Need To Know 2003-04-11

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"After sentencing, Mr Tarrant issued a statement saying the plot to cheat the show was a 'very cynical plan, motivated by sheer greed'..." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2910119.stm - all other "Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?" contestants motivated by altruism, philanthropy, the sheer joy of general knowledge >> HARD NEWS << invisible coups Good to see ANDREW ORLOWSKI of The Register get hold of whatever pills Thomas Greene was on before they shipped him back to Nam. Andrew - who, these days, can *see* the googlebots walking among us - says that the search engine corps is one step away from creating an Orwellian superstate where the proletariat's expressions of discontent are written out of history by a cabal of elite bloggers and their corporate overlords. Google does this in two stages. First by giving bloggers' stupid invented words a higher ranking than Andrew's ingenious made-up terminology. And it's certainly true that the Register stories do seem to be remarkably low down in googly pagerankings. Is this because - as Andrew claims - "someone at Google doesn't like the word 'Googlewashed'"? Or is it that that "someone" penalises long text pages with non-descriptive headings and a <TITLE> tag that says "The Register" on every page? Only Google's sinister robot army know for sure. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30087.html - Google fails to index New York Times (subscription) article that doesn't mention key phrase http://www.google.com/search?q=googlewash - on the other hand, does seem to be a bit blog-crazy... http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30195.html - EQUALS PROOF OF A CONSPIRACY But what about Orlowski's other accusation - that Google News indexes press releases? Thanks to Orlowski's still-keen investigative skills, this turns out to be true: but where could the Google Bots have learnt that technique from? Well, certainly not from the fine human journos at the Register, whose recent article on Habeas was in no way cut and pasted from Habeas' own press release. As you can see for yourself, many of the sentences are in a different order. Oh, and to show journalists will never be replaced by feelingless machines, they've also reworded a literal quote. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/30112.html - Google has redefined news as press releases, while http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/30109.html - the Register fears no PR flack's... http://www.habeas.com/about/prs.htm#fivesuits - ... accusations of plagiarism Perhaps, instead, they learnt it from the BBC, who this week ran another piece on the importance of fighting piracy with strong laws, quoting statistics and attitudes from the BSA without reasonable balance - from, say, the Malaysian pirates who sold a guy a copy of FrontPage and gave him the Chernobyl virus. Quite how a Word macro virus got mixed up with an executable wasn't explained. Neither was the obvious counterpoint to these "dangers of pirated software pieces". Why don't these people rip software off from a reputable ftp site, instead of paying for it? Remember kids, that md5 hash is your warez Certificate of Authenticity! http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/2924531.stm - at least Google's press releases cut out the middleman http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/30148.html - in the interests of balance: The Reg on FAST does good >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious war spam forces coders to resort to using "Boolean logic": http://www.ntk.net/2003/04/11/dooboo.gif ... if you don't want us to run more GOOGLE GOOFS, please send something else in: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22dead+or+alice%22 + "per anum" vs www.google.com/search?q=anum+%22through+the+nose%22 ... BBC offer baffling introduction to game of GO, a game apparently played with an infinite number of stones, on a chequered board, until both players are so bored they give up: http://news.bbc.co.uk/cbbcnews/hi/world/newsid_2164000/2164580.stm ... GUARDIAN gets into the "inappropriate advertising" game: http://media.guardian.co.uk/advertising/story/0,7492,932861,00.html THE INQUIRER, comedy captions: www.theinquirer.net/?article=8796 - we'll take 'em all on: www.ntk.net/2003/04/11/dohhome.gif , http://www.ntk.net/2003/04/11/dohqa.gif .... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Annoyingly, next week's scheduled LINUX USER EXPO 2003 has now been postponed to the end of June, otherwise we could have juxtaposed it with this weekend's FORTEAN TIMES UNCOVENTION (from 10am, Sat & Sun 2003-04-12/13, Commonwealth Centre, Kensington, London W8, from UKP10 per day) in order to make our now-traditional gags about "Linux wildmen" and their sacred ritual of the "comparing of the distros". Still, if you prefer to witness your weirdness in its natural habitat, so to speak, you can always join the marching sub-contingent KAZOOS AGAINST THE WAR (meeting 11.30am to march at 12noon, tomorrow Sat 2003-04-12, Royal Festival Hall bar, London, free, but bring a kazoo and, if you can, wear red). And if you've somehow managed to lose that friend of yours running the London Marathon, then why not drop by and catch NTK's own "Dave Green" at CYBERSALON's second DIGITAL ART AND NET ACTIVISM CYBERSUNDAY (from 6pm, Sun 2003-04-13, Freedom bar below, 60-66 Wardour Street, London W1, UKP2), ostensibly speaking about this new-fangled "Open Source" but almost certainly touching on the good old days of warez and serialz along the way. http://www.cybersalon.org/ - plus Digital Activism evening at the ICA this Monday http://www.stopwar.org.uk/ - if that statue stunt was staged, why'd it take so long? http://www.unconvention2003.com/html%20pages/visitors/v-speakers.htm - featuring Ghostwatch, Buffy & Forteana, Ken Campbell http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/expo/ - gotta love those lossy jpegs on the nav menu >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Continuing our ongoing theme of reviewing half-finished Python IDE components in the hope that someone will stitch them together into something usable, BICYCLE REPAIR MAN is everything you need for a neat refactoring editor. All, that is, except for the editor bit: which BRM sensibly leaves to Emacs, Idle or Vim. Little wires lead from your chosen editor to Python routines for smartly renaming classes and methods, extract methods and find definitions and references. Stuff like inlining and extracting variables are in CVS with more to come. If the idea of some huge monolith of an IDE like Eclipse scares the bejesus out of you, but you find bolting chunks on to your existing environment positively calming, BRM is worth looking at. If only to fiddle with endlessly: the true goal of all IDEs. http://bicyclerepair.sourceforge.net/ - as if there wasn't enough Monty Python quoting in the world http://isbn.nu/0201485672 - you always have to buy one book for these XP things http://weblog.infoworld.com/udell/stories/2002/12/11/librarylookup.html - or support your local library >> MEMEPOOL << ceci n'est pas une http://www.gagpipe.com/ ultraniche slash: http://www.michaelkelly.fsnet.co.uk/karl.htm ... puppet regime: http://makeashorterlink.com/?N15812D24 ... groovy young person's guide to buying your first home: http://www.portlandmercury.com/current/feature.html ... TITLE tag announces "WEBSITE GOOD", huge downloads beg to differ: http://www.matthew-arnold.surrey.sch.uk/ ... that "Schott's Original Miscellany" book clearly has a lot to answer for: http://www.vitaminq.blogspot.com/ ... this week's unfortunate product name: http://www.biovea.net/item.jhtml?PRID=1185607 ... ROCHESTER INSTITUTE OF SCIENCE unveils limited robotics programme: http://www.cis.rit.edu/~jerry/Image/lego/ed209.html ... digital projector chain to use Windows Media Player 9: http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/030403/sfth027_1.html - premier performance likely to be: http://www.imdb.com/Title?0106438 ... naked Ebay guy at last manages to locate his dressing gown: http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=3411877471 ... >> GEEK MEDIA << what, *another* http://www.tvgohome.com/ ? TV>> as the sports section of The Columbus Ledger-Enquirer astutely observes, ALI G IN DA USAIII (10pm, Fri, C4) "has several alter egos - a British wannabe rapper, a clueless reporter from Khazakstan and [flamboyant TV reporter] Bruno": http://www.ledger-enquirer.com/mld/ledgerenquirer/sports/5515487.htm ... will C4 screen THE DAM BUSTERS (4.10pm, Sat, C4) uncut?: http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,504037,00.html - showing in conjunction with simulator-recreation DAMBUSTERS (9pm, Mon, C4), itself up against Presidential aerial actioner AIR FORCE ONE (9pm, Mon, C5)... and 25 YEARS OF SMASH HITS (9pm, Sat, C4) examines "how the magazine has influenced the music industry" - and not in a good way?... Peter Biskind's '70s-movie-biz hagiography is adapted into talking-heads docu EASY RIDERS, RAGING BULLS (9pm, Sat, BBC4)... the incomparable Bill Murray is on fine form in gross-out Amish 10-pin-bowling odyssey KINGPIN (10pm, Sun, C4)... and there's more nudity from Radha "Pitch Black" Mitchell than from Ally Sheedy in lesbian "Trainspotting" HIGH ART (1.55am, Sun, C4)... the contestants try to keep up with the helicopter's inexorable progress on the all-new gloebtrotting TREASURE HUNT (6pm, Mon- Fri, BBC2)... C5 targets a slightly older demographic with its followup to "99 Things To Do Before You're 30", 99 THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE (11.25pm, Mon, C5)... and Adam and Joe add their voiceover expertise to SHOCK VIDEO (11.55pm, Mon, C5), a reversioning of the HBO clip show which used to be shown on E4: http://www.fortunecity.com/lavender/scarface/753/latest2.html ... THE REAL BLAIR WITCH (10pm, Tue, C4) doesn't appear to be a belated mockumentary promo for the DVD release of the movie, but maybe that's just what "they" want you to think... despite a lot of press saying that's when they've scheduled Donal MacIntyre's investigation of credit card fraud, most of the listings have C5 showing BROKEN ARROW (9pm, Wed, C5)... HORIZON: GOD ON THE BRAIN (9pm, Thu, BBC2) attempts the theoretically impossible - inducing an electromagnetic religious experience in the mind of arch-atheist Richard Dawkins... while the "Danny Wallace" protagonist of kung-fu buddy actioner THE CORRUPTOR (10pm, Thu, C4) isn't the Dave Gorman sidekick who now appears to specialise in the appalling genre of concocting pointless challenges then writing books about them: http://www.dannywallace.com/joinme.html ... FILM>> early publicity had Henry Naylor reprising his original "Bough" from the Barclaycard ads, a role in which he now seems to have been replaced by fellow Cambridge Footlights 1990 alumnus Ben Miller in lame Mr Bean spy spoof JOHNNY ENGLISH ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : contains mild language and comic violence)... Easter brings the voices of Haley Joel Osment, John Goodman and Phil Collins - together at last! - in wildly unnecessary "Bear Necessities" retread THE JUNGLE BOOK 2 ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/junglebook2.htm : lies, repeatedly; strong implication of a character's death by another character; defiance of mother's call)... as S-Club n-1 play mindless automatons - which shouldn't be too much of a stretch, on the evidence of their TV show - in their thought- provoking musical comedy on the ethics of cloning, SEEING DOUBLE ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : contains mild sex references and one use of mild language)... BONERS: CORRECTIONS, CLARIFICATIONS, AND "INCORRECTLY REGARDED AS GOOFS">> well spotted to BEN MOOR for noting that, despite the ominous predictions of NTK 2003-03-21, "the British prime minister is the UK's head of government rather than head of state"; to reader MIKE, for remembering that the traditional construction should be "Someone set *up us* the...", rather than the "Someone set us up" we chose to dabble with in the same issue; and to super-pedants LLOYD WOOD and PAUL BLEZARD, who both crowed over the accidental substitution of "tying" for "trying" in NTK 2003-03-28, Blezard going on to query a previous usage of "publically" instead of "publicly" plus a subsequent mention of "Henry VII" (should have been "VIII"). Yet our greatest sympathy was reserved for GUY DAVIDSON, who was sufficiently misled by NTK's 2003-01-31 confusion of "Smiths" vocalist Morrissey with Homebase spokesman Neil Morrissey to excitedly email his wife, only to get "a forlorn message" back from her, presumably correcting the error and leading him to forgo any hopes of "pie and mash" that evening ... entering yet more complex territory, reader CHESS theorised that NTK 2003-03-07's news link entitled "Georgia senators ANGRY about musical! Georgia senators SMASH!" had probably been submitted to us because the actual events ("South Pacific" being slammed for "justifying intermarriage of different races") apparently "happened fifty years ago", though the site "forgot the '50 Years Ago' banner on the web page": http://talkingpointsmemo.com/feb0304.html#022803142pm (hey, we take our jokes any way we can find them). And, on a point of house style, ADAM NEALIS incorrectly regarded NTK 2003-02-21's use of "PIN number" as a goof because, he expands: "PIN = Personal Identification Number, therefore PIN number = Personal Identification Number number, which sounds ludicrous". To be honest, Adam, we - and the alt.usage.english FAQ http://www.english-usage.com/faq.html#fxrepeat (caution, large file) - don't have a problem with this, or HIV virus, or MIDI interface, or whatever (though admittedly "interface" is being used there in two slightly different ways)... and finally, in the wake of NTK's 2003-03-28 sighting of the "Spazz" wheelchair http://www.sportaid.com/page16.htm , ALF EATON "thought we might like" the Guardian's recent correction http://www.guardian.co.uk/corrections/story/0,3604,908199,00.html wherein a mole was described as having "weird, spazzy, claws" - a use of "spazzy" described as "totally contrary to the Guardian's approach to disability". Too right it's inappropriate - surely they're more "flid-like", or "fliddy"?: http://www.playgroundlaw.com/perl/browse.pl?sid=286 ... >> 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 "fun loving, criminal" http://www.ntk.net/2003/04/11/dohdg.gif 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. 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