Need To Know 2003-09-12

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"Whatever we think about the toxicity of Ecstasy, 40% of people using it each weekend do not die..." - Prof Colin Blakemore sets minds at rest, thanks to BBC http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/3089350.stm ...60% dance badly enough to be considered "life-threatening" >> HARD NEWS << instrumental statues As if the bloody week couldn't get more retrospective. Last summer's Statutory Instrument for town councils and egg marketing boards wanting to collect comms data on you is back, back, partly fixed, and back. And just to ensure you remember what you were doing when it was, the government also announced their "voluntary" plans to get ISPs to retain all traffic data for twelve months. "If this voluntary arrangement proves unacceptable to the industry, the Government will look to make such data retention compulsory", says the press release, in a tone of friendly reconciliation that's giving us goose-bumps already. http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/n_story.asp?item_id=602 - we'd point to the legislation itself, but the govt's learnt *that* lesson Still, the EU kicked back the new Euro-DMCA - the intellectual property rights enforcement directive - until November, the cowards. Giving them all a little bit longer to enforce the *old* euro-DMCA, the EUCD. This week, the little men from FIPR have been bicycling around Europe finding out exactly what each country has banned in their national implementations of the EUCD. Roughly speaking: if you want to crypto research or reverse-engineer, better high-tail it to Finland or Denmark. Norway and Denmark allow for non-infringing circumvention (ie, you can run DeCSS for your own sweet fair use). If you don't like prison food, don't go to Italy, where they'll put you away for four years for breaking Adobe eBooks protection. And if you like your savings, don't, for God's sake, stay here in the UK, where there'll be unlimited fines for commercial or "large-scale (crackz) dealing" - also known by its street name "freebase zer0-dayz". http://www.fipr.org/copyright/guide/intro.html#_ftn43 - done it, done it, want to do it, done it >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious puerile Sky EPG abbreviations - looking a bit too "passionate" for our liking: http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/12/dohjim1.jpg (2nd source: http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/12/dohjim2.jpg )... BBC contact info describes Dr Kelly as "absolutely gorgeous": http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/12/dohgorge.gif ... swap flags at half time: http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/12/dohflags.gif ... good to see that, at the posh schools, a man's word is still as good as his bond: http://oww.westminster.org.uk/directory/ ... also a moderately amusing Google goof, if you can be bothered: http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/12/dohshite.gif ... Old thrill! - alarmingly abstract technology news illustration of the week: http://smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/10/1062902093146.html ... The Friday Thing's Paul Carr deems Madonna/ Britney kiss "disturbing": http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/12/dohcarr2.gif - especially considering that, according to his previous "web exclusive", Madonna must be due to give birth any day now: http://media.guardian.co.uk/print/0,3858,4602121-105337,00.html >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful NTK, of course, does not condone breaking the law, nor are its contents intended to replace the advice of a qualified legal professional. Nonetheless, we feel we should comment on both the scientific and sociological implications of the FARK DAVID BLAINE FLASH MOB (8.45 for 9pm, tonight Friday 2003-09- 12, Thames river bank near Tower Bridge, London SE1, free). Sociologically, we believe that the US-based b3ta-alike may be the first to have devised a Flash Mob with some sort of point to it - that point being, in this case, to target Mr Blaine's flying toilet using safety-conscious laser pointer technology (or, as irrepressible agit-blogger Tim Ireland has highlighted, hand-held mirrors on a sunny day could be even more amusing). And scientifically, this is in many ways the perfect followup to October 2001's ill-judged attempt to persuade the physics-ignorant to use hand-held lasers to "paint the moon" - the difference here being that the moon is a quarter of a million miles away, and David Blaine is a just a few metres off the ground: if anyone actually makes the effort, they should be able to light him up like the Blackpool illuminations. http://www.fark.com/2003/blaine.shtml - they've suspended one American from a crane in a glass box http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02001-10-26&l=124#l - why can't they do it with all of them? http://www.bloggerheads.com/ - serves him right for not having a blog, eh Tim? http://c64audio.valuehost.co.uk/live/bitl4/ - NTK stall at Brighton C64 show tomorrow http://www.yarr.org.uk/ - making next Friday... International Talk Like A Pirate Day >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Hey, young man or girl, writes YOZ GRAHAME (our man with his finger on the barely-registering pulse of geek street hep), all the cool kids have given up on mashing tunes - they're getting wild to the crazy beat of usable site remixes. At least, that's the myth we've been endlessly trying to propagate with the IE-busting adventures of Matthew "Freelance Sitedresser" Somerville (see NTKs passim) so why don't you join the followers of Jakob too? To help you along with the tiresome business of scraping the useful information from some Barley-ised Javascript-ridden shitpit, take a look at the latest Perl toys from AUTRIJUS TANG. In the gaps between rewriting Perl in Chinese or polishing off the biting-the-ActiveState-hand-that-funds-us PAR executable-builder, he's been turning Andy Wardley's popular Template Toolkit inside out: TEMPLATE::EXTRACT throws the sausage machine into reverse, using TT2 templates to extract data from published pages. So far so fascinating, but it's accompanied by the "deeply magical" (or "on crack" if you're London.pm) TEMPLATE::GENERATE, where the cows and the sausages unite to overthrow their mechanical oppressors: feed it data and a published document, and it'll work out the template needed in between. http://search.cpan.org/author/AUTRIJUS/Template-Extract-0.25/ - saves all that tedious mucking about in XSLT/XPath http://search.cpan.org/author/AUTRIJUS/Template-Generate-0.02/ - "considered experimental", in an Edward Teller way http://par.perl.org/ - ActiveState PPMs are somewhat outdated, strangely >> MEMEPOOL << contains a source of http://snackspot.org/ LORDS OF MIDNIGHT 3D: http://www.frozenempire.net/lom.html (for Athlon/ Geforce) vs PocketPC WIRELESS NODES OF YESOD: http://www.wirelessdevnet.com/news/2003/aug/27/news4.html ... bad product names - L'Oreal Wrinkle D-Crease "with Boswelox": http://www.beautyweekly.com/archive/010803.html (anag: "Ox Bowels", among other things)... maybe not Amazon's *dullest* book: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/812072299X/ - but one of their shortest?... Dalai Lama "splittist" claim: http://www.guardian.co.uk/elsewhere/journalist/story/0,7792,1037794,00.html - inadvertently imitates People's Front Of Judea?... milk ad http://www.ananova.com/entertainment/story/sm_817112.html - ideally also backed by Rich Herring, Hugh Dennis' "Milky Milky" character, award-winning author Alice Sebold: "Yes, the murder of a 14 year old girl isn't pretty. But neither are rickets, osteoperosis, or other calcium deficiency diseases. Girls in particular need to watch their calcium intake - if your dismembered corpse is found in a field, you want the investigating officer to think 'Mmm - lovely bones'"... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> Arnie will indeed "be back", as THE TERMINATOR (9pm, Fri, C5) begins a season of Friday night Schwarzenegger films, a frankly more entertaining prospect than arthouse David Bowie "scifi" THE MAN WHO FELL TO EARTH (12.35am, Fri, BBC2)... otherwise the week's best films are ingeniously scheduled in the popular round-midnight slot, with Doug "Swingers" Liman's Katie Holmes Vegas rampage GO (12.25am, Sat, C4), non-stop techno pop video RUN LOLA RUN (11.35pm, Sun, C4), plus DJ documentary SCRATCH (12.15am, Wed, C4)... Hedy Lamarr co- invented "frequency hopping" radio transmission, and now Diana Dors turns out to have been an amateur cryptography nut, in codebreaking docu WHO GOT DIANA DORS' MILLIONS? (9.15pm, Sat, C4)... Alistair Cook, magician man, does everything a clairvoyant can in PSYCHIC! (8pm, Sun, C5)... and see if you can flick seamlessly between Indian drama SECOND GENERATION (10pm, Sun & Mon, C4) and the new series of THE KUMARS AT NO. 42 (9.30pm, Mon, BBC2)... C5's commitment to pushing back the boundaries of human knowledge is epitomised by THE CURSE OF PAGE THREE (9pm, Mon, C5) and new fetish series WHATEVER TURNS YOU ON (10pm, Wed, C5), the latter presented by the arguably not-adhering-to-conventional-notions-of-attractiveness David Aaronovitch... MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE 2 (9pm, Wed, ITV) is, astonishingly, almost as pointless as the first one... making this week's highlight the full series of Lucas and Walliams' state-of-the-art dressing-up-as-ladies character comedy LITTLE BRITAIN (9pm, Wed, BBC3)... FILM>> something of a limited release for the redubbed-by-John "Pixar" Lasseter Overfiend-free anime kiddie odyssey SPIRITED AWAY ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/spiritedaway.htm : adolescent sass to parents; witches, whether using their talents for good purposes or bad, still serve evil since a witch's "power" does not come from God)... and similarly not many places showing Aussie crime caper THE HARD WORD either ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/the_hard_word.html : [Joel "Attack of the Clones" Edgerton] slowly rubs his head and mouth against [Rachel "Six Feet Under" Griffiths'] clothed chest and, after she lifts her shirt, graphically sucks on her bare breast (that we see))... otherwise it's Monica "Matrix Reloaded" Bellucci, the director of "Training Day" and, er, Bruce "Moonlighting" Willis in frankly disappointing Nigerian rainforest US Marines rescue-mission-gone-wrong TEARS OF THE SUN ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/tearsofthesun.htm : flash nudity; excessive cleavage; Priest saying "Go with God" with [Willis] replying "God already left Africa")... and the religious unusualness continues with Heath "A Knight's Tale" Ledger, Shannyn "A Knight's Tale" Sossamon, Mark "A Knight's Tale" Addy and the director of "A Knight's Tale" - together at last! - in sub-"Ghostbusters" Catholic exorcist frolic THE SIN EATER ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/the_order.html : [Sossamon] plays a painter who's recently escaped from a mental institution and accompanies [Ledger] to Rome where she has sex with him)... >> 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 [overheard on IRC] "Always with the stand.org.uk/fax-your-mp... blah blah" 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.