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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


                                >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         http://www.cokeauctions.co.uk/ doesn't strip HTML from
         usernames, letting you close </td>'s at will... "By 1988
         online porn sites had established themselves as a major
         presence on the World Wide Web" reveals Sex Industry survey in
         TIME OUT (p17)... "In engineering terms, IndraNet is a fourth
         generation wireless broadband multimedia tridimensional
         fractal communication mesh network technology endowed with
         advanced computing capabilities" - and in bullshit terms?
http://www.indranet-technologies.com/technology/core-technology.asp ...
         hey, ours works fine: http://df9.clanpages.com/bt-ad[1].gif
         ... implying the two stories with headlines are completely
         made up: http://www.gyford.com/images/macweekdoh.gif ... with
         these salaries, they're going to be searching for some time:
         http://194.205.126.134/cgi-bin/JobDetails.asp?JobID=445391 ...
         someone's got have a crack for: http://www.crackzilla.com/ ...
         view "ideavirus" propagation, live, before your very eyes!:
         http://www.ideavirus.com/stats/webalizer/ ... after several
         days of web server downtime, CIX redefine "user support":
         http://x54.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=699574262 ...


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

         OK, so we'll do a big KEVIN WARWICK WATCH update next week, as
         the Professor appears to be commemorating the start of his
         Royal Institution Christmas Children's Lectures (from 2000-12-
         14, London) with a fresh burst of publicity for bizarre
         cybersexual experiments involving his wife. (Remember: Watch
         operatives are forbidden from interfering at this crucial
         stage of human evolution, in accordance with our First Law: "A
         operative may not injure Kevin Warwick, or, through inaction,
         allow Kevin Warwick to come to harm"). Also currently taxing
         NTK's busy "Operations" division is the imminent prospect of
         our NEWTONMAS 2000 party, which now seems almost certain to
         take place on the evening of Saturday 2000-12-23, and to be
         some kind of tie-in with those groovy VXSLAB guys and LONDON
         2600 (who helped choose the date, explaining "Almost none of
         our lot are likely to be up to their elbows in family Xmas
         preparations"). Exactly *where* it's going to be - well,
         that's where you come in: if you know of, frequent, or own any
         reasonably central London venue that could accommodate up to
         several hundred geeks singing Cthulhu Christmas carols, do get
         in touch. Same applies if you have any video projection kit
         that you'd like to supervise at the event - or it'll be OHP
         acetates at Webshack or The Foundry again, you Scrooges...
         http://www.ri.ac.uk/Christmas/details2000.html
            - soundtrack to TV version composed by... Daniel Pemberton
         http://www.cnn.com/2000/TECH/computing/12/07/robot.man/
         - also guesting on "Start The Week", 9am (&9.30pm), Mon, Radio 4
         http://www.nmk.co.uk/events_diary/events.cfm?ItemID=2466
                    - vs http://www.atheists.org/flash.line/dildo2.htm


                                >> 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


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                              hasta la altavista

         "I am sorry, but as of November 2000, I will no longer respond
         to questions about the U.P.C and the New Testamant" - due
         presumably to the forthcoming BARCODE ARMAGEDDON -
         http://members.aol.com/productupc/666quest.html ... REBOOT:
         THE MUSICAL? ... http://www.wherearethetoonsnow.com/ ... who's
         your fave HAYEK? http://www.csun.edu/~dgw61315/dgwhayek.html
         ... tetanizing beam weapons ... http://www.nic.mu versus
         http://www.hot.mu ... help spammers: change your name to
         <subst string=first_name> ... they can't *all* be bots, surely?
         http://www.attrition.org/hosted/sexchart/current.txt ...
         http://www.quintessentially.com/guest/ - oh, fuck *off* ...
  http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/11/21/virtual_suicide/index3.html
         - pulled out a gun from where? ... traumatised by CALL ME KENNETH:
         http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/zd/20001120/tc/death_by_robot_1.html
         ... nope, i we think *this* has to be THE WEAKEST LINK:
         http://www.diffusionuk.freeserve.co.uk/weakest.htm ... re-record,
        not fade away: http://www.studio2.freeserve.co.uk/tapes/tapes.htm ...
     BBC ims TVGH: http://www.bbc.co.uk/choice/microtv/fifteen/15films3.shtml


                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                 get out less

         TV>> the Liberal Democrats present their reactions to THE
         QUEEN'S SPEECH (10.35pm, Fri, BBC1) - not to be confused with
         FREDDIE MERCURY: THE UNTOLD STORY immediately after (10.40pm)
         - that's "Untold to anyone who hasn't watched any TV for the
         last 9 years", presumably... itself followed by unpretentious
         giant-worm movie followup TREMORS 2: AFTERSHOCKS (11.40pm,
         Fri, BBC1)... Saturday sees a long-overdue tribute to a much-
         loved entertainer whose image is constantly being reinvented
         to consistently challenge the status quo. But enough about
         DAVID FROST NIGHT (from 8.10pm, BBC2; likely highlight WHEN
         FROST MET MUHAMMAD ALI, 11.35pm) - C4 are also celebrating
         ailing pop has-been MADONNA (from 9pm, supposed "highlight"
         DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN, 11.20pm)... we suspect that COMIC
         TALES WITH ALAN MOORE (2.55am, Sat, C4) may be an extended
         profile from 4later's upcoming history of Brit sci-fi - rather
         than our dream "bearded Alan" line-up of getting him and Alan
         Cox to interview each other... we still maintain that "Life Of
         Brian" is the only watchable Python film, as opposed to
         Spectrum-game adaptation MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL
         http://www.theonion.com/onion3636/holy_grail_quotes.html ,
         http://www.geocities.co.jp/Hollywood/9060/holye.html (9pm,
         Sun, BBC2)... and the Sunday night movie ratings battle
         continues with Ang Lee's Oscar-winning kung-fu-free SENSE AND
         SENSIBILITY (9pm, Sun, C4) up against Molly Ringwald/ Michael
         Ironside '80s trash SPACEHUNTER: ADVENTURES IN THE FORBIDDEN
         ZONE (9pm, Sun, C5) - launching a perfect run of terrible C5
         films which include ROBIN HOOD: MEN IN TIGHTS (9pm, Mon);
         Kevin Spacey disability comedy SEE NO EVIL, HEAR NO EVIL (9pm,
         Tue - "and try not to set yourself on fire, Mr Pryor"); plus
         Phil Collins' train robber romance BUSTER (9pm, Wed), which
         "competes" with Spielberg's appalling THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC
         PARK (8pm, Wed, ITV)... the big beneficiary of the dot.com
         bust, as covered in CUTTING EDGE (9pm, Tue, C4) seems to be
         Daniel Pemberton, who does the soundtrack music for all of
         them... C4's Graham Hancock gets some sort of comeback among
         the widespread debunking of his preposterous "lost mysteries
         of the ancients" theories in HORIZON: ATLANTIS REBORN AGAIN
         (9pm, Thu, BBC2) http://www.grahamhancock.com/intro.php ...
         not quite as plausible as alien global-warming sub-They-Live-
         alike sci-fi THE ARRIVAL (12.10am, Thu, BBC1), which shares
         the intriguing premise, general menace, and shoddy special
         effects of director David Twohy's subsequent "Pitch Black"...

         FILM>> "Charlie's Angels" still the best thing out there,
         unless you're at all tempted by yet another superformulaic
         Wesley Snipes actioner in the form of THE ART OF WAR (imdb
         trivia: [co-star] Michael Biehn reads a copy of Sun Tzu's "Art
         of War" in the film "K2"; Wesley Snipes' character was reading
         "The Art of War" on the plane in "Passenger 57")... otherwise
         it's a kids' version of the behavioural modification therapy
         of "A Clockwork Orange" in uninspired sequel 102 DALMATIANS
         (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/102dalmatians.htm : use of
         "6660"; reckless vehicular endangerment; human sent into
         baking oven; serving as cause for adding the reminder of our
         God-ordained superiority over animals in Gen. 1:26, one of the
         characters says "Dogs are people, too")... or Liza "Teenage
         Health Freak" Walker, Stuart "Shooting Fish" Townsend, and
         Keith "sodding" Allen - together at last! - in Hanif
         Kureishi's mid-life fantasy THE ESCORT (imdb: also known as
         "Mauvaise Passe", "The Wrong Blonde")... while John Waters
         takes "guerrilla film-making" to its natural conclusion in
         amateurishly scattershot Hollywood satire CECIL B DEMENTED
         (http://www.screenit.com/movies/2000/cecil_b_demented.html :
         the theater manager is looking through a porno magazine with
         the title, "Hershey Highway" and then gets [Alicia "Dune,
         Cybill" Witt] to sign a box of "Sticky Bunz" - a sex toy
         presumably molded after her rear end [...] Back in the porno
         movie, she suggestively asks, "Why is it that men only want my
         ass?" She then kisses a gerbil that she's holding, but it gets
         away and it's implied that it then crawls up her butt [...]
         Meanwhile, there's more masturbatory behavior from the viewers
         in the audience)...

         TRANSATLANTIC T-SHIRT TERROR>> OK, just one more week of this
         ceaseless corporate merchandising, then we'll shut up about it
         (for a start, if you haven't ordered your NTK T-shirts from
         http://www.ntkmart.com by midnight Monday 2000-12-11, then you
         might not get them before Christmas, assuming that was what
         you had in mind in the first place). Anyway, we've had
         reassuringly few complaints so far, all of which have been
         from either Americans or women. A "surprised and disgruntled"
         BRUCE STERLING led the US delegation, moaning that the "USA
         isn't even afforded on the pull-down menu!", while another
         citizen confessed to concerns about ordering via a proxy in
         the UK, that proxy being his "mother's septugenarian penpal
         from before the war". Sorry guys, this wasn't meant as a slur
         on your fine young nation; we genuinely thought you might have
         had enough of consumer items on that extensive landmass of
         yours. We did look into some lame cafepress.com alternative,
         but their print area is only 8" by 10", and our logos are all
         about 11" square. But we will let you know if we secure some
         sort US distributor and, if you are female, see if any of
         http://www.linkz.freeserve.co.uk/Babeshirts.htm look like your
         kind of size. Take as long as you like - we'll be in Dixons...
         thanks also for the exceptional entries which readers have
         continued to mail us, often in clear violation of one or more
         of our most basic rules. As a reminder: 1. Be careful with
         images that are copyrighted or of unknown provenance - eg:
         http://www.gyford.com/images/ntk_shirt.jpg , to avoid nasty
         http://www.mememachine.net/ -style litigation. However,
         clearing your parody with the copyright-holders first, as at
         http://bofhcam.org/images/NTK.tif shows admirable initiative
         (though does anyone have any ideas for funny animals that we
         could use instead of the crowbar?)... and 2. Try and put the
         images on your own site, then send us the URLs, instead of
         just mailing us gigantic BMP files, which, if we didn't know
         someone who had a Windows machine, we wouldn't be able to
         read. Though some of the "4K and under" ones have been so good
         http://www.ntk.net/2000/12/08/small.html - that we'll let them
         off (just this once)... and finally, after NTK 2000-09-01's
         iconoclastic http://www.cafepress.com/moose2000/ , TIM AIDLEY
         corrected his friend's oversight with the more (or less?)
         Stallman-friendly http://www.cafepress.com/fuckgnulinux/ . NTK
         fervently hopes that opportunities for sending us further
         variations on this particular theme are now closed...


                               >> 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
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