Need To Know 2003-10-10

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"Lewis said [VeriSign] needs to make money from new services such as Site Finder, or it will not be able to protect the Net's critical infrastructure. He cited a hacker's attack on the domain name system last year, in which VeriSign servers remained relatively unscathed - largely because of the 'substantial amount of capital we've had to invest,' he said." http://news.com.com/2100-1038_3-5087139.html ...Nice internet you've got here. Be a shame if something "happened" to it... >> HARD NEWS << no cause to enthuse Well, we're into those last precious days of freedom before the EUCD gets implemented in the UK. The final implementation, signed off by Parliament last Friday (yes, we missed it too), now makes time-shifting TV shows only legal "for domestic use", bans practically anything else, and puts the DMCA-like clampers on breaking copyright protection. Except, that is, for "the purposes of research into cryptography" - which just goes to show that even the government is scared of Ross Anderson's wrath. Even then, you're doomed if you affect "prejudicially the rights of the copyright owner". Clearing out the cupboards, then, here's that code we mentioned last week that shows the weakness of Network Solution's whois captcha tech. And if they can't protect the public's domain database, can we really trust them with its misspellings? http://www.patent.gov.uk/copy/notices/2003/copy_direct3.htm - worse to tell you on this topic http://www.ntk.net/2003/10/10/whoisnt.tar.gz - last hurrahs not indicative of guilt http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/33322.html - it's the shift key! press the SHIFT K- NO CARRIER Highlight of this week's LONDON LINUX EXPO (well, apart from the guy who'd signed in as something like "IP enforcement officer, SCO") - all the dedicated Linux evangelists who'd got as far as persuading their mums to use Mozilla, only to find them subsequently thrown out of respectable high-street store sites like Marks and Spencer ("optimised for use with the most popular browsers - IE5, Netscape 6.1, AOL browser version 5.0 and above"). Even less excusable - as it's directly funded by your taxes - is this month's new contender for a Usability Makeover: the Department for Work and Pensions JOBCENTRE PLUS, whose Jobsearch feature is variously described by Yosser Hughes-like NTK readers as "a horrible attempt to reinvent the wheel" and "breaking Moz, Firebird, perhaps Opera too?". Though unemployed layabout ASHLEY POMEROY spoiled it somewhat by going on to point out that "The Welsh language version is amusing because Welsh looks like Klingon, and the thought of unemployed Klingons working behing the counter at Tesco makes me smile, and I shall put this to the people in Tesco next time I go there, yes I shall, I shall liken them to Klingons". http://www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk/cms.asp?Page=/Home/Customers/SearchforaJob - vs http://www.jobcentreplus.gov.uk/cms.asp?Page=/Welsh http://www.marksandspencer.com/disallowed.html - do the shops still not accept credit cards either? http://www.reverendrat.com/ - apparently he does something similar "at all the shows" Though to be honest, our current favourite Webscraper has to be PUBLIC WHIP, which is what happens when you slam Hansard and MATLAB together very hard. Find out the latest votes, how your MP voted, their attendance record, watch for backbench rebellions, and then see them all crammed into little behavioural clusters via a compact java applet. Apart from the cheap thrill for us of recommending some obsessive-compulsive hack-the-democracy site that hasn't just been slapped up by our mates, it should also prove invaluable for those who don't want to see another EUCD sneak by without a whisper of complaint. Now all it needs is other people to scrape it for their own single-issue obsessed sites. Power to the meta-meta-people! http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/ - information wants to be plotted in colour doodads http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,,2-7-1442_1427869,00.html - if you tolerate this: your pizza could be next >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious (also a popular Google goof) "And about time too - she's hideous!": http://www.ntk.net/2003/10/10/dohbeaut.gif vs http://www.google.com/search?q=beatification+beautification ... not the best week for Reebok to be running its WHODUNIT? campaign: http://www.b3ta.com/board/2118710 ... not what footy needs right now: http://www.ntk.net/2003/10/10/dohpubic.gif ... more placeholder hilarity: http://www.proscript.co.uk/ ... crack http://www.encrypta.com/company.htm 's secret message (bottom of page)... help ROBIN COOK choose his favourite integers: http://www.robincook.org.uk/cook/rc_pollstn.asp ... 2x missing millions: http://www.ntk.net/2003/10/10/doh15v1.gif vs http://www.ntk.net/2003/10/10/doh15v2.gif ... excessive emphasising (from "Important" on) implies it's all YOUR fault: http://www.easyjet4insurance.com/brand/easyjet/products.htm ... hit "Cancel" to teach child of their insignificance in wider scheme of things: http://www.toweroflondontour.com/kids/ ... http://forum.edge-online.com/ flaunts insider credentials ... http://www.joinarnold.com/en/agenda/arnoldsviews.php#hh1 - VY DIDDEN YOU LISTEN DER FIRST TIME?... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Now located - without a hint of irony - in one of the old SGI buildings on Shoreline Blvd, the Mountain View Computer History Museum hosts its sixth VINTAGE COMPUTER FESTIVAL AND BOOK SALE this weekend (9.30am-6pm, Sat & Sun 2003-10-11 & 12, corner of Highway 101 and Shoreline, California 94043, $5). Highlights include "operating Xerox Altos and D* machines", a "retro-code videogame programming challenge" (Atari 800, C64, and Apple 2), plus "over 15" computer history lectures, though the scariest thing we saw when we were there was the (non- functioning) Cray 2 cooled by fluorinert, a liquid also used as an artificial substitute for human blood plasma. Somewhat closer to home, NTK reader/ former PC games reviewer MIL MILLINGTON will be launching his followup to "Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About", neurological rom-com novel A CERTAIN CHEMISTRY at his local Wolverhampton branch of Waterstones (7pm, Mon 2003-10-10, 13-15 Victoria Street, Wolverhampton, UKP3, "for Tickets, phone: 01902 427219") - a gesture of defiance to all those modern multimedia artists who just waltz into a month-long residency at the ICA without working their way up through the Northern working men's galleries and book readings like you had to in the old days. http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/stores/static/-/waterstones/events/ - introduced/ interrupted by NTK's very own "Dave Green" http://www.richardherring.com/gigs/ - Rich Herring also gets his book out, from Tue http://www.computerhistory.org/events/vcf6/ - hey, http://www.vintage.org/2003/main/ seemed to be down http://www.fipr.org/sfs7.html - another Scrambling for Safety event in a couple of weeks >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Although YAML's Perlish originators might choke on the idea, this standard looks to be the Python of markup. Designed to be human-readable and human-editable, it eschews all those pointy bracketed, no whitespace, entity-escaping of those weird SGML mongrels. Instead, it's all indents and linebreaks - perfect for configuration files and data- dumping. There are now YAML writers and parsers for Perl, Python, Java, Ruby and C. And it's about as rebellious as markups get. http://www.yaml.org/ - YAML ain't a Markup Language http://whytheluckystiff.net/syck/ - but syck is, in fact, syck >> MEMEPOOL << contains a source of http://snackspot.org/ Speccy emulator - for ZX81: http://www.chuntey.com/SP81/ ... thanks, that ought to do it: http://www.blaine-appeal.co.uk/ ... Mmm, cookie - accepted!: http://www.jibble.org/cookies.php - vs "I used the iterator once [...] and it [doesn't] seem to work": http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?ExternalIterator ... time to start the petition for "Star Wars kid" as the next "Dr Who": http://www.livejournal.com/users/internetsdairy/24125.html ... technicolor phrenology ... this week's Amazon insomnia-cure: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/9992154705/ ... this week's WWW insomnia-cure: www.britishparking.co.uk/ ... http://www.montalk.net/potter.html : "Harry Potter - An Introduction Into 4th Density?" - apparently from the site that brought you "TELETUBBIES: Nazi Hybrid Greys in Disguise": http://www.angelfire.com/mt/montalk/teletubbies.html ... fresh from Museum of Techno - surely can't be Paul Oakenfold, can it?: http://www.ntk.net/2003/10/10/superstarsremix.mp3 (4 meg MP3, long breakdown section believed to be space for Madonna's "Vogue"-style rap: "Daley Thompson, and Geoff Capes/ Officials with their measuring tapes")... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> worried that bad guys might start to recognise him from off the telly, MACINTYRE UK UNDERCOVER (9pm, Fri, C5) sends Donal's similar-looking brother into residential care homes - not to be confused with would-be "Colditz" remake P.O.W. (9pm, Fri, ITV)... GRUMPY OLD MEN (9.50pm, Fri, BBC2) appears to be a celebrity talking heads version of "Room 101" featuring Bob Geldof, John Peel, Will Self etc, who should ideally conclude the show by following the example of the original fuel-tax protestors in CONVOY (12.15am, Fri, BBC1)... as the "American" sequence of films - "Psycho", "Beauty", "Pie", "Gigolo", "Graffiti", "Werewolf In London" - takes an even more violent turn in Ed Norton's AMERICAN HISTORY X (10.55pm, Sat, C4)... FIGHTBOX (7.30pm, Mon-Fri, BBC3) is "the new Robot Wars", from EC1-based web design house Bomb.co.uk... fans of adolescent inanity are well-catered to by the likes of "too hot for school's programmes" TEEN BIG BROTHER: THE EXPERIMENT (10pm, Mon-Fri, C4), Adam Sandler golfing goof-off HAPPY GILMORE (11.25pm, Mon, ITV), plus feature-length workplace health and safety violation COYOTE UGLY (9pm, Wed, ITV)... while both Marisa "Freddy Got Fingered" Coughlan memetic slasher GOSSIP (11.10pm, Mon, C4) and Brittany Murphy virgin-murderer CHERRY FALLS (11.15pm, Wed, BBC1) came out the very same week in the UK: http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02000-08-25&l=198#l ... the "Wife Swap" format goes intriguingly off the rails in WHEN MICHAEL PORTILLO BECAME A SINGLE MUM (9pm, Wed, BBC2) - while the single mum in question is off being MP for Kensington and Chelsea?... the author of Quatermass is profiled in THE KNEALE TAPES (9.30pm, Wed, BBC4), followed by psychometric sci-fi THE STONE TAPE (10.10pm, Wed, BBC4)... though only Londoners get to see RACE AROUND THE UNDERGOUND (7.30pm, Thu, ITV), an attempt at the tube-traversing challenge documented, in vivid detail, by that guy who does the unofficial Fox's biscuits fan page: http://www.geofftech.co.uk/tubechallenge/ ... FILM>> good enough for you to forgive both the smaller breasts in "Knick Knack" http://www.metafilter.com/mefi/26116 *and* a mildly annoying performance from Ellen DeGeneres, it's FINDING NEMO ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/findingnemo.htm : series of posterior references and jokes/comments by young adolescents; adolescent defiance; suggestion of flatulence)... otherwise a shamefully limited release for low-budget social- mobility-myth braces-and-glasses junior geek docu SPELLBOUND ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : contains one use of mild language) ... in contrast with relatively unreconstructed 1980s-style necrotising fasciitis cheapo backwoods horror CABIN FEVER ( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=Cabin+Fever+(2003) : Cerina Vincent the always nude girl from Not Another Teen Movie, does it again; after, she shaves her legs with interesting results, then is literally torn apart by this crazy German Shepherd mix)... >> 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 "Originated the idea for using figlet" - for anything! http://www.b3ta.com/board/2072396 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.