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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.
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