Need To Know 2004-09-17

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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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"These [miniature atomic clocks] will be so useful that we can't even think of the most significant applications at present..." - Dr John Kitching, US National Institute of Standards and Technology http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3656278.stm ...you know, we've heard they've had similar problems unleashing the "true usefulness" of the Segway >> HARD NEWS << "just putting you through"-s Here's how a video call works on the new Amstrad E3 land-line phone: you make a person-to-person voice call (through your usual telephone provider) to someone else with an Amstrad E3, press a button, then an internal DSP modem effectively splits the usual 56k dialup bandwidth of the existing call, sending pics at 2-9 frames per second to the other device and your voice in whatever's left over. Ingeniously, the phone then logs the fact that you've made a video call and, in its regular nighttime calls back to Amstrad's telco partner Thus (to check your email, ad downloads etc), then charges you 50p for each one you've made, even though you make no additional demands on their network (or even your own phone supplier's) by doing so. When pressed by us about this, Alan Sugar became defensive about needing the revenue to subsidise the hardware (retailing at UKP99), but we think this is a business model hardly anyone's dared try before: selling you a product which charges you every time you use it (ie, for the privilege of making person-to-person data calls via your own telephone supplier) - presumably on the assumption that most users find phone tariffs completely arbitrary and confusing anyway? http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/09/15/amstrad_e3_launch/ - framerate not great for hearing-impaired sign language either Foo you once... That sinister Bohemian Grove of geekery, FOO CAMP, forked this year, with a EuroFoo taking place near old Amsterdam, and Foo Classic running a little later in the Californian home of O'Reilly, the hippyopolis Sebastopol. Compare-and-contrasting, some cliches applied: MerkinFoo was certainly more about the pesos (and the Jeff Bezos, who leapt from talk to talk). In Sebastopol, delicate clouds of cashotropic hackers gathered around otherwise identical geeks who had previously sublimed into millionairehood. No such luck^Wdistractions for the EuroFoo, who had a narrower income range, and perhaps more subversive tastes. Ah, the Baudelairean pursuits of the Eurohacker: lockpicking; drinking and decadence; 0wnzoring phones over bluetooth; more drinking; studying the effects of marijuana on the frontal lobes; dancing to thumping bass; RSS, decay, and Perl. The haler MerkinFoos seemed healthier, but had their own inner rot: they built rocketships and compared hiking boots with their peers. But while the Eurohackers laughed at the folly of the world, the Americans grew furious with each other over DRM, simple metadata versus the semantic web, and exactly how satanic Microsoft was this year. The MSDN apologists left little "Channel 9" playpeople everywhere. By nightfall, most of them had had their heads torn off. http://www.whoot.org/archives/000079.html - Chocolate Printer Summer Tour '04 http://qwer.org/preferthetermalphaspazzos.html - video of Piers Cawley, impro, creative archive, Cawley, 'tooth hacking, Cawley http://overstated.net/04/09/15-foocamp-hacks.asp - badger, badger, badger >> EVENT QUEUE << GOTOs considered non-harmful OK, last time we went to see Paul B "8-Bit Construction Set" Davis talk about circuit bending (at the Royal Festival Hall in Feb), it wasn't his fault that he couldn't get the video projector to work with his Powerbook. And we're still not completely convinced of the fun potential of learning assembly language to reprogram old Nintendo cartridges. But his upcoming tour of CIRCUIT BENDING WORKSHOPS (from next Sat 2004-09-25, London, Bangor, Manchester, Newcastle, Plymouth, Liverpool, and London again, free but email them your phone number to book a place) also features "UK experimental noise artist" Sarah Washington, is backed by the Institute of Electronic Engineers and the Channel4 IdeasFactory, and "all equipment is provided", so you don't even need to dig out your old soldering iron and Speak and Spell machine. http://www.lektrolab.com/ - also available: DJing masterclass with Bitch Ass Darius http://www.no2id.net/events/launch.html - official launch of the UK anti-ID card campaign tomorrow http://www.inthecity.co.uk/itc2004/interactive/ic-tuesday-detail.shtml - Reg hack keynotes Manc music-biz pigopolists, on Tuesday http://www.cybersalon.org/edemocracy/ - Cybersalon on "E-Democracy vs E-Hypocrisy" that evening http://www.brum2600.net/brumcon4/ - advance warning of Brumcon IV at the start of next month http://www.openhouselondon.org/london/search/showall.asp - almost-navigable London Open House venues this weekend http://www.swarming.org.uk/recl/reclwhe.htm - plus 90 minutes of Ken Campbell on Thames beach on Sunday >> ANTI-MEMES << there's smoke, flames, there's http://dohthehumanity.com/ together at last - terrible cover art Photoshopping triple- whammy: http://dvdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=12690 ... Blunkett ID card "fringe" conference session sponsored by - http://www.disinfopedia.org/wiki.phtml?title=Labour_Party_conference (search page for "Siemens")... Westminster City Council promotes "innovation" with - man in a rubber "gimp" suit?: http://www.westminster.gov.uk/ ... casualty Widdy - thought- provoking *and* puerile: http://qwer.org/tasteless.html ... if you're going to nitpick, why is it only hunting "with" dogs - what about if you just happen to be hunting "near" them?: http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/archives/000450.html ... double- URLtendres of the month - http://www.poolife.com/ , those frisky students: http://www.studlife.com/ , plus publishers of fine nautical filth: http://www.FishermanSexPress.com/ ... calling Jon Katz - if you can read this, your people need you: http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=121036&cid=10214639 ... >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering VIEWGLOB is a little GTK+ window that sits near your xterm, and listens to you tapping away on bash or zsh. When you "cd" to a new directory, it shows you the content listing of that directory. When you start typing commands, it shows you (a la autocompletion) which of the filenames you're typing. If you type a wildcard, it'll show you what you're about to affect. It's not two-way (so you can't select files and see them appear on the command line), but it's still strangely reassuring to have it lurking over your actions. As the author Stephen Bach says, "no longer will you compulsively ls after every cd". It also feels like a harbinger of helper apps to come. With shortcut managers like QuickSilver on Mac adding CLI elements to the GUI, it's about time we got some GUI sugar to add to the bitter black hotness of our terminal windows. http://viewglob.sourceforge.net/ - I like my terminals like my women: VT100 compatible with Tektronix extensions >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> Bill Bryson apparently perpetuates the Superman/ Batman cape "Does not enable wearer to fly" urban myth in GRUMPY OLD MEN (10pm, Fri, BBC2) - next week, ironically turning their wrath on "The Media" and "celebrities"... good of them to specify that it's "Sci-Fi" (as opposed to that "Fantasy" rubbish) in HOLLYWOOD'S GREATEST SCI-FI SPECIAL EFFECTS (8.05pm, Sat, C5)... and it's only three years since we last made the joke about the next film in the ALONG CAME A SPIDER (9.10pm, Sat, C4) series being called "Kiss The Girls 3: Wee- Wee-Wee All The Way Home"... tragically, Rob Schneider never quite recaptured the "man-whore" comedy gold of DEUCE BIGALO: MALE GIGOLO (11.30pm, Sat, ITV) - NTK Film Of The Year 2000... Greg Dyke uses his privileged media contacts to explain why he feels BETRAYED BY NEW LABOUR (8pm, Sun, C4)... and there's Kirsten Dunst, Martin Short and arguably excessive soundtrack use of Badly Drawn Boy's "The Shining" in cheap but cheerful high-school Shakespeare comedy GET OVER IT (9pm, Sun, C4) - young people face rather more pressing dilemmas in the always- entertaining low-budget horror FINAL DESTINATION (10.35pm, Wed, BBC1)... ABBA - THE REUNION (9pm, Tue, ITV) may as well be a more mainstream re-edit of BBC3's recent "Liquid Assets: Abba's Millions"... and no doubt they'll eventually combine the two lifestyle-makeover formats of THE BANK OF MUM AND DAD (8pm, Tue, BBC2) and TOO POSH TO WASH (8.30pm, Tue, C4) to create a show where your mum follows you round all day wiping your face with a hanky... FILM>> normally when a lead character is obviously made up to look older, this means there'll be a time-travel sequence when they go back and meet their younger self, but oddly that doesn't seem to be the case for Tom Cruise in Michael "Heat" Mann's digital-video ambient-lighting extravaganza COLLATERAL ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/collateral2004.htm : talk of sexually immoral deeds; many demonstrations of sinful behavior; use of firearms to threaten and to force behavior, repeatedly)... the bizarre futuristic street-slang infects even the title of post-cyberpunk Tim Robbins/ Samantha Morton mood-piece CODE 46 ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : Contains strong nudity and moderate sex)... then, next week, its being championed by Quentin Tarantino is frankly all the warning you should need regarding CGI/wirework-heavy kung-fu cobblers HERO ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/hero.htm : intercourse under sheets with sounds; second intercourse, implied; lots of "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon" flying; running on water in mockery of our Lord who walked on water)... >> 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 "That's *formerly* idealistic - if you don't mind!" www.google.com/search?q=%22Danny+O%27Brien%22+%22idealistic+journalist%22 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 - with NTK in the subject, cheers. 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.