_   _ _____ _  __ <*the* weekly high-tech sarcastic update for the uk>
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        "We are surrounded by so many things that are flippant and 
         trivial. This could have been just another self-important 
         plastic thing..."
        http://news.google.com/news?q=%22The+Guts+of+a+New+Machine%22
       - Jonathan "iPod" Ive, in a 5000 word article on an MP3 player


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                               gattaca's muse

         If ID Cards are a little like social security licence keys
         you have to carry around with you, here's the 30-day free
         beta trial. SchlumbergerSema, natch, will be the lucky
         company to be scooping up iris, facial and fingerprint
         biometrics next year for 10,000 passport holders, and
         eventually reporting how successful this first test of ID
         Card technology will be. Pollsters MORI will be ensuring
         that the Digitised 10K will be a representative sample of
         the UK population: and here's where it gets interesting.
         MORI are inviting people to apply. Assuming that those most
         worried about biometrics in society aren't going to leap at
         the chance to be fingerprinted *in advance* of the giant
         Orwellian (etc) database, why not help the sample from 
         getting a bit too skewed? Plus who wouldn't want to mess
         with cool, hackable, potentially dystopian gadgets? Form an
         orderly line, please, and send your application to Melanie
         Briere, MORI, on telephone number 020 7347 3023 or email
         trial@mori.com. And no using other people's disembodied
         heads and arms!
         http://www.wired-gov.net/WGLaunch.asp?ARTCL=21356 
            - "to assess customer perceptions and reactions". Woohoo!
         http://news.zdnet.co.uk/story/0,,t269-s2129590,00.html
                        - SchlumbergerSema's previous impartial study

         The Copyright Protection Agency UK (TM) is an intriguing
         private company. Its premise is simple enough: whenever you
         have one of your brilliant ideas, stick it into an envelope,
         date and send it to the Agency, and have them keep it safe
         in preparation for the inevitable court case when the FILTHY
         COPYRIGHT THIEVES steal your precious, steal it likes they
         all wants to. Envelopes cost UKP65, storage costs a small
         annual fee. The CPA looks set to tap into the growing "I
         came up with the idea of the moon blowing up before Space:
         1999"/ "How can I stop Web pirates downloading my
         watercolours of cats?" audience, and good on them for that.

         The CPA's Website, though, does raise a few questions.  For
         instance: after an excellent page on the history of
         copyright, the CPA states that "there is no official
         Copyright Register and therefore difficult to do any form of
         prior art search." Not quite. A little Google search on the
         very text of their own history reveals that large chunks of
         it are lifted verbatim from elsewhere. The history occurs
         variously at the UK government's official "Intellectual
         Property" website, the Irish Patent Office, *and* the
         official 2002 draft copyright law for the Crown Dependency
         of Jersey. What makes this more confusing is they *all*
         claim copyright. Will the CPA dig out their envelope and
         show all the other crown copyright organisations to be
         plagiarists? Or is the CPA cheekily ignoring the British
         crown's requirement to acknowledge "the sources and
         copyright status" of the redistributable text? What is the
         "source and status"? Did the UK Patent Office nick it from
         the Irish Patent Office, or vice versa? Can you sue Crown
         Dependency legislatures for the copyright infringement
         embedded within *their own copyright laws*? Have the pirates
         won yet? And if so, can we all go home now?
         http://www.copyrightprotection.com/history.htm
                                                               - copy
         http://www.google.com/search?q=%22the+1956+Act+prior%22&filter=0
                                                           - riiiight


                                >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         "Thunderbirds" director and production designer clearly agree: 
         http://www.ntk.net/2003/12/05/dohthun.gif ... spammers "less 
         than human" - BBC: http://www.ntk.net/2003/12/05/dohhuman.gif 
         ... maintaining platform announcements' famously high level of 
         intelligibility: http://www.ntk.net/2003/12/05/dohthames.gif 
         ... someone automate "Am I abstract or not?" for news.bbc: 
         http://hello.typepad.com/photos/cnn/ ... other kind of bus: 
         http://www.family-movie-review.com/Computers/Hardware/Buses/ 
         ... ringtone spamdexing = your top Engrish entertainment value: 
         http://www.ringtones-superstore.co.uk/Snn5542a-T2288.htm ... 
         Xmas Amazon special: http://www.ntk.net/2003/12/05/doh2002.gif 
         ... continuing the wide-ranging "Teenage Health Freak" series: 
         http://www.ntk.net/2003/12/05/dohesr.gif ... a brush - with 
         death!: http://www.ntk.net/2003/12/05/dohbrush.gif ... pukka 
         Molotov, mate: http://www.ntk.net/2003/12/05/dohanarc.gif ...


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

         Looks like there are still a few places left on the URBAN 
         TAPESTRIES PUBLIC AUTHORING IN THE WIRELESS CITY LONDON TRIAL 
         (2 hour sessions from 10am-6pm, daily from tomorrow Sat 2003-
         12-06 to Sun 2003-12-14, Bloomsbury area of London, free but 
         requires a credit or debit card "to be left as security at the 
         Trial HQ") - still no clearer on what this actually is though, 
         other than another of those frameworks "for understanding the 
         social, cultural, economic and political implications of 
         pervasive location-based mobile and wireless systems". Sounds 
         like it might not be completely incompatible with next 
         weekend's drunken Santa rampage SANTACON 2003 (mystery start 
         location, probably London's West End, Sat 2003-12-13, mail 
         them for details), which you may consider merely a warmup for 
         either all-day wargame-bash DRAGONMEET 2003 (10am-11pm, Sat 
         2003-12-13, Kensington Town Hall, London, UKP7 on the door), 
         or the DORKBOT LONDON CHRISTMAS PARTY (7pm, Sat 2003-12-13, 
         Limehouse Town Hall, London, free but RSVP).
        http://www.proboscis.org.uk/urbantapestries/london_trial.html
 - vs http://www.adgame-wonderland.de/community_tools/htck/bayeux.php
         http://www.santacon.co.uk/
            - "NOT a Flash Mob", in some intriguingly unspecified way
         http://www.dragonmeet.com/
            - character stats t-shirt to go with Christie's Roman d20
         http://www.dorkbot.org/dorkbotlondon/
                  - actually not too sure about that "Christmas Song"
         http://www.cybersalon.org/web_of_intrigue/
        - next Thu: Doug Rushkoff, Sandy Spiked, Hunt the Boeing guy!


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         The best thing about a minimal "link log" that runs in
         the corner of a real blog is that, with luck, it kills the
         main blog stone dead. Linklogs perform all the old school
         functions that make blogs most useful - providing a permanent
         store for interesting URLs, hideously distorting Google
         searches to favour people's real preferences, etc - while
         dispensing with that DJish slice o' life chit-chat in
         between. Now Joshua "the other memepool" Schachter has
         created the blogspot of linklogs. DEL.ICIO.US is a
         centralised Web service for dumping links, generating feeds
         and resucking an HTMLised list of your most recent choices
         back into your own Website. His brand of bitterness-driven
         perfectionism grants a bit more confidence that the
         del.icio.us setup will stay up a little longer than other
         blog servers. And the open API and ongoing experimentation
         already hints at wider possibilities for a lightly
         metadata-ed, collectively edited URL-bank. As it is, it's
         mostly just nice to have someone else write the bookmarklet
         and keep up with whatever the hell RSS format people are
         using these days.
         http://del.icio.us/
                                       - there goes the neighbourhood
         http://www.blogshares.com/
                                  - Falcooooo! (and jennicam.org too)


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

         especially if you overlook that she wrote the first one on 
         state benefits: http://www.lp.org/lpnews/0309/harrypotter.html 
         ... Research And Education wing inc. "Bass in battle" display: 
         http://www.museumoftechno.org/resedu/perfect_techno.html ... 
         taking this whole "digital convergence hub" idea slightly too 
         far: http://ln.hixie.ch/?start=1068165679&count=1#alarmclock 
         ... one of these pics is not like the others, no. M6-A38(M): 
         http://images.google.com/images?q=Spaghetti+Junction ... what 
         do you mean, you're not bored of UK's Most Boring Amazon title 
         yet?: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/186181075X/ ... 
         new thrill - quest for most hideously photoshopped cover art: 
        http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0000BZND5.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
         ... www.bigconservation.org.uk/ vs http://www.bigcon.co.uk/ 
         ... Mr Winder's referring to stumbleupon.com (hey, what did 
         you think?): http://www.stumbleupon.com/url/autopr0n.com/ ... 


                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         TV>> "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised" rap innovator GIL 
         SCOTT HERON (10pm, Fri, BBC4) even inspired Google-goof-alike 
         band http://www.google.com/search?q=%22gil+scott+heroin%22 ... 
         Michael Moore maintains that they actually *were* giving away 
         guns in that bank that time, as shown in his gripping, albeit 
         mildly self-aggrandising BOWLING FOR COLUMBINE (9pm, Sat, C4) 
         http://www.michaelmoore.com/words/wackoattacko/ ... and no 
         doubt the Black Eyed Peas will win RECORD OF THE YEAR 2003 
         (9.30pm, Sat, ITV), though the best song was clearly Busted's 
         anti-futurism anthem "Year 3000"... it's all small arms, all 
         the time, in Sunday night docus GUN TRAFFIC (7pm, Sun, BBC2) 
         and TERROR TOURIST (9pm, Sun, BBC2)... "Fertility Studies" 
         Professor Dr Robert Winston appears to perpetuate the myth 
         that "Frankenstein" is the name of the creature rather than 
         the doctor, in dramatised recreation FRANKENSTEIN: BIRTH OF A 
         MONSTER (8pm, Sun, BBC1)... and Robert A Heinlein's to blame 
         for cheesy catchphrase PAY IT FORWARD (10.15pm, Sun, BBC1) 
         http://www.heinleinsociety.org/rah/FAQrah.html#payitforward 
         ... BODYSHOCK: THE BOY WHO GAVE BIRTH TO HIS TWIN (9pm, Mon, 
         C4) suggests a no-less-controversial way of growing rejection-
         free back-up organs than designer-baby debate A BABY TO SAVE 
         OUR SON (9pm, Tue, BBC1)... the production company behind the 
         excellent "Psychic Secrets Revealed" and PEEP SHOW (11.45pm, 
         Wed-Fri, C4) sadly seem to have lost the plot in semi-scripted 
         pseudo-reality CCTV show BEDSITCOM (10.40pm, Mon-Thu, C4)... 
         IMAGINE (10.35pm, Wed, BBC1) profiles Pixar Studios... and 
         here's hoping the "Could the English have been the first to 
         fly?" enthusiasm of HORIZON (9pm, Thu, BBC2) won't overlook 
         the fact that pretty much anyone could have built a decent 
         glider before the Wright brothers, except that they were all 
         obsessed with replicating the flapping action of birds...
         
         FILM>> it's Michael "Jurassic Park" Crichton, Paul "The Fast 
         And The Furious" Walker, Anna "Brookside" Friel and Billy 
         Connolly - together at last! - in tame temporal travesty 
         TIMELINE ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/timeline.htm : 
         if the complete lack of any sexual immorality or vulgarity 
         except for one innuendo makes Timeline lame and made-for-TV, 
         [then] fine)... assuming you haven't already seen it on import 
         DVD, a slightly more upmarket cast blow stuff up in average 
         actioner SWAT ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/swat.html :
         All of the fighting and gunplay might be enticing for some 
         kids to imitate; We see [Michelle "Resident Evil" Rodriguez] 
         in her sports bra)... its 18 certificate would presumably 
         prevent its adolescent co-writer from going to see her own 
         gritty tempestuous mother-daughter relationship drama THIRTEEN 
         ( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=Thirteen+%282003%29 : 
         [Holly Hunter's] nude scene comes an hour into the movie. Just 
         like in "The Piano", Holly manages to suck the eroticism out 
         of the scene)... still, she can always catch Disney's latest 
         U-certificate anthropomorphic animated adventure BROTHER BEAR 
         ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/brother_bear.html : Some 
         kids might want to imitate the Canadian accents of Rutt and 
         Tuke; Some kids may get the idea that it's okay to play with 
         bears)... 
         
         THE "VICTORIAN AFFECTATION">> yes, it has been a while since 
         our last dead-tree publishing round-up - long enough, at 
         least, for CORY DOCTOROW to publish new short story collection 
         A PLACE SO FOREIGN AND EIGHT MORE (UKP 7.40 via Amazon.co.uk) 
        http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/1568582862/needtoknow0e
         - and upload two-thirds of it under a Creative Commons licence 
         http://craphound.com/place/download.php . Other NTK readers 
         have chosen to pursue more conventional routes: BBC science 
         correspondent SUE NELSON has clearly been inspired by "The 
         Science Of Star Trek" to co-write self-consciously zany "the 
         pop-sci of sci-fi" HOW TO CLONE THE PERFECT BLONDE (UKP 10.39)
        http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0091892287/needtoknow0e
         - while trained psycholinguist DR K wants *your* help to put 
         together his "Complete Hacker's Handbook" followup, HACKERS' 
         TALES https://www.fastweb.co.uk/spy.org/cgi-bin/HackerTales.pl 
         ... amid the ever-shrinking constituency of publications that 
         *haven't* been written by NTK readers, we did enjoy the tone - 
         but not the mysterious lack of plot - of autistic-perspective 
         THE CURIOUS INCIDENT OF THE DOG IN THE NIGHT-TIME (UKP 5.59) 
        http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0099456761/needtoknow0e
         (hey, it's no "Flowers For Algernon") - and speaking of faux-
         naif writing styles, reader INTERNETSDAIRY came up with the 
         ingenious portability solution of chopping Neal Stephenson's 
         948-page QUICKSILVER (Amazon UKP 11.89) into 5 easy sections 
         http://www.livejournal.com/users/internetsdairy/28752.html ... 
         back with reader-published magazines, and KEITH JEFFREY claims 
         to have invented rock'n'noir - "the first new literary genre 
         of the 21st Century" - in his http://www.bulletmagazine.co.uk/ 
         (from UKP 1.50 for "digital version"), though of course it's 
         up against the totally free Christmas special of UGVM: The uk. 
         games.video.misc Magazine http://www.ugvm.org.uk/ . And 
         finally, in accordance with previous NTK scepticism, it turns 
         out there hasn't been a proper first issue (or a launch party) 
         of The Friday Thing's "40,000 circulation weekly, launches Aug 
         '03" THE LONDON NEWS REVIEW yet, just in case you missed their 
         big announcement about this in the comments section of a post 
         on somebody's blog all about working for London Underground:  
         http://qwer.org/apparentlyreadslikeastudentmagazine.html ... 
                           

                               >> 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
                           "owners of a stupid arse"
                     http://2lmc.org/spool/date/2003/11/29/       

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