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         "Portugal wants to create a common lexicon made up of a
         set of keywords in different European languages. It seems
         to be very concerned with the tech-slang of hackers, 
         'such as for instance the use of the letter z in the end of
         words by the hacker community (passwordz, gamez, crackz,
         softwarez).' The ignorance of such mechanisms makes it, 
         according to the document, 'an extremely hard task to 
         achieve good results in the research'"
  - the EU struggles with the use of encryption amongst cyber-terrorists
        http://www.heise.de/tp/english/special/enfo/6672/1.html  
    ...you know, wildcard technology is going to blow this scene wide open


                                >> HARD NEWS <<
                               if they only knew                 
         
         Like a supply teacher late for his first class, Charles
         Clarke, Home Office minister in charge of Not Being Scared
         by The Crypto Freaks, looked most put out by the giggling
         during his speech at Wednesday's SCRAMBLING FOR SAFETY.
         Whenever he tried to praise the work done by the experts in
         the audience, the experts laughed - and not in a nice,
         self-deprecatory way. And when he patiently answered the
         question "how do you prove that you've forgotten your
         password to your key, when failure to do so makes you a
         criminal?" not once, but five times, everyone smiled like
         goons. And excuse me, but *WHO* was snickering at the back
         when I mentioned drug barons and terrorists? Sadly for
         Clarke, most of the attendees had spent the half-hour time
         while they waited for his appearance scurrilously sketching
         out predictions of his key points. Chief among them: Talk
         highly of the audience; dissemble furiously when asked about
         the "forgot password? got jail" provisions, and whenever the
         need for the bill was questioned, segue to the "Four
         Horsemen of the Infocalypse" defence: to protect us all from
         terrorists, paedophiles, drug dealers, and money launderers.
         As it was, Clarke was lucky no-one shouted out "bingo!".
         What makes it all the stranger is that much of the audience
         weren't bear-like cypherpunks at all, but professionals
         entrusted with tough security jobs in multi-billion pound
         companies. Even more peculiar: when the opposition spokesmen
         gave their viewpoints after Clarke vanished back to the HO,
         everyone went quiet, looked increasingly surprised - and
         even applauded at the end. Both Mr. Heald (Con) and Mr.
         Allan (Lib) appear, in the space of two weeks or so, to have
         got it. So there's a glimmer of hope that RIP might get
         fixed after all.
         http://www.stand.org.uk/
                - blah blah blah read about RIP blah blah fax your MP
         http://www.cyber-rights.org/documents/hc-rip2.htm
                                       - because somebody's listening 
          
         This week, the Observer exclusively revealed the dark side
         of "the underbelly of the Net" - USENET. Something, they
         railed, should be done about it. It's good to see that
         they've managed to maintain their level of indignation about
         this whole "illegal material on the Net" shocker since their
         last exclusive on the problem, back in August 1996.
         Something was done then: among them the closing down of a
         Finnish anonymous remailer - heavily used by the Samaritans
         and support groups to protect their clients' anonymity. The
         Observer's assertion that anon.penet.fi remailer was a den
         of paedophiles depended on quotes from an "FBI investigator"
         - who later turned out to be nothing to do with the FBI, but
         a sergeant at a Californian sheriff's office. He strenuously
         denied the viewpoints that the Observer ascribed to him.
         This time, they claim that "Internet sources" - anonymous,
         this time - revealed "over forty" newsgroups containing
         illegal posts (but have yet to tell any of the authorities
         what these groups are), and imply a sinister conspiracy to
         keep them quiet between Demon and the industry's watchdog,
         the Internet Watch Foundation - while forgetting to explain
         exactly what advantage Demon and the IWF would have for
         allowing illegal material to be propagated in the first
         place. Actually, it's odd that the newspaper doesn't make an
         explicit link between the two stories, given that they're
         make exactly the same discoveries. Maybe that's down to the
         fact that last time, they fingered Clive Feather, the Demon
         newsmaster, as Britain's "pornographer in chief". Whereas
         now, Clive's a board member of the IWF, and one of the few
         people who could actually claim to be really doing something
         about it. Rather than just sitting around, recycling the
         same stories.
 http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/observer/uk_news/story/0,3879,148489,00.html
                                         - not that we'd ever do that
         http://hotwired.lycos.com/netizen/96/36/index4a.html 
           - hey, maybe Declan can re-animate his Observer expose too
        
         D-Day for ADSL, as BT finally turns on broadband in the 400
         selected exchanges ready for end of March, and the Great
         Leap Forward. But BT's getting increasingly paranoid about
         making any move that will knock their short term profits.
         Even the "poor results" in last year's 3rd quarter has them
         streamlining like crazy to please the City. That means
         lowering the headcount: they're planning on losing 3,000
         middle managers, and the company's has offered a full year's
         salary to all management over the age of 59 if they retire
         now. So what are the chances of those 1200 other exchanges
         getting ADSL soon, given the technical difficulty of
         offering it in remote areas and the nasty possibility that
         widespread use will temporarily wipe out BT's lucrative
         leased-line service? We wait with bated breath the release
         of the full timetable...
         http://www.bt.com/broadband/
                         - although we advise not holding said breath 


                                >> ANTI-NEWS << 
                             berating the obvious

         god help us when they discover *pre-emptive multi-tasking*:
         http://www.diskbooks.org/part1.html#hs1b10 ... MITNICK FLICK
         smuggled out - in France!: http://www.cybertraque.com/ ...
         Domain name not registered: killdando.co.uk ... MS "high on
         management": http://www.ntk.net/2000/03/24/hashfile.gif ...
         http://www.symantec.com/press/2000/n000321c.html - new
         features in this upgrade... special "Mission Impossible" dept:
         http://www.cia.gov/cia/employment/jobpostings/theatrical.htm
         whois happygeek.com... 3 more IRIDIUM users than you thought:
         http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000320/tc/iridium_norway_1.html
         best "best viewed with" http://www.canda.com/ ... all very
         amusing: http://www.fenn-den.co.uk - until someone clicks on
         the "about us" link... post-show online chat for last night's
         "video games violence" DISPATCHES makes at least one convert:
         http://www.ntk.net/2000/03/24/c4chat.gif ... guy seems to know 
         a *bit* too much about JILL DANDO: http://www.jilldandofund.com/ ...  
        


                               >> EVENT QUEUE << 
                         goto's considered non-harmful

         And what nicer gift could there be for our UK "Mother's Day"
         than your continued absence - because you (or your mother)
         are in Boston for the second international GEEK PRIDE
         convention (actually starts Fri 2000-03-31, hence the
         advance warning). Music, technology and talking are all on
         the agenda, with the usual gang of idiots (well, two core
         NTK personnel, for a start - plus Keith "Tasty Bits" Dawson,
         Rob "Slashdot" Malda, and Eric "Duck!" Raymond) - and for
         any of you perhaps dissuaded by the early pre-publicity, it
         now sounds like Jon Katz may not be attending after all.
         http://www.geekpride.org/ 
         - hey, Mother's Day and April Fool's don't coincide this often
      http://www.brunel.ac.uk/research/virtsoc/text/events/GetReal.htm
         - early registration for VR seminar too. "Get Real", indeed...


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         You'd think the guys behind OPERA, the low-fat browser with
         the funny low-slung URL box, would know enough not to fall
         for the Law of Software Envelopment, wouldn't you? But
         noooo. The new beta of 4.0 manages to squeeze HTML 4.0, HTTP
         1.1, CSS1 & CSS2 and XML parsing onto the traditional 1.44MB
         single floppy, then blows it all with an improved 300K POP
         mail client which takes it over the limit. Oh, how could they?
         http://www.opera.no/
          - 25 days to really definitely seriously consider buying it
         http://www.jwz.org/hacks/ 
          - then grudgingly switch to watch Mozilla crash for free

         
                                >> MEMEPOOL << 
                              hasta la altavista

         sending threatening emails to previous recipients via the
         "back" button on DOME web terminals... countering usual press
         comments that the X-Box is MS's "first venture into hardware"
         by calling it the MSX-Box... http://fyl.xymox.net/sworigmi.htm
         vs http://www.geekhaus.co.uk/toybox/trek.htm ... not that I'm 
         *really* bitter http://www.ozemail.com.au/~ksolway/misogyny.html 
         ... Windows DeCSS installs registry key under a key called MPAA
         (HKLM\SOFTWARE\MPAA\DeCSS)... "right to life" imitates ONION
         http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20000320/zo/suicide_2.html ...
         http://www.rconline.net/archiv-05/mig29/mig29.shtml - the MIG
         they'd let Larry Ellison bring into the US... JAVA - with legs
         - http://www.soda.co.uk/soda/constructor/ ... life imitates 
         MCSWEENEYS: http://www.mcsweeneys.net/2000/03/23changes.html ...
         ... sometimes nothing beats jamming a pair of scissors into
         your crotch: http://www.armchair.mb.ca/~scissors/ ... one
         Flash dude: http://download.theforce.net/stardudes.html ...

         
                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                         the less rude http://www.tvgohome.com/ 

         TV>> the increasingly odd-sounding OPEN MINDS slot (9am, Sat, 
         BBC2) features Richard Dawkins, Tony "Mind Maps" Buzan, plus 
         items on "cybersouls" and carbon dioxide... which may soothe 
         you back to sleep if you've woken too early for Sky's later 
         weekend showing of the persistently excellent fmv cgi STARSHIP 
         TROOPERS: THE ANIMATED SERIES (10.30am, Sat, Sky1; 7.30am, 
         Mon-Fri)... Keith Chegwin aptly introduces the TOP TEN REALLY 
         ANNOYING RECORDS (8.55pm, Sat, C4)... followed by - ideally - 
         a revival of Game For A Laugh's old "watching us, watching 
         you" slogan in THE BIG BROTHER STORY (10.30pm, Sat, C4), re: 
         the surprise Dutch webcam popularity-contest hit... in a weird 
         "little book of" stab at modern-day relevance, a new series on 
         Western PHILOSOPHY subtitles itself as A GUIDE TO HAPPINESS 
         (7pm, Sun, C4) - can't wait for the one on Nietzsche... plus 
         you can skip the rubbish ending of SPEED (9pm, Sun, C5) and 
         still catch that cool twist at the end of THE USUAL SUSPECTS 
         (10pm, Sun, C4)... Inspector Morse takes on his toughest 
         villain yet - Adolf Hitler! - dressed as MONSIGNOR RENARD 
         (9pm, Mon, ITV)... and Channel4 sets up a new kangaroo court 
         to investigate both "criminal acts" in HATE CRIME (11.40pm, 
         Mon, C4) and policemen who run over its own presenters in 
         DISPATCHES (9pm, Thu, C4)... I POSED FOR PLAYBOY (11.10pm, 
         Mon, C5) blurts out Lynda "Wonder Woman" Carter - here aged 
         40... we still have a soft spot for Jim Carrey lawyer caper 
         LIAR LIAR (8.40pm, Wed, ITV) - not just because it provided 
         the start quote for NTK 1997-05-09... while Yorkshire-centric 
         news spoof FOCUS NORTH (12.30am, Thu, C4) concludes with an 
         all-new episode from the future, where our so-called "swear 
         words" have lost much of their power to offend...

         FILM>> perhaps even more controversial than the (censored?) 
         performance of South Park's "Blame Canada" at the Oscars 
         (apparently they *did* ask "that bitch" Anne Murray to sing 
         it, but she declined), we can't find any reference on 
         viewaskew.com to Kevin Smith slagging off Paul "Boogie Nights" 
         Thomas Anderson's ultra-long Aimee Mann video MAGNOLIA 
         (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ : graphic fall injury; 
         exceptionally hateful screaming; "I am firing pearls at you" 
         when spouting boasts of sexual conquest; admission of adultery 
         with oral sex and other sexual improprieties; insane 
         mannerisms in aggression) - plus, after this, 2 Days In The 
         Valley, Short Cuts, (and Boogie Nights as well) just what *is* 
         it about LA's San Fernando valley and its residents' multiply 
         intertwining lives?... apparently it's supposed to be a chick-
         flick "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest", but the prospect of 
         Angelina Jolie and Winona Ryder running round a mental home in 
         their pyjamas surely risks attracting quite a different 
         demographic for James "Copland" Mangold's GIRL INTERRUPTED 
         (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ : sensual positioning; 
         brief lower female nudity, front and back; teen girl 
         unbuckling pants of teen boy to perform oral sex; incredibly 
         arrogant aloofness about suicide; graphic suicide)... and 
         Norman "Rollerball" Jewison returns for another look at 
         sporting violence in overblown miscarriage-of-justice punch-up 
         - based on both "The Inspirational True Story Of A Champion" 
         *and* the Bob Dylan song of the same name - THE HURRICANE 
         (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ : exaggerated boxing 
         violence; improper intimidation by police; multiple rear male 
         nudity; a slime slug attempting to molest a child; three 
         murders by gunfire with bloody detail) - again coming in for 
         some criticism over "dramatic reinterpretation" of the facts, 
         since fallen-from-grace '70s snooker star Alex "The Hurricane" 
         Higgins was, in reality, neither American, nor black...


                               >> 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 "Now that crazy's Knowledge!"
           http://penn.netroedge.com/~mrt/cgi-bin/t.cgi?field=www.ntk.net 


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