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        "The earliest bloggers have been at it for two years now..."
                   - net may have "silly season", muses BILL THOMPSON,  
                                                   self-referentially
                                  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3134629.stm
            ...earliest where? The International Space Station? Iraq? 


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                                 excess BTUs

         All hail the great, the good and the clueless. Last months's
         report from the Broadband Stakeholder Group concluded that
         what was *really* impeding broadband wasn't BT's slackness 
         at connecting up rural areas, but - get this! - a lack of
         micropayments and DRM. Evidence? Not just the testimony of 
         the committee's "17 year-old ... mate Dan" who is depressed 
         that he can't pay for "cool digital stuff", like "Dr.M's"
         "Where's da money?" track, we hope. Oddly, if you read past 
         the report's bizarre introduction, all the right people 
         and points are quoted (including Ross "DRM will blind our 
         children" Anderson). It's merely the conclusions that are
         pasted in from another planet. Particularly the idea that
         the best place to try out DRM would be in the public sector.
         Oh yeah, wouldn't want that publicly-funded intellectual
         property falling into the wrong hands, would we? What's
         scarier is how seriously such sentiments are taken: witness
         the National Gallery being quizzed this week on exactly why
         their digitisation project isn't being DRMed up the whizzer.
         Hello? Unless we're still trying to incentivise Vincent van
         Gogh with royalty cheques, whose "digital rights" are we
         managing here? And in whose interest is it to keep these
         already publicly-owned works from being spread far and wide?
         http://www.broadbanduk.org/reports/DRM_report.pdf
                                                   - read it and weep
         http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99994030
         - "If a file is hacked or a high-quality print scanned and
         copied, the gallery will be unable to prove the source." OH NO!

         A depressingly hefty mailbag for our request for sites that
         could do with a little guerilla webscaping "improvement". We
         sense great pain. We're determined to see the brighter side
         of all this, however: and CHRIS LONG sent the first glimmer
         of hope with his repurposing of Channel Four's cinema
         information site, which appears to put every fragment of
         data you need to know about a film - the cinema it's at, the
         time it's on, its name - on separate webpages. Of course,
         writing a scraper does put you somewhat at the mercy of the
         original site, and the (original) cinema finder does seem a
         little flakey at the moment. But at least Chris is trying to
         help. And there's worse - far worse - to come. Start your 
         side-bets now on what the most (un)popular suggested sites
         have been - or mail us with any new Web horrors you've felt
         crawling over your face recently, and just how you'd like to 
         see them "fixed".
         http://www.oview.co.uk/
                           - admittedly, you still have to click once
        http://www.channel4.co.uk/film/search/cinema/cinema_search.jsp
                                - mr no results is showing everywhere

         Last fortnight's clarification of our Japlish slogan contest 
         appears to have worked wonders, though we did receive a few 
         more retranslations of our existing catchphrases - JONATHAN 
         MATTHEWS' "With the fact that it is on the register in the 
         point official duties thread together", BRUCE LOKEINSKY's 
         "*The* weak resale caustic high-tack udpate, fool you! OK?". 
         Lack of space unfortunately precludes a full explanation of 
         SHEZ's intriguingly phonetic "Conpuu tama neon rubbery you 
         shun", but many of the other runners-up were (relatively) more 
         self-explanatory, ranging from PAUL HOFFMAN's "We like listing 
         on Fridays!", GARETH ROBINSON's "No, lets come assist liquid, 
         helper. What then?", and GRAHAM DUNN's "Pleasure to be 
         deceived! For your enjoyable Newsletter life". CHARLIE ULLMAN 
         touched on some of the poignancy we were hoping for with his 
         "Technical Friday reading alone", JILL PHYTHIAN thought that 
         "Seven day elegant and can dancing with winning news shirt of 
         mens" summed up "everything she ever believed" about NTK, and 
         LLOYD WOOD was inadvertently filed as a competition entry for 
         pointing out the haiku-esque structure of an online chat with 
         International Star Trek Guru quizmaster Terry Shuttleworth, in 
         lines like "In general yes/ the universe is too big/ for use 
         [sic] to be all alone". And taking the final runners-up no-
         prize was the similarly unwitting suggestion from ALEC MUFFET 
         to check out the meta-tag-style spamdexing on ringtone sites 
         nowadays, such as the breathily conspiratorial: "Do you find 
         lots of lg cell phone and ericcson phone accessories on the 
         television or free logos for nokia and nokia 3210 australia on 
         cable TV, I know I do, all the time nokia cat".
         http://uk.docs.yahoo.com/chat/terry.html
                          - actual winners announced in a week or two 
         http://www.ringtones-4-all-phones.co.uk/vodafonede_r4989_409.htm
   - thought "melissa sagemiller" would set off all the filters again


                                >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         Beckham identified as "Real Player", al-Qaeda dangerously keen 
         on home taping: http://www.ntk.net/2003/08/08/dohbec.gif ... 
         tempted to break "largest death toll from chemical weapons" at 
         the same time?: http://www.ntk.net/2003/08/08/dohguin.gif ... 
         and presumably that must be steam coming off their feet there: 
         http://www.ntk.net/2003/08/08/doh98.gif ... double-URLtendres: 
         http://simonkidgitsclub.com/ , http://hunkinsexperiments.com/ ,
         http://www.professional-ho.co.nz/ ... "things that are new and 
         quirky will be successful" - analyst's super-specific prediction: 
         http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3123993.stm ... inappropriate print ad:
    http://thegareth.net/home/photos/random/inappropriate_advert_of_the_week
         ... usually boots faster than this: http://www.mysymbian.com/ ...
         London Flash mob "staged": http://www.blackbeltjones.com/work/


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

         We can't remember if next Thursday's ARTISTS AGAINST SUCCESS 
         RECORD LABEL PARTY (from 8pm, Thu 2003-08-14, The Windmill, 
         Brixton, SW2, UKP3 may include "Goody Bag") is the show that 
         MJ HIBBETT was supposed to be learning Eminem's "Stan" for, 
         though no doubt the other performers - including the "Joy 
         Division meets Mario Bros electro" of JOHNNY DOMINO - will 
         graciously decline your shouted requests for "Hey Hey 16K", 
         "Programming Is A Poetry For Our Time", or any of Hibbett's 
         slightly less geeky tunes for that matter. In fact, why not 
         make it a week of offbeat pop by catching the highlights of 
         last month's "Placard London" headphone-only electronica 
         weirdness at Wednesday's DORKBOT (7pm, Wed 2003-08-13, 
         Limehouse Town Hall, London E14, free), or indeed the laid-
         back jazz and hip-hop of INNOCENT SMOOTHIES' FRUITSTOCK (12pm 
         to 9pm, Sat & Sun 2003-08-09/10, Camden corner of Regents 
         Park, London, free) - while of course queuing for the Pimms, 
         Ben & Jerry's and Ty Nant spring water essential to recreating 
         that grass-roots Woodstock atmosphere. 
       http://www.windmillbrixton.co.uk/Months/2003August.html#Thursday
             - vs http://mjhibbett.tripod.com/sampler/programming.htm
         http://dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/
              - "gabba techno, but played live with a home-made feel"
         http://www.innocentdrinks.co.uk/fruitstock/details.html
                      - caution: self-consciously cute corporate site
         http://www.edinburghnews.com/capitalcity.cfm?id=842902003
             - Gary Le Strange "best Fringe debut" since Steve Coogan 


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         SLITHY is "a library for creating animated presentations
         using Python and OpenGL". Actually, it's a bit more than
         that: it's a framework for creating little bits of drawing
         and animation code objects that can dance along to a
         time-line on a canvas, and have enough introspection to be
         generally treated by code-generating proggies. In other
         words, to write a presentation, you hand write code for all
         your objects you need (or pull some out from the toolkit
         provided), and then stick them together in a simple Python
         script. Or - better - write that code that *generates* the
         code that runs your presentation. To put it another way, if
         the marketing types can waste hours building a Powerpoint
         presentation, you can certainly deserve to spend *months*
         creating the perfect meta-presentation. Code for everything
         is shockingly clean; the documentation is, literally, a
         philosophical thesis, and the guys at SIGGRAPH reportedly
         loved it. Freak out your CEO by trapping his entire business
         logic in a little bouncing 3D cube on slide 4 today.
         http://www.cs.washington.edu/homes/dougz/slithy/
                                                               - ssss


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                contains a source of http://snackspot.org/

         inevitably: http://www.fixyourmp.com/ ... "At MINAS TIRITH, turn 
         LEFT toward MINAS MORGUL": http://www.ooblick.com/text/tomordor/ 
         ... nice idea, good answer to "how are you going to make money":
         http://www.mailinator.com/mailinator/Faq.do ... after the glow of
         http://www.themarriage.co.uk/ comes http://www.thedivorce.co.uk/ ...
         something candled this way comes: wish Ray Bradbury happy birthday
         at https://planetary.org/bradbury/ ... www.respectcopyrights.org 
         vs www.disrespectcopyrights.org ... top-ten net vulnerabilities 
         - LIVE!: http://www.qualys.com/security/ ... investigators ask: 
         could we have started killing off the Beatles any earlier?
         http://www.anycities.com/user/uberkinder/ ... before they rise to kill
         STEVE JOBS? http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,88439,00.html#2 ...
         ah, but who is *really* behind http://www.google-watch-watch.org/ ?


                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         TV>> you wait all year for some terrestrial appearances from 
         MTV uber-prankster Tom Green, and then two come along at once: 
         hopefully a few Glenn Humplik-humiliating highlights in chat 
         format THE BEST OF THE NEW TOM GREEN SHOW (11.45pm, Fri, C4); 
         plus a cameo in MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE (6.45pm, Thu, BBC2)... 
         SEX AND THE CITY (10pm, Fri, C4) briefly explores the erotic 
         possibilities of the TiVo... and it's psychological horror 
         almost every other evening, in the form of JACOB'S LADDER 
         (11.50pm, Fri, BBC1), STIR OF ECHOES (10.15pm, Sun, BBC1) and 
         INSTINCT (9pm, Wed, ITV) - aka "Gorillas In The Mist" meets 
         "Silence Of The Lambs"... THE BEACH (9pm, Sat, BBC1) isn't so 
         bad until it goes all "Apocalypse Now"... Michelle "Dawson's 
         Creek" Williams ponders a different kind of adolescent trauma 
         in HALLOWEEN H20 (10.55pm, Sat, BBC1)... and C4 gives up the 
         weekend ratings battle with WITNESS: GOD BLESS IBIZA (8.15pm, 
         Sat, C4) plus Dermot O'Leary taking a madcap look at papal 
         infallibility in SOME OF MY BEST FRIENDS ARE CATHOLIC (7.30pm, 
         Sun, C4)... "too much reality" TV is examined in both ED TV 
         (9pm, Sat, C4) and THE TRUMAN SHOW (10.15pm, Wed, BBC3)... 
         preceded by MAN TRAP - STRAW DOGS: THE FINAL CUT (11.20pm, 
         Sat, C4), controversial 1970s mathematician's revenge STRAW 
         DOGS (11.15pm, Sun, C4) is championed by - you've guessed it, 
         Mark Kermode... BLACK HAWK DOWN: THE TRUE STORY (8pm, Tue, C5) 
         appears to be the third History Channel reversioning of the 
         source material for its two "Battle Stations" profiles of the 
         Black Hawk helicopter shown on C4 in March and June of this 
         year... while yet another role-reversal life-swap contrivance 
         MASTERS AND SERVANTS (9pm, Thu, C4) will nonetheless hopefully 
         feature the eponymous Depeche Mode track as its theme tune...
         
         FILM>> over-the-top performances from Johnny Depp and Geoffrey 
         Rush almost salvage overlong Disney theme-park-ride adaptation 
         THE PIRATES OF THE CARIBBEAN: THE CURSE OF THE BLACK PEARL 
         ( http://www.ahafilm.info/movies/moviereviews.phtml?fid=7519 : 
         A fish biologist accompanied the crabs to the set. He released 
         6 Nigerian Moon Crabs on the sand and the fake skeleton and 
         stood just off camera [...] They were retrieved when the scene 
         was over and brought back home)... it's "Freddy Vs Jason" next 
         week, Paul "Shopping" Anderson is making "Alien Vs Predator" 
         http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0370263/board/flat/2453059 , but 
         it's the ultimate faceoff of Rugrats Vs The Wild Thornberrys 
         providing this summer holiday's "mild peril" in RUGRATS GO 
         WILD ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/rugrats_go_wild.html :
         We briefly see Charlotte (an adult) in her non-sexy, non-
         revealing underwear)... while "Somebody sensitive and tough/ 
         Somebody there when the going gets rough/ [...] Somebody cool 
         but real tender too/ Somebody, baby, just like [Colin Firth]" 
         was Christina Aguilera's original definition of "You English 
         are so uptight!" Anglo-American kids comedy WHAT A GIRL WANTS 
         ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/whatagirlwants.htm : 
         lashout at mother; punk dress, repeatedly; lack of chemistry 
         and energy in the kissing scene. Thankfully)...
         
         PHEAR, BEER, AND OTHER PEOPLE'S ROOT PASSWORDS #2 with our "My 
         second DEFCON" correspondent, "Crash Override", Las Vegas>> 
         "popular adjunct to the BlackHat briefings" might not be quite 
         such an accurate description any more, as BlackHat speakers 
         were reportedly asked not to present at DefCon. Not that this 
         seemed to affect the talks' popularity: fire marshals decided 
         that each of the three presentation rooms could only hold as 
         many attendees as there was available seating. With a con of 
         roughly 4500, and seating in all three streams of talks for 
         only about 1900, that's lot of disappointed haxx0rs. But the 
         Defcon staff explained the situation patiently and repeatedly, 
         "flushing" the crowd out of the room at the end of each talk 
         so the maximum number of people could see something. The video 
         feed to the bar gave up after a day or so, but all the talks 
         were on "DefCon TV" throughout the hotel so you could catch 
         most of what you wanted to... the talks I did see were well 
         worth the queuing: CAT OKITA on peer-to-peer reputation 
         software that might solve the authenticity problem on security 
         mailing lists http://www.geekness.net/tools/aura/ ; DNSCon's 
         own JONATHAN WIGNALL summarising the history and future of 
         network worms and defences against them; and RYAN LACKEY 
         overcoming myriad technical problems to present a post-mortem 
         on HavenCo http://zdnet.com.com/2100-1105_2-5059676.html - 
         life imitates http://www.pirateutopia.org/macbeth/about.htm ? 
         Still, missing a few talks was a bug and a feature - I met a 
         lot more people and made a lot more friends than last year; 
         not being one of the hordes huddled over a laptop also seemed 
         to help... the HACKER JEOPARDY contest was even more chaotic 
         than last year: on the Friday night "supporting babe" BEER 
         BETTY was replaced by a selection of haxx0r girls - alleged 
         "pornstars of the hacker scene" - who would strip and duct 
         tape audience members when necessary. Things got better, or 
         worse, on the Saturday, with the third qualifier and final 
         taking a marathon four hours to complete. For the qualifier 
         the OSI category caused uproar amongst the audience, "friend 
         of NTK" DAN KAMINSKY arguing with compere WINN SCHWARTAU about 
         quite where TCP sits on stage. The final ended, appropriately, 
         in a complete farce, with the "Son of Portmath" question 
         suffering a typo between SNMP and SMTP... there were plenty of 
         other event highlights - the Scavenger Hunt team that scored 
         points by bringing a cow's head to the organisers' table, the 
         runaway LockPicking contest winner who'd only been practising 
         for five months, playing "six degrees of David Litchfield" 
         with the UK security enthusiasts, the orgy in the pool, the 
         rare times KEVIN MITNICK wasn't being asked for an autograph, 
         and PETE SHIPLEY briefly seen hanging around at the back of 
         talks. Of course, with the contract with the Alexis Park Hotel 
         expiring this year, DefCon 0B was, of course, the last one 
         ever. Well organised, well attended, very friendly - I'm 
         looking forward to next year's "last ever" DefCon already...
                  

                               >> 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
          "we said snackspot.org *above* 'Sideburns' and 'The Cure'"
                    http://www.snackspot.org/images/qmag.jpg

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