"The earliest bloggers have been at it for two years now..."
- net may have "silly season", muses BILL THOMPSON,
self-referentially
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3134629.stm
...earliest where? The International Space Station? Iraq?
>> HARD NEWS <<
excess BTUs
All hail the great, the good and the clueless. Last months's
report from the Broadband Stakeholder Group concluded that
what was *really* impeding broadband wasn't BT's slackness
at connecting up rural areas, but - get this! - a lack of
micropayments and DRM. Evidence? Not just the testimony of
the committee's "17 year-old ... mate Dan" who is depressed
that he can't pay for "cool digital stuff", like "Dr.M's"
"Where's da money?" track, we hope. Oddly, if you read past
the report's bizarre introduction, all the right people
and points are quoted (including Ross "DRM will blind our
children" Anderson). It's merely the conclusions that are
pasted in from another planet. Particularly the idea that
the best place to try out DRM would be in the public sector.
Oh yeah, wouldn't want that publicly-funded intellectual
property falling into the wrong hands, would we? What's
scarier is how seriously such sentiments are taken: witness
the National Gallery being quizzed this week on exactly why
their digitisation project isn't being DRMed up the whizzer.
Hello? Unless we're still trying to incentivise Vincent van
Gogh with royalty cheques, whose "digital rights" are we
managing here? And in whose interest is it to keep these
already publicly-owned works from being spread far and wide?
http://www.broadbanduk.org/reports/DRM_report.pdf
- read it and weep
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994030
- "If a file is hacked or a high-quality print scanned and
copied, the gallery will be unable to prove the source." OH NO!
A depressingly hefty mailbag for our request for sites that
could do with a little guerilla webscaping "improvement". We
sense great pain. We're determined to see the brighter side
of all this, however: and CHRIS LONG sent the first glimmer
of hope with his repurposing of Channel Four's cinema
information site, which appears to put every fragment of
data you need to know about a film - the cinema it's at, the
time it's on, its name - on separate webpages. Of course,
writing a scraper does put you somewhat at the mercy of the
original site, and the (original) cinema finder does seem a
little flakey at the moment. But at least Chris is trying to
help. And there's worse - far worse - to come. Start your
side-bets now on what the most (un)popular suggested sites
have been - or mail us with any new Web horrors you've felt
crawling over your face recently, and just how you'd like to
see them "fixed".
http://www.oview.co.uk/
- admittedly, you still have to click once
http://www.channel4.co.uk/film/search/cinema/cinema_search.jsp
- mr no results is showing everywhere
Last fortnight's clarification of our Japlish slogan contest
appears to have worked wonders, though we did receive a few
more retranslations of our existing catchphrases - JONATHAN
MATTHEWS' "With the fact that it is on the register in the
point official duties thread together", BRUCE LOKEINSKY's
"*The* weak resale caustic high-tack udpate, fool you! OK?".
Lack of space unfortunately precludes a full explanation of
SHEZ's intriguingly phonetic "Conpuu tama neon rubbery you
shun", but many of the other runners-up were (relatively) more
self-explanatory, ranging from PAUL HOFFMAN's "We like listing
on Fridays!", GARETH ROBINSON's "No, lets come assist liquid,
helper. What then?", and GRAHAM DUNN's "Pleasure to be
deceived! For your enjoyable Newsletter life". CHARLIE ULLMAN
touched on some of the poignancy we were hoping for with his
"Technical Friday reading alone", JILL PHYTHIAN thought that
"Seven day elegant and can dancing with winning news shirt of
mens" summed up "everything she ever believed" about NTK, and
LLOYD WOOD was inadvertently filed as a competition entry for
pointing out the haiku-esque structure of an online chat with
International Star Trek Guru quizmaster Terry Shuttleworth, in
lines like "In general yes/ the universe is too big/ for use
[sic] to be all alone". And taking the final runners-up no-
prize was the similarly unwitting suggestion from ALEC MUFFET
to check out the meta-tag-style spamdexing on ringtone sites
nowadays, such as the breathily conspiratorial: "Do you find
lots of lg cell phone and ericcson phone accessories on the
television or free logos for nokia and nokia 3210 australia on
cable TV, I know I do, all the time nokia cat".
http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/chat/terry.html
- actual winners announced in a week or two
http://www.ringtones-4-all-phones.co.uk/vodafonede_r4989_409.htm
- thought "melissa sagemiller" would set off all the filters again
>> ANTI-NEWS <<
berating the obvious
Beckham identified as "Real Player", al-Qaeda dangerously keen
on home taping: http://www.ntk.net/2003/08/08/dohbec.gif ...
tempted to break "largest death toll from chemical weapons" at
the same time?: http://www.ntk.net/2003/08/08/dohguin.gif ...
and presumably that must be steam coming off their feet there:
http://www.ntk.net/2003/08/08/doh98.gif ... double-URLtendres:
http://simonkidgitsclub.com/ , http://hunkinsexperiments.com/ ,
http://www.professional-ho.co.nz/ ... "things that are new and
quirky will be successful" - analyst's super-specific prediction:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3123993.stm ... inappropriate print ad:
http://thegareth.net/home/photos/random/inappropriate_advert_of_the_week
... usually boots faster than this: http://www.mysymbian.com/ ...
London Flash mob "staged": http://www.blackbeltjones.com/work/
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
goto's considered non-harmful
We can't remember if next Thursday's ARTISTS AGAINST SUCCESS
RECORD LABEL PARTY (from 8pm, Thu 2003-08-14, The Windmill,
Brixton, SW2, UKP3 may include "Goody Bag") is the show that
MJ HIBBETT was supposed to be learning Eminem's "Stan" for,
though no doubt the other performers - including the "Joy
Division meets Mario Bros electro" of JOHNNY DOMINO - will
graciously decline your shouted requests for "Hey Hey 16K",
"Programming Is A Poetry For Our Time", or any of Hibbett's
slightly less geeky tunes for that matter. In fact, why not
make it a week of offbeat pop by catching the highlights of
last month's "Placard London" headphone-only electronica
weirdness at Wednesday's DORKBOT (7pm, Wed 2003-08-13,
Limehouse Town Hall, London E14, free), or indeed the laid-
back jazz and hip-hop of INNOCENT SMOOTHIES' FRUITSTOCK (12pm
to 9pm, Sat & Sun 2003-08-09/10, Camden corner of Regents
Park, London, free) - while of course queuing for the Pimms,
Ben & Jerry's and Ty Nant spring water essential to recreating
that grass-roots Woodstock atmosphere.
http://www.windmillbrixton.co.uk/Months/2003August.html#Thursday
- vs http://mjhibbett.tripod.com/sampler/programming.htm
http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/
- "gabba techno, but played live with a home-made feel"
http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/fruitstock/details.html
- caution: self-consciously cute corporate site
http://www.edinburghnews.com/capitalcity.cfm?id=842902003
- Gary Le Strange "best Fringe debut" since Steve Coogan
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
SLITHY is "a library for creating animated presentations
using Python and OpenGL". Actually, it's a bit more than
that: it's a framework for creating little bits of drawing
and animation code objects that can dance along to a
time-line on a canvas, and have enough introspection to be
generally treated by code-generating proggies. In other
words, to write a presentation, you hand write code for all
your objects you need (or pull some out from the toolkit
provided), and then stick them together in a simple Python
script. Or - better - write that code that *generates* the
code that runs your presentation. To put it another way, if
the marketing types can waste hours building a Powerpoint
presentation, you can certainly deserve to spend *months*
creating the perfect meta-presentation. Code for everything
is shockingly clean; the documentation is, literally, a
philosophical thesis, and the guys at SIGGRAPH reportedly
loved it. Freak out your CEO by trapping his entire business
logic in a little bouncing 3D cube on slide 4 today.
http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/dougz/slithy/
- ssss
>> MEMEPOOL <<
contains a source of http://snackspot.org/
inevitably: http://www.fixyourmp.com/ ... "At MINAS TIRITH, turn
LEFT toward MINAS MORGUL": http://www.ooblick.com/text/tomordor/
... nice idea, good answer to "how are you going to make money":
http://www.mailinator.com/mailinator/Faq.do ... after the glow of
http://www.themarriage.co.uk/ comes http://www.thedivorce.co.uk/ ...
something candled this way comes: wish Ray Bradbury happy birthday
at https://planetary.org/bradbury/ ... www.respectcopyrights.org
vs www.disrespectcopyrights.org ... top-ten net vulnerabilities
- LIVE!: http://www.qualys.com/security/ ... investigators ask:
could we have started killing off the Beatles any earlier?
http://www.anycities.com/user/uberkinder/ ... before they rise to kill
STEVE JOBS? http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,88439,00.html#2 ...
ah, but who is *really* behind http://www.google-watch-watch.org/ ?
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
TV>> you wait all year for some terrestrial appearances from
MTV uber-prankster Tom Green, and then two come along at once:
hopefully a few Glenn Humplik-humiliating highlights in chat
format THE BEST OF THE NEW TOM GREEN SHOW (11.45pm, Fri, C4);
plus a cameo in MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE (6.45pm, Thu, BBC2)...
SEX AND THE CITY (10pm, Fri, C4) briefly explores the erotic
possibilities of the TiVo... and it's psychological horror
almost every other evening, in the form of JACOB'S LADDER
(11.50pm, Fri, BBC1), STIR OF ECHOES (10.15pm, Sun, BBC1) and
INSTINCT (9pm, Wed, ITV) - aka "Gorillas In The Mist" meets
"Silence Of The Lambs"... THE BEACH (9pm, Sat, BBC1) isn't so
bad until it goes all "Apocalypse Now"... Michelle "Dawson's
Creek" Williams ponders a different kind of adolescent trauma
in HALLOWEEN H20 (10.55pm, Sat, BBC1)... and C4 gives up the
weekend ratings battle with WITNESS: GOD BLESS IBIZA (8.15pm,
Sat, C4) plus Dermot O'Leary taking a madcap look at papal
infallibility in SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE CATHOLIC (7.30pm,
Sun, C4)... "too much reality" TV is examined in both ED TV
(9pm, Sat, C4) and THE TRUMAN SHOW (10.15pm, Wed, BBC3)...
preceded by MAN TRAP - STRAW DOGS: THE FINAL CUT (11.20pm,
Sat, C4), controversial 1970s mathematician's revenge STRAW
DOGS (11.15pm, Sun, C4) is championed by - you've guessed it,
Mark Kermode... BLACK HAWK DOWN: THE TRUE STORY (8pm, Tue, C5)
appears to be the third History Channel reversioning of the
source material for its two "Battle Stations" profiles of the
Black Hawk helicopter shown on C4 in March and June of this
year... while yet another role-reversal life-swap contrivance
MASTERS AND SERVANTS (9pm, Thu, C4) will nonetheless hopefully
feature the eponymous Depeche Mode track as its theme tune...
FILM>> over-the-top performances from Johnny Depp and Geoffrey
Rush almost salvage overlong Disney theme-park-ride adaptation
THE PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL
( http://www.ahafilm.info/movies/moviereviews.phtml?fid=7519 :
A fish biologist accompanied the crabs to the set. He released
6 Nigerian Moon Crabs on the sand and the fake skeleton and
stood just off camera [...] They were retrieved when the scene
was over and brought back home)... it's "Freddy Vs Jason" next
week, Paul "Shopping" Anderson is making "Alien Vs Predator"
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0370263/board/flat/2453059 , but
it's the ultimate faceoff of Rugrats Vs The Wild Thornberrys
providing this summer holiday's "mild peril" in RUGRATS GO
WILD ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/rugrats_go_wild.html :
We briefly see Charlotte (an adult) in her non-sexy, non-
revealing underwear)... while "Somebody sensitive and tough/
Somebody there when the going gets rough/ [...] Somebody cool
but real tender too/ Somebody, baby, just like [Colin Firth]"
was Christina Aguilera's original definition of "You English
are so uptight!" Anglo-American kids comedy WHAT A GIRL WANTS
( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/whatagirlwants.htm :
lashout at mother; punk dress, repeatedly; lack of chemistry
and energy in the kissing scene. Thankfully)...
PHEAR, BEER, AND OTHER PEOPLE'S ROOT PASSWORDS #2 with our "My
second DEFCON" correspondent, "Crash Override", Las Vegas>>
"popular adjunct to the BlackHat briefings" might not be quite
such an accurate description any more, as BlackHat speakers
were reportedly asked not to present at DefCon. Not that this
seemed to affect the talks' popularity: fire marshals decided
that each of the three presentation rooms could only hold as
many attendees as there was available seating. With a con of
roughly 4500, and seating in all three streams of talks for
only about 1900, that's lot of disappointed haxx0rs. But the
Defcon staff explained the situation patiently and repeatedly,
"flushing" the crowd out of the room at the end of each talk
so the maximum number of people could see something. The video
feed to the bar gave up after a day or so, but all the talks
were on "DefCon TV" throughout the hotel so you could catch
most of what you wanted to... the talks I did see were well
worth the queuing: CAT OKITA on peer-to-peer reputation
software that might solve the authenticity problem on security
mailing lists http://www.geekness.net/tools/aura/ ; DNSCon's
own JONATHAN WIGNALL summarising the history and future of
network worms and defences against them; and RYAN LACKEY
overcoming myriad technical problems to present a post-mortem
on HavenCo http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5059676.html -
life imitates http://www.pirateutopia.org/macbeth/about.htm ?
Still, missing a few talks was a bug and a feature - I met a
lot more people and made a lot more friends than last year;
not being one of the hordes huddled over a laptop also seemed
to help... the HACKER JEOPARDY contest was even more chaotic
than last year: on the Friday night "supporting babe" BEER
BETTY was replaced by a selection of haxx0r girls - alleged
"pornstars of the hacker scene" - who would strip and duct
tape audience members when necessary. Things got better, or
worse, on the Saturday, with the third qualifier and final
taking a marathon four hours to complete. For the qualifier
the OSI category caused uproar amongst the audience, "friend
of NTK" DAN KAMINSKY arguing with compere WINN SCHWARTAU about
quite where TCP sits on stage. The final ended, appropriately,
in a complete farce, with the "Son of Portmath" question
suffering a typo between SNMP and SMTP... there were plenty of
other event highlights - the Scavenger Hunt team that scored
points by bringing a cow's head to the organisers' table, the
runaway LockPicking contest winner who'd only been practising
for five months, playing "six degrees of David Litchfield"
with the UK security enthusiasts, the orgy in the pool, the
rare times KEVIN MITNICK wasn't being asked for an autograph,
and PETE SHIPLEY briefly seen hanging around at the back of
talks. Of course, with the contract with the Alexis Park Hotel
expiring this year, DefCon 0B was, of course, the last one
ever. Well organised, well attended, very friendly - I'm
looking forward to next year's "last ever" DefCon already...
>> 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
"we said snackspot.org *above* 'Sideburns' and 'The Cure'"
http://www.snackspot.org/images/qmag.jpg
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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