_   _ _____ _  __ <*the* weekly high-tech sarcastic update for the uk>
| \ | |_   _| |/ / _ __   __2004-05-21_ o       join! sign up at
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        "'Cyber brides' vulnerable to abuse..."
                                  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3700409.stm
            ...while their cyber men are away for long periods trying
             to destroy the gold planet Voga, cyber-leaders warned in
                                               a statement, yesterday


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                              Eurovision debuts

         Our Java skills must be getting rusty - we missed out a
         cycle of European Parliament procedure in last week's
         pseudocode summary of the Software Patents process.
         Following the Council of Ministers vote this week, the
         patent proposals now go back to the Parliament for a
         second reading. Any amendments to fix the mess will need an 
         absolute majority there. That's not inconceivable - many of 
         the original EU parliament amendments got over 50% of the
         votes. But it'll be close. But then, it was close all along.
         The Council of Ministers vote was only seven votes short of
         going our way, after lobbying by RMS and others swayed the
         juries of Poland and Spain. Even now, moves are afoot in the
         Dutch parliament to have that country's Council of Ministers
         pro-patent vote retrospectively changed. Lobbying is really
         working: your MEP may be the next to switch.
         http://mjr.towers.org.uk/proj/eurovote/
                               - getting the LibDems would be a start
         http://wiki.ael.be/index.php/MEP-Position-Lobbying-Guide
                               - go on, have a word in their shellike
         http://www.infiniteideasmachine.com/archive/000062.html
                         - also, looks like some progress on ID cards

         Following a fantastic response to last week's request of 
         putting "NTK" in the subject line if you're mailing us, here's 
         something slightly more ambitious we'd really like for our 
         birthday. With all the RSS/ iCal stuff available now, can't 
         someone, somehow, aggregate together as many tech-related UK 
         events as is feasible in some sort of openly searchable way? 
         Get in touch (don't forget that "NTK" in the subject line...) 
         if you know of one, or are building one, or are convinced 
         "it'd never work, for these patently obvious reasons" - and 
         ultimately we'd replay the favour by regularly linking to the 
         one that's a) friendliest about exporting its data to other 
         websites or services, and b) - at least as importantly - is 
         piss-easy to submit things to. 
         http://www.lecturelist.org/
                   - not bad, some registration though, no export API?
         http://www.upcoming.org/metro/uk/london/london/
                        - "No events scheduled" in London, apparently
         http://undergroundlondon.com/art/
                      - apart from all those art galleries, obviously
        

                                >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         rest assured, *abnormal* services will resume as soon as 
         possible: http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/21/dohnorth.gif ... care 
         to speculate what BT's "Frequently Asked Question" might be?: 
         http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/21/dohfaq.gif ... big Hollywood 
         names bring "unique creative vision" to this recent episode: 
         http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/21/dohcount.gif ... bootstrap alert: 
  http://www.croydon.gov.uk/leisure/events/tasteritashburtonlibrary?d=20040518
         ... so *that's* how it is in that weird cult-like Mac family: 
         http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/21/dohinc.gif ... clearly not 
         bitter: http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/21/dohsex.gif ... Internet 
         Magazine - FALCO!... "appropriate banner ad placing" proudly 
         presents: http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/21/dohnovell.gif , 
         http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/21/dohwolf.gif , credibility of New 
         Yorker questioned by site advertising "Electron Energised 
         Water": http://www.ntk.net/2004/05/21/dohelectro.gif ... 


                               >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                         GOTOs considered non-harmful

         The battle against (so-called!) "intellectual" "property" 
         rages on this week, with a last-minute appearance by RICHARD 
         STALLMAN on software patents *tonight* (6-7pm, Friday 2004-05-
         21, Lecture Theatre 1, Cruciform Building, UCL, Gower Street, 
         London WC1, presumably just turn up). PROF LARRY LESSIG will 
         also be REDISCOVERING FREE CULTURE in Oxford next Fri (6pm, 
         Fri 2004-05-28, Oxford Internet Institute, Oxford OX1, free 
         but please pre-register by email), and preceded on Monday by 
         BREWSTER KAHLE offering UNIVERSAL ACCESS TO ALL KNOWLEDGE 
         (5pm, Mon 2004-05-24, other details the same) - but don't 
         worry if you can't catch Brewster then, as the Internet 
         Archive/ Alexa/ WAIS founder is now confirmed to speak at the 
         resoundingly NTK-endorsed NOTCON (doors open 11am, Sunday 
         2004-06-06, Imperial College Union, South Kensington, tickets 
         UKP4/ UKP3 concessions for students, under 18s, OAPs, the 
         unemployed, any bloggers not covered by one or more of the 
         previous categories).
         http://www.fipr.org/press/040517softpat.html
              - only 5 mins from the PC World on Tottenham Court Road
         http://ifso.ie/news.html
                      - URL as promised for RMS in Dublin Monday 24th
         http://www.oii.ox.ac.uk/collaboration/?rq=forthcoming
           - is this the building that used to be the Computer Centre?
         http://www.ica.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=13265
                        - almost as funny: Dave Green at ICA next Wed
         http://www.notcon04.com/
                         - *really* need to update this site sometime


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         Most of us would like the night sky a lot more if it came
         with tool tips. MicroSky is a J2MEE astrolabe that can be
         jammed into your mobile phone or PDA, and will give you an
         accurate portable rendering of what you'd see right now if
         it wasn't pissing down with rain. You'll need a net
         connection (GPRS will do nicely), because the applet
         communicates with a heap big sky server running out of
         Germany. Free registration for the server; endearingly empty
         of either source code or promises to keep the server going.
         So the sky may fall yet.
         http://www.upto.org/microsky/
     - scornful astronomers mail us with better apps at usual address
         http://skyserver.sdss.org/
                  - not that skyserver - but we bet they're connected
 

                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                contains a source of http://snackspot.org/

         Older people from black and minority ethnic communities feel 
         they have been "researched to death", intensive research finds: 
         http://www.jrf.org.uk/knowledge/findings/socialcare/564.asp 
         ... maintaining the cosmic balance after last week's vi-
         emulating Word macros: http://rath.ca/Misc/VBacs/ ... even 
         in a community which flies in the face of contemporary 
         social mores, certain standards of behaviour must still
         be maintained: http://www.modernprimitive.com.au/main2.html 
         ... misinterpretable URLS of the month: http://www.bitart.com/ ,
         http://www.oddsexchange.com/ , http://www.knobgallery.com , 
         http://www.piersandmorgan.co.uk/ + perhaps not the best name: 
  http://www.culture.gov.uk/global/press_notices/archive_2004/dcms54_2004.htm
      ... http://www.bbc.co.uk/wonderland/ - after police operation of the
         same name?: http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=01998-09-18&l=29#l 
         ... which distinctive piece of movie poster typography are 
         you?: http://lists.inanutshell.us/form/1.html ...
         

                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         TV>> here's hoping the implausibly self-mythologising HOW 
         "FRIENDS" CHANGED THE WORLD (9pm, Sat, C4) examines the theory 
         that the whole show is basically just a dumbed-down version of 
         "Seinfeld", monstrous parents and all... daft made-for-TV 
         nukes-vs-earthquake two-parter 10.5 (7.15pm, Sat, C4) appears 
         to be running as a handy spoiler for C5's "Survival Sunday", 
         of which Michael Bay's character-actor-fest ARMAGEDDON (8pm, 
         Sun, C5) is the arguable highlight... though fortunately you 
         can skip the dodgy ending to see Billy Bob Thornton reappear 
         in offbeat air-traffic control romantic rival comedy PUSHING 
         TIN (10.35pm, Sun, BBC1)... there's more non-verbal nonsense 
         in BODY TALK: SEX (8pm, Mon, C4)... a no-holds-barred look at 
         domain-ownership disputes is promised in THE SEX.COM STORY 
         (11.20pm, Mon, C5)... and Wednesday night is Space Night on 
         C5, in the form of the - stretching the literal definition of 
         "Escape"? - ESCAPE FROM APOLLO 13 (7.30pm, Wed, C5), THE 
         BRITISH UFO FILE (8pm, Wed, C5), plus "Did it blow up the 
         space shuttle?" docu MEGALIGHTNING: STRANGER THAN FICTION 
         (9pm, Wed, C5)... 
         
         FILM>> it's "Gladiator" meets "The Return Of The King" - and 
         not in a good way - in interminable Wolfgang Petersen air-sea 
         trademark TROY ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/troy.htm : 
         deceit leading to hundreds of deaths; perverted gloating with 
         victim's body; much talk of servitude to and faith in false 
         gods; a man exposing his full nudity to a woman; man and woman 
         in bed together, repeatedly)... so not a very wide release for 
         the curios smuggled out in its giant blockbuster-shaped shadow, 
         including the semi-autobiographical quirky-even-by-Almodovar-
         standards Spanish religious abuse BAD EDUCATION (imdb: 
         education/ school)... plus "Wayne's World" meets "This Is 
         Spinal Tap" - albeit with most of the jokes taken out - in 
         low-budget Canadian headbanger buddie-movie mockumentary FUBAR 
         ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0302585/trivia : The word "fuck" 
         is said 274 times)... 
         
         AVAILABLE IN A WIDE RANGE OF BLACK>> yes, this is a bit slack 
         by even our extraordinary standards, but we finally got round 
         to printing one of the very first t-shirt design entries we 
         ever received - the "You Have *No* Idea" slogan, one of many 
         submitted by GORILLA SALAD certainly not much more than 3 and 
         a half years ago: http://tv.cream.org/gorilla/ntkt/ . They/it 
         receive the standard UKP2 for each shirt sold, assuming they 
         come up with a more acceptable method of payment than "Post 
         the coins through Christopher Ecclestone's letterbox", or 
         simply "Put it on a horse!". Also at http://www.ntkmart.co.uk/ 
         this month: a very simple "Loading..." disclaimer designed by 
         the minimalists over at PC EXTREME magazine, and possibly the 
         last of the "Hey Hey 16K" design recently popularised by the 
         cult b3ta animation http://www2.b3ta.com/heyhey16k/ , the 
         success of which apparently prompted "++Ungood;" designer 
         LLOYD WOOD to start composing his own Orwellian promo song (to 
         the same tune): "We'd like to help you with your thoughtcrime/ 
         We'd like to help you with your thoughtcrime/ Double-plus-
         ungood - hey!/ What is 2+2 today?" - and so forth... still, 
         our extremely high aesthetic standards have not deterred the 
         rest of you from continuing to send in entries, from MATTHEW 
         PETTY's http://www.petty.me.uk/images/paunch_tshirt.png to an 
         entire wardrobe suggested by MAT SIMPSON - highlights of which 
         include http://homepage.mac.com/matsimpson/.Pictures/ntk2.jpg 
         and http://homepage.mac.com/matsimpson/.Pictures/ntk4.jpg . 
         And text-only submissions need be no barrier to obscurity, as 
         perhaps illustrated by JASMINE STRONG's "Emmanuel Goatse" idea 
         (with "We have always been at war with Eastasia" on the back, 
         "for preference"), plus BOB JORDAN's self-referential "Just 
         one of the many things I have bought off the internet while 
         drunk" - a slogan he came up with on after, you've guessed it, 
         buying a shirt off our website. While drunk. Obviously...

              

                               >> 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
                 "less of the 'sometimes', if you don't mind!" 
                http://b3ta.com/features/valentine-raffle-2004/        

                                 NEED TO KNOW
            THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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