Need To Know 2004-02-27

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2004-12-10
#350
Patents, presents, privacy

2004-11-26
#349
Google recruits, history refuted

2004-11-12
#348
Geowanking for plugins

2004-10-29
#347
McCandless and Brooker - together at last

2004-10-15
#346
Web 2.0, Stirling Albion - Nil

2004-10-01
#345
Jumping the shark, gun

2004-09-17
#344
Foo, Foo, Alan Sugar, McGrew

2004-09-03
#343
Piracy good, not bad like you thought

2004-08-20
#342
Google boner, kick out the MD5

2004-08-06
#341
Yo Robot, Carry On Camping

2004-07-23
#340
from Odeon to Od-Iain

2004-07-09
#339
Browser Wars II - Electric Boogaloo

2004-06-04
MiniNTK #30
Not the NotCon final Schedule

2004-05-28
#338
Peek-a-boo Barney, Charles III "in charge"

2004-05-21
#337
Hey, Hey, Software Pa(tents) - slight reprise

2004-05-14
#336
A wip-woawing Widdecombe wollercoaster wide

2004-05-07
#335
A prawn sandwich and a BBC Micro

2004-04-30
#334
Eternal Sunshine of the Wireless Find

2004-04-23
#333
PayPal, piracy to "destroy society"

2004-04-16
#332
Loads more Gatesions, all-geek radio

2004-04-09
#331
Easter NotCon speaker hunt

2004-04-02
#330
The mass Onion-isation of pretty much everybody

2004-03-26
#329
LOAFs of spam, wifi settees

2004-03-19
#328
state of the "nanny state" nation

2004-03-12
#327
EU Ew-yew, pseudo- edutainment

2004-03-05
#326
SCO bandits, eBaywatch

2004-02-27
#325
Tidgy fridges, didgeridoos

2004-02-20
#324
ConConUK, Space 0.64 miles per second

2004-02-13
#323
All Tim O'Reilly, all the time

2004-02-06
#322
info on ebay scams only $10

2004-01-30
#321
the site now running on platform - well, whatever platform you like...

2004-01-23
#320
spam vs spam, Lisp to Perl

2004-01-16
#319
Name-calling, nuclear lan parties

2004-01-09
MiniNTK #24
Even more unpopular answers

2004-01-02
MiniNTK #23
Unpop quiz

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NTK 1997

"[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. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Unsubscribe or subscribe at http://lists.ntk.net/ NTK now is supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.ntkmart.com/ (K) 2004 Special Projects. Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/ Full license at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0 Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com All communication is for publication, unless you beg. Remember: Your work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material. Sending >500KB attachments is forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Your country may be at risk if you fail to comply.