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          "Michael Hulme says part of the reason why the mobile is so 
           successful is that it takes us away from where we are..."
         - Mobiles 'part of social fabric' shocker, muses Click Online
                                   http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/4297993.stm
           ...as ingeniously symbolised by those giveaway "mobile" and 
                                         "telephone" parts of its name

         
                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                               largesse accrues

          Don't do popular things! Stop it! The government's Green
          Paper on the BBC caught the corporation in the "manic" stage
          of its traditional bi-polar swing. As the BBC continues to
          frenzedly chase ratings, the BBC was warned that it was
          getting too commercial, and should return to producing
          high-quality output untouched by popularist taint. Next
          charter, in 2016, of course, the BBC will be warned that it
          is too elitist, and should start trying to pander to popular
          tastes. But in the mean time, what of THE CREATIVE ARCHIVE,
          the BBC's plan to free at least some of its content for
          remixing under a more liberal license? "Likely to be popular
          with the public", warns the government, and rumbles that the
          it should be the very first experimental subject of the new
          BBC Trust's "public value and market impact tests". With
          commercial radio already leering hopefully at the Beeb's
          radio back catalogue, will the Archive be the first piece of
          meat thrown to the "stop being so popular so we don't have 
          to compete" crowd? Or will those keen commercial types
          realise that, when it comes to "opening up new markets",
          everyone getting it for free always beats one company paying
          for access?
http://www.bbccharterreview.org.uk/pdf_documents/bbc_cr_greenpaper.pdf
                              - search for "archive", just like we did
http://www.bbc.co.uk/pressoffice/pressreleases/stories/2004/05_may/26/
        - "Doctor What, Everything?" is our current snappy name for it
          http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/4309325.stm
           - who else gives you PDF file sizes to three decimal places?

          Of course, for those who might consider the BBC license to
          be "dirty money", there *are* other ways of subsidising the
          release of freely licensed works. Jason Clifford's UK FREE
          SOFTWARE NETWORK, for example - the ISP that spends all its
          profits in donations to free software. The blood and sweat
          and toil of Clifford's obsessive altruism has now borne
          fruit, and the Association for Free Software is handing out
          the first round of money. Just write your grant proposal and
          send it off to them. There's UKP1500 to give away, with
          hopefully more to come. Yay! Free as in money!
          http://www.affs.org.uk/grants/
             - "we *strongly* prefer formats usable with free software"
          http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02002-11-22&l=54#l
                                                    - the story so far
          http://www.ukfsn.org/finance.html
                                 - and what he promised, open accounts


                               >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                         GOTOs considered non-harmful

          The ravaged US economy creates favourable conditions for 
          attempting the fabled "Grand Slam" of the GDC GAMES DEVELOPERS 
          CONFERENCE (from Mon 2005-03-07, San Francisco, from $195), 
          SXSW INTERACTIVE (from next Fri 2005-03-11, Austin, Texas, 
          from $275), and the O'REILLY EMERGING TECHNOLOGY CONFERENCE 
          (from next Mon 2005-03-14, San Diego, California, from $425). 
          But for anyone sticking in the blizzard-swept UK, let's have 
          our own crazy cutting-edge celebration right here, possibly 
          under the aegis of NATIONAL SCIENCE WEEK (from next Fri 2005-
          03-11, assorted times and venues), featuring yet another hee-
          hee-hilarious IG NOBEL TOUR (Oxford, Warrington, Nottingham 
          plus an already-sold-out one in London), and unofficially 
          culminating in our old techno-artist pals JON THOMSON and 
          ALISON CRAIGHEAD returning - in triumph! - to DORKBOT LONDON 
          (from 7pm, next Wed 2005-03-16, State51, Rhoda St, London E2 
          7EF, free), ably supported by a folksonomic black cab "derive" 
          entitled "Taxi-onomy" (you see what they've done there?) and - 
          of course - some RSS poetry.
          http://interactive.usc.edu/archives/003955.html
             - aren't all GDC delegates "wandering monsters", in a way?
          http://2005.sxsw.com/interactive/
           - with blinking Malcolm Gladwell, Bruce Sterling, "Wonkette"
          http://conferences.oreillynet.com/etech/
             - roll up for the Wired Editor and his amazing "Long Tail"
          http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/
                       - no, not the "John Thomson" off "The Fast Show"
          http://www.the-ba.net/the-ba/NationalScienceWeek/
             - "compose a poem" not quite the "science" we had in mind


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

          reassuringly authentic-looking not-pasted-in-at-all screen: 
          http://itsafe.gov.uk/about/picture_800.html - vs a scientist, 
          thinking deeply: http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/event.asp?id=2953 
          ... spot the test data: http://www.cs.ucla.edu/~kohler/pubs/ 
          vs http://isotropic.org/uw/papers/chicken.pdf ... clearly one 
          way of stopping phishers, anyone else from sending you mail: 
          http://www.banksafeonline.org.uk/ ... which is a spoof portal, 
          which an amusingly-named Eastern European web design agency?: 
          http://www.wankadoo.co.uk/ , http://hulan.cz/redakcni-system/ 
          ... for one week only - "one of these not SFW like the others" 
          http://images.google.com/images?q=%22Big+Cook%22 , plus your 
          regular http://www.google.com/search?q=pgp+%22key+singing%22 , 
          "pedantric", "greasepoof", "freshmean", "enchanced" and 
          http://www.google.com/search?q=%22duel+carriageway%22 ... 
          reader Rod Begbie greases that slippery slope a little more: 
         http://groovymother.com/archives/2005/02/28/dave_winers_wor.html
         

                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

          It's not the Smalltalkiness of it; it's not the 
          Cocoaliciousness of it; it's the funky APL sideburns that's 
          made F-SCRIPT so tempting. F-Script is a scripting language 
          for MacOS X that takes that OS's object frameworks and slips 
          them into a Smalltalk syntax, then left-hooks it all with an 
          inexplicably neat multiple receiver syntax called OOPAL which 
          lets you use things called "message templates" to fire off the 
          same message to an array of objects, and ponce around like you 
          just don't need loops or iterators any more. Soon you'll 
          realise that this is brilliant, yet there's almost nothing you 
          can do with F-Script. But wait! Along comes F-Script 
          Everywhere that - in theory - allows you to browse and probe 
          ObjC objects in any running application. And, finally, when 
          you tire of that, the author hints that the next version will 
          give F-Script the ability to create new classes of its own, 
          which is what it desperately needs to become a first-class 
          scripting citizen. In the meantime, come for the OOPAL, stay 
          for the OOPAL, leave taking the OOPAL with you to your own 
          weirdo language. 
          http://www.fscript.org/
                                       - the manual is pretty readable 
          http://www.fscript.org/download/FScriptGuide.pdf
                        - and page 25 is where it starts getting funky

         
                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

          TV>> the competition for "TV's Worst Tech Show" continues to 
          hot up, with CLICK ONLINE (8.30pm, Sat; 4.30pm, Sun, BBC News 
          24) - which last week chose to pronounce "moblog" as "mob-log" 
          - increasingly under threat from the sub-"Tomorrow's World" 
          explanations of THE GADGET SHOW (7.30pm, Fri, C5), this week 
          thrillingly comparing Linux to Microsoft Windows... Saturday 
          is black helicopters night, in the company of not-bad Mel 
          Gibson mind-controller CONSPIRACY THEORY (9.15pm, Sat, C4) 
          plus Clipper-chip hacking romp SNEAKERS (11.20pm, Sat, ITV)... 
          still, we all question the nature of reality - but do we 
          *really* question the nature of reality? - ponders one of the 
          best-ever episodes of THE MIGHTY BOOSH (11.40pm, Sun, BBC2)... 
          it doesn't look like we'll be seeing Wendy Grossman appearing 
          in HIGH SPIRITS WITH SHIRLEY GHOSTMAN (10.30pm, Sun, BBC3) any 
          time soon: http://www.theinquirer.net/?article=20281 ... in 
          case you were wondering, C4 *has* embarked on yet another 
          back-slapping orgy of X-RATED: THE TV THEY TRIED TO BAN (10pm, 
          Sun, C4), concluding with the implicit assumption that 
          advertising per se is in some way defensible or worthwhile in 
          X-RATED: THE ADS THEY COULDN'T SHOW (10pm, Thu, C4)... while 
          Mode 7 "Gagfax" graphics were once considered primetime 
          entertainment, reveals COMEDY CONNECTIONS' look back at "Three 
          Of A Kind" (11pm, Mon, BBC1)... 
           
          FILM>> the West may have largely failed to intervene in the 
          country's horrific 1994 genocide but - to our eternal credit - 
          we've made by far the best movie about it in HOTEL RWANDA 
         ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : Contains moderate war images and 
          strong language)... the makers of "Dude, Where's My Car?" were 
          at least cogent enough to rename their latest stoner odyssey 
          from the US-burger-chain-centric "Harold & Kumar Go To White 
          Castle" to the rib-tickling HAROLD & KUMAR GET THE MUNCHIES 
         ( http://cndb.com/ : [Malin "Earth: Final Conflict" Akerman is] 
          wearing shorts and a blouse with only three buttons)... and 
          the filth continues in ideological sexologist biopic KINSEY 
          ( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=9+Songs+%282004%29 : 
          Male nudity is not really my thing, so I can't give this 
          a full four-star rating, but if you happen to be a Peter 
          Sarsgaard fan, and were dissapointed with "The Center of the 
          World", this is definitely the movie for you)... plus next 
          Fri's widely-covered-elsewhere concert-movie-with-a-difference 
          9 SONGS ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : Contains frequent strong 
          real sex)... 


                               >> 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
                        "comparatively homophone-free"
                  http://www.qwghlm.co.uk/blog.php?article=610

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