Need To Know 2001-04-27

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"New robot Fido doubles as a Dildo" http://www.japantoday.com/e/?content=kuchikomi&id=87 ...conversely, this robot version of the singer "Dido" doubles as a Filofax! >> HARD NEWS << as they says, not as they dos If the RIAA is so keen to remunerate working musicians, why doesn't it pay mariachi bands to drown out academic seminars it doesn't want heard? It'd do as much good as the legal threats they're directing against anyone who speaks on the Secure Digital Media Initiative's weaknesses - and, may, we think, add a much needed air of calm and dignity to the RIAA's thrashing. The RIAA's requirement that this week's conference - on "Information Hiding" - destroy all evidence of one of their sessions, was cringingly misplaced. And their apparent amazement that people were using zipfiles (the MP3s of scienze dudez) to "hide" the secret information of the evil researchers all over the Net was just embarrassing. What did they think was going to happen? That the authors of the squelched paper would shut down the pirate sites until they agreed to pay as dearly for their freedoms as the scientific community is right now? http://cryptome.org/sdmi-attack.htm - LA LA LA! You too, Lars, everyone KEEP SINGING http://www.salon.com/tech/log/2001/04/26/felten/ - we shall, we shall not be cp'ed Weirdly, the media seem to have some sort of vested interest in claiming that next Tuesday's MAYDAY MONOPOLY festivities have been extensively infiltrated and distorted by ultra- violent agitators (and they don't mean "the police"!). Given this, it's odd they're not encouraging people to pursue more non-violent ways of protesting - "hacktivist" website defacing, for example - especially as this currently poses no particular threat compared to any other time of the year, according to such noted and credible experts as DK Matai of mi2g, who previously warned of "hackers precipitating Y2K chaos by setting PC clocks forward" [see NTKs passim]. Handily enough, many new Windows 2000 users are even labouring under "a false sense of security", as Graeme Pinkney, of security firm Activis told THE REGISTER this week; ah, mused shadowy exploit-watchers THE DATA AND NETWORK SECURITY COUNCIL, that must be why Activis are running a notably old version of Microsoft's tried-and-tested IIS4 on their public webserver. http://www.freespeech.org/mayday2k/resources/guide_textonly.htm - violent anarchists with an interest in local history http://www.antionline.com/2001/04/26/m2p/0000-0002-m2p_200104260841521_1.html - vs http://www.kumite.com/myths/opinion/thoughts/1999/mi2g.htm http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/8/18515.html - vs http://www.activis.com/ . Not literally, of course... Not unexpected news on that LEONARD CHESHIRE [NTK 2001-03-09] case. We always suspected that the disabled "interventionist artists" running this anti-institutional site might not get to keep the domain. Handy tip to domain-activists: offering to sell the domain back to the Complainant for forty grand looks bad to the WIPO, even if you're offering the site as a work of art, and plan to spend the cash on a disabled holocaust memorial. However, it *is* good to report that even as the WIPO passed the domain back, all the other leonard cheshire domains were snapped up by other disability activists with more activism planned. We at least suspect this group of subversive net.artists might not use inaccessible frames and bloody Flash everywhere. http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?back=2001/now0309.txt&line=57#l - "evil that is Leonard Cheshire" probably ill-advised http://www.rnib.org.uk/digital/ - we've heard the RNIB's after a usability test court case too >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious JEFF BUCKLEY hates piracy just as much as when he died in 1997: http://www.artistsagainstpiracy.com/artists/a_i.html ... http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?pg=/search/callfx.html handily lets you search for articles from year 2021 ... not to be confused with "Eamonn Holmes" (two n's) off breakfast TV: http://www.gaydar.co.uk/eamonholmes ... US rock guitarist "is free" for gigs: http://www.johninman.com/ ... meet the SEETHRU fans: http://www.sadfuck.com/seethrugallery/ ... WIRED congratulate Declan on his "dearth of information" (6:45): http://www.wired.com/news/audio/notebooks/2001/04/wnr_DCNotes_042101.mp3 ... http://www.cybernanny.net/ promised all the functionality of Windows FIND... http://www.oodlebee.com/ launching "Autumn 2000"... http://www.theschmews.com/issue5/home.asp imitates both http://www.theonion.com/onion3416/marxist_student.html ("Student Rebels Against Capitalist Pig Father") as well as http://www.theonion.com/onion3712/disposable_car.html ("TV Programme Uncovers Counterfeit Cars Scam")... leaving London? MULTIMAP warn you're venturing into "great unknown": http://www.ntk.net/2001/04/27/dohmap.jpg ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Spike Jonze documentaries! Cut scenes from PS2 games! Odd fixations with Japanese animation, hip-hop, and Flash! Yes, the Barley-o-meter peaks predictably off the scale at this year's ONEDOTZERO digital film festival (from 5pm tonight, Fri 2001-04-27, London, the hated ICA), though they're also showing the WILLIAM GIBSON docu NO MAPS FOR THESE TERRITORIES, in which the soporific Canadian cyberdude is interviewed by a Knight-Rider-style computer car whose GPS is on the blink (hence the title) and starts picking up live satellite transmissions from his pals Bono and The Edge out of U2. Meanwhile, taking the alternative view that the salvation of TV lies not in its future, but in its past, nostalgia-media maniacs TV CREAM are relaunching their mailing list for a "limited time only", enabling them to call it 31 DAYS IN MAY. Hopefully it'll be up to the perilously obsessive standards of their existing "TV Cream Times" listings service: "Saturday, C4, 21.05: Top Ten Boy Bands. A repeated episode, and one I didn't think we'd get again as it was presented by Paula Yates. It hasn't been re-edited, so expect the links to make quite uncomfortable viewing". http://www.onedotzero.com/ - oh, the Nathanity... http://tv.cream.org/ - also fans of BBC Choice cult "The RDA with John Gordillo" http://www.btinternet.com/%7Efred.helen/playgym.html - what digital filmmaking is really like. Well done! Good girl! >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering With their consistent indentation, neat modularisation, and smarmy little Changelogs, even the suckiest open source package makes an effort to be neat, clean and bug-free. And by doing so, they say to "we live on a great old planet that's W3C-diddly-Python perfect!" But let's be honest. Who *really* scratches itches like that? Where are those freaky scripts that gaffer our tattered pants to our sorry arses? Those crazy, home-grown ideas, project-managed by Dr Bourbon, with a deadline of dawn and a jeering audience of one? You know damn well where they are - hiding at the bottom of your ~/bin directory where no-one will ever see them. Well, friend, JOEY RAMONE did not DIE so that FREE SOFTWARE could become BOGGED DOWN in GLOSSY LIFELESS PRODUCTION VALUES. Of that we can be certain. It's time you sent your three-chord executables to DUMBCODE, the site expressly designed to foster the stupid side of coding. It's the moshpit freshmeat: processes that live fast, die young, and leave zombies. Code that chroot jail's too good for. An open source project that you don't have to wait "until I've got time to document the features", because you ain't going to do it - and we like you the way you are. Dumb. http://www.dumbcode.org/ - to wit: who hasn't quite grasped the "--exec" option to find(1), then? >> MEMEPOOL << inquire of limewire "Large-scale, Global Anti-capitalism Protests Putting Smaller, Local, Anti-capitalism Protests Out Of Business" reports funny-for-once http://www.urbanreflex.com/monopoly.html - vs terrifying evidence of child-police using water-cannons: http://www.ntk.net/2001/04/27/dohriot.jpg ... cheap, cheerful CHEGGERS' LOAD BALANCING: http://zpin.com/chegbalance.htm ... it's almost too plausible; something smells suspicious about: http://www.bekkoame.ne.jp/ha/dins/index.english.html ... this week's specialist in "Computer Accessories", "Heavy Duty Equipments", and "Ladies' Fashion": http://www.symmic.com/ ... fake AMAZON REVIEWER of the week - it's "Andrew Lloyd-Webber": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A3LVCYIJTHG693/ ... Lucozade renamed LARAZADE... life imitates SOUTH PARK: http://www.gaydog.co.uk/ ... LASTMINUTE imitates TVGOHOME: http://www.lastminute.com/lmn/webcourier/en_GB/MSN/email.htm ... AMAZON disses solar power as mere "Religion & Spirituality": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0967189101/ ... we have no joke here (just for a change) - we just liked the names: http://www.geocities.com/absea98/ichristian.html ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> annoyingly, they don't mention the specific RFC, but IN THE NICK OF TIME (10.05am, Sat, BBC2) follows "a piece of legislation forced through Brussels in record time that helped Europe keep up with the Internet" (Radio Times)... SF:UK (1.15am, Sat, C4) talks to Anthony "C3P0" Daniels as well as Grant Morrison on his attempt to bring back "Dan Dare"... and, in a wildly disturbing new trend, "Casualty" actors help out an actual A&E ward in CASUALTY: GET REAL (9.05pm, Sat, BBC1) - next week, Robbie Coltrane helps police psychologists profile a sex killer!... an "edited for nudity" LOGAN'S RUN (2.45pm, Sun, BBC2) gets its second showing since Dec 1999 - one solution to the plague of OAP criminals depicted in CUTTING EDGE: BUS PASS BANDITS (9pm, Tue, C4)... true conspiracy theorists will see Jon Ronson's ineffectual new-world-order jaunt THE SECRET RULERS OF THE WORLD (9pm, Sun, C4) as merely another ad for his "Adventures With Extremists" book... while Steven Seagal becomes the nakedly lethal chef in Andrew "The Fugitive" Davis' Die-Hard-on-a-boat UNDER SIEGE (10.15pm, Sun, BBC1)... THE AD FACTOR (11.20pm, Mon-Wed, BBC2) profiles Psion, apparently still having problems matching the ages of their typical users to those specified in their <alt> tags: http://www.series5mx.com/New_user/profiles/Marie_Anne_B.asp ... Clint Eastwood shows no sign of relaxing his vice-like grip on the schedules in WHERE EAGLES DARE (9pm, Tue, C5) - last shown on BBC1 about 8 weeks ago... and Wednesday is 1980s body-horror night (again), with the "Come To Daddy" video- inspiring HELLRAISER (10.15pm, Wed, C5) leading nicely into Cameron's interminably gung-ho ALIENS (12.05am, Wed, ITV)... FILM>> it's the 50 year-old Steven Seagal, Tom "True Lies" Arnold, plus DMX, one of the few rappers to have named himself after a digital multiplexing system for controlling stage lighting - together at last! - in hip-hop kung-fu chucklefest EXIT WOUNDS (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/exitwounds.htm : repeated full female nudity and vulgar dance while nude plus some innuendo; woman in men's locker room; many, many gunfire deaths/killings; rude arrogance; lies)... the same source also warns that the "heterosexual immoralities are shadowed by the homosexual presences" in lethargic Julia Roberts/ "Sopranos" guy road movie THE MEXICAN (http://www.cndb.com : near the beginning, we see [Brad Pitt's] oh-so-gorgeous bare back and just the top of his bare butt as he sits on the edge of the bed where Julia Roberts sleeps on the other side)... which just leaves Ken "social conscience" Loach's Latino workers' rights rabble-rouser BREAD AND ROSES (MPAA: rated R for strong language and brief nudity) - intriguingly scheduled to either encourage May Day protestors or keep them off the streets by giving them a good excuse to go to the cinema instead... CONFECTIONERY THEORY>> first up, apologies to T-shirt purchasers who received a bafflingly unsolicited email from our e-commerce associates CyberCandy this week, which has now been traced to a misguided attempt to clarify the workings of their opt-in update newsletter which they hadn't realised had lost its opt-out button when they upgraded their shopping cart software. Nonetheless, measures are being put in place to make it slightly more difficult for NTK readers to purchase sweets from them in future, to ensure that this sort of thing neither goes unpunished nor ever happens again... anyway, not too much to report in the basic sugar/chocolate department: an anonymous source close to MARS observed that the "KIT-KAT BALLS" spotted in NTK 2001-03-30 more accurately fit the description of MALTESERS TEASERS, possibly to be launched with a new Mars logo as part of "a vigorous marketing operation from September"... while frozen comestibles enthusiast TOBY "I led the great 1999 revolt against Calippo Shots" SLATER described his initial encounter with WALLS' CORNETTO WHIPPY as "a disappointment: the ice cream is nothing like Mr Whippy (it's pretty much solid and *even more* synthetic-tasting than its namesake)", and the enclosed chocolate bar bears "no resemblance whatsoever to a Flake", more resembling a "five- month-old offcut of Aero"... while another nameless tip-off alleged that VIRGIN are due to launch "a 5-strong range of dirty, Panda Cola flavoured rainbow coloured drinks, called V COLOURS", and featuring "herbal extracts". Apparently, they "all taste like shit"... other liquids to look out for include ailing COCA-COLA'S attempts to expand into non-carbonated beverages - a 500ml wide-mouth plastic bottle for OASIS and new "still fruit drink" ALIVE - and ROWNTREE's 200g DRINKING YOGHURT (UKP 1.59 for pack of 4); we prefer "Peach, Orange and Apricot" over the artificial sweetener-alike "Strawberry", plus it comes in a dinky little bottle that you can swig from as if you were nonchalantly abusing cough medicine... but the real action this month has been in spicy versions of savoury snacks - JAKE LINGWOOD thought WALKERS FUNYUNS (27p) were "good, in a sort of Onion Rings meets Skips sort of way", and thus his "favourite new extruded corn snack", though, when challenged over his implicit endorsement of Walkers/PepsiCo's leverage of Smiths to dominate the UK crisps market, admitted he may have been swayed by their "exquisite wordplay"... there's strong word-of-mouth on the new "Salt and Vinegar" and "Savoury Salted" flavours of QUAKER SNACK-A-JACKS (the excellent "Barbecue" now also available in "Jumbo" size)... the "New Tortilla" ones ("Nacho Cheese" and "Cool Chilli") are the more interesting variants of HULA HOOPS XL (compared to the as-you'd-expect "Curry" and "Beef & Mustard")... and you can also look forward to "Nice 'N' Spicy" GOLDEN WONDER CRISPS; "Smokey BBQ" and "Tangy Salsa" replacing "Cheese and Onion" and "Cheese and Ham" KP MINI CHEDDARS; and Dennis-the- Menace tie-in "Baked Beano" flavour KP SKIPS - all part of an onslaught of new product development that also includes PEANUT LION BAR, the unfortunately named FRUITELLA JELLIES, and a new look, new recipe and new "Peach and Raspberry" flavour for HALLS SOOTHERS, intended to appeal to the 50% of purchasers "who don't just use them when they have a sore throat"... >> SMALL PRINT << Need to Know is a useful and interesting UK digest of things that happened last week or might happen next week. You can read it on Friday afternoon or print it out then take it home if you have nothing better to do. It is compiled by NTK from stuff they get sent. Registered at the Post Office as "proud to be cybersquat" http://wwwntk.net/ NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Unsubscribe? Mail ntknow-unsubscribe@lists.ntk.net Subscribe? Mail ntknow-subscribe@lists.ntk.net NTK now is supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.ntkmart.com/ (K) 2001 Special Projects. Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/ Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com All communication is for publication, unless you beg. Press releases from naive PR people to pr@spesh.com Remember: Your work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material. Sending >500KB attachments is forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Your country may be at risk if you fail to comply.