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                                >> HARD NEWS <<
                                tentative phews

         Ding dong, the witch is - well, not dead, exactly, but
         certainly trapped in an environmental stasis field for the
         holidays. The EUROPEAN COPYRIGHT DIRECTIVE, aka the evil
         EuroDMCA, has been postponed. Thanks to your three hundred or
         so comments on the UK Patent Office's consultation document,
         the government has admitted that it'll have to go back to
         the drawing board. They've postponed the law until March
         2003 instead of the 2002 Christmas pressie we were all
         expecting. An excellent result, given that a) the original
         British draft had almost all of the bad bits of the EUCD
         with none of the handy get-out clauses, and b) up until now,
         the government has claimed that to miss the original
         deadline would be "In Serious Breach Of Treaty", with
         punishments including exile from the EU and being forced to 
         beg for subsidies on the streets of Norway. 
         http://www.patent.gov.uk/copy/notices/report.htm
      - "the degree of importance attached by certain correspondents"
         http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/28202.html
   - "not in the business of locking up content", a Reg reader claims

         So will the Patent Office listen to your complaints? Odder
         things have happened - are happening, indeed. We're
         currently watching the Home Office with something almost
         approaching sympathy, as they attempt a new consultation
         over this year's RIP "give spying powers to parish councils"
         statutory instrument. Their first port of call, naturally,
         was the wise yet opinionated folk of the ukcrypto mailing
         list. Three weeks on, dozens of longwinded threads, a
         smattering of Ross Anderson prophecies of doom, and
         hundreds of emails later, the list is still in major thrash
         mode. Three hundred comment documents must look like a
         couple of Post-Its to the beleagured HO subscribers.
         Unless, of course, drowning us all in nitpicking discussions
         while they get on with the dirty work is exactly what our
         betters *want* to happen...
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcrypto/2002-October/020853.html
                                                        - starts here
http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcrypto/
                                      - two megs on, it's still going
         http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/APIG021115.pdf
                     - plus: a data retention inquiry? Whatever next?

         Looks like JASON CLIFFORD, a man who has had his fair share
         of ups and downs on the Usenet reputation rollercoaster, 
         has been wheeling out another well-meaning, if slightly
         controversial, project. The father of UK distro Definite
         Linux and founder of uklinux.net split with the latter
         company earlier this year after he felt that their plan 
         to plough money into the Free Software movement from
         UKLinux's dialup ISP profits wasn't really happening. Now
         he's launched the UK Free Software Network - a new ISP
         which, he says, really will pay back the community. In a
         nice twist, he's setting up public accounts to show what's
         going on. Really public. Every month, UKFSN promises to post
         up the company's profit and loss on their website, for
         everyone to see. It's an ambitious undertaking, and seeing
         as UKFSN seems to be a bit of a one-man operation, we hope
         Jason hasn't bitten off more than he can chew. But even if
         you don't support it, it'll be interesting to see if these 
         mini-ISPs really are a Perl script for making money
         (Clifford claims that UKLinux pulled in over 120,000UKP a
         year). And for the time being, who can fault a dial-up
         service whose current status report includes "In what I can
         only describe as a screw up of monumental proportions, I had
         forgotten to turn on PHP support" from the CEO?
         http://www.ukfsn.org/status/
                                                              - bless
         http://www.jasonclifford.com/uklinux.html
                                   - Jason's side of the story so far
         http://groups.google.com/groups?q=jason+clifford
                                        - the court of usenet opinion


                                >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         "clean underwear" recommendations were "joke", AMAZON claim: 
         http://www.goodexperience.com/columns/02/1121.amazon.html ... 
         enjoy taking surveys? "Enter survey number" from 1-3000, press 
         "Go": http://www.advancedsurvey.com/ ... MISSPELLINGS AHOY: 
         http://www.google.com/search?q=%22buggers+belief%22 , "bomb 
         treats", "prictical", "jewish setters" and, following on from 
         last week's "risumi", the increasing pressure to decriminalise 
         middle-class use of http://www.google.com/search?q=canapis ... 
http://ak.bluestreak.com/adv/aol-uk/^1941/^79772/lfstyl_skyscraper_600x120.gif
         imitates http://www.epigee.org/ocd/graphics/scream-md.gif ... 
         BILL THOMPSON describes first right-hand link as "blah blah 
         blah": http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/column/col157.shtml ... 
         "Yatter yatter yatter" help desk informatively agrees: 
         http://www.encorecbt.com/clients/nationwide/ ... not sure what 
         ads are trying to say about thrift shopping for video games: 
  http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=395CBB2B.58CEB7B5%40earthlink.net ...


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

         Want to be part of the increasingly fragmented UK new media 
         "networking" scene, but can't tell the difference between one 
         bunch of braying self-congratulatory wankers and the next? 
         Then you'll be pleased to hear that NOTJUSTANOTHERFAILING.COM 
         shares your exasperation, and sent out their invites to 
         December's THE RED SIDE CHRISTMAS PARTY (Thu 2002-12-05, The 
         Propaganda Bar, London W1, UKP15) with the generic mailmerge 
         instructions still in them. "This Christmas, [insert name of 
         community here] has joined up with 14 other online communities 
         to bring you the best party of the season", they enthuse. 
         "[Add community comment or promotional offer here]", they 
         continue, before making you feel really special with the 
         personalised signoff, "Wishing you a very merry Christmas, 
         [insert community name here]". The descriptions of the other 
         participants are no more reassuring: "physical e-business 
         community" METROCUBE; "intelligence for digital business" 
         NETIMPERATIVE; plus the lone, terrifying epithet CHINWAG - no 
         further description apparently required. 
         http://www.theredside.com/
               - OK, so it's a cool name for it. We'll give 'em that.
         http://g2002.bash.sh/cgi-bin/gwi?mode=page&pg=home
                    - also in Dec: return of the LAN bash in a bunker
         http://www.ica.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=10701
               - or 6 quid to listen to Bill "Tiddly Om-Pom" Thompson
         http://www.bath.ac.uk/~su1fish/
                - tonight: your last chance to see Ben Moor. In Bath. 


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         Anyone who saw his storming depiction of weird-ass NAT
         tunnelling at last year's Codecon knows that you don't get
         much more twisted copper-pair than Dan Kaminsky. That boy is
         to data packets what Magneto is to iron filings. So it's
         with some trepidation that we announce a public snapshot of
         Dan's current mental state in PAKETTO KEIRETSU, a grab-bag
         of sick and evil things done with bits on a wire. Stateless
         port-scanners, traceroutes so far down the OSI Networking
         model they're into the negative numbers, ethernet trailer
         steganography, a userland "virtual router" that uses
         ethernet multicast to let machines on a network share the
         same IP address (think of it as NAT turned inside out). If
         that's not enough, there's a graphics dumper that takes
         those strange-attractor fingerprints of sequence ids and
         turns it into a 3D voxel plot, and the usual fine
         caffeinated stream o' consciousness Kaminskytron prose to
         penetrate. As ever, it's not quite what these
         mini-utilities do as much as how the hell they do it. Not
         black hat or white hat but *deep* hat going on here.
         http://www.doxpara.com/
                      - person most likely to be digitised by the MCP


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                ceci n'est pas une http://www.gagpipe.com/

         great gift ideas #1 - t-shirts, coffee mugs, keyrings from 
         "merchandise" page at: http://www.neuticles.com/index1.html 
         (via http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/museum.htm )... ladies 
         and gentlemen, may we present - Al-Qaeda's Winter Collection: 
         http://www.oxbridgecasuals.co.uk/millennium/fleece.htm ... vs: 
         http://www.utilikilts.com/ ... on a similarly Scottish note: 
         http://www.limmy.com/playthings/xylophone/ ... found photo 
         fun: http://www.diddly.com/random/ ... very prior art: 
         http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_709660.html ... set your
         clock to 23:59: http://www.yugop.com/ver3/stuff/03/fla.html ... 
         look-o-like-o JACKO: http://anomalies-unlimited.com/Jackson.html 
         ... MARK WARD revives last year's "not a fruit at all" gag: 
         http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/1560419.stm for "not an interview at 
         all": http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/2488049.stm - ah-haaaaaa!...


                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         TV>> sci-fi classic THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1.20am, Fri, 
         BBC2) didn't have the special effects to do the shape-shifting 
         alien from the original short story, subsequently resurrected 
         by John Carpenter's "The Thing"... Billy Connolly is the voice 
         of a computer-literate dog in Aussie soap-actor kiddie caper 
         PAWS (4pm, Sat, C4)... and FAME SET AND MATCH (8.55pm, Sat, 
         BBC2) looks at the jetset lifestyles enjoyed by Peter Cook, 
         Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett following their 
         appearance in "Beyond The Fringe"... the BBC counterprogrammes 
         ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES (7.50pm, Sun, BBC1) against 
         ITV's all-star remake of DR ZHIVAGO (9pm, Sun, ITV) and C4's 
         incisive analysis of the significance of the female bottom in 
         modern society, BOOTYLICIOUS (10pm, Sun, C4)... REAL LIFE: 
         FLEUR'S STORY (10.30pm, Mon, ITV) looks at a kid with 
         progeria, the accelerated ageing disorder suffered by JF 
         Sebastian in "Blade Runner"... Mark Kermode continues his 
         mission to shock "normals" out of their complacency with 
         previously unshown footage from THE DEVILS (11.10pm, Mon, C4) 
     http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,843371,00.html
         ... and the perils of not keeping offsite backups are once 
         again highlighted by the interminable TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT 
         DAY (9pm, Mon, C5)... the former owners of HMV trace their 
         roots back to the military-industrial-entertainment complex in 
         EMI - AND ME (9pm, Wed, BBC2)... Crystal, De Niro and Kudrow 
         look on the lighter side of "The Sopranos" in ANALYZE THIS 
         (9pm, Wed, C5)... James Randi's $1m Homeopathy Challenge is 
         put to the test in HORIZON (9pm, Thu, BBC2)... as Ewan 
         McGregor chooses weird Cthulhu sex in Lovecraftian Ian McEwan 
         adaptation SOLID GEOMETRY (10.35pm, Thu, C4)... 
         
         FILM>> as if they hadn't all been made to a rigid formula 
         anyway: http://www.langleyhigh.com/english/bond/formula.htm , 
         they're making a big thing out of the "references" to all the 
         preceding Bond films - mad millionaire, terrible sub-"Carry 
         On" dialogue, invisible car etc - which appear in DIE ANOTHER 
         DAY ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2002/die_another_day.html :
         [Halle Berry] shows cleavage and other skin in various scenes; 
         We see [Rosamund Pike] in something akin to a sports bra top; 
         some kids many want to imitate Bond or Jinx's adventurous 
         stunts, fighting and/or the double entendres they deliver)... 
         otherwise it's another wistful 1970s Midlands/Asian coming-of-
         ager ANITA AND ME ( http://www.bbfc.org.uk/ : Contains 
         moderate language, violence and sex references) - not to be 
         confused with brutal fact-based crime drama TED BUNDY (imdb: 
         masturbation-scene/ painful-sex/ rape/ serial-killer)... 


                               >> 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
                     "easily confused with NeedtoKnow.Com"
       http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/comment/0,7496,843324,00.html

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