>> HARD NEWS <<
bewildering menus
Not to be confused with this week's 1,000th US death row
execution, some future digital rights criminal bravely put
his or her name down as the thousandth OPEN RIGHTS GROUP
founding member, thereby setting off alarm bells at
Pledgebank HQ, and prompting 100 of the UK 1K (plus American
imports Jimmy "Wikipedia" Wales, Jonathan "Eldred v.
Ashcroft" Zittrain, and David "Stupid Network" Isenberg) to
hunker down in a basement in Soho, and plot and machinate on
what to do next. Sue Sony? Lobby MEPs? Throw oneself under
horses in the name of supporting fair use? Or, as the
cream.org gang indelicately suggested before going a bit mad
with the trolling possibilities of an open meeting, plotting
to win over "the unhosed stupid masses"? Whatever happens,
the thousand ORG founding members begin their whip-round on
Monday. Four extra basic civil liberties to the first fifty
to stump up their money!
http://www.pledgebank.com/rights
- of course you know they're just going to bank it and go to Rio
http://www.digitalrights.ie/
- on the 6th, ORG's sister in IE kicks off
http://skimmed.cream.org/?p=13
- thanks guys, that ought to do it
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
GOTOs considered non-harmful
Is it just us, or do HUGH MACLEOD's quirkily ultra-modern
business card doodles remind anyone of an illustrated version
of Carl Steadman's "99 Secrets" of about 7 years ago? Either
way, it may be hard to avoid the irrepressible Stormhoek wine-
promoter in the future, as he's speaking at next week's LES
BLOGS 2.0 (Mon and Tue 2005-12-05/06, "Negocia", 8 Avenue de
la Porte de Champerret, Paris, EUR 200 but sold out anyway), a
reassuringly US-dominated gathering of folks who still think
that blogs and wikis are a pretty neat idea. Hugh then lures
Microsoft "Technical Evangelist" ROBERT SCOBLE back to the UK
for another crowd-pulling GEEK DINNER (from 6pm, Sat 2005-12-
10, The Texas Embassy, 1 Cockspur Street, London SW1Y 3DQ,
UKP20 inc Tex-Mex buffet and maybe some free booze) - a 1900%
cost increase over the other events that Ian Forrester had in
the basement of that pub that time, but perhaps a small price
to pay for some of the spiciest autistic groupthink around!
http://lesblogs.typepad.com/blog/program/
- "How is ze blogging affecting ze corporations?" Ooh-la-la!
http://thehughpage.com/London_Geek_Dinner_With_Robert_Scoble
- vs...
http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://cheesebro.nonexiste.net/misc/99secrets.txt
http://www.etceteratheatre.com/page.php?pageID=2#show5
- speaking of quirky, London run for friend-of-NTK Ben Moor
>> ANTI-MEMES <<
there's smoke, flames, http://dohthehumanity.com/
A squirrel, yesterday: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/4489792.stm -
and the same lethal species as seen in Hertfordshire just 6
weeks ago: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/4365002.stm ... all-new
"not that I'm bitter": http://xooglers.blogspot.com/ ...
slightly "things you might see in ads" Google goofs o' the
month: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22central+hating%22 ,
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22hated+towel+rail%22 ,
http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22minty+condition%22 ...
a vital step towards establishing any "causal relationship":
http://google.co.uk/search?q=%22causal+sex%22 ... this year's
http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=02002-11-15&l=10#l -style
"risumi": http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=fagade+building ,
inevitably also affects other French words with cedilla
accents, eg http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=gargon+waiter
... how the new Kraftwerk-sampling Coldplay single sounds,
with Kraftwerk mixed back into it: http://www.m-1.us/ (search
page for "Kraftwerk")...
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
Okay, so this is a Tracking that's about something that's
not actually ready, as such. Or even usable. Or even (our
usual excuse) something requiring all-hacks-to-the-deck
contributions from NTK readers. But as we note more and more
PowerBook-wielding ex-Linux users beginning to twitch at the
jerky kernel-crashes of Tiger, feel a little burnt by the
whole "Oh, Did We Say Big-Endian?" switch to Intel, and keep
suffering repeated "interventions" at conferences by their
Debian-wielding friends, we thought we should fire a flare
for a project that's just *about* to get interesting. The
convoluted Chinese-walled reverse-engineering of the
Broadcom chipset used in Apple's Airport Extreme is now
getting to the point where it can fire and receive radio
packets, and the team is now hard at work at building a
software implementation of the MAC layer. They've had
success at scanning and associating, they have a plan for
syncing nicely with the latest Linux kernels, and soon -
perhaps as soon as next NTK, they may well have something
you can use on your PowerPC kit to let Linux connect
wirelessly. Just in time for Apple to upgrade from
Broadcom completely, of course - but isn't that always the way?
http://bcm-specs.sipsolutions.net/
- somebody writes the specs, someone else writes the code
http://bcm-specs.sipsolutions.net/irc-logs/?C=N;O=D
- remember, IT STILL DOESN'T WORK. So shh!
http://softmac.sipsolutions.net/
- still, if you are thinking of helping out, here's where the work should go
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
FILM>> Roger Ebert complains that the Human Genome Project was
actually completed in 2003 - but maybe future researchers will
discover they "missed a bit", thus justifying lines like "10%
of the human genome has not yet been mapped. Some say it's the
soul" in the promisingly knuckleheaded videogame adaptation
DOOM ( http://capalert.com/capreports/doom.htm : At a rate of
58.8 examples of violence per hour, that is very near an
average of one example of violence per minute; relatively
"lite" sexual content; massive firearms, repeatedly)... then
it's a great big unconvincing CGI animal Christmas, with Peter
Jackson both directing and starring in the title role of KING
KONG ( http://cndb.com/movie.html?title=King+Kong+%281933%29 :
While many have microanalyzed the inspiration that Fay Wray
provides, few have bothered to note that King Kong is totally
naked throughout the movie)... as New Zealand's Middle Earth
scenery is hastily repurposed as the backdrop to THE LION, THE
WITCH AND THE WARDROBE (imdb keywords: talking animal/ faun/
1940s), raising hopes that Disney will go on to make films of
all the books, including "Prince Caspian" and - acknowledged
by fans as the best of the series - "The Narnia Engineers"...
>> 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 'obscenely' overweight"
http://enjoyment.independent.co.uk/food_and_drink/features/article327908.ece
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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