"One of the major problems that I've always had with Christ
Anderson's reading of the so-called 'Long Tail' theory is
his consistent mis-understanding of what media is all about
in the 21st Century..."
...2nd time Ian's called him "Christ" in the past 6 months
http://www.ianbetteridge.co.uk/technovia/?p=1006
http://www.ianbetteridge.co.uk/technovia/?p=345
- all together now: He's not the Messiah, he's just
*a very naughty boy*
>> BARELY NEWS <<
time to carouse
As some of the more punctuality-obsessed of you will have
spotted, NTK is on more of an extended hiatus than we
previously anticipated, while we rethink some of the near-
decade-old technical and editorial infrastructure. Heaven
forbid that too many of you were relying on us for updates
about what's really going on, but - on the plus side - our
recent slackness may have prompted several NTK readers to
produce their own tech-event calendars, to help keep track
of which fashionable bars *aren't* currently hosting web-
professionals' networking nights under some combination of
the words "social", "geek", "beers", a day of the week, and
- of course - "2.0".
http://upcoming.org/group/1928
- Nicole Simon: Upcoming.org highlights for non-Americans
http://jigsawuk.org/index.php?title=Events_and_conferences
- Colin Donald: "wiki for young British digital media companies"
http://www.bluedust.com/tla/
- London round-up by Steev Goodwin, "Geek About Town"
http://open-lecture.net/
- vs Steve Cooke, doing his own http://lecturelist.org/ ?
http://barcamp.org/minibar
- Friday Jan 26 London freebie we didn't spot elsewhere
http://2lmc.org/spool/id/5501
- bubblier than a Coke bottle full of Mentos
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
CVS may be history (a history from which Subversion is
trying to awaken), but if you really want to tag a forked
branch of version control as "cool", we'd gump not for Hg,
Git, and Bzr, or ny f thse othr nw mthrfckrs, but for MVS.
Nothing as outre as a distributed version control system,
MVS is a CVS-alike command line interface for MediaWiki.
"mvs login" to your favourite Wikipedia clone (including
Wikipedia), check out the pages you'd like to have around
as text files in a local repository, and then update them,
change them, run diffs, edit them offline and commit them
with comments whenever you want, wherever you want. Perfect
for armchair trolling, or maintaining your mastery of the
Wikipedia Chicken page.
http://search.cpan.org/~markj/WWW-Mediawiki-Client/bin/mvs
- CPAN! Remember that, kids?
http://wikitravel.org/
- Mr. Bad's boy, all grown up
http://www.everytopicintheuniverseexceptchickens.com/
- This article or section does not cite its references or source
>> ANTI-MEMES <<
there's smoke, flames, http://dohthehumanity.com/
not "because you demanded it" so much as "because you kept
sending them in" - double-URLtendre backlog from the last
year: http://BurningAhole.co.uk , http://www.BritMilfIT.com ,
http://les-bi.org , http://TheirPastyOurFuture.org.uk ...
along with a selection of superficially sporting-themed
Google goofs: http://google.com/search?q=%22goat-scorer%22 ,
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22eye+of+the+ball%22 ,
http://google.com/search?q=%22conversation+of+momentum%22 ,
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22golf+of+mexico%22 (see
also http://www.google.com/search?q=%22guff+of+mexico%22 )
- plus http://www.google.co.uk/search?q=%22cola+miner%22 ,
and the more salacious alternative to NTK 2006-07-14's
"worhip": http://google.com/search?&q=house+of+whorship ...
http://computashop.com/pc.html imitates Police Squad's "For
some reason unknown to scientists, the Earth cooled, forming
a crust, a hard igneous shell, we scientists call rock":
http://www.xs4all.nl/~mrrob/policesquad/i-l.htm#pslab ...
yet no ban on the use of obfuscated phonetic Glaswegian?
http://www.west-dunbarton.gov.uk/forum/DisplayArticle.asp?ID=7448
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
QUICK TV>> now the end of BBC4's smug "Science Fiction
Britannia" season has reduced the risk of turning on
Freeview and catching Kim Newman and/or spods from Future
Publishing, ITV4 pays proper tribute to the late Nigel
Kneale with repeats of his 1979 "Children Of Men"-esque
Brit dystopia QUATERMASS (8pm, Sun, ITV4), co-starring
Simon "Manimal" MacCorkindale... falling ratings may doom
it to a future of direct-to-fanservice DVD releases -
http://www.geekmonthly.com/news/2006/12/28/ - but we like
to think of the remade BATTLESTAR GALACTICA (9pm, Tue, Sky
One) as a long-overdue spinoff of the retro "future war"
chic of "Genesis Of The Daleks"... plus, over on the audio-
only channels, NTK reader (and current star of the Florette
salad TV ad) BEN MOOR appears as a "reluctant beekeeper"
in Laura Solon's TALKING AND NOT TALKING series of
"Absolutely"-style comedy monologues (11pm, Wed, Radio 4)...
READERS' SITES>> We've always wondered if you could
synthesise some sort of ersatz NTK from the RSS feeds of
staff solo projects - with news from Danny's EFF Minilinks
http://eff.org/deeplinks/archives/cat_minilinks.php (with
added podcasts http://eff.org/deeplinks/archives/004982.php )
original linkage from Lee http://del.icio.us/lee/top , and
semi-humorous screenshots from http://dohthehumanity.com/ ,
which Dave says he'll clear the comment spam off once he's
finished "redesigning" http://snackspot.org.uk/ ...
Then if you could aggregate it all together with the neo-
brutalist courier .css from http://valleywag.com/ , so much
the better. For digital injustices closer to home, there's
always the Open Rights Group http://openrightsgroup.org/ ,
now under the capable custodianship of BECKY "Upon My
Signal, ReleaseTheMusic.org" HOGGE - while, on a more
environmental tip, reader GAVIN STARKS aims to harness the
power of the GPL, Pledgebank.com, and pop stars such as
Eric "Call On Me" Prydz to help replace global warming with
"Global Cool": http://www.global-cool.com/en/act/diy/ ...
On a lighter note, Why Not Try - reviving the rhetorical
recommendations from Lee and Herring's 1995 Fist Of Fun
book http://www.fistoffun.net/book/32.htm , with the help
of LEILA LOVEMAUS' all-new http://www.whynottry.org site?
But try not to get as cryptic as SIMON CROSS, who mailed us
last August requesting "Go on, help pimp my site/ You know
it's a good one/ Even if its not on Google", but neglected
to provide any clue as to its URL - we know "alternate
reality" puzzlers are supposed to be popular nowadays, but
really this is taking the mickey...
>> SMALL PRINT <<
Need to Know is a useful and interesting UK digest of things that
happened last month or might happen next month. 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
"well, you wouldn't want to pull teeth too often"
http://ukresistance.co.uk/2006/10/hear-actual-voice-of-richard-jacques.html
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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