is equal and nothing is private. But Im frightened that we neglect the people around us.