Need To Know 2003-05-30

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"The stereotype of the Sari-clad docile Indian woman was first shattered in another film, Jism, which literally means body. [...] More important, Jism did relatively well at the box office, says industry analyst Amod Mehra..." http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/south_asia/2931870.stm - still setting off mail filters, even when we don't mean to >> HARD NEWS << no Santa Cruz June the 3rd (next Tuesday) marks the final date for your comments on the government's new plans for giving RIP surveillance powers to local authorities, as well as their data retention plans for ISPs. Frankly, we're terrified of even suggesting you write in with your views, just in case they turn us all into a "petition" as the ID Card Minister still appears to have done. That said, that unusually wired civil servant Simon Watkin has said that he's been checking all the comments with due attention, and it'd be a shame not to knock off a quick mail or two over the weekend while you have the chance. http://www.statewatch.org/news/2003/mar/11comm.htm - those consultation docs in full http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcrypto/2003-May/025997.html - Mr Watkin is counting everything twice http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/2947958.stm - Mr O'Brien is very disappointed For now let's assume that our masters heed your hearty recommendation that they grab all the surveillance and data-collection powers they can. What will that future be like? As we all know, it is the children that are our future - and sure enough, the government's latest "Connexions" campaign has been introducing young adults to the chumminess of joined-up, data-hungry government right now. First, there's the Connexions Card. Run by famously competent and discreet Capita, this smartcard lets teenagers gain points for attendance and attainment, as well as store useful health information. It also gives Capita a profile of the young person (via the Card's accompanying Website), which they can resell to advertisers. Capita is paying schools one quid for every child they sign up for the card. Meanwhile, more confidential data is being captured by the card's sister project, the Connexions "Personal Advisors". Answers to questions about the young persons' parents, trouble they're having at school or work - can be shared with social services, youth offending teams, schools, LEAs, health authorities, local authorities, the police and probation offices. Kids as young as thirteen will be asked to give consent to such data-sharing, by Advisors who will drop into their schools once a week for a little chat. All information collated will stay in the system until the child is twenty - and then kept by the government for another three years, for "auditing purposes". After all, you should never throw away stuff that might come in useful... http://www.arch-ed.org/confp.htm - not many civil liberties campaigns in Comic Sans these days http://www.4ni.co.uk/nationalnews.asp?id=16556 - those UKP2.3m TV ads you've been seeing recently Launching your own magazine is the other big craze among NTK readers this summer, with Future Publishing's SAM RICHARDS requesting "Please don't be too unkind!" regarding his "genuine attempt to do something new with the games mag genre", PSNEXT (UKP4.00, out now) - by which he appears to mean combining "Official Playstation" with "Edge". MARK PILKINGTON predicts an August launch for the first edition of his STRANGE ATTRACTOR journal - by which time Britain's angriest young men will also have the option of venting their rage in a mass-circulation print weekly with the somewhat parochial title of THE LONDON NEWS REVIEW. Publishers THE FRIDAY THING confirm that this isn't just another ingenious viral promo for their interminable email newsletter - though, by that point, we'll have been waiting a full year for further news of "The Dot Thing" (billed as "The Friday Thing's voice, applied to all things web"), plus their plan from last year of "setting up a bona-fide political party" intended to "unseat the Tories as the main party of opposition". http://www.psnext.co.uk/ - contains Flash in pop-up window, jokes about "the interweb" http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk/ - slightly newer take on games mags: http://www.ugvm.org.uk/ http://www.thelondonnewsreview.co.uk/media3.shtml - that famously healthy demographic of "West Wing" viewers http://www.thefridaything.co.uk/sample/ - almost unbearably concise >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious truth in advertising: http://www.ntk.net/2003/05/30/doh3.gif , http://www.ntk.net/2003/05/23/dohoff.gif ... new cases of missing millions: http://www.ntk.net/2003/05/23/dohiht.gif vs www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/03/03/walq03.xml ... failing to convey the full horror of this poster (seen in Canadian university) http://www.ntk.net/2003/05/23/dohwhim.jpg : http://www.buzzwordometer.com/analyse.aspx?url=www.whimco.com%2Fabout.asp ... http://freedom.ntl.com/sc_default.asp?num=Anne+Widdecombe ... ooh SQLSERVER - your suggestions are gettin' me all hot: http://www.sqlservercentral.com/sitesearch/cgi-bin/es/esearch.asp?search=sql ... what if we only do PUERILE GOOGLE GOOFS once a month?: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22bum+in%22+%22burn+in%22 , "shitter speed", "daft resolution", "data minging", "Marcus Gravy", "rick management"... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful According to the mailout that we were forwarded: "This is a unique opportunity to see a legendary British creative talk intimately about his process, his history and his revolutionary new Gamecube project, 'Unity' - whilst drinking and eating curry". Presumably it's you that's "drinking and eating curry" rather than JEFF "LLAMASOFT" MINTER himself, but maybe that's part of the bizarre entertainment at GOAT IN THE MACHINE (from 7pm, Thursday 2003-06-05, Mogal-e-Azam Tandoori Restaurant, Nottingham, UKP10 includes "exquisite food", but spaces are limited so please book in advance). Also consider this advance warning of the UK arrival later next month of TIM "O'REILLY" O'REILLY, who'll be speaking to the UK UNIX USER GROUP (6:30pm, Monday 2003-06-23, City University, London EC1, pre-register but free), shortly after hosting the O'Reilly 25th Anniversary boat trip along the River Thames, Michael Jackson's giant statue-stylee. http://events.suppose.co.uk/ - two more Llama Bhunas over here! http://www.joystickjunkies.com/pages/events.html - on Wed: Soho Joystick Junkies' "Oh the Nathanity" http://www.ukuug.org/events/TimOReilly/ - also talking at http://www.linuxuserexpo.com/ , natch http://www.toflife.co.uk/calendar/june.html - also around London in June: hey, free ice tea! It is the curse of the gratuitous NTK plug: the FreeNetworks people said that if we mentioned their conference in last week's issue, then oh, we would have all the dancing ladies that Vegas could provide. Drooling, we succumbed, and now we must look down at shame at our still spittle-wet shoes. The FREENETWORKS CONFERENCE has been postponed due to lack of registration. And we must wander the earth, bitter and penitent, but free. http://con.freenetworks.org/ - still, there's always defcon http://www.webbyawards.com/main/event/learn_more.html - and on Thu: host your own bloody "Webby" awards >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering You've got to give it to the NULLSOFT guys: they know just how much to write, and how much to leave to strangers. Just like the original Gnutella, WASTE is mostly just a protocol with a bare-bones UI hanging off it. Like Gnutella, it suffers from having being developed in isolation: there are weird edges to it (the load balancing is cranky; the random-number generation might be buggy; the routing metric looks, to our untrained eyes, nigh-fuxxored). Like Gnutella, it nonetheless *works*, which is more than your fancy-schmancy distributed-anonymous-reputation-system, daydream believer. It doesn't work very well - but that merely means that, even as we write, thousands of coders are cranking out improved clients and protocol extensions that will breathe more life into WASTE than Nullsoft ever could. Conspiracy theorists might also wonder whether Nullsoft's withdrawal of the source after the Slashdotting was planned to give WASTE an Gnutella-like illicit cachet: more social-engineering of the P2Punks? Or was it, timed as it was on the fourth anniversary of AOL's purchase of Nullsoft, and the day when AOL announced they were jumping back into bed with Microsoft, yet another fuck you to the Man? http://www.dhorrocks2003.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/ - "I got the mugwhump jism up in every verse" >> MEMEPOOL << ceci n'est pas une http://www.gagpipe.com/ LARRY WACHOWSKI has alternative philosophical interpretation of "fantasy world where you can do/wear whatever you like": http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/allnews/page.cfm?objectid=12987678&method=full ... like a b3ta nightmare : http://www.crochetfashions.com/ ... while fashion police swoop on Basildon hat/hood wearers: http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/story.jsp?story=409342 ... government not too keen to share the "nation's" artworks: http://www.gac.culture.gov.uk/search/Artist.asp?maker_id=107533 ... http://www.ceefax.com/ points to... (self-referential gag here): http://www.stevewhite.org/stuff/GenericLiterature.html ... inevitably: http://j-walk.com/blog/docs/conference.htm ... WHAT CAR diversifies into BBC-online-tastic photoshoppery: http://www.whatcar.com/default.asp?a=news&b=story&article=2010 ... because so many of you found something amusing about #4: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/in_depth/photo_gallery/2946602.stm ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> it's "Lamer: Kubrick movies, Kramer: Kubrick action figures" when ADAM & JOE GO TOKYO (11.25pm, Fri, BBC3; 12.05am, Mon, BBC1)... the Japanese influence persists with pointless pre-paid promos for the Matrix Reloaded ANIMATRIX: SECOND RENAISSANCE (10.40pm then around midnight, Fri-Mon, C5) ... not to be confused with COSMO'S 50 WAYS TO PLEASE YOUR MAN/WOMAN (10.50pm, Tue & Thu, C5) - probably "Cosmopolitan" magazine rather than Cosmo K from "Seinfeld" but, hey, we can always hope... a week of up-to-the-minute war documentaries kicks off with AFGHANISTAN: HERE'S ONE WE INVADED EARLIER (8.05pm, Sat, C4)... AL-JAZEERA EXCLUSIVE (9pm, Sun, BBC2) appears to have been postponed for a few weeks so they can put more footage of those Brits not getting executed in it... while the BATTLE STATIONS IRAQ (8pm, Mon, C4) profile of the B-52 is presumably another co-production with The History Channel, co-owned by the famously gung-ho Hearst Corporation: http://www.smplanet.com/imperialism/remember.html ... Richard "Coupling" Coyle and Samantha "Game On" Janus are the unlikely Mulder and Scully of non-sitcom weirdness STRANGE (9.05pm, Sat, BBC1)... though not based on the Cure song of the same name, Hilary Swank cross-dresser BOYS DON'T CRY (9.05pm, Sat, BBC2) does feature it on the soundtrack... Winona fails to steal any scenes from the new "white chocolate" flavour xenomorph in ALIEN: RESURRECTION (10.20pm, Sat, ITV)... and NTK staffer Lee Maguire maintains that JERRY MAGUIRE (9.35pm, Sat, C4) was the first film he'd ever seen where someone of that surname didn't turn out to be a deranged IRA terrorist... Cuba Gooding Jr reappears with Skeet Ulrich in CHILL FACTOR (9pm, Mon, C5), ostensibly a comedy remake of the 1953 French classic "The Wages Of Fear"... Roger Ebert reckons that the mystery briefcase in De Niro Euro car-chaser RONIN (10.15pm, Sun, BBC1) contains "the briefcase from Pulp Fiction"... and they still haven't come up with a better tagline than "MI5: not 9 to 5" tagline for SPOOKS (9pm, Mon, BBC1)... can't remember if C4 ever got to the end of season 2 but C5 is jumping straight in with season 3 (the one before the one currently on Sky) of - hopefully uncut - Buffy spinoff ANGEL (8pm, Mon, C5)... Dawn French takes on squirrels, otters and a crow in the race to be crowned BRITAIN'S CLEVEREST ANIMAL (7pm, Wed, BBC1)... plenty of whisky-ad opportunities in the brutal SOUTHERN COMFORT (9pm, Wed, C5)... and CODE NAME: MINUS ONE (3.35pm, Thu, C5) is the original TV pilot of "Gemini Man", and sadly not the MST3K-d classic "Riding with Death"... FILM>> Steve Martin, who hasn't made a funny film in the last 10 years, meets Queen "Sphere" Latifah online then in person, in predictable racial-stereotype-fest BRINGING DOWN THE HOUSE ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/bringingdownthehouse.htm : child reading porn magazine, repeatedly; fruit in pants to simulate sexual power; dildos in dog's mouth; demonstrating that participation in sinful behavior makes one a better, more likable, rounded person)... otherwise "Beat" Takeshi Kitano swaps brutal Yakuza shootouts for arty butterfly shots in his limited-release meditation on the nature of love and free will DOLLS ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : contains moderate violence), or it's John Malkovich essentially remaking "Hannibal" - but without the pigs - in posh serial-killer sequel RIPLEY'S GAME ( www.bbfc.co.uk/ : contains strong language and violence)... >> 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 "here's to the next 6 years!" http://www.ntk.net/1997/05/23/ 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.ntkmart.com/ (K) 2003 Special Projects. Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/ Full license at: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/1.0 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. Sending >500KB attachments is forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Your country may be at risk if you fail to comply.