>> HARD NEWS <<
spontaneous ballyhoos
See what happens when you go mainstream? Old Internet
wunderkinder CHARLIE BROOKER, father of TV Go Home, NTK
irregular, creator of Nathan Barley, maker of (corporate
shields up! pr0n filters on stun!) "Cunt", was picked off
in a hail of lone typists acting online this week, for
concluding his Guardian TV review of the US presidential
debates with a reference to Lee Harvey Oswald, John Hinckley
and the other people you put in the standard "Come back
$PERSON, all is forgiven!" graffiti joke.
http://news.google.com/news?q=charlie+brooker
- how these things spread
The Guardian, in its fine tradition of boldness in the face
of adversity, instantly took down the column and replaced it
with an apology. But, as the servers struggle to keep up
with the bad-teeth-citing, lime-despising, sure-kicked-your-
ass-in-the-late-18th-Century barrage, we remain charmed by
one thing: Proper Media still counts.
http://littlegreenfootballs.com/weblog/?entry=13269#c0051
- the Net perceives censorship as a fair use op and carefully
redistributes it
Because Brooker may write in a paper, but he still posts
like he was on a newsgroup. You do know what they're saying
on IRC, right? Do you read what the little green forums of
the world spit out on a daily basis? Have you seen the
Indymediots, the Freepers, the lists, the feeds, the
unmoderated masses? Do you remember what you yourself wrote
*last night*? You've heard the Bush jokes, the Kerry jokes,
the Blair jokes: are we supposed to take all of those
seriously, too?
http://www.arbitary.i12.com/ccb-archive.html
- we wish to complain about the portrayal of Micro Machines V3
Yes, it's all serious now. But one day, we'll look back and
laugh. We'll watch Dad's Reservist Army, and visit the Twin
Towers Vegas attraction, and the guy in the giant Osama head
will ask us to recall that time when people stayed up at
night, staring at their dim screens, and darker forums,
threatening to do more than JUST TYPE IN ANGRY CAPS during
The Great Trolling. Ah, hell, here's to next week, when we
all tap on reload, watching that grey bar of progress of
inch across the screen, then sticking, as it always does, at
49%. HAND.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/weekend/story/0,,321755,00.html
- as recently as 1999, you were even allowed to have a pop at John Peel
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
GOTOs considered non-harmful
We're as sceptical about online petitions as anyone, but it
took just 47 signatures to ensure the resurrection of a 32-
page "tribute" issue to YOUR SINCLAIR, covermounted with this
month's RETRO GAMER magazine (in shops now, UKP5.99). Here's
hoping that next weekend's ORSAM NORWICH SINCLAIR AND CLONES
SHOW (10am-4pm, Sat 2004-11-06, Alec Bussey Scout Centre, free
- presumably) is at least as enthusiastically attended, though
the exhibitors (eg "Anglia Classic Computer Users Society will
be selling keyboard membranes on behalf of RWAP Software") can
always just sell stuff to each other, as happened from time to
time last year.
http://www.ysrnry.co.uk/cover1.htm
- David McCandless! Jonathan Davies! (scroll down)
http://www.speccyverse.me.uk/orsam/
- vs http://www.petitiononline.com/Sinclair/petition.html
http://www.apachecon.com/
- "Will ya plug [ApacheCon]?" (Vegas, Nov 13), Ben Laurie pleads
http://www.shmoocon.org/cfp.html
- and ShmooCon, Washington DC, Feb 2005. Consider it done, Ben.
>> ANTI-MEMES <<
there's smoke, flames, http://dohthehumanity.com/
another satisfied customer makes use of guestbook facilities:
http://www.westwalesbeachbreaks.co.uk/10602/10603.html ...
Daily Mail fails to realise there are 101 years from 1904 to
2004 (inclusive): http://qwer.org/ClassicFencePostError.html
vs http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/3755482.stm ...
intricately constructed Widdecombe of the fortnight or
whenever (some NSFW language): http://tinyurl.com/3pbrg ...
when oh when will the public tire of inappropriate background
image-linking on forums full of earnest Harry Potter fans?:
http://p071.ezboard.com/fhogwartsandbeyond81091frm114 ... one
reason why Bush doesn't want the world seeing his website?:
http://www.siliconcreative.com/images/towit_large.jpg (fixed
now from the looks of things)...
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
Look, you're not obsessed over your http hits, alright? You
don't pour over your apache logs, gleefully pouncing on
referrers, chortle over your keh-razy Google search terms,
tracing your rise up the blogrolls to Supreme
Google-Juicity. That would be *vain*. As a matter of fact,
you don't even have a weblog statistics analyser installed.
But you do concede it would be nice to just take a cursory
glance across the last /var/log/apache/access_log file.
Perhaps even, as in that last slashdotting, to get an HTML
summary in real time, counting up the hits as they happen.
Enter VISITORS, the ironically ungoogleable name of a C
executable that's fast enough to just run over your logs
when you need it, raw enough to generate a text summary to
STDOUT, and small enough to sit listening to a piped "tail
-f" of your logs, generating HTML on the fly. The code is
portable with no dependencies, so you don't even have to
install it. No-one need know you care.
http://www.hping.org/visitors/
- wow, that's a lot of adverts for a C program
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
TV>> you know, you wait all year for detailed deconstuctions
of what goes on in US politics, then GOD BLESS AMERICA: WITH
GOD ON OUR SIDE (7.20pm, Sat, C4), THE NEW WORLD WAR (11.10pm,
Sun and Mon, ITV), and DEAD RINGERS ELECTION SPECIAL (9pm,
Mon, BBC2) all come along at the same time... the makers of
"Attachments" tackle a slightly less fantastical workplace in
the form of legally dubious pre-crime procedural MURDER
PREVENTION (10.20pm, Sat, C4)... and the mythical "but Abraham
Lincoln's statue has the head - of a horse!" ending would make
about as much sense as anything else in Tim Burton's travesty
of PLANET OF THE APES (9pm, Sun, C5)... ITV3 launches on
Freeview with both home-grown *and* American crime shows, the
latter including detective-cabbie romp HACK (11pm, Mon, ITV3)
and the updated Ed "Married With Children" O'Neill DRAGNET
(9pm, Wed, ITV3)... THE SMOKING ROOM (10pm, Tue, BBC2) is
basically a nicotine-stained, less-funny version of "The
Office"... but the "you've been targeted for Shermination" bit
remains a highlight of the as-you'd-expect AMERICAN PIE 2
(9pm, Wed, ITV)... HORIZON (9pm, Thu, BBC2) tackles the tricky
issue of nature vs nurture in the sensitively titled "Dr Money
And The Boy With No Penis"... C4 are presumably celebrating
something with a terrestrial premier double bill of TOUCHING
THE VOID (9pm, Thu, C4) and the neat but neurologically
improbable MEMENTO (11.05pm, Thu, C4) - dense anterograde
amnesia is so rare it's unlikely he'd have ever met anyone
else with the same condition... and apparently it's quite
amusingly written, but does that really make up for the
atrocious animation quality of new C4 acquisition THE SIMPSONS?
(from 9pm, next Fri, C4)...
FILM>> Izabella "Reign of Fire" Scorupco is sworn in as the
new "Pazuzu" in unnecessary prequel EXORCIST: THE BEGINNING
( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/exorcistthebeginning.htm :
If you are bothered by seeing a human body atomized into tiny
pieces and another body with a 10-inch hole eaten through its
midsection with about half the flesh gone from the rest of the
body, this film is not for you)... also out on limited release
this Friday is the scariest Halloween sociopath of them all -
aka THE CORPORATION ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : Cert PG,
contains images of real violence and death)... then next week,
Sarah Michelle Gellar avoids stereotyping as a young woman
battling supernatural forces in Japanese horror remake THE
GRUDGE ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/grudge_the.htm :
human mandible; adults in underwear; mutilated walking undead;
at least seven murders and one suicide; Buddhism)... and sure,
we admit there are *a few* funny moments amid the endless,
brutal misanthropy of Billy Bob Thornton's predictably BAD
SANTA ( http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0307987/trivia : the word
"fuck" and its variations are used 147 times while "shit"
appears 34 times - possibly a record for a Christmas film)...
>> 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
"in all this excitement, we've kind of lost track ourselves..."
http://www.freecherrypy.org/asbradbury/archive/0429000
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
Archive - http://www.ntk.net/
Unsubscribe or subscribe at http://lists.ntk.net/
NTK now is supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.ntkmart.com/
(K) 2004 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 - with NTK in the subject, cheers.
All communication is for publication, unless you beg.
Remember: Your work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material.
Sending >500KB attachments is forbidden by the Geneva Convention.
Your country may be at risk if you fail to comply.
