I'm not aware of any, although there are judicial rulings in various countries that have taken a similar view, for example this. See also the UK Competition Act, specifically disallowing certain vertical restraints.

For the same reason that the person who manufactured your TV shouldn't be allowed to dictate which channels you're able to watch. This sort of behaviour creates vast monopolies and stifles competition.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PSP_Go ?

Pretty much all future consoles will only be able to download content from the hardware manufacturer's website, making this a moot point. We ought to be asking the EU to force Apple, Nintendo and MS to open up the market for downloadable apps. I guess someone is doing this at the mo?

G.O. is really stunning and worth visiting. Go in the afternoon, then take one of the fast boats up the Thames from there to Central London as the sun is setting. Really very excellent, but make sure you know the boat times in advance. Visit LMNT in Hackney (http://www.lmnt.co.uk/) - It's a crazy restaurant and you'll see a different part of London. You could have gone to White Mischief (http://www.whitemischief.info/) for some Steampunk goodness, but it looks like it's not on while you're there so how about The Horse Hospital (http://www.thehorsehospital.com/). Plenty of interest to see there. Don't bother with a laptop, there's too much else to be spending your time on.

Also, did you realise that TIME is CUBIC in NATURE?

Of course, the bit that seems to have been disproved here is the "Cosmic String", which Wikipedia tells me is unrelated to String Theory in any large way.

Along similar lines, from Richard Feynman: "I don't like that they're not calculating anything. I don't like that they don't check their ideas. I don't like that for anything that disagrees with a n experiment, they cook up an explanation - a fix-up to say, "Well, it might be true." For example, the theory requires ten dimensions. Well, maybe there's a way of wrapping up six of the dimensions. Yes, that's all possible mathematically, but why not seven? When they write their equation, the equation should decide how many of these things get wrapped up, not the desire to agree with experiment. In other words, there's no reason whatsoever in superstring theory that it isn't eight out of the ten dimensions that get wrapped up and that the result is only two dimensions, which would be completely in disagreement with experience. So the fact that it might disagree with experience is very tenuous, it doesn't produce anything; it has to be excused most of the time. It doesn't look right."

Seeing as we haven't managed this in the real world, I'm not holding my breath. It should be easier in a game, but the more complex the world, the harder it's going to be, and I'm guessing they're getting more complex.

Hehe! The rats were shown the maze beforehand and were getting sweetened condensed milk, something like 10% fat, but 50% sugar/carbs so to be honest I don't know how it would affect their appetite. I just read TFA, not the full study - they could have mentioned this but it seems a fairly major factor left to be left unexplored.

No-one seems to have spotted the fact that the rats who were being fed fatty food may have had less motivation for completing the maze, given that the reward was more food. Am I missing something or is this entire study invalid?

This extraordinary conclusion reached with two groups of 13 people, one East Asian, the other Western. Well, that's that settled then.

But learning a new language can often alter the way you clarify your thoughts. I'm learning Haskell at the moment and it's a bit of a sidestep mentally.