>> HARD NEWS <<
avoidable snafus
OPENTECH, a fortnight ago: after a long and pleasant
retrospective on the digital rights scene in the UK, a panel
of shaky old cyber-activists - including the quiet, self-
effacing CORY DOCTOROW, prematurely aged software patent
fighter RUFUS POLLOCK, crypto old hand IAN "ex-FIPR" BROWN,
and NTK's doddering editor-without-responsibilities DANNY
O'BRIEN - all noticed that the crowd had turned ugly.
Facing yet another year without some really good public fights
in the UK against spreading DRM, data retention and net
surveillance, government data hoarding, copyright
criminalising, American corporate idiocy importation, and
general backward-assed technology policy-making in the UK, the
mob rebelled.
Tipping over tables, chanting anti-EUCD vitriol, and (perhaps
more accurately) nodding and muttering a fair bit, the crowd
were challenged by known agitator STEVE COAST to set up some
sort of membership-driven digital rights group then and there,
funded by a fiver-a-month charge.
Noting where the wind was blowing, the panellists tried to get
ahead of the pack. It was too late.
By the time you read this, over 500 people will have signed
up to support a digital rights network of sorts, whose vague
structure even as we speak is being made the hell up by a
scared and panicky group of old men. All they know is this:
its job will be to publicise the core geek issues in the
British media, it'll have a tiny full-time staff, and that,
if, in six months, it fails to please the membership rabble,
they'll string their so-called leaders up by their own CAT-5
cables. Or, you know, stop paying their fiver. Whichever's
easier.
Five hundred more people, and the pledge will be complete.
What will you do? Click to donate your money, and force old
men to do your cyber-liberty-crazed bidding? Or turn away, and
spend your fiver on the crisps and soft drink and sweet
ciggies of apathy and despair? The future, fellow tech-rabble,
is in your hands.
http://www.pledgebank.com/rights
- pledge your money here
http://www.guardian.co.uk/online/story/0,3605,1537039,00.html
- Danny's Guardian article explains in more hand-waving "detail"
http://www.flickr.com/photos/bowbrick/28071560/
- just to point out: it's completely separate from the EFF
http://www.ukuug.org/events/opentech2005/recording/
- with commentary at http://oblomovka.com/entries/2005/07/30
Regular readers will know that, on futurological matters, we
traditionally defer to the predictive wisdom of the 1960s one-
hit wonder "In the Year 2525", a whirlwind tour of upcoming
advances in handy increments of every 101 decades (by the year
5555, for instance, we are reliably informed that "Your legs
got nothing to do", as "Some machine" will be "doing that for
you"). It's rare to see such vision and imagination in the
work of today's scenario planners, so thank heavens for BT's
ever-reliable "Technology Timeline", published in the July
issue of The Observer's new Technology Magazine.
Sadly, our old friend "smart yoghurt" (see NTK 2005-05-27)
isn't expected to arrive until the 2020s, though we can look
forward to a "supercomputer as fast as a human brain" within
the next 5 years, both of which should prove invaluable when a
"Virus crosses over from machine to human" sometime between 2026
and 2030 (inevitably blamed on the androids who, by that point,
make up "10% of the population"). To BT's credit, they have
flagged certain milestones - "Time travel invented", "Faster
than light travel" and "Creation of Star Trek's Borg" - as
"Wild Cards (may happen at any time)", though you've got to
admire the specificity of placing "Terminator 3-style robots"
between 2041 and 2045, especially when BT boast a success rate
of "between 80 and 90 percent" in the past.
http://www.ntk.net/2005/08/05/bt.html
- clear flaws in T2-style "all-mimetic-poly-alloy" design
http://www.guntheranderson.com/v/data/intheyea.htm
- "From the bottom of a long glass tube, whoa-oh"
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
GOTOs considered non-harmful
August - when the burly Linux-wielding menfolk like to don
their Utilikilts and partake of the "walks, hikes, climbs,
[and] scrambles" of this year's LINUX BIER WANDERUNG (from
tomorrow Sat 2005-08-06 until Sun 14th, based around Killin
Village Hall, Killin, Stirlingshire, free but contributions
appreciated). And it's just down the road from this year's
WOMEN IN GAMES (from Mon 2005-08-08, University of Abertay,
Dundee, from UKP30/ day) - possibly discussing why there
aren't a few more female speakers at this year's EDINBURGH
INTERACTIVE ENTERTAINMENT FESTIVAL (from Thu 2005-08-11,
Edinburgh International Conference Centre, UKP195 + VAT; game
"screenings" from as little as UKP3). Yes, 3 quid doesn't get
you into many fringe shows nowadays - but then again, even
David "Elite" Braben plugging his new "Wallace & Grommit" game
seems unlikely to match the bittersweet poignancy of friend-
of-NTK Ben Moor's COELACANTH (3.15pm, every day until Sun
2005-08-28, The Pleasance Courtyard, Edinburgh, from UKP8.50)
- a romantic comedy set in a parallel universe where Victorian
scientists hybridised the "great trees of the world" and tree-
climbing became Britain's national sport.
http://lbw2005.ziggur.at/hiking
- apt-get "The Birks of Aberfeldy and Falls of Moness"
http://www.tech.port.ac.uk/staffweb/eylesm/wig-website/
- with totally non-patronising "Shadow Witches" compo
http://www.eief.co.uk/content/conference-programme.htm
- we kind of suspect that "Jean-Michel Tari" is a man
http://www.spesh.com/ben/coelacanth.html
- "The National Indecisiveness Society - Or Association"
http://www.dnscon.org/
- also up North: DNSCon Blackpool, from Friday Aug 12
http://www.fave.org.uk/mambo/index.php
- and "out West": open source creativity, Bristol, Aug 20
http://www.cgeuk.com/
- and down in Croydon: retro games mayhem on Sat August 13
>> ANTI-MEMES <<
there's smoke, flames, http://dohthehumanity.com/
those teenage file-sharers aren't going to sue themselves, you
know: http://golf-day.co.uk/home.html ... double-URLentendre
of the month: http://conceptits.com/ (as apparently blocked by
Telus Canadian ISP)... Google goof round-up: "maintainted",
"steaming multimedia", "involvoed" (sometimes with SAABs),
http://google.com/search?q=stonehenge+%22of+the+lentils%22 ,
http://google.com/search?q=%22costumer+care%22 , from French
for "naughty"?: http://google.com/search?q=%22mechant+navy%22
plus http://google.com/search?q=%22summery+execution%22-souls
- we guess it's the right season for them... not that we fully
approve of the term "mashups" being used in a non-musical
context (or "remix" for that matter), but if you're bored:
http://idealgovernment.com/index.php/weblog/comments/491/ ...
like Engadget, if it was edited by UK Resistance - literally:
http://www.idiottoys.com/ ...
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
It's a bit disturbing how much we've talked about PowerPoint
alternatives in Tracking in the past - and the immediate
present, for that matter. S5 is Eric Meyer's re-coding of
the old Opera Show trick, whereby a nicely-formatted single
XHTML page can be magically transformed into a complete,
formatted PowerPointy presentation, all in your
standards-compliant browser. Opera's parlour trick merely
let you page up and down the pages while in full-screen
mode, and got a bit tricky to using when Opera started
showing the ads in front of your bid for venture capital.
Eric's version lets you jump around the slides with keyboard
shortcuts, do primitive transitions, and, most importantly,
still code the whole thing up in simple HTML.
http://www.meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/
- S5. Catchy.
http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02003-01-31#TRACKING
- its fine forebear
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
FILM>> a flying "Short Circuit"/ HAL 9000 AI is struck by
lightning, downloads "all of" the songs on the internet, and
therefore must be destroyed, posits the preposterous STEALTH
( http://screenit.com/movies/2005/stealth.html [NB: Pop-ups,
generally oddly-behaving site]: The crew goes to Thailand for
some R & R and we see some miscellaneous cleavage; There are
many shots of [Jessica "Blade 3" Biel] in very tight pants)...
the theme of autonomous vehicles developing a mind of their
own is developed for younger viewers in HERBIE: FULLY LOADED
( http://screenit.com/movies/2005/herbie_fully_loaded.html :
[Lindsay "Mean Girls" Lohan] shows a little cleavage and wears
a very short skirt; When Herbie spots a new VW Bug, some sexy-
style music plays on the soundtrack [...] We then see Herbie's
antenna suddenly spring up)... then, next week, Michael "The
Rock" Bay remakes "Logan's Run" - but with more car chases - in
THE ISLAND ( http://screenit.com/movies/2005/the_island.html :
Ewan McGregor plays two versions of the same man, one who
realizes his life isn't anything like what he's been told and
then goes on the run once he learns that. He fights various
people who come after him and [Scarlett Johansson], with whom
he later has sex)...
>> 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
"dismissed as antiglobalization twerps"
http://tsmi.blogs.com/tsmiblog/2005/07/keeping_one_eye.html
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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