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"Using a laptop computer in the shadow of Big Ben, we
identified 26 parcels of confidential computer information."
- and inside each was a delicious chocolate treat
www.sundaymirror.co.uk/homepage/news/page.cfm?objectid=12125585&method=sm_full
>> HARD NEWS <<
here falls shoe two
Well, it's getting late, and the government hasn't fallen,
so we better roll the presses on the bad news. The CAMPAIGN
FOR DIGITAL RIGHTS published its first in-depth analysis of
the EUCD. For this exciting installment, CD-R has
concentrated on what it does to people who have to
circumvent copy protection to do their job. The short
summary is: if they're not a teacher, a prison warder,
disabled, or the cops, they can forget their jobs. If you're
anyone else - like a musician, or a cryptographer -  and the
copy protection says you can't make a backup, you can't. And
even if you *are* a teacher or other exceptional person,
you'll have to ask the Secretary of State if you can crack
the protected CD. In writing. Each time.
http://uk.eurorights.org/issues/eucd/ukimpl/
- oh, don't worry, it gets worse
http://www.stand.org.uk/weblog/archive/2002/08/21/000243.php
- what you can do to stop all this
But there's plenty more to ooze out of the law than that.
One of the big questions about the EUCD is "is it the
European DMCA, or what?". Well, the DMCA spurted bad juice
in many different directions, but one way in which the two
are similiar is over "circumvention devices". Distributing
DeCSS, the DVD lobby have claimed, is a crime under the
DMCA. DeCSS is code that was also a magically dangerous
artifact: a circumvention device. Circumvention devices are
about to become illegal here. Specifically, three months in
chokey (or two years if you really nark the judge), for
those who "distribute otherwise than in the course of a
business to such an extent as to affect prejudicially the
copyright owner" one of them. "Otherwise in the course of
business" is legalese for "as an ordinary punter", so it's
not just mod-chip sellers who are liable. Anyone who
distributes such satanic machines is also a perp.
http://www.stand.org.uk/weblog/archive/2002/08/21/000243.php
- what you can do to stop all this
That's not going to go down well with ANDREW SIMMONS.
Regular NTK readers will remember Andrew as a lightning rod
to lawyers. Not only was he John Doe #13 in the American
DeCSS case, but in a completely unrelated affair, he waws
threatened with all manner of nastiness just for publishing
his list of doomed dotcoms on his Website [NTK 2000-09-22].
In the last week, he's had another letter via Demon, finally
ordering him to remove his shiny "circumvention device" (aka
DeCSS) from his site. It sounds like the lawyers may have
shot their wad a tad early: the EUCD rules don't kick in
until Christmas. But when the new laws do hit, and if what
Andrew's preposterous correspondent says is believed in a UK
court, hosting DeCSS *will* mean jail. There's been some
talk about how the EUCD rules are better than the DMCA,
because they specifically exclude computer programs from the
new rules. Well, it looks like DeCSS is no longer just a
computer program. From now on, it could become a special "nick me"
tag for your Website.
http://www.xenoclast.org/free-sklyarov-uk/2002-August/002923.html
- here we go again
http://www.stand.org.uk/weblog/archive/2002/08/21/000243.php
- CLICK ON THE DAMN LINK
>> ANTI-NEWS <<
berating the obvious
surely approaching the end of the PUERILE GOOGLE MISSPELLINGS
soon: http://www.google.com/search?&q=%22penny+farting%22 vs
http://groups.google.com/groups?q=%22whitewater+farting%22 -
we suspect some people are using "poofreading" deliberately,
but probably not "potable document format", or the enigmatic:
http://www.google.com/search?q=%22To+Be+Set+Browser+Caption%22
... presumably meant "interfaith" (unless of course they're
Mac loyalists): http://www.ntk.net/2002/08/23/dohfaith.gif ...
banner ads haven't been getting any less inappropriate either:
http://www.ntk.net/2002/08/23/dohcruz.gif ... A Keyboard,
Yesterday: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2208216.stm
..."A levles" in "Phisics, Information Technoligies, Languges":
www.elance.com/c/fp/main/viewprofile.pl?view_person=insspirito&catid=10231
... "Alcohol makes others better-looking" - scientists' shock
finding: http://www.msnbc.com/news/796225.asp ... not judging
them or anything: http://www.ntk.net/2002/08/23/dohsin.gif ...
experience required in handling the *really* big accounts:
http://www.ntk.net/2002/08/23/dohgod.gif ...
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
goto's considered non-harmful
Is it just us, but just 5 years after Lara Croft appeared on
the cover of "The Face", could it be that the PlayStation is
now even cooler than ever? As if anyone had any doubts, next
week's PLAYSTATION EXPERIENCE (from Thu 2002-08-29, Earl's
Court, London) features exclusive demos of imminent releases,
teen band "Blazing Squad", skateboarding, BMXing, plus DJ sets
from the likes of XFM bootleggers James Hyman and Eddie
Temple-Morris. And, best of all, Sony are charging you a mere
UKP8 (plus booking fee) for the privilege of allowing them to
market all their upcoming titles to you.
http://www.ects.co.uk/pressmore.html?type=1&articleID=43
- still, Gareth "Gaz Top" Jones is hosting the ECTS awards
http://www.caextreme.org/
- coin-op collectors hit San Jose in 2 weeks' time
http://www.cobd.co.uk/yakfestpage.htm
- Llamasoft all-dayer in Oxford pub end of Sep
http://www.frightfest.co.uk/programme2002.html
- this weekend: horror film fest in London, with "Lupo"
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
The crazy counterintuitive conditional probability world of
BAYES THEOREM has a reputation for making judges look stupid
in DNA-testing murder cases, and search-engines look even
stupider when they suggest "relevant documents" - but it's
getting a bit of a re-renaissance in the spam filtering
world. Tradition states Naive Bayesian alone doesn't work
well enough at filtering by example, so it's good to see
dozens of people independently sloshing around the noospere
looking for better tweaked solutions. Including, of course,
leading noosphere cadet ERIC S RAYMOND, whose Bayesian
BOGOFILTER is fast, has extra smarts, and is up to version
0.2. Unfortunately, as with Raymond's abandoned kernel
configurator and recent anti-gay anti-islam anti-vegetable
rants, it requires taking on board just a *bit* too
much extra baggage to really take off. Rennies' IFILE around
has been around for a while, and has support for MH and
mutt. Gary Arnold's BAYESPAM is something he knocked up in
Perl for qmail; a good start if you want to try this
yourself. Which you should, because nobody's cracked it yet.
http://www.paulgraham.com/spam.html
- what i did after i invented another new language
http://www.sjdm.org/mail-archive/jdm-society/2000-November/002244.html
- so, given a probability of 1% that a judge has understood Bayes before
http://tuxedo.org/~esr/bogofilter/bogofilter.html
- of course some say the bogofilter should be on ESR's outgoing mail
http://www.ai.mit.edu/~jrennie/ifile/
- leading by example
http://www.garyarnold.com/projects.php#bayespam
- "Don't hurt me, I'm a C programmer!"
>> MEMEPOOL <<
ceci n'est pas une http://www.gagpipe.com/
worth it for the elaborate assembly instructions/ blank page
excuses alone: http://www.log.dial.pipex.com/things/ ...
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story2&u=/nm/20020822/ts_nm/bush_dc_14
vs http://www.theonion.com/onion3724/bush_vows_to_remove.html
... be a bit funnier if it read them out in her voice as
well: http://homepage.ntlworld.com/l_tabraham/jbrr.htm ...
hey, in future, why not try sending us these while they're
still vaguely topical?: http://www.chthonic.f9.co.uk/24/ vs
http://thesurrealist.co.uk/24/ ... When Audiophiles Attack #5
(or #6?) - THE QUANTUM PURIFIER: http://www.bybeetech.com/ vs
http://www.showandtellmusic.com/pages/galleries/gallery_q/morse.html
... when oh when will the bloggers tire of putting a new word
in front of "chalking"?: http://zapatopi.net/psychalking.html
... just one small step closer to "Star Trek" warp drives:
http://physicsweb.org/article/news/6/8/11/ ... doing well for
"teaser openings": http://humanity.berlios.de/usr-bin-perl/
... CRONENBERG to direct (one of two) upcoming JUDGE DREDD
movies?... bloody students: http://www.elve.net/rtips0b.htm ...
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
TV>> the week's late-night sci-fi selection starts off with
Yul Brunner 1970s post-apocalyptic beat-em-up THE ULTIMATE
WARRIOR (12.40am, Fri, C5), John "The Last Seduction" Dahl's
bonkers brainscanner UNFORGETTABLE (2.05am, Fri, C4), and the
seems-to-last-an-eternity STARGATE (11.05pm, Sat, BBC1)... the
BBC have swiftly replaced the advertised showing of serial
killer psycho-profiler "Messiah 2" with repeats of THE LOST
WORLD (9.15pm, Sat, BBC1)... and, considering what came after,
AMERICAN PIE (9.05pm, Sat, C4) may be eventually regarded as
one of the great teen movies of all time... it's a double-
Arnie fertility-horror double-bill in TWINS (6.20pm, Sun,
BBC1) and JUNIOR (4.50pm, Mon, BBC1)... Nell McAndrew and
Rhona Cameron contribute to a slightly vague interpretation of
"celebrity" in I'M A CELEBRITY - GET ME OUT OF HERE! (8pm,
Sun, ITV)... WHEN [DIANA] DIED - DEATH OF A PRINCESS (9pm,
Sun, C4) contains "scenes of nudity and religious ritual" -
funny what people find offensive nowadays ... and Jeff "Tron"
Bridges plays the other half of that K-Pax double-act in
STARMAN (2.30pm, Mon, C5) - all together now: "You don't
understand, Mrs Hayden: that *thing* is no longer your
husband!"... archaeology imitates "Coneheads" in ANCIENT
MURDER MYSTERY: RIDDLE OF THE CONE-SHAPED SKULLS (8pm, Mon,
C5)... odd scheduling for Bill Murray's kid-friendly identity
mixup THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE (11.05pm, Tue, BBC1)... and
if only they'd got hold of Tim Burton's recent "reimagining"
to show after the run of BATTLE FOR/ FAREWELL TO/ BACK TO
THE PLANET OF THE APES (1.30pm, Tue-Thu, ITV), you could have
watched the franchise deteriorate before your very eyes...
FILM>> good to see Time Magazine's staff staying cool long
enough to publish their final "Humanity Doomed" collectors'
edition for the backstory of "X-Files" director Rob Bowman's
"2000AD"-style Brit-set monster apocalypse REIGN OF FIRE
( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/reignoffire.htm : "Here's
to evolution!"; many deaths by incineration; child permitted
in hardhat construction area; massive tattoos)... it's Martin
"Bad Boys" Lawrence and Academy Award nominee Tom "In The
Bedroom" Wilkinson - together at last! - in funnier-than-
you'd-expect "Galaxy Quest"/"A Knight's Tale" hybrid BLACK
KNIGHT ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2001/black_knight.html :
[Lawrence] does all sorts of mugging and facial contortions at
the camera that some kids might want to imitate; we hear the
King fart at dinner; some kids might want to imitate all of
the action-based fighting that occurs)... or there's badfilm
stalwart Heather Graham and "My Cousin Vinny" Academy Award
winner Marisa "In The Bedroom" Tomei in clumsy Bollywood porn
comedy pastiche THE GURU ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : Contains
strong sex references and language)...
DRESS DOWN FRIDAY>> after an unexpected 3-month hiatus -
because, hey, who buys t-shirts in the summer? - NTK's online
store is back to full strength at http://www.geekstyle.co.uk/
and now features lengthy explanations of exactly what PayPal
will attempt to charge you. Also new this month: lots of
designs now available in XXL, including the ever-popular 404
/SHIRT/TIE NOT FOUND, a glow-in-the-dark variant of the ZX
font BORN TO RUN one, plus slightly more limited numbers of
the arcade-style HI-SCORE TABLE and the last few remaining
souvenirs from June's EXTREME COMPUTING show. Oh and copies of
Mark Bennett's BLACK ICE magazine (for just US$7 plus postage
and packing) - Brighton's very own answer to "Mondo 2000"...
meanwhile, your entries have continued to flood in, a leading
contender being CHRIS HOWE's possibly Designers-Republic-
influenced http://www.geekstyle.co.uk/images/chrismessiah.gif
- though his email address appears to have changed recently,
so if anyone knows where he is, could you ask him to get in
touch? We also enjoyed JAMES SWIFT's politically motivated
http://www.3dengineer.com/tshirts/privacylogged.gif , BRUCE's
heartfelt http://www.growf.org/shirts/crack.gif , and ASHLEY
POMEROY's whimsical http://www.ashleypomeroy.com/arpshirts.gif
- but remained puzzled by people sending us what appear to be
parodies of our existing parody designs, from OWAIN KENWAY's
http://www.angelfire.com/scifi2/dsky/1337spotting.html through
to JOF's http://www.overhope.org.uk/misc/revolution.jpg and
PAUL "THE FRIDAY THING" CARR's perhaps over-self-explanatory:
http://www.geekstyle.co.uk/images/tft-shirt.jpg . And if your
design skills aren't up to this high standard, you can of
course just mail us a text slogan, so long as it's at least as
funny as SIMON LIPSON's "NTK: ROTFL meets ROT-13", ANDREW
SIMMONS' "NTK: Notes you don't want to save, and for link
evaluation", or PHIL SOUTH's "Frieze - Marther - Farquhar" -
but designed to look like it's the name of a law company!...
meanwhile, the http://www.geekstyle.co.uk/images/ gallery
reveals the "Buy One, Subvert The Mass Media, Get One Free"
contest to be hotting up once again, as 25-year-old web
designer GRAEME DAVISON "just happened" to be wearing the
shirt that spells "fuck" in ASCII URL-encoding when he was
photographed by THE NORTHERN ECHO about his trip to see
"Attack Of The Clones" open in LA. Even though this was only a
local newspaper, the judging panel felt he deserved the full
prize (of another t-shirt), as the story goes on to cover the
ostensibly pointless nature of the entire exercise. That's the
kind of product placement that money just can't buy...
>> 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
"geeks", apparently
http://anews.co.uk/
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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