Mat Bowles

A nice little mix of stuff in this lot, though the politics averse amongst you should be warned that with elections next week there's a fair bit on that, though not much of it is serious.

• A quick guide to the British voting system for the EU elections | Nosemonkey's EUtopia
  There are elections next week across the UK. In Britain, the votes are counted using the D'Hondt closed list PR system. This is one of the few electoral systems I've encountered I consider to be worse than the one we use for Westminster, when you get critics attacking "PR", they're having a go at this pile of arse, which no one sane suggests for Westminster (and Labour had to force through the Lords after a lot of opposition). If you're not sure who to vote for, and don't want to spend too much time thinking about it, go out and vote either Lib Dem or Green; there's a small chance the BNP could win a seat in the North West. Giving Nick Griffin a tax funded salary and the ability to hire a bunch of staff just doesn't appeal. It's unlikely he'll get in, but it could happen. So just go vote, please? Even if the system is arse, the EU parliament does actually have power these days, even if it's not as much as would be liked.
  (tags: elections europe eu BNP electoral+reform d'hondt)
• Self destructing product catalogue
  Not a bad bit of viral marketing this: what happens when the stuff on the display screen starts falling over. A nicely animated product catalogue as it slowly blows itself up.
  (tags: humour funny flash marketing)
• Blogging in the 19th Century: The Future of Journalism | The Lay Scientist
  I pretty much agree with this. Most of us writing our own personal blogs and journals are copying the old small press pamphleteers and chain letter writers. We're just doing it with better technology. Most of the established newspapers grew out of various small presses—the biggest blogs online now have copied this model, bringing in lots of individuals to create a more coherent whole.
  (tags: blogging journalism pampleteering campaigning)
• Jon Worth » Some wacky ways to improve the EU
  Some of them really are a bit daft, yes, but still worth thinking about. What the antis always seem to miss is that most supporters of EU membership also constantly argue for reform of the system. That it's a bit crap isn't disputed, how to improve it is. Bit like everything else in life really.
  (tags: EU europe politics reform)
• UKIP's "Britain paying the EU £40 million a day" claim vs the REAL costs of UK EU membership | Nosemonkey's EUtopia
  A UKIP campaign slogan that doesn't make sense and is based on unfounded and uncosted hyperbole? really? Never would've guessed.
  (tags: UKIP Europe EU elections misinformation)
• Spawning A Campaign - diffrentcolours
  There are Euro elections due. One of the issues the EU legislates on is software patents, the Free Software Foundation thinks we should ask the candidates their views on this. Makes sense to me, go do it...
  (tags: software patents freedom europe EU elections)
• Annals of Innovation: How David Beats Goliath: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker
  The underdog can always win if enough effort is put in. Being able to put that effort in is the main barrier. Does this apply to any walk of life, if at all?
  (tags: activism sport inspiration psychology)
• The Cute Cat Theory Talk at ETech » My heart's in Accra
  Makes sense to me: a successful web technology will have cute cats, porn and activism. If it doesn't have a mix of the three, something isn't working right.
  (tags: cats theory internet activism web2.0)
• 386 - My Kingdom for a Beer? Heineken's Eurotopia « Strange Maps
  This, however, is one of the crazier ideas for solving the EU governance issue—when the paranoid fringes talk about 'plots to break up Britain'? This is the sort of thing they're referring to. But, y'know, interesting idea, even if he does make godawful beer.
  (tags: europe EU maps)
• 105 — The Tory Atlas of the World — Strange Maps
  Apparently from a Spitting Image annual from the mid 80s. It's really quite funny and rather accurate. Note to those supporting Cameron's modern Conservative party (or even those that can remember Major). Yes, Thatcher's Tories really were like this. Some of them still are. That the majority of MPs after the next General Election will be 'untainted' by this association doesn't mean those of us that can remember will trust them.
  (tags: funny maps tories politics Thatcher)
• The perils of an identity system - The Web of Evil
  If your identity has been used by a fraudster, and you're required to log all your movements, the authorities will keep trying to arrest you. And a national mandatory identity scheme WILL get cracked by a fraudster almost instantaneously. WebOfEvil shares a personal anecdote
  (tags: NIR ID+cards identity)
• Warner Music to Warner Music: You are pirates! - Boing Boing
  Dear Warner. Getting YouTube to remove your subsidiaries officially posted music vids because they infringe your copyright means that people won't see your videos. You know, the ones you paid for to advertise your product? Is there a chance that, at some time soon, the recording industry will grow up and get a clue?
  (tags: dmca video youtube warner stupidity)
• Would be Bond villain seeks femme fatale - m4w
  Paging George! This bloke seems perfect for you girl...
  (tags: funny ads personals supervillains)
• Kid keeping a lending library of banned books in his her locker - Boing Boing
  Heh—banning books from teens makes them more likely to want to read them. So a kid running a library of banned books is encouraging her schoolfriends to read more. Cool
  (tags: books subversion censorship)
• How Ursula K Le Guin led a generation away from realism | Books | guardian.co.uk
  I never did understand the whole "he'll grow out of it" approach to my liking of SF and fantasy when I was a teen, why would I WANT to grow out of it? Just because I like Asimov and Stross doesn't mean I can't appreciate Nabokov (who wrote some SF anyway) or the likes, just as liking Therapy doesn't prevent me also liking Dvorak or Gershwin. Silly elitist snobs. Still, at least we're winning...
  (tags: writing culture fantasy sf books)
• Hoversnail goes WHIRRRRRRRRRRRRVOOM.
  Really. It's a hoversnail. It's cool. Go look.
  (tags: funny pictures)

Posted to both LJ and DW with comments open for technical reasons that I can't be arsed to fix, LJ version: Europe, books, maps and snails—MOAR linkspam

Bad news. El Reg reports UK ID card service mounts birth, marriage, death landgrab:

The UK Identity & Passport Service (IPS) has staged an identity landgrab on birth, marriage and death records. From April 2008 the General Register Office, which is responsible for recording these matters and is currently a directorate of the Office of National Statistics, is to become part of IPS, meaning that IPS will be logging you from the moment you're born until the moment you die.

The logic of the move is chilling.

There might be a little hyperbole in that report, but not much, and I agree with the general thrust. You will be stamped, you will be categorised, you will be numbered. Come in Number Six, your free time is up.

Other, possibly good, possibly bad news? They're getting efficient as well. Jennie's passport just arrived. Hand delivered. She only sent the forms off last week. So yay! we can book flights. But it seems they are now able to organise piss-ups in breweries.

Meh, down with grotty cold. Concentration shot to hell, so I've been playing Diablo II, having given up on Warcraft II (yes, 2) due to the bloody awful AI. Anyway...

Norwegian judge declares stripping is art:

Striptease, the tantalising dance pioneered by Salome in the Old Testament, is an art form that ranks with opera and ballet, according to a Norwegian court. As a result, strip clubs will be freed from paying the country’s hefty 25 per cent VAT.

A fair amount of the UK media has been writing scare stories about the "war on Christmas" again. The Guardian has investigated:

All of which might be reasonable, were it not for a few awkward facts. Luton does not have a festival called Luminos. It does not use any alternative name for Christmas. When it did, once, five years ago, hold something called Luminos one weekend in late November, the event didn't even replace the council's own Christmas celebrations, let alone forbid anyone else from doing anything. Similarly, Christmas is not called Winterval in Birmingham. The Royal Edinburgh Hospital for Sick Children never banned a Christmas CD for mentioning Jesus. And Chester council's "un-Christian" Christmas card says - as cards have done for decades - "Season's Greetings".

Yup, all bollocks, just as we'd expect. Good news! The more people learn about ID cards, the less they like them; I'm not the only one planning to refuse the damn things:

Hundreds of thousands of people will refuse to sign up to the UK Government's planned identity register, according to just-published research. Around eight per cent of those surveyed said they would refuse to sign up to the database even if they are fined.

The survey was carried out by polling firm YouGov on behalf of the Daily Telegraph newspaper and in a sample of 1,979 people found that a significant proportion were prepared to defy the government over the database.

8% of those surveyed. And that didn't include me, haven't done a YouGov poll for a bit now, can't be arsed. It would be nice if they sent you a message when the results came out, but there y'go. Longest pending retirement in history? Arthur C Clarke still alive, but not writing (again):

Arthur C. Clarke is no longer writing, and has asked dynamic young author Frederik Pohl (born two years after ACC) to finish his new novel. `Talked to Pohl recently, and he was doing it,' confirms Charles N. Brown. It is rumoured that this came as a surprise to Greg Benford, who had rather expected to be called on for the task.

I've got rather attached to the stuff he's done with Baxter recently, but still, proclaiming too old to write then getting a friend two years your junior to do it? I dunno. When building a site, what browsers should you support? All of them, naturally:

In the first 10 years of professional web development, back in the early ‘90s, browser support was binary: Do you — or don’t you — support a given browser? When the answer was “No”, user access to the site was often actively prevented. In the years following IE5’s release in 1998, professional web designers and developers have become accustomed to asking at the outset of any new undertaking, “Do I have to support Netscape 4.x browsers for this project?”

By contrast, in modern web development we must support all browsers. Choosing to exclude a segment of users is inappropriate, and, with a “Graded Browser Support” strategy, unnecessary.

The chart on the next page is rather good as well, lists all the A-listers you should test with. M$ finally let me install IE7 last night, tried it. No thanks, not for me. On the subject of designing, how about a list of all fonts that come as a default install on all common platforms?:

Here you can find the list with the standard set of fonts common to all versions of Windows and their Mac substitutes, referred sometimes as "browser safe fonts". This is the reference I use when making web pages and I expect you will find it useful too.

Not a bad one that. Assuming, of course, you want to use something that isn't Verdana.

Meh, I'm off to down some more Beechams. Might be a poll or something daft later.