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


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                             shortening the fuse
        
         HAHAHA! The Americans are funny! This Thursday, the funniest
         of them all, Mitch Bainwol of the MPAA, said with a straight
         face firstly how much he loved his MP3 player (glad you
         could enjoy it, after you tried to sue the Diamond Rio out
         of existence). Then, his organisation asked, very gently,
         for all digital radio players to be rigged so that: you can 
         only record for a minimum of 30 minutes; have no metadata
         storage at all; and only save a maximum of fifty hours of
         music, before the machines would start deleting - in strict
         FIFO order. That's the land of the free, my friend! Can't do
         digital TV, can't do digital radio, and when they do, they
         let their self-style "entertainment" industry drool DRM all
         over it! Never happen here, of course:
         http://www.dvb.org/index.php?id=294
                                                                - ulp.
         http://www.xmfan.com/viewtopic.php?t=50894 
                    - PLEASE DO NOT PRESS THE RED RECORD BUTTON AGAIN

         Hopefully moving beyond a simplistic techno-libertarian "Well, 
         my computer seems able to copy all sorts of stuff, so it must 
         be morally justifiable *somehow*" riposte to this kind of 
         thing, the as-previously-advertised OPEN RIGHTS GROUP is 
         holding its first open-to-all get-together in London later 
         this month. What's definite so far is the date (the evening of 
         Tue 2005-11-29), the venue (the 01Zero-One Creative Learning 
         Lab cyber-basement, Hopkins Street, Soho, London W1F 0HS) and 
         the aim: for all potential members, the press, and any other 
         digital activists to meet each other and discuss what's 
         currently lighting up their personal early-warning systems. 
         Further details will be furnished closer to the time via the 
         organisation's conveniently just-launched official site, 
         including what time to actually turn up, whether you need to 
         pre-register (you know, for numbers), and tips on identifying 
         - let alone accessing - the venue's seamless metal door 
         embedded in an otherwise featureless brick wall.
         http://www.openrightsgroup.org/
                   - now with its own Wikipedia entry, and everything
         http://www.pledgebank.com/rights
        - save from the ignominy of http://pledgebank.com/list/failed


                               >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                         GOTOs considered non-harmful

         Live in London? Like programming? Then you're in for a treat 
         this month, as the metropolis is rocked not just by SOCIAL 
         SOURCE 2005 (exploring the potential of Free and Open Source 
         software for the Voluntary and Community Sector, 9.30am-5.30pm 
         next Wed 2005-11-09, City Temple Conference Centre, Holborn 
         Viaduct, London EC1A 2DE, free) but also this winter's LONDON 
         PERL WORKSHOP 2005 (Sat 2005-11-26, City University, near 
         Angel, London EC1V 0HB, free but pre-register on the site). 
         But glancing further north - just for a moment - November's 
         spawned another monster in the form of Edinburgh's inaugural 
         "people doing strange things with electricity" show-and-tell 
         DORKBOT ALBA (from 4pm, Sun 2005-11-13, Forest Cafe, 3 Bristo 
         Place, Edinburgh EH1 1EY, also looks free), in the company of 
         a-life artist RICHARD BROWN, ZOE "Dial-a-Diva" IRVINE, and 
         wearable-computing-enthusiast-turned-"Speckled Computing"-
         researcher MARTIN "EARTH" LING.
         http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotalba/
        - while http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/ moves to Mon Nov 21
         http://london.pm.org/lpw/
        - also, from the looks of things, something to do with the...
         http://blog.unixdaemon.net/cgi-bin/blosxom.pl/events/
           - ...Docklands "Web Frameworks Evening" on Thu November 17
         http://www.socialsource.org.uk/pmwiki.php/EventNov05/HomePage
       - bit vague on whether you need to register or anything though
         http://www.geekdinner.co.uk/
          - plus a London Geek Dinner with Molly Holzschlag on Nov 24
         

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

         Amazon.co.uk credits Jeffrey Zeldman with yet another work of 
         http://amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0553840444/ "Pleistocene 
         detail, provocative speculation [...] sex, tribal politics, 
         soap opera, and homicidal woolly rhino-hunting adventure": 
         http://amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0609610597/ ... vaguely 
         legally-flavoured Google misspellings of the month: 
         http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22died+interstate%22 , 
         http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22fist+and+foremost%22 , 
         http://google.com/search?q=%22temporary+retraining+order%22 , 
         http://google.com/search?q=%22fragrant+abuse%22 - or, with a 
         nod to Spinal Tap, you won't find heavy metal using "dobly": 
         http://www.google.com/search?q=dobbler+shift ... membership 
         possibly put off by odd headline spelling of "Proffesionals": 
         http://groups.google.co.uk/group/Global-Business-Professionals 
         ... "BBC Broadcast" rebrand makes impressive "Pseuds Corner" 
         bid: http://digitmag.co.uk/news/index.cfm?NewsID=5265 - lucky 
         they overlooked nature's other "expert navigators" that begin 
         with "B", like the "bird", or "bluebottle", or "bat"...


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         Sometimes, it seems that all life consists of piping
         the same basic Unix utilities in ever varying combinations.
         If that's true, then perhaps the secret of life-extension is
         GNU SCREEN. Which is here, not because there's anything new
         with it (it's nearly twenty years old, and no longer
         actively developed), nor has there been some new and
         wonderful application for it. It's still the same as it's
         always been - a program that lets you run more than one
         terminal session at a time, and switch between them, and
         re-attach to them if you lose the connection to a remote
         machine. It's just here because we sense that everyone is
         re-discovering it again, and we wanted to make sure, as
         ever, you smugly rediscovered it a fraction of a second
         before your friends.
         http://www.gnu.org/software/screen/
             - go on, you've been meaning to learn it. Ctrl-A! Ctrl-A!
         http://www.kuro5hin.org/story/2004/3/9/16838/14935
                                  - kuro5hin! the great hope for 2004!

         
                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less
         
         FILM>> hitting pretty much all the places you'd expect (but in 
         a good-natured, sporting fashion), the only disappointment is 
         that they didn't work in more homages to the original 1975 
         "Rollerball" in MTV quadriplegic-rugby documentary MURDERBALL 
         (imdb: high school friends/ car crash/ handicapped person/ 
         paralympics/ wheelchair)... for all that we've enjoyed Cameron 
         Crowe's previous romantic nonsense, Kirsten Dunst and that elf 
         guy apparently aren't so good in this new one, ELIZABETHTOWN 
         ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/elizabethtown.htm : adult 
         in underwear, repeatedly; portrayal of parent as "pal" to son; 
         building suicide machine; postponing suicide; plan to get back 
         to suicide; talk of killing self)... and Crowe's just not in 
         the same league as his idol Billy Wilder, as proved by next 
         week's (presumably limited-screen) re-release of 1944's top 
         film noir DOUBLE INDEMNITY (imdb: cult favorite/ insurance 
         fraud/ femme fatale/ told in flashback/ jump from train)...
          

                               >> 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
                                 "holy", "crap"
            http://www.gnome.org/~jdub/blog/projects/ubuntu/1129996213
   

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