Need To Know 2003-09-05

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"My practice is to delete all of those who do not reply to my email, or who are so tardy to be ineffective, and similarly web pages and hyperlinks. And it really works!" - Earth 98% full... delete Peter Cochrane's "ineffectives" immediately http://www.silicon.com/opinion/166-500001/1/5686.html >> HARD NEWS << motley crews She's got a little list: the McCarthy witchhunt continued in Brussels this week, with Arlene M., leader of the software patent campaign, sending a "factsheet" to MEPs, correcting the errors of those subversive programmers who've been fighting her proposal. She gets as far as the second sentence before blowing the "fact" part of her mission. There she describes her pursuers as "the Free Software Alliance": an organisation that doesn't appear to exist. Then again, when you have the EuroLinux Alliance, the Foundation for a Free Information Infrastructure, the Free Software Foundation, the Oxford Internet Institute, Super Mecha Donald Knuth, the Soros Foundation, SUSE, Redhat and the 228,137 people who've signed the anti-software patents petition against you, it must be easy to mix up names. The fiendishly efficient FFII have already written a detailed reply to this rearguard action. It also works as a decent summary of the positions of both Arlene *and* the sinister Free Software Alliance if you haven't been keeping up. If you're bored this weekend - or would prefer to keep your job producing patent-free software in Europe - you might want to read it, then have a word with your MEP about a few of those "facts". http://swpat.ffii.org/papers/eubsa-swpat0202/amccarthy030901/ - point by point http://www.europarl.org.uk/uk_meps/MembersMain.htm - digging up your MEP http://petition.eurolinux.org/ - or just sign the petition, you lazy COMMIE Just to emphasise the positive power of protest: rogue gamer STUART CAMPBELL has been back on the campaign trail, once again tackling games-biz body ELSPA, but this time over the informatively incorrect FAQ on their website. "Am I legally entitled to make a backup of my original software?" you ask; they used to unequivocally answer: "No". As Stuart's superfast reflexes rapidly tracked down, section 50A of the amended 1988 Copyright, Designs and Patents act in fact encourages "a lawful user of a copy of a computer program to make any back up copy of it which it is necessary for him to have for the purposes of his lawful use", a difference of opinion which Stuart felt necessary to report to the Advertising Standards Authority. They said it wasn't really their area and pointed him in the direction of Trading Standards, who said it wasn't their area either - but they had a word with ELSPA anyway, who've now modified the wording to warn against backing up the "film and sound" copyrights which they believe games inevitably contain. Of course, making backup copies of lawfully obtained audio or video material for your personal use isn't quite so explicitly permitted under UK law, but - and please correct us if you know any differently - we're not sure if it's actually specifically banned either? http://www.rllmuk.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14006 - chipping Playstations also not *that* illegal, yet http://www.rllmuk.com/forum/index.php?showtopic=14505 - result, though not clear who ELSPA should be reported to http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3192927.stm - and still illegal to circumvent lame anti-copying tech Everyone's praising the Hutton Inquiry's data dumps, but is anyone actually ploughing through the online evidence? Yes they are - including bits that they shouldn't be. Subscriber WILLIAM ANDERSON spotted that some of the BBC's submitted evidence wasn't all as [redacted] as it could be. Take Gilligan's phone bill: "Not all of the data has been properly blanked... visible within the first couple of inches are the BT account number, the bill number (... usually used by BT as proof that you are who you say you are) and, critically an 0208 phone number". All gone now, replaced with a time-warping note that says the phone bill is "not yet available". Wonder how many people phoned Gilligan up and started hassling him for a quote? http://www.the-hutton-inquiry.org.uk/content/evidence-lists/evidence-bbc.htm - BBC/13/0058-0067, 0068-0096 http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02003-08-22&l=192#l - (sort of) in accordance with prophecy >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious hey, once you get those 400-year old Londoners talking about the "old days": http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/05/dohgreat.gif ... SYDNEY advertises October street parade followed by "an apple": http://duxton.com/upcoming_hotel_main.asp?hotel_id=2 ... WIDDECOMBE of the week (you can come up with ruder ones): http://www.365london.co.uk/locationdetail.asp?title=Ram%20Raiding ... ah, the old "The Helpdesk/ The Helpless" comedy confusion: http://www2.warwick.ac.uk/services/its/aboutus/latestnews/#0 ... monthly return of the ever-popular PUERILE GOOGLE GOOFS: http://www.google.com/search?q=baptits , "breech of contract", http://news.google.com/news?q=javascript+fella , "rdf tripes", and what *is* so special about "Cack Cocaine"?... THE FRIDAY THING's Paul Carr slams viral marketers' attempts "to drive traffic away from other people's websites towards their own": http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,7558,1028727,00.html - harsh words from former promoter of "buy Cheeky Girls record" campaign: http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/05/dohcheek.gif ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful MARK THOMAS is officially opening the centre to co-ordinate protests against next week's DEFENCE SYSTEMS AND EQUIPMENT INTERNATIONAL (various times and venues around Excel Exhibition Centre, pre-registration necessary for arms fair). Meanwhile, controversy-magnets SPIKED MAGAZINE tackle the issues that really matter with a short season of net-related debates, starting with INTERNET REGULATION: IS THERE SUCH A THING AS HARMFUL CONTENT? (7pm, next Wed 2003-09-10, Hill and Knowlton, 35 Red Lion Square, London WC1R, from UKP10), in the company of ROLAND "Internet Policy Agency" PERRY and YAMAN AKDENIZ from Cyber-Rights and Cyber-Liberties UK. Then, assuming proper WiFi protocol is observed, expect the usual flurry of uninformative "I'm actually blogging this *from the event*" postings the week after when GONE TO THE BLOGS: THE BLOGGING PHENOMENON IN PERSPECTIVE (7pm, Wed 2003-09-17, IBM South Bank, 76 Upper Ground, London SE1) annotates the musings of bonkers anti-blog blogger BILL THOMPSON and the iSociety's inescapable Chris Evans-lookalike JAMES CRABTREE. http://www.dsei.org/ - "There will also be music from Cello Man" http://www.dsei.co.uk/ - "Vessels are berthed immediately alongside the exhibition hall" http://www.spiked-online.com/event/ - it's basically Lee and Herring's "Ironic Review". Ahhhhh. >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering E-mail is dead! Long live Usenet! Wait, is that right? GMANE is a website that subscribes to all your favourite tech mailing lists, then spits them out as despammed NNTP feeds. Searchable, skimmable, threadable and disposable, it lets you hang on with your fingernails to a bunch of different online discussions without drowning in filters and mailboxes. Thanks to gmane's constant Great Renaming, it can be a little hard to find your old haunts: who, for instance, knew that gmane.emacs.code-browser was really a feed of ecb-list@lists.sf.net? But at least the tree format encourages browsing - and if your favourite mailing list isn't there, there's a simple one page form to add it. Instant Web archive! http://gmane.org/ - of course, potentially instant Web archive you don't know about http://gmane.org/about.php - but at least it's run by a good guy http://www.google.com/groups?q=%22please+respect+x-no+archive+when%22 - oops >> MEMEPOOL << contains a source of http://snackspot.org/ DHTML LEMMINGS dead: http://www.xs4all.nl/~crisp/lemmings/ - predictably... but some things will never die (Flash, sorry): http://www.powerstrike.net/Tehkan/mamejump.html ... the new "Quake haikus": http://www.twhi.org/rip/wizard/bluewizard.htm ... raising possibility that DMX's lyrics "What these bitches want", "Where's my bitches?" and "bitches drippin sweat" are actually about female dogs: http://www.boomer129.com/home.html ... DULLEST TITLED BOOK ON AMAZON contender #2 "You'll design longer-lasting, more cost-effective road pavements", thanks to http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0070144516/ ... Commodore said "most famous author in sci-fi history" *above* Jakki Brambles: http://amiga.emugaming.com/celebrities.html ... September 11 will inevitably "happen again", experts warn: http://www.cullenleeds.force9.co.uk/september11tm/infonationstation.htm ... Babelfish Japlish: http://qwer.org/cnnjaplish.html ... Comic Sans != a feature: http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/05/messengerad.gif ... what situationist prank is this? http://www.paulmorley.com ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> "Pitch Black" director David Twohy provides rather more pedestrian ET incursions in THE ARRIVAL (1.20am, Fri, BBC1)... romantic comedy DON'T GO BREAKING MY HEART (2.30am, Sat, C4) was memorably promoted with the poster tagline "He couldn't if he tried!"... and we still think the "Do not have anything in your life you are not willing to walk out on in 30 seconds" line from HEAT (9pm, Sun, BBC1) would make a good ad for those USB keyring memory sticks... according to the Radio Times, SOUL SEARCHING (8pm, Sun, C4) reports that "scientific opinion is swaying - maybe we do have an inner, God-given spiritual essence"... the trails list the celebrities as "Gail Porter", "Mel C" and "Miss World", which is how they'll hopefully refer to her in "Superstars" remake THE GAMES: LIVE (9pm, Sun, C4) ... and we previously pondered if Ewan McGregor's character - called "The Eye" - might like to "hold bees" in bizarro serial killer romance THE EYE OF THE BEHOLDER (10pm, Sun, BBC2)... THE CURSE OF FRIENDS REUNITED (9pm, Mon, C5) really ought to include their frankly rubbish "don't give out your email address" regexp... Sandra Bullock booze battler 28 DAYS (10pm, Mon, C5) turns out not to be a prequel to "28 Days Later"... and "Desmond's" veteran Robbie Gee reappears in BBC1's all- black sitcom THE CROUCHES (10.35pm, Tue, BBC1) - maybe Richard Blackwood was busy doing "Quote me happy" insurance ads... JUMP LONDON (10pm, Tue, C4) seems to refer to the activity of leaping from rooftop to rooftop as "free running" rather than the original French name of "Le Parkour"... listen out for the samples from the new UNKLE "Eye for an Eye" single in arthouse war film THE THIN RED LINE (11pm, Tue, ITV)... Stephen Fry reunites with Hugh Laurie, John Sessions in urban-legend- debunking panelgame smugfest QI (10pm, Thu, BBC2)... and CANTERBURY TALES (9pm, Thu, BBC1) updates some of the Chaucer classics - just as Dire Straits did all those years ago: http://www.museumoftechno.org/correspondence/lyrics.html ... FILM>> it's Dennis Pennis, Johnny Vegas and Vince "Swingers" Vaughn - together at last! - in crude crown-green bowling slapstick BLACKBALL ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : Contains strong language)... though fans of unclothed middle-aged British female character actors will already be queuing up for based- on-a-true-story CALENDAR GIRLS ( http://www.mpaa.org/ : Rated PG-13 for nudity, some language and drug-related material)... a slightly odd back-to-school release for "let's do the show right here" adolescent showbiz-wannabes spectacular CAMP ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/camp2003.htm : social brutality, repeatedly; pelvic thrusts by a small child; belly sin; one might get the impression most performing artists choose to be "gay") - disappointingly, not based on either the Scottish beverage http://www.sybertooth.com/camp/ or the adenosine nucleotide "cyclic AMP" which regulates various metabolic processes at a cellular level... despite the "no special effects" claim, the preponderance of over-water shots implies a lot of boat-based imprinting during the making of WINGED MIGRATION (imdb: nature/ avalanche/ farming/ hunting/ parrot)... and one of the blokes from "Attachments" is hunted down like a dog in semi-downloadable Brit "Deliverance"-alike THIS IS NOT A LOVE SONG ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : Contains strong language, drugs use and violence) - which, for once, *does* appear to be based on the Public Image Ltd song of the same name: http://www.thisisnotalovesong.com/ ... >> 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 "dysfunctional" http://news.independent.co.uk/digital/features/story.jsp?story=439760 NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Unsubscribe or subscribe at http://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. 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.