Need To Know 2003-10-24

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>> HARD NEWS << junk from SW2 There we were, getting our hopes up about the ALL PARTY INTERNET GROUP, watching them catch on that spam was a serious problem, seeing them beetle off to Washington to hobnob with experts on the matter, cheering on the boyish enthusiasm of chairman DEREK WYATT MP for the topic. Derek, unfortunately, appears to be fighting the good fight with the Shield of Wholesale Technical Misunderstanding and the U-Shaped Gun Of Shooting One's Own Mouth Off. This week, he sent out a press release announcing his own proposed solution to spam. Postcodes. No, no, hear him out: Wyatt proposes that every UK address have the postcode of the recipient prepended between the domain and the .co.uk. So, he explains, "derekwyatt@aol.com" would become "derekwyatt@aol.swiaoaa.co.uk". Those who don't want to give out their postcode could use a six-digit code ("plus a pin number which would be held by the Information Commissioner's Office"). "Addresses ending .com", he adds, as an afterthought, "would need to identify their country of origin, such as .com.uk". Yes. Yes, they would, Derek. Mr Wyatt is soliciting feedback at wyattd@parliament.uk. Could you do it? We're busy banging our heads against this tree. http://www.derekwyattmp.co.uk/dereks_work/viewtopic.php?t=201 - just in case you thought he was being joe-jobbed http://www.apig.org.uk/ - and it was all looking so promising http://www.hexkey.co.uk/lee/log/2003/05/22/ - the NTK campaign to Save Our SMTP You wait all year for the some decent political Net hackery, and then three come along at once. First publicwhip - and now from the unlikely auspices of the BBC, iCan, their scarily large-scale political involvement engine. iCan looks to be Meetup meets Friendster meets Moveon meets those bits in the Archers where they used to give you useful agricultural advice - but in a good way. It's still in beta, so it's all empty pages and new website smell right now. But you should at least take a whack at it before the government shuts it all down. Or at least before all the cool low numbered campaigns fill up with be "fake-prop" ragweek silliness and hard-working organisations devoted to freeing the "testinghellotessting123". http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/ican/ - the third is yet to come >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious just one step up: http://www.ntk.net/2003/10/24/dohbin.gif ... another of those seamless print-to-web publicity transitions: http://www.ntk.net/2003/10/24/dohhut.gif ...net less resilient than solutions: http://www.ntk.net/2003/10/24/dohresi.gif ... Hewlett Packard monitors to survive nuclear conflict - but still worth investing in post-apocalyptic next-day tech support: http://www.dabs.com/uk/productView.htm?quicklinx=166J ... demo crew just love the new ZX81 with 24-channel 44kHz audio: http://www.trsi.org/machines/other.asp ... "Bowleg throwing" appears to be even more viral than they'd thought: http://www.lycos.co.uk/viral/ ... hey, better late than never: http://www.latesaversfrance.co.uk/ ... in accordance with prophecy, new comedy mag features - angry, unsympathetic agony aunt!: http://www.sourmashmagazine.com/sourlives.html ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Triumphing over both a recently broken arm and user groups which he can't speak to because they haven't used the proper "GNU/Linux" designation in their names, RICHARD "RMS" STALLMAN will be sampling the UK's native cuisine *and* speaking about software patents (he's against them, apparently) this very weekend (1pm Sat 2003-10-25, Stoddart building, Sheffield Hallam University; 2.30pm, Sun 2003-10-26, Cavendish Campus, University of Westminster, London, both free - as in "freedom" - but pre-registration advised). For an arguably less confrontational approach to solving the world's problems, you need look no further than Canada's WORLD ROCK PAPER SCISSORS CHAMPIONSHIPS (7.30pm, Sat 2003-10-25, Kool Haus 132 Queens Quay East, Toronto, Spectator tickets $15 on the door), whose UK contenders reveal - we hope not foolhardily - many of their tactics on their own hastily assembled website, including such gems as "You need nerves of steel to throw three papers in a row, as it's regarded as the most docile move and is particularly vulnerable to an opponent who's using the 'toolbox' gambit (three scissors)." http://www.ukrpsteam.com/ - swiftly corporate-hijacked, just like with Extreme Ironing http://www.sheflug.co.uk/meeting.html - claims RMS to be a "friendly little monkey"? http://www.nickhill.co.uk/rms-speech-status.html - Sheffield venue appears to be just down the road from... http://www.ntkmart.co.uk/images/ - ...NTK t-shirt exhibition (*must* close next Friday!) http://homepage.ntlworld.com/speccyverse/orsam.htm - next weekend: Norwich's biggest Spectrum and SAM Show >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering THE REGEX COACH is a utility for Windows and Linux for testing out and walking through Perl-style regular expressions. You can interactively try out regexs on test data, find out which bits of the expression match what, view a graphical version parse tree, and get a confusing rendition of what the expression does in convoluted english. It's a minor miracle for anyone learning regular expressions, and will be a frequent timesaver even for those who have slashes on each side of their brain. And, of course, it's written in Common Lisp. What *is* it with everyone taunting the Perl guys these days? http://www.weitz.de/regex-coach/ - guess they drop the "p" in "regexp" because it's not a question http://dev.perl.org/perl6/exegesis/E05.html - cometh the perl6::rules >> MEMEPOOL << contains a source of http://snackspot.org/ http://qwer.org/synth.html channels The Onion's Smoove B: http://www.theonion.com/archive/archive_smooveb.php - "Demo CDs may also be provided"... submitting comedy "Oxo tower" reviews http://www.london-eating.co.uk/2252.htm (see 10/10/03) is the new "Martin Wank prank Amazon writeups"... putting all our old Google misspellings/ OCR artefacts ("bum victims" etc) into Amazon.com's new full text search... not like the others #17: http://images.google.com/images?q=%22deanna+troi%22 ... increasing professionalism killing the amateur spirit of eBay: http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=2761443653 ... roll d6 for muggings: http://www.chooseyourownny.com/ ... the Guardian - giving you both sides of the very same story: http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/story/0,3604,1067446,00.html vs http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,7496,1067224,00.html >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> inexplicably, all the published listings describe last week's plot for tonight's last-in-this-series episode of PEEP SHOW (10.40pm, Fri, C4)... Welsh "Jackass"-alike DIRTY SANCHEZ (11.45pm, Fri, C4) is, one hopes, the rudest TV title of all time... and nothing kicks Saturday night off with more of a bang than 1970s assassination thriller THE DAY OF THE JACKAL (6.45pm, Sat, BBC2)... comedian Jimmy Carr and former "body of Darth Vader" Dave Prowse serve up C4 viewers' THE 100 GREATEST SCARY MOMENTS (9.05pm, Sat & Sun, C4) - in a week of Halloween movies that includes unexpected influence on US aerial-photo-interpretation THE OMEN (11.25pm, Sat, BBC1) http://www.austinchronicle.com/issues/dispatch/2003-10-24/pols_naked6.html , German psycho-thriller THE EXPERIMENT (9pm, Sat, BBC4), arms- biz suburban nightmare FALLING DOWN (10.55pm, Sun, BBC1), plus karaoke comedy DUETS (11.30pm, Sun, BBC2) - featuring Gwyneth Paltrow butchering "Bette Davis Eyes"... yet another "Matrix night" (from 9pm, Sun, C5) features both DECODED: THE MAKING OF MATRIX REVOLUTIONS (11.40pm, Sun, C5) and enough clues in ANIMATRIX: SECOND RENAISSANCE (12.10am, Sun, C5) to make the "mother of all spoilers" oh *so* obvious to true devotees: http://www.netalive.org/stuff/matrix-revolutions_mother-of-all-spoilers.txt ... BBC2 fills an inconvenient gap in its regular snooker coverage with the jumped-the-shark-in-the-musical last-ever series of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (6.45pm, Tue-Thu, BBC2)... and we still like this opening "Merlin" anecdote from the director of revenge classic POINT BLANK (11.45pm, Tue, BBC1) http://books.guardian.co.uk/review/story/0,12084,1040562,00.html ... the BBC's entirely unpatronising Asian season climaxes with THE JOY OF CURRY (8pm, Wed, BBC2)... there's even an Asian lead in one-sided mobile phone drama YOU'RE BREAKING UP (11.20pm, Wed, BBC2)... but it's nuclear annihilation night on digital with a triple-bill of APOCALYPSE NOW - AND THEN (10pm, Wed, BBC4), tedious "protect and survive" counter-propaganda THREADS (10.40pm, Wed, BBC4) and an-all-too literal Hiroshima edition of DAYS THAT SHOOK THE WORLD (12.35pm, Wed, BBC4)... FILM>> half-term arrives with junior David Lynch-style prison weirdness HOLES ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/holes.htm : unsafe rock climbing; flatulence; rudeness to many; lies)... outdoor Caine/ Duvall/ Osment family feelgooder SECONDHAND LIONS ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : Distributor chose to remove sight of illegal weapons (flick knives) and instructional use of knife)... or a somewhat limited release for extended Daft Punk anime video INTERSTELLA 5555: THE 5TORY OF THE 5ECRET 5TAR 5YSTEM ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : contains mild fantasy violence)... George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones attempt to broaden the mainstream appeal of the intolerable Coen brothers' still undeniably quirky rom-com INTOLERABLE CRUELTY ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/intolerablecruelty.htm : lusting after nudity; series of sexual antics, including perversion; multiple divorces; cheapening the wrongness of adultery)... while hardly anywhere at all appears to be showing Vin Diesel-free infidelity drama "XXX" prequel XX/XY ( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=XX%2FXY : we see Mark [Ruffalo] swimming in a pool underwater, and the trunks he's wearing are very very loose and pushed down very low at the back with the pressure of the water thus revealing about 3/4 of his ass)... AVAILABLE IN A WIDE RANGE OF BLACK, DESATURATED RED, AND DARK GREY>> yes, muted earth tones are "in" to celebrate the official arrival of autumn over at http://www.ntkmart.co.uk/ . Hot this month: our mock Japanese writing design consisting of semi-random kanji and katakana characters, interspersed with English phrases like "random japanese text" and "computer hobby", plus one of those one of those freaking Internet Explorer alert boxes on top of the whole thing, advising "To display this shirt correctly you need to download: Japanese Text Display Support", and so on. It's available in black, charcoal (dark grey) and steel (turquoise blue), 50p from each sale goes to recent Japlish contest winner DAVID GENTLE (for suggesting the phrases "tap-tap machine" and "Is 'grooved'? Yes grooved!"), while reader RONAN WAIDE has already confirmed that the big writing up at the top does seem to mean something like "to know [something] thing" and/or "shiru (to know) hitsuyousei (necessity)" - hey, as long as it's nothing rude: http://www.engrish.com/category_index.php?category=Adult%20Engrish ... "Memes don't exist/ Tell your friends" is also back at last, "404 /shirt/tie not found" is additionally available in tan (light brown/ dark yellow) and cedar (desaturated red), but new reader designs continue to tickle our fancy, including NONEMORENEGATIVE's refreshingly baffling "jumper setting" gag: http://www.nonemorenegative.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/jumpers/jumpers.asp . JON PETERSON appeared to be promoting a radically pro-blog position in http://www.snowdrift.org/images/blog1.gif , JOHN MORTON implied that Richard Stallman is the new Che Guevara http://kaos.org.nz/misc/jshirts/index.php#gnu , but many of this month's top submissions were in text-only form, including LLOYD WOOD borrowing "yet another cynical goth programmer" from http://www.livejournal.com/users/cyn_goth_prog/ , and DANIEL BARLOW's yet-more-succinct "within$ ssh system shutdown -i0 -g0 -y". Don't forget to vote for your favourites by mailing us at the usual NTK address, ideally including the disclaimer "I am not a friend or colleague of the person who originally sent the design in, though obviously have no way of proving this". Speaking of which, tune in next time for the results of our ground-breaking competition to find the UK's most convincing email impersonation of TV's very own IAIN LEE: http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02003-08-29&l=291#l ... >> 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 "not quite the opinion we're forming over here" http://conferences.oreillynet.com/cs/et2004/view/e_spkr/1661 NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. 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