Digital Digital Getdown

What do you do when your "battle groups" are the biggest joke in military history? You concentrate on non-military goals in an effort to preserve your former cultural hegemony.

A plan to create a vast digital library to preserve Europe's cultural heritage has received strong backing from European Union (EU) culture ministers.

Six EU nations said they supported the initiative at culture talks, which were also attended by more than 800 artists.

It would be similar to search giant Google's global virtual library plans.

It is planning a 10-year digitisation project to make works from Harvard, Stanford and Oxford university libraries freely-available online.

EU officials and cultural commentators have voiced concern that Google's ambitious plans could result in important European literary works missing out and being lost to future generations.

How much do you want to bet that Google's database will be better, even if it's run by liberal twerps?