Need To Know 2002-04-12

archive

"More than 95% of the people that are in the United States at any given time are in the computers of companies that mail junk mail and you can look for patterns there..." http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1912000/1912895.stm - former President BILL CLINTON spams for freedom, imitates http://www.nationallampoon.com/news/4_11_2002c.asp Dear TERRORIST SLEEPER AGENT, You may already have won a super DETENTION WITHOUT TRIAL... >> HARD NEWS << pitying the foo's BT's announcement that they'd be rolling out 400 802.11b access points within 12 months seems pretty darn ambitious - especially when you take into account that it's currently illegal for them to do so. Although everyone seems agreed that the Radiotelecommunications Agency is going to dump the current restrictions on business use of 2.4Ghz (which, by way of its strange wording, was also messing up unbusinesslike community initiatives like Consume.net), it's still not gone yet. The RA's report on the topic comes out on 2002-04-24, after which there'll be 28 days of public consultation. A consultation mainly, we imagine, composed of squawking 3G licensees bitching about how WiFi upstarts are getting their money for nothing and spectrum for free. After that, 802.11 will be open for free nets and telcos. Odd isn't it, that BT are so keen on WiFi now they've dumped 3G onto their spin-off MMO2? Anyway, talking of consultation (and bitching), there's also been some idle talk that parties interested in WiFi should join the government's Broadband Shareholder Group, where they can rub shoulders with BT, the Heeby-Jeeby 3Gs, good old Erol Ziya of the Campaign for Unmetered Telecomms, and speak the ad-hoc wireless gospel unto them all. Mail us if you're interested. No weirdoes beyond the usual parameters. http://www.radio.gov.uk/topics/pmc/consult/publictele/public.htm - we have to route around microwave ovens, we have to share these ESSIDs http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/ecommerce/broadband/compgrp.htm - now doesn't this sound fun? Sensitive souls already troubled by recent events in the Mundane World should draw no conspiratorial conclusions from the fact that that Palestine's top level domain .PS expired on 2002-03-22. As the ever-watchful Sean Donelan notes in his mail to NANOG, the sell-by date *shouldn't* affect anything - although given NetSol's recent attempts to bill ARIN for the in-addr.arpa domain [NTK 2002-03-15], we're not so confident. For those of you who fancy a bit of whois-omancy, however: Israel's .IL "domain" expires on 2087-10-24, thereby dating the arrival of the Messiah uncommonly accurately. .DE evaporates on 2088-11-05, allowing them a decent 98 year Reich. Don't get cocky though: .UK sinks below the waves first on 2087-07-24. As ever, you shouldn't put too much store by NetSol's accuracy - as Sean points out, someone there set the .SU domain to expire on 2092-09-19. A very optimistic prediction for the Soviet Union's lifespan, we'd say. http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?!PS240-DOM&id=0 - all their sites down anyway, perhaps because they're... http://www.netsol.com/cgi-bin/whois/whois?!IL-DOM&id=0 - all routed through here So, falco then, ZENTERTAINMENT, the twice-or-thrice weekly email entertainment newsletter which we stole the format of NTK from and which went on indefinite hiatus this week after nearly 7 years of continuous publishing. Editor Sean Jordan cites a number of reasons for the break - he's got a job in a fancy French restaurant, he wants to spend more time with "the good people and good things that surround [him]" - but there's also a hint that his pioneering optional subscription scheme (asking the 160,000 recipients to pay 50c per month - if they felt it was worth it) didn't really take off, with reportedly only 5% of the readership chipping in. All of which supports our stand that, despite some readers' reassuringly misplaced enthusiasm, we'd never try moving NTK to a subscriptions-only model - if only because, if you paid for NTK, you might start reasonably inquiring why half the issues never arrive until after you've already left work. http://www.zentertainment.com/ - bonkers website still going strong, though http://www.ntk.net/2002/04/12/zensub.txt - still, 5% of 160,000 is 8,000 subscribers, at 50c each... >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious illustration depicts Marc Almond, presumably not Will Young: http://www.ananova.com/entertainment/story/sm_559478.html ... <TITLE> tag describes royal tributes as "Game of the Month": www.ntlworld.com/data-feeds/editorial/microsites/queen_mother/reviews.html initial letters of weather outlook spell "Die Old Witch": http://www.ntk.net/2002/04/12/dohdie.gif ... "Download the latest Flash 4.0 plugin" advises "real time" new media agency http://www.ehsrealtime.com/ , goes on to enthuse about Tamagochis: http://www.ehsrealtime.com/mn_home_noflash.html ... "it's a girl's game", background .jpgs gruffly imply: http://www.csclub.uwaterloo.ca/clubs/badminto/tipssingles.html ... snappy comeback to that "wehavethewayout.com" fiasco: http://www.ntk.net/2002/04/12/dohsun.gif ... "Many of [my publications] revile something about me", reveals spellcheck fan: http://kevin.atkinson.dhs.org/ ... supporting the theory that every rude word is also the name of an American town: http://www.gotocity.com/local/2/us/MI/a/49831/ ... TA teamup with goatse.cx implied by http://www.getfitta.co.uk/ , where: http://www.laxguiden.com/cgi-bin/navigate/go.cgi?page=ordlista_sv_eng#g - "get" is Swedish for goat, and "fitta" is - something else: http://www.notam02.no/~hcholm/altlang/ht/Swedish.html#f ... and concluding this week's inadvertent double-entendre triple- bill: http://www.dice.com/DandL/i/infobahn.018.html ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful As you've no doubt gathered from our minimal coverage of it so far, the USA's proposed CBDTPA (formerly known as the Security Systems Standards and Certification Act) is extraordinarily bad news if you happen to enjoy swapping warez and MP3s - or even if you don't. Basically it requires all "digital media" players, including PCs, to incorporate mandatory copy- protection technology - which, under 1998's Digital Millennium Copyright Act, it's an offence to circumvent. And there's no reason for Europeans to feel smug and complacent, as our very own poorly-localised version of the DMCA, the European Union Copyright Directive, is due to be implemented by EU member states later this year. The first thing you can do about it is to get along to the next CAMPAIGN FOR DIGITAL RIGHTS public meeting on the subject, featuring guest vocals from kernel hacker Alan Cox and scheduled for Monday 2002-04-29 at City University in North London (free but you must pre-register for numbers). And we'll probably be returning to the subject at some point during the NTK 5TH BIRTHDAY CONFERENCE AND DIY TECHNOLOGY TRADE FAIR, which now seems almost certain to take place at a central London venue on Sunday 2002-06-09, for the benefit of all those lucky people who like to plan what they're doing more than 24 hours in advance. http://www.lonix.org.uk/tnet-cgi/Lonix?CODE=userMeetings - vs http://www.digitalconsumer.org/cbdtpa/ http://www.yurisnight.net/parties/index.php - Yuri's night tonight (Gagarin, not Geller) http://www.onlinecontentuk.org/Apr02event.html - NB: for content practitioners (and their students) *only* >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering There's immature tech - and then there's P2P, which is currently a pile of oily prototypes up on blocks in the driveways of leather-clad enthusiasts. But if you're sick of riding around the garden on the GNUTELLA lawnmower, and want to get dirty with some intriguingly coded, easy-to-get-into, works-on-my-platform, and - most importantly - nearly-almost-working prototypes, whose front yard should you loiter around? Best bets at the moment seem to be: for anonymity and crypto fun, INVISIBLE IRC. This anonymising IRC client works, good god, actually works, on Windows, OS X and the Freenixes. There's some work to be done in auditing the code for possible attacks, but hey - it's the written in C instant-feedback Freenet you can understand. For crunchy cutting-edge distributed resource sharing without all that confusing anonymity, THE CIRCLE is a neat Python 2.1 app that melds a neat GUI with some well-explained slicing-and-dicing-edge theoretics. Windows and Linuxen are both supported, and you can even run it from behind yonder firewall if you have a ssh shell account somewhere else. As with all of these baby P2Ps, it's a bit crummy for sharing MP3s, but is dripping with "non-infringing uses" - including trust metrics, distributed chat, neat visual public-key signatures, and, yay, gossip distribution. Perfect for a Sunday afternoon's hacking. http://www.invisiblenet.net/iip/ - 1.2 out in a fortnight; and a system-wide upgrade beckons http://invisibleip.sourceforge.net/iip/research/httpoveriip.gif - inevitably http://yoyo.cc.monash.edu.au/~pfh/circle/ - arbitrarily trust some random peers to get some traffic. We're 'simplicity' >> MEMEPOOL << ceci n'est pas une http://www.gagpipe.com/ because everyone thought the original pics were a caption contest: http://www.sortakinda.com/look/withyoualways.shtml ... how he did the "Fell in Love With a Girl" video (among others): http://www.res.com/feature-michelgondry.jsp ... fame- hungry BLOGGERS make it into local paper, still aren't happy: http://www.infinitemonkeys.co.uk/gasgiant/000023.html - maybe they're all bots?: http://greengabbro.net/haveblogs.shtml ... http://www.penny-arcade.com/view.php3?date=2001-07-30 vs http://buffy.slayers.co.uk/ ... which ostensibly humorous external validation of your so-called "personality" are you?: http://www.carlsoncarlson.com/dane/stories/2002/01/13/whichAreYou.html ... lazy fan sites: http://johnhannah.freeservers.com/ ... lazy spoof sites: http://www.poprevolution.co.uk/gurgle/ ... instant forgiveness for listening to "Geeks In Space": http://thepope.org/index.pl?node=Create+Indulgence - or watching: http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/nasatv/ ... there's no OS symbol for a solid-state phased-array radar?: www.multimap.com/map/photo.cgi?x=486500&y=497000&scale=25000&rt=overlay.htm vs http://www.subbrit.org.uk/rsg/sites/f/fylingdales/ ... even worse, they conceal their sinister machinations behind an annoying Flash interface: http://www.theyrule.net/ ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> THE BOOK GROUP (9.30pm, Fri, C4) is Yet Another Brit Sitcom Featuring That Bloke From The Chewing Gum Ads - arguably a funnier name for it... the Pet Shop Boys do an acoustic set on the new LATER WITH JOOLS HOLLAND (11.35pm, Fri, BBC2)... and the interesting career choices continue when Louise Brealy http://www.filmfour.com/cannes2001/txt_louB.htm becomes the latest CASUALTY (8.10pm, Sat, BBC1), following recent cameos from the stars of ATTACHMENTS (10pm, Wed, BBC2)... Ali G on PARKINSON (10.20pm, Sat, BBC1) goes up against TOP TEN CAMP ICONS (10pm, Sat, C4), patchy antiwar satire CATCH-22 (11.35pm, Sat, BBC2) and the original Dudley Moore/ Peter Cook Faustian pact BEDAZZLED (11.35pm, Sat, C4)... low-rent X-Files knockoff DARK SKIES (1.55am, Sat, C4) reveals the real truth behind Peter Cushing and Bernard Cribbins' resistance to the DALEKS: INVASION EARTH 2150AD (3.25pm, Sun, C4)... while Dr Who just happens to be among the concepts consigned by former BBC boss Michael Grade - both literally and metaphorically - to ROOM 101 (10pm, Mon, BBC2) ... maybe Hasselhoff was too busy doing "Reservoir Dogs" cover versions to appear in KNIGHT RIDER 2010 (5.20pm, Sun, C5): http://www.hellonetwork.com/demo/toysclub/video.asp?speed=hook300 ... Jackie Chan directs himself in WHO AM I? (9pm, Sun, C5)... Melanie Griffiths takes on nightmare tenant Michael Keaton in pro-landlord horror PACIFIC HEIGHTS (10pm, Sun, C4)... and THE SLOT (7.55pm, Mon-Thu, C4) profiles 4 digital artists whose work "explores the concept of personal identity", which doesn't exactly narrow it down: http://www.identinet.net/ ... C4 flaunts its commitment to investigative factual programming with THE TRUTH ABOUT LESBIAN SEX (10.35pm, Mon, C4), hotly pursued by nude photography docu NAKED STATES (11.40pm, Mon, C4)... but C5 stays in the game with "Naturists Uncovered" in STARK NAKED (8.30pm, Thu, C5), Dolph Lundgren action idiocy BLACKJACK (9pm, Mon, C5) and Matthew Modine made-for-TV nootropic weepie FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON (3.45pm, Tue, C5): http://www.xocolatl.com/kathy/ALGERNON.html ... FOOD JUNKIES (9pm, Wed, BBC2) counts the sugar content of "95% fat free" products... while the LIFE DOCTOR (8pm, Thu, C5) addresses the increasingly common problem of a tribute singer who feels that his "Robbie Williams" side is starting to "take over"... FILM>> it's not as similar to Greg Egan's "Infinite Assassin" story as SFX Magazine makes out, but Jet Li does appear to be playing a character called "uLaw" (compression?) in parallel- universe wirework actioner THE ONE (imdb: James "director of Final Destination" Wong, Glen "writer of Space: Above And Beyond" Morgan, and Carla "Mike's girlfriend in Spin City" Gugino - together at last!)... Jeff "Tron" Bridges sees the other side of that "Starman" situation when Kevin Spacey plays a mental patient who thinks he's an alien who thinks he's a mental patient, or something, in actionless actor-fest K-PAX ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/k-pax.htm : irreverent discussion of Jesus; brief nudity of [Mary McCormack] in bed with a man; several presentations of thematic elements such as "All beings have the capacity to heal themselves"; I will in this case consider the use of mind control through hypnosis to be an unholy act and liken it to witchcraft and sorcery)... while from the makers of the raunchy Gwyneth Paltrow "Great Expectations" comes acclaimed arthouse Mexican teen sex comedy Y TU MAMA TAMBIEN ( http://www.cndb.com/ : we get to see [Gael Garcia Bernal's] great ass; [Maribel Verdu] looks 10 times cuter with a hat on; so much sex and nudity I'm sure I'm leaving something out)... "East Is East" meets "Gregory's Girl" in Keira "Queen Amidala imposter" Knightley feminist footy comedy BEND IT LIKE BECKHAM ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : contains moderate language and sexual references)... and Aaliyah is - briefly - resurrected from straight-to-video oblivion in yet another bloody Anne Rice adaptation, QUEEN OF THE DAMNED ( http://www.cndb.com/ : [Aaliyah] spends most of her scenes in a bronze chest plate; an extreme close-up of [Marguerite "Mighty Ducks" Moreau's] nice rack; a shot late in the film potentially shows [Stuart "Shooting Fish" Townsend's] pubic hair)... CONFECTIONERY THEORY>> Easter has been and gone but top marks to MCDONALDS for successfully deseasonalising their CREME EGG MCFLURRY (99p), remarkable in the field of brand extensions for actually tasting like the thing it's supposed to be based on - unlike MARS' frankly bizarre MILKY WAY CHOC ICE and the MALTESERS ICE CREAM STICK. BIRDS EYE WALLS have attempted to address the McFlurry threat with their disappointing WHIPSTER tubs (with fake mini Smarties on top), but continue innovating elsewhere with an automated dispenser for what looks like chocolate flavour CORNETTO SOFT ice-cream, and Slush-Puppy-in- a-pouch SOLERO SMOOVER (UKP1). But KIT KAT CHUNKY ICE CREAM has now been officially axed, confirming doubts about biscuit- based choc-ice bars... elsewhere, there's been unremitting criticism of TERRY'S CHOCOLATE ORANGE EGG & SPOON (UKP1.99) - "the most sickly thing I have ever eaten" (SIMON WHITAKER), "suspiciously not available individually. This is because they are disgusting" (CHARLOTTE LATIMER); FLYIN' CUSTARD FLAVOUR FRIJJ - "somehow they've got it wrong" (PAUL GILLIBRAND); and FOX'S COOKIE POPPETS - "like slightly stale digestive biscuits" (BHIKKU). Speaking of which, we love the "Frosted Multi-Grain Cereal Loops" but not the "Mini-Chocolatey Biscuits" in KELLOGG'S BART SIMPSON'S NO PROBLEMOS (UKP1.79), and ditto the "NEW for Adults" MILKYBAR MUNCHIES ("White chocolates with a CRUNCHY biscuit centre"), while WRIGLEY'S X- CITE "Mint Crunch Pearls" (60p for box of 40) appear to be a more expensive way of buying WRIGELY'S EXTRAS, and aren't even the right size to fit in a standard calibre air gun. That said, you seemed to like the new DIME NUGGETS (49p/bag) and NESTLES LITTLE ROLOS, despite - or perhaps because of - the highest per capita "missing toffee" rate of any recent product (CHARLOTTE LATIMER again)... over in savouries, the Walkers/ Golden Wonder war rages on with WALKERS' SENSATIONS (40p) tackling Kettle Chips by spraying ordinary crisps with fancy flavours like "Four Cheese and Red Onion", "Oven Roasted Chicken and Thyme", "Sea Salt and Cracked Black Pepper", and "Thai Sweet Chilli" and putting them in a foil bag, but GOLDEN WONDER's upmarket response DUETS (UKP1.49) are basically Wheat Crunchies with a creamy dip almost indistinguishable from tartar sauce. And finally, new stuff to look out for includes: the MARS SNICKERS FLAPJACK (65p), NESTLE SMARTIES CANS (75p), the UK launch of DIET COKE LEMON (due in June), CHICAGO TOWN SCRAMBLES - microwaveable breakfast pizzas topped with egg, cheese and a choice of bacon or sausage - and the equally microwaveable ALDO'S PIZZA BAR, notable mainly for their mildly unsettling "Cook - Crack - Stack - Snack" promotional campaign: http://www.pizza-bar.co.uk/ingredients.htm ... >> 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 "Successful businessman?" http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_564608.html 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) 2002 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.