"[What is] up with blogging, and why should you care?"
http://qwer.org/ZDNetWhatIsUpMyMan.htm
- story URL proves ZDNet hip to both blogging *and*
groovy street slang of recent "Whassup?" campaign
>> HARD NEWS <<
tightening screws
All those stories about the RIAA intimidating 12-year olds
in the US look bad - but most people think it could never
happen in the UK. The rumour is that the British equivalents
are going to get the cops to do their dirty work for them
Seemingly as a way of reassuring ruffled corporate copyright
feathers, the government has been spreading word of a new "IP
Squad" they intend to launch in the next month: a dedicated
police force, a la the high-tech crime squad, devoted to
quashing evil pirates where'er they may be found. And why
should the police get involved in copyright enforcement -
traditionally a civil matter? Well, the level at which
copying (or even breaking copy protection) turns from
infringement to crime have been quietly dropping over the
last few years. And now, if the EUIP enforcement directive
gets through, the police will have the right to invade
homes, freeze bank accounts and seize assets of
non-commercial, unintentional infringers. Voting on the EUIP
happens on March 8th, full approval on the 11th. After that,
it's no more Mr Nice Record Executive.
http://action.eff.org/action/moreinfo.asp?item=2873
- EFF's rat-a-tat guide to the issues
http://www.fipr.org/copyright/draft-ipr-enforce.html
- and for those with more time, FIPR's take
You know, apart from that minor detail about not being able to
fit everyone into the venue, we'd say Monday's ETCon catchup
CONCON UK actually came off surprisingly well - kudos to all
who took part, especially whoever came up with the wifi video
relay to the additional "spectator's gallery" in the room next
door. Inevitably, it seems to have merely increased the
appetite for a (slightly) less crowded event in the future -
please add your thoughts to the wiki if you'd interested in
attending, speaking, or pretty much anything (partly because
this'd be in the spirit of spontaneous self-organisation, and
partly because at least one of us has never been to the actual
O'Reilly event, and so doesn't want to inadvertently propose a
slavish cargo-cult imitation with wifi antennas made out of
twigs and ceremonial masks of Donald A Norman).
http://www.symbianwiki.com/ConConUK
- and don't forget to put that "m" in "Symbian"
http://wiki.oreillynet.com/etech/csp?ConConUK
- looks like it was Will Macdonald and Jonathan Sanderson
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cargo_cult
- then the holy MT Plugins will come...
New thrill! Following previous NTK discussion of "*really*
stupid mail filters", reader YOZ GRAHAME wonders if anyone can
beat his experience with [a major UK games producer], who
flagged a one-line email of his as a virus for containing the
phrase "What's up?" (Yoz, it's actually "What is up?" nowadays
- haven't you been reading ZDNet recently?) The IT dept
mailsweeper at alternativenetworks.com bounced NTK 2004-01-30
for (among other offences) containing the surname of outgoing
Director-General of the BBC, Greg [Lesbian] - an achievement
rivalled only by NTK 2004-02-06's tripping the "one in a
million" false positive rate of Demon's Brightmail install. As
one Usenet wag wondered, does that "count as only one false
positive" (easily offset by Brightmail getting the next
million emails right) or one for each Demon-using subscriber?
http://groups.google.com/groups?threadm=k8A65XQFdOKAFAdd%40highwayman.com
- vs www.demon.nl/eng/products/services/spamfilterfaq1.html
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/22/35534.html
- it decided our fate in a microsecond
>> ANTI-NEWS <<
berating the obvious
"Tidgy Fridge" not for Amazon's "tidgy" customers, apparently:
http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/27/dohtidg.gif ... see what they
did here?: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/27/dohrub.gif ... not so
clever: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/27/dohintent.gif ... PENTAX
randomly deems self "Official Digital Camera Of The Internet":
http://www.pentaxusa.com/news/news_display.cfm?pressid=182 ...
the power of suggestion: http://anlp.org/when.asp ... all-new
Widdecombe of the Week: http://qwer.org/UKWaterwaysMap.html
... pardon?: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/27/dohbecks.gif ...
well explained: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/27/dohphp.gif ...
got to admit, "Brian Blessed" would be a good name for an
adult film star: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/27/dohbless.gif
...old joke: http://news.google.com/news?q=%22cum+consumer%22 ,
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22cum+distillation%22 - not so sfw:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22like+a+cup+of+tea+and+a+bikkie%22
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
GOTOs considered non-harmful
Can we just say that we're not sure whether downloading new
software to the (fairly well understood) Nintendo development
environments via one of those (increasingly widely available)
backup kits technically constitutes "hacking" them any more?
That proviso aside, next Sat's (2004-03-06) free lectures on
everything from circuit bending to demented super-softsynth
Reaktor sound like - well, a squelching electronic nightmare
of the most entertaining kind (11am-7pm, various locations,
Royal Festival Hall, South Bank, London SE1, workshops UKP5,
lectures and demos free). It marks the start of a month of
experimental techno concerts at the venue, including Plaid,
Tangerine "Babylon 5" Dream, Kraftwerk, Les Rhythms Digitales
(off the famous Sunny Delight advert), plus an "Acid Brass"-
style interpretation by the London Sinfonietta of works by
Squarepusher and the Aphex Twin.
http://www.rfh.org.uk/main/series/185.html
- shout "Go on, do Didgeridoo" for an encore
http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/27/dohplaid.gif
- and screens don't come much wider than that
http://members.cox.net/jsensebe/gba/
- then just run Ditty Editor on http://www.gbax.com/#xg ?
http://gllug.org.uk/meeting-20040228.html
- this Sat: talks + overhead projector debugging with GLLUG
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
No self-respecting Thinker Of Hard Thoughts these days is
without their own Deep Theory Of How To Do Version Control.
Now that Subversion has hit 1.0, it's time for the truly
neophilic to start scouting around these folk to find
something radically better than just a mended CVS - and then
foolishly entrust all their source to it. CODECON this week
showcased a couple. For the brave, there's the Cohen
Brothers (Bram "BitTorrent" and Ross) with Codeville.
Codeville's novelty comes down to a rethinking of what a
diff is. "If you want to know the complete accurate details
of how it works, I suggest reading the source", they say,
ending the rest of *that* explanation. If you're the sort
of person who does that with 4200 lines of Python, then
Codeville is the sort of thing for you. For the lazier yet
ambitious, VESTA is an eon-old, stable GPL'd configuration
management system that was used to maintain 130MB of the
Digital Alpha dev team work. It detects dependencies
automatically by watching what processes load what files,
and guarantees binary-perfect reproducibility by sucking
*everything* into the versioning process: compilers,
libraries, your aunt, environment variables. It scary.
Version control all scary.
http://subversion.tigris.org/
- version 1.0 saaafe
http://bitconjurer.org/codeville/
- python cleeean
http://www.vestasys.org/
- big company's have own ecosystem
http://www.zooko.com/revision_control_quick_ref.html
- zooko stared at all so you don't have to
>> MEMEPOOL <<
contains a source of http://snackspot.org/
MIDIs, not ringtones: http://www.burncopy.com/424/main.html
... www.butlerreview.org.uk/ vs http://www.butlerreview.org/
... Hagbard Celine docks for wifi connection, posts comments
to fnord BBC: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3513063.stm ... geek
blinkers: http://www.ecost.com/ecost/shop/detail.asp?dpno=328
... Thai-lish ahoy: http://www.bjbrothers.com/faq/?wp=faq ...
419ers getting a bit sick of all those "funny" replies now:
http://www.poe-news.com/forums/sp.php?si=31&ti=1000654979&pi=1000654979
... RUMSFELD imitates Onion, vows will get bin Laden "one day":
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml;?type=topNews&storyID=4444065
... at last - SMS software that does unwanted syntax-checks:
http://kudra.hates-software.com/2004/02/25/b21c9d6a.html ...
"If you're over age 40, there's a good chance your computer
isn't the problem": http://www.microsoft.com/enable/aging/ -
modestly refrains from blaming your old version of Windows...
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
TV>> BBC2 boldly replaces its interminable reruns of "The
Fresh Prince Of Bel Air" with Damon Wayans black-family sitcom
MY WIFE AND KIDS (6.25pm, Fri, BBC2)... in accordance with
last week's RollingStone.com prophecy, tonight's is the jaw-
dropping "Magnetic Fields" episode of THE SHIELD (12.05am,
Fri, C5), followed by nutty Asimovian rogue cyborg scifi
AUTOMATIC (12.55am, Fri, C5)... and why don't they just
nominate Busted for UK song contest EUROVISION - MAKING YOUR
MIND UP (6.35pm, Sat, BBC1) and be done with it?... C4 is
trailing this as the "lean" (ie non-"Redux") 1979 version of
APOCALYPSE NOW (10.05pm, Sat, C4)... we'd rather see an
extended director's cut of STARSHIP TROOPERS (9pm, Sun, C5)...
and the question of whether all PCs give off a faint aroma of
roasting human flesh (due to dead skin particles being sucked
in by the fan) seems unlikely to crop up in the profile of
that German computer engineer/ cannibal BODYSHOCK: THE MAN WHO
ATE HIS LOVER (9pm, Mon, C4)... after previous campaigns on
the state of Britain's toilets etc, http://www.bbc.co.uk/ican/
showcase BEE IN YOUR BONNET (7.30pm, Tue, BBC2) helps muster
opposition to an energy-saving windfarm... to counter the
ludicrously glamorised portrayal of con-artists in HUSTLE
(9pm, Tue, BBC1), the makers of "This Life", "The Cops" and
"Attachments" apply their trademark warts-and-all approach to
the lives of nurses in NO ANGELS (10pm, Tue, C4) - can't wait
till they get round to doing priests and nuns... Stephen "The
Usual Suspects" Baldwin swaps bodies with Kyle "Dune Guy"
MacLachlan in obvious "Face/Off" imposter XCHANGE (11.15pm,
Wed, BBC1)... as HORIZON (9pm, Thu, BBC2) provides a near-
identical facsimile of last year's Wired piece on artificial
diamonds: http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/11.09/diamond.html ...
FILM>> on the suggestion of reader IAIN AITCH, this week's
guest opinions are excerpted from PRE-REVIEW's largely
trailer-based "Reviews Of Movies That Haven't Come Out Yet And
The Reviewer Hasn't Seen Or Otherwise Have Any Idea About" -
eg Ben Stiller/ Jennifer Aniston gross-out romance ALONG CAME
POLLY ( http://homepage.mac.com/joester5/prereview/#Along :
[Stiller] calls up the beautiful but unattainable girl from
high school. Turns out she's wackier than a mule on crack!...
There sure is "Something About Polly", whoops, I mean, Polly
sure "Came Along")... don't make Jennifer Connelly angry, you
wouldn't like her when she's angry, warns Channel-4-property-
show-gone-horribly-wrong actor-fest, THE HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG
( http://homepage.mac.com/joester5/prereview/#House : Gosh
Jennifer Connelly is purdy! Even when... she's wearing a
frumpy oversized pocket tee and unfashionable jeans)... Tommy
Lee Jones and Kate Blanchet hit the Wild West for a tiresomely
"moody adaptation of Jane Campion's The Piano", THE MISSING
( http://homepage.mac.com/joester5/prereview/#Missing : He
helps find Kate's missing daughter or finger, either of which
were stolen by Kate's big bad husband. Jones gives said
daughter or Kate a lock of his hair, which she uses to make a
"dream catcher" and the three live happily ever after, each
adapting to the other's "exotic" ways)... or you can always
wait for John Woo's (or Tsui Hark's?) inevitable toned-down
English-language version of limited-release Cantonese actioner
INFERNAL AFFAIRS (imdb: police/ undercover/ cop/ internal-
affairs / police-officer/ policeman/ undercover-cop)...
>> 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
"not shy"
http://www.kiwanonet.org/morpheus/?postid=138
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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