I can roughly divide the books I've read into two piles: those that have left a lasting impression on me and those I enjoyed but ultimately forgot about. In the first pile there in a lot of Science Fiction and a lot of the "literature", in the latter goes a fair bit si-fi and fantasy and some more mainstream stuff.

Of the really great books I'd put Kafka, Orwell (1984, Animal Farm), Hermann Hesse (Siddhartha, The Glass Bead Game) and those which shaped the way I think about things. Some of these could be called science fiction, they use settings removed from the real world, but also provide some commentary on how we live now.

So much si-fi does fall into a formulaic adventure romp. There is little to learn from these, indeed they can be dangerous - as the characters can be idealised heros, setting unrealistic role models. One exception to this was Moorcock's eternal champion, initially a hero but by the end just a slaughterer of half the population. Perhaps a truer view of conflict than most.

Yes a bit of escape can be fun, but there are other reasons we read fiction. I like books which give me something I was not expecting, and shed a bit of light on life. Its been a while since I read a modern science-fiction book which has done that.

We can't actually tell it did not tear internally. It would really need to be unfolded again to ensure that.

OK, taking the dates from List of earthquakes and List of solar cycles. If we limit the range to when both sets overlap i.e. 1755 - now and split the data into buckets according to how many years the earth quake is from nearest solar cycle we find -5 years before: 0; -4 4; -3 0; -2 0; -1 5; 0 3; 1 3; 2 1; 3 1; 4 2; 5 0. The data does have highest numbers in the -1, 0, and 1 buckets. We can then use a chi squared test on these as we would expect 19/11 in each bucket ie. 1.73. Doing the chi squared test gives a p-value of 0.045. Significant at the 5% level!

Which in turn cites "Jonson G, Orremo F, Wallin C, Ringsberg K. IT, mat and miljo . En miljokonsekvensanalys av elektronisk handel med dagligvaror. Stockholm: Naturvardsverket. Institutionen fo r Designvetenskaper, Forpackningslogistik/Lunds Tekniska Hogskola; 1999. p. 102." Which is where the 3.5 traditional shopping trips figure comes from.

So we have a 2010 press release, summarising a 2010 report which quotes a 2002 paper, which in turn quotes a 1999 paper.

Actually the report merely cites a previous paper on the subject: Plepys A (2002), "The Grey Side of ICT", Environmental Impact Assessment Review, 22: 509-523 PDF. That is the paper with the details.

Full Report: "Rebound: unintended consequences of transport policy and technology innovations", page has link to the PDF.

Old joke, off topic, not interesting. What are the mods playing at these days. Mod parent down.

This is a bit rich coming from a Murdoch, a family have the greatest impact on British public life. Many votes are swayed according to what the sun says. And whats more the family managed to reduce "The Times" from a great pillar of the establishment to the least respected broadsheet.

The wave simulation is very nicely executed. It does also seem to generate some rather interesting artefacts. If you move the mouse to to very close to a corner and hold it down for a second or so and release. The smaller high frequency wave will interfere to produce a much lower frequency wave with one or two point peaks. This peeks then drift across the screen. I've also managed to produce a standing wave as well. Quite an interesting phenomena but I'm not sure if its really accurate or an artifact of the way the program is coded.

This is the nub of the matter. There was a time a few years back when wikipedia could have gone in one of two ways it could either become a proper encyclopaedia with a higher standards for inclusion or a vast repository of every little detail of popular culture. Either would have been good but its name led it to the more academic route. I think that shift happened about the time of the millionth article when there was a shift across the community from aiming for growth and quantity to a focus on quality.

Yes wikipedia has now matured and has raised the barrier for entry. Tougher requirements are needed for editors and for the articles and these will deter some, and indeed anger many who have not realised that wikipedia has changed nor bothered to read what it is now is. This change has been observed many times in all sort of online and real world communities as the open free for all shifts to a more stable entity. So it should really come as not great surprise not any great worry for its long term future.

My first thought was has there been a breach of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act 2000 which restricts the sort of information the police can access without a warrant. If the people had just advertised the party to their friends on facebook then I suspect it become the sort of info the police would need a warrant to access. I seem to recal that the police can't just get warrents to speculative crawl for this information unless they have details of a specific crime that may be committed.

I took a few minuites for my parinoia to subdue when I realised that they had probably listed it as a public all night party event. Which the whole world, its mother and the police can happily look through.

It does depend on quite what distribute means

"Distribute" means to make available to the public the original and copies of the Work or Adaptation, as appropriate, through sale or other transfer of ownership.

If the modified version is only used in-house then it not made available to the public so clauses about redistribution do not apply.

A slight modification of this makes a memory cell. Very useful as the basis of computers which are basically memory cells and gates. You could have quite a bit of fun with 7400 series logic gate and some breadboard.

Merging wikipedia with you company wiki is a bad idea:

• The wikipedia content will always be out of date
• Changes made to wikipedia content don't get fed back into wikipedia
• Creates confusion as to what is and is not company information
• Trying to load the wikipeida DB locally is a headache due to its shear size

If this guy was an normal anthropologist studying some remote tribe he would be hauled before an ethics committee and expelled from university for this sort of behaviour. The field of anthropology has spent over a century establishing research methods for studying cultures. As a rule the best way to observe is to have as small an impact as possible so you see how the culture really behave. Effects where a culture modify its behaviour due to the presence of a researcher are common and a big barrier to objectivity. By provoking you get the abnormal behaviour so its not really good research.

Is there really a difference between virtual world and real cultures. Should not the same ethics apply when studying either?