Need To Know 2003-06-20

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"Lady Susan Greenfield suggested that advances in technology would one day enable anyone, of whatever age or sexual orientation, to become a parent in a bland society of like- minded individuals who would get on better with a computer than another person [...] Described as Britain's most glamorous and flamboyant scientist..." http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/06/07/1054700446731.html ...well, that's what it says in her .plan file >> HARD NEWS << with Beverley Hughes Thanks to (what we assume must have been) the anonymous NTK reader who wrote to their MP Anne McIntosh to ask how many STAND contributions were received by the Home Office's ID card consultation. Ta too to whoever tipped off the Earl of Northesk to ask in the House of Lords what they were going to do about it. Both got their Ministerial replies this week. It's mixed news. Turns out that the Home Office did count all those emails after all, and lo and behold 4856 of them were against. Which means, as the BBC said in their news headline, that an overwhelming majority of the consultation responses were against ID cards, not for, as the ministers had been saying previously. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/3004376.stm - another Home Office U-turn, maybe http://tinyurl.com/et48 - Ms Hughes gives the figures http://tinyurl.com/et32 - or is it 4000? Make up your minds, kids! Meanwhile, upstairs, the Earl of Helpdesk was told that the contributions would be treated a bit like "a teletext survey". Which isn't quite as bad as it sounds. One of the biggest reasons STAND got involved was that Home Office ministers were lauding their initial two thousand responses as though it was a referendum on how cool ID cards were - when in fact, numerically, that claim had as much validity as a slashdot poll (or hell, a teletext poll, if it had Cowboy Neal as an option). Consultations are good for gathering a range of views. But they're not supposed to be a show of hands. Any politician who claims that the consultation provided a majority of support is going to get their heads bitten off by our all-wise media and opposition from now on. We hope. http://tinyurl.com/et4b - House Of Lords reply. It's like a DOS attack on parliament, this. Again. http://www.gmnation.org.uk/dz_08/form01.asp - now *here's* a real multiple-choice consultation Finally, it looks like they're postponing the whole thing until after Summer recess, which is a relief. Also postponed - again - is the UK's implementation of the Euro-DMCA, the EUCD. They don't even say when they plan to have that done by. Maybe they're hoping it'll just go away. Expect a speedier press release from Parliament's ALL-PARTY SPAM SUMMIT on July 1st, although I'm sure we'll wait and wait and see for results. It's invite only: we really hope they've included the Nigerian Ambassador. Also coming up, sometime, from those crazy politicos: an explanation as to exactly how the police plan to run the Internet, as they will be empowered to do in times of emergency by the new Civil Contingencies Bill. We have these vague visions of traffic police standing on routers, waving the packets through... http://www.apig.org.uk/spam_summit.htm - "a new global-level organisation"... uh oh http://www.patent.gov.uk/copy/notices/implementation.htm - dog ate it http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,176-714188,00.html - and where do you think you're going with that, son? Mars? >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious BBC cover up "fencepost error" by inventing metric minutes 100 seconds long: http://www.ntk.net/2003/06/20/doh100.gif ... revive their (Dave McKean inspired?) "abstract illustration" division: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/2975828.stm ... drew this "tattoo" in biro?: http://www.ntk.net/2003/06/20/dohfist.gif ... almost two-thirds of young mothers "fed up with dog mess on pavements": http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/2980028.stm - 33% think it's "quite nice" or just "OK"... http://www.iobox.com/ - FALCOOOO!... but phew - VICTORIA REAL saved for the nation: http://media.guardian.co.uk/mediaguardian/story/0,7558,978066,00.html ... http://www.webfusion.co.uk/ endorsed by tech expert Philippa Forrester, vs "with gloves like these the manipulator can molest any part of the child's body placed against the screen": http://media.guardian.co.uk/Print/0,3858,4229582,00.html ... new thrill (ctd) - even if powergenitalia was a spoof, can't argue with: http://ringtoneshits.com , http://www.ipedo.com , http://whorepresents.com , http://www.classicalbums.co.uk ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful You might be a fan of CORY DOCTOROW, his books, the EFF - or all three. You might be near Birmingham next Thursday. You might even be at THE LINUX USER AND DEVELOPER EXPO 2003 (from Tue 2003-06-24 to 06-26, Birmingham NEC, entrance free). But you might not want - or be able - to pay the 60 or so quid it costs to hear him speak at the fancy-schmancy "conference" part of the show, in which case you'll be pleased to hear that he'll be hanging out at the CAMPAIGN FOR DIGITAL RIGHTS stand from 11am on Thu 2003-06-26, chatting, answering questions and maybe even signing anything you've brought along. At around noon, you are then invited to adjourn to one of the NEC's well-stocked cafeterias, for an informal NTK "birds of a feather" lunchtime session on intellectual property, the creative commons, software patents, and the contents of any snack vending machines in the immediate vicinity. http://www.linuxuser.co.uk/expo/?module=ContentExpress&func=display&ceid=13 - down in the .ORG Village at midday: http://www.linuxexpo.org.uk/ http://www.workfoundation.com/research/isociety/open_spectrum.jsp - Cory also frees the airwaves in London on Tue Of course, the dedicated Doctorow-stalker will also attempt to catch his talk to the OXFORD UNIVERSITY SPECULATIVE FICTION GROUP (8pm, Graves Room, St John's College, Oxford, Wed 2003- 06-25, possibly aimed at University members and their bona- fide guests only). If, however, you're hoping to *avoid* Cory on your Linux-related travels, there is no evidence to suggest he'll be attending "Happiness In a Virtual World", a LINUX USERS MEET UP NORTH! gathering scheduled for 7.30pm this Sat 2003-06-21 at Micklegate Bar, York Brewery, free but RSVP. Soon: world domination. But first: a piss-up in a brewery. http://www.bytemark-hosting.co.uk/events/york20030621/ - OK, there's a talk on User-mode Linux and Virtual Machines too http://www.craphound.com/bio.html - you know, the BoingBoing guy who always posts about Disney http://www.swarming.org.uk/recl/reclwer.htm - and don't forget to reclaim the Thames beach on Saturday >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering No tracking this week: just a hole for rent. With the launch of the Treo and that Palm-on-a-watch thing, and with smartphones slinking in all over the place, we have to ask: where are the open source handheld scripting development environments? Yeah, we know you can download the SDK at home, but where's the challenge in that. You want to sit and hack on your *watch*. Kids in playgrounds should be writing shitty games with swearwords in them in BASIC until the screen makes them go blind and the keyboards turn their fingertips to callouses. We're not despairing: we're sure there's J2EE-friendly onscreen Jython interpreter out there, or a way of coding OML on Symbian phones, or a RISC Basic port to PalmOS 5. But we don't have all these platforms, so we can't test them - or, indeed, be bothered to look. Tell us, and we'll gullibly list the supposed "best" at some point. Or write one, and start a new Cambrian explosion of teen hacking, the like we've not seen since Mr Sinclair was alive. http://www.surrealservices.co.uk/ - oh, he's not dead yet? http://www.lispme.de/lispme/ - best free alternative on Palm. and the kids go wild for lisp! >> MEMEPOOL << ceci n'est pas une http://www.gagpipe.com/ maybe why it slows down when there's lots of stuff on screen?: http://java.about.com/cs/technologies/a/matrix_reloaded_4.htm ... and what better way to honour her Klingon grandparents?: http://www.babyzone.com/babynames/nameinventor.asp?gender=female ... http://physicsweb.org/article/news/7/6/13 - vs unexplained resurgence of 1997's NANOGUITAR meme... '80s coder makes good - "As a teenager, David Webb wrote books about programming the Z-80 Sinclair Spectrum" (yeah, and Melbourne House's STARION): http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=nifea&&sid=aW4nO4EzhNgc ... this week's bandwidth-limited Tripod site - take that, Emotion Eric: http://kemical.tripod.com/ERLCM/manual.html ... every bit of education funding helps - Aston Uni goes PayPal: http://www.ee.aston.ac.uk/teaching/tutorials/paths ; Jesus College, Cambridge prefers the more refined Amazon referrals: http://www.jesus.cam.ac.uk/internal.html ... and those who can't criticise, take incomprehensible potshots at those who do: http://www.rcubednews.com/ (mostly PDFs, sorry)... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> women's mag journalist Famke "Dr Jean Grey" Janssen draws on - get this! - her personal life for inspiration in LOVE AND SEX (2am, Fri, C4), then pops up again next Friday night in DEEP RISING (11.10pm, Fri, BBC1)... the first two instalments FX: MURDER BY ILLUSION (10.05pm, Fri, C5) and FX2: THE DEADLY ART OF ILLUSION (10pm, Wed, C5) only add to anticipation of the concluding part of the trilogy, "FX3: Die Bryan Brown Die!"... and place your bets now on how long self-consciously zany medi-comedy SCRUBS will survive at 9.30pm on a Friday on C4... the movie "Meet The Parents" becomes humiliation reality-show MEET MY FOLKS (6.15pm, Sat, BBC1)... Jim Carrey's "Somebody To Love" cover remains the Ben Stiller-tormenting highlight of THE CABLE GUY (9.45pm, Sat, C4)... and make what you will of the high-profile timeslot for the UK terrestrial premiere of Robin Williams WW2 comedy JAKOB THE LIAR (2.40am, Sat, C4)... Kate Jackson week commences with ADRIFT (11.05pm, Sat, C5) and continues with weekdaily showings of CHARLIE'S ANGELS (2.35pm, Mon-Fri, C5)... it's Kevin Spacey, Linda Fiorentino, Helen Baxendale, and improbable Oirish accents - together at last! - in ORDINARY DECENT CRIMINAL (10.45pm, Sun, BBC2)... SUPERFLY (11.20pm, Tue, BBC2) ponders whether there'll ever be a Drosophila Melanogaster mutant tough enough to fight off a GIANT HORNET ATTACK (7.15pm, Thu, C5)... Chuck D and Ice T rap with Alan Y-to-the-B in IMAGINE's 50-min history of hip-hop (10.35pm, Wed, BBC1)... and BERNARD'S BOMBAY DREAM (9pm, Thu, C4) sends stand-up comedian Bernard Manning to India - raising the question: why can't we send them all there?... FILM>> never mind getting rid of Vin Diesel, they've even ditched Jordana Brewster for deranged roadracing sequel 2 FAST 2 FURIOUS ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : distributor chose to reduce the violence of the heroes in one scene by removing 3 kicks, a stamp and a spit, all delivered to a prone man, in order to achieve a 12A) - Roger Ebert as entertaining as ever: http://www.suntimes.com/ebert/ebert_reviews/2003/06/060603.html ... John Travolta and Connie "Gladiator" Nielsen play bad cop/ worse cop in nutty modern military police procedural BASIC ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/basic.htm : homosexual presence; "bad daddy" blame; upper female nudity)... plus there's a limited arthouse release for both John Cusack Hitler psychohistory MAX ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : contains strong language and violence)... along with this week's precocious supposedly sassy adolescent getting involved with older women, though this time played by guy who was "Biro" in X-Men 2 and with Susan Sarandon's role played by Sigourney Weaver, TADPOLE ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/tadpole.htm : teen out all night without parental knowledge; stepmother kissing stepson; Oscar is in love with his mother!)... AVAILABLE IN A WIDE RANGE OF BLACK>> "That's weird - it works on my machine" is our catchphrase for the summer, suggested by reader ANDY BRICE a while ago, and now adorning the chest of our newest NTK t-shirt in gorgeous monospaced courier as part of a "catch ( exception& )" C++ clause. Andy receives 2 pounds Earth Money for each one sold via http://www.ntkmart.com/ - yes, not quite as much as the UKP3.00 per item due to "the PC Extreme team" for our other new addition of "O|\|lY L4m3r5 5p34|< L33t" (oh, you work it out), but that's because they are able to promote the latter via their own website and/or magazine. Get in touch if you're interested in doing something similar for your own cult webpage, club, society or Half-Life clan... of course, traditional reader entries are always welcome, with ASCII still proving popular with both MATTHEW KIRKWOOD http://www.geekstyle.co.uk/images/kirkwood1.gif and the ever-persistent LUKE PILLANS' tribute to Rene Magritte: http://www.btinternet.com/~l.pillans/ceci_nest_pas_une_cig.gif . LAURENCE TUCKER devised our most complicated graphics gag yet in the second of http://www.industry.f9.co.uk/shirts/ , NICK BALL stuck to some of the tragic basics of sysadmin life in http://members.optusnet.com.au/nicalu/boozetech.jpg , and STEVE C provided his own visualisation of the actual internet to confirm http://www.fractalus.com/steve/tmp/inter.jpg ... text slogans ranged from LLOYD WOOD's vaguely Buffy-esque tribute "[Front print] Yay, me! [Back print] Go, me!", to JAYNE HAYWARD's "LOADING - Please wait" (or "DEFRAGGED"), and GARETH ROBINSON's reassuringly pop-retro "echo beach\n beach" plus "echo and the bunnymen\n and the bunnymen". Well done to all of you - we'll decide on the winners (if any) based on focus group testing, reader feedback, and which ones look best rendered in cheapo TrueType fonts... in the meantime, we have five copies of the astonishingly filth-packed UNNOVATIONS book http://www.unnovations.com/ (and the same number of t-shirts) to give away to the best suggestions for either a Japlish- style slogan for NTK http://www.tanuki.org.uk/japlish.html - or a florid J Peterman-style ad blurb for one of the products in our range http://www.jpeterman.com/discoveries.htm . Or, if you're prepared to risk it, a combination of the two... >> 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 "occasionally [...] a decent read" http://www.popbitch.com/newboard/21/86/68/4/ NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Unsubscribe? Mail ntknow-unsubscribe@lists.ntk.net Subscribe? Mail ntknow-subscribe@lists.ntk.net NTK now is supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.ntkmart.com/ (K) 2003 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 All communication is for publication, unless you beg. Press releases from naive PR people to pr@spesh.com Remember: Your work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material. Sending >500KB attachments is forbidden by the Geneva Convention. 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