Need To Know 2002-05-17

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"We're condemning the court's decision as well as the government's prosecution. We're 3 years old, and Microsoft was prepared to give us the trust of owning a core part of the browser. That doesn't seem the behavior of a monopolist." - KEITH TEARE, CEO Realnames (20% Microsoft Investment), June 2000 "Microsoft seems to be playing the role of the referee who decides whether any innovations succeed" - KEITH TEARE, ex-CEO Realnames, after MS cancel contract ... so the name you get allocated really does depends on how much you pay >> HARD NEWS << cons and pros The Emerging Technology Conference, it turns out, was akin to putting a bunch of Wilhelm Reich fans inside an Orgone machine : what transpired may not change many minds, but *boy* it sounded like they were having fun in there. The tribes building the new Net got to see each other through the impending nanotech mist, briefly: the wiring techmonkeys of WiFi (winners of Best T-Shirt Motto By A Mile: "CRIMINAL. ANARCHIST. PARASITES."), the keyboard rattling hoardes of Blogistan, the Men-In-Suits-With-Earrings of the Web Services crowd, and the grubby-but-unbowed street P2Punks of last year's file-sharing implosion. You know when the geek mood is up when attendees stop talking about making rent this month, and resume predicting the date of the Singularity. Looks like we're back to looking up at a J-curve - and after all those months of sitting on a U-bend, too. http://www.aaronsw.com/ - Aaron generous enough to put it in your lifetime as well http://kode-fu.com/shame/ - Joey coining what this is: the Rise of The Sycophantic Web http://www.pigdog.org/auto/software_jihad/link/2581.html - but there are worse things to be than hopeful "My spam is important to me. In this new age of the Internet, I need the information and opportunities that e-mail marketing provides.", writes BARRY DENNIS in C|Net's trolling-for-hits opinion column. For someone who loves the interactivity of the Web and runs a Net marketing company himself, Barry seems strangely reticent to link to his company's site or give away his e-mail address. Can we help? One quick search finds Barry's impressive corporate Net presence is a detailed Geocities site, which reveals his e-mail address as the equally prestigious BDennis410@AOL.com. That's BDennis410@AOL.com, you Web-spidering spambots. http://web.archive.org/http://www.geocities.com/bdennis410/netweb.html - remember, Barry: just hit delete! http://news.com.com/2010-1076-915523.html - and when CPM banner ads die, we'll lose troll columns like this too Last week's plea for "anyone who does interesting weird-tech things" elicited some interesting responses, not least those of GEORGE AND FREEMAN DYSON, who confirmed that they'll be dropping by EXTREME COMPUTING (Sunday 2002-06-09, the Camden Centre, London, blah blah blah) to discuss George's new book revealing his dad's work on spacecraft powered by nuclear explosions (the quantum electrodynamics pioneer is of course also the father of former ICANN chairwoman Esther, and the inventor of the Dyson sphere, as seen in the "Relics" episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation). Joining them on this - increasingly startling - bill is TOM "The Mechanical Turk" STANDAGE, a selection of some of the UK's top satire sites, and ZDNet-UK's RUPERT GOODWINS, who'll be hosting a salute to 20 Years Of The ZX Spectrum, introduced by former 1980s pop icon, GARY LE STRANGE. You know, we couldn't make this up. Even if we wanted to. http://www.xcom2002.com/talks.php - plus the author of Spectrum Machine Code Made Easy, Vol 2 >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious what part of "effective user guides" don't you understand?: http://www.interface.co.uk/ ... "QUEEN rocks London" reports YAHOO Royalwatch: http://uk.fc.yahoo.com/r/royalwatch.html ... this week's more-common-than-you'd-think GOOGLE typing error: http://www.google.com/search?q=yorkshite ... mail - from jail: http://weblog1.netfirms.com/rosst/archives/000013.html ... http://www.ibmag.co.uk/ - FALCO!... depends what kind of "Ah" they're inspiring: http://www.ntk.net/2002/05/17/dohemc.gif ... pick a country, any country: http://www.eue.org/ ... VM Labs have great "future of digital entertainment" behind them: http://www.ntk.net/2002/05/17/dohvm.gif ... customers who bought this item also bought - paperback version of same book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0091880963/ (after wearing out the first copy?)... hey, who's cloning who here?: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22illegal+copies+of+Star+Wars%22 ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful It's "I Love The ZX80s" - a bland, whitewashed pseudo-history which largely ignores the quirkier independent stuff in favour of obvious big-league successes that surely everyone remembers anyway. It's corporate nostalgia masquerading as some sort of cultural significance, and who gets the biggest single display - Tomb Raider? Nintendo? No, RockStar Games, of course, a company co-founded by exhibition curator Lucien King. Somehow, we had a feeling we were going to be disappointed by GAME ON: THE HISTORY, CULTURE AND FUTURE OF GLOBAL GAMING (The Barbican, London EC2Y, until 2002-09-15, UKP11 full price, UKP5-8 concessions). And yeah, there's a PDP-1, and some coin- ops on free play (until they get broken), and the basic 8-bit machines you'd expect (perched on top of PC emulators), but 11 quid to get in? You can spend an hour in a real arcade - or buy your own retro console - for that. http://www.gameonweb.co.uk/ - still, talk on Sat with noted "friend" of Edge, Stuart Campbell It's LINUX INSTALL DAY this Sun, an ancient Dorset festival (now spreading to the rest of the UK), in which participants surreptitiously replace a friend or neighbour's Windows desktop with KDE and see how long it takes them to notice. Hopefully all involved will recover in time for Wednesday's party celebrating the existence of SONOMU (from 8pm, secret London location, UKP6), a shadowy members-only State51 spin- off for "people passionate about new forward-thinking music". Inexplicably, this threatens to include NTK's "Dave Green" unveiling his all-new set of acoustic cover versions of synth- pop favourites, a backwards-looking lineup which goes from "19" by Paul Hardcastle to "Where's Your Head At?" by Basement Jaxx. And he's "doing" the ARTHUR C CLARKE awards again on Sat (from 1.30pm, The Wellcome Wing, The Science Museum, London), though that seems to have been somewhat overshadowed by the more photogenic exhibit "Grossology: Burp, Fart And Sniff Your Way To Understanding The Science Of The Human Body". http://www.linuxinstallday.org/ - Linux on a PS2 at the London Lonix event, apparently http://party.sonomu.net/ - 6 quid though (you could print your own Olga tabs for that) www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/corporate_commercial/press/pressreleases.asp - after it went so well last year http://club.net-art.ws/ - what is this, digital artists week or something? http://twenteenthcentury.com/madminton/ - apparently it is http://www.onlinecontentuk.org/May02event.html - also on Wed: just some "casual drinks", with friends... >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Mark this one down as sufficiently retarded tech. As an exercise in caffeine abuse and hubris, NTK's own PANOPTICON is a graphical stalking system for finding bloggers and other celebs in the corridors of the ETCON conference. Now that the conference is over, we thought you'd like to survey the damage, and perhaps gut it for your own purposes. Redeeming features: it does live updating on a Webpage without a page reload in sight. It does Web Services the old-fashioned way, with a http GET sending data, and a telnet stream outputting streaming updates. You can put rude words on it and click on things. Warning: it's javascript, and therefore shit. It'll only work on Windows IE 5+ and Mozilla/Gecko browsers. It scares Opera so much you'll never escape. And my in-depth knowledge of NTK clickthrough rates and how badly I wrote the server says that it'll crash and burn as soon as we send this out. We'll fix it in time for XCOM, I don't think. http://actuallyworks.com/panopticon/explanation - i was writing documentation in a hotel bar, that much is true http://actuallyworks.com/panopticon/ - FINAL WARNING: EVIL JAVASCWIPT http://www.pipetree.com/qmacro/2002/May/15#panopticon - distributed hackery >> MEMEPOOL << ceci n'est pas une http://www.gagpipe.com/ posted to Usenet couple of weeks ago, original author unknown: http://features.slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=32731&threshold=3&cid=3530325 ... evil GEORGE LUCAS clones start disagreeing with each other, one dismissing "that Phantom Menace was a let down": http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/film/newsid_1986000/1986453.stm while other admits "prequel did not live up to expectations": http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/film/newsid_1986000/1986342.stm ... LONDON UNDERGROUND present - e-democracy in action once more: http://www.thetube.com/content/faq/surveys/pppoll.asp ... this week's "off the map" - so there isn't an OS symbol for a giant AN/FLR-9 "Elephant Cage" Antenna (dismantled)?: www.multimap.com/map/photo.cgi?x=510500&y=239500&scale=25000&rt=overlay.htm ... $40 Win XP kit includes free bubblegum, baseball action figure: http://www.microsoft.com/partner/campaign/Winpro1.asp ... on the plus side, at least it wasn't GRAND THEFT AUTO 3: http://smh.com.au/articles/2002/05/13/1021002431568.html ... BBC pic: "Oooh Vic - I've fallen" or "Walk like an Egyptian"? http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_1980000/1980254.stm ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> classic Bill Murray timeloop redemption comedy GROUNDHOG DAY (10.30pm, Sat, ITV) - last shown on terrestrial TV in May 2000 - isn't this week's only case of deja vu: there's "Men In Black" knockoff THE SILENCERS (9pm, Fri, C5) - last shown August 1999; Christopher "Spinal Tap" Guest's dud remake of ATTACK OF THE 50FT WOMAN (1.05am, Fri, BBC1) - last shown Aug 2000; and, more entertainingly, a teenage Eliza "Faith" Dushku as Arnie's tearaway daughter in TRUE LIES (10.30pm, Sat, BBC1) - last shown March 2000... plus a DIY introduction to America's tenuous grasp of libel in THE PEOPLE VS LARRY FLYNT (1.05am, Sat, C4) - last shown October 2000; and frankly disappointing Gibson adaptation JOHNNY MNEMONIC (9pm, Sun, C5) - last shown Aug 2001 on BBC1. Phew... in terms of new stuff, Jeff Bridges suspects wacky neighbour Tim Robbins of being a mad terrorist bomber in slightly-more-topical-than-when-it-was-made paranoia thriller ARLINGTON ROAD (10pm, Sun, C4)... C4's factual department dumps a bunch of zany high-concept documentaries before its schedules go all Big Brother, in the form of the top 100 poorly differentiated GREATEST WORLD CUP MOMENTS (9pm, Sat, C4), SAS tell-all debunk TO THE ENDS OF THE EARTH: THE REAL BRAVO TWO ZERO (9pm, Mon, C4), the self-explanatory DANIELLA WESTBROOK: MY NOSE AND ME (10pm, Wed, C4), and inspirationally titled old-people workplace docu-soap WORKING WITH DINOSAURS (8pm, Tue, C4)... then it's back to the temporal anomalies again, with Van Damme "Terminator" knockoff TIMECOP (10.35pm, Wed, BBC1) - last shown Sep 2000... plus Arnie flaunting those one-piece sunglasses that have indeed become surprisingly fashionable in the 21st century, as the original THE TERMINATOR (9pm, Tue, C5) - last shown on ITV about two months ago... FILM>> hopefully answering the obvious question - "What possible advantage would there be to having a 'clone army' in a technologically advanced universe with no apparent shortage of available manpower?" - comes even more interminable blue- screen action scenes composited in front of animated Maplins catalogue covers, aka STAR WARS 2: ATTACK OF THE CLONES ( www.screenit.com/movies/2002/star_wars_episode_2_attack_of_the_clones.html : One [outfit] shows [Portman's] bare back and shoulders, another is cut low up top and shows the tops of her breasts, and a third is formfitting and accentuates her bosom - and later is ripped at the bottom to reveal her bare midriff)... or, apparently assuming that anyone who doesn't want to go see Star Wars must be either French or gay, the only other national release looks like Gerard Depardieu photoshopped condom-factory comedy THE CLOSET (imdb: coming-out/ homosexuality/ homosexual/ accountant/ attempted-suicide/ cat/ closeted-homosexual/ condom/ father-son-relationship/ gay- bashing/ gay-parade/ gay-pride/ man-pretending-to-be-gay/ obesity/ photo-montage/ pink-sweater/ racism/ rugby/ sexual- harassment/ unemployment/ wet-blouse/ local-blockbuster)... >> 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 "top of the Google!" http://www.google.com/search?q=ntk 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.geekstyle.co.uk/ (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.