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


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                              a conspiracy brews
        
         How long has it been since that rash promise: to start a 
         member-driven digital rights group in the UK, funded by fivers 
         pledged by ragged-t-shirted philanthropists like yourself? 
         Just over an "NTK week", we'd estimate - or one of your earth 
         months. And the news? Well, dispensing with the traditional 
         policy of starting a public wiki, a mailing list, and then 
         trailing off awkwardly into an endless "design a logo" 
         competition, your deputised authorities have been hard at work 
         in the background: smooth-talking potential benefactors, 
         drugging and kidnapping would-be board members, and sidling up 
         to people who should know better and futilely hinting that 
         they should quit their day jobs. But time's a ticking on the 
         pledge, and there's a point where you have to say "screw this 
         top-down crap: let's become 'massively distributed' and get 
         everybody else to do the real work". That time is - very 
         close. But in the meantime, in the style of one of those 
         always-disappointing teaser campaigns, let us give a name to 
         our domain: Welcome, please, THE OPEN RIGHTS GROUP. Defenders 
         of freedom; drinkers of tea.
         http://www.pledgebank.org/rights
              - look, you should have seen what the *second* choice was


                               >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                         GOTOs considered non-harmful

         Among the (many) interesting aspects of October's WORLD SUMMIT 
         ON FREE INFORMATION INFRASTRUCTURES (Sat and Sun, 2005-10-01 
         and 02, Limehouse Town Hall, London E14 7HA, UKP10) is that, 
         as well as tackling contemporary matters of interest like 
         wifi, open geodata and community currencies, it also (John The 
         Baptist-style?) aims to "gather participants, themes, issues 
         and programme items" for a "larger event in India in late 
         2006". 
         http://www.okfn.org/wsfii/wiki/WsfiiDescription
                - more info at http://www.okfn.org/wsfii/programme.html
         
         Taking on "big consumerism" (and raising money for a Portland 
         zine distributor) the week before, reader Iain Aitch's READING 
         FRENZY (12noon-5pm, Sat 2005-09-24, Horse Hospital, London 
         WC1N 1HX) is a second-hand book sale where almost everything 
         costs a quid, and they'll waive the UKP1 entrance fee if you 
         bring along some (decent) old books of your own.
         http://www.iainaitch.com/reading_frenzy.htm
                    - "Librarian fancy dress" may also swing it for you
         
         And outside London, there's a slight overlap between the UK's 
         "first major [demoscene] party for a few years", SUNDOWN 2005 
         (from 6pm, next Fri 2005-09-09, Budleigh Village Hall, Devon, 
         EX9 7DU, UKP25), and - stop us if you've heard this before - 
         how blogs and wikis are "enabling conversations between 
         businesses and their customers [...] instead of the monologue 
         of PR" at OUR SOCIAL WORLD (from 9am, Fri 2005-09-09, The 
         Moller Centre, Churchill College, Cambridge CB3 0DS, prices 
         from UKP60 plus VAT), an event which we sincerely hope has 
         been named so they can sing along to the hit single from 
         Disney's Aladdin: "It's Our Social World! (our social world!)/ 
         A new fantastic point of view/ No one to tell us no/ Or where 
         to go" - or say they're "only dreaming"?
         http://www.sundown2005.org/rules.php
             - may also be wishful thinking, but "Girls get in for free"
         http://www.cybersalon.org/info.html#vrp3
              - vs "Encouraging women to use mobiles" night, Tue Sep 20
         http://oursocialworld.com/
              - see also London http://www.podcastcon.co.uk/ Sat Sep 17
         

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

         really beyond the usual remit of the "Make A Wish" Foundation: 
         http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1732873,00.html ... 
         it's like "Make" magazine for people who aren't too ambitious:
http://chalkline.blogspot.com/2005/08/diy-coffee-scented-car-freshner.html
         ... in other DIY ingenuity: http://samsung.co.uk/ vs "Dave G, 
         I dispair!!!" comment in www.ntlworld.com/styles/global.css 
         ... somewhat technically-themed Google Goofs o' the month: 
         http://www.google.com/search?q=%22command+lie+interface%22 , 
         never forget your http://google.com/search?q=%22loin+name%22 , 
         http://google.com/search?q=%22fully+fuctional%22 thankfully 
         more popular than http://google.com/search?q=fully-cuntional , 
         http://google.com/search?q=%22massage+from+the+director%22 , 
         slightly more impressive dummy copy than that "Lorem Ipusm": 
         http://google.com/search?q=complex+chronotron-feedback , and 
         the long-overdue return of "Unusually Named US Military 
         Personnel": http://google.com/news?q=Bunnatine+H.+Greenhouse 
         ... http://www.wftv.com/slideshow/2691965/detail.html?qs=;s=11 
         - fossil evidence confirms Earth once ruled by - fish guy out  
         of "Stingray": http://tv-timewarp.co.uk/stingray/ ...  


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         Look, I JUST want to run cross-platform automated browser
         tests of my BLOODY dev website so I can TELL when I break
         stuff WITHOUT sitting there being MISTER CLICKY CLICKY
         TESTBOT myself. Is that so very HARD? Judging from the
         ingenious SELENIUM, which achieves the trick of automated
         web site regression testing, yes, it is hard:
         hack-on-top-of-hack hard. Instead of cheating and use IE's
         OLE2 automation, Selenium does this: it loads, in-browser, a
         bunch of javascript-driven browser frames on top of your
         site's pages, which are trapped within their own frame. Then
         the javascript does the clicky clicky on the lower frame,
         magically filling your website's forms and clicking links 
         in Safari, Opera, IE and Firefox, testing the resulting page
         appearances to ensure it fits in with what you want your
         site to do. The javascript frames take their orders from a
         set of instructions spelled out in an HTML table page, or
         can be driven by Ruby, Java or Python plugins (using a
         JS->local process communication protocol that's even more
         evil). The downside is that because of that darn javascript
         security model, your Selenium javascript and command tables
         have to be on the same server as your testee website. But
         don't worry: somebody's written a Selenium web proxy, which
         fakes Selenium's presence on any foreign site. And if you
         think that's sick, wait until someone introduces the
         Selenium coders to those Greasemonkey maniacs.
         http://selenium.thoughtworks.com/index.html
                       - it makes a bit more sense when you download it

         
                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         FILM>> the makers of "Anchorman" - minus Will Ferrell - aim a 
         bit lower in midlife grossout rom-com THE 40-YEAR-OLD VIRGIN 
( http://cndb.com/movie.html?title=40+Year+Old+Virgin%2C+The+%282005%29 : 
         This R-rated flick might go down as the movie with the most 
         missed skin opportunities - the worst being Kat Dennings, who 
         plays the daughter of the woman the virgin ends up dating)... 
         Rachel "Wedding Crashers" McAdams faces every air passenger's 
         nightmare - sitting next to the author of that hard-hitting 
         industry insider's column in "Edge" magazine - in RED EYE 
       ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/red-eye.htm : a quite 
         violent film with a gaudy helping of foul language; exposure 
         of adult woman's underwear by fall. Yes, a woman's underwear 
         is likely to be exposed when she falls but the filmmakers know 
         *exactly* what is in each and every frame)... then, later in 
         the month, there's another of those wacky Japanese animations, 
         HOWL'S MOVING CASTLE (imdb keywords: castle/ floating/ 
         scarecrow), and no doubt a continued lack of explanation as to 
         how, in the absence of fresh "hosts", zombies are able to feed 
         or reproduce, in GEORGE A ROMERO'S LAND OF THE DEAD (imdb 
         keywords: shot-in-the-chest/ shot-in-the-crotch/ shot-in-the-
         eye/ shot-in-the-forehead/ shot-in-the-leg)... still, on the 
         plus side, 2.20am tonight sees an occasional Channel 4 showing 
         of Skip "Swordfish" Woods' top Tarantino-ish sitcom THURSDAY 
       ( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=Thursday+%281998%29 : 
         [Paulina Porizkova] strips and forces herself on this guy 
         [...] Her dialogue used to degrade him is also a major plus. 
         A must-see!)... 
          

                               >> 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
                     "The koolest kid in Peoria, Illinois"
        http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Danny+O%27Brien
    

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