Need To Know 2003-04-04

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>> HARD NEWS << farewell to WC2? It's not often - but, we guess, not rare enough either - that a company gets slashdotted and receivershipped in the same week. But that's what's just happened to one of Britain's pluckiest start-ups, UPMYSTREET. The funny little postcode database thing put itself up for sale on Thursday and, for once, we can't muster up our usual joy at someone else's misfortune. UMS gave money and spare cycles to FaxYourMP, sheltered the people behind Barbelith and the Samuel Pepys Diary, bitched about usability in all the right places, and even gently lobbied the government around to accepting Net- based standards. It had a product which was actually useful (albeit mainly to people checking on their neighbour's mortgages), and that was gently sprawling - in the form of UMS Conversations - into the genuinely innovative. And if UMS sleepwalked through all the dotcom nonsense - splurged ads on the underground, won various piles of meaningless awards, took money from strangers, grew too fast and too thinly - maybe it was still dreaming about something more important all along. Now, they'll go to the highest bidder - and we're hoping that they'll display a little graph of their offers over time compared to other dotcoms in their area. And hoping more that they'll go to someone as unevil as they've proved to be. http://www.upmystreet.com/ - guess this just leaves streetmap.co.uk ? And from Good, to hideous, unmentionable Evil: the shambling zoo of Cambridge-based codeshop CREATURE LABS. Long-time readers will remember the CL's gameplay-free series of Creatures games, where players were encouraged to grow and preen mutant, helplessly dependent "Norns" and then throw them to the vagaries of artificially accelerated evolutionary pressures. Inevitably, the cute but constantly afflicted Norns that weren't wiped out by their enemies, the Grendels, or disease, were eventually left to rot on old hard drives, or else tortured to death by their decadent owners. Well, the door to this house of horrors has at last been nailed shut, with the news that Creature Labs has ceased trading and its servers switched off. Mastermind Steve Grand, however, who long pondered the - now somewhat easier to answer - question of whether Norns are "alive", left the organisation some time ago, and is now fiddling with an "artificial orang-utan", all the better to haunt your dreams for ever more. http://www.businessweekly.co.uk/news/view_article.asp?article_id=7525 - bloody genetic algorithms getting stuck on local maxima http://www.lummoxjr.com/creatures/webmasterpit/backlog10.html - rogue sites more like Huntingdon A-Life Sciences http://www.cyberlife-research.com/about/anatomy.htm - "Keeeelll meeeeeee!" http://www.savesallysbunnies.com/ - a reader sent this in, apparently believing we're aiming, adhocracy-like, to *replace* the RSPCA There's been a magnificent response so far to our appeal for classic ELSPA anti-piracy ads, in the form of scans of both the original "One day at the market..." advertisement and an unofficial follow-on episode published in "Zero" Amiga/ST magazine. But you needn't restrict yourself to just ELSPA's contributions to the genre: we've also had a Business Software Alliance radio ad announcing "Shaun's father is right [...] kids pirating software is equivalent to them shoplifting - walking into a local software store, stuffing a program into their backpack, and walking out without paying" (for the benefit of anyone unclear on just how shoplifting works?). But our favourite, bizarrely, is from the back of a recent issue of Private Eye, clamping down on the menace of those who illegally photocopy books, journals and periodicals "save in the limited cases provided by statute". As our contributor notes: "Yes, turn in your colleagues if you catch them photocopying a newspaper. That'll help your career no end". http://www.ntk.net/2003/04/04/piracy.mp3 - "English class Henry" clearly the ringleader (1 meg MP3) http://www.ntk.net/2003/04/04/copywatchsmall.jpg - reward's gone up a bit since the old days http://www.ntk.net/2003/04/04/fastmarket.gif - vs http://www.ntk.net/2003/04/04/fastbloggo.gif >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious BBC would have gotten away with it, if not for those episode number URLs: http://www.ntk.net/2003/04/04/dohmurder3.gif ... one way of informing you "the instant there is any problem": http://www.ntk.net/2003/04/04/dohlife.gif ... topical GOOGLE GOOFS: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22chefs+of+staff%22 , shite muslims, afterbumer - or, for the more sub-aqua scholar: http://www.google.com/search?q=dante+%22diving+comedy%22 ... top hit for "West Midlands Ambulance" no longer safe for work: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22West+Midlands+Ambulance%22 ... http://login.lycos.co.uk/lsu_password.php offers quiz-fans option to "Answer your reminder question", or can just mail you password anyway... hotel "can accomodate a maximum of 3 people": http://www.sixcontinentshotels.com/h/d/HI/hd/lysvi ... http://www.bccmarketing.co.uk/ sends out email boasting of "minimum level of proficiency and quality we promise to attain" - to 550 recipients listed in cc: field... she's back: http://www.lasenza.co.uk/viewimage.asp?product=50&pname=Anne+Widdecombe ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful SONY continue their well-funded, yet risible attempts to get games taken seriously with the "Portrait of the Artist as a Video Gamer" PRIMAL ART season (from Sunday 2003-04-06, the ICA, London, individual event/ membership fees apply). Panels will be tackling everything from old chestnuts like "Women in the video games industry" (with ALEKS "Bits" KROTOSKI) to "the British artistic heritage and its influence/presence in video games" (with MARK "Exorcist fan" KERMODE), all with the aim of promoting new Gothic anime-style release "Primal" on the PS2. The game itself is described as a "compelling, original experience of dark fantasy that transcends the typical video game adventure formula", apparently via the noted thespian skills of Hudson Leick (Callisto in "Xena: Warrior Princess"), Paul Darrow (Avon from "Blake's 7") and Andreas Katsulas (G'Kar from "Babylon 5"), plus the ground-breaking innovation of getting a soundtrack from the techno-industrial band 16 Volt. And if that doesn't make the "Late Review" panel of Mark Lawson, Germaine Greer and Tom Paulin sit up and take notice then what, for the love of God, will? http://www.primal-art.com/primalSeminars.html - we dunno, maybe a game that makes some sort of point? http://www.unconvention2003.com - if you want to book for London Unconvention next weekend http://b3ta.com/party/easter.gif - or just turn up to London b3ta party next Fri >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Python is like the Lament Configuration in Hellraiser: looks like an exotic puzzle, is actually a gateway to a world of programming discipline and pleasure beyond pain. God knows, for instance, how many sick Python initiates now write unit tests for all their code - hell, before they even *write* the main code. For those poor souls who are so helplessly test-infected, the PYUNIT TEST BROWSER is the the last word in obscene self-flagellation. Like the GuiTestRunner program that comes with PyUnit, it's a little Tk app that collates and shows you the results of running your Python tests on your existing code. But it's also trained to kick up your favourite editor (Kate, Idle or Vim) on the errors you select. And then, the moment you save in those editors, it runs all the tests again automatically. To test you. To *punish* you. And, oh, you've been so very bad, haven't you? http://flea.sourceforge.net/BrowseMe.html - go on, browsssse meeee http://members.pingnet.ch/gamma/junit.htm - Programming The Cenobite Way >> MEMEPOOL << ceci n'est pas une http://www.gagpipe.com/ now seeking research assistants to help expand the James Soame collection of badboy kickdrums: http://www.museumoftechno.org/ - vs http://gstsp.red.co.uk/popup/popup_ray.htm ... sadly, doesn't give a link where can you buy the Kubrick figures: http://www.mikegerhardt.com/static/kodomonews/ ... once again, real war: http://qwer.org/bbcpic.html imitates Counterstrike: http://cestiny.cz/obrazek/counterstrikemensi.jpg ... the guy behind: http://www.bloggerheads.com/out_of_order.asp brings you: http://www.tom-watson.co.uk/teens.html ... CYBIKO in "2 for 1" deals in UK mobile phone shops?... nothing to do in Bedford?: http://www.tomchance.uklinux.net/uglygardens/ ... Northern Ireland over its explosive recent history, thinks BBC: http://www.bbc.co.uk/northernireland/education/blastni/ ... "Help to prevent the sabotage of the Iraqi Oil Industry": http://www.centcom.mil/galleries/leaflets/images/izd-070.jpg ... April Fool: http://www.ensembl.org/Tyrannosaurus_rex/ ... or not: http://www.abc.net.au/news/newsitems/s819685.htm ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> right-wing historian Andrew Roberts suggests that Martin Luther King deliberately provoked violent confrontations - including getting himself shot? - in SECRETS OF LEADERSHIP (9pm, Fri, BBC2)... "design icon" Lara Croft is among the subjects of the 1990s DESIGNING THE DECADES (7.10pm, Sat, BBC2)... and the topic of "books" mysteriously continues to be televisually uninteresting in THE BIG READ (from 8.10pm, Sat, BBC2), culminating in one of the most disappointing nude scenes of Charlize Theron's career in THE CIDER HOUSE RULES (10.20pm, Sat, BBC2)... the role of Kryten from "Red Dwarf" is now played by Henry Rollins in home-made-car "Scrapheap Challenge" spinoff FULL METAL CHALLENGE (5.30pm, Sun, C4)... George Clooney battles the elements, Wolfgang "Air Force One" Petersen's trademark aerial action sequences in THE PERFECT STORM (9.20pm, Sun, C4).. but Kryten is back in HOLLYWOOD SCIENCE (7.30pm, Wed, BBC2), recreating the urine-drinking scene from Kevin Costner's largely unpalatable WATERWORLD (10.55pm, Sun, BBC1)... Waterworld's Jeanne Tripplehorn reappears - with Bob Hoskins - in FRASIER (10.35pm, Mon, C4)... there's yet another recreation of the UK's favourite bombing of an arguably civilian target in DAMBUSTERS (9pm, Mon, C4)... and Eddie Izzard has a midlife crisis, starts dressing as a man, in bleak grown-up drama [30 THINGS TO DO BEFORE YOU'RE] 40 (10pm, Tue-Thu, C4)... THE AUTISM PUZZLE (11.20pm, Tue, BBC2) tracks down some of the first people to be diagnosed with the disorder, not all of whom work in IT... the psychiatric disturbances continue with one of those "we only use 10% of our mental capacities" docus, THE WOMAN WITH THE MYSTERIOUS BRAIN (8.30pm, Thu, C5), plus a repeat of Chris Morris' JAM (11.45pm, Wed, C4)... and the current US tradition of using British soldiers for target practice is historically commemorated in Mel Gibson War of Independence drama THE PATRIOT (9pm, Thu, C5) - as memorably endorsed by Capalert: http://www.capalert.com/capreports/patriot.htm ... FILM>> ham-fisted comedy duo Jackie Chan and Owen Wilson reunite in Victorian England for anachronistic kung-fu buddy sequel SHANGHAI KNIGHTS ( http://www.imdb.com/Goofs?0300471 : Arthur Conan Doyle was never a detective for Scotland Yard; at Stonehenge, modern rubber radial tires can be seen on the automobile; firework makers could not make strong blue colors at the time)... there's a special "swimsuit" edition of the old "smalltown teen follows their dream" plot in BLUE CRUSH ( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=Blue+Crush+%282002%29 : [Kate Bosworth] is taking a shower and only her naked back is shown with the barest glimpse of her round upper rump)... Vin Diesel takes on his greatest opponent yet - scenes of non- action drama - in filmed-before-XXX revenge thriller A MAN APART ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/a_man_apart.html : we see a bare-breasted dancer in a thong bottom)... or it's Sean "Never Mind The Buzzcocks" Hughes and Elliott "M*A*S*H" Gould - together at last! - in wacky Spike Milligan Oirish border satire PUCKOON ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : contains mild bad language, nudity and sex references)... >> 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 "imagining this guy getting down this far, then falling off his chair in sheer astonishment" http://users.ox.ac.uk/~pemb1553/blogger.html#91575250 NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. 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