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

       
        "I'm a programmer by trade and I know probably several 
         hundred, and I have only ever met one woman," Mr Sear said
                       [end of] http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/4530583.stm
             - that's enough "I met a woman once" boasting from you, 
      Mr Super-Cool Games Programmer lording it over the rest of us


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                               MS misconstrues

         The 1400-word terms and conditions for MSN.CO.UK's strong-IP 
         "Thought Thieves" film competition are quite the read, even if 
         you're not the 14-17 year-old they're intended to be read and 
         understood by and complied with in their therein bywhich 
         entirety. Entries must be the "sole work and creation of the 
         person submitting the film" (no sharing your precious 
         intellectual property fluids with your cameraman, Mr Auteur); 
         must not "use third party intellectual property rights" (no 
         furniture, no architecture, only clouds as background); the 
         entry form additionally specifies "Should I be selected as a 
         finalist [...] I will formally licence on terms acceptable to 
         Microsoft, all intellectual property rights in my film and 
         agree to waive all moral rights in relation to my film if 
         requested to do so". But what we made us wonder was: where 
         exactly did Microsoft get this "Thought Thieves" idea from? 
         The idea that people can "steal your thoughts" is surely not 
         original. We're hoping for a class-action by paranoid 
         schizophrenics, who we think came up with the idea that others 
         are stealing the very THOUGHTS FROM YOUR MIND a good few years 
         before Microsoft started losing theirs.
         http://www.msn.co.uk/thoughtthieves/
                        - send us a copy of your entry. We'll do prizes.
         http://www.the-future-of-ideas.com/excerpts/index.shtm
      - Lessig's book starts at the exact point the T&C gets ridiculous 
         
         On top of that, legal experts agree, it's not like there's 
         usually copyright in "just an idea" in the first place. It's 
         this (and the fact that it only seems to encourage them) 
         that's preventing us from having more of a pop at sampling 
         pranksters NEGATIVLAND, no doubt currently asking themselves 
         how they can possibly stay cutting-edge and relevant in a 
         world where pretty much any semi-talented PC owner can churn 
         out audio collages to their sort of standard - and beyond. One 
         possibility, on their new album out May 26, has been to base 
         their 10-min "Downloading" track around former Grammy head's 
         Michael Greene's anthemic "insidious virus" address - yes, the 
         same one that NTK readers were enthusiastically remixing 
         shortly after he actually made the speech, certainly not much 
         more than three long years ago.
         http://www.negativland.com/nobiz/
            - yup, also appears in the epic http://djfood.org/info.html
         http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02002-05-10&l=70#l
            - vs http://www.ntk.net/2003/05/09/DownloadingLivesAway.mp3
         http://www.primalscreamremixed.com/
           - pioneering nu-skool of collages that actually "have a tune"


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         Worried that Java is insufficiently free for your dirty
         tree-hugging OpenOffice.Org? Hah - NeoOffice/J is far more
         blasphemous! For those who have already SOLD OUT and are
         running MacOSX, it's an OpenOffice implementation that has
         been stitched, with no care for scruples, to Java *and*
         Cocoa, and probably the corpses of some murdered free
         software coders too. Disorientingly, it works rather well,
         and rather speedily: you don't need X11, it uses Aqua menus
         (no Services, mind), and you can use Mac fonts and do that
         magic thing that open source practitioners have theorised
         may be "actually printing" (only 300dpi mind you). And it's
         GPLed too, so even when you're feeling bad, you don't have
         to *be* bad. Well, not very.
         http://www.neooffice.org/
- for those interested in software that is "free as in - oh shiny thing" 


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

         Morse: "This parchment - must date back to the Roman era. 
         Lewis, find me a Latin-speaking special constable right away": 
http://www.herts-recruitment.police.uk/03_specials/03.3_profile2_2004.htm 
         ... oh, those saucily-named Korean Nintendo DS dating sims: 
         http://www.touchdic.co.kr/ ... German comedy confectionery 
         page: http://nicoladoering.de/gbear.htm - as theoretically 
         rigorous as you'd expect... Google goofs of the edible/ 
         natural world: http://google.com/search?q=%22larva+lamp%22 , 
         http://google.com/search?q=%22doner+card%22 / "donor kebab", 
         http://www.google.com/search?q=%22endangered+spices%22 ... 
         PageRank to replace democracy - Andrew Orlowski's head to 
         explode: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/sd-2/ ... Google 
         apparently misunderstanding that this is what a search engine 
         is intended to do: http://google.com/press/testimonials.html ... 
         

                               >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                         GOTOs considered non-harmful

         And the award for this year's "Conference With The Most 
         Sessions Featuring The Letter X In Their Title" must surely be 
         in the bag for the event formerly known as XML Europe, XTECH 
         2005 (from Tue May 24, Rai Centre, Amsterdam, registration 
         fees from $175 for "Students without lunches" - lunch upwards 
         of $150 extra), where NTK readers Edd Dumbill and Matt 
         Biddulph have assembled an acronym-tastic lineup covering 
         XSLT, CMS, XAML, XUL, RSS, JFDI, ROME, XFY, IDE, FOAF, RDF and 
         SVG - and that's just on the first day! As Edd himself pointed 
         out, we've all come a long way since he first wrote to us 
         about how impressed he was by the "free orange squash and 
         choc-chip biscuits" being given away by one VC-happy exhibitor 
         at Kensington's "World Of Amiga" show back in July 1999...
         http://www.xtech-conference.org/2005/schedule.ASP
                - vs http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=01999-07-30&l=244#l
         http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/
          - Dorkbot London on Wed if you're not going to E3 or anything
         http://www.onedotzero.com/event.php?id=30952
          - onedotzero9 digital film stuff at the ICA at the end of May

         
                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         TV>> sure, we can understand it not being in the Top Ten or 
         anything, but surely it's an oversight to leave "Starship 
         Troopers" out of THE 100 GREATEST WAR FILMS (about 9pm, Sat 
         and Sun, C4) altogether?... presumably Errol "Fast, Cheap And 
         Out Of Control" Morris' extended Robert McNamara interview THE 
         FOG OF WAR (10pm, Sun, BBC2) was excluded from the chart for 
         slightly *too* unflinchingly depicting the real horrors of the 
         battlefield... while George Lucas' latest effort remains 
         largely uncriticised in both STAR WARS: FEEL THE FORCE (8pm, 
         Wed, Sky1) and GENERATION JEDI (9pm, Sun and Fri; 11.30pm, Tue 
         and Thu, BBC3)... expect a bit of coverage for CELEBRITY LOVE 
         ISLAND (10pm, weeknights, ITV), though frankly we're more 
         intrigued by the preposterous "past life regressions" of Dr 
         Fox, Anneka Rice, and Lisa I'Anson in HAVE I BEEN HERE BEFORE? 
         (1.30pm, Mon-Fri, ITV)... "The Money Programme" catches up 
         with the VOIP phenomenon in THE FREE PHONE CALL REVOLUTION 
         (7pm, Fri, BBC2)... and look out for http://snackspot.org.uk/ 
         savouries correspondent Stuart Campbell sharing his crisp-
         sampling expertise in the "Potatoes" edition of EVER WONDERED 
         ABOUT FOOD? (11.30am, next Sat, BBC2)... 
         
         FILM>> ditzy J-Lo discovers her husband-to-be is the son of 
         notorious serial killer Aileen Wuornos in slapstick sequel 
         MONSTER-IN-LAW ( http://ahafilm.info/movies/mr.phtml?fid=7651 :
         [Lopez] sits on the beach with four of her canine clients when 
         one of the dogs tries to mount another)... "no wirework, no 
         CGI, and very few scenes that don't feature some form of 
         kickboxing" are the unique selling points of onomatopoeic Thai 
         beat-'em-up ONG-BAK ( http://mpaa.org/ : Rated R for sequences 
         of strong violence, language, some drug use and sexuality)... 
         and speaking of martial arts, they don't seem to retained many 
         of the original Jackie Chan/ Jennifer Love Hewitt/ robot suit 
         characters in "The Tuxedo" time-travel followup THE JACKET 
         ( http://cndb.com/movie.html?title=Jacket%2C+The+%282005%29 : 
         After a heaping load of plot development, [Keira Knightley's] 
         character, much to our delight, decided to take a bath. She's 
         sitting in the tub, and her left breast can be seen for 
         several seconds)... then, next week, the special effects are 
         inevitably let down by all the mystical new-age nonsense, but 
         that's enough about quantum pseudoscience WHAT THE [BLEEP] DO 
         WE KNOW!? ( http://www.guardian.co.uk/life/badscience/ : [Jars 
         of] water photographed after positive words such as "love" and 
         "thank you" was [sic] taped to them overnight produced 
         beautiful patterns)... as 28 years of suffering at last comes 
         to some sort of end in (hopefully) the last ever "Star Wars" 
         film, EPISODE III - REVENGE OF THE SITH ( http://mpaa.org/ : 
         Rated PG-13 for sci-fi violence and some intense images)... 
          

                               >> 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
                      "wanting high-caffeine soft drinks" 
http://telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2005/05/09/cbstar09.xml 
         

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