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        "Microsoft has scoffed at suggestions its software contains 
         back doors for use by United States intelligence services..."
       http://www.theage.com.au/articles/2003/08/15/1060871752574.html
     - Sorry, CIA: you'll have to use all the existing security holes, 
                                         just like everyone else does


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                                easier to use

         What's this? Easier access to the machinations of the Hutton 
         Inquiry site, but without the apparently needless use of 
         JavaScript, cookies, or frames? It must be the work of - The 
         Usability Vigilante! Yes, Odeon recoder MATTHEW SOMERVILLE has 
         struck again, improving the world's accessibility one website 
         at a time. In other good news: do you recall the appalling
         Post Office page, with its monstrous postal code address
         finder? Turns out that there *is* an accessible version of
         this (no registration required) - and the rest of the Royal
         Mail site too. Those sneaky disabled people have been
         keeping it to themselves, it seems. In a similar vein to
         the WAP version of play.com we mentioned, TXTBUX is a
         convenient SMS-interface ISBN-based Amazon price checker for
         browsing tightwads. BIGFROG takes an already semi-usable
         interface, and stuffs it into the burlap bag of RSS with his
         feeds of Yahoo News etc. And it's good to see BEN CHALMERS of
         DownwardSpiral reworking Andrew Orlowski's screeds into the
         format that most suits them.
         http://www.downwardspiral.org.uk/cgi-bin/orlowski.cgi
                                          - it's the Dave Spart blog!
         http://www.dracos.co.uk/hutton/
       - what the?: http://www.dracos.co.uk/web/accessibility/bbcnews/
         http://www.access.royalmail.com/dda/index.htm
         - my eyes have seen the glory of the black text on the white
         http://www.bigfrog.net/vnews/hot/
                           - would you recommend this photo overview? 
         http://www.txtbux.co.uk/
                          - f u cn rd ths u hv bn sld a bk wth n vwls

         All right, enough. With the most anti-climactic fanfare we
         can muster, the results of our survey. The worst sites in
         Britain are... any of the ones to do with trains. The
         Trainline, the Eurostar site, and, especially, the NATIONAL
         RAIL booking system. We got fistfuls of mail complaining
         about the latter, especially by contrast to its previous
         incarnation, the little app done by plucky North Londern
         WAPpers Kizoom that was so much better. "The Kizoom app,"
         reminisces the nostalgic STEVE BOWBRICK "... allowed you to
         define nicknames ('placemarks') for favourite destinations,
         remembered your current location (It's lunchtime and it's a
         weekday, so you're at work, so when you click 'next train
         please' you mean 'next train from my work placemark to my
         home placemark please') [and] was supported by the BEST SMS
         APP EVER". The new site by contrast, has enforced waits,
         only four trips per page, precious little timetabling, and
         ... oh, the pain goes on. To eradicate this disgrace to our
         nation (TM Daily Mail), we'll shower with plaudits anyone 
         who dares screen-scrape it into something reasonable. Or, 
         if pandering to busy commuters isn't quite your idea of a
         charitable gesture, why not re-do our runner up: the
         Dyslexia Association of London's site, which is so
         unreadable as to give everybody an insight into that
         unfortunate condition.
         http://www.nationalrail.co.uk/planmyjourney/
                                                    - then domyheadin
      http://www.nres.mytrains.kizoom.co.uk/nationalrail/html/new_services.jsp
                                   - the remnants of the previous day
         http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/30564.html
                             - your "to do" list (partly implemented)
         http://www.dyslexiainlondon.ik.com/
- an animated GIF of juggling letters: that's taking the piss, isn't it?

         TESCO Cambridge and GILLETTE cave in to bearded privacy 
         activists and withdraw their RFID-labelled razor blades; 
         TRANSPORT FOR LONDON unveil a somewhat more ambitious plan to 
         issue all the capital's commuters with RFID tags. Sure, you'd 
         have to be a bit paranoid to read too much into the fact that, 
         from next January, your London tube and bus fares go up by as 
         much as 25%, unless you give them your name and address to 
         register for their new Oyster "contactless smartcard", which 
         both acts as a travel pass and/or deducts money from your 
         prepaid account when you swipe it across a terminal. The 
         traffic data promises to be particularly useful for London 
         Underground, as their current magnetic-stripe-based dumb 
         ticketing system lacks the ID coding to track specific 
         individuals through the network, so at the moment planners 
         have only the vaguest idea of where most tube journeys go. 
         But, moving into more "tin-foil hat territory", the London 
         Underground is of course also one of the few places where you 
         can't easily be tracked via your mobile phone.
         http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2003/08/275818.html
            - though no word on http://www.spy.org.uk/cgi-bin/rfid.pl
http://www.kablenet.com/kd.nsf/Frontpage/5FB8B97C03173BB480256D7A004A8CEB
             - aka "entry token" for health, benefits, education, etc


                                >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         Tomb Raider 2 "expected to trigger massive interest in 
         Snowdonia, the location of a Chinese village in the film", 
         believes: http://news.google.com/news?q=trigger+snowdonia - 
         more plausible than "massive interest in going to the 
         cinema"?... BBC warns of park bagheads, marauding "gentiles": 
         http://www.ntk.net/2003/08/22/dohgen.gif ... go on, Egg, lend 
         us a quid: http://www.ntk.net/2003/08/22/greatloan.gif ... 
         this week's somewhat redundant Amazon "perfect partner" offer: 
         http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00006ZS92/ ... 
         responsibilities also likely to include - proofreading our 
         recruitment ads: http://www.ntk.net/2003/08/22/dohrea.gif ... 
         "For an in-depth article, I might only have a couple of hours 
         to pull something together", says broadband fan Anjana Ahuja: 
         http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,6715-732801,00.html - 
         might explain her "DNA" solution to Turing's Halting Problem: 
         http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=01999-04-09&l=105#l ... 


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

         Next week is LONDON GAMES WEEK, featuring the European debut 
         of HALF-LIFE 2 at the ECTS (Tue-Fri, 2003-08-26/29, free but 
         "trade only"), the embarrassingly repositioned "Fun, anyone?" 
         PLAYSTATION EXPERIENCE (Thu-Sun, 2003-08-28/31, Earls Court, 
         UKP8 on the door) and, in an ideal world, running battles 
         between the rival VODAFONE UK MOBILE GAMES CHAMPIONSHIPS and 
         the devastating juggernaut of the NOKIA N-GAGE TOUR (see sites 
         for dates and venues). But the festivities kick off with a 
         unique showcasing of non-virtual entertainment, as Lionhead's 
         STEVE "Fighting Fantasy" JACKSON takes the stage at Richmond's 
         The Black Horse pub, to perform "a collection of rock, pop, 
         blues and funk classics" with his band THE JACKSON FOUR (8pm, 
         Sun, 2003-08-24, free from the looks of things). Helping 
         decide between page 23 and page 49 of the "choose your own" 
         setlist will be Eidos' IAN LIVINGSTONE on harmonica and vocals 
         and, at the end of the evening, a bucket will be passed around 
         for donations towards the coding of a new Tomb Raider game.
http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=518962&Y=175000&A=Y&Z=2
                                   - check local listings for details
         http://www.londongamesweek.com/
                                     - vs http://www.n-gage.com/tour/
         http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/4/32457.html
       - Kieren leading well-argued Brussels anti-patents demo on Wed
         http://www.ht03.org/
           - unless you're hypertalking with Ted Nelson in Nottingham
     http://www.petebarrwatson.com/wiki/pmwiki.php/Main/BrightonBloggers
                              - plus: Brighton Bloggers meet next Fri


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         XKEYMACS is a utility for what must be the Untouchable caste
         of Emacs: those who not only use Windows, but also, from
         time to time, are tempted to dabble in other applications.
         Since 2001, Yutaka Oishi has been tending ("burnishing", in
         his words) this taskbar applet, which provides as many Emacs
         shortcuts as it can within as many Windows applications as
         is feasible. The dialog box looks like a walkthrough for 
         a control-key version of "Dance Dance Revolution", but it
         hides more than a bunch of hacked key-bindings. Command-line
         completion for COMMAND.COM? Recording keyboard macros for
         Notepad? Your time in the wilderness is now over.
         http://www.cam.hi-ho.ne.jp/oishi/indexen.html
                          - successor to nogu.org's keymacs, keymacs+
         http://www.gnufoo.org/ucontrol/ucontrol.html
                             - there's a patent on one-handed-typing?


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

         dude, your logo's been ownz0rr3d!: http://www.palm.com/ ... 
         video chat with your forced labour camp buddies thanks to: 
         http://www.burmacampaign.org.uk/dirty_list/hutichson.html ... 
         a *parody* of a Flash company site? http://www.de-construct.com/  
         ... proof that the Internet is not yet ready for MELTING WOOD: 
         http://groups.google.com/groups?th=34e75e612afff39b ... filmed in
       http://www.spodrum.freeserve.co.uk/victory/pages/content/subbuteo.htm
         ... one of these pics is not *quite* like the others, part 2:
         http://images.google.com/images?q=best_picture_ever.jpg ... 
         just a matter of time before Tone Loc launches his patented 
         "Funky Cold Medina": http://www.nme.com/news/105934.htm ... 
         Govt stop using Word docs: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3154479.stm 
         hopefully move to PDF files with black rectangles drawn over 
         secret bits: http://www.schneier.com/crypto-gram-0308.html#8 
         ... Death Metal remix "still not as scary as the original": 
       http://www.jonobacon.org/music/solo/jonobacon-freesoftwaresong.ogg ...


                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         TV>> PD JAMES'S DEATH IN HOLY ORDERS (9.05pm, Sat & Sun, BBC1) 
         takes the monastery murder mystery of "The Name Of The Rose" 
         and, pioneeringly, sets it in the present day... marvel at the 
         synchronicity of C4's PSYCHIC NIGHT (from 8pm, Sat, C4) 
         coinciding with the Living Channel's PARANORMAL WEEKEND (from 
         3.50pm, Sat) - skeptic James Randi provides an alternative 
         viewpoint, though sadly not to the extent of going ON HOLIDAY 
         WITH THE [URI] GELLERS (11.10pm, Sun, C4)... while fans of 
         empirically based observation are catered to with the unusual-
         proximity-of-Mars astronomy special THE ALL NIGHT STAR PARTY 
         (11.20pm, Sat, BBC2)... the original SUPERMAN (3pm, Mon, ITV), 
         THE ITALIAN JOB (9pm, Mon, BBC2), and the usual offhand 
         Gallagher brother hilarity of LIVE FOREVER (22.35pm, Mon, 
         BBC2) are arguably the highlights of Bank Holiday Monday... 
         interchangeable Irish standup Sean Lock is this year's choice 
         to present a low-budget trawl of ESSENTIAL EDINBURGH (11.20pm, 
         Wed, BBC2)... and "It took so much of my leg away I looked 
         like Terminator 2", says one victim of the antibiotic-
         resistant "superbug" MRSA in INTENSIVE SCARES (9pm, Thu, 
         BBC1), though perhaps he actually means: "I looked like the 
         liquid-nitrogen-damaged 'T-1000' Terminator, from the film 
         Terminator 2: Judgment Day"?... 
         
         FILM>> apart from most of the first hour and some appalling 
         dialogue interchanges, "not as bad as the first one" is our 
         surprise verdict on LARA CROFT TOMB RAIDER: THE CRADLE OF LIFE 
       ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/tombraider-cradleoflife.htm :
         In defiance of the Scriptures, presents that Alexander the 
         Great found a box that contains the source of life on Earth, 
         thereby mixing Scriptures with "strange philosopy" and myth) 
         ... otherwise the woefully underexplored world of con artists 
         is revisited in uninspired Dustin Hoffman ADD drama CONFIDENCE 
         ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/confidence.html : the 
         film could inspire some kids to try to con others in any 
         number of ways; a classic painting shows a bare breast and a 
         little bit of pubic hair)... Australian filmmakers and Billy 
         Connolly take a look at the lighter side of taking the church 
         to court in romantic comedy THE MAN WHO SUED GOD (imdb: court-
         case/ journalist/ lawyer)... and there appear to be about 4 
         cinemas in the whole of the UK showing self-indulgent Matt 
         Damon/ Gus Van Sant/ Casey Affleck "two blokes wandering 
         around a bit" twaddle GERRY ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : 
         contains strong language)... 
                  

                               >> 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
                      "a rag, a bone, and a hank of hair"
            http://www.livejournal.com/users/wookiepocket/6431.html

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