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Tips, news & gossip to tips@spesh.com - with NTK in subject line, cheers.

         
          In comparison to other process-oriented industries, the meat 
          industry had a lot of catching up to do before it arrives at a 
          highly integrated functional system. "We have now plugged this 
          gap with myMEAT," [Jan Grutter] remarks proudly....
     http://smbnews.sap.info/en/news.php4?OID=Article-1553441665bfd61a8f
           - entire press release builds to classic "Carry On" punchline


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                            spontaneous ballyhoos

          See what happens when you go mainstream? Old Internet
          wunderkinder CHARLIE BROOKER, father of TV Go Home, NTK 
          irregular, creator of Nathan Barley, maker of (corporate 
          shields up! pr0n filters on stun!) "Cunt", was picked off
          in a hail of lone typists acting online this week, for
          concluding his Guardian TV review of the US presidential
          debates with a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley
          and the other people you put in the standard "Come back
          $PERSON, all is forgiven!" graffiti joke.
          http://news.google.com/news?q=charlie+brooker
                                               - how these things spread

          The Guardian, in its fine tradition of boldness in the face
          of adversity, instantly took down the column and replaced it
          with an apology. But, as the servers struggle to keep up
          with the bad-teeth-citing, lime-despising, sure-kicked-your-
          ass-in-the-late-18th-Century barrage, we remain charmed by 
          one thing: Proper Media still counts.
          http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=13269#c0051
           - the Net perceives censorship as a fair use op and carefully 
                                                        redistributes it

          Because Brooker may write in a paper, but he still posts
          like he was on a newsgroup. You do know what they're saying 
          on IRC, right? Do you read what the little green forums of 
          the world spit out on a daily basis? Have you seen the
          Indymediots, the Freepers, the lists, the feeds, the
          unmoderated masses? Do you remember what you yourself wrote
          *last night*? You've heard the Bush jokes, the Kerry jokes,
          the Blair jokes: are we supposed to take all of those
          seriously, too?
          http://www.arbitary.i12.com/ccb-archive.html
          - we wish to complain about the portrayal of Micro Machines V3

          Yes, it's all serious now. But one day, we'll look back and
          laugh. We'll watch Dad's Reservist Army, and visit the Twin
          Towers Vegas attraction, and the guy in the giant Osama head
          will ask us to recall that time when people stayed up at
          night, staring at their dim screens, and darker forums,
          threatening to do more than JUST TYPE IN ANGRY CAPS during
          The Great Trolling. Ah, hell, here's to next week, when we
          all tap on reload, watching that grey bar of progress of
          inch across the screen, then sticking, as it always does, at
          49%. HAND.
          http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,321755,00.html
 - as recently as 1999, you were even allowed to have a pop at John Peel 


                               >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                         GOTOs considered non-harmful

          We're as sceptical about online petitions as anyone, but it 
          took just 47 signatures to ensure the resurrection of a 32-
          page "tribute" issue to YOUR SINCLAIR, covermounted with this 
          month's RETRO GAMER magazine (in shops now, UKP5.99). Here's 
          hoping that next weekend's ORSAM NORWICH SINCLAIR AND CLONES 
          SHOW (10am-4pm, Sat 2004-11-06, Alec Bussey Scout Centre, free
          - presumably) is at least as enthusiastically attended, though 
          the exhibitors (eg "Anglia Classic Computer Users Society will
          be selling keyboard membranes on behalf of RWAP Software") can
          always just sell stuff to each other, as happened from time to
          time last year. 
          http://www.ysrnry.co.uk/cover1.htm
                       - David McCandless! Jonathan Davies! (scroll down)
          http://www.speccyverse.me.uk/orsam/
               - vs http://www.petitiononline.com/Sinclair/petition.html
          http://www.apachecon.com/
        - "Will ya plug [ApacheCon]?" (Vegas, Nov 13), Ben Laurie pleads
          http://www.shmoocon.org/cfp.html
          - and ShmooCon, Washington DC, Feb 2005. Consider it done, Ben.
          

                                >> ANTI-MEMES <<
               there's smoke, flames, http://dohthehumanity.com/

          another satisfied customer makes use of guestbook facilities: 
          http://www.westwalesbeachbreaks.co.uk/10602/10603.html ... 
          Daily Mail fails to realise there are 101 years from 1904 to 
          2004 (inclusive): http://qwer.org/ClassicFencePostError.html 
          vs http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3755482.stm ... 
          intricately constructed Widdecombe of the fortnight or 
          whenever (some NSFW language): http://tinyurl.com/3pbrg ... 
          when oh when will the public tire of inappropriate background 
          image-linking on forums full of earnest Harry Potter fans?: 
          http://p071.ezboard.com/fhogwartsandbeyond81091frm114 ... one 
          reason why Bush doesn't want the world seeing his website?: 
          http://www.siliconcreative.com/images/towit_large.jpg (fixed 
          now from the looks of things)...


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

          Look, you're not obsessed over your http hits, alright? You
          don't pour over your apache logs, gleefully pouncing on
          referrers, chortle over your keh-razy Google search terms,
          tracing your rise up the blogrolls to Supreme
          Google-Juicity. That would be *vain*. As a matter of fact,
          you don't even have a weblog statistics analyser installed.
          But you do concede it would be nice to just take a cursory
          glance across the last /var/log/apache/access_log file.
          Perhaps even, as in that last slashdotting, to get an HTML
          summary in real time, counting up the hits as they happen.
          Enter VISITORS, the ironically ungoogleable name of a C
          executable that's fast enough to just run over your logs
          when you need it, raw enough to generate a text summary to
          STDOUT, and small enough to sit listening to a piped "tail
          -f" of your logs, generating HTML on the fly. The code is
          portable with no dependencies, so you don't even have to
          install it. No-one need know you care.
          http://www.hping.org/visitors/
                          - wow, that's a lot of adverts for a C program
         

                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

          TV>> you know, you wait all year for detailed deconstuctions 
          of what goes on in US politics, then GOD BLESS AMERICA: WITH 
          GOD ON OUR SIDE (7.20pm, Sat, C4), THE NEW WORLD WAR (11.10pm, 
          Sun and Mon, ITV), and DEAD RINGERS ELECTION SPECIAL (9pm, 
          Mon, BBC2) all come along at the same time... the makers of 
          "Attachments" tackle a slightly less fantastical workplace in 
          the form of legally dubious pre-crime procedural MURDER 
          PREVENTION (10.20pm, Sat, C4)... and the mythical "but Abraham 
          Lincoln's statue has the head - of a horse!" ending would make 
          about as much sense as anything else in Tim Burton's travesty 
          of PLANET OF THE APES (9pm, Sun, C5)... ITV3 launches on 
          Freeview with both home-grown *and* American crime shows, the 
          latter including detective-cabbie romp HACK (11pm, Mon, ITV3) 
          and the updated Ed "Married With Children" O'Neill DRAGNET 
          (9pm, Wed, ITV3)... THE SMOKING ROOM (10pm, Tue, BBC2) is 
          basically a nicotine-stained, less-funny version of "The 
          Office"... but the "you've been targeted for Shermination" bit 
          remains a highlight of the as-you'd-expect AMERICAN PIE 2 
          (9pm, Wed, ITV)... HORIZON (9pm, Thu, BBC2) tackles the tricky 
          issue of nature vs nurture in the sensitively titled "Dr Money 
          And The Boy With No Penis"... C4 are presumably celebrating 
          something with a terrestrial premier double bill of TOUCHING 
          THE VOID (9pm, Thu, C4) and the neat but neurologically 
          improbable MEMENTO (11.05pm, Thu, C4) - dense anterograde 
          amnesia is so rare it's unlikely he'd have ever met anyone 
          else with the same condition... and apparently it's quite 
          amusingly written, but does that really make up for the 
          atrocious animation quality of new C4 acquisition THE SIMPSONS? 
          (from 9pm, next Fri, C4)...
          
          FILM>> Izabella "Reign of Fire" Scorupco is sworn in as the 
          new "Pazuzu" in unnecessary prequel EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING 
        ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/exorcistthebeginning.htm :
          If you are bothered by seeing a human body atomized into tiny 
          pieces and another body with a 10-inch hole eaten through its 
          midsection with about half the flesh gone from the rest of the 
          body, this film is not for you)... also out on limited release 
          this Friday is the scariest Halloween sociopath of them all - 
          aka THE CORPORATION ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : Cert PG, 
          contains images of real violence and death)... then next week, 
          Sarah Michelle Gellar avoids stereotyping as a young woman 
          battling supernatural forces in Japanese horror remake THE 
          GRUDGE ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/grudge_the.htm : 
          human mandible; adults in underwear; mutilated walking undead; 
          at least seven murders and one suicide; Buddhism)... and sure, 
          we admit there are *a few* funny moments amid the endless, 
          brutal misanthropy of Billy Bob Thornton's predictably BAD 
          SANTA ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307987/trivia : the word 
          "fuck" and its variations are used 147 times while "shit" 
          appears 34 times - possibly a record for a Christmas film)... 


                               >> 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
         "in all this excitement, we've kind of lost track ourselves..."
             http://www.freecherrypy.org/asbradbury/archive/0429000

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