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        "It was supposed to tell the truth. Not much has changed in 
         2,000 years - Jesus was [controversial] and they killed him. 
         We all killed him, and he died for it..." 
                 - "The Passion of the Christ" actor pulls no punches
                             http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/film/3484915.stm
          ...in other words: we murdered him. Murdered him - to death.


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                               du temps perdu
 
         There's a point at the EMERGING TECHNOLOGY conference where
         all the blog entries, all the SubEthaEdit documents, all the
         IRC transcripts, all the bluejacking notes passed under the
         table, just spell out a communal "Mi BWAINN HURTZ". This
         year, the fog seemed to descend *very* early. A dull product
         pitch keynote on the Roomba vacuuming robot reared up and
         transformed into a pre-release description of military
         swarming autonomous killerbots. In a subsequent panel: a
         drill sergeant from the US's National Reconnaissance Office
         began marching up and down the aisles, barking orders at the
         geeks to COME UP WITH NEW IDEAS to FIGHT TERRORISM. Meek BBC
         employees who had flown in to find out more about RSS stared
         deep into their laptops, and prayed that Hutton wouldn't
         send the roomba-wobots after them. Keynoting Nokia CTO
         Pertti Korhonen said all the right things in such an extreme
         monotone that attendees were seen beating themselves bloody
         with iBooks to stay conscious. Few were alive to see him
         release Python for Series 60. By the end, exploring the conf
         had become like playing mental Doom: run one way, and you'd
         find Wil McCarthy eager to tell you (again) how his quantum
         dots could reprogram MATTER ITSELF. Run the other, and you'd
         find dangerous British ammunition exports like Matt Webb and
         Chris Heathcote strafing their own geolocatory, social
         softwary freakazoid nailguns. Geowarchalking postcodes on to
         letterboxes? Chat software with a single icon interface and
         a deliberate lag of one and a half hours? Thank God for the
         local hacker community, who (wearing badges labelled "John
         Ashcroft" and "Tim O'Really") distributed homemade absinthe
         to numb the frantic minds of attendees.
        http://conferences.oreillynet.com/pub/w/28/presentations.html
  - download yourself and then do a Professor Denzil Dexter voiceover
         http://www.itconversations.com/index.php
       - doesn't quite convey the horror of Pertti's repeating slides
         http://www.programmablematter.net/
             - here, has organised itself into a primitive "web page"

         Which is all very nice, but not everybody can pack up their
         G4 PowerBook, pay for a conference ticket, fly to San Diego
         and we don't know, use their spare change on buying a moon
         made of gold. In San Francisco on Monday they're having a
         cheapo condensed soup of Emerging Tech (partly inspired by
         NTK whining). Given the large contingent of British Emerging
         Techxors, would it be TOO MUCH to ask for them to stop
         eating pearls and having their slaves smear priceless caviar
         over themselves, and spill instead the etech beans at a more
         convenient location? Speakers and attendees running through
         what they saw or said, in a salubrious pub somewhere? Oh go *on*.
         http://wiki.oreillynet.com/etech/hosted.conf?ConConUK
                                                  - go on go on go on
         http://wiki.oreillynet.com/etech/hosted.conf?ConCon
                         - all the bits that don't work are our fault

         Warez afficianados worldwide must be shocked - shocked! -
         that the ruthless Microsoft security cordon has allowed the
         source code to Windows 2K to leak out. The more grizzled may
         recall the echoes of an NT source collection supposed to
         have broken cover around about 1995. The driest skeletons 
         will still be rattling with laughter at the comments in the
         original FDISK MS-DOS code, which "emerged" even earlier.
         Maybe the rumours weren't true: but if they were, the zipped
         and tarred ancestors of the latest leak wouldn't have spread
         far. Back then, like most warez, source code would have
         been more trophy than usable, a hidden prize you hoarded in
         the hope of trading it for something - well, equally
         useless. But now the slickening lubricant of the Net has
         transacted such baggage far away from the hoarders, to those
         who really desperately need such leaks: journalists looking
         for a scoop. If those old warez tales were true, it's good
         and bad for Microsoft. Tales Good: they would mean Microsoft
         has survived its source being available for some time. Bad:
         What does it say when the warez scene has tighter security -
         both in preventing leaks, and hushing up breaches - than
         Microsoft ever did?
         http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/02/12/2114228
                                              - no! it burns my eyes!


                                >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         hence night shift: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/13/dohwere.gif 
         ... targeting notoriously short attention span of rugby fans: 
         http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/13/doh60.gif ... where "No news" = 
         good news?: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/13/dohkish.gif ... 
         goatse - in NYT?: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/13/dohgoat.gif 
         ... NATURE dumbing down things a bit (see picture caption): 
         http://www.nature.com/nsu/040126/040126-13.html ... Three 
         'fess up: http://www.three.co.uk/facts.omp?cid=1022777698090 
         ... musical Widdecombe - mix and match any products and pics: 
        http://boutique.steinway.com/Item.aspx?id=006830&pic=10M049B.JPG
         ... might suit programmer fluent at deciphering "geek codes": 
         http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/13/dohrent.gif ... Amazon might 
         want to take a quick flick through those manuals itself: 
         http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/13/dohepo.gif ... a "wee" bit 
         faster: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/13/dohwee.gif ... old joke, 
         always liked it: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/13/dohint.gif ... 


                               >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                         GOTOs considered non-harmful

        "ARE WE TOO RISK AVERSE?", asks the ever-controversial SPIKED 
         MAGAZINE (again), in yet another series of debates confronting 
         apparently common-sense positions on global warming, childhood 
         obesity, and no doubt genetically modified food as well, if 
         their previous interests are anything to go by (7.30pm, third 
         Thursday of every month, Hill and Knowlton, London W1A, from 
         UKP10). Annoyingly it's at exactly the same time as the hot-
         from-ETCon TIM O'REILLY addressing the UK ColdFusion User 
         Group on THE OPEN SOURCE PARADIGM SHIFT - he's in favour of 
         it, apparently (from 7.30pm, this Thu, Room A366, City 
         University, London EC1V, free but you must pre-register via 
         the site) - so no turning up just to make fun of the poor 
         ColdFusion users, OK?
    http://www.ukcfug.org/?objectid=8ED1C0D5-50DA-4D01-87FEB77EB879BD48
            - another typically easy-to-remember ColdFusion URL there
         http://www.spiked-online.com/event/
         - vs www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,1102753,00.html
         http://www.antennapromo.co.uk/
         - *and* the same night as Nathan Barley's Rather Good Videos
         http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk/
           - then free-entry launch of Strange Attractor mag next Fri 


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                contains a source of http://snackspot.org/

         (via gothamist) "shake it like a Polaroid shareholder", more 
         like: http://qwer.org/PolaFAQ.htm ... kids dislike "way they 
         are portrayed": http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3471163.stm - as users 
         of clingfilm condoms: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3473415.stm ... 
         master of surprise attack US marine revealed to be in North 
         Carolina: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/040212/325/eluu5.html +  
         Afghanistan, at same time: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3072105.stm 
         ... thanks Bill, that ought to do it: http://www.fypl.info/ 
         ... bumper "one of these is not safe for work like the others" 
         bonanza: http://images.google.com/images?q=street+sharks , 
         3way, peapod, and - most gratuitously - webmail (implies maybe 
         1 in 20 Google images are "of this nature"?)... BBC3 mirrors 
         glaringly hideous choices - with glaringly hideous photo-
         montage: http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/tv/top50movers.shtml 
         ... http://techdirt.com/articles/20040213/026247.shtml - vs 
http://www.revolutionmagazine.com/News/?fuseaction=ViewNewsArticle&ID=202355
         

                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         TV>> new "reality" series REGENCY HOUSE PARTY (9.05pm, Sat, 
         C4) attempts to recreate the events of Noel Edmonds' 1990s 
         Saturday evening variety show in the early 19th century... no 
         chance of presenter Roland Rivron being as funny as BRITAIN'S 
         BEST SITCOM: ONE FOOT IN THE GRAVE (9.05pm, Sat, BBC2)... and 
         even though there's a war on, Ralph Fiennes will have Julianne 
         Moore naked by THE END OF THE AFFAIR (10.05pm, Sun, C4)... 
         UNBREAKABLE (9pm, Sun, ITV) is basically a more fanboy version 
         of THE SIXTH SENSE (9.15pm, Sat, ITV), but with terrible 
         "Where are they now?" text captions instead of a twist at the 
         end... and C5 leads into its new meta-containment drama BACK 
         TO REALITY (8pm, Sun-Fri, C5) with a daily STRANGEST EVER slot 
         (7.30pm, Mon-Fri, C5), looking at transport (Mon), obsessions 
         (Tue), homes (Wed), Austrian expressionist painters (Thu), 
         sporting events (Fri), and - next week - rectums found in 
         foreign objects... Carol Smillie appears to use the unusual 
         phrase "I can't imagine pulling off a guy I don't actually 
         like" in cross-dressing makeover GENDER SWAP (10pm, Mon, C5) 
         ... an appearance in the TVGoHome series is all we can find on 
         the eponymous star of quirky sketch fest THE CATHERINE TATE 
         SHOW (10pm, Mon, BBC2)... as BBC3 makes another yet attempt at 
         finding a workable vehicle for the CYDERDELIC gang (11pm, Mon, 
         BBC3)... Phil "Dead Ringers" Cornwell plays the chirpy 
         squaddie who entertains his pals with impersonations of 
         Michael Caine, Mick Jagger, David Bowie etc in DUNKIRK (9pm, 
         Wed-Fri, BBC2)... there are sadly no chess-playing computers 
         in C5's annual showing of DEEP BLUE SEA (9pm, Thu, C5)... and 
         let's get this straight: BBC3 has bumped "Celebdaq" - 
         understandably - and "Liquid News" - inexcusably - in favour 
         of popular maths show THE MAGIC NUMBER (9pm, Thu, BBC3)?...
         
         FILM>> watch out for Daffy Duck wearing a "Maxine Carr" 
         t-shirt http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_659889.html in 
         self-referential Warner backslap LOONEY TUNES: BACK IN ACTION 
       ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/looneytunes-backinaction.htm :
         [Jenna] Elfman was dressed in a very short skirt with her feet 
         wide apart and the camera with a clear view of her crotch; 
         fascination with underwear; filled with animated violence; 
         more like the crude extremes of the modern Animaniacs(tm) than 
         Looney Tunes(tm) we all grew up with)... not a wide release 
         for this week's more grown-up releases, such as Claire 
         "Terminator 3" Danes's pre-apocalyptic IT'S ALL ABOUT LOVE 
         (imdb: drama / thriller / romance / sci-fi)... or more Danish 
         dogma-tism in Nicole Kidman minimalist-set stage-play DOGVILLE 
         ( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=Dogville : after 
         watching this 3 hour movie I can tell you without a doubt 
         there is no nudity by Nicole)... which just leaves half-term 
         fodder like execrable Disney ride adaptation HAUNTED MANSION 
         ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/hauntedmansion.htm : if 
         you find communicating with the dead as innocuous or as a fine 
         jest, seek for yourself what God has to say about it)... or 
         Steve Martin population-control advocacy CHEAPER BY THE DOZEN 
         ( http://www.ahafilm.info/movies/moviereviews.phtml?fid=7552 : 
         when the dog appears under the table at [Ashton Kutcher's] 
         crotch, it's really the trainer wearing padded pants with a 
         piece of cloth sticking out of the fly)...
                                             

                               >> 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
                    "deliciously *lilac*-scented, surely?"
         http://www.groovymother.com/archives/2003/11/21/geek_pride.html

                                 NEED TO KNOW
            THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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