Need To Know 2002-12-27

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"Who therefore wouldn't want to support and belong to the Matrix, especially when it is making life easier for its subjects? [...] We really need to clamp down on the party- pooper Neos of this world and get into the future as soon as we can - a future in which we can be part of a Matrix system, which is morally far superior to our Neolithic morals of today." - "Agent" Kevin Warwick puts the other side of the story http://whatisthematrix.warnerbros.com/rl_cmp/new_phil_warwick.html [ Next week is our traditional start-of-year "fencepost error" holiday. In the meantime, we thought we'd leave you with a smattering of the thoughtful queries from subscribers over the last year, together with our insufferable answers. We'll be back, gabbling madly to fill the awkward silence, on 2003-01-10. Which brings us neatly to our first question: ] >> Q AND A << while the cat's away Q. What I need to know is why you use American style dates. Here I was thinking to myself surely it can't be the 18 month of the year 2000 already, only to be told some days later that there is in fact no 18th month in any year. So distressed was I that I cancelled my subscription to Private Eye. I mean what are you people thinking? - Richard Brown A. We are thinking ISO 8601 Extended Calendar Date Format, Richard. The YYYY-MM-DD format is trivial for computers to order chronologically, has no ambiguous variants, and, in common with all the best standards, has no precedent in established practice anywhere in the world. It is guaranteed to offend Americans, confuse the British, and dismay the French, all of are Established Goals in the NTK/ISO Joint Secret International Manifesto (ISO 6392-1:1936, available from http://www.iso.ch/ ). NTK officially switched to ISO 8601 on Pungenday, Chaos 8, 3165 YOLD. Q. NTK has a very hardcore stance on privacy and related issues, but you don't actually have any kind of privacy policy yourself. I've sort of got the impression that they're kind of pointless for sites to have anyway as they can't mean anything legally, but I was a bit surprised not to find even some sarcastic parody of a disclaimer on www.ntk.net. - Peter Lowe A. NTK's privacy policy is private. Contrary to all our efforts, however, bits of it have leaked out onto the Net, including this fragment from the NTK subscription notice: "We don't give out our mailing list. Never have, never will." That said, when Dredd crashes through our door waving subpoenas, he'll find us wriggling on the floor, squealing logfile data like we're already in thumbscrews. Don't send us info, unless you want it to publicised. We'll respect any request for anonymity or the omission of facts and dates, but we have precious little protection under the law for hiding sources. If you truly want to cover your tracks, send mail from a hushmail account or (if you know how to do it), an anonymous remailer. Our PGP keys hide out at http://www.spesh.com/danny/crypto/ Q. Are there any special NTK URLs I should know about? You mean like the text only version at http://www.ntk.net/text.cgi ? Or its PDA-friendly brother at: http://nobodynet.ddts.net/palmntk.htm ? Or the Mozilla-friendly smart bookmark: http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?search=1&searchv=%s (Bookmark it, and give it the keyword name "ntk". Whenever you want to search our back issues for mentions of foobar, type "ntk foobar" into the URL bar.) Or the proportional typed version (probably mangled by this issue)? http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?s=ntk.css Or the slashdot version? http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?s=slashdot.css Or the RSS feed? http://www.ntk.net/rss.php3 Q. Ooh! RSS! How can I "permalink" to your stories? - The Rabble of Blogistan If you just use to "http://www.ntk.net/" when you're "blogging" us on your "web page", your link will point to this week's content, not the original article you were slagging off. For posterity's sake, you should link directly to the offending issue. NTK issues can always and permanently be found at http://www.ntk.net/YYYY/MM/DD - so this issue will eventually end up at http://www.ntk.net/2002/12/27 If you want to point to a particular section, say it like this: http://www.ntk.net/2002/05/24#TRACKING And if you want to be really pinickety, you can pinpoint an individual line by doing this: http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02001-04-20&l=312#l These are the URLs that our search engine generates - that's generally the best way to discover them, too. Just enter the text from the first line of the piece into the search bar at the top of the Web page, then copy the link that the search engine presents. (The leading zero in the exact URL is an extension to ISO 8601, proposed by Stewart Brand of the Long Now foundation. For more information, see the bottom of Bruce Sterling's own FAQ http://www.viridiandesign.org/notes/101-125/00125Viridian_FAQ.html Now do you regret asking, Richard Brown?) Q. What does the keyword "64 208 49 135" mean in your meta tags? - Peter Lowe, again A. The Rules of NTK are: 1. No-one understands more than half of NTK. 2. Rule one includes its editors. 3. Never apologise, never explain. Sorry we couldn't be clearer. Q. Why didn't you use my hilarious tip? A. Each week, NTK receives many excellent contributions. Unfortunately, we can only print the best. Q. Why didn't you use my hilarious doh? A. Was it a JPG or a BMP? Then I'm afraid our laughter was choked back by sobs of pain. Jpeg's generally turn crips screenshots into damp watercolours, and BMPs are just obscene. Send GIF or PNG. Thanks! Or was it somehow not as amusing as this ongoing series? http://www.ntk.net/2002/12/27/dohpoo3.gif Q. Why didn't you use my hilarious puerile google misspelling? A. We've already printed it before. Q. Is it true about the 500k attachment limit? i think its silly, 500k isn't very big, it only takes about 20 seconds. i just sent myself a 645k file on purpose to see what happens to me. - "Lord Doan the Unqualified" A. We're very sorry about your friends in Iraq. But an example must be made. [ Unfortunately, space forbids us from including even more popular questions, such as: "How does NTK pay the bills?" (Mark Gibbs) and "What's wrong with me?" (Steve Bowbrick). If you've got any questions, mail tips@spesh.com, and we'll run them as part two of this FAQ when there's no news next week either. Until then, Happy post-Newtonmas! See you through the eye of this year's singularity! ] >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less FILM>> "At least five of the films in your top ten for 2001 were quite good", complained reader MARK THOMPSON (presumably not the new head of Channel 4) - a "worrying" precedent as he traditionally uses NTK as "a reverse indicator" of whether a film is going to be any good or not. With that in mind, we've tried extra hard to devise this year's ever-controversial "best-of" run-down - consisting, where possible, of movies either overlooked by everyone else or actively placed in their top ten turkeys. To wit: 10. OCEAN'S ELEVEN, 9. BLACK HAWK DOWN, 8. PANIC ROOM, 7. NOT ANOTHER TEEN MOVIE, 6. SIGNS, 5. THE NEW GUY, 4. MONSTERS INC, 3. TRAINING DAY, and 2. BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE - making the only sane number 1 choice Steve Irwin's ebullient self-referential cut-and-shut job CROCODILE HUNTER: COLLISION COURSE, a film so obviously constructed from two different movies that, in the cinema where we saw it, the alternating narratives were shown in totally different aspect ratios... so now it just remains to name and shame this year's biggest cinematic disappointments, in not much of any particular order: WINDTALKERS, GOLDMEMBER, MEN IN BLACK 2, XXX, ROLLERBALL, THE TIME MACHINE, THE MINORITY REPORT, FROM HELL, THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS, STAR WARS 2: ATTACK OF THE CLONES, SPIDER-MAN and, specifically to enrage the anonymous tipster who wrote in describing it as "perfect" (apologetically adding "I Am Not A Goth"), DONNIE FUCKING DARKO... >> 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 "Any more questions?" http://www.ntk.net/2001/06/29#SLOW_NEWS 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/ Full license at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0 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.