Fun_People Archive
8 Dec
NTK bits, 2000-12-08
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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Fri, 8 Dec 100 12:23:28 -0800
To: Fun_People
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Subject: NTK bits, 2000-12-08
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Excerpted-from: NTK now, 2000-12-08
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"Sad people choose an online woman (cue stereotypes of air
hostess, barmaid and school teacher) and then exchange
flirtatious emails with what is really a computer program.
Alan Turing, where are you when we need you?"
- "Heroes and Zeroes" column, MACUSER, Friday 2000-12-08
...actually, Turing kind of preferred the motorcycle cop, the American
Indian, and the construction worker...
>> HARD NEWS <<
up the wazoo
The Sexual Offences Amendment, introduced to bring the gay age of
consent in line with those notorious heterosexuals, is now law,
but the riveting Lords debate on the topic continues at the very
home of frank sexual argy-bargy - THE WEB! Welcome to
www.ageofconsent.org.uk, our favourite Baroness Thornton's own
exercise in on-line democracy, where you too can vote on the
controversial topic of what is scaring the peer's horses these
days. There are, we should say, something a bit skewiff here. The
explanation of exactly what you're voting for on the site is very
confusing, with strong encouragements to vote with the good
Baroness, whatever you originally thought. Also, they keep on saying
the word "buggery", to the point where we began to forget what it
meant. Finally, details of the individuals behind the site are
strangely vague, apart from the credit to "the group who voted in
favour of the House of Lords amendment". Although it would be nice
to imagine that it's actually the Baroness who wrote the ColdFusion
back-end (oops-la!), this does make it tricky to discover who to
contact - should, say, you wish to query about the use of the site's
personal data under the Data Protection Act (helpfully linked from
their homepage in place of a proper privacy statement). That's
certainly pertinent, given that in order to vote, you have to give
your name, postcode - and your sexual orientation. Those of us who
are a mite concerned about handing over a lucrative, geographically-
detailed, pink pound marketing database to the Baroness shouldn't
worry: One call to the Lords later, and we find it was the oddly
reticent INTERACTIVE BUREAU who manage the site. Unfortunately,
as of "press send" time, they hadn't given us the precise details
of the fat "data controller" contact required by law. So, in
accordance with the data registrar's own recommendations, do send
your firm, manly, request to have your most private recesses
unhanded this instant to IAB's chief exec: RODNEY TYLER,
INTERACTIVE BUREAU LONDON, HOLBORN GATE, 26 SOUTHAMPTON BUILDINGS,
LONDON WC2A 1PJ. We'll update that address as soon as they pull
their finger out. Ahem.
http://www.ageofconsent.org.uk/
- notice our restrained use of double-entendre here
http://wood.ccta.gov.uk/dpr/dpdoc.nsf
- form letter under Your Rights
http://194.128.65.4/pa/ld199900/ldhansrd/pdvn/lds00/text/01113-06.htm
- "the position is quite different for girls"
Surprises came thick and fast at this year's BIG BROTHER AWARDS:
the absence of Mark Thomas (on "a sting" somewhere); Simon Davies
and David Shayler taking the stage as "Men In Black"; endearingly
amateurish home movies of Privacy International delivering awards
to winners who couldn't make the ceremony. But the biggest turn-up
for the bookies came when out-of-nowhere outsiders ENVISION TV
LICENSING swept ahead of established favourites - including 192.com/
InfoDisc proprietors i-CD Publishing, automated face-recognition
pioneers Visionics and, of course, Amazon.co.uk - to take "Most
Invasive Company", thanks to their national database of 26 million
addresses plus what Davies described as "constantly hounding TV-free
households to explain why they don't have a TV". To which we'd add:
and requiring retailers, by law, to provide them with the names
and addresses of anyone buying or renting a TV, digital set-top
box, VCR, PC tuner card or "TV-enabled computer" in the UK, making
the sale of Orwell's "telescreens" more strictly regulated here
than, say, rifles and shotguns in the state of Florida. Now, we
don't recall ever explicitly handing over these details when buying
a telly (unless they get them direct from your credit card or bank),
but if you're purchasing some TV-enabled consumer goods this
Christmas, why not take along a large sum of cash and perhaps a
"new" address as well, and do let us know how you get on...
http://www.privacyinternational.org/bigbrother/uk2000/
- Jack Straw re-nominated "for the astonishing achievement of
being consistently more authoritarian than Michael Howard"
http://www.tv-l.co.uk/retailers/retailers.html
- TVs, rifles, shotguns: which "urban pacifier" is next?
Celebrity gossip time: WHICH spicy e-mail newsletter attempts to
avoid legal action by keeping its scandalous gossip as "blind
items"? BUT is these days getting shopped by its own online FORUM,
who insist on putting names to EVEN THE WORST ACCUSATIONS regarding
hitherto NAMELESS TV PRESENTERS, to the point where they've had to
(temporarily, we hope) shut it down? But who, have nevertheless,
pointed their fans to forum on another site, which presumably will
have to shut itself down too, and so on infinitum? Hmm?
http://www.popbitch.com/
- no, you idiots, not us
http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.popbitch.com/data/guestbook.html
- damn missed it
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
AUDIOGALAXY SATELLITE isn't your standard Napster clone. It's
principal advantage is that almost all the UI is run from their
own Website; you pick out the tracks you want queued for download,
and the stubby little client merely chats occasionally to find out
what's to be downloaded, where from, and who wants to upload. There
are no permanently open ports, the client automatically auto-resumes
downloads, and the CPU usage is miniscule. The Windows version
(yes, there's a 200K CLI Linux client) even has bandwidth
throttling. Meanwhile, that Audiogalaxy Web UI is *lovely*: it
automatically sorts songs by artist, and does its best to eliminate
broken files and consolidate good versions. It keeps track of files
that have appeared in the past on the network, so you can select
and queue them for when they reappear. And because the selection
and downloading process are separated, you can pick your tracks
away from home, and have them auto-download remotely to your home
machine. Heck, as an journalistic experiment, we even managed to
set up a public repository of songs using a client running on a
Webserver. It's exactly how Napster should be done - and there's
even a potential revenue model for AG with banner ads and CD
purchases. If wasn't for the fact that it's slightly more
centralised than the Nap (making for some scaling issues), non-free
(natch), and fucking doomed to be smashed into pieces by those RIAA
folk, we'd say it's the future of MP3 distribution. As it is, we'll
say that it's the all-too-brief present, and wait for the writs to
fly.
http://www.audiogalaxy.com/satellite/
- very tempted to keep quiet about this one
http://ultimate.infopop.com/~rageagainst/ubb/Forum19/HTML/000009.html
- raging with the help of some machines
>> 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
"like Christmas (1997) all over again"
http://ccmail.freemans.com/samples/isapi/drop.htm
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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