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.

Yes. Look up 'Web Engineering'.

"Proponents of web engineering supported the establishment of web engineering as a discipline at an early stage of web. [...] San Murugesan, Yogesh Deshpande, Steve Hansen and Athula Ginige, from University of Western Sydney, Australia formally promoted web engineering a new discipline in the first ICSE workshop on Web Engineering in 1999. Since then they published a serial of papers in a number of journals, conferences and magazines to promote their view and got wide support. [...]However, it has been controversial, especially for people in other traditional disciplines such as software engineering, to recognize web engineering as a new field. The issue is how different and independent web engineering is, compared with other disciplines.

Terrifying but true, and it's good to know - because that way, no matter how depressing one's career choice might happen to be, one can always think: at least I'm not working towards a PhD in Web Engineering.

As the Swedish example shows, it's not unknown for Europeans to study multiple subjects. In the UK, not all universities (or university course structures) allow a great deal of 'pick and mix' flexibility in learning, but see for example the Open University in the UK for an example of a system that lets you study just about anything you feel like in virtually any order you can cope with. Many people in the UK solve the problem by taking a conversion postgraduate degree, and gaining multiple undergraduate degrees is another solution that until fairly recently was widely considered to be a perfectly valid thing to aim for. Second undergrad degrees have recently become more difficult to achieve because of Labour's fairly recent decision to deny any level of government contribution for anybody wanting to complete a second (or further) qualification at any given level. Gordon Brown apparently figured that one of any given qualification was quite enough, so it's probably fair to assume that Labour subscribed to the theory you mention - that one should limit oneself to one topic of study.

I disagree, but do concede that there is no need for in-depth study of a very large number of specific topics in university (a wide range of topics would be good, though). What is important is that during a student's university studies, he or she gains all the necessary skills to be able to continue to study and learn after his or her formal studies end. The idea that one needs a named degree in order to prove knowledge or understanding of a given field is problematic, and as far as I can tell is pushed by universities for about the same reason as tech companies market the idea of tech certifications - it's a reasonably good earner for the various organisations involved, as well as simplifying life for Human Resources. But really, the point of a (worthwhile) degree is in large part that it teaches the student how to learn. There aren't that many jobs that directly use knowledge of classical languages, but there are a whole lot of happily employed classics graduates. And if the graduate classicist is working in economics or software development, does it really matter if their degree didn't mention software development by name?

As for the assertion that 'being well versed in multiple areas of knowledge is an almost uniquely american tradition', well, it's laughably wrong, but then you knew that. In any case, polymaths are no longer in fashion in corporate culture, in the UK, in many European countries, or in the USA. Academic funding agencies do not on the whole approve of polymaths, and interdisciplinary work can be difficult to fund unless there is a clearly defined expert from each discipline involved in the funding proposal. But this is, as far as I can tell, true across the western world. It is linked to a general love for statistics, evaluation, and ranking, whether it's six-sigma or citation metrics. If we can't classify people as grade something whatchamacallits, then they break our neat models, and that doesn't make us happy at all.

The point, as far as I can tell, is that there are many chances to bolt on external junk, whilst it's pretty difficult/unusual to be able to compromise the ATM itself. External devices are just opportunistic ways of reading the data off your card (ie. magnetic strip, maybe a camera to read out the PIN as the user inputs it). I suppose you could place an overlay on the screen, but it sounds like a lot of work compared to a little magnetic strip reader.

If you'd managed to compromise the ATM (so as to be able to change the image displayed on that particular screen) you wouldn't need to bolt anything onto the outside at all - the ATM knows everything you're likely to want to steal. But then, if you were able to successfully hack an ATM, why waste time skimming credit card numbers?

Well, it clearly wasn't that funny - Clouds did pretty badly in competition :)

Aristophanes was mocking everybody in sight as far as I can tell - Strepsiades' name means 'twisting' or 'scheming'. He is a weak man trying to pull the wool over his creditors' eyes dishonestly, and throughout the play he reaches for whatever seems to offer the best short-term advantage. The play tends to upset people because of its portrayal of Socrates, but it's pretty well offensive to everybody involved.

"There are no gods, and the lightning is not a sign of Zeus' displeasure, it's just [insert somewhat reasonable-sounding theory here]'

It might be harder to commit convincing heresy in a multitheistic belief system (because you always have the 'but my preferred god says that' argument), but it's certainly not difficult. It might be even easier because rather than one god you have to believe in, there's a whole pantheon.

For some examples, check out Aristophanes' Clouds. Aristophanes was obviously not accurately reporting Socrates' arguments - he was writing a comedy - but it gives you an idea. In this example, Strepsiades is the fall guy.

SOCRATES: [The Clouds] are the only goddesses; all the rest are pure myth.
STREPSIADES: But by the Earth! is our father, Zeus, the Olympian, not a god?
SOCRATES: Zeus! what Zeus! Are you mad? There is no Zeus.
STREPSIADES: What are you saying now? Who causes the rain to fall? Answer me that!
SOCRATES: Why, the Clouds, and I will prove it. Have you ever seen it raining without clouds? Let Zeus then cause rain with a clear sky and without their presence!
STREPSIADES: By Apollo! that is powerfully argued! For my own part, I always thought it was Zeus pissing into a sieve. But tell me, who is it makes the thunder, which I so much dread?
SOCRATES: The Clouds, when they roll one over the other.
STREPSIADES: But how can that be? you most daring among men!
SOCRATES: Being full of water, and forced to move along[...] they bump each other heavily and burst with great noise.
STREPSIADES: But is it not Zeus who forces them to move?
SOCRATES: Not at all; it's the aerial Whirlwind.
STREPSIADES: The Whirlwind! ah! I did not know that. So Zeus, it seems, has no existence, and its the Whirlwind that reigns in his stead? But you have not yet told me what makes the roll of the thunder?
SOCRATES: Have you not understood me then? I tell you, that the Clouds, when full of rain, bump against one another, and that, being inordinately swollen out, they burst with a great noise. Take yourself as an example. When you have heartily gorged on stew at the Panathenaea, you get throes of stomach-ache and then suddenly your belly resounds with prolonged rumbling.
STREPSIADES: Yes, yes, by Apollo I suffer, I get colic, then the stew sets to rumbling like thunder and finally bursts forth with a terrific noise. At first, it's but a little gurgling pappax, pappax! then it increases, papapappax! and when I take my crap, why, it's thunder indeed, papapappax! pappax!! papapappax!!! just like the clouds.
SOCRATES: Well then, reflect what a noise is produced by your belly, which is but small. Shall not the air, which is boundless, produce these mighty claps of thunder?
STREPSIADES: And this is why the names are so much alike: crap and clap. But tell me this. Whence comes the lightning, the dazzling flame, which at times consumes the man it strikes, at others hardly singes him. Is it not plain, that Zeus is hurling it at the perjurers?
SOCRATES: If Zeus strikes at the perjurers, why has he not blasted Simon, Cleonymus and Theorus? Of a surety, greater perjurers cannot exist. No, he strikes his own temple, and Sunium, the promontory of Athens, and the towering oaks. Now, why should he do that? An oak is no perjurer.
STREPSIADES: I cannot tell, but it seems to me well argued. What is the lightning then?
SOCRATES: When a dry wind ascends to the Clouds and gets shut into them, it blows them out like a bladder; finally, being too confined, it bursts them, escapes with fierce violence and a roar to flash into flame by reason of its own impetuosity.
STREPSIADES: Ah, that's just what happened to me one day. It was at the feast of Zeus! I was cooking a sow's belly for my family and I had forgotten to slit it open. It swelled out and, suddenly bursting, discharged itself right into my eyes and burnt my face.

There was nothing unintentional about it. Socrates describes himself as a gadfly in Plato's 'Defence of Socrates'. It seems to have been his signature style...

Also, Socrates was 70 and, according to Xenophon, was committing the ancient Athenian version of 'suicide by cop'.

Xenophon describes Socrates as saying that '[i]f my years are prolonged, I know that the frailties of old age will inevitably be realised, - that my vision must be less perfect and my hearing less keen, that I shall be slower to learn and more forgetful of what I have learned. If I perceive my decay and take to complaining, how... could I any longer take pleasure in life?'

http://www.springerlink.com/content/x7286wq826173461/

I have to say: 'No duh.'

Your entire point appears to be 'Urban legends are present in large text corpora, and that's bad'. It's not bad, it's not good - it just is. A good part of the reason for studying at all, be it in sciences, humanities, arts, whatever, is to come to the understanding that just because a lot of people have said it doesn't necessarily mean that it's true. As an aggregation mechanism for what a lot of people say, Google will be no more or less correct than any other aggregation mechanism of what people say. This includes libraries, which contain a smaller subset of the same urban-legend-riddled culture.

If a student were to come out of their first four years at University still believing that 'everything I read in a book is true', then I would think that the University had failed. There's no difference between that and 'everything I read on the Internet is true', except that the Internet kindly does some of the checking indexes and wielding highlighter pens that you would need to do on the way to getting that dataset out of a set of books yourself.