"What does being accountable really mean? Making sure that
it's your name only that's on anything successful. Or adopt
the Microsoft value and..."
...be a chilled-out entertainer first, *then* a manufacturer
of secure operating systems?
- MS unveil their in-house "The Office XP" training tools
http://www.ntk.net/2004/01/23/dohbrent.jpg
>> HARD NEWS <<
filtering SPEWS
SPAM WILL EAT ITSELF! The Net's overloaded immune systems
continued to misbehave this week, with SPEWS blacklisting
fellow anti-spammer DSL Reports (when is SPEWS going to
discover it has "Spam" in its acronym, and blacklist
itself?), and Habeas's anti-spam header haiku being
commandeered by a Viagra salesman. Perhaps it was because so
many of the antibodies were meeting for a SPAM AND THE LAW
conference in San Jose. Capped by Larry Lessig (whose
transformation from speccy academic lawyer to a Steve
Jobsian all-in-black hipster is now complete) to Declan "the
anti-Lessig" McCullough, maven after maven pouted over the
world's new, weakly-flapping, anti-spam laws. Highlight of
the day was fresh-faced FTC rep Michael Goodman tentatively
admitting that the definition of "Internet Access Service
Provider" in the American CAN-SPAM legislation was so vague
as to include anyone who ran a website - meaning that the
mass private prosecutions that marketeers tried to hack out
of that draft law might still be possible. Most edgy
performance came from John Praed of the Internet Law Group,
who redirected his anger at a PowerPoint crash into a sharp
screed against spammers and how he was going to "get them".
Surprisingly, when asked who in the audience was a spammer -
a novel method for tracing IPs - only one person took the
bait. It turned out to be the programmer of a *very* popular
anti-spam program. In a moment of shameful confession, he
admitted that the marketing department of the company that
sells his program also sends out UCE. As others hung their
heads in sympathy (et tu, marketing?), no one noticed who
had snuck out for a well-timed break. Eager audience-member
Scott Richter, currently being sued by New York State
Attorney Eliot "Ness" Spitzer *and* Microsoft, reputedly the
world's third-largest spammer, had eluded his interrogators
once again.
http://www.isipp.com/events.php
- not someone to give your business card to
We're guessing you've heard of the bizarre victimisation of
CD-WOW.COM, who were this week told that their selling of
discount-priced CDs legally obtained in the Far East does
not count as "importation for personal use", even if they
individually airmail you each one from Hong Kong. What this
means for game imports, Region 1 DVDs, Amazon's transatlantic
book offerings (and increasing range of third-party fulfilment
options) and - heck - almost any CD you see in a shop with
Japanese writing on it remains to be seen, though the FREE-
SKLYAROV-UK list incisively realised that it could mean that
all CD-Wow has to do is to start a separate company in Hong
Kong - another hard-won victory for the British Phonographic
Industry!
mailman.xenoclast.org/pipermail/free-sklyarov-uk/2004-January/005592.html
- like anyone's buying CDs now anyway
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/34745.html
- Play.com based in Temporary Autonomous Zone of Jersey
http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/browse/-/1200048/
- coincidentally, Amazon.co.uk sale *must* end Feb 1st
People taking last week's news a bit too far: "Thanks
guys!", writes .nz's SHADE, who has been trying dodgeit.com,
the no-password throwaway e-mail account mentioned in last
week's tracking. "It was interesting to see that
joe@dodgeit.com not only got his NY Times registration sent
to dodgeit.com, but his DynDNS.org account". Well, as Stan
Lee said, with great access comes great plausible
deniability, Shade. CHRIS DRAKE actually tried to get
"dot.name.name", and was refused by .name's filters, but
still managed to get as far as "a.silly.name". He invites
other readers to send in the most ludicrous, most libelously
named domain that .name declares to be permissible. We're on
for that, although steady on the libel bit, all right? And
finally, we didn't actually *mean* it about sending Mars
Explorer dohs. Sorry for any inconvenience caused there.
http://www.dodgeit.com/
- sex@dodgeit.com another good one
http://www.nic.name/
- overly defensive registrations
http://www.spesh.com/contact.html
- on the bright side, aren't the MER "random noise" symptoms exactly
the same as the end of Contact?
>> ANTI-NEWS <<
berating the obvious
Skillz! - guess what the URL is for the non-excerpt version:
http://certcities.com/shop/downloads/TheSkillfulDeveloperexcerpt.pdf
... pet ant accidentally swallowed ant poison? try cannabis!:
http://www.ntk.net/2004/01/23/dohant.gif ... nothing sickening
about: http://www.ntk.net/2004/01/23/dohvile.gif ... not that
Register readers (or contributors) need self-defence products
any more than most: http://www.ntk.net/2004/01/23/dohstun.gif
... Google goof revisited - a comic strip that prettifies war:
http://www.bry.fast.co.za/~stuartm/rave/cypunx/comix/rouge.html
... now *that's* conservative: http://www.tory.org/home/inca/
... for one week only - special "record cover mix-up hilarity"
triple bill: http://www.101cd.com/Music/info.asp?id=1318433 ,
http://www.djpeanuts.co.uk/product/Max+Bygraves/Singalongamaxmas/B00000APLR/
http://www.ntk.net/2004/01/16/dohdk.gif ... jaded Q reviewer
knows just how Therapy? album will sound 4 years in advance:
http://www.q4music.com/nav?page=q4music.review.redirect&fixture_review=121297
... express shipping? http://www.ntk.net/2004/01/23/dohvenus.gif ...
ah, irony: http://www.ntk.net/2004/01/23/dohschool.jpg ...
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
GOTOs considered non-harmful
Doesn't seem to be any clear sign of this on their site, but
THE FRIDAY THING are having some sort of launch party for
their LONDON NEWS REVIEW "student magazine for the 21st
century" (from 7pm, Mon 2004-02-02, Walkabout Aussie bar, 136
Shaftesbury Avenue, London W1D, free but you're supposed to
RSVP if you think you're entitled to attend via one of their
elaborate subscriptions offers or something). Just a quick
update on a couple of their other ever-imaginative projects:
they've startlingly concluded that an earlier plan to form a
political party to "unseat the Tories as the main party of
opposition" was, in fact, "rubbish" - while December 2003's
double tube derailments seem to have cast something of a
downer on their campaign to keep London's notoriously over-
maintained underground network open until 3am at weekends,
with their petition closing last month at 65,800 signatures,
a mere 34,200 short of their target. Of course we're just
jealous because it was deflecting attention away from our own
pioneering transport strategy - an SMS service to put people
who pester you for "a quid to get the bus" in touch with the
ones who hang round tube stations collecting used travelcards.
http://www.ntk.net/2004/01/23/dohlate.gif
- from the folks who brought you the totally non-viral...
http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/05/dohcheek.gif
- No no no! Wrong wrong wrong!
http://www.ntk.net/2004/01/23/dohcheap.gif
- also seem to think "Cheap Date" is a "new magazine"?
http://science-project.org/inspire/in_sci_cafe.htm
- this Mon: Kev Warwick *above* Norwich food allergies
http://www.piecouncil.org/national.htm
- and today: "When come back, bring pie..."
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
Dread words have slipped through the lips of men, but none
so dread as these: "Thus is the Lisp to Perl compiler
constructed". You can hear the thunderbolts crackling
overhead, can't you? DAVID RITCHIE has an odd idea of both
Lisp and how to better mankind - but he has marshalled some
desperate justifications for his monstrosity. It's a Lisp
with Perl's regexps built in, an ability to run wherever
Perl runs, access to the CPAN modules, and a chance to
horrify both Lisp and Perl advocates. The generated code is
about as terrifying as you can get this side of Intercal: it
looks like Ritchie has converted the Lisp into *pure
syntax*.
http://www.hhdave.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/
- "I have used it succesfully for a fairly large project at work"
>> MEMEPOOL <<
contains a source of http://snackspot.org/
http://search.ebay.com/search/search.dll?query=imaginary+girlfriend
- for less than the price of 160Mb Lexmark Alsatian on wheels:
http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&category=3750&item=3453467335
that's not "random noise" - that's just me updating my blog:
http://www.markcarey.com/mars/ ... no NASA blood for oil:
http://www.petroleumnews.com/pnarch/010228-49.html ... get
your own Java-virtual-machine-3D-flight-sim ass - to Mars:
http://www.radicalplay.com/aces/ ... new 2-screen Nintendo
is the new - Multi-Screen Game & Watch... hey, free classic
audiowarez: http://www.illegal-art.org/audio/liner.html ...
Google illustrating news stories in new "comic strip" mode:
http://images.google.com/images?q=prescott+kelly+funeral ...
though what's stopping those "PR firms, think tanks, industry-
funded organizations" from re-editing their own Wiki-page
entries? http://www.disinfopedia.org/ - Leslie Bunder-stylee:
http://londongeek.org/index.cgi?action=edit&page_id=LeslieBunder
(see revision history 1.9-1.10)... new skin for "Blunkett
policy maker": http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/other/dailymail.php ...
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
TV>> it's Amanda Holden, Jamie Theakston and John "Loved By
You" Gordon-Sinclair - together at last! - in vaguely "Mad
About You"-style divorcee sitcom MAD ABOUT ALICE (8.30pm, Fri,
BBC1)... Wilco road movie I AM TRYING TO BREAK YOUR HEART
(10.30pm, Fri, BBC4) hopefully documents the band being
dropped from AOL Time Warner subsidiary Reprise Records then
getting re-signed to Nonesuch Records (a subsidiary of AOL
Time Warner), ingeniously making the same corporation pay for
the same (flop) album twice... and the original POLTERGEIST
(9.05pm, Sat, C5) fails to answer McSweeneys.Net's question:
what if you built an Indian graveyard - on top of an old
Indian graveyard?... OK, so Rob "Marion and Geoff" Brydon
voiceovers old clips in THE DIRECTOR'S COMMENTARY (11pm, Wed,
ITV), but they've ignored DJ Yoda's pioneering new soundtrack
in favour of the original one for THE GOONIES (5.55pm, Sun,
C5) http://boomselection.info/archives/000019.php ... as THIS
WORLD: AMERICAN VIRGINS (9pm, Sun, BBC2) looks at the growing
phenomenon of US teenage abstinence, with many now too fat to
even leave the house, let alone have sex with each other - see
also Dawn French-voiced Beryl Cook painting animation BOSOM
PALS (10.35pm, Mon, BBC1)... still enjoying these trashy pop-
science docus like ULTIMATE THRILL RIDES (8pm, Mon, C5) and
HITLER'S PLAN TO ATOM BOMB NEW YORK (8pm, Mon, C4) before the
start of I'M A CELEBRITY GET ME OUT OF HERE (9pm, Tue, ITV) -
former MP Matthew Parris returns to a different kind of
"urban" jungle - a rundown Newcastle suburb - in FOR THE
BENEFIT OF MR PARRIS, REVISITED (10.30pm, Thu, ITV)... there
are po-faced new series of CSI: VEGAS (9pm, Tue, C5), LAW AND
ORDER: CRIMINAL INTENT (9.50pm, Tue, C5), FRASIER (11.05pm,
Wed, C4) and SIX FEET UNDER (11.05pm, Thu, C4)... VR-thriller
THE THIRTEENTH FLOOR (11.20pm, Wed, BBC1) had the misfortune
of being released just after "eXistenZ" and "The Matrix"...
and spot-on Mark Kermode soundalike http://www.garthmarenghi.com/
makes the tricky transition to 1980s TV horror spoofery in GARTH
MARENGHI'S DARKPLACE (10.35pm, Thu, C4)...
FILM>> "Signs", "The Matrix", "8 Mile", and "Freddy Got
Fingered" are among the targets when the makers of "Police
Squad" join endearing scattershot spoof-fest SCARY MOVIE 3
( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/scary_movie_3.html : A
supernatural force states that it won't recognize the Martin
Luther King holiday as a day off; An alien slides a large
knife under a door so that he and another alien can view a
crotch shot of [Anna Faris'] panties (in the reflection on the
blade) as she kneels on the other side of the door. We then
see one of the aliens licking his lips and both playing with
their own nipples)... only one cinema in London seems to be
showing chess computer docu GAME OVER - KASPAROV AND THE
MACHINE ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : Contains mild language - C?)
... while this time it's Nicole Kidman as Clarice Starling, as
Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter takes a bite out of her *and*
institutional racism in Clinton-era potboiler THE HUMAN STAIN
( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=Human+Stain%2C+The+%282003%29 :
Nicole looks really good here, and there's no shortage of her
on display. Anthony Hopkins, who's 66 but looks much older, is
in all of her nude scenes, which is either really kinky or
really wrong, depending on your taste)...
>> 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
"doesn't even work with other letter combos in the URL"
http://jennifer.19333.com/ntk.html
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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