"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.
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