"There seem to be I.R.C. channels dedicated to every sexual
fetish, and I.R.C. users speculate that terrorists also use
the networks to communicate in relative obscurity..."
http://news.com.com/2100-1032_3-5207202.html
/join #and_my_particular_fetish_is_winding_up_journalists
>> HARD NEWS <<
the old bamboos
The WIPO broadcasting rights treaty - in which starving
media corporations gratefully acquire a new IP right to
control recordings of their broadcasts (because as everyone
knows, home taping is killing broadcasters) slinks toward
ratification. The final draft is up for discussion by
government representatives this week. Just in time for a bit
of democratic involvement: except nobody quite knows who
those representatives are. THE UNION FOR THE PUBLIC DOMAIN
is an old pressure group (with RMS, EFF dignitaries and
various academics at the helm) which has been dusted down to
discover who is in charge of the treaty in various countries
and what their current opinion of the doc is. After that,
comes the gentle pursuasion. Word on the (heavily-forwarded
email) street is that they're short of UK and EU volunteers.
If you fancy a bit of low-impact exercising of democratic
power, mail David Tannenbaum, the UPD's British organiser
and see what you can do.
http://www.public-domain.org/
- what we really need here is a picture of Stallman as Kitchener
http://www.pervertedlogic.com/pserv/rms.jpg
- no we don't really. I SAID WE DON'T
Chances are, the EFF's Cory Doctorow may well be touching on
the topics of copyright and fair use (among many other
interesting issues) at this year's NotCon on Sunday 6th June,
in the company of other confirmed speakers including Ian
"Freenet" Clarke, Bill "bonkers anti-blog blogger" Thompson,
NTK's own Danny "Lifehacks" O'Brien, the unveiling of an
all-new "hacking UK democracy" application, and someone who
promises to tell the time (not very accurately) using only "a
Marks and Spencer prawn sandwich and a BBC Micro". And don't
forget, you could be joining them on the hallowed stage of
Imperial College Union (South Kensington, inbetween the Royal
Albert Hall and The Science Museum) if you get your suggestion
in via the submissions form before the deadline of midnight
next Friday (the 14th) UK time. Incidentally, there haven't
been too many "Geolocation" or "Actual impacts of blogging"
proposals so far, and if no-one comes up with anything in the
latter category, that's technically letting the Thompsons and
Orlowskis win.
http://www.notcon04.com/
- we'll invite him; he's probably busy not being Belle De Jour
>> ANTI-NEWS <<
berating the obvious
Virgin pioneer "bring a bottle" Alcoholics Anonymous meetings:
http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/07/dohaa.gif ... Apple owners hit
the Special Brew: http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/07/dohlag.gif ...
http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/07/dohklang.gif - nice double-
vision... Economist's Linux fans diss Bill's MS stockholding:
http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/07/dohrubbish.gif ... Reg appears
to consider 1Hz PC the benchmark of "modern computer speeds":
http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/07/dohtera.gif ... would suit
Ghostbusters fan: http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/07/dohslim.gif
... Google goofs o' the month - "thrustworthy computing",
"muslim cotton", "warning sings", "election beam", "hype park"
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22carnal+tunnel%22+arthritis
... plane emerges from one end of factory, one slice after
another: http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/07/dohbus2.gif ...
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
GOTOs considered non-harmful
Sheesh - you wait all year for a public meeting on the
Government's proposed National Identity Card, and then two
come along at (almost) the same time. Privacy International's
MISTAKEN IDENTITY (from 1.30pm-5pm, Wed 2004-05-19, Old
Theatre, LSE, London WC2A, free but RSVP) currently has the
best lineup - Ross Anderson and at least 3 MPs - but the
BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE will also
be wondering whether these biometric advancements are really
such a good thing at their X-CHANGE event (6.30pm, Wed 2004-
05-26, Dana Centre, near Science Museum, London SW7) in the
company of UCL Professor Steve Miller and BBC Science
Correspondent Christine McGourty. Adding to the overall sense
of deja-vu is reader BRIAN MADEUP, who wants to know what
happened to the last "six months", "10,000 volunteer", "large-
scale" trial of biometric passports which we were previously
told was planned to run from "January to June 2004"?
http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/n_story.asp?item_id=709
- ironically, getting tricky to tell the difference now
http://www.stand.org.uk/mistakenidentity.php3
- Rt Hon David Blunkett, Home Secretary (invited)
http://www.the-ba.net/the-ba/Events/
- details to appear here, eventually
http://mond.at/swpat/
- this Wed: Vienna demo against software patents, mit RMS
http://joi.ito.com/joiwiki/LoicLondonMay04
- same day: London bloggers run buffet-up in brewery
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
So you've finally got your nice, clean, bugfree install of
Mozilla Firefox. What better way to ruin it than with a
bunch of extraneous, complex and alpha-quality extensions?
Starting at the better-paved end of this road to ruin, the
"OOK" extension is nice little hack to stick bookmarks where
you need them - under the right-click context menu. Web
developers will make that funny squeaking noise web
developers make when they see the "Web Developer Extension
Toolbar", which includes Tracking favourite "edit CSS" (now
slipped into a sidebar), as well as various site
testing/brokenness discovery/conformance checking/webmonkey
twiddling buttons like "view response headers", "highlight
images missing alt tags", "clear HTTP auth/cookies" and
"resize to 640x400, 800x600, etc". Finally, for those of you
somewhat suspicious that Apple's iCal was not "All That",
the broadly comparable, open-sourcely grungey, and not half
as psychedelic Mozilla Calendar project has now been ported
to Firefox and Thunderbird. Cross-platformtastic!
http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#ook
- start simple
http://www.chrispederick.com/work/firefox/webdeveloper/
- get complex quickly
http://www.mozilla.org/projects/calendar/download.html
- now available on Mac!
>> MEMEPOOL <<
contains a source of http://snackspot.org/
makes more sense than a lot of the news satire sites nowadays:
http://www.industrialandmarine.com/rt/rndtimes_new.html ...
a UseCrime so severe, the "menu" needs an audio explanation:
http://www.kenwood.co.uk/clever/kframes.htm ... "one careful owner":
http://atsearch.autotrader.co.uk/www/CARS_popup.asp?id=200417140440092
... b3ta.com diversifying into abstract tech illustrations?:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101040510-632091,00.html
... Klingon prospers at Google, maths seems to be slipping:
http://services.google.com/tcbin/tc.py?cmd=status ... hope
these aren't just the usual "sex in space" urban myths:
http://www.in-sourced.com/article/articleview/1689/1/13/ vs
http://stack.dnsalias.net/~dphelan/archives/000047.html ,
http://stack.dnsalias.net/~dphelan/archives/000049.html ...
there's more to adult movie titles than just dumb parodies
(NSFW): http://members.shaw.ca/stayasyouare/tohwpmt.html ...
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
TV>> Peter Ackroyd - the more mainstream Iain Sinclair -
provides a much-needed history of a UK city hardly ever seen
on television nowadays, LONDON (9pm, Fri, BBC2)... "more
disturbing when it was in Danish" is the diagnosis on Stephen
King's Lars Von Trier's Garth Merenghi's KINGDOM HOSPITAL
(10pm, Sun, BBC2)... but you can enjoy sub-war claustrophobia
in the original German in the miniseries of DAS BOOT (7.10pm,
Sun, BBC2)... "no topic is taboo", warns The Radio Times of
the new series of DEAD RINGERS (9pm, Mon, BBC2) - assuming,
that is, it can be tacked onto the same old impersonations of
Tom Baker, Ozzy Osbourne and Russell Crowe... Peter "from
Balham" Baynham is credited as writer/ director of new Baby
Cow animated anthropomorhpic antics I AM NOT AN ANIMAL (10pm,
Mon, BBC2)... and it's slightly tricky to keep track of who's
who in Japanese "Lord Of The Flies" with automatic weapons
BATTLE ROYALE (11pm, Mon, C4)... we enjoy it as much as
anyone, but GONE IN 60 SECONDS (9pm, Tue, ITV) returns only 8
months after its last showing on ITV... Tony Blair talking
about weapons of mass destruction is a reassuring inclusion in
the trails for THE WORLD'S GREATEST CONSPIRACY THEORIES (9pm,
Wed, C5)... while C4's Thursday-night filth slot aims to
satisfy those piqued by last week's look at voyeurism, with a
profile of that guy who photographed all those nudes in
Selfridges, NAKED WORLD (11.05pm, Thu, C4)...
FILM>> the trailer looks like Kate Beckinsale's been
overdubbed with a bad Eastern European accent in an ill-judged
Sega coin-op version of Konami's "Castlevania" - but it's just
Stephen "The Mummy" Sommers' latest CGI nonsense VAN HELSING
( imdb: based-on-novel/ monster/ vampire-slayer/ werewolf/
vampire/ dracula/ frankenstein's-monster/ dark-hero/ crossbow)
... frankly we're more intrigued by the *psychological* demons
explored in the currently uncertificated/ only showing at the
ICA http://www.ica.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=13225 arthouse
cyberthriller DEMONLOVER ( http://www.cndb.com/ : We see
[Chloe] Sevigny from the front, lying fully nude, for a few
seconds, on a hotel bed, playing a videogame)... other than
that, there's a wider release for Val-Kilmer-as-John-Holmes
more-based-on-fact-than-"Boogie Nights" drama WONDERLAND
( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0335563/goofs : Within the first
few minutes of the film, a second generation Honda Prelude is
seen passing in the street. In 1981 when the film takes place,
the Prelude was still in the first generation [1979 - 1982])
... than for Neve "Scream" Campbell's nothing-to-do-with-the-
CIA ballet-school collaboration with Robert "MASH" Altman, THE
COMPANY ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/the_company.html :
[CAUTION, POPUPS] A momentary glimpse of [Neve Campbell's]
bare breast from the side; The film could inspire some kids to
try to imitate the various dance moves and jumps that occur in
it; Dancers of both sexes wear tight, form-fitting and skin-
colored outfits that show off every nook, cranny and bulge of
their bodies and make them appear nude from a distance -
particularly in the buttocks area)...
AD MUSIC FOR SIX PEOPLE>> among some changes to the "new"
NTK - will it finally be time to retire the reviewing of
records purely on the basis of which TV ads they sound like?
Also, we suspect that enthusiastically incompetent releases
from GOLDIE LOOKIN' CHAIN http://www.youknowsit.co.uk/ ,
evinced on such lyrical flights of fancy as "Half Man Half
Machine" ("I'm not like other people you might see or you
might know/ I made love to a BBC Micro") and (the largely
self-explanatory) "Your Mother's Got A Penis" will ultimately
make all other forms of music both redundant and unnecessary
... until then, however, we still reckon that XTC's "Senses
Working Overtime" ("Trying to taste the difference 'tween the
lemons and limes", "And all the world is biscuit shaped/ It's
just for me to feed my face") might prove to be ideal for
Nestle's upcoming "Kit Kat White with Lemon and Yoghurt";
PADDY SMITH suggested that "rice-based milk substitute Rice
Dream obviously needs to license Radiohead's 'Nice Dream' in
order to appeal to disaffected lactose-intolerant youth"; and
both DANIEL PEMBERTON and LEE MAGUIRE separately proposed
Ottowan's "D.I.S.C.O", the former for Blockbuster ("Rent a V-
I-D-E-O") and the latter for - you've guessed it - T-E-S-C-O,
though neither expanded on what the acronyms might then stand
for ("T - terrible TV ads", and so forth)... which just leaves
it to BILL BUMGARNER to leap to the defence of one of those
"When Audiophiles Attack" sites we used to make fun of back in
2002: http://www.johnvestman.com/digital_myth.htm . "The guy
does make a number of valid points, including that different
brands of CDRs *do* sound different when burned with the same
material", Bill maintains. "This is mostly because audio CD
transports suck ass - they are manufactured as cheaply as
possible - and, combined with a shitty quality CDR, you will
get different quality sound from different burn rates and
different CDRs. To burn at a higher speed, the CD burner must
adjust the output of the laser to a higher degree to allow
each 'spot' to be burned more quickly. Obviously, changing
both the speed of the burn and the power of the burn causes
the exact qualities of the written spots to change". Whatever
next, eh - how gold-plated IDE cables improve the playback of
your MP3s?...
>> 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
"large, hairy"
http://www.eurogamer.net/article.php?article_id=55363
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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