Need To Know 2001-06-01

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"On the web, it can be hard to distinguish between something run out of a bedroom and a major company..." - Elaine King, genius behind "the phonebook for the web" http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1346000/1346559.stm ...ie, the bedroom one might still be going in 6 months' time? >> HARD NEWS << you win they lose Four years ago, top Labour advisors told us that the next election would be "fought on the Internet". And they were right! We've spent the last month fighting with all these Flash games with photos of politician's heads clumsily pasted into them, and, boy, we still can't get enough! That new innovation apart, we have to admit: politician turnout online *has* been low this year. We put it down to general apathy on the part of the elected: they've realised that spamming policies doesn't really change anything, and don't really see the point in discussing the issues in a forum where the inflexible electorate are just going to ask awkward questions. Meanwhile, those greedy, unprincipled voters appear to have been after the one thing they love: the corrupt allure of facts. The GUARDIAN and the TELEGRAPH, it seems, have been a bit taken aback by the number of people interrogating their MP and electoral databases. It's almost as if people online *are* interested in politics: just not politicians. Unless they're in a funny game. http://uk.indymedia.org/display.php3?article_id=5565 - politicians playing funny games, too. but not that funny. If anyone's lived the wacky geek activist life to the full, it's H KEITH HENSON. He co-founded the L5 society in 1975, to promote space colonisation (it merged to become the more stately National Space Society). He was somehow a friend to both Tim "LSD" Leary and Tim "Cypherpunks" May, the carved wooden bookends at the far edges of any gonzo futurist's bookshelf. He shares two patents with Eric Drexler, the godfather of nanotechnology. He's been involved in cryogenics. He was married to Carolyn Meinel, "Happy Hacking" hate figure for the haxx0r underground. He's the toastmaster for the extropian Far Edge Party, where the cloned copies of every uploaded human meet up at a prearranged point on the other end of the Galaxy in 10 million years, and show each other holiday slide shows of where they've explored. And, as of this week, he's 63 years old, bankrupt, and stuck in a maximum security jail, after being arrested by six Canadian Emergency Task Force officers in full battle gear. They'd been tipped off that he was a dangerous pipe-bomb wielding fugitive. He's certainly a fugitive; he's currently pleading asylum in Canada after being convicted of interfering with the Scientologists. He could well be someone you secretly hoped existed: his defence fund has a PayPal account. http://freehenson.da.ru/ - what *is* it with Russia hosting all these free speech sites? http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/Authors/Engineering/Henson-HK/ - academic interests http://addall.com/New/compare.cgi?dispCurr=GBP&isbn=0201567512&location=20100 - see also "The Great Mambo Chicken & The Transhuman Condition" Following on from the bargain half-price PS2s offered by THESLAMMER [NTK 2001-04-06], THE DVD FORUMS is becoming *the* place to compare notes on pioneering online business models and, more to the point, how much they've deducted from your credit card. Annoyingly, you have to register to read it, but highlights include one 11-page thread, under "Suppliers", with wild reports of companies with no stocks of DVDs at all, sysadmins threatening to pull the plug on their hosting unless they receive full payment (in DVDs, natch), as well as representatives posting to defend various companies and ending up admitting they haven't been paid for a month and hereby resign. It's the innovative "zero-stock" business plan we're most intrigued by - sure, we run out of t-shirts from time to time, but visiting an e-commerce site where you can't actually buy anything is a bit close to that old practical joke of ringing up bookshops and then, when they say "Can I help you?", you reply "It's OK, thanks - I'm just browsing..." http://www.thedvdforums.com/ - also at http://groups.google.com/groups?ic=1&th=7acda5d62de648f5,7 >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful "Make no mistake: we've only scratched the surface of all the Internet can and will do" admits the blurb for INTERNET WORLD UK 2001 (Tue-Thu, 2001-06-05/07, Earls Court, London, should be free if you pre-register). This thrillingly dull event is handily co-located with the likes of E-FULFILMENT 2001, CUSTOMER CONTACT CENTRES 2001, SERVICE MANAGEMENT EUROPE 2001 and, of course, ENTERPRISE CUSTOMER MANAGEMENT 2001, just in case the ranks of depleted .coms have problems filling out that cavernous Earls Court exhibition hall. http://www.internetworld.co.uk/london/index.cfm - there is such a thing as a free "networking lunch"? http://yetanother.org/index.cgi?page=yapcna2001-day1 - next week, Larry Wall launches "YAPC::America::North" >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious WOMEN prefer gifts bought at AMAZON over ones you can't buy there: http://news.excite.com/news/r/010531/11/odd-gadgets-dc - AMAZON research reveals... hat-wearing ex-tech-journo starts weblog: http://www.mediacooperative.com/users/blog/ ... bad day at DEMON: http://www.ntk.net/2001/06/01/dohdemon.gif ... "Arriving in November 2000 - The POPTEL WORLDWIDE Website": http://www.poptelworldwide.com/ ... when will we tire of IRONIC BANNER ADS in "every pixel is sacred" Nielsen columns: http://www.internetworld.com/news/archive/05292001c.jsp ... this week's mistranslated hilarity - "Internet, which refers to as virtual platform does, held space-time spellbound": http://sg.netor.com/ , "a village that keeps a mystery and the natural cleanness": http://www.hwachon.kangwon.kr/english/ , and, of course, "WE MEANS WHAT PROMISED BASE ON THE HIGH QUALITY": http://www.jinyuan.com/ ... what, no DAVE LEE?: http://www.play247.com/play247.asp?page=title&r=CD&title=93537 ... at least they're not BITTER: http://www.pcxl.com/ ... >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering The best Free Software projects have two attributes in moderation: complexity and competition. Oh, and comprehensibility. Oh, and coolness. And compactness. Well, anyway, we think that the current friendly tussle between UCLIBC and DIETLIBC is producing all these wonders; both look great projects to mess around with. Here's the plot: glibc is now about as bloated as can be, and really not usable for bootdisks and embedded systems. What could be more fun than reimplementing the 90% of it that's needed for most programs, and super-optimizing it as much as you can? uClibc is the classic old Linux project turned corporate-sponsored contender, pulling most enthusiasts along in its wake. DIETLIBC is the new, slightly idiosyncratic, Dan Bernstein-ish implementation, with some shiny coolness (regexps, spirited pleadings not to port to Windows), and some philosophical omissions (it's not a shared libe yet, although it could easily be). Both are in a virtual spiral of development; both have just reached the stage of being linkable to most programs, and there's still fun to be had tweaking them further. http://cvs.uclinux.org/uClibc.html - big math http://www.fefe.de/dietlibc/ - pthreads! dns! >> MEMEPOOL << oogle the google HOLY GRAIL action figures: http://www.flyingwebsite.com/ - no match for Japanese PLANET OF THE APES Lego-style minifigs: http://64.26.15.120/kubrick/apes/cont1.html ... read the fucking MANUAL: http://lumthemad.net/shadowbane/labor/ ... not clicking on anything that comes with a recommendation to "turn your speakers up LOUD!"... OLD MAN MURRAY remembers DOUGLAS ADAMS: http://www.oldmanmurray.com/realnews.shtml (05/14)... POPBITCH now hosted by http://thebunker.net - fearing wrath of celebs with nuclear capability... in a DECADE far, far away: http://www.toysrgus.com/images-speci/kitsch/kitsch.html ... "frustrated by an inability to see yourself, er, we mean, 'a character' as you've imagined?": http://www.heromachine.com/ ... death of net predicted: http://grc.com/dos/grcdos.htm - DDoS at 11... PCs of the future to look like 1992's Amiga 1200: http://www.softwareparadise.co.uk/graphics/zpc300.gif ... polite BILLBOARD MODIFICATION says "Tapping your phone": http://www.ntk.net/2001/06/01/dohposter.jpg ... direct DEMOCRACY: http://www.kickboxthequeen.com/ ... maybe after another 4 years, people will have stopped doing this joke by then: http://www.systemed.net/allyourvote.html ... >> GEEK MEDIA << the back-from-holiday www.tvgohome.com TV>> unless it's another late April Fool like we ran last week, Giles more than survives tonight's BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER season finale (8pm, Fri, Sky1) [CAUTION, SPOILERS]: http://www.salon.com/ent/col/mill/2001/05/29/finales_2001/index3.html ... C4 pulls in the post-pub crowd with a necrophiliac 'n' retard double-bill of KISSED (12.25am, Fri, C4) and SLING BLADE (1.55am, Fri, C4)... and ITV finally shows the last - and worst - in the trilogy DIE HARD WITH A VENGEANCE (9pm, Sat, ITV)... the editor of BBC in-house magazine Radio Times slams porn, sex and violence drama MEN ONLY (10pm, Sun, C4) as "a vile, disgusting programme that would have been better not made", without having seen it... even worse, it clashes with mild Jenny Agutter nudity horror classic AN AMERICAN WEREWOLF IN LONDON (9pm, Sun, C5)... while ITV2 is making an inexplicably big thing out of its repeats of Leslie Grantham bodysnatcher thriller THE UNINVITED (10.30pm, Sun, ITV2)... C5's run of entertaining rubbish continues with Whoopi Goldberg IRC espionage caper JUMPIN' JACK FLASH (8pm, Wed, C5) plus RAMBO: FIRST BLOOD PART II (10pm, Wed, C5)... NIGELLA BITES (8.30pm, Wed, C4) ventures temptingly into "Top Secret Recipes" territory with ham baked in Coca-Cola... and the only respite from non-stop election coverage on Thu comes with the last in this series of real-life politicising over in THE WEST WING (11.05pm, Thu, C4)... FILM>> connoisseurs of Michael Bay's trademark crane shots, epic explosions and terrifically tortuous teen-style acting remain most likely to enjoy the first half of "Titanic" plus the last two-thirds of "Independence Day" - aka PEARL HABOR (http://www.screenit.com/movies/2001/pearl_harbor.html : although kids probably don't have access to planes in which to play "chicken", they might get the idea to do the same and apply it to some other mode of transportation; [Josh "The Faculty" Hartnett is] shirtless and [Kate Beckinsale] appears to be in her bra. She then moves on top of him and they then reverse that where we then see him nuzzling her shoulder. It's implied that they have sex)... "Outrageously funny" and "This year's Blair Witch Project" are among the varied plaudits on the poster for slightly-too-good-at-imitating-the-banality-of- reality-gameshows arthouse parody SERIES 7: THE CONTENDERS (http://www.screenit.com/movies/2001/series_7_the_contenders.html : a cartoon representation of a penis and scrotum; it's possible some kids could get the idea to do the same kind of kill or be killed "game" as shown here). Also features a spoof of a film- school Joy Division video, and the girl from down the hole in "Silence Of The Lambs" - all together now: "It puts the lotion on its skin!"... which just leaves last week's dog-based David "Scream" Arquette undistinguished kiddie-filth SEE SPOT RUN (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/seespotrun.htm : impudent material; dog urinating on a man's leg; several examples of flatulence; series of electrification of a man; prelude to intimacy; vulgar suggestive positioning for oral sex)... PRO-CELEBRITY BONERS>> "Hey, I actually do look like that" writes MARTIN HAMILTON of his UKUUG Developer Conference pic http://www.ukuug.org/bios+profiles/MHamilton.shtml [see last week's NTK], kicking off a special bumper week of complaints and clarifications, often from the very people involved. A, er, FORMER ESCAPE STAFFER followed up last week's "Those We Have Lost" with a comprehensive rundown of subsequent mags that he and his colleagues have "recently failed to close" (CRE@TE, COMPUTER ARTS, OFFICIAL DREAMCAST MAGAZINE, FT.COM, MINISTRY and MIXMAG among them), but with a solid record of five closures behind him (including the Dreamcast itself), the implication is it may just be a matter of time... and, while less personally involved, MARTIN "THE GEEK" and "PROJECT2501" both observed that some TANDY stores escaped the CARPHONE WAREHOUSE "Night Of The Long Adaptor Cables", to live on under the new "T2" brand, especially in locations - Glasgow, Dudley, West Mids - where Carphone Warehouse still fears to tread... regarding actual errors, thanks to ANTHONY ELIZONDO (and an ANONYMOUS TIPSTER) for pointing out that last week's link to "Counterstrike: The Musical" in fact appears to feature characters and details from Team Fortress Classic, which presumably ruined their enjoyment of the entire joke... and "Discussing your bits and pieces 'on TV news'?" commented JOHN HANDELAAR of NTK 2001-03-16's inspired anti-RIP campaigning: http://www.darwinwars.com/lunatic/scans/rip_nutter_pamphlet.jpg "This is Mike Corley of uk.misc fame and I claim my UKP5"... "Love NTK, but can you not get it out a bit quicker?", inquired RICK BUTLER, a sentiment echoed by the pithy tip submission "Hello? why don't you publish before home time on a Friday? We're not all sociopaths you know". Well, *we* are, unfortunately, but we're working on it... and, finally, MARC SPIEGLER at last got the chance to unleash a dinner party anecdote he must have been honing for months, revealing that NTK 2001-05-11's "Catch The Sperm" game is almost certainly not "the first PC game to take place entirely in a vagina", attributing that honour to http://213.11.4.226/sexjam , devised by "French Flash wizards CHman [...] for last summer's Ars Electronica" and, apparently "a lot fucking scarier than the Swiss game". The gauntlet has been thrown down, game-in-a- vagina fans - do let us know if you can beat that with any earlier sightings... >> 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 "a collection of links with funny bits next to them" http://www.metafilter.com/comments.mefi/7942 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.