Need To Know 2003-02-14

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"The City Alert Texting System (Cats) will warn people where [terrorist] attacks are taking place and pass on information about what to do to people caught in an incident..." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/2757017.stm ...CATS: U HAVE NO CHANCE 2 SURVIV MK YR TIME >> HARD NEWS << scooby dooby doos In the eve of conflict, right before we're all drafted to write shoot-'em-ups for our cool new military empire, all is quiet. Too quiet, we say. Where are the voices we've come to depend on to pierce through the silence with their handy suggestions of how this war should *really* be run? More precisely: just where are JON KATZ and ERIC RAYMOND when their country needs them? Rent-a-blather JonKatz appears to have vanished from Slashdot some time last July (when he uttered, pointedly, that even H.L. Mencken "wouldn't be able to find work these days"). And while black-belt warlord ESR is reputedly working on his Art of Unix book, his old site at tuxedo.org has been transformed, in abstentia, into a disrespectful flickbook of redirects to peacenik backsliders like the Free Software Foundation and www.ethics.org. Could it be too much to hope that ESR and Jon Katz might have been the first casualties of war? Apparently so. From an undisclosed location, an all-too-lively Raymond reports that these Apache Weapons Of Mass Redirection are not his work, are undetectable from his home machine, and therefore, North Korean-fashion, DO NOT EXIST. Meanwhile, the reclusive JK has, it seems, abandoned geek politics and indeed humanity, having now tracked down a silent minority who don't talk back when he's trying to speak for them. Yes, Anonymous Cowards the world over will be relieved to know that JK now writes exclusively about dogs. And so those words of prophecy come home to haunt us all: "Human sacrifice, dogs - and Katz - living together, mass hysteria!" http://www.workingdogweb.com/Katz.htm - the center cannot hold http://www.catb.org/~esr/ - esr hides out in his cathedral of solitude http://www.tuxedo.org/ - even RedirectPermanent is not Of course, marching round London is all very well, but what if you really want to hit the military-industrial-entertainment complex where it hurts? One ingenious - yet anonymous - NTK reader may have an answer, in the form of a breathtakingly realistic video cover he's created, pioneeringly depicting US President George W Bush as a fish-out-of-water idiot who just happens to find himself running the world's least accountable superpower. What's more, the 1614k jpg is exactly the right size for responsibly-minded individuals to print it out in glossy inkjet colour, slide it into an empty DVD sleeve, and leave it in a prominent position in their local video library/ rental superstore, where, our correspondent hopes, "it should confuse and delight in equal measure". The section you leave it in - Comedy? Action? True Crime? - is entirely up to you. http://www.ntk.net/2003/02/14/duhhhhv2.jpg - yes, we think we know who might be behind it too Another sign we're hitting the end game - or the end of one game, at least. DAVID BRABEN finally dropped the other shoe, and obliged Christian Pinder to withdraw his meticulous re-engineering of Elite, The New Kind - and all derivatives (PocketPC, SGI, Linux, Windows, Palm, whatever) thereof. Naturally, 1980s videogame re-enactment societies the world over were bereft. But amongst open brawling of the warez hawks and copyright-appeasers of alt.fan.elite, only Pinder emerges as a ruefully clear voice of sanity. Yes, he did devote n+1 months of his life to reverse-engineering Elite and implementing it in C. Yes, it is a shame that Braben has now required him to withdraw TNK from circulation. But no, the brave young coder doesn't have much of a legal leg to stand on, so he's not bitter. Besides, he's now working on a legacy-unencumbered Elite sequel with Ian Bell, fittingly titled "Darkness Falls". It's due out in March 2003 - if you can wait that long. http://frontiernews.alioth.net/ - ooh, so that's what he looks like http://www.darkkind.com/ - or perhaps Elite IV will beat them to it? http://www.frontier.co.uk/press/release/darxide-emplaunch.html - Darxide versus Dark Kind. There's balance to the force for you >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious EVENING STANDARD will be paying congestion charge "when hell freezes over": http://www.ntk.net/2003/02/14/dohcc.gif ... OCR ahoy: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22ancient+and+modem%22 ... no need for formality - it's just "Jess" to my friends: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22jess+christ%22 ... CAROLINA couples "rush to exchange vowels" (for what? consonants?): http://rdu.news14.com/content/headlines/?ArID=22574 ... tobacco ad irresponsibly advises spending UKP 416.00, saving UKP417.20: http://www.mapman.co.uk/shopping/cigarettes.htm ... unfortunate company names: http://www.geocities.com/condormob/ ... hey, romance isn't dead (unlike most of the characters in the film): http://www.ntk.net/2003/02/14/dohmoi.gif ... MS recommend typing with one hand, while "training your staff" with the other: http://www.ntk.net/2003/02/14/dohhand.gif ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Yes, you've already missed the "Early Bird" discount for next week's UK UNIX USER GROUP WINTER CONFERENCE (from 9.30am, Tue 2003-02-18, Institute of Physics, London W1, from UKP85 to members of UKUUG or a recognised national Unix user group), featuring Lindsay "Risks Digest" Marshall, a talk on "UK Law And The System Administrator" (would-be BOFHs, please note!), and hopefully some NTK t-shirts here and there. But if you (or your company) have got that sort of money to throw around, why not follow it up with a transatlantic trip to 2003's "premier event for P2P, Cypherpunk, and network/security application developers", CODECON 2.0 (from 12noon, Sat 2003-02-22, Club NV, San Francisco, US$95 - or just US$80 if you pre-register by the end of tomorrow, Sat 2003-02-15). It could be the only place you're going to see the "AmIHotOrNot" guys and Dan Kaminsky's Paketto Keiretsu on the same bill all year. http://www.ukuug.org/events/winter2003/ - a slightly less rowdy event than the big summer blowout http://codecon.info/ - vs http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02002-11-22&l=139#l http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/ - Dorkbot London back next Wed 2003-02-19 http://www.indiemagazine.co.uk/cgi-bin/news.cgi?id=1121&section=1 - next Fri: megastore mayhem for Miyamoto-san >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Now that the Tivo UK is dead, what are you going to do with all that free time? Well, how about wasting it to build your own PVR out of a sub-100UKP video capture card, a 500Mhz Linux box and one of many open source digital recorder projects filling the (carefully orchestrated) timetables of idealistic young TV obsessives these days? Neither MYTHTV nor FREEVO are ready for rolling out onto your grandparents' settop boxen (unless your nan knows how to install MySql, or hand-edit dodgy XML and Python config files). Both suffer slightly from that post-Enlightenment open source development strategy of coding until you hit a cool enough screenshot, then moving on. But when you can get them to work, they *do* work. And there is something enticing about seeing live TV pause and rewind on your root window; seeing the week's TV guide construct itself from thin air, Ananova, and perl scripts; watching on-the-fly anti-aliased text fade majestically over your digitally recorded programmes; and controlling it all using your remote and serial-port IR adaptor. TV just looks better when you're processing it at home. http://freevo.sourceforge.net/screenshots.html - in TV land, it's all about... http://www.mythtv.org/#features - ... the screenshots >> MEMEPOOL << ceci n'est pas une http://www.gagpipe.com/ BUSH encourages hunt for "space aliens", in secret hope that they could be developing weapons of mass destruction as well: http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/02/03/tech/main539116.shtml ... 404 humour: http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ vs http://www.panix.com/~hncl/HectorsJournal/archives/000109.html ... QVC channels must get more viewers than you'd thought: http://groups.msn.com/TimGoodwinFanclub/ ... DoCoMo 3G service FOMA: http://foma.nttdocomo.co.jp/english/fun/ imitates the "lies", "harmless untruths" of Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle": http://www.cs.uni.edu/%7Ewallingf/personal/bokonon.html#words ... don't go breaking any more laws than absolutely necessary: http://www.ksrevenue.org/perstaxtypesdrug.htm ... humour in robots.txt: http://pigdog.org/robots.txt ... new "evirob" KUBRICK is "another standard" "the essence of weird life", "will make you too ill": http://www.evirob.org/ (needs Flash, sorry)... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> Anglo-Caribbean tracing-your-roots docu MOTHERLAND - A GENETIC JOURNEY (9pm, Fri, BBC2) provides an interesting counterpoint to Mark Dacascos "Predator"-knockoff DNA (9pm, Fri, C5)... surveillance week sees ever-topical Will Smith CCTV thriller ENEMY OF THE STATE (9pm, Mon, C5) triumph over irritatingly whimsical Carrey vehicle THE TRUMAN SHOW (9.50pm, Sat, BBC1)... and it's unclear whether host Rhona Cameron will herself be eligible for any of THE LUVVIES - THE AWARDS THE STARS DON'T WANT (9.30pm, Sat, ITV)... Hugh Grant's romantic comedy persona seems ill-suited to "Coma"-style medical drama EXTREME MEASURES (9.30pm, Sat, C4)... a bunch of non X-Men mutants take on Matt "Max Headroom" Frewer in Marvel's made- for-TV GENERATION X (1.25am, Sat, C5)... and it's Kirsten Dunst and Allison "The West Wing" Janney - together at last! - in grossout redneck beauty pageant spoof DROP DEAD GORGEOUS (10.55pm, Sun, BBC1)... an NTK reader reports that he has "started a weblog" http://www.24weblog.com/ for fans of the frankly time-consuming 24 (10pm, Sun, BBC2), while contributor Yoz Grahame hopes viewers in the London area may see an NTK shirt displayed on his monitor during BBC LONDON NEWS (6.30pm, Mon, BBC1)... you've a "95% chance of surviving" a crash if your plane doesn't go and catch fire for some reason, reports science and schadenfreude 3-parter AIRCRASH (9pm, Mon, C4)... Christopher Lambert fails to perform the expected fatality on largely successful videogame franchise MORTAL KOMBAT (12.25am, Tue, ITV)... and Rich "Otis Lee Crenshaw" Hall is the guest on inverted "Room 101" chatshow GOD ALMIGHTY (10.50pm, Tue, C5) ... there's a reassuring double-bill of THE UK'S WORST PET SHOP? (8pm, Wed, BBC1) with environmental health investigation THE FOOD POLICE (8.30pm, Wed, BBC1)... TROUBLE AT THE TOP (9.50pm, Thu, BBC2) revisits the well-trodden tale of the "New Coke" disaster http://www.snopes.com/cokelore/newcoke.asp ... not that they're spin-conscious or anything, but there was a film crew covering the "Cherigate" events, reveals THE CONMAN, HIS LOVER AND THE PRIME MINISTER'S WIFE (9pm, Thu, BBC1)... as Famke "Deep Rising" Janssen and Ali "Final Destination" Larter again find themselves battling B-movie monsters on an initially social visit to THE HOUSE ON HAUNTED HILL (10pm, Thu, C5)... FILM>> considerably darker, more comic-like, and nuttier than "Spider-Man" - and introducing Frank Miller as "Man with pen in head" - comes the perfunctorily competent adaptation of DAREDEVIL ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/daredevil.html : [Jennifer "Alias" Garner] shows varying amounts of cleavage; Bullseye loudly belches; Bullseye wildly swerves through traffic on his motorcycle and then stands on top of it as it goes down the road)... "Deuce Bigalow" man-pimp Eddie Griffin plays blaxploitation "Citizen Smith" hero UNDERCOVER BROTHER ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/undercoverbrother.htm : "Jesus Christ was a Black man"; strip fighting between [Aunjanue Ellis and Denise Richards] with three men watching for enjoyment; excessive cleavage throughout)... we might not be seeing many more non-CGI animated features from Disney, after the "curse of pirate movies" handicapped TREASURE PLANET ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2002/treasure_planet.html : [David Hyde Pierce] repeatedly sings, "Go Delbert, Go Delbert, Go Delbert" while doing a little dance - kids might imitate that by inserting their own name into the chant)... set in a post-apocalyptic Liverpool - how can they tell? - there's an unsurprisingly limited release for Alex "Repo Man" Cox's Jacobean overacting-fest curio A REVENGER'S TRAGEDY (imdb: Christopher Eccleston, Eddie Izzard, Derek Jacobi and Sophie Dahl- together at last!)... while spotting the top character actresses playing suicidal lesbians ought to while away THE HOURS ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/hours_the.htm : lifetime homosexual relationship; Virginia Woolf is portrayed as being both severely depressed and lesbian; death viewed as a release or escape, an ending rather than a beginning)... BONERS: CORRECTIONS, CLARIFICATIONS, AND "INCORRECTLY REGARDED AS GOOFS">> first up, apologies to all of you who were so distressed by our faltering attempts at an FAQ earlier this year. "When I was a lad, we didn't have any pansy crib-sheets to NTK, no York Notes - we had to read the damn thing, and decipher it ourselves", reminisced TOM ANDERSON; "This was the most boring NTK ever. Not knowing what the fuck you're on about is half (I lie: ALL) the fun!", agreed KARL DALLAS. And "Stop with your sentimental self-aggrandizing", commanded ADRIAN WARD, with just the lone voice of PAUL BLEZARD piping up "PS: Grateful for all the useful explanations in this week's edition". Once again, apologies (and especially to you, Paul) - it won't happen again... further controversy raged as JOSH ROULSTON pleaded "Stop it with the Google mis-spellings - they're rubbish", though ALEC BOWMAN describes them as "the best fun [he's] had for ages". The deciding vote - for now - goes to FIPR's crypto guru (and co-author of Locoscript for the Amstrad PCW) RICHARD CLAYTON, who gave the feature his critical imprimatur with the statistical analysis that http://www.google.com/search?q=cyrptographic is, at the moment, by far the most popular misspelling of the word. Richard went on to observe that, in a subtle variation on the "missing millions" gag, the BBC seem to have added an extra 0 to the number of CDs needed by AOL for data retention requirements http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02003-01-31 , as you can see by searching http://www.apig.org.uk/ispa_oral_evidence.htm for "36"... virtually all our other errors so far this year seem largely due to NTK's oh-so-parochial Britishness: DAVID THIEL was the first of many to claim that Americans, with their endearing literalism, "routinely refer" to stick insects as "walking sticks": http://www.ntk.net/2003/01/17/dohwalk.gif ; KATE MCDONNELL revealed "many Euro languages" use "biological" the same way we use "organic", hence our misunderstanding over: http://www.geocities.com/hotelannelies/ha2e.html - see also http://www.google.com/search?q=%22biological+cooking%22 ; SHARON DAVIDSON protested it was "Vancouver, Washington state" in http://www.prisonplanet.com/news_alert_011303_general.html - not Vancouver in Canada; and - finally - "Can I be the first to say that [NTK 2003-01-03] spelled Wehrmacht incorrectly?", inquired WILLIAM WILES, before signing off with the intriguing detail that he is "Chief sub-editor" of "Housing Today"... >> 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 "reliable?" http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,7558,892214,00.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) 2003 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. 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