"As a first step, the BPI yesterday unveiled a campaign to
make people aware that file-sharing was illegal. A message
will automatically appear on the computer of anyone illegally
downloading music that will warn them that they are in breach
of copyright law and could face legal action..."
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2004/03/26/ndown26.xml
- further transgressions will activate the BPI's patented
USB 2.0 wrist-slapping device (if installed)
>> HARD NEWS <<
boiled into glues
Actual intelligence on the "artificial" intelligence shown by
the much-lauded NannieBot continued to leak out this week,
with a new chat transcript placing the bot in the unusual
position of trying to convince cynics that it's actually a
computer (via a handy "error:beginning core dump::modRecover"
"accidental" bug report and the semi-convincing can't-parse-
that excuse "i know food, beer and music! not much else!"). A
lot of the criticism seems to hinge on the fact that the AI
can't be as intelligent as it appears, though no-one's proved
this isn't an artefact of (say) probabilistic Markov chaining
of typical chatroom replies. Our tip for the next person to
put it to the test: try asking it things it couldn't derive
from existing chat transcripts (What's the first letter of the
word "Cat"? What do you think will be in the news tomorrow?)
or, heck, even the "Please write me a sonnet on the subject of
the Forth Bridge" that Turing originally had in mind.
http://www.waxy.org/archive/2004/03/23/nanniebo.shtml
- (Comment) "A friend and I spent some time trying to come up
with a neural net chess-playing program... To make a long
story short, it didn't work"
http://www.cs.nott.ac.uk/~gxk/courses/g5aiai/002history/turing_test.htm
- vs http://www.alicebot.org/articles/wallace/turing.html
Junk science, junk faxes, junk mail. Microsoft quaintly
received news of Wednesday's EU497 million bill for Windows
Media Player by fax (we imagine attempts to send it by
Outlook mysteriously bounced). The company spent a few
minutes with the currency calculator before chucking it in
the "due to pay after five years of appeals" folder. Funnily
enough, Gates spoke last month about trying to find a way of
reducing the $52.8 billion dollars of cash that the company
currently sits on. "There will come a point... where we
probably will change the balance sheet of the company, and
make it more pure", he said. A quote that works a lot better
if you say it with a German accent.
http://forbes.com/reuters/newswire/2004/02/26/rtr1277828.html
- or as General Jack D Ripper from "Dr Strangelove"
Continuing in that accent, deceptively British spamgilantes
SPAMHAUS finally crumbled to the "my solution to spam is
unstoppable!" tendency by launching a bid for a .mail
domain. The domain will be restricted to only the finest,
most pure mail servers (please to fax $2000 bond to
domainmaster@nic.mail). Global whitelists do appear to be
the new black right now. Even the good old RBL reverse-DNS
systems are being reversed for listing the IPs of known good
guys - witness this week's launch of ISIPP's "Accreditation
Database" of known opt-in-all-the-trimmings mass mailers.
Only ten bucks: but is that what it's going to take to get
past the filters these days?
http://www.clickz.com/news/article.php/3325981
- (rhetorical)
>> ANTI-NEWS <<
berating the obvious
high on own supply?: http://www.coffeeaddict.co.uk/search.php3
...old thrill revisited - case of the missing superscript tag:
http://www.ntk.net/2004/03/26/dohpeta.gif ... Dublin model
village, that is: http://www.ntk.net/2004/03/26/dohmil.gif ...
holding terrifyingly obsessive conversations - with herself:
http://www.frogger.uklinux.net/_forums/?n=Ann%20Widdecombe ...
perceptively, how sports reporting sounds to the rest of us:
http://www.ntk.net/2004/03/26/dohlivi.gif ... Straw to avenge
Sauron's death: http://www.ntk.net/2004/03/26/dohsaur.gif ...
you wanna see a "Privacy Policy"? I got your "Privacy Policy"
right here: http://www.ntk.net/2004/03/26/dohtick.gif ... non-
alarmist advice from MS's now defunct small business support:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22once+a+hacker+has+locked+onto%22
... new OS strategy: http://www.ntk.net/2004/03/19/dohpowerpc.gif
... love that "retro" styling: http://www.ntk.net/2004/03/26/dohintelli.gif
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
GOTOs considered non-harmful
You can save as much as 100 quid if you pre-register for THE
SECOND INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON APPLIANCE DESIGN before
April 1st (Tue-Thu 2004-05-11/13, HP Labs, Bristol) - it still
costs upwards of UKP199 (student rate) if you do so, though
that covers both a robot football tournament *and* Alan "Xerox
PARC" Kay. Plus, you could even save on accommodation:
ConConUK attendee Pete Ferne rashly promises that he's got
"plenty of floor space, settees and mattresses in a largeish
house in central Bristol" and - answering your very next
question - "wireless broadband access throughout", though an
undertaking to "sample the delights of Bristol" may constitute
your side of this Faustian deal.
http://wiki.oreillynet.com/etech/hosted.conf?MoreUkGatherings
- seriously, isn't http://www.kidcarpet.co.uk from round there
http://wtfcon.org/
- considerably cheaper opinions on appliances etc this weekend
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
The biggest problems afflicting Social Networking websites
are that a) they cause you to spray your personal
information around like an overeager dog marking its
territory, b) they're all centralised and therefore Tools Of
The Man, and b) they are quite, quite useless. Maciej "Blog
Census" Ceglowski and Joshua "von memepool und del.icio.us"
Schachter have come up with a scheme that might fix all of
that. LOAF is private. It's decentralised. It fights spam!
LOAF revolves around a blob of data which you can pass
around your friends. The blob can reveal (via the usual
cryptomagical foo-fah) whether you know someone, but can't
reveal the complete list of who you know. In other words,
with Joshua's LOAF, you can ask "does Joshua know
larry@wall.org?" and the blob has enough info to say yes. But
as it's just a mess of hashes and bitmasks, you can't pull
out everybody Joshua knows. Giving a friend your LOAF lets
them find out whether a stranger knows you or not, letting
them build their own goddamn social networks. Application?
When you get an incoming email, quickly scan your friends'
LOAFs to see if they've met the sender. If they have, up the
score. If they haven't, treat with slight disdain. Blob
reader, writer and anti-spam mail integration are all in
Maciej's and Joshua's preliminary beta. At last, an excuse
to open attachments again.
http://loaf.cantbedone.org/
- Bloom Filter County
>> MEMEPOOL <<
contains a source of http://snackspot.org/
missing only the former Viz catchphrase "I made my excuses and
left": http://cheerleader.yoz.com/archives/001867.html ...
important safety tip - keep the writers *away* from Photoshop:
http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2004/03/25/1079939761567.html
... Birmingham - one of "the leading spoof departments in this
field": http://www.cryptozoology.bham.ac.uk/ ... life imitates
novelty RFCs: http://www.notes.co.il/benbasat/5240.asp - also,
surely Israel must have a few M1 battle tanks kicking around?:
http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc1217.html ... scroll to end for #2
comment: http://www.faqs.org/rfcs/rfc2616.html ... presumably
http://toothycat.net/wiki/wiki.pl?ChipAndPin is going to make
cloning cards harder, skimming PINs substantially easier?...
http://www.nomadrugs.com/ vs http://www.nomoredrugs.com/ ...
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3524838.stm reveals MRSA inspiration
for http://www.telewest.co.uk / blueyonder logo...
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
TV>> there's a chance to "compare and contrast" mob comedy
ANALYZE THIS (9pm, Fri, C5) with precursor NATIONAL LAMPOON'S
THE DON'S ANALYST (12.15am, Wed, BBC1)... Rich Herring says
he's "both appalled and delighted" to have whacked another
rower with an oar in THE OTHER BOAT RACE (6.05pm, Sat, BBC1)
http://www.richardherring.com/warmingup/warmingup.php?id=468
... and a double bill of more comedians tackling unexpected
straight roles sees Mike Myers disco-era romp 54 (11.25pm,
Sat, BBC2) followed by Jim Carrey quirk-fest MAN ON THE MOON
(10.30pm, Sun, BBC2)... two different looks at the undead in
the not-as-bad-as-"Evolution" GHOSTBUSTERS II (5.35pm, Sat,
C4) - "Is the atomic weight of cobalt 58.9?" - and a DAWN OF
THE DEAD SPECIAL (11.40pm, Sat, C4) on the current remake of a
1970s film which, Aintitcool reveals, was "also about zombies"
http://www.aintitcool.com/display.cgi?id=17222 - Sarah "Go"
Polley also pops up in wintry Western THE CLAIM (11.20pm, Tue,
BBC2)... and James Nesbitt plays a man plagued with guilt over
his niece's bad haircut in PASSER BY (9pm, Sun, BBC1)... ZERO
TO HERO (4.05pm, Sun, C4) will ideally take a "The Authority"-
style look at the responsibilities of turning yourself into a
technologically advanced superhero... Jeri "Seven of Nine"
Ryan and Colleen "Vitamin C" Fitzpatrick are among the "three
wives" of DRACULA 2000 (11.10pm, Sun, BBC1)... Donal Macintyre
appears just one step away from reviving Arnie's "The Running
Man" in his BIG STING (8pm, Tue, C5) crim-catching gameshow...
and not many obvious April Fool's candidates on April 1st,
unless C4 are really pushing the boundaries with their HAPPY
BIRTHDAY THALIDOMIDE (9pm, Thu, C4)...
FILM>> it's clearly had more money thrown at it than "28 Days
Later", but not much seems to have landed on the script of
unsophisticated A-Team B-movie remake gorefest DAWN OF THE
DEAD ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/dawnofthedead.htm :
gunfire gore, repeatedly, frequent with tops/backs of heads
blown off; "When there is no more room in Hell, the dead will
walk the Earth." Hell will never be too full; vulgar/offensive
[Richard Cheese] song in background; resurrection from death
due to bites throughout)... slightly less likely to feature a
trailer for "Shaun of The Dead" is Mel Gibson's brutal deus ex
machina nail-'em-up vanity project THE PASSION OF THE CHRIST
( www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=Passion+of+the+Christ+%282004%29%2C+The :
Was it my imagination, or when the Roman soldier ripped JC's
cloak off, did we get a brief outline of his wee-wee?)... the
trailer implies that similar unrelenting punishment is handed
out to "The Rock" in Christoper Walken/ Stifler/ Arnie cameo
action nonsense THE WELCOME TO THE JUNGLE ( www.bbfc.co.uk/ :
Abridged version of work previously known as THE RUNDOWN for
which cuts to scenes of violence were made in order to
accommodate requested 12A category)... while the Tusken
Raiders' further adventures on Tatooine are sadly not the
subject of holiday-home makeover movie UNDER THE TUSCAN SUN
( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/underthetuscansun.htm :
[Diane "Judge Dredd" Lane] in underwear making out in bed;
lesbian pair to be "parents"; as reportedly almost all gay/
lesbian relationships go, this one fails)...
>> 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 as funny as Private Eye used to be"
http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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