"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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