Need To Know 2005-03-18

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NTK 2007

NTK 2006

2005-12-02
#366
Revealing the totaliser for this year's appeal

2005-11-04
#365
November spawns a Dorkbot

2005-10-07
#364
Mery, Cory, Buzz and Ning

2005-09-02
#363
Cheap books and backronyms

2005-08-01
#362
Digital Rights vs The Management

2005-07-01
#361
Open Tech registration, WhatTheHack, Aibo Nation

2005-05-27
#360
*Not* NotCon 2005, Punt Picnic Ahoy!

2005-05-13
#359
The XML Factor, Microsoft mind robbery

2005-04-29
#358
oh no, not again

2005-04-15
#357
not a(nother) pathetic MP quiz

2005-04-01
#356
Temptation and the Supremes

2005-03-18
#355
O'Reilly Factored

2005-03-04
#354
There's money in them thar licenses

2005-02-18
Mini NTK #31
Contentions, M and S pants

2005-02-04
#353
Round up the usual patents

2005-01-21
#352
Mucker, Tucker, Ducker - and Spaz

2005-01-07
#351
Freedom of Information, Vectors of Zorn

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"The book is everywhere. There is a very real risk that many people who read it will believe that the fables it contains are true..." - Catholic archbishop speaks out against "shameful and unfounded lies" in best-selling novel The Da Vinci Code http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/entertainment/arts/4350625.stm ...and Christians in particular have proved themselves oddly susceptible to this kind of ruse >> HARD NEWS << hurrahs and booze Drunk with the promise of hardware hacking, also cocktails, EMERGING TECHNOLOGY, O'Reilly's annual neophiliac frenzy, reeled into gaudy San Diego this week: both hammered and hammering. Perhaps led astray by the still alarmingly high Brit content ("English accents make all presentations more entertaining", says the peanut gallery on IRC, suspiciously), perhaps engaged by the Google-Yahoo-Apple- Microsoft-plex sponsors' free drink, the overall tone seemed to be less chin-stroking, and more "nothing that can't be solved with an engineering metaphor, some alcohol and maybe a power drill". Perhaps most disturbing, in that context, was Drew Endy's synthetic biology talk, in which MIT sets about building a DNA mechanical parts bank (with explanations on how teenage biohackers might synthesise it at home). Or the ever-lurid imagination of old NTK friend JAMES LARSSON, whose mix of chicken electrocution, puns, and disturbing seduction hacks certainly required some kind of a stiff drink afterwards. http://parts.mit.edu/ - wait, what's in this cocktail again? http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0596009224/needtoknow0e - issue 1 of "Make" hardware hack magazine, UKP6.96, out now It's usually around this time of year that people start asking "Hang on, why don't we do an EtCon-kind-of show - right here!" (in the UK, that is), and we do have a few ideas along these lines already - though (currently) no particular constraints on when to hold it. Help us out by mailing tips@spesh.com with events we should try to avoid clashing with, ones we could perhaps catch people en route to (the Netherlands' 4-yearly WHAT THE HACK at the end of July, for instance), or if you know of any interesting speakers who don't usually come to the UK but are going to do so at some point during the year. On a completely separate note - and shorter timescale - we'd also like to hear any "alternative" ways you could suggest of celebrating next month's WIPO-sponsored WORLD INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY DAY, with a particular emphasis on stunts that are actually constructive and could generate some positive WIPO- countering press, possibly a problem with one previous proposal regarding "book-burning" parties. No, not like the Nazis - burning out-of-copyright books onto free CDs! http://www.own-it.org/events/details/?eventId=66&p=1 - this one at the Patent Office/ the very heart of Mordor http://www.whatthehack.org/ - via the always-interesting http://www.ukuug.org/diary/ >> EVENT QUEUE << GOTOs considered non-harmful Just a small point about #33 in O'Reilly's MIND HACKS guide: as any fan of signal detection theory will tell you, it's not universally the case that adding noise to a weak signal increases its detectability - if, for instance, you were trying to spot a single, one-off stimulus in a random environment, adding more noise would just increase the number of false positives. "Stochastic resonance" (as described in "Mind Hacks") is more like an artefact of the way that a periodic - or otherwise predictable - signal tends to be more detectable than a more random one, and that averaging noise over time effectively corresponds to lowering the detection threshold or increasing the gain. So: don't go asking obvious questions like that when authors Matt Webb and Tom Stafford demo some of their popular cog-science pub-tricks from the book (6.30pm, Wed 2005-03-23, 2nd Floor, Foyles Bookshop, London WC2H 0EB, UKP4 redeemable against purchase of O'Reilly publications on the night) - if only because someone's sure to try and prove they really can boost their wifi reception using a Van Der Graaf machine. http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2005/03/mind_hacks_at_foyles.html - depending on the periodicity of the 802.11 signal, of course http://hacks.oreilly.com/pub/h/2800 - sensors detect: link moved to http://neurodyn.umsl.edu/sr/ http://www.socialtext.net/loicwiki/index.cgi?london_europablog - some sort of Six Apart blogging bash in London this Thursday http://doors8delhi.doorsofperception.com/ - "Doors of Perception 8" in Delhi from Mon (Stirling Albion: nil) http://www.spaceuk.org/conf2005/2005.htm - UKP35/ day Brit rocket retrospective at end of month, Surrey http://www.gilscottheron.com/lywhitey.html - or, as Gil Scott-Heron puts it, "Whitey on the Moon" >> ANTI-MEMES << there's smoke, flames, http://dohthehumanity.com/ would be a shoo-in for worst Photoshop montage of the month, but now we're worried that might adversely prejudice our application for a PhD in "Progressive House with Applied Techno": http://www.courses.dce.harvard.edu/~musie145/ ... nearly as laugh-out-loud as Wikipedia - but intentionally so: http://mrpalmguru.com/uncyclopedia/ ... right-hand image filename not quite the "right-on" image they told designers they were aiming for: http://www.little-shop.com/aims.html ... "The only word I can imagine to define this company's client support service? Fascinating. Quite fascinating, Captain": http://www.webhost4life.com/ ... Google Goofs o' the week: http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22viscous+assault%22 , http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22vicious+fluid%22 , http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22investment+baking%22 , http://www.google.com/search?q=%22perspective+employer%22 ... aghast BBC warns of "network of computer buffs who derived pleasure from cracking codes protecting copyrighted software such as Windows 95": http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/4205559.stm ... >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Despite all the alcohol/bioterror/loft-party nonsense of ETECH, there's a halo effect of genuinely-useful code releases - albeit mostly written during the presentations. It's especially good for the "BigCos" (cough) who show that they're listening to Uncle Tim and sharing more than just the booze. Amazon's new OPENSEARCH, for example, is both a small step towards the Semantic Web and a nifty way to offload their indexing onto other people. GOOGLE took the opportunity to showcase their eclectic collection of Open Source projects, ranging from sparse hashtables to, um, something that dumps core (but dumps it really well). SIXAPART quickly followed suit, though theirs was more of a "Here are our Perl modules, and... oh! Look what we found in LiveJournal's cupboard!" affair. And for all the non-developer suits confounded by low- flying memes exploding from every corner, YAHOO!'s new "Tech Buzz Game" was there to soothe the capitalist brow: you may not understand it, but that won't stop you making money off it. http://www.sixapart.com/pronet/weblog/2005/03/opensearch_at_e.html - we weren't joking about that "written during" thing http://code.google.com/ - Hashtable has ImFeelingLucky() function, returns targeted ad objects http://www.sixapart.com/pronet/docs/powertools - all of LiveJournal's GPLed goodies except for, um, LiveJournal http://buzz.research.yahoo.com/bk/index.html - "Buy FOLKSONOMY! And all the typo variants too!" >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> a surprise (Dr Who-spoiling?) showing of the early, funny episodes of Sky1 stalwart BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER comes to 6.40pm, Sat, C5... Mel Gibson plays a "deeply religious" Air Cavalry helicopter enthusiast in Nam revisionism WE WERE SOLDIERS (9.10pm, Sat, ITV)... and expect slightly more of the "Good British name" Pub Landlord catchprases than his "Police Academy" weapon sound-effects in AN AUDIENCE WITH AL MURRAY (9.15pm, Sat, ITV)... reality-show-examining hypothetical- future drama-documentary IF - TV GOES DOWN THE TUBE is ignominiously shunted off to 11.20pm, Mon, BBC2... BBC4 counterpoints human-shield tragi-comedy BAGHDAD OR BUST (9pm, Wed, BBC4) with acclaimed analysis of US military-industrial policy WHY WE FIGHT (10pm, Wed, BBC4)... and, following a week that's featured ironically repeat-based DOCTOR WHO NIGHT (7.30pm, Sat, BBC2), and both of the Peter Cushing movies DOCTOR WHO AND THE DALEKS (3.50pm, Sat, BBC2) plus DALEKS - INVASION EARTH 2150AD (12.40pm, Fri, C4), we're still hoping that the new series of DOCTOR WHO (7pm, next Sat, BBC1) will incorporate some of the League of Gentlemen's 'zine spoof, "Dandy Lord": http://www.ntk.net/2005/misc/dandylord.html ... FILM>> "not as bad as it could have been", yet "not a patch on the 'Hellblazer' comic either" is the unsurprising verdict on gothic Keanu Reeves supernatural nonsense-fest CONSTANTINE ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/constantine.htm : The angel Gabriel was a potty-mouthed androgynous female [Tilda Swinton] while the Bible says otherwise; spiritual use of lukewarm in clear defiance of God's admonition against being lukewarm; That God and Satan made a wager sounds as if the story is saying God and Satan are equal in power and authority!)... you suspect that British audiences may come up with their own "four-letter" solution to the Hangman poster http://www.empiremovies.com/posters.php?id=571 for low-budget sub-"Fight Club" artsy psychological potboiler THE MACHINIST ( http://cndb.com/movie.html?title=Machinist%2C+The+%282004%29 : Jennifer Jason Leigh lies in bed with Christian Bale and reveals her rack at the 20 and 59-minute marks)... the imminent Easter holidays are marked with the release of CGI romp ROBOTS ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/robots.htm : transsexual suggestion; posterior in face humor; flatulence, repeatedly)... then, next week, expect MISS CONGENIALITY 2: ARMED AND FABULOUS (imdb: break-up/ drag-queen/ fake-breasts/ hung-upside-down/ ski-mask/ underwater-scenes) to largely overshadow Will "Anchorman" Ferrell and Radha "Pitch Black" Mitchell in quirky Woody Allen "comedy v tragedy" intertextual exercise MELINDA AND MELINDA (MPAA: PG-13 - adult situations involving sexuality, and some substance material)... >> 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 "much-admired" http://www.lifehacker.com/software/announcements/lifehacker-faq-028869.php 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) 2005 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.