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                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                                  warm vdu's

         And cue the Creative Archive! Oh sure, a few people have
         griped about the "no-endorsement" clauses (hey, even the
         mighty copyright-free NASA weakly requests you not to use
         its material to imply United States Starfleet support). And
         there's some real questions over what it means to be UK-only
         (Will the BBC enforce the rule with special GeoIP "detector
         vans" that will roam every street outside Britain? Is the
         BBC motto going to be "Nation Won't Let Nation Touch Its
         Preciousssss"? Or will the original copyright holders
         eventually wise up and see the benefits of inevitable
         worldwide distribution?) But the key promise has been
         preserved: no DRM, and a working demo to test the waters.
         Plus the Open University is on board, leading to potentially
         endless "Look Around You"-style parodies. Also, actual
         content: while nobody seems to have mentioned it, the BFI
         have stepped up to the mark with three CA-licensed works:
         "Silent Hamlet" (clearly some classic anime episode), "Looks
         very jolly, doesn't it?" (would work great in a video remix
         of Fatboy Slim's "Praise You"), and "Our New Errand Boy".
         Which, presumably, is some sort of ad for BitTorrent.
         http://creative.bfi.org.uk/
             - oh come on, "Praise You" must be public domain by *now*
http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/archives/what_is_the_creative_archive/
  - FAQ has entry for old Dr Who episodes, oddly overlooks uknova.com
         http://creativecommons.org.uk/
    - and not to be outdone, actual CC licenses for England and Wales

         Are we the only ones who suspect that when the election is
         over, CHRIS LIGHTFOOT will be mysteriously found to be Prime
         Minister, with the rest of the MySociety hackers in prominent
         cabinet positions? The speed by which they have,
         individually or acting in secret conspiracy, constructed
         fistfuls of election sites, surely hints at some deeper lust
         for power. Their slightly-defensively-domained NOTAPATHETIC
         DOT COM takes your confessions as to why you're not voting
         (we're looking forward to the MP's response site,
         IDONTBLOODYWORKFORYOUTHEN.COM). Lightfoot-hosted,
         party-based "Who Should I Vote For" competes with his
         honourable colleagues' more granualar seven-question quiz at
         Public Whip, which bases its demands on your personal MP's 
         voting patterns. If just one of these sites were rigged to 
         tell you to vote for the CVS party, they could get in with 
         a landslide.
         http://www.notapathetic.com/
- we only picked Chris as leader because we suspect he's good in a coup
         http://www.whoshouldyouvotefor.com/
             - it's the "So You're Trying To Deny Being Lib Dem" quiz!
         http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/election.php
                         - worth clicking around the rest of the site
         http://www.politicalsurvey2005.com/
      - and here's another one (which "political quiz taker" are you?)
         http://www.notapathetic.com/cgi-bin/tags.cgi
                          - there's a cry for help if ever we saw one
         http://www.mysociety.org/?cat=2
                                  - and another: the developer's blog
https://secure.mysociety.org/cvstrac/getfile/mysociety/bin/hassleblog?v=1.2
                          - the technical fix to their social problem 


                               >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                         GOTOs considered non-harmful

        "You know, you can tell GPS was invented by a man", we caught 
         ourselves thinking the other week, "because women tend not to 
         be quite so inexplicably terrified of asking for directions." 
         (Isn't that right, ladies? Well, isn't it?) Why not question 
         this - and other gender-related stereotypes - at the launch of 
         Cybersalon's VENUS RISING girl-gang think-tank (7pm this Tue 
         2005-04-19, Dana Centre, next to the Science Museum, 165 
         Queen's Gate, London SW7 5HE, free but RSVP to the email on 
         the site), a debate chaired by Cyberia co-founder Eva Pascoe 
         on whose turn it *really* is to "hold the remote control", if 
         you know what we mean. 
         http://www.cybersalon.org/future.html#venusrising
        - also Jungulator show + workshop in North London on Saturday
         http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/
       - multimedia "Erotic Shortcuts" at Dorkbot London on Wednesday
         http://www.tjm.org.uk/wakeup/comedy.shtml
      - free charity gig with Rob "Hello..." Newman, midnight tonight 
         http://www.notbbc.co.uk/not118/?31%5DaX%7BZrYx
              - or sponsor LeeAndHerring.com's Rob in London marathon
         http://www.penguicon.org/programming
     - Cory Doctorow *is* Meat Loaf at Penguincon, Michigan, April 22
         http://www.tvturnoff.org/week.htm
                    - and don't forget TV-Turnoff Week, from April 25


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

         Learn how to program your very own amazing disappearing left-
         hand rollover menu (in IE - even worse in Mozilla/ Firefox): 
      http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/Events/Oxbrookes/bookoxbrookes.shtml
         ... blinking botanists: http://www.botanic.co.uk/ ... "Do you 
         comply with the DDA?", reads an image with no "alt" attribute: 
         http://www.slingsby.com/ ... The Gadget Shop - (slightly 
         overpriced) FALCO!: http://toynewsmag.com/newsitem.php?id=61 
         ... browse the web - without leaving the comfort of the Half-
         Life 2 engine: http://www.hostile-planet.com/gallery.php?4 ... 
         perhaps making it slightly too easy for anyone to build their 
         own official-looking site: http://www.labour.co.uk/ - vs 
         esoteric satire: http://chimpen.com/tory/ ... so now maybe 
         someone could have a go at that other annoying thing he wrote, 
         retitled "If you're so super-smart, why don't you just work 
         out what the other kids are doing to make them so 'popular'?": 
         http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm ... 
         

                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         [TO TUNE OF "MICKEY", BY TONI BASIL] Greasemonkey, you're so
         fine, you're so fine, you rewrite incoming HTML on the fly
         within the Firefox browser, using user-defined Javascript
         scripts, the script being determined by the URL of the
         original page! Hey Greasemonkey! GM is the premier
         bit-tampering plugin, based on its growing library of
         rewriters, which do locally what the best guerilla usability
         sites did at the server: skin sites, strip ads, de-Flash
         Flickr, grab Salon daily passes, cut out Michael Jackson
         stories from Reuters, and splice Bloglines and Del.icio.us
         together in inhuman ways, and so forth. For those trapped 
         by the Time Wars in the 20th Century, there was briefly
         GREASEMONKIE, which did the same thing for Internet
         Explorer co-dependents. Todd Ostermeier even attempted to
         patch IE's idiosyncratic Javascript library so that
         Firefox-sourced scripts would work unchanged. But now,
         that's gone - and who will write a replacement? Will it be
         Dean Edwards, master of the IE7 library? Will it be you?
       http://www.daishar.com/downloads/GreasemonkIE/greasemonkie.msi
                                    - no. not you, the guy behind you
         http://dunck.us/collab/GreaseMonkeyUserScripts
                                       - don't break my heart, monkey 

         
                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         TV>> the "psychological" illusionist faces his greatest 
         challenge yet - befuddling the fearsome intellect of mental 
         giant Simon Pegg in DERREN BROWN: TRICK OF THE MIND (9.30pm, 
         Fri, C4)... C4 counts down THE 100 GREATEST ALBUMS (8pm, Sun, 
         C4) - which, for the benefit of our younger readers, were an 
         old-fashioned way of selling music that padded out the better-
         produced tracks with obvious filler material... similarly, it 
         may help to think of POINT BREAK (9pm, Sun, C4) as basically 
         "The Fast And The Furious", but with extreme sports instead of 
         racing cars... the British fixation with hobbies that are 
         extremely time-consuming, yet ultimately produce very little, 
         is celebrated in the three-part history of cartoons ANIMATION 
         NATION (9pm, Mon, BBC4)... "Best way to make it look like 
         you've lost weight? Holiday with Americans", recommends 
         obesity-reality docu WELCOME TO FATLAND (8pm, Tue, ITV)... 
         while Freeview watchers may sometimes feel they're in their 
         own special purgatory condemned to watch it every other week, 
         but it's always worth catching the magnificent production 
         design of Paul Anderson's demented "Solaris"-remake career-
         highlight, EVENT HORIZON (11.45pm, Fri, BBC1)...
         
         FILM>> spring is here at last, commemorated by traditional 
         cinematic celebrations of transformation and rebirth such as 
         Wes Craven's troubled Christina Ricci werewolf romp CURSED 
         ( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=Cursed+(2004) : After 
         Judy ["Arrested Development" Greer] is (spoiler!) killed she 
         is seen in the fetal position offering a split-second shot of 
         her ass in profile. Not brightly lit and far too brief to be 
         of much interest) - or the equally uninspiring Michael "Pearl 
         Harbor" Bay-produced retread of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (imdb: 
         haunted-house/ axe/ based-on-true-story/ demonic-possession) 
         ...then also next week, Debra "Prey, Will And Grace" Messing's 
         man-troubles continue in romantic gigolo farce THE WEDDING DATE
    ( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=Wedding+Date%2C+The+%282005%29
         When [Debra] embraces Dermot Mulroney and start[s] rolling 
         around, we get a nipple peek for about a second. Worth it only 
         if you are a Debra fan)...
          

                               >> 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
                                    "puckish"
www.corante.com/copyfight/archives/2005/04/04/gearing_up_for_world_ip_day.php


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