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

         
         "Drinkaware.co.uk is run by the Portman Group, which is funded 
          by the alcohol industry to promote sensible drinking. The 
          site, which is currently unavailable because of technical 
          problems but is expected to go live later on Friday, offers an 
          alcohol unit calculator using real drink brands..."
                          http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4003229.stm
         - ironic this particular site should fall victim to "Error 500:
                      too many cocktails at big launch the night before"


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                               spelled "L-Z-Ws" 

          Last year, Microsoft had 4,000 patents in total. This year,
          they applied for another 3,000. They are now planning at
          least twenty IP cross-licensing deals with other large
          corporations, and have made it clear that they are seeking
          similiar alliances with even their worst enemies. This
          April, they quietly offered a "Royalty Free Protocol License
          Agreement" on their site. It generously allows the license
          of "any intellectual property rights Microsoft may have in
          any or all of [the following] protocols". The 130 protocols
          listed included Appletalk, most of TCP/IP - and everything
          else, from DNS to Zmodem, from DHCP to the port 9 discard
          service (whose sole function is to drop packets). Signing
          this license frees developers from being sued for IP
          infringements by Microsoft, but prevents you from working on
          GPL software (Samba already warns its contributors not to
          sign it). This week, Microsoft indemnified all their
          customers from the legal fallout of any court cases
          revolving around their IP. Which implies there is either
          about to be such a battle: or at least Microsoft wants
          everyone to think there'll be one. Put this week in your
          diaries, ladies and gentlemen of the Internet: you don't
          need Yoda to tell you that the Patent Wars have begun.
          http://www.groklaw.net/article.php?story=20041107154122603
                                - pat groklaw says all you need to know
          http://www.worldwar2database.com/html/phonywar.htm
                                           - or the phony war, at least


                               >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                         GOTOs considered non-harmful

          Let's just say there's a more than a few names we recognise 
          in the speaker lineup at next month's all-free LONDON PERL 
          WORKSHOP (Sat 2004-12-11, Imperial College Student Union, 
          London SW7 - where we had NotCon in the summer; free but you 
          must pre-register on the site), tackling topics on everything 
          from "Perl Black Magic" and "Python For Perl Programmers" to 
          "Managing And Sending Mail". Even more imminently, there's the 
          tantalising possibility of a special geowanking night (no, 
          it's not what it sounds) at next week's DORKBOT LONDON (7pm, 
          Wed 2004-11-17, Limehouse Town Hall, London E14, also free) - 
          and what better way to celebrate international Geographical 
          Information Systems (GIS) Day?
          http://london.pm.org/lpw/signup.html
             - still haven't quite worked out the actual venue capacity?
          http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/
                                             - vs http://www.gisday.com/
          http://www.cybersalon.org/
           - Cybersalon feat. The Mighty Jungulator @ Dana Centre today
      http://www.spacestudios.org.uk/courses/arts_digital_course.asp?id=501
                  - Wireless week (though isn't every week?) in Hackney
          http://www.lektrolab.com/pages/currentevents.html
           - and more London circuit bending + chip music at end of Nov
          http://www.greatesthobby.com/wgh/default.aspx?id=88&c=a
               - sorry, a bit late for "Take a Model Train To Work" day
          

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

          paste-in reviews to appeal to self-loathing Bruce Willis fans: 
         http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6337369871
         http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6337368887
         http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=6337368561
          ... worth a shot, we suppose: http://www.no2id-petition.net/ 
          ... disappointed this hymn isn't to the tune of "Relax" 
          (caution, MIDI): http://www.jmanjackal.net/eng/engscause.html 
          ... http://channel9.msdn.com/ShowPost.aspx?PostID=27667 : "20 
          years at Microsoft" - with beard that looks like he spent some 
          of those chained to a radiator... *exactly* how we look when 
          settling down to an relaxing evening of illegal song-swapping: 
      http://www.harderfaster.net/?section=news&action=shownews&newsid=11685
          ... http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3982367.stm imitates RoboCop 2: 
          http://www.trudang.com/critter/robocop2.html ... antiobesity 
          wonder drug Acomplia (aka Rimonabant) = stealth anti-stoner 
          medication, allege (unexpectedly paranoid?) cannabis 
          campaigners: http://www.ccrmg.org/journal/04aut/icrs.html ...


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

          Firefox hit 1.0, which means it's no longer fashionable to
          like it, and you have to now start grumbling about lack of
          documentation, when oh when will they fix the Slashdot
          rendering bug, such unprofessionalism is unbecoming from
          such... err, unprofessionals etc etc. To fan the flames,
          allow us to plug the to-die-for extensions you should
          install, play around with, and then struggle to uninstall
          later, plus their not-quite-what-you-want slimmed-down
          equivalents. Lots of people like ADBLOCK, but we prefer
          installing URIID and playing around with ad-blocking
          UserContent.css settings. WEB DEVELOPER continues to rule,
          although we can probably still live with just the "edit
          styles" bookmarklet. PAGERANK gives you everything you wanted
          from the GOOGLETOOLBAR. And SUPER DRAG AND GO (which opens a
          new tab from dragged links, text, or what have you) probably
          doesn't do everything that you want from TABBROWSER
          EXTENSIONS. But then TBE is now so gigantic people really
          should start referring to it as "Firefoxzilla". And do some
          complaining, people. We're slipping behind our quotas!
          http://adblock.mozdev.org/
                                                       - big and chunky
          http://www.mozilla.org/support/firefox/adblock.html
                                               - ad blocking with style
          http://extensionroom.mozdev.org/more-info/uriid
                                    - not sure this even works with 1.0
          http://morphis.eu.org/
                                                    - super drag and go!
          http://texturizer.net/firefox/extensions/#webdeveloper
                                                             - tool kit
http://www.squarefree.com/bookmarklets/webdevel.html#edit_styles
                                                 - edit css bookmarklet
          http://piro.sakura.ne.jp/xul/_tabextensions.html.en
                                                     - Jabba the plugin
         

                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

          TV>> Rachel "Road Trip" Blanchard joins the cast of the 
          magnificently non-naturalistic internal-monologue sitcom PEEP 
          SHOW (10pm, Fri, C4)... Rob Schneider xenotransplant romp THE 
          ANIMAL (11.10pm, Fri, C4) has its moments, but it's no "The 
          Hot Chick" or "Deuce Bigalow"... and "Fame Academy" alumnus 
          James Fox sings Oasis' "Don't Look Back In Anger" at THE ROYAL 
          BRITISH LEGION FESTIVAL OF REMEMBRANCE (9.25pm, Sat, BBC1) - 
          haven't these people suffered enough?... there must still be a 
          gap in the market for a more "specialist" adult movie knockoff 
          of BRIDGET JONES DIARY (9.25pm, Sat, C4) entitled, well - 
          http://www.google.com/search?q=%22bridget+jones%27+dairy%22 
          ... Jon Ronson comes late to the "Unusually Named US Military 
          Personnel" contest with Major General Albert Stubblebine III 
        http://books.guardian.co.uk/extracts/story/0,6761,1339464,00.html
          in his ever-entertaining THE CRAZY RULERS OF THE WORLD (8pm, 
          Sun, C4) - assuming you don't mind it being narrated by what 
          http://www.livejournal.com/users/internetsdairy/ calls "Alan 
          Bennett's inner child"... and we particularly enjoyed the 
          explosive riposte to all of James Cameron's tiresome T2 "There 
          is no fate but what we make" moralising in TERMINATOR 3: THE 
          RISE OF THE MACHINES (9pm, Sun, C5)... SPACE ODYSSEY - VOYAGE 
          TO THE PLANETS (9pm, Tue, BBC1) implies the BBC has actually 
          been paying attention to Matt "Yahoo Serious" Jones' blog post 
          http://blackbeltjones.typepad.com/work/2004/01/a_dare.html - 
          except they've cut out the tedious "actually going to planets" 
          element and just show the cool sci-fi footage that, since the 
          1970s, the public have actually come to prefer... while, as 
          we've said before, we're not sure about the musical numbers, 
          but the "Tundra" episode remains an excellent introduction to 
          THE MIGHTY BOOSH (7pm, Wed, BBC2) - though will it still 
          contain the incongruous lines "icy bastard" and "You said it, 
          bitch"? http://www.themightyboosh.inuk.com/tundra.html ... 
          
          FILM>> as we noted about 4 years ago, KW Jeter's "Blade Runner 
          2: The Edge Of Human" does not appear to be the inspiration 
          for this week's same-scenes-as-the-first-film-but-in-a-
          slightly-different-order sequel BRIDGET JONES 2: THE EDGE OF 
          REASON (imdb: bangkok-thailand; boyfriend-girlfriend-
          relationship; england; germany; premarital-sex)... oddly, the 
          http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ detected "one use of strong language 
          and moderate violence" in the 111m 58s subtitled/ Cantonese 
          cut of wirework-heavy sporting-cliche wuxia-nonsense SHAOLIN 
          SOCCER, though an additional incident of "drug use" has crept 
          into the dubbed-English 87m 25s edit that's being semi-widely 
          released over here... then next week, it's back to Mel Gibson 
          "Conspiracy Theory" territory again in Denzel Washington 
          political brainwashing remake THE MANCHURIAN CANDIDATE 
        ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/manchuriancandidate_the.htm :
          mother using son for personal gratification; gambling; a 
          single use of the most foul of the foul languages; bizarre 
          drawings of evil and murder, repeatedly)... 
          

                               >> 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
            "as disappointed with Halo 2 as you are (NB: SPOILERS)"
 www.google.com/groups?selm=72bc196b.0411082252.4dc5c309%40posting.google.com

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