Need To Know 2006-03-17

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NTK 2007

2006-09-29
Mini NTK #32
Muttley's top games, dastardly ID cards

2006-07-14
#373
Techa Kucha culture, Steve "Coast to" Coast

2006-06-09
#372
Dorking Burn-Bot, You Propose It To Them

2006-05-05
#371
Bruce Sterling, 5 (count 'em!) things happening outside London

2006-04-01
#370
Still valid if you're on California time

2006-03-17
#369
All the events, all the time

2006-02-17
#368
Plugs, more plugs, and intelligent mains

2006-01-13
#367
Web 2.0, mail from 2004

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>> HARD NEWS << down a fashionable mews Places may be limited at next week's post-Emerging Tech catchup in London, but the fun certainly shouldn't be, with a mix of new faces - TOM ARMITAGE, musing "Is Controller Design Killing Creativity in Videogames?", plus DAN "geobloggers.com" CATT providing co-ordinated coverage of SXSW Interactive - amid some old familiars: NICK AND DOMINIC LUDLAM unveiling an all-new version (and beta-test update?) of their Promise.TV gigantic hard-drive PVR, and YOZ GRAHAME proudly showing you round the metaphorical swings and roundabouts of "The Ning Playground - A Springboard for New Social Software". And maybe one or two special guests as well, if there's time. It's free to attend (from 6.15pm Thu 2006-03-23, 01zero-one, Hopkins Street, London W1F 0HS), making it all the more vital that you promptly RSVP to the address on the official page. Or, if you can't make it till later, from about 9pm onwards we'll be in a nearby pub that offers both "megabytes" and "nanobytes" on the menu, hopefully around 1,000,000 and 0.000000001 times the size of a normal bar snack, respectively. http://www.01zero-one.co.uk/insync_events.htm - yes, "Technology 2.0" seemed like a funny name at the time http://www.nanobytebar.com/map.html - "femto-fries" and "kilopints" would round it out nicely http://etech06.ning.com/ - stuff they "wouldn't let" Yoz talk about in this one http://www.savetherhino.org/php/products.php?id=482 - sadly, same night as UKP10 to save Douglas Adams' rhino http://www.interactiveknowhow.co.uk/events/insync_01.php - or "Digital Utopias", same time, same place, a week later Conceivably continuing the theme of "sheltered" soup kitchens for the capital's cyber-homeless, that OPEN RIGHTS GROUP are endorsing this weekend's CORY DOCTOROW'S COPYFIGHTERS' DRUNKEN BRUNCH AND TALKING SHOP (brunch from 11am-1pm at Stanhope Centre, Stanhope Place, London W2 2HH; "excursion" to Speakers Corner from 1pm, both free), where you can eat, drink, and learn how record labels all have "obsolete business models" and therefore must be destroyed. Our favourite counterpoint to which is currently inspired by blogger James Boardwell: big media is a bit like pre-invasion Iraq - famously dictatorial, sitting on a vast stockpile of desirable resources - making it the duty of all right-thinking web-users (or "second superpower", if you will) to liberate these resources purely by force of technological superiority, despite the lack of any clear plan for what the old regime ought to be replaced with. http://www.craphound.com/000615.html - ORG looking for office space from mid-April; please mail tips@spesh.com if you have two spare desks and broadband http://openrightsgroup.org/orgwiki/index.php/Main_Page#ORG_Events - Manchester gets an Open Rights visit, most likely 2nd May http://www.technogoggles.com/technogoggles/2006/02/tv_to_go_but_go.html - but with the boogeyman of DRM instead of WMD? >> EVENT QUEUE << GOTOs considered non-harmful Even by their usual enigmatic standards, details remain sketchy about this weekend's DORKFEST LONDON (8pm-midnight Sat 2006-03-18, 1pm-6pm Sun, Limehouse Town Hall, London E14 7HA, most likely free). But we get the impression that the Saturday evening will feature "performance type pieces" from the offbeat electronic-ish artists' community, then Sunday may be more of an "open mic" free-for-all science fair, culminating in a "Guru Nerd's Question Time" between about 2 and 4pm in the company of James "prawn sandwich clock" Larsson, Mike "electricstuff.co.uk" Harrison, and NTK's own "Dave Green". Email tips@spesh.com (with "NTK question" in the subject line) if there are any matters of contemporary concern you'd like this maverick "brains trust" to tackle, though please note that any answers provided will be for entertainment purposes only, and should not replace the advice of your GP. http://www.dorkfest.org.uk/ - Electric Mike also demoing "spark-o-phone" on the Saturday http://www.takeawayfestival.com/31lgiles.html - Jeremijenko's robots let loose in London, Friday March 31st http://www.lovebytes.org.uk/2006/ - and next week, the annual Lovebytes festival in Sheffield >> ANTI-MEMES << there's smoke, flames, http://dohthehumanity.com/ "alternatively, to hover over our faces, drop us an email": http://www.gaffertape.com/hazard.php ... presumably in the style of Tom Binns' zany "hospital radio" act. Presumably: http://topicaljokes.squarespace.com/twisted-news-jokes/ ... this month's ostensibly "e-democracy in action" Google goofs: http://google.com/search?q=%22results+of+the+ballet%22+vote , http://google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q=%22sign+the+partition%22 , http://www.google.com/search?q=%2224%2F7+356+days+a+year%22 , http://www.google.co.uk/search?&q=%22racial+epitaphs%22 , and famed for its stories on "Rogue Centurion", lawmakers battling new kinds of crime on the modern streets of "Mega Londinium": http://www.google.com/search?q=comic+200AD ... top Photoshop: http://news.yahoo.com/photo/060302/ids_photos_ts/r3439378870.jpg ... pro-celebrity looky-likey - Ben "Bad Science" Goldacre: http://www2.le.ac.uk/ebulletin/events/2000-2009/2005/jan/npevent-8fc-5c7-55c vs skeptical Moonbase Alpha science officer Victor Bergman: http://web.axelero.hu/arrakis/space1999/alpha/series/ser_bergman.jpg >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering The skies begin to boil; Nature collapses into the screaming Void. And, finally, someone writes a decent open source GUI testing and automation library. DOGTAIL is a Python library for anything that supports the accessibility framework AT-SPI - which means, um, GNOME. (But KDE soon.) With it you can use procedural or OOPy Python to drive almost any Gnome app, plus Open-Office, and Mozilla-based apps like Epiphany (so you can automate web and test applications too). Driving code is ridiculously tight: you can automatically kick up a browser, enter a form, and rip out the resulting text with a just a few lines. It can drive multiple apps with all your hands tied behind your back. It can search out applications based on their package name, not the binary. It can send keystrokes to anything you damn well want. Your GUI is about to become posessed with dozens of your own private bots. http://people.redhat.com/zcerza/dogtail/ - OBEY ME! OBEY ME, my fork-ed children! http://people.redhat.com/zcerza/dogtail/media.html - you'd think they'd use this to automate the screencasts too >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV SPECIAL>> We never did get round to making a techno track that sampled John Thaw saying "That's what's really 'wicked', Lewis" or "It's The Hallelujah Chorus, conducted by Sir Adrian Boult!" in Danny Boyle's pre-"Shallow Grave" 1992 rave episode of INSPECTOR MORSE (3.05pm, Sat, ITV1)... "Who are the real monsters - zombies, or Christopher Eccleston's power-crazed army?", ponders Boyle's 28 DAYS LATER (10.15pm, Sat, C4)... while, half-way through both series, we're starting to prefer "Invasion Of The Body Snatchers/ Midwich Cuckoos" clone INVASION (8pm, Sun, C4) over "boy and his monster" nonsense SURFACE (6.35pm, Sat; 8pm, Tue, ITV2), not least because the latter clashes with the extended prime-time edition of folk- probability-analysis foolhardiness DEAL OR NO DEAL (7.15pm, Sat, C4): http://donduk.blogspot.com/ ... Over on the BBC, LITTLE SHOPPING HORRORS (8pm, Mon, BBC3) promises a look at "pester power", apparently as it relates to video games... despite the efforts of Nick "Spaced" Frost and and Nick "Nathan Barely" Burns, we confidently predict that MAN STROKE WOMAN (9.30pm, Mon, BBC2) will be hailed as the worst sub-"Spoons" sketch show of the decade... and is it just us, or is THE APPRENTICE (9pm, Wed, BBC2) using all those outside shots of Canary Wharf to try and create the impression that that's where "the boardroom" is, though when candidates finally are fired, they're often seen in front of Amstrad's Brentwood House, which is obviously in Brentwood, Essex http://www.amstrad.com/about/location.html ...? But, although they've ditched "Dream On" and "The Larry Sanders Show", ITV4 remains our favourite Freeview channel with a "4" in its name, this week debuting the 1970s live- action series of PLANET OF THE APES (6pm, Sun, ITV4) - hopefully in a more rational order than they've managed so far with UFO (7pm, Sat, ITV4) or SPACE: 1999 (7pm, Sun, ITV4)... sadly, Kevin Smith's CLERKS: THE ANIMATED SERIES (10pm, Wed, ITV4) never re-attains the heights of last week's "finished by the Korean animators" opener - showing in a taboo-busting double-bill with eating-disorders sitcom STARVED (10pm, Wed, ITV4), which previously featured the lead character crawling around the floor of a crowded colonic irrigation waiting room, with a jet of "water" fountaining out of his, well, colon... >> SMALL PRINT << Need to Know is a useful and interesting UK digest of things that happened last month or might happen next month. 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 "Mike Butcher borrowed our slogan..." http://mbites.com/web_2_wave_or_bubble "...now Bruce Sterling's borrowing it back" http://google.com/search?q=Viridian+00459+%22stole+our+revolution%22 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) 2006 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. 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