Need To Know 2003-11-07

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"Gawker decreed, by example, that blogs should be not only loquacious but erratic, funny, bitchy, passionate, and obsessive to the point of being a little demented. Blogs, in other words, were no longer to be the exclusive province of strident, annoying people..." http://www.newyorkmetro.com/nymetro/news/media/columns/download/n_9457/ - but it helps... >> HARD NEWS << dooby dooby doos Wasn't it Brian Wilson who said "Heheheheheheee WIPO oooout!"? Him or one of the Fat Boys. Anyway: not much surf but a lot of turf-wars on the shores of Lake Geneva this week, with yet another shortcut being taken by the Evil Intellectual Property Developers at the World IP Organisation's copyright committee. Here's the scene: the IPers want to create a bundle of new IP rights: not for creative artists, but for those who package and broadcast their works on air or online. The idea is that a broadcaster can record a public domain or Creative Commons licensed work, claim "FIXATION RIGHTS" to it, and retain control of that expression for the next twenty years. Did I say twenty? I'm sorry - that's what they used to want. Now it's *fifty* years, to match Sonny Bono inflation in copyright extensions. WIPO thought this was a done deal (after all, who could complain about more rights?) - until a few of the developing countries and those pesky open source advocates started taking note. Developing countries: not so keen on yet another round of having their native cultures air-lifted out of their control. OSS folk: not thrilled about a WIP definition of "broadcasting" that could include docs, files, or executables. Could you take a GPL'd program, "broadcast" it on the Net, and then claim exclusive copyright control on that expression? No-one at WIPO knew. The end result: not for the first or last time, the developing world teamed up with the free software folk to backburn the proposal. Well, all except Kenya, who went on about how they'd passed a law banning people from taking photos of TV broadcasts to prove what a good IP world citizen they were. Better to back the Bitching Boys than the Fat Cats on this particular track, we think... http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/wipo-casting.html - another Jamie Love song http://www.cptech.org/ip/wipo/casting-note-29Oct03.html - wish they all could be non-infringing NTK subscriber JASON KITCAT has been hacking away on electronic voting systems long before they became unfashionable. And by "hack" here, we mean, mostly, the exact opposite: carefully investigating a secure, reliable, open source system that might actually work, rather than the hodge-podge of bad security and whizz-nag touchscreens that dominate the commercial offerings. These days, as the rush to introduce voting machines overtakes the slow pace of getting them right, Jason's joined with cyberrights groups across Europe to try and at least slow down the acceptance of these sub-standard Diebold-style cheat-o-matics. Right now, the EU's position has been (to use the rhetorical form pioneered by Kitcat's choccie namesake) "you can't verify your vote, you can't authenticate your privacy, you look awful - you'll go a long way". Kitcat's resolution to encourage voter-verifiable audit trails in European voting machines might help stop that. You can sign it at the URL below, and follow in the illustrious footsteps of MPs, ukcrypto wonks and some bearded Free Software guy whose name escapes us. http://www.free-project.org/resolution/ - ah but how can we *prove* he signed it? >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious COLDPLAY triumph over Travis in MTV's hotly-contested "Best Coldplay" award: http://www.ntk.net/2003/11/07/dohcold.gif ... despite well-publicised problems with bulimia, cruel nicknames persist: www.ntk.net/2003/11/07/dohwhales.gif ... warmed by 2.4GHz microwaves: http://www.ntk.net/2003/11/07/dohhot.gif - also a popular Google goof; in this month's puerile round-up: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22reaming+experience%22 , "ford fista", "life begins at contraception", "sliming club", "plutonic friendship", "mailing lusts", "highly sort after", plus the frankly marvellous "ming-boggling"... this week's "missing millions": http://www.ntk.net/2003/11/07/dohcon.gif ... TfL suffering from "wrong kind of Javascript" on the site: http://www.ntk.net/2003/11/07/dohtfl.gif ... and Boots seem to have withdrawn this pic, though surely someone must have the calendar featuring Jamie Oliver's unfeasibly large "baguette": http://www.ntk.net/2003/11/07/doholiv.gif ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful BEN "Apache-SSL" LAURIE writes to ask if we could give "a plug or three" to APACHECON (Sun to Wed 2003-11-16/19, Alexis Park Resort, Las Vegas, from US$299). Consider it done, Ben, and we didn't even fall back on our old "heap big webserver pow-wow" gag that has marred our coverage of this event in the past. In other linguistic mixups, reader RONAN WAIDE bounced back from our misquoting of his Japanese t-shirt "translation" (he was merely passing on Babelfish's "shiru hitsuyousei" suggestion, while the shirt actually says "shirubeki koto" - almost as good as "shiru hitsuyou", according to BENJAMIN PETERSON), and will be delivering a free public presentation at the end of this month on RSS - REALLY SIMPLE SYNDICATION (Tue 2003-11-25, Residents Lounge, Earl of Kildare Hotel, Dublin 2), and hopefully taking the opportunity to clarify whether "RSS" really should be pronounced "Arse", Irish Father Ted-stylee. http://www.apachecon.com/ - same venue as DefCon, ironically http://www.doolin.com/events.html - as a Google search for "RSS bandit" appears to imply http://www.ntkmart.co.uk/ntkmart.cgi#Japanese - and now you can pay via NoChex with a normal UK debit card http://www.resfest.com/london.html - Resfest arrives in London from Thu Nov 13 >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering They're not the most earth-shatteringly coded web services on earth, but Marc Fest's QUICKBROWSE and ONLINEHOMEBASE have a wiki-ish simplicity that makes them easy to set up, hand out to friends, and use as inspiration for your own projects. Also, they're easy to explain. Quickbrowse takes a list of URLs and jams them together onto one page (more convienient than you'd think, especially if the quick-loading aggregrate is emailed to your HTML browser). Onlinehomebase is just a giant permanent store of textareas: a Web-based notebook into which you can also drop time-based messages that trigger mail reminders. Bookmarklets and crypto, file uploading and email gateway; it's worthing messing around with just to see how a simple idea can be elaborated to make a service that might just be worth paying for. http://www.quickbrowse.com/ - press write-ups are fun: remember when you could get VC for a Perl script? http://www.onlinehomebase.com/ - like Lotus Agenda but in a browser >> MEMEPOOL << contains a source of http://snackspot.org/ at last - a high tech way of sticking playing cards in bicycle wheels: http://trade.turbospoke.com/product_main.asp ... what cyberspace really looks like: http://www.wmtransfer.com/ ... knowing ESR's pro-firearm position, surprised he didn't go for the Gosper Gun: http://www.catb.org/~esr/hacker-emblem/ vs http://www.ericweisstein.com/encyclopedias/life/GosperGun.html (Google reckons he's more of "a barometer of inflammation": http://www.google.com/search?q=define+esr )... where are they now: http://www.jackmtempleton.supanet.com/Presenters_crew.htm ... still getting plenty of use out of re-editing that same old Javascript: http://www.martian.fm/dump/ghostfleet.htm ... http://www.setforeurope.org/ animation features every young scientist's dream project - Darth Vader's TIE fighter... increasing our interest rate: http://www.rdwarf.com/~kioh/ ... Visits "by appointment only" - they didn't get to that size on just carrots, you know: http://www.britishgiantrabbits.com/ ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> a full week after its ceremonial cinema re-release, SHOCK AND AWE: THE RETURN OF ALIEN, WITH DANNY BOYLE (12.40am, Fri, C5) shows probably as many old clips as those A VS P promos: http://www.apple.com/trailers/fox/avp/ ... THE BIG READ: THE HITCH-HIKER'S GUIDE TO THE GALAXY (9.30pm, Sat, BBC2) attempts to overcome the fact that it's a novelisation of a radio series and, in common with much of Adams' work, doesn't have any particular ending... while Hugh Grant Day climaxes with BRITS GO TO HOLLYWOOD (9pm, Sat, C4), this year's showing of FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL (10pm, Sat, C4) plus Woody Allen caper comedy SMALL TIME CROOKS (12.10am, Sat, C4) - now showing in C4's prestigious post-midnight premiere slot, along with suburban child-molest-fest HAPPINESS (12.20am, Mon, C4), crack dealing miniseries THE CORNER (1.10am, Tue, C4), and Charlize Theron's alien impregnation THE ASTRONAUT'S WIFE (11.15pm, Wed, C4)... grand unified pop-physics stab THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING (8pm, Sun, C4) is presented by a bloke impersonating Commander Data ... MOVIE MISTAKES (8.30pm, Sun, C5) discovers there's nothing less funny than actually seeing movie goofs in action... then PANORAMA SPECIAL (9pm, Sun, BBC1) celebrates 50 years of the current affairs slot with the time the US military tried to kill John Simpson... the wacky world of prostitution is gently ridiculed by LOUIS [THEROUX] AND THE BROTHEL (9pm, Sun, BBC2), though weirdly you never see him applying his ingenue-style interview technique to subjects like WITNESS: INSIDE THE MIND OF THE SUICIDE BOMBER (9pm, Mon, C4)... there's a topical showing for politically puzzling Marines-shooting-unarmed-Yemenis courtroom yell-off RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (9pm, Tue, ITV) ... and Helen Mirren takes on her slipperiest opponent yet - Slobodan Milosevic - in the last ever PRIME SUSPECT (9pm, Sun, ITV)... HOW CLEAN IS YOUR HOUSE (8.30pm, Wed, C4) is basically "Grime Scene Investigation": http://www.hexkey.co.uk/lee/log/2003/06/19/#1056055860 ... "Big Brother nerd" Jon Tickle will hopefully examine why the public always vote for reality-show contestants who clearly have no future in entertainment television on his new show BRAINIAC: SCIENCE ABUSE (8pm, Thu, Sky1)... but nothing in Paul Verhoeven's appalling invisibility yawn HOLLOW MAN (10.10pm, Thu, C5) is as scary as the "broken milk carton" in pre-Airplane nuke spoof THE BIG BUS (12.25am, Thu, BBC1)... FILM>> obviously it would be controversial to claim it's our favourite of the trilogy (largely 'cos the first is so wildly overrated), but once Neo goes all "Dune Messiah", there's a decent "future war" movie at the end of MATRIX REVOLUTIONS ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/matrixrevolutions.htm : mockery of God, Jesus, Satan and the antiChrist; men showing intimate affection to each other; extensive revelry)... else there's the prospect of tiny-headed Christina Ricci, John "mobile ads" Simm, plus Kyle "Dune Guy" MacLachlan - together at last! - in dominatrix/ con-woman dom-con rom-com MIRANDA ( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=Miranda+%282002%29 : No nudity - lots of heavy breathing, short skirts and humping tho... pity [Ricci] didn't show those magnificent breasts)... or the error-riddled depressingly-uplifting depression-era loosely-based-on-true-story horse-racing travesty SEABISCUIT ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0329575/goofs : War Admiral is repeatedly referred to as being 18 hands vs. Seabiscuit's 15 hands. The horses were actually the same height, with some sources listing Seabiscuit as the heavier of the two)... BONERS: CORRECTIONS, CLARIFICATIONS, AND "INCORRECTLY REGARDED AS GOOFS">> and a special no-prize to everyone who wrote to let us know that the "fresh dolphin" which IBM customers just love to consume http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/12/dohdolph.gif "is actually talking about the Dolphinfish or Mai Mai", rather than the popular seagoing mammal, noted first poster ANDREW MOBBS. THE REVEREND JOE MCNALLY kind of spoiled an earlier joke http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02003-09-12&l=154#l by explaining that "Splittist is the Chinese govt's peculiar word for anyone who favours booting the Chinese out of Tibet" (he ran into it "with numbing regularity" in the Chinese Embassy's press releases in the early 1990s, whose other remarkable quality was that "they appeared to be printed on that coarse green paper more normally used in the manufacture of the hand towels you get in pub toilets"), while DOM ROBINSON confirmed that C4 did swap the order of the last 2 episodes of "Peep Show" (one of the "comedy highlights" of his year), at least compared to their transmission on E4, presumably because the penultimate one made a stronger close to the series without (badly) compromising the character arc... IAIN CUNNINGHAM was the only one to "incorrectly regard us as goofs" over last month's doh description "Italy invests in enough power to run 60W lightbulb" http://www.ntk.net/2003/10/03/dohmilli.gif , arguing "12,000mW is 12W and therefore not enough to run a 60W bulb (unless of course you just want to use it to gently warm your hands on - but doing that will vitrify the envelope and so shorten the bulb life)" - the correct calculation from the image is left as an exercise for the reader - but ASH provoked our greatest wrath for daring to suggest we were using a "greengrocer's apostrophe" in our weekly heading "goto's considered non-harmful". As Ash soon found out, apostrophes are in fact used like this to form "an alternative spelling, for clarity, of the plurals of a very few short words": http://www.askoxford.com/asktheexperts/faq/aboutspelling/pizza - when we replied "OK, if you're so clever, you tell us: should it be 'gotos' or 'gotoes'?", Ash responded "Oooh that's the old potatoes/potatos question", which wasn't quite the level of plural-forming expertise we'd previously hoped for... >> 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 "an obs[c]urantist taste" http://www.discourse.net/archives/2003_10_14.html NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. 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