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

         
         But the dependence on computers by the industry means 
         passengers are likely to see more flight delays caused by 
         computer errors in the future. "I'm afraid so," said airline 
         industry analyst Michael Boyd. "As long as *computers continue 
         to be made and operated by humans*, we're going to have the 
         problem..." [our emphasis]
         http://www.jsonline.com/bym/news/dec04/287755.asp
         - The funding bill is passed. The system goes online on August 
         4th, 1997. Human decisions are removed from all airline flight 
            scheduling. "SkyNet" begins to learn at a geometric rate...


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                             insufficient excuse

         So what did you do on your Newtonmas Holidays? Made a New
         Year's Resolution to foment revolution, possibly using your
         cool decentralised reputation-management idea, which this
         year you'll be writing in OCaml or maybe Ruby? Well, if that
         doesn't pan out again, here's what some other NTK readers
         came up with on their societally-mandated periods of enforced
         semi-isolation: 

         The shadowy figures behind SPY.ORG.UK (of which we cannot
         speak, but who have haunted NTK since issue 1) have started
         a blog to gather and their track Freedom of Information
         requests, so you can have a nice RSS feed of wriggling civil
         servant replies. And, just to make life even more snugly
         private, you can anonymously provide your own requests,
         which they will forward as a sort of human anonymising proxy.
         http://www.spy.org.uk/foia/
              - watching him (or her) writing to them, writing to you
 http://community.foe.co.uk/tools/right_to_know/request_generator.html
                - links to Friends Of The Earth DIY request generator
         http://www.spy.org.uk/icb/
            - and analysis of ID cards bill too, speaking of which...

         And GAVIN BELL, smarting that the only official copies of the 
         EU Constitution reside in some PDFs marked "Beware of the
         Leopard", is creating a usable, permalinkable, annotable
         version for the Web. He's looking for Moveable Type and
         Mediawiki hackers to help him out. The perfect hobby for
         those wanting to open up what Gavin says will be "the social
         software for 500 million people for the next twenty years" -
         or if you just want to *really* annoy Andrew Orlowski.
         http://www.betageek.co.uk/
          - your chance to put tubgirl links into a founding document
         http://www.flickr.com/photos/doctorow/3021490/
                - looks like Andrew may have other things on his mind
         http://www.commonhouse.net/wiki/secretorigins
           - speaking of wiki-fiddling: help Danny talk design in Jan
        

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

         Taiwanese heatsinks offer "high-density excretion technology", 
         "crotched fin design" http://www.evercool.com.tw/index_eng.htm 
         ... depending on level of responsibility, perks include "home-
         made chilled apple, avacado and ginger soup", or "home-made 
         mulled wine": http://historicalengineering.com/People.shtml 
         ... Dell miss the "destroying what they're trying to save" 
         subtext of "Team America": http://delltechforce.com/ - vs 
         http://theserverside.net/news/thread.tss?thread_id=30491 : 
         MSDN meets TVGoHome... for top-notch "lorem ipsum" copy needs: 
        http://translationexpress.co.uk/translators/latin_translator.php
         ... (semi-)new thrill - puerile Google Scholar misspellings: 
         http://scholar.google.com/scholar?&q=%22neuron+scattering%22 , 
         http://google.com/scholar?&q=%22silicon+geranium%22 - maybe 
         not fully http://google.com/scholar?&q=%22pier+reviewed%22 ? 
         ... "I took them away from all that, and now they work for - 
         Jakob Nielsen": http://nngroup.com/events/tutorials/camp.html 
         (bottom of page)... 

          
                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         Flash? Open fire all weapons and dispatch war rocket "Ajax"
         to bring back its body! Ah, we wish: but if you'd like to
         dick around with vector graphics without delving into
         Macromedia's proprietary little quarterback, Walter Zorn's
         ingenious JAVASCRIPT VECTORGRAPHICS LIBRARY may be worth a
         peek. Using coloured DIVs and some of that old Bresenham
         algorithm magic, Zorn has done the impossible:
         standards-based, programmatic drawing of lines, rects, and
         ellipses anywhere on the Web's broad canvas, from IE 4
         upwards. Performance is... forgiveable: old schoolers may
         find themselves typing "FOR I = 0 TO 360" instead of legal
         JavaScript at times. The library has been around for so
         long, we're surprised it hasn't popped up more before; but
         there's still time to score ridiculous amounts of hits for
         your JavaScript implementation of Missile Command.
         http://www.walterzorn.com/jsgraphics/jsgraphics_e.htm
                           - you only have 17 hours to save the earth
         http://www.whatwg.org/specs/web-apps/current-work/#graphics
                                  - kills time while waiting for this
         

                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         TV>> Jessica "Spaced" Stevenson and the writer of "My Family" 
         - together at last! - inexplicably avoid a "sex" pun for the 
         title of doubtless-abysmal new sitcom ACCORDING TO BEX (9pm, 
         Fri, BBC1), though perhaps it was called "The Joy Of Bex" or 
         "The Opposite Of Bex" in development and changed at the last 
         minute... the BBC come up with an innovative new vehicle for 
         expensive acquisition Dom Joly - aimless, "absurdist" hidden-
         camera pranks - in WORLD SHUT YOUR MOUTH (10.35pm, Fri, BBC1) 
         - should be more laughs in imaginative teen-horror procedural 
         FINAL DESTINATION (11.05pm, Fri, BBC1)... and it's not 
         entirely clear where the estimate of "3000-8000 obscenities" 
         originally came from (The Daily Mail?), but given that Richard 
         "Fist Of Fun" Thomas and Stew Lee's JERRY SPRINGER - THE OPERA 
         (10pm, Sat, BBC2) is only 2 hours long, that's an impressive 
         rate of one every 2.4-0.9 seconds... the world seems strangely 
         less outraged by the prospect of imminent environmental 
         catastrophe, as highlighted by C4's WAR ON TERRA season 
         (7.30pm, Sat, C4), also featuring "current effects of climate 
         change" SEVEN DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WEATHERMEN (8pm, Sun, C4) 
         and anti-car exploration WHAT WOULD JESUS DRIVE? (8pm, Mon, 
         C4)... political reality-show VOTE FOR ME (11pm, Mon-Fri, ITV) 
         falls into the usual trap of assuming that the public will 
         deign to exhibit even the slightest interest in the "winners" 
         of these programmes ever again... while a new series of HORIZON 
         (9pm, Thu, BBC2) preserves its up-to-the-minute reputation 
         with an overdue look at the phenomenon of "global dimming": 
      http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/feature/story/0,13026,1108853,00.html ...
         
         FILM>> sadly the controversy over unflinching portrayals of 
         "alternative lifestyles" and military imperialism threatens to 
         overshadow the epic technical achievement - but that's enough 
         about next week's magnificently jaw-dropping pseudo-satire 
         TEAM AMERICA: WORLD POLICE ( http://mpaa.org/ : Rated R for 
         graphic crude and sexual humor, violent images and strong 
         language - all involving puppets)... apparently cinemagoers 
         were less surprised to learn that the protagonist was bisexual 
         than to learn he had a broad Irish accent in Oliver Stone's 
         characteristically sweeping-yet-underdeveloped ALEXANDER 
         ( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=Alexander+%282004%29 : 
         Rosario ["Josie And The Pussycats"] Dawson's nude scene comes 
         at 1 hour and 30 minutes into the film; We see [Colin 
         Farrell's] bare ass about 15 minutes after the wedding scene) 
         ... while Michael "Batman" Keaton can "hear dead people" in 
         radio and TV static - presumably inquiring how they're going 
         to continue contacting the living when the "analogue switch-
         off" eventually comes around - in not-based-on-the-excellent-
         Dom-DeLillo-novel psychological horror nonsense WHITE NOISE 
         ( http://mpaa.org/ : Rated PG-13 for violence, disturbing 
         images and language)...


                               >> 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
                    "annoyingly, rtk.net was already taken"
                   http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk/4142755.stm


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