>> HARD NEWS <<
warm vdu's
And cue the Creative Archive! Oh sure, a few people have
griped about the "no-endorsement" clauses (hey, even the
mighty copyright-free NASA weakly requests you not to use
its material to imply United States Starfleet support). And
there's some real questions over what it means to be UK-only
(Will the BBC enforce the rule with special GeoIP "detector
vans" that will roam every street outside Britain? Is the
BBC motto going to be "Nation Won't Let Nation Touch Its
Preciousssss"? Or will the original copyright holders
eventually wise up and see the benefits of inevitable
worldwide distribution?) But the key promise has been
preserved: no DRM, and a working demo to test the waters.
Plus the Open University is on board, leading to potentially
endless "Look Around You"-style parodies. Also, actual
content: while nobody seems to have mentioned it, the BFI
have stepped up to the mark with three CA-licensed works:
"Silent Hamlet" (clearly some classic anime episode), "Looks
very jolly, doesn't it?" (would work great in a video remix
of Fatboy Slim's "Praise You"), and "Our New Errand Boy".
Which, presumably, is some sort of ad for BitTorrent.
http://creative.bfi.org.uk/
- oh come on, "Praise You" must be public domain by *now*
http://creativearchive.bbc.co.uk/archives/what_is_the_creative_archive/
- FAQ has entry for old Dr Who episodes, oddly overlooks uknova.com
http://creativecommons.org.uk/
- and not to be outdone, actual CC licenses for England and Wales
Are we the only ones who suspect that when the election is
over, CHRIS LIGHTFOOT will be mysteriously found to be Prime
Minister, with the rest of the MySociety hackers in prominent
cabinet positions? The speed by which they have,
individually or acting in secret conspiracy, constructed
fistfuls of election sites, surely hints at some deeper lust
for power. Their slightly-defensively-domained NOTAPATHETIC
DOT COM takes your confessions as to why you're not voting
(we're looking forward to the MP's response site,
IDONTBLOODYWORKFORYOUTHEN.COM). Lightfoot-hosted,
party-based "Who Should I Vote For" competes with his
honourable colleagues' more granualar seven-question quiz at
Public Whip, which bases its demands on your personal MP's
voting patterns. If just one of these sites were rigged to
tell you to vote for the CVS party, they could get in with
a landslide.
http://www.notapathetic.com/
- we only picked Chris as leader because we suspect he's good in a coup
http://www.whoshouldyouvotefor.com/
- it's the "So You're Trying To Deny Being Lib Dem" quiz!
http://www.publicwhip.org.uk/election.php
- worth clicking around the rest of the site
http://www.politicalsurvey2005.com/
- and here's another one (which "political quiz taker" are you?)
http://www.notapathetic.com/cgi-bin/tags.cgi
- there's a cry for help if ever we saw one
http://www.mysociety.org/?cat=2
- and another: the developer's blog
https://secure.mysociety.org/cvstrac/getfile/mysociety/bin/hassleblog?v=1.2
- the technical fix to their social problem
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
GOTOs considered non-harmful
"You know, you can tell GPS was invented by a man", we caught
ourselves thinking the other week, "because women tend not to
be quite so inexplicably terrified of asking for directions."
(Isn't that right, ladies? Well, isn't it?) Why not question
this - and other gender-related stereotypes - at the launch of
Cybersalon's VENUS RISING girl-gang think-tank (7pm this Tue
2005-04-19, Dana Centre, next to the Science Museum, 165
Queen's Gate, London SW7 5HE, free but RSVP to the email on
the site), a debate chaired by Cyberia co-founder Eva Pascoe
on whose turn it *really* is to "hold the remote control", if
you know what we mean.
http://www.cybersalon.org/future.html#venusrising
- also Jungulator show + workshop in North London on Saturday
http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/
- multimedia "Erotic Shortcuts" at Dorkbot London on Wednesday
http://www.tjm.org.uk/wakeup/comedy.shtml
- free charity gig with Rob "Hello..." Newman, midnight tonight
http://www.notbbc.co.uk/not118/?31%5DaX%7BZrYx
- or sponsor LeeAndHerring.com's Rob in London marathon
http://www.penguicon.org/programming
- Cory Doctorow *is* Meat Loaf at Penguincon, Michigan, April 22
http://www.tvturnoff.org/week.htm
- and don't forget TV-Turnoff Week, from April 25
>> ANTI-MEMES <<
there's smoke, flames, http://dohthehumanity.com/
Learn how to program your very own amazing disappearing left-
hand rollover menu (in IE - even worse in Mozilla/ Firefox):
http://www.ics.heacademy.ac.uk/Events/Oxbrookes/bookoxbrookes.shtml
... blinking botanists: http://www.botanic.co.uk/ ... "Do you
comply with the DDA?", reads an image with no "alt" attribute:
http://www.slingsby.com/ ... The Gadget Shop - (slightly
overpriced) FALCO!: http://toynewsmag.com/newsitem.php?id=61
... browse the web - without leaving the comfort of the Half-
Life 2 engine: http://www.hostile-planet.com/gallery.php?4 ...
perhaps making it slightly too easy for anyone to build their
own official-looking site: http://www.labour.co.uk/ - vs
esoteric satire: http://chimpen.com/tory/ ... so now maybe
someone could have a go at that other annoying thing he wrote,
retitled "If you're so super-smart, why don't you just work
out what the other kids are doing to make them so 'popular'?":
http://www.idlewords.com/2005/04/dabblers_and_blowhards.htm ...
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
[TO TUNE OF "MICKEY", BY TONI BASIL] Greasemonkey, you're so
fine, you're so fine, you rewrite incoming HTML on the fly
within the Firefox browser, using user-defined Javascript
scripts, the script being determined by the URL of the
original page! Hey Greasemonkey! GM is the premier
bit-tampering plugin, based on its growing library of
rewriters, which do locally what the best guerilla usability
sites did at the server: skin sites, strip ads, de-Flash
Flickr, grab Salon daily passes, cut out Michael Jackson
stories from Reuters, and splice Bloglines and Del.icio.us
together in inhuman ways, and so forth. For those trapped
by the Time Wars in the 20th Century, there was briefly
GREASEMONKIE, which did the same thing for Internet
Explorer co-dependents. Todd Ostermeier even attempted to
patch IE's idiosyncratic Javascript library so that
Firefox-sourced scripts would work unchanged. But now,
that's gone - and who will write a replacement? Will it be
Dean Edwards, master of the IE7 library? Will it be you?
http://www.daishar.com/downloads/GreasemonkIE/greasemonkie.msi
- no. not you, the guy behind you
http://dunck.us/collab/GreaseMonkeyUserScripts
- don't break my heart, monkey
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
TV>> the "psychological" illusionist faces his greatest
challenge yet - befuddling the fearsome intellect of mental
giant Simon Pegg in DERREN BROWN: TRICK OF THE MIND (9.30pm,
Fri, C4)... C4 counts down THE 100 GREATEST ALBUMS (8pm, Sun,
C4) - which, for the benefit of our younger readers, were an
old-fashioned way of selling music that padded out the better-
produced tracks with obvious filler material... similarly, it
may help to think of POINT BREAK (9pm, Sun, C4) as basically
"The Fast And The Furious", but with extreme sports instead of
racing cars... the British fixation with hobbies that are
extremely time-consuming, yet ultimately produce very little,
is celebrated in the three-part history of cartoons ANIMATION
NATION (9pm, Mon, BBC4)... "Best way to make it look like
you've lost weight? Holiday with Americans", recommends
obesity-reality docu WELCOME TO FATLAND (8pm, Tue, ITV)...
while Freeview watchers may sometimes feel they're in their
own special purgatory condemned to watch it every other week,
but it's always worth catching the magnificent production
design of Paul Anderson's demented "Solaris"-remake career-
highlight, EVENT HORIZON (11.45pm, Fri, BBC1)...
FILM>> spring is here at last, commemorated by traditional
cinematic celebrations of transformation and rebirth such as
Wes Craven's troubled Christina Ricci werewolf romp CURSED
( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=Cursed+(2004) : After
Judy ["Arrested Development" Greer] is (spoiler!) killed she
is seen in the fetal position offering a split-second shot of
her ass in profile. Not brightly lit and far too brief to be
of much interest) - or the equally uninspiring Michael "Pearl
Harbor" Bay-produced retread of THE AMITYVILLE HORROR (imdb:
haunted-house/ axe/ based-on-true-story/ demonic-possession)
...then also next week, Debra "Prey, Will And Grace" Messing's
man-troubles continue in romantic gigolo farce THE WEDDING DATE
( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=Wedding+Date%2C+The+%282005%29
When [Debra] embraces Dermot Mulroney and start[s] rolling
around, we get a nipple peek for about a second. Worth it only
if you are a Debra fan)...
>> 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
"puckish"
www.corante.com/copyfight/archives/2005/04/04/gearing_up_for_world_ip_day.php
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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