I called what the title meant ages back (and if anyone can tell me where I did it as it wasn't a post I can find I'd be very grateful), but the Wikihistory story is just brilliant *anyway*, so you should read it.

How cool would this be? That China also expects international travel to be more and more common is indicative of movement in certain other areas as well. Would be great if it can happen, suspect logistics are going to be a headache though.

Look at that change in fortunes-Nokia once taking a massive slice of smartphone sales profits, now making a loss on them and Apple clearly way out ahead.

I love this sort of thing, using the opening of a new fashion store to understand more about the dynamics of an environment.

Follow up from the link the other day about the redesigned map, one of the reasons why changing might be a good idea.

Still no luck in Edinburgh for Andi. She needs to tour the country and come to West Yorks.

Actual sales figures as well as market share. Nokia's Symbian, despite the announcement that it's being canned, still outselling iPhone's and only a small drop in total sales. Android through roof, Windows plummetting, Blackberry up in sales, down in %age, to be expected. Hell, Samsung's new Bada outselling MS. App devs and companies advertising apps need to look at actual figures before going large on advertining their iPhone apps. Silly hype believing marketers.

More analysis of the Motorola purchase, even if it's defensive purchasing, it still stinks that so many stupid software patents exist for competing ideas, utterly ridiculous setup that discredits the whole IP system.

To stop the wall, Adenauer proposed a teritory swap. I think that goes nearer the top of my list of counterfactuals that're worth thinking about.

Phil Plait goes into more detail on Fuhrer's images, worth a read

Some absolutely stunning renderings of the planets, including some in scale to each other. Dodgy JS gallery makes seeing them in full size harder though, if you right click and 'view image' you should get the actual full size stuff, really worth it

Ye gods, the patent wars continue.

OK, it appears to be that they're not going to take original content from Panini owned Marvel UK franchise, but... It was Marvel UK stuff that got me into comics. Somewhere at my parents should be a copy of the Transformers issue that had the very first Death''s Head appearance. I got the complete run of both Dragon's Claws and The Sleaze Brothers. I started collecting Zoids because of the Zoids comic. Looks like we've only got Rebellion left funding original content over here now. Gap in the market?

Very very early stages, very experimental, very weird. But a bloke given a week to live is completely cured? We are living in the future.

I was really looking forward to Mircale Day. Rusty on good form can be brilliant, give him a budget and co-writers like Jane Espenson? It should be brilliant. It's not. It's close to being unwatchably bad. It's not just that the politics make no sense, at all, even if there's a mass brainwash going on, it's that the whole thing just doesn't hang together. It feels both rushed and deathly slow at the same time. I won't bother watching it live next week, I'll catch up at some point over the weekend, that way I can find out what happened without hoping it might be good.

11 years of my life I spent working hell week after Xmas. More returns on one day than the rest of the year, guaranteed. I can so see this happening.

I think the only objection Jennie's likely to raise is that she'd want to join in, but seriously, how is someone as attractive and funny as Andi Osho single and unhappy about it? What a weird world we live in.

And, of course, if you declare it's OK for us to turn off communications, then it was OK for Mubarak. It wasn't OK for Mubarak, and Cameron said so at the time.

"Over the years, as a musician and as a writer, I've watched how traditional hierarchies in the workplace create divisions and arguments. I don't think I'm alone in not wanting to have a boss tell me what to do. I refuse to have a boss tell me what to do. The bargaining tool that's unspoken in that statement is that I will happily relinquish the power to tell other people what to do. That, for me, is anarchism. I won't order you about, if you don't order me about. And together we'll make it work." For those liberals unaware, JS Mill's liberalism and his views on economics were heavily influenced by Proudhon, and for a damn good reason. The Chumbas sometimes play gigs in pubs around here, I really need to pay attention to this and go see them soon. We'll be singing, when we're winning...

More on the Cameron is a moron meme, with added censorship is bad goodness. However, the comments? All about gun control. Gotta love the US gun nut and the monomaniacal approach to everything.

John's spot on here. A select wuoted paragraph "These riots are the difference between WWII and Vietnam: the insurgents didn’t have a front line, but tried to appear, attack and disappear – and the authorities just didn’t know how to handle the new kind of conflict. Adding water cannons and CS gas into the mix wouldn’t have done anything to stop the looters, and I’m sceptical that rubber bullets would have achieved much. Live automatic weaponry would’ve done the job, but if you think that’s an acceptable solution to teenagers robbing shops, then you’re a dangerous lunatic who shouldn’t be allowed out in public." I keep looking at the YouGov figures saying 33% would've supported live fire. Then I go back and reread one of my many "why YouGove are talking bobbins" posts to make myself feel better.

Ye gods, how stupid are some people? It only really worked in London as it was happening everywhere at once and the Met's always busy. Huddersfield? Gah! FWIW, I live just off Bradford Road, it'd be a bit of a walk but the Asda they tried to loot is literally "down the road from me", even if it's several miles down said road. Hang on. They tried. To loot. An Asda. USians? Asda is owned by Walmart. Says it all really.

Seems to make sense, the reactions of a theist to finding someoen is an atheist are very similar to a suiter being turned down. Anyone know better? Definitely makes the rhetoric used worthy of thinking about a bit.

IBM engineer bigs up how his company works. Bit of a "aren't we wonderful" feel to it, but I don't think he's actually wrong, getting out of the PC market, the market they effectively created, was a canny business move.

OK, these figures are for the US, but odds are the UK figures would be very similar, this whole "we don't make stuff anymore" meme really gets to me at time, I live 5 minutes walk from a factory FFS.

"In a liberal society, it is no business of the state's how people conduct their private lives." Exactly. It would be really good if we can figure out a way of allowing people with multiple partners to register those relationships, if that's what they want to do. We certainly do.

OK, sports kits tend to be emblazoned with sponsor logos and similar. I'm fine with that. Beech volleyball, being, y'know, a beach sport, tends to involve wearing very little. I'm fine with that. Due to lack of space, the sponsor has a QR code on the arse of each member of the British beach volleyball team that leads to the Betfair mobile site. So watchers are encouraged to take pictures of the teams arses. Um...

How cool is this? A drug that identifies anything with a viral infection, and kills it. If it works as advertised, it could be phenomenal.

Can't argue with Jon here. OK, I rarely argue with Jon, but he's spot on on this. as the riots started, I used Twitter and similar to find out what was going on, check friends were OK, spread information that was useful. I saw elected officials coordinating their constituents, reassuring people, etc. I saw people coming together to organise cleanups, pass on information to the police warnings, etc. A communication medium is neutral, it can be used for good or bad. Overwhelmingly, over the last week, online communication has been a medium for good. Why some MPs think otherwise is beyond me. Lib Dems? I feel an emergency motion coming on, anyone want to help?

I saw a link to this and though "there's a meme in this", and within half an hour saw multiple people copying it out and bolding their faves. Some very good choices on here, some very interesting choices, and a few low points. Surprised to see S. Morgenstern's Classic Tale as high up the list as it is, but, y'know, I love the book so perhaps shouldn't be.

I had the 8-10chars, some numbers, some punctuation jammed into me at work and elsewhere, it's become a habit. Anyone got a random word generator app? Suspect "correct horse battery staple" may become new 1234

Steve wishes the riots were political, wishes they had a point, but they're just looters looting. I think he's, broadly, right. I think he's wrong to say there's no alternatives, but the disillusion of many with the idea of incremental improvement from within is a fight for another day.

Is Worstall's analysis correct here? I can't see any flaws in it and the logic is sound to my ears, but it's certainly an unpopular message amongst certain elements of the environment first movement.

Are we all descended from alien DNA falling to the ground in rocks? Maybe. Certainly possible if this is backed up. This is cool.

The rules and weird politics around the Oscars always befuddles me, the LoTR movies barely got anything then ROTK swept the board, etc. But Scalzi makes a good point here about specifically singling out Serkis and the work he's done bringing forward motion capture acting as an actual art.

For those of you that have never played Doomtown, the best CCG ever released, this picture of the real actual Clovis hogging a sofa is meaningless (but still cool, it's a devilbunny). For those that did? Clovis lives!

Fucking hell this is wrong. You can make out the police, surrounding a person on the floor and beating her while she's down.

I spent less than 48 hours in Florence as I wanted to get to Sienna. I've been wanting to go back for ages as it's, simply, a beautiful city. Someone linked to this and I started laughing. And learning things, then laughing more. Can't pick a single entry, just, y'know, go have a look.

Pretty much agree with this-the reason Vimes is an interesting and cool character is because he's Not Perfect. He makes mistakes, he messes things up, he tries to fix them and sometimes he fails. This is good.

The more you learn, the less you know. Didn't know what maria was, now I know it's a big mystery and the answer may be rather cool.

Ooh, interesting. Haven't read the whole judgement but the exerpts from El Reg are, well, nice. And Unclean Hands is an excellent, if risky, defense. They've got some very good points there, can't claim competetive infrigement while at the same time shutting down profiles of people who admit using the site for sex. Not sure about Shagbook itself though, they're using an IP geolocate to put me in Dewsbury, close but no cigar, but they've put a bunch of people "near" Dewsbury that I might like. Including a bloke in Devon. Devon definitely not close to Dewsbury, if it were I'd walk to me Mum's for tea...

I'd so love to have a room big enough, and tidy enough, to attempt this sort of thing. The former is, of course, possible. The latter? Me? Nah...

OK, the headline's io9's, and it's a bit crap, but it made me smile. Spoilers, naturally, so, y'know, go and hide fromt he internet until it's broadcast. Eyepatch!River. Frances Barber. Weird shit. Explosions. Oh, and a bloody stetson. Apparently, stetsons are cool. Don't believe it.

Celebrating his 20,000th Twitter follower, @Scalzi writes a short story with every sentence less than 140 characters. It's short, it's funny and worth a read.

Reminds me of when Boston was shut down because of the flashy robot things. Go Huddersfield!

A strong step in the right direction, and abandoning the pointless, good good.

Could be interesting, always liked the Ultimate line when I was buying comics, didn't know they'd killed Peter Parker. Jennie's more interested in the artist, when DC are trying to claw back their alienated female fans, Marvel are just appointed women creators as if it's normal. Good good.

OK, OK, I'm being daft, but David's explanation of the whole thing is pretty cool.

This should be interesting, the two great Liberal economists of the 30s being discussed heavily-both have influenced entire schools of economic thought.

Bit of a puff piece, but has he actually made good progress solving a problem endemic in govt IT projects and spending?

Yeah, that's good, they guy the Diocese of Plymouth put in charge of pretcing children from abusers in their congregations has a massive child porn collection. Not getting any better on the PR front is it?

A lot of the fuss about the New College for the Hunaities has been, frankly, hyperbolic. Grayling does a good job here of defending his position and what he's trying to acheive, while attacking historic underfunding. I think I agree with him.

HSBS claims to be "the world's local bank". Not sure that's really accurate if this is correct, overwhelmingly a British operation, same for Barclays. Worth noting neither got in trouble during the credit crunch either.

I knew nothing about this, whatsoever. Impressive stuff.

The joke of paying for Thatcher's funeral by charging for the dancefloor over her grave was always just a little off. But maybe those that want to celebrate her passing should do so now, when she's closed her offices and withdrawn from public life?

The Met Office was founded by the Captain of Darwin's Voyage? I had no idea. Nice little silly season story showing how Einstein was wrong.

Three questions put to a fairly succesful nationally known businessman. Three sensible answers. Looks like a decent employer, especially in his approach to Facebook &c on work time.

How cool is this?

Reynolds thinks Jones is a high order troll being so stupid deliberately. I think she's just an overpaid moron, but that the editor of the Fail is a troll. You?

Many of my Devon based family use Facebook, it's useful to keep in touch with them there. That's it, beyond that I rarely go to the place except to reply to people. Not as keen on G+ as Jennie, but it's already better than FB

I'd heard, and believed, the ecocide theory that the inhabitants had made it unsustainable themselves and were dying out before discovery. Looks like that's completely untrue, the trees dies out early, but a sustainable culture survived for centuries on very limited resources in an impressive manner

I can easily picture Jennie doing this.

Interesting reading, didn't know some of the early stuff about the East India. Long article, 7000 words, not had time to finish properly yet but want to go back to it, worth a read.

PRobably some Soviet kit lost at some point, but what if?

The headline is hyperbolic, naturally, but user happiness with Android isn't as high as it should be given the hype.

Caterina was a co-founder of Flickr and has a good roundup. Some anonymous platforms are problematic. Some Facebook groups are full of arseholes using their real names. It's how you control things that matter, privilege inspired exclusionism doesn't help. You listening Google?

When the quaterly growth figures were announced, the hashtag #osborneexcuses started trending on Twitter, taking the piss out of Gideon for the crappy excuses he gave for them. Thing is? They weren't his excuses, they were concocted byt he supposedly independent Office of National Statistics. Tim Leunig argues they should concentrate on getting the fact straight and reporting them, and leave excuses to politicians. He's right, he usually is.

Technically, I'm in GenX, but I went to university late so many of my friends have the attitude and approach of GenY, ie those born post 1980, who came of age when mobile phones were ubiquitous. I hate calling people by phone, and I even more hate being called by phone unannounced. And if you do that, and don't ask me if it's convenient to talk? Incredibly rude to expect me to drop everything to deal with your problem.

Isn't it nice to know that the US govt has at least some employees/presidents with a sense of humour?

Finally. Some of us have been saying this for years. "preferred bidder status", no internal experts, no central coordination. Some Govt IT contracts I've looked at have been mindbogglingly bad and overpriced, might we finally get some movement the other way?

1848. Mill wrote this book in 1848. One of the greatest thinkers this country has ever produced, and stuff he considered basic common sense is still being forgotten more'n 150 years later. Last night, on Newsnight, former Labour Cabinet minister James Purnell basically said he'd figured the above quote out. Which is basically admitting that for 13 years in power, LAbour weren't thinking that way. FFS

Especially useful, for me, was the praise for the police and their methods, explain everything, apologise for mistakes, is something worth taking forward.

Constructable robotic cubes that do different things if built in different ways? How silly is that?