I wish your analysis were accurate, because it would be the simplest possible solution to the whole problem if it could be boiled down to personal responsibility. However, some people are allergic - not "OMG autism!" allergic, but simply allergic - to components like egg protein or gelatin. Those who were perfectly able to take the vaccine and decided not to because "OMG autism!" are increasing the risk for those who can't, and have to depend on others to do the responsible thing.

To compare with the examples you give - people have the right to drink, but not to undertake activities that might harm others while they are intoxicated (ie. driving, etc). Similarly, they are free to smoke, but there are increasingly strict limits on where and when - I'm in Britain and my personal opinion on the nanny state is unprintable, but I see that New York just banned smoking on beaches and in parks, so I guess Britain is not alone.

I find in a humid client jeans will smell within days.

What job title do you have? I doubt there's a large waiting line for a job that requires you to put on jeans and then spend days immersed in damp clientele.

Yeah, I know. Although before they start solving differential equations, they need to work out the model, which in itself is a potentially intractable problem on this scale. IMO, the proposal should've been junked by reviewers at the first stage on the basis that, whilst noone expects this sort of funding to actually achieve anything concrete other than paying IBM for another round of supercomputer hardware, it's good practice to politely pretend that they're not entirely, overtly kicking the arse out of the system. Taking data they know nothing about from point A and collecting it in point B does not necessarily mean that they have a clue about what they're storing, let alone what it signifies or how it may be processed or modelled.

As Douglas Adams put it:

'I think,' said Dirk, 'you will be impressed. Consider this. An intractable problem. In trying to find the solution to it I was going round and round in little circles in my mind, over and over the same maddening things. Clearly I wasn't going to be able to think of anything else until I had the answer, but equally clearly I would have to think of something else if I was ever going to get the answer. How to break this circle? Ask me how.'
'How?' said Miss Pearce obediently, but without enthusiasm.
'By writing down what the answer is!' exclaimed Dirk. 'And here it is! With the result that I am now able to turn my mind to fresh and intriguing problems, like, for instance...'
He took the piece of paper, covered with its aimless squiggles and doodlings, and held it up to her.
'What language,' he said in a low, dark voice, 'is this written in?'
Miss Pearce continued to look at it dumbly.
Dirk flung the piece of paper down, put his feet up on the table, and threw his head back with his hands behind it.
'You see what I have done?' he asked the ceiling, which seemed to flinch slightly at being yanked so suddenly into the conversation. 'I have transformed the problem from an intractably difficult and possibly quite insoluble conundrum into a mere linguistic puzzle. Albeit,' he muttered, after a long moment of silent pondering, 'an intractably difficult and possibly insoluble one.'

It's a safe assumption.

Actually, it's probably a safe assumption that this is just a way to extract $1.3 billion of funding out of the EU in order to pay for a bunch of supercomputers and interdisciplinary research. It's apparently part of something called FuturICT, a submission to the EU's Flagships initiative, which is to say that it is meant to be ambitious - here a codeword for 'infinitely improbable'. FET Flagships are long term initiatives on a budget of around 100 M€ Euros per year.

You can get a copy of the proposal from here. It's a bunch of hand-wavy maybes. Most of the proposal is taken up with the interesting observation that knowing stuff about stuff is a prerequisite to revolutionising education, understanding and fixing the world economy, identifying financial crises before they happen, identifying innovations before they catch on, solving transport problems, creating a whole new scientific paradigm ('science 2.0'), fixing energy consumption and making us all safer. However, they have letters of support from George Soros and various other luminaries, so presumably the EU will assume (or already assumed) that they know what they are talking about.

Legally, LocalH is correct. The wording of the law relates to use rather than ownership; if you're using it to receive or record broadcast TV, emphasis on broadcast, then you are liable for the licence. If you're not using it then it suffices to take a cursory step towards demonstrating that you do not use it - like not plugging it into an aerial, and ensuring that it is not tuned. You'd need to use the epoxy approach in some other European countries that take a different approach to TV Licencing law, but it's hardly worth it in the UK.

The licence requirement deals only with the action - not the capability - of receiving/recording broadcast TV, which has the intriguing side effect that catching up with programs on iPlayer is perfectly legal without a TV licence. Similarly, watching sports shows on the Web as they are being streamed (broadcast) is illegal without a TV licence. And if your fillings picked up ITV, you would have to get a TV licence for the receiver in your skull.

The level of enforcement is variable, as the enforcement is done by 'visiting officers' who are very much like any other rent-a-goon on a small wage, with one exception: a good part of their salary is paid through performance-related bonuses (commission). This gives them an excellent motivation to lie, cheat and generally harrass their way through life ('oh, the law's changed, you need a licence for iPods now. No, I can't show you any proof. And I'm not leaving until you sign this, and if you don't sign it I'll have you arrested and fined £5,000'). They will lie like a rug, partly because they barely know the law themselves, partly because they don't think you know the law, but mostly because they need the money for whatever it is Blattaria sapiens do in their free time.

I haven't had a TV for a decade, so I've had a lot of practice in dealing with TVL enforcement. It's true that the BBC is incredibly popular, but like diet soda, it's an acquired taste. We lost the habit because we couldn't afford it, being students. Having lost the habit, the BBC now tastes like carbonated aspartame.

Not sure I agree with you here. That's very much 'in the box' thinking, if you like, and it comes from a mindset that believes very strongly that even admitting to the existence of other options is marketing suicide.

How about, 'Here on the left side of the stand, we discuss the strong, stable and supported OpenOffice.Org, which is insert marketing spiel for OO.o here, and here on the right you will see the bleeding-edge, exciting, cheerfully compatible LibreOffice, which is insert marketing spiel for fork here'? Direct competition will only happen here as and when Oracle definitively fails to compromise, which is to say, sometime next week.

Marketing deals with nuanced choices all the time; Cheap 'n Cheerful, Traditionally Produced At Twice The Price, Extra Hot With Chilis. There are many possible ways to market across a range in a manner that is not particularly offensive to either and optimises involvement with both products, and it happens all the time with open source. The customer can then choose whichever fits in best with their own perceived needs, and will usually get what they deserve (if not what they actually needed).

Oracle's stiff-necked attitude is damaging for all concerned.

Authors in academia are only rarely given a significant upfront advance, unless the author is famous and/or notorious and/or appears on TV, Star Trek or The Economist.

The intro textbooks may actually carry an advance, but the low-volume specialist works either won't, or will carry a tiny advance, as in a few hundred dollars. General interest technical books make more, as in maybe 5-10k.

People write academic stuff for tenure, not for cash in hand. Only about three hundred people will ever care enough about shoelace manufacture in ancient Rome to bother reading the author's magnum opus. Essentially, specialist academic publishing seems to follow the rules laid down by print-on-demand organisations.

True. The implication of 'had to go to Australian institutions' is just 'no international collaborations.' It just tends to characterise the profile of work that gets done (ie. everyday research activity commonly has international elements, which will not be possible with this funding), the type of deliverable, and so forth.

Oh well. You can never have too many assembly areas, or too much multimedia, or too many case studies.

Oddly, I'm actually a fan of the Australian government's approach, even though I can't spell 'innovate' without scarequotes. But there are predictable results to short-term funding with specific terms and a risk of the cash being clawed back by the agency, and this sort of spend-and-study activity is often seen when there is a short-term surplus.

This may be related to Australia's recent funding opportunities.

The Australian government's reaction to the current world economic situation has been to throw a series of large bucketloads of money in the direction of research, development and infrastructural work. Australia decided it could spend and 'innovate' its way through the next few years. There are some restrictions on the use of this plentiful funding, notably that it all has to go to Australian institutions. As is usually the case with this sort of funding it is also strictly short-term.

I would imagine that a lot of people have found themselves with a few k left in a budget and a need to zero the budget in the very near future, have asked themselves, "now what can we do that sounds sexy and means we get to play with cute shiny hardware?" and they've all come up with the same (incredibly unimaginative, sorry guys) solution.

The e-book research area is currently choked with iiiiiiPPPPaaaaaaddd zombies. It would be depressing if it weren't - no, wait, what am I saying? It's depressing.

Yeah, he looked good. Says that the condition is progressing very slowly -- slower than expected, or words to that effect. Aside from the fact that he no longer reads out the bedtime story (part of an unreleased book) at the Discworld Convention himself (Rob, his PA, did that), he seemed, if anything, much more cheerful than he was in 2008. Which is awesome.

MozeeToby's comment later in the thread, suggesting that someone make "a pretty interesting study on the effects of Alzheimer's on language by studying his books," reminds me of Pratchett's comment that he throws away drafts for fear of what English Literature researchers might theorise in future. Although I am now strongly inclined to test the hypothesis by comparing actual vocabulary used over time, because it does not seem to me that there has been a marked reduction in the complexity of language used. That said, there may very well be changes in structure due to using dictation software and so forth, as well as in punctuation and in the use of concrete poetry/structural games, footnotes, etc.

I saw Transformers 2 on a flight to South Korea, or rather, it looped several times while I zoned in and out of consciousness. It was running for about six or eight hours, so in theory I saw it several times, but I have very little memory of it other than a sort of deliriously Pythonesque stop-motion montage of people running, people driving, people running, people lying around in various states of repair, things exploding and so forth. A surreal experience.

Granted that prior use doesn't cancel the trademark, and yeah, that probably is why Facebook are suing, although there are a lot of other companies out there they should be suing if they're that worried about trademark dilution. However,
1) if there are (say) hundreds of other trademarks that use the same approximate construction and have some sort of 'online sharing' aspects, and
2) given that the other guys' trademark contains only partial elements of their own (ie. Facebook vs Teachbook share only the term 'book' and a monosyllabic generic prefix) and
3) given that 'Face' and 'Teach' don't sound remotely alike - 'Fazebook' would be a more obvious attempt to cash in, and
4) given that there are (say) hundreds of other trademarks that contain that same pattern

then you could legitimately ask whether 'Teachbook' resembles 'Facebook' more than it resembles any or all of the other options out there, especially given that their actual area of operation more closely resembles PlanBook, which also allows sharing of lesson files between teachers. That's why it's interesting to look at prior use - if it's common enough to be generic, then TFA's 'highly distinctive in the context of online communities and networking websites' is provably inaccurate.

A trademark should not be generic or reasonably required for use in that trade, nor should it be confusingly similar to other trademarks used in the industry. 'Facebook' arguably succeeds in that, although it is an arguable point given others' statements that the term is used locally as a generic description. The 'use of book in a name' construction mentioned in TFA would seem to fail that criterion. In short, if it's that common for the '*book' pattern to be used in trademarked names for social applications, and it is a long-standing tradition for it to be used in that way, then it would be surprising if the 'book' construction weren't considered generic. But the law is frequently surprising. Also, IA obviously NAL.

Cough cough ljbook.com cough. Which, incidentally, exists in the context of online communities and social networking websites. It's named 'LJBook' because it does what it says on the tin - it makes a book from a LiveJournal. What's more, they've been around for sufficiently long, well over six years from the looks of it, that they slightly pre-date Facebook.

That 'trademark' has been comprehensively diluted prior to Facebook even registering it, primarily due to the fact that it's such an obvious name that a whole lot of other people thought of it first. According to TESS (http://tess2.uspto.gov/) their trademark was filed in Feb 24, 2005.

IC 038. US 100 101 104. G & S: providing online chat rooms for registered users for transmission of messages concerning collegiate life, classifieds, virtual community and social networking. FIRST USE: 20041116. FIRST USE IN COMMERCE: 20041116
Standard Characters Claimed
Mark Drawing Code (4) STANDARD CHARACTER MARK
Serial Number 78574730
Filing Date February 24, 2005

Perhaps the lawyers ought to have gone after HighPoint Technologies instead, who registered 'my+facebook' as 'external storage hard drives for sharing, accessing and downloading media through the Internet by using propriety hardware and software. The external storage hard drives allow users to upload and share media, play music and videos in addition to viewing photo slideshows by utilizing a software interface from a group of invited guest and users.'

As for other people to go after, TESS suggests the following:

AMBook - online files
PlanBook - lesson planning for educators, with sharing of plans via PlanBookConnect
MOBook - online travel planning
PartyBook - business networking
D VIdeobook - educational services
Gracebook - internet portal for social communications, the fiends
Placebook - geolocation software
TheLookBook - fashion online networking
BookBrowse - online book review centre from the 90s.
LiveYearBook
MarketBook
StudioBook
ShagBook (dates from 2006, this one)
Mobibook
Smilebook
Fieldbook
Whichbook
Sportsbook
Genebook
Sharedbook
Dealbook - online news, shared databases
and over eleven thousand others, which is enough to make you wonder whether some-short-word-plus the suffix 'book' is a distinctive enough trademark. Some guys who I wish Facebook would sue, just because there are some good headline opportunities there:

LameBook - which reposts everything lame and funny about Facebook. A full-time job, especially when they're acting out like this.

Comparing this one to the Victor's Little Secret case, concluded earlier this year, would seem to suggest that Facebook have a better chance against ShagBook. It's marketed to a fairly similar audience, but comes with added value sexual overtones, and is therefore likely to tarnish the mark. IANAL, obviously.

I'm imagining it. Like an ASCII version of Drawball Two.

Wasn't it Lovecraft who wrote about The Horror that Crawls From The Chaos, The Blind Idiot God? What a prophet that guy was.

Yup, studying dead and living languages. Their teaching for dead languages is excellent, the tutors are experts (but then, only 300 people a year study ancient Greek at the OU, so it is not surprising that they can easily find enough experts to tutor the course). Their teaching for living languages is relatively unexciting - as far as I can tell the 'Advanced' level is about equivalent to level B2 of the Common European Framework of Reference, and while tutors are native speakers in most cases, they're usually not academics or researchers. That's fairly unusual in my experience, but apparently the rules are somewhat more relaxed regarding who gets to call themselves 'associate lecturer' in languages than they might be in certain more technical areas.

The level of attainment would be more disturbing if I hadn't just read a paper that lamented the fact that education in modern languages across the UK is systematically underperforming, with students achieving a limited vocabulary compared to advanced students from other European university systems. The OU therefore is simply conforming to national standards, but it is unfortunate, meaning presumably that if you want to further your language studies beyond B2 or so, studying in the UK may not be the way to do it.

I've also been a little disappointed with the fact that there is no real opportunity to do any research in modern languages during the degree - there's no obvious 'undergrad dissertation' or research module, and although there is the chance to write an extended-length essay in your modern language of choice, you have to pick one of a small number of topics (~5 choices) on offer. This is presumably to facilitate marking, but it's a real shame since it means that the student cannot focus on their area of choice. I imagine there are ways to get this sort of thing to happen, but another problem with the OU is that the people who answer the telephone are pretty much just a helpdesk, and therefore it's often hard to find a way to get the course you want.

So: at worst, infinitely better than no course at all -- you get a certificate; any practice is better than none, and even the worst courses are an opportunity to improve if you decide to put in the effort; and it's increasingly difficult to find language courses in the UK, so congratulations to them for giving us any chance at all of learning. At best, the OU can be an extraordinarily good experience. Many tutors are experts in the best sense of the term - well-known researchers, authors, full of domain knowledge and only too happy to share as much as possible with you.

Although that might have sounded negative, the experience is, overall, the best thing to have happened to me in years. I'm kicking myself for not having tried it a long time ago.