Need To Know 2002-08-23

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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. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Unsubscribe? Mail ntknow-unsubscribe@lists.ntk.net Subscribe? Mail ntknow-subscribe@lists.ntk.net NTK now is supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.geekstyle.co.uk/ (K) 2002 Special Projects. Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/ Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com All communication is for publication, unless you beg. Press releases from naive PR people to pr@spesh.com Remember: Your work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material. 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