geekosystem

Good news? A family of endangered peregrine falcons has taken up residence in a U.K. cell tower. Bad news? Since U.K. endangered species laws prevent people from messing with the nests of endangered birds and potentially disturbing their rare offspring, technicians are unable to conduct maintenance on the tower and have been forced to shut it down, leaving customers in the area lacking a cell signal until July, when officials -- and customers -- hope the baby birds will have grown old enough to leave the nest.

Sometimes I forget that stamps are still a thing, because we live in the future now, but then something tremendous happens in regards to stamps that reminds me of their existence. The United Kingdom's Royal Mail service is commemorating the 50th Anniversary of Doctor Who with a series of stamps featuring all 11 doctors. There's even a miniature sheet featuring the TARDIS, Daleks, the Ood, Cybermen and Weeping Angels. Sadly they'll only be available in the U.K., and I imagine they'll sell out quickly. Perhaps even sadder, there's no K-9 stamp. Poor little guy can't get any love.

Have you ever reached a place where you questioned the merits of having a smartphone? Having access to so much information at all times can, every so often, get in the way of living in the moment, breathing in the fresh air, enjoying a quiet moment, or, you know, not walking into people on the street. In the United Kingdom, one company has decided to take the idea of the "dumbphone" to its logical conclusion. Feast your eyes on the OwnFone. A tiny, custom-made phone that can only communicate with a small set of preset numbers.

A new U.K. law, expected to be announced during the Queen's Speech in May, would allow the Government Communications Headquarters ( -- a British intelligence agency -- to have unlimited access to a wealth of information about U.K. citizens' communications. The law, which proponents claim is necessary for tackling terrorism and crime in general, would allow the GCHQ to pull up records concerning any citizen's phone calls, text messages, emails, and web history. At the moment, access to such information requires the permission of a Magistrate, much in the same way search warrants work in the United States. The new law, however, would remove this step.

The Pirate Bay has been sailing on some stormy seas lately, and things don't look to be getting any better. U.K. high court recently ruled that the site "authorizes" and encourages users to infringe on copyrights as opposed to merely "enabling" or "assisting," a distinction which puts The Pirate Bay in the position of being decidedly illegal in the U.K.. That being the case, it's possible that the site could be blocked outright by ISPs; they wouldn't be the first.

As a Netflix customer, the best service they provide is the large amount of full television series I can watch anywhere I have an Internet connection. As someone living in the U.S., the best part of Netflix's wide array of available television is the deal it has with the BBC, which allows us to watch popular shows like Doctor Who if we don't happen to have the BBC America channel, or more obscure shows like Spaced that have been off the air for quite some time. Now, however, Netflix has launched in the U.K. and Ireland, giving customers across the pond a chance to check out our gritty American television, such as all of our remakes of BBC shows. Yeah!

There seems to be no end of possibilities for Apple's iPad tablet: You can explore stonehenge, Orangutans can play with it, cats can slice fruit with it, and you can fake a grievous bodily injury with it. Now, you'll apparently be able to help run a government with one, too. At least, that's the plan for British Prime Minister David Cameron, who is having a specially made "government dashboard" app developed especially for him.

Despite big plans to open up 100 stores in Great Britain and take all of Europe by storm, Best Buy has failed in the U.K. and is now closing the 11 stores it actually managed to get open because they have been hemorrhaging money. In a statement, Roger Taylor, CEO of the Carphone Warehouse Group, a company partnered with Best Buy in the U.K. venture, put it this way:

“The eleven Best Buy UK ‘Big Box’ stores have performed exceptionally at the level of customer satisfaction, but they do not have the national reach to achieve scale and brand economies. Due to the lack of visibility of an acceptable rate of return on historical and future potential investment, we have decided against rolling out more ‘Big Box’ stores and we will be closing our existing stores, subject to consultation with our employees.”

In Ardnamurchan, archaeologists have discovered the first ever, fully intact viking boat burial site on the U.K. mainland. The details that make this case specifically interesting are the condition in which the burial site was preserved (read: great) and the artifacts found alongside the body, which suggest that this particular viking was a pretty ridiculously macho killing machine high ranking warrior.

"[The] artifacts and preservation make this one of the most important Norse graves ever excavated in Britain" said Dr. Hannah Cobb, and she would know; she's been excavating artifacts in Ardnamurchan for about six years now. Along with the body and 200 rivets, the remains of the boat, archaeologists found the viking had been buried with an axe, a sword with a tricked out hilt, a shield, a spear, and a bronze ring pin, all Exceptional quality, level requirement 25.

From the UK's Royal Mail, the above set of stamps features some of the most (currently) famous wizards, witches and enchanters. Featuring characters from Harry Potter, Terry Pratchett's Discworld series, the legends of King Arthur, and characters from the Narnia series. Who else is thrilled The Luggage makes an appearance? He follows his owner everywhere, after all. Head past the break to see a larger version of the set.

Last night's South Park took on the Facebook obsession and wryly referenced FarmVille -- some might say they were a little late on both scores -- but just like that, the real world furnishes us with some FarmVille news that also recalls South Park's infamous World of Warcraft episode. A 12-year-old boy in the UK amassed a debt of more than £900 ($1367) buying in-game FarmVille supplies, wiping out his savings account of £288 and then draining £625 more from his mother's credit card without her knowledge. And Zynga, the oft-vilified company behind FarmVille, refuses to forgive the debt:

Well, it seems that lawmakers in the UK are feeling quite favorable to science-type persons this week! The BBC is reporting that Simon Singh, the high-profile science writer who was forced from The Guardian as the result of legal attacks from a medical industry pressure group, has won a temporary victory today.

Simon Singh, a distinguished British science journalist who has been working in science media since 1990, was forced to pen his last column today, thanks to a libel lawsuit filed by the British Chiropractic Association after a column of his questioning the practices of chiropractors appeared in The Guardian in 2008. According to a more recent Guardian article, one in four chiropractors in the UK are currently under investigation for "allegedly making misleading claims in advertisements" thanks to Singh's original article, which highlighted the claims of some chiropractors that they could cure the likes of asthma and ear infections. Even the UK's General Chiropractic Council has disavowed those claims (warning: PDF), so why is Singh still embroiled in the costly, time-consuming legal battle? One simple twist of law: in UK libel lawsuits, the burden of proof falls on the defendant to prove that their claims are true, and not on the plaintiff to prove that they are false; in other words, if you're accused of libel, you're guilty until proven innocent: