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        "It's a cool piece of technology but frankly the idea of 
         people wandering around wearing sunglasses photographing me 
         all the time is really disturbing..." 
              - Bill Thompson demands inquiry into "privacy and stuff"
                                  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3111004.stm
                              ...though if they're all as fetching as
                             http://bill.verity-networks.com/billslog/
                               then "disturbing" isn't quite the word...


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                                broken taboos

         Everyone (including us) moans about the uselessness of the
         new UK anti-spam legislation which is so set about with
         provisos as to be next to useless. It's not all bad, though.
         Come December 11th, we can sue spammers for damages, giving
         the vague possibility of forming a big scary anti-spam
         posse, demanding our thrupenny SMTP charges en masse.
         Subscriber James Smith has been practicing his hue and cry
         on TV company MAST MEDIA. They sent him the world's most
         cumbersome would-be viral last week: a whole *four megs* of
         unsolicited attachment. It all seems to be down to optimistic
         TV micro-producers thrashing in their own Outlook-soaked
         Barley idiocy: but think of the fun when we can charge them
         for the dial-up phone call! Yeah, we know it's not a
         solution. But dreams of revenge may have to do for now.
         http://www.floppy.org.uk/stuff/mastmedia/
       - anyone else "within the media industry" been cc'd with this?
         http://www.hexkey.co.uk/lee/log/2003/09/18/#1063908000
                             - deeper analysis, weirdly, in blog form
         http://www.tropic.org.uk/~crispin/nigeria/ 
                  - supporting an entire ancillary industry, you know

         Though, as Mast Media pointed out, it's sometimes tricky to 
         tell the difference between "viral marketing" and "an attempt 
         to encourage friends and colleagues to watch a preview of our 
         new TV show". In the light of last weekend's revelations about 
         the spoof spam designed to harvest login details of BARCLAYS 
         ONLINE customers, reader ANT MITCHELL was understandably 
         concerned when he received a mail directing him to a non-SSL'd 
         page instructing him to type in details like name, postcode 
         and "the last nine digits of your credit card number" to win 
         "1000 points" on his Goldfish card. The site, with the 
         reassuringly official URL of "goldfish.xdbs.co.uk", appeared 
         to be hosted by easily.co.uk who, nonetheless, didn't take it 
         down - because it was subsequently established to be a genuine 
         offer from the clearly security-conscious Goldfish themselves. 
         Goldfish said they'd "pass on" these comments to whoever's 
         running the site; Ant wonders how many valid credit card 
         numbers could be generated given the last 9 digits and "a bit 
         of Perl".
         http://goldfish.xdbs.co.uk/apply/mgm.php
                          - just reeks of respectability, doesn't it?
         http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3105658.stm
         - and "legitimate" marketers aren't really helping with this

         Oh, and that RIP Statutory Instrument we mentioned last week
         has finally been published. It doesn't get debated until
         next month, so we'll save boring you with the details until
         nearer the time - but it's not looking good. No Egg
         Marketing Board, but the local council still gets a good
         peek at your phone logs. What's needed, we think, is some
         extra legislation to provide more accountability and
         horribly punish the people who misuse this data: either with
         four megabyte attachments or prison, whichever is worse.
         http://www.stand.org.uk/HomeOfficeDraftOrders.html
                                                  - all in DOC format


                                >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         at last, a digital camera with plenty of storage space: 
         http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/12/dohurn.gif ... IBM targeting 
         Japanese market?: http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/12/dohdolph.gif 
         ... David Blaine "looking for love" - in all the wrong places: 
         http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/12/dohblaine.gif ... charity irony: 
        http://lists.samba.org/pipermail/linux/2003-September/017192.html
         "pakiesRus" not the kind of "Schools and Education" group they 
         had in mind?: http://www.communigate.co.uk/wales/viewall.phtml 
         ... got to pay for all those expensive Premiership players 
         somehow: http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/12/dohspurs.gif ... new 
         Altman film reveals the darker side of New York gallery scene: 
         http://www.ntk.net/2003/09/12/dohultra.gif ... 4th paragraph 
         "royalty" link - music industry take credit for everything: 
         http://www.newmusicbox.org/news/nov00/fasttrack.html ... 
         double-URLtendres of the world: http://dvdcollectorshaven.ca/ 
         http://www.bum.it/ , http://www.MerdeSable.fr/ ...


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

         It's aimless-queueing architecture-extravaganza LONDON OPEN 
         HOUSE this weekend (various London venues, all free), but if 
         that doesn't offer quite enough goatee-stroking potential for 
         your liking, you may also appreciate advance warning of the 
         LUMEN INTERNATIONAL MEDIA ARTS EVOLUTION (various venues 
         around Leeds, from Thu 2003-10-09 to Sat 2003-10-11, day 
         passes from UKP18.00) - an event which unselfconsciously 
         describes one of its "highlights" as a chat between "leading 
         postmodern sociologist Zygmunt Bauman and artistic activist 
         Gustav Metzger, two of the most uncompromising thinkers of the 
         twentieth century". And, if you left early, you could still 
         get to London in time for CYBERSALON's dinner with high-
         pitched hype-monger DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF (7pm, Sat 2003-10-11, 
         London Sketch Club SW3, "donations from UKP35.00"). The online 
         menu whets your appetite with "Vegetable and gruyere gallette 
         served with oyster mushrooms, asparagus, and salsa verdi", but 
         you can of course always rely on Rushkoff to serve up his own 
         generous helpings of half-baked techno bollocks, marinated in 
         new-age emergent optimism, with a choice of vasopressin or LSD 
         dressings.
         http://www.londonopenhouse.org/OHevent.html
            - "you might deem [emailing your credit card info] risky"
         http://www.lumen.net/evolution2003/about.html
            - "video works by Nam June Paik, Dan Graham and Ant Farm"
         http://www.cybersalon.org/
             - includes half a bottle of wine, source code to Judaism
         http://www.royalsoc.ac.uk/live/
                        - plus: Tim Berners-Lee live online on Monday


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         A-A-P is all wrong. Worse, the more you use it, the more you
         like how wrong it is. It's a generic package configuration,
         compiler and installer (yeah, another one) which uses Python
         (huh?) and runs on Windows and Unix. It has enough smart
         defaults so you can create multi-platform installable
         packages almost instantly. It has a UI element (what?)
         called "Agile" that helps you build and test your install
         recipes. Agile is fairly minimal - to begin with. But as you
         use it, all your other favourite packages begin to pop in
         and say hello. Gdb and gcc seemlessly appear when you try to
         execute debug code. Look twice at an editable file, and Vim
         pops up, and starts listing code - with breakpoints, and
         watch variables. We still have no idea how it does that. Boa
         Constructor, the Python IDE, also introduces itself. It's as
         if someone - say, Bram Moolenaar, author of Vim and A-A-P,
         was smuggling his Vim cohorts into the world of
         fully-featured IDEs,  and getting away with it. A-A-P's
         still in development, but is already very useable. And Bram's
         got some big Euro prize money for folk who want to extend it
         in interesting ways. God knows if it will get enough
         followers to gain traction in the world of package systems:
         but it's sufficiently exotic and fiddleable to be worth a look.
         http://www.a-a-p.org/
                                                  - try the tutorials
         http://www.a-a-p.org/zimbu_award.html
                                                    - all hail zimbu!


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

         this week's token Japlish - the "Mysterious Fly-off Incident": 
         http://www.mars.dti.ne.jp/~ateban/eng_tng.html (NB: Next Gen - 
         TOS, DS9, Voyager links at top of page)... libertarian "Angle 
         Grinder Man" http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3112670.stm neglects to 
         conceal website-creating sidekick's secret civilian identity: 
      http://195.66.240.211/cgi-bin/whois.cgi?query=anglegrinderman.co.uk 
         ... and just in time, too: http://www.hutton.softblade.com/ ... 
         SUN Microsystems threaten entire IT-headline writing industry 
         with edict that trademark "should never be used as a pun": 
         http://www.sun.com/policies/trademarks/#10b ... civilisation 
         that gave the world democracy, philosophy, geometry, etc - yet 
         to master web design: http://www.greekpride.co.uk/ ... rave 
         star Guru Josh not doing much better: http://www.gurujosh.com/ 
         ... open-minded Aussies take a much more responsible attitude 
         to "dogging" craze: http://www.easyguides.com.au/Dogging.htm 
         (vs http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3119024.stm )...


                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         TV>> OK, so maybe a 5-minute puberty "would require a power 
         source of 5 million watts, the equivalent of about 4000 
         toasters" http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/6thday.html , 
         but Arnie cloning nonsense THE 6TH DAY (9pm, Fri, C5) is still 
         more entertaining than, say, "Minority Report"... most of the 
         cast of BBC2's "Bruiser" reunite for "dark" internal-monologue 
         Brit-com PEEP SHOW (10.35pm, Fri, C4)... as Sky tries to fill 
         that "Buffy" gap with sarcastic swearing junior Grim Reaper 
         DEAD LIKE ME (9pm, Fri, Sky 1)... the unquiet spirit of "Tiswas" 
         is once again disturbed from its rest by "irreverent" Saturday 
         show DICK AND DOM IN DA BUNGALOW (9am, Sat, BBC1)... ARENA 
         (9.05pm, Sat, BBC2) is a 90-minute hagiography of John 
         Lennon's "Imagine", hopefully concluding with Moped's more 
         contemporary version: "Imagine all the people - raving in the 
         place!" http://www.emmetonline.co.uk/moped/music.htm ... and 
         you thought Channel 4 would be *against* globalisation, but 
         Johan Norberg argues - ahhh, do you see? - that actually 
         GLOBALISATION IS GOOD (9pm, Sun, C4)... Vin Diesel, Radha 
         "Neighbours" Mitchell and her off of Farscape are all way 
         better than you'd expect in genius minimalist sci-fi PITCH 
         BLACK (9pm, Sun, C4) ... Dominic "director of Swordfish" Sena 
         week sees KALIFORNIA (10.55pm, Sun, C4) hotly pursued by the 
         intentionally hilarious GONE IN 60 SECONDS (9pm, Wed, ITV), 
         the latter featuring too much of the Crystal Method's overused 
         "Busy Child", yet never enough of BT/ M Doughty's inspired 
         stream-of-consciousness big-beat "Never Gonna Come Back Down" 
         http://www.mtv.com/news/articles/1426640/07052000/dj_rap.jhtml 
         ... and BREAKING THE SILENCE (10.45pm, Mon, ITV) sees John 
         Pilger pointing the finger for the evidently fictitious "war 
         on terror" at Bush's military-industrial complex, aka THE 
         USUAL SUSPECTS (10pm, Mon, C4)... "The Day Today" director and 
         NTK reader Andrew Gillman has mailed to confirm that TERRI 
         MCINTYRE (9.30pm, Mon, BBC3) comprises new 30-min episodes of 
         the 15-min Glaswegian tanning sitcom previously known as 
         "Terry McIntyre - Classy Bitch"... and hopefully THE DARK SIDE 
         OF STAGE HYPNOTISM (10pm, Tue, C4) will touch on the inability 
         of hypnotists to make people do anything they can't do when 
         not "in a trance" anyway... 
         
         FILM>> sure, they've thoughtfully added a plot, some character 
         motivation, Seth Green as XFM's James Hyman, endless close-ups 
         of Charlize Theron, plus Shawn "Napster" Fanning - as himself 
         - but the car chase is still the saving grace of THE ITALIAN 
         JOB ( http://www.intuitor.com/moviephysics/ItalJob.html : at 
         this pressure, assuming the door is roughly 2 ft wide by 4 ft 
         high the force holding the door shut would have been around 
         3500 lbs (15000 Newtons))... almost certainly the first of 
         Kate Beckinsale's movies to ship with its own Half-Life mod 
       http://www.sonypictures.com/movies/underworld/site/game/game.html
         it's vampires vs werewolves in goth Romeo and Juliet "Blade" 
         knockoff UNDERWORLD ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : contains strong 
         violence and language)... Naomi "Jet Girl" Watts seems as 
         bemused as anyone by Gallic chick-flick frolic LE DIVORCE 
         ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/le_divorce.html : we 
         later see [Kate Hudson] in a bra, panties and garters (in an 
         open robe that shows cleavage, part of the side of her bare 
         butt and lots of leg) and sex is then implied)... or it's 
         Steven Berkoff, Fish from Marillion, and Carol Decker from 
         T'Pau - together at last! - in limited-release Brit caper NINE 
         DEAD GAY GUYS (imdb: independent/ gay-interest/ hustler/ gay-
         stereotype/ first-gay-sexual-experience)... 
         

                               >> 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
                             "impenetrable... tat"
                 http://www.jimcromwell.demon.co.uk/general.html

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