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         "Purple Moon isn't a Web company or a CD-ROM company. It's
         a girls' company."
                        - Brenda Laurel, Vice President, Purple Moon
                                   ...you calling my startup A GIRL?


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                                  no excuse

         Maybe if they knew more about encrypting their e-mails,
         there wouldn't be so many leaks about this. Yes, it sounds
         like the British government really are going to choose the
         path of maximum stupidity and announce a KEY ESCROW POLICY
         in the next couple of weeks. Without getting too technical
         (as if we would), this is ... a bad thing. Bad for civil
         liberties, bad for business. It will be as if you'll be
         forced to loan someone else your PIN, or your signature.
         Britain's booming crypto industries - particularly the ones
         being eyed up by Bill Gates in Cambridge - will be zapped
         at birth. At worst - if key escrow is made mandatory -
         you'll be criminalised simply for owning a copy of Pretty
         Good Privacy, while the real outlaws will simply move onto
         undetectable crypto systems. Almost all the security
         experts are against it - all, except the ones at GCHQ, who
         rather like the idea of being able to break into anyone's
         private communications at the drop of a hat. "Attempts to
         control the use of encryption technology are wrong in
         principle, unworkable in practice, and damaging to the
         long-term economic value of the information networks.",
         said the Labour Party's manifesto, signed and pledged by
         Tony Blair himself. Or perhaps he gave away his signature
         for someone else to use? Gosh, wouldn't *that* be a
         terrible thing to happen?
         http://www.labour.org.uk/views/info%2Dhighway/content.html
                            - on message? But which message exactly?
         http://www.pgpi.com/               - get it before it's hot
         http://www.crypto.com/key_study/report.shtml
                          - the big guns come out against key escrow
         http://www.ntk.net/gordon/
         - Gordon Brown's signature. If we trust them with ours
                           they should trust you with theirs. Right?

         [ If the announcement comes, as some suggest, next Tuesday,
         we'll post a special announcement. There's still time to
         stop this. Hey, it's a democracy, right? ]

         Mind you, it's not all doom and gloom down in spookland.
         NTK's favourite crypto expert, Ross Anderson, has been hard
         at work, as the WASHINGTON POST - somewhat inaccurately -
         reported this week. After giving a $20 million grant by
         Microsoft to his Cambridge department, Bill asked Ross and
         his team to see if they couldn't invent an unbreakable
         copy-protection system. Taking advantage of their studies
         into TEMPEST technologies (readily available spy equipment
         that lets anyone see what's on your monitor from outside
         your building), the group suggested a method that would
         broadcast license numbers via the VDU, so that special
         "Microsoft software piracy vans" could drive around and
         scan buildings for unregistered software. Strangely,
         Microsoft weren't so keen on this. No matter. As part of
         the same study, Ross' group went on to develop a method for
         protecting *any* user from covert surveillance by using a
         special "anti-Tempest" font. A problem solved, before you
         even knew it was there...
         http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~mgk25/ih98-tempest.pdf
                              - memo to self: send out NTK this way?
         http://www.ntk.net/icecreamvan/
         - they could play the Microsoft boot-up tune as they went past

         It looks like INTEL'S StrongARM tactics didn't quite come
         off as expected. Many commentators thought that Intel would
         be happy to keep the plucky British processor going when
         the company bought it in a job lot with a bunch of chip
         fabrication plants from Digital. But the team who actually
         developed the processor have now all jumped ship to a cushy
         consultancy afterlife at Cadence. Whether they did this out
         of anti-Intel sentiment(come on, these are ARM users -
         they're *all* religious fanatics), or just because they
         could sense a distinct lack of a "to do" list in their
         future Psion diaries at Intel is uncertain. But most
         pundits now agree that, what with ARM owning the trademark,
         Intel owning the Hudson chip plant, and Cadence owning the
         brains, StrongARM development is on the road to nowhere. Us
         - we still hold out hope. After all, the Beatles reformed
         didn't they? Oh, ah. Maybe that's a bad comparison.
         http://techweb.cmp.com/eet/news/98/992news/cadence.html
                             - they could do a re-union tour in 2020


                               >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         PLAYSTATION POWER "relaunching"... BT profits up again - to
         UKP 734m... T3 magazine "redesigned"... man behind "biggest
         known case of alleged domestic piracy in Western Europe"
         was Alan Watkins of CD manufacturer PC Wise... AOL sacks
         nearly 2/3rds of the US Compuserve staff one week into
         ownership ... "almost half British games companies failed
         to make a profit last year" tiptoes PLIMSOLL PUBLISHING...
         "Clothing, Physical Activity And Heating Can Prevent Excess
         Winter Mortality" reveals BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL... C|Net
         lists top search engines as "Alta Vista, Excite and Hot
         Bod"... PETER COCHRANE emphatically denies answering "What
         do you say to the elderly who can't get grip with these
         newfangled contraptions?" with "Don't worry -- you're going
         to die soon."... Even ALTAVISTA offering free e-mail now
         (despite uniquely awkward URL)... JOHN CARMACK wins $20,000
         at Blackjack by making himself "consistently behave like a
         robot" (donates it to Free Software Foundation)... BT
         "slashes" price on Webserving - to 200UKP a month, plus
         200UKP set-up fee...


                              >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                         adventures in the real world

         Sounding just a little like The Royal Institution Christmas
         Lectures - but for Mondo 2000 readers - THE EYE OF THE
         STORM is yet another "International Art and Science
         Conference" held at The Royal Institution (natch),
         Piccadilly, London next Thurs/Fri (19/02/98-20/02/98). It's
         the usual roll-call of nutty telly pundits - Melvyn Bragg,
         Susan Greenfield, quantum-hippy AI critic Roger Penrose -
         plus "artists" (and we use the term loosely) including VR
         was-prodigy Jaron Lanier, child-trainer pervs Jake & Dinos
         Chapman, and half-man, half-cyborg, all-Aussie Stelarc.
         Still, it's only UKP45 (UKP25 concessions), though -
         perhaps reassuringly for anyone who's seen Stelarc stick a
         webcam down his gullet - "lunch", we learn, "is not
         provided".
         http://www.artscat.demon.co.uk/eye.htm
         - "the first artist to work in zero gravity"
                                   (we expect they mean "free fall")

         The final part in our "plug our friends'" trilogy: NTK's
         much put-upon Webcasting guru, GAVIN STARKS,is appearing in
         a "multi-media entertainment", MORE, at the Gate Theatre on
         Wednesday 18/2/98. He'll be premiering his new computer-
         generated musical composition. Your geek attractor: it
         really is computer generated, via approximately 9,000 lines
         of C++ and 3 gigs of collected audio data. Gavin says to
         say "frequency-domain morphing". Tickets are UKP5, show
         starts at 7.30PM. Box office: 0171 995 6035.
         Meanwhile, fans of TV'S LIGHT LUNCH might like to pop down
         to a VALENTINE'S CABARET on Sunday 15/2/98, where those
         Aphrodites of daytime TV, SUE PERKINS AND MEL GIEDROYC,
         will be entertaining the troops, assisted by Venus the
         Goddess of Love, R.D. Laing and usual Special Project
         suspects. Tickets are UKP10. The show starts at 7.30pm at
         the October Gallery, Old Gloucester Road, near Russell
         Square tube. NTK offers its traditional "pint in the bar
         and a chat about Linux afterwards if not fully satisfied"
         lifetime guarantee.
         http://www.tir-nan-og.demon.co.uk/
              - he also insists MORE is named after the Unix utility
         http://www.channel4.com/entertainment/lunch/      urlarious


                                >> TRACKING <<
                           Big Chief I-Spy reports

         The XML standard is out, and all the tech papers are
         talking about how it's going to be the new HTML. They're
         wrong, we think, partly because it seems *much* more useful
         as generic file-format thing, partly because that whole
         "it's going to make searching so much easier by creating
         tags like <SARCASTIC> and <CAT-FOR-SALE>" clearly hasn't
         got a chance in hell of working. But mostly because in
         order to do the clever parse-and-display-as-old-fashioned-
         Webpage stuff right now, you'll need to brush up on your
         SCHEME. Yup, the object-oriented LISP. Runawayscaredrunaway!
         http://www.w3.org/XML/
                      - you leave academics alone for 10 minutes and
                                     they have to stick LISP into it

         Uma Thurman's English accent! Sean Connery as a Scottish
         separatist in full national costume! Big Ben blowing up! Not
         much to go on in the AVENGERS download trailer, admittedly, but
         already enough to earn it a mention in the "Worst of '98"
         predictions at THE STINKERS - "The Ultimate Bad Movie Awards".
         Votes for the worst of 1997 close 21/02/98. Also now available
         for your postage-stamp-sized perusal: deep-sixed Sharon Stone
         sci-fi SPHERE, Sundance-wowing Elvis kung-fu apocalypse SIX
         STRING SAMURAI and, from the soundtrack of The Wedding Singer,
         the now-deceased Presidents Of The USA doing quite a faithful
         version of VIDEO KILLED THE RADIO STAR.
         http://www.thestinkers.com
                      - Snailmail voting! I'd buy that for a dollar!
         http://members.tripod.com/~amith/film972.html
                   - and we're still waiting for Waiting For Guffman
         http://www.canoe.com/JamMusicAntihit/home_jan27.html
                     - Real Audio argues it was justifiable homicide


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                              hasta la altavista
         Postscript DES/RC5 clients... HASBRO buy TIGER ELECTRONICS
         - expect an exo-skeleton for Action Man shortly... BeOS for
         Intel next week... they're not 56Kbps modems, they're
         "v.90"... *exactly* as horrifying as you'd expect:
         www.nickross.co.uk/ ... www.digicrime.com ... Pinball: The
         Next Generation - www.interplay.com/stpinball/index.html
         ... NYTSYN's greatest headline yet: "Dr Bombay: That Porno
         Wallpaper Has Got to Go"... SOUTH PARK creators working on
         Dumb and Dumber sequel, Channel 4 "considering" showing SP
         after King of The Hill run... a MILIA-winner worthy of the
         name www.baguette.com/cur/strongman/004/english/ ... Bill
         gets half: www.vcnet.com/bms/departments/catalog1.html ...
         Quake II interface developed for Perl : World Ends -
         www.jump.net/~dctank/q2/perlq2.txt ... What Fred Fish is up
         to: www.ninemoons.com/ ... Teletubbies in their native
         tongue www.kiirtee.ee/~ain/teletupsud/ ...


                               >> GEEK MEDIA <<
           why don't you turn in and do something less interesting?

         TV >> ITV takes on C4's US sitcoms with some - unusual -
         imports of its own: Mad-About-Phoebe cute-fest DHARMA AND
         GREG (10.30pm, Fri, LWT + regions), and eyeless Dilbert-
         alike THE DREW CAREY SHOW (11.40pm, Mon, ITV)... isn't
         there actually a Red Dwarf episode where the crew are
         forced to sit down and watch nearly three hours of
         themselves on RED DWARF NIGHT (9pm, Sat, BBC2) - surreally
         introduced by Jean-Luc Picard and Stephen Hawking? well, if
         there isn't, there should be... LWT "celebrates"
         Valentine's Day with a very special movie double-bill: Meg
         Ryan alcoholism tragedy WHEN A MAN LOVES A WOMAN (9pm, Sat,
         LWT) and adulterous Gene Wilder comedy THE WOMAN IN RED
         (11.25pm, Sat, LWT) - and, before you ask, no, neither of
         them are anything like the songs...
         http://mudhole.spodnet.uk.com/fist/ will tell you far more
         about LEE AND HERRING IN THIS MORNING WITH RICHARD NOT JUDY
         (12.15pm, Sun, BBC2) than we could ever dare to (NB: it's
         also repeated - in sinisterly "revised" form - later next
         Fri)... not entirely clear what the "extreme" in the new,
         animated EXTREME GHOSTBUSTERS (4.15pm, Tue, ITV) refers to
         - though one is vaguely Hispanic, one rides a wheelchair,
         and the only remaining member of the original cast (Egon -
         Slimer doesn't count) is now mysteriously blonde...
         PREDATOR 2 (10.40pm, Wed, Carlton + regions) is that rare
         sequel that's almost as good as the original, though surely
         a couple of snipers would have sorted it out a bit
         quicker... and it's a (repeated) flashback to the
         surprisingly good "One With The Flashback" when Janice asks
         if any of the gang were ever more than just FRIENDS
         (10.30pm, Wed, C4)...

         FILMS>> in the nightmarish face off with Abel "Driller
         Killer" Ferrara's THE BLACKOUT (imdb: thriller / erotica),
         we'd - unfortunately - have to bet on MORTAL KOMBAT 2:
         ANNIHILATION (imdb : action / adventure / monster /
         alternate-dimension / based-on-video-game / fantasy /
         transformation / game / martial-arts) - if only because the
         Motion Picture Association of America gave MK2 a PG-13
         rating for "non-stop martial arts violence", thus, once
         again, confusing certification with recommendation...
         otherwise a good week for fans of Brit-made whimsy
         featuring Paul McGann, with another Conan-Doyle-at-the-
         bottom-of-garden frolic in FAIRYTALE: A TRUE STORY (imdb:
         photography / family / drama / fairy-tale / fantasy /
         period), plus DOWNTIME (imdb: thriller), which scores
         points for setting a gritty social-comment action movie *in
         a lift!*, but then plummets weirdly out of control...
         sadly, the I/O configuration of popular hardware platforms
         are not the subject matter of IN AND OUT (imdb: school-
         teacher / gay / comedy / oscars / wedding / small-town), as
         it's actually an extended rework of the "gay" Seinfeld
         episode, though - in this case - there *is* something wrong
         with that... oh, and the Motion Picture Association of
         America don't yet seem to have made it through a showing of
         SICK: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BOB FLANAGAN, SUPERMASOCHIST
         (various reviewers: "contains explicit scenes of
         mutilation... extreme pain and sexual perversion; intended
         for adults") so we'll just hand you over to Bob himself:
         www.mindspring.com/~sagriffin/FlanaganManifesto.html ...

         FEEBDACK>> It's always the food columns that get the
         letters in: Chris Locke berated our omission of Boots'
         edible Subbuteo in our "food based on board games" round-up
         - the chocolate version of the popular table sport,he
         reports, included 20 footballs and a reassurance that "the
         winner is allowed to eat the FA Cup"... Patrick Smith
         meanwhile sided against "The Fabulous Bakin' Boys" in the
         muffin wars (ibid.), arguing that their "Ballistic
         Blueberry" flavour labelling was only accurate if "they
         threw one at you" ... hundreds sent us the
         www.legomindstorms.com URL for our SKIENCE column (NTK
         30/1/98), but only "JTR" spotted the real use for the
         www.speechmachines.com CyberTranscriber  : stealing voice
         biometrics, for resale to the security services. Very
         cunning...  an anonymous tipster reports that our favourite
         cyberpunk mag 21C is not dead (NTK 6/2/98), but "de-
         animated", and will return in book form shortly... oh, and
         thanks for everyone who sent sound files, gifs, and hqx's
         for the Royal Festival talk - a howdy-doody to you too!


                            >> OPERATION FALCO! <<
                           the anti-news dead pool

         Two or three times a week, these days, we get tips along
         the lines of "You know **** Digital? Going bust. And ***
         Networks? They're toilet-bound too, you know". When we get
         these, we're torn. Should we print them, and risk really
         annoying the supposedly-doomed companies? What if they sue
         us? What if they're not as weak as the tipster claims, and
         they come around and kick us in?

         On the other hand (this being the booming world of plucky
         UK start-ups), our tipsters are almost always right. It
         seems a shame not to give such perspicacious souls credit.
         To cope with this, we're introducing a new NTK feature.
         Simply send us, now, a list of companies that you think are
         going to go bust in the next year. When they *do* go bust,
         we'll announce it - as ever - in Anti-News, but follow it
         with a FALCO!, together with the names of those who
         successfully predicted their demise. So, for instance, we
         might say "Intel calls in receiver (Davy Winder, Vint Cerf
         - FALCO!)". You can, of course, choose to remain anonymous.

         The Falco competition is so named in honour of Falco, the
         prominent Austria techno-rap artist, who passed away
         earlier this week. The winner of the most FALCO!s by the
         time we do the .NOT Awards (almost there now), will receive
         our special commemorative "Rock of Amadeus" statuette. You
         may nominate up to five technology-based companies. You can
         change your list whenever you see a FALCO! in NTK. We
         reserve the right to abandon this competition if it turns
         out not to be funny, but actually a bit sick. Or too much
         like hard work.

         We'll try and automate this sometime, but in the meanwhile,
         send your selection to falco@spesh.com . And thanks for
         your caring input.


                              >> 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.
       It is registered at the Post Office as "your unlucky valentine".
                         ( http://www.99secrets.com )

                                 NEED TO KNOW
            THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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