"Once installed the ['Skulls' malware] replaces all the icons
on the main page with skulls and replaces all the working
applications, such as contacts, calendar, notebook etc with
non-working versions so the phone becomes almost useless.
The only thing the phone can do is *make and take calls*..."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/4033231.stm [our emphasis]
- Nokia users, eh? Are they *never* satisfied?
>> HARD NEWS <<
merci beaucoups
The app that we've always dreamed of - the one that goes
around the Internet, finds every embarassing mention of you
ever, and then magically deletes it - may finally be
available. Attorney General LORD GOLDSMITH, in his role as
the Peer who goes "Shhhh!", reminded the newspapers that
they couldn't talk about current court cases without being
in contempt of court. Then, going all futuristic cyber-Lord
Justice Dredd on us, he added that if newspapers had any
articles in their online archives about people in the case,
published *before the case even existed*, they should delete
them for the duration of the trial. To repeat that for the
hard of believing: you can't stop jurors from using Google,
so the entire media should modify their online history, or
risk contempt of court proceedings. How will this work
exactly? A juror googles a defendant's name, clicks on the
first link and then says "Well, this blog links to a Times
story with the tag 'dog raper still in the news', but the
link leads to a 404, SO NOTHING HAPPENED?". I mean, we all
knew that the blogosphere was beneath contempt: but will
that now actually be a defence in the eyes of the law?
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1375365,00.html
- go through Google News to see this without a subscription
http://www.spy.org.uk/spyblog/archives/2004/11/attorney_genera.html
- or see it here permanently recorded (you see how this works?)
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
GOTOs considered non-harmful
Obviously we're sceptical about events promising "amazing
insights into how search engines actually work", but we guess
it's not so bad when they're actually being run by Google - in
this case, under the inspirationally generic title of GOOGLE
TECH TALK (7pm, Monday 2004-11-29, Huxley Lecture Theatre 311,
Imperial College, London SW7 2BZ, free but looks like you have
to RSVP). Plus, there's also the opportunity to talk to the
company's VP of Operations, Urs Hoelzle (anag.), about
"exciting jobs in engineering", if you know what they mean.
For those hoping to construct their own category-killing
search site, however, we are assured that there are "a few"
places left at December's LONDON PERL WORKSHOP (Sat 2004-12-
11, Imperial College Student Union, London SW7 2BB, free but
you have to pre-register on the site) - featuring streams on
both "Advanced" and "Learning" Perl, the latter introduced by
NTK's own "Dave Green", possibly with a song, should that be
likely to swing it for you one way or the other.
http://dev.pulsegroup.com/google/gl0262
- not quite where NotCon was, but just round the corner?
http://www.google.co.uk/jobs/culture.html
- "typical day" apparently involves everything except work
http://london.pm.org/lpw/signup.html
- looks like you have to just fill in the survey now
http://www.no2id.net/events/brixton.html
- Stop Press: No2ID public meeting in Brixton on Tue
http://www.buynothingday.co.uk/
- and don't forget not to buy anything this Saturday
http://www.nmk.co.uk/event/2004/12/14/Christmas-Lecture
- not even tickets for Eva Pascoe's Christmas Lecture, Dec 14
http://www.pirateutopia.org/
- or more Open Source theatre at Norwich Arts Centre next week
>> ANTI-MEMES <<
there's smoke, flames, http://dohthehumanity.com/
"More than 80% of male members who visited Japan to see
Japanese women in July 2004 became a couple and started a
serious relationship": http://www.destinajapan.us/ ... oldie
but goodie: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=recursively
... another triumph for "international product naming" dept:
http://countrystore.tabasco.com/index_category.cfm?tlcatid=299
... starting to see why author "wishes to remain anonymous":
http://www1.us.ioccc.org/2004/anonymous.hint ... moderately
seasonal/ management-themed Google goofs of the month:
http://google.com/search?q=%22office+manger%22 (and variants),
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22mythical+man+moth%22, plus
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22pubic+domain%22 ... new
thrill! surreally inapproriate (yet SFW) Google imagewhacks:
http://images.google.be/images?q=erotic+angels+of+rock ,
http://images.google.com/images?q=Dick+Cheney+Costume ...
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
"Most broadcasters are today standing about the equivalent
of one mile from Mount St Helens. When it blows, frankly, it
will be too late to run." Yet another of these P2P peers,
this time Lord Currie, chairman of OFCOM, fretting about
smug broadcasters getting blasted into oblivion by big fat
pipes and bigger hard disks. Well, stirring up the lava last
week was Lazyweb founder, Sahara multi-marathon running
maniac and all round Edwardian gentleman BEN HAMMERSLEY, who
from the comfort of his Florentine apartments has brewed up
RADIOPOD, a fistful of Perl glue code which you stick in a
cronjob, hand over some radio times as arguments, and watch
it chop up a Realplayer feed into individual programmes.
Marvel then as it saves them as MP3s and spits out a a
Podcast-friendly RSS2.0 feed. Then, we imagine, we just sit
around and roast some marshmallows.
http://www.benhammersley.com/weblog/2004/11/14/releasing_radiopod.html
- brave enough to flaunt copyright...
http://sourceforge.net/projects/radiopod/
- cheeky enough to start a SF project for a 4K script
http://www.rts.org.uk/Information_page_+_3_pic_det.asp?id=3587&sec_id=503-
- blah blah regulatory environment blah blah ARGH! FEET ARE MELTING!
http://blogtorrent.com/
- some more stuff to loosely join
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
TV>> it seems like something of a special "songwriters"
season, with Lennon and McCartney deconstructed in HOWARD
GOODALL'S 20TH CENTURY GREATS (7pm, Sat, C4), ELTON JOHN: AN
IVOR NOVELLO TRIBUTE (8pm, Sun, BBC1), CLOSE TO YOU: THE STORY
OF THE CARPENTERS (8pm, Sun, ITV3), plus IMAGINE: BRIAN
WILSON'S SMILE (10.35pm, Wed, BBC1)... John Cleese is unlikely
to be introducing many of his own starring roles in the-usual-
suspects-but-in-a-slightly-different-(based-on-UK-box-office-
takings)-order THE ULTIMATE FILM (9pm, Sat; 8pm, Sun, C4)...
and the characters don't really go anywhere, but really that's
just nitpicking as LITTLE BRITAIN NIGHT (from 9pm, Sun, BBC3)
offers (numerous?) "too hot for terrestrial" bits before
they're cut for BBC1 http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3964995.stm
(9.30pm, next Fri)... Arnie suggests a no-doubt popular
alternative to "hunting with dogs" in THE RUNNING MAN (9pm,
Sun, C5)... the winner of Brit "Spelling Bee" HARD SPELL (7pm,
Mon, BBC1) gets the chance to virtually firebomb civilian
populations in a pro-celebrity BOMBER CREW (9pm, Mon, C4)...
while, despite the recollections of EMPIRE WARRIORS (9pm, Fri,
BBC2), capitalism seems to kill far more people than terrorism
is ever going to, implies ONE NIGHT IN BHOPAL (9pm, Wed, BBC1)...
FILM>> great CGI hair, fabrics, action scenes etc, but isn't
the post-"Watchmen" plot basically "Spy Kids" featuring "The
Fantastic Four"?, we feel compelled to ask of THE INCREDIBLES
( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/incredibles_the.htm :
adolescent mischief with arrogant defense of it; smacking on
the bottom, twice; dressing to maximize the [cartoon] female
form)... still, following the recent poster quote advising
that "You Must See 'Saw'", at least there haven't been any
suggesting that you "Remember To Check Out" Julianne Moore
sub-PKD memory-tweaking NSA nonsense THE FORGOTTEN (imdb:
abduction; conspiracy; experiment; dutch-angle; shot-in-the-
back)... or even that you'll "[Heart]" David "Three Kings" O
Russell's ostensibly existential ensemble self-indulgence
I [HEART] HUCKABEES (imdb: sudanese; absurdism; vulgarity;
breast-suckling; topless; self-abuse; dinner-scene)...
AVAILABLE IN A WIDE RANGE OF BLACK>> and it's crazy Christmas
clearout time over at http://www.ntkmart.co.uk/ , as what may
be the last of the current incarnations of the "404: /Shirt
/Tie: Not Found" and "Hey Hey 16K" designs are joined by a
loosely law-enforcement themed selection identifying the
wearer as either "Network Security" (as proposed by the guys
over at PC Extreme magazine), opposed to ID cards (courtesy of
the http://www.no2id.net/ campaign), or simply "Police Aware"
(as originally nominated by reader ALEX TEUGELS just slightly
over three years ago - see NTK 2001-09-21)... as that time
delay implies, we're kind of doing OK for t-shirt concepts at
the moment, with favourites including Scott Keir's lonely
flashmob-wear http://www.scottkeir.com/solitary/solitary.png -
but could whoever sent in the "It's not Asperger's Syndrome"
slogan please get in touch? Still, we're always interested in
any ideas that are perhaps slightly more original than RICHARD
BEER's suggestion: "Any chance you can just copy some of the
excellent Thinkgeek ones? I'm not sure if they can copyright a
couple of words of text" - unless perhaps he's confusing us
with somebody else... which just leaves the celebrity-packed
results of this year's "Buy One, Subvert The Mass Media, Get
One Free" competition, with TV's PHILL JUPITUS and AL
Digital's ADAM LAURIE both losing points for locating their
illicit product placement in comparatively obscure media
outlets (The Yorkshire Evening Post and BBC News 24's "Click
Online", respectively http://www.ntkmart.co.uk/images/ ).
Congratulations therefore to our old Wired UK nemesis HARI
KUNZRU, for sneaking a (mildly) fictionalised version of the
old "iloveyou.vbs" design onto page 61 his new novel
"Transmission" - Hari wins a free t-shirt of his choice, just
as soon as he sends us a pic of the mention that we can put
on the site, or the book officially comes out in paperback in
2005, whichever happens first...
>> 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
"maximal in brain"
http://www.pnas.org/cgi/content/abstract/91/11/4975
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.
