I visited this site in the late 70's as part of a camel ride into the desert. I was only a child, but don't remember seeing the dome part at all. The below ground part was recognisable from the movie - and I remember the guide explaining that the white paint was not a traditional feature - it was added for the movie but the people living there liked it and left it like that afterwards.

When the European Court of Human Rights ruled that this was illegal in 2008 the UK government promised to delete the profiles of innocent people. But they backtracked in 2011 and decided to keep the profiles in "anonymised" form: where "anonymised" means a form that doesn't directly retain the person's name, but does retain the case barcode, so can be linked back to them with some effort.

We are doomed? That is insightful? FFS

Yes, we got our 11 year old a mobile when he started at secondary school. But there is a difference between "has a mobile" and "uses a mobile". His phone stays in his bag, turned off, mostly. In fact, he didn't really want a phone, since he sees his friends all the time anyway. So really it is only there for his parents' peace of mind "in case of emergency".

Doesn't your library have an inter-library loan system? I started using my local library in the UK a lot a couple of years ago when a friend pointed out that they have a large collection of graphic novels that my kids were just getting into. Those "books" cost about 20 quid each to buy but they are only 50p if you have to order them from another library (and free obviously if the local library has them). OK, you might have to wait a week or so for the book. Since then I've been getting most of my books (of all types) from the library.

Also, academic research is so focussed on getting out publications that there is no time to actually "make it work properly". Did anyone ever get a publication out of fixing bugs in a previous project's code? I'm a fan of leaving academics to get on with fundamental research and leaving the private sector to solve the final practical problems. It used to be called "technology transfer" but it often fails to work, for various reasons :(

Exactly. It is all about learning how to organise your own work in a novel subject area. Perhaps more so in the UK where a PhD is not "taught" as such: there are no classes, you just have to get on with it yourself with guidance from a supervisor. A PhD is also a good way to experience what an academic life might be like, with a reasonably prestigious qualification to take away to industry if you decide it is not for you.

The code that was released under the EPL by the Symbian Foundation is still available from the legal remains of the Symbian Foundation if you want it. Nokia have simply said that all further developments by them and their partners will not be released under that license.

Well, twitter has lots of links to content. I used to think twitter was bollocks until I realised a lot of people basically use it as an alternative to RSS. Facebook shows you what people you [may] know are interested in, Twitter shows you what people you [probably] don't know are interested in. I don't know about you, but collectively the people I don't know know more than the people I do know.

I went to a talk by Richard Stallman in London last week where he discussed this issue and others. Whilst you are free to disagree with him, I think it is short-sighted to disregard his arguments as "shit", since they are perfectly rational. As he said in his talk - it is too late to worry about surveillance after your government has gone bad: now is the time to do something about it... assuming you think you are currently free.

I wish rational people would stop using the word "believe" when they mean "am convinced by the evidence". Making it clear that faith and evidence are complete opposites would help clarify some of the pointless and long-winded arguments that appear in the popular media.