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        "Who ever thought that sending encrypted streams of data 
         across the Internet could produce a map on the other end 
         saying 'this is where your target is' or 'here's how to kill them'?"
                  - PAUL BEAVER, of Jane's Defense Weekly, helps the NSA 
                            explain all the porn sites in their logfiles
       ( http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/2001-02-05-binladen.htm )
       ...because ICBM co-ordinates in your .sig never went out of style

         
                                >> HARD NEWS <<
                             next: barcode tattoos

         More cut-and-pasting from ukcrypto, Britain's last remaining 
         form of parliamentary oversight. This week: the government's 
         plans to require all security consultants to register with the 
         authorities, and be strictly licensed afore passing on their 
         forbidden, arcane wisdom. First the bad news: the bill in 
         question, the PRIVATE SECURITY INDUSTRY BILL, is already at 
         its Commons' Second Reading, and is set to be law in two 
         months (barring those pesky elections). Now, the good news: at 
         the reading, HO minister Charles "RIP" Clarke said it's mainly 
         aimed at security guards and bouncers, not IT security 
         consultants. Now, the bad news: he added the word "currently" 
         - and, "currently", the Home Office says it *does* apply to 
         computer consultants, but they won't get around to enforcing 
         that until 2005. Now the good news: the main restriction on 
         the license is that you mustn't have a serious criminal 
         record. The bad news: hasn't *every* security consultant got 
         at least a "Teenage Cyberthief Was Threat To World Security" 
         headline under their belt? And if these badly-phrased tech 
         laws keep on at this rate, we'll all be criminals by 2005. 
         http://www.homeoffice.gov.uk/psib/
                                        - that BOFH license in detail
  http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcrypto/2001-March/015267.html
- best read the whole thread, because we're sensationalising like crazy here
         http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/50/17971.html
    - we should point out that Mr Kuji was not convicted of any crime

         It's a publicity-garnering April-Fools-style prank which we 
         never quite got round to: announcing that NTK was splitting 
         into two rival sarcastic technology newsletters, largely 
         identical to each other (except one would have slightly more 
         emphasis on confectionery reviews), and promising the 
         irresistible spectacle of former friends and colleagues 
         jovially slagging each other off in public. Annoyingly, as is 
         so often the case nowadays, THE REGISTER has beaten us to it, 
         with company figurehead Mike Magee's embryonic launch of THE 
         INQUIRER, a somewhat similarly hardware-oriented news site. We 
         believe (and, to be honest, fervently hope) that the imminent 
         settlement between the two parties is more amicable than 
         recent Silicon Investor postings imply: then again, given The 
         Reg's long-standing hard-drinking two-fisted publish-and-be-
         damned reputation, would you really want it any other way?
http://www.siliconinvestor.com/stocktalk/msg_multireplies.gsp?msgid=15555885
                                - leave it Mike, it's not worth it...
         http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/5/17918.html
                    - Reg writers still nursing nasty CeBIT "Hanover"
         http://www.theinquirer.org/
             - not quite "The Register" spoof site we were hoping for

         News update time, this week cunningly combined with addenda
         to last week's "Huh?" feebdack. The mysterious Zeddust,
         whose true identity was revealed in court [NTK 2001-03-16]
         after he slagged off the ISP Totalise, wrote to us, claiming
         that there were *others* posting mysterious *positive*
         defences of Totalise to the board. Follow the money, we
         thought. Yeah, until we realised: how do we know this is the
         *real* Zeddust? At that point, we started to get a headache.
         Proper journalists: get to work. In similiar "Deep Throat"
         fashion, we were urged, following our report on the feud
         between Bishop Sean "Vampire Hunter" Manchester and the Rev.
         Joe "Forteana" McNally, to find out "ALL the facts" - on an
         URL conveniently held on the Bishop's own organisation's
         Website. Happy to uncritically oblige. Warning: some readers
         may find the choice of font size both eldritch and uncanny.
         http://www.gothicpress.freeserve.co.uk/Sean%20Manchester.htm
                            - remember: vampires have hypnotic powers
         http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=2001/now0302.txt&line=22#HARD_NEWS
                                     - get back from whence you came!
         http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=2001/now0316.txt#HARD_NEWS
                   - it's as much of a hint as we can afford, Zeddust

         
                                >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         JULIE MEYER speaks for "under UKP5,000" - how much to get her 
         to shut up again? http://www.sfb.co.uk/speakers/juliemeyer/ 
         ... making you work harder to get your hard-working money 
         back: http://www.ntk.net/2001/03/30/dohbos.gif ... RANDAL 
         SCHWARTZ slams London.pm's "Perl is my bitch" T-Shirt - odd, 
         considering: http://www.stonehenge.com/perl/amihooternot/ ... 
         LASTMINUTE.COM soon to announce departures from Kingston, 
         Surrey... disproving the myth that old people can't HTML: 
         http://www.thegreyparty.co.uk ... they're using JAVASCRIPT 
         ENCRYPTION (phew!): http://www.biemme.co.uk/order.htm ... 
         "blah blah blah blah blah blah blah", reports THE OBSERVER: 
         http://www.local-government.net/lganet.htm ... "INTERNET" not 
         recognised by http://www.worktrain.gov.uk/ "Find a job" search 
         - "It may be mis-typed or not in our dictionary. Please type 
         in a different job title"... COLT site powered by Matt's 
         Script Archive: http://www.ntk.net/2001/03/30/doh-colt.png ... 
         Carl Sagan's CONTACT now part of Diana/ Morrissey conspiracy: 
         http://members.home.net/veganmozfan/part3 ... PEPSI.au site 
         features "prominent tit" (Robbie Williams not available?): 
         http://www.pepsi.com.au/v1/background/bluesun_1024.jpg ... 


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

         The UK's INTERNATIONAL CONFERENCE ON COLLABORATION AND 
         OWNERSHIP IN THE DIGITAL ECONOMY kicks off this week in London 
         and Cambridge with, irony of ironies, a book launch: a talk 
         and a film and some music from Belgrade's B92 radio station to 
         celebrate the publication of "This Is Serbia Calling" (Tue 
         2001-04-03, The Foundry, maybe you should RSVP to make sure). 
         Obviously the usual Nathan Barley warnings apply, though 
         frankly it sounds a lot more palatable than the rantings of 
         those "BACK THE NET" DAY clowns (also 2001-04-03), whose 
         recipe to "help the Net regain its respect" includes spamming 
         "this letter to 10 other people, or as many as you can" - 
         somewhat akin to running a Reclaim The Streets event that also 
         offers valet parking.
         http://www.ellipsis.com/foundry/b92/
          - maybe they transmitted pirate Spectrum games or something
         http://www.iconocast.com/crusade/ 
           - "Imagine the net without Yahoo or Amazon.com" (ie, 1993)
         
         On the subject of direct (or should that be "pie-rect"?) 
         action, April 1st also marks the start of pie-throwing month, 
         at least according to zany culture-jammers DESSERT STORM. 
         Exactly how flinging flans at public figures helps undermine 
         global capitalism isn't made entirely clear, but it sounds 
         like fun - NTK, of course, regards the choice of target and 
         associated legal risk a matter for the personal conscience of 
         indvidual readers. 
         http://www.dessertstorm.org/legal.html
                                   - thanks guys, that ought to do it
         
         Oh, and ex-Wired supremos Louis Rossetto, Jane Metcalfe and 
         John Battelle are attending NEW MEDIA PUBLISHING STRATEGIES 
         2001 at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism next 
         Friday. 
         http://www.journalism.berkeley.edu/events/conference2001/
               - raising the question: what *are* L&J up to nowadays?


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         Mozilla's birthday this Sunday: time for our annual
         slagging! Except, after three years' coding, it looks like
         bits stop rotting into Wordperfect-shaped silhouettes of
         corpse fat, and start going all... well, all NASAish. No,
         we don't know whether that's good or bad, and we'll admit
         that this week's 0.8.1 release is still embarassingly buggy.
         But the emerging 0.9 - with its rewritten-from-scratch
         image library, rewritten-from-scratch caching system, and
         rewritten-from-scratch-*again* renderer, is actually looking
         pretty tough. Everybody sees Mozilla as the testcase Open
         Source project, but it's turning out to be a demo of
         something quite different. Namely: what happens if you stop
         giving coders realistic deadlines, and let them actually
         follow the spec that they so naively believed themselves
         capable of at the start? And then, when they go "Ohhh... we
         messed up. Can we have another year to fix it?" - what
         happens if you let them? The answer isn't Navigator, and it
         isn't IE, and, no matter what Netscape management read into
         the Cathedral and the Bazaar in '98, it ain't ESR's
         fetchmail either. To be honest with you, we don't know what
         it is. But, come June, maybe we'll have an idea.
         http://www.mozillazine.org/articles/article1884.html
                                             - stick to the nightlies
         http://www.pigdog.org/auto/software_jihad/link/2044.html
                                              - stick to the purties!


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                              hasta la altavista

         JAMIE OLIVER HATING is new "All Your Base Are Belong To Us": 
         http://www.hairytongue.com/gallery/fattongue.shtml ... rugby 
         ANAL PROBE http://www.sportal.com.au/league.asp?i=news&id=9703 
         controversy incorporates nightmarish ZAPRUDER-style footage: 
     http://www.foxsports.com.au/common/imagedata/0,5001,136894,00.gif
         ... UK forced to import American FOOT AND MOUTH gags, after 
         concerns over local quality control: http://www.manbeef.com/ , 
         http://www.satirewire.com/news/0103/outlook.shtml ... MR BEAN 
         saves plane: http://allafrica.com/stories/200103240069.html 
         ... MICROSOFT is suspicious beneficiary of dot-com crash: 
         http://www.forbes.com/2001/03/19/0319karlgaard.html ... JESUS 
         starts dating: http://www.jesus.com/ ... lamb born with HUMAN 
         FACE: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_253620.html ... 
         greedy CORPORATES imitate http://rtmark.com/fundhigh.html#BABY :
     http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/sports/DailyNews/tattoos_010321.html
         ...dance, you DOGS! http://aibohack.com/movies/apv_dances2b.mov 
         vs http://lambdadance.spacebar.org/ ... and, rounding off this 
         week's omens of the imminent apocalypse, BLAKE'S 7 - THE TV 
         MOVIE: http://www.blakes7.com/ ... 


                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         TV>> as if it wasn't obvious from the title, SEX BAR (1am, 
         Fri, C4) is a one-off follow-up to previous CGI-satire show 
         "Pen Monkeys", featuring giant mutated pop-offspring Lennon 
         Gallagher and Brooklyn Beckham rampaging around London, in a 
         tribute to The Goodies' "Kitten Kong"... after being trailed 
         in last week's "Top Ten Guitar Heroes" on C4 comes arguably 
         the funniest movie of all time, THIS IS SPINAL TAP (9.05pm, 
         Sat, BBC2)... up against the usual suspects - Madonna, The 
         Prodigy - and, more promisingly, 2 Live Crew and NWA, in TOP 
         TEN: X-RATED (10pm, Sat, C4)... Iain Lee's "lost" video games 
         docu THUMB CANDY (11.35pm, Sat, C4) hits terrestrial at last, 
         with Matt "Manic Miner" Smith and Sir Clive Sinclair holding 
         the legendary "White Spectrum"... while C5's especially poor 
         "Savage Nature Weekend" line-up includes ARACHNOPHOBIA (9pm, 
         Sat), Ally Sheedy dog-monster MAN'S BEST FRIEND (11.05pm, 
         Sat), THE BEVERLY HILLBILLIES (6pm, Sat), plus CLASH OF THE 
         TITANS (5.20pm, Sun)... SON OF GOD (9.10pm, Sun, BBC1) 
         controversially reveals that Jesus looked like George Michael, 
         or, from certain angles, Dom DeLuise... a Julia Roberts season 
         begins with her likely career high, FLATLINERS (10pm, Mon, 
         C4)... DOT-COM AND KOSHER (11.15pm, Mon, BBC1) is presumably 
         the out-takes from that Ben Cohen "Trouble At The Top" of 3 
         weeks ago... and David "Pitch Black" Twohy's sci-fi back 
         catalogue throws up temporal tourist treat TIMESCAPE (11.50pm, 
         Mon, BBC1)... following idle NTK speculation [2000-11-10] 
         about KELLY'S HEROES (9pm, Tue, C5), reader Ian Watters 
         recommended a book called "Nazi Gold" for the "real" story 
         behind the Eastwood WW2 tank epic... it's not all stuffed 
         toys, proves THE ADAM AND JOE SHOW (11.05pm, Wed, C4) spoofing 
         new formats like "People Place", "The South Bank Show" and, 
         later in the series, a hideously accurate MTV VJ... C5's 
         indefinite Rutger Hauer season continues with BLIND FURY 
         (10.15pm, Wed)... and if Travolta's PHENOMENON (9pm, Thu, C5) 
         actually *is* supposed to be an ad for Scientology, surely he 
         could have done a better job of it...
         
         FILM>> Robert De Niro fortnight continues with robust Cuba 
         Gooding Jr WW2-era biopic MEN OF HONOR (imdb: african-american 
         / hero / institutional-discrimination / navy / instructor / 
         prejudice / rescue / racism / training / alcohol / submarine / 
         amputee / amputation / bigotry / courtroom / biographical / 
         deep-sea-diving / disabled-person / determination / disabled) 
         ... similar themes - the racism, we mean, not the diving - 
         resurface in Julia "10 Things I Hate About You" Stiles' smart 
         teen romance SAVE THE LAST DANCE (http://www.capalert.com : 
         arrogance against a father; dutiful homosexual mentions; God 
         separated the races for a reason; vulgar dance, repeatedly)... 
         of course, if Kate Hudson had won Best Supporting Actress as 
         planned, crowds would be queuing up to go see her and Stuart 
         "Shooting Fish" Townsend in quirky Oirish human chameleon 
         rom-com ABOUT ADAM (http://www.bbfc.co.uk : strong language, 
         moderate sex)... which is still a better bet than Simon "The 
         Full Monty, that Cisco ad" Beaufoy's zany hairdressing farce 
         BLOW DRY (http://www.screenit.com/ : several views of [Rachel 
         "Hilary And Jackie" Griffiths'] bare breasts covered in paint 
         and glitter; Heidi ["Spin City"] Klum plays a model who fools 
         around with her brother-in-law and has him cut and dye her 
         pubic hair)...
         
         FROZEN WITH FEAR>> in accordance with NTK prophecy [2000-10-
         06] MARS have at last diversified into SKITTLES MINTS (29p), 
         though, as reader BEN JEFFREYS points out, they've "been in 
         Italy for a while", and "come in a lovely uber-Poppets-style 
         box". Ben's verdict on the coolmint, peppermint, toffeemint, 
         spearmint and sweetmint flavours? "Pretty nice - you can tell 
         what flavour they're meant to be without looking at the 
         colours first, which sets them apart from Fruit Skittles." 
         "[The Italians] also have Liquorice Skittles," he concludes, 
         "which I didn't try as I don't know what kind of variety that 
         could offer"... continuing the continental theme, MARTYN 
         WILKINSON claims that he "picked up some KIT-KAT BALLS" in 
         France recently - small, dark chocolate spheres filled with 
         "something which isn't quite wafer" which "pop when you put 
         them in your mouth [...] utterly delicious"... and, to prove 
         that we're not overly biased towards the exotic imports of 
         http://www.cybercandy.co.uk/ (get your combined sweets and 
         T-shirt orders in now by the way, as we'll be switching to a 
         different shopping cart soon), CHRIS HEATHCOTE boasted that 
         he'd bought "a tequila-flavoured lollipop, with a real tequila 
         worm embedded in it, and a white chocolate covered scorpion" 
         from http://www.todd-design.com/edible/ , though at time of 
         writing he couldn't quite bring himself to eat the scorpion... 
         not much other ambient-temperature action to report - no sign 
         of KRAFT FOODS' COLA DIME BAR yet, though it should have been 
         around for a week; KIT KAT CHUNKY ORANGE (30p) is due April 9 
         - though we are looking forward to the UK arrival of Spanish 
         popcorn-style microwaveable crisp snack import POP CRACKS 
         (79p) http://www.nuevo-nuevo.com/product.php3?NumProd=878 
         (available in "Classic crust, Star with flavor to Bacon and 
         Parrilla with flavor to Species", Babelfish reveals)... so, 
         it's fortunate that it's time for the ceremonial unveiling of 
         the summer ice-cream line-ups, kicking off with MARS, taking 
         on CADBURY'S poorly distributed range of luxury tubs with 
         500ml versions of TWIX, SNICKERS, M&M, MARS, and BOUNTY ice-
         cream, plus SNICKERS CONE (90p), JOOSTERS LOLLY (60p) and now 
         discontinued Winner-Taco-alike M&M COOKIE (85p)... CADBURY 
         TREBOR BASSETT hit back with their own hand-held CARAMEL ice-
         cream (UKP1) and JELLY BABIES ICE LOLLIES, while NESTLE are 
         launching the SMARTIES POP-UP (vanilla ice-cream with Smartie 
         pieces and a mini-Smarties stick, 80p)... but, as ever, BIRDS 
         EYE WALLS wear the new product development crown, with SOLERO 
         TROPICAL SHOTS, the "tangerine and cranberry" SOLERO TRIBE, a 
         fruity water ice called FRUIT 5, plus "a major technical 
         breakthrough" in the form of CORNETTO WHIPPY, a soft-ice-
         cream-style cone dispensed by a special machine "adapted so 
         that only Cornetto products can work in it". We await your 
         sightings of this unholy apparatus - and also of BRITVIC'S 
         TANGO FISH vending machine, which apparently "mimics a fish 
         tank" in some enticingly unspecified way...


                               >> 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
                  "a bit more supportive, this time around"
                         http://www.lwn.net/2001/0329/     

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