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        "Usually machine-written [spam] messages betray their 
         mechanical origins... Occasionally though a message will 
         arrive that eschews the usual tricks and fools you into 
         opening it with a clever or enticing subject line. 
         Congratulations, you've just been outsmarted by a 
         computer..."
                - Mark Ward now getting email from Turing-capable AIs
                                  http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/3503465.stm
            ...Greetings Friend, I Am Mrs Miriam Wintermute, Widow Of 
                                   The Late Dr Ibrahim Neuromancer... 


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                                all in ToDo's
 
         We have no idea how this happened, but it *does* appear to
         be happening. After an engagingly shambolic West Coast debut, 
         ETCon catchup CONCON comes to the UK this Monday evening, 
         at the Dover Castle pub in Weymouth Mews, London W1. Unless
         someone zips back from this weekend's CodeCon, it'll mostly
         be a speedy Emerging Tech deconstruction (because you surely
         haven't heard enough of that), with extra status reports
         promised from Mr MySociety, Tom Steinberg, and perhaps some
         late chocolate news from Dave. If ConCon US is anything to
         go by, expect a radically decentralised event (ie, lots of
         mic feedback and communistic re-investment of donations into
         free bar snacks). Put your name down on the Wiki so we know
         how many are coming - and if you were at Etech, or have some
         geowankery, hardware-hackery, social-softwarey, mobile-
         whackery thing you can explain in five minutes, stick your
         name down as a speaker too. Oh, and if you can bring a
         VGA/S-Video projector along, say that as well, otherwise
         it's all going to be done with glove puppets.
         http://wiki.oreillynet.com/etech/csp?ConConUK
                                      - what could POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

         We really should shut up about the BBC too, given that the
         private sector seem to be finally employing new media geeks
         again. One last go though. The people desperately trying to
         work out what the BBC should do next are calling for members
         of the public who are freakish interactive cut-and-paste
         media-consumption aberrations. You know, you who play video
         games, file-share, time-shift and/or self-publish, you
         *weirdos*. It all involves a questionnaire, a London-based 
         chat session, and UKP50 for you. We could have saved them
         the money and told them the replies they'd get from their
         initial postings: the Barbelith forum folk conspiratorially
         spotted it as a booby-trap to catch filesharers (the BBC is,
         after all, the original home of "Room 101"), and the B3ta 
         community started ripping it to bits. And we'll do nothing
         - but winge about how the questionnaire is in Word format.
         http://www.tomski.com/archive/000592.html
            - ignores less-fashionable threats to TV-viewing posed by 
           "renting videos", "visiting the cinema", "going for a walk"


                                >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         frankly arguable example of blatant BBC pro-Americanism: 
     http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/20/dohdads.gif ... with those accents, 
         hard to tell: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/20/dohasth.gif ... 
         MSNBC a-haaaaa!: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/20/doheast.gif 
         ... must have been updating this page when Delia got busted 
         by the Food and Drug Administration, Martha-Stewart style: 
         http://www.deliaonline.com/premium/christmaswithdelia/ ... 
         something Nintendo should be telling us? (bottom right): 
       http://images-eu.amazon.com/images/P/B0000A1OX0.02.LZZZZZZZ.jpg
         ... for one week only - return of spookily *appropriate* 
         banner ads: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/20/dohasp.gif , 
         http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/20/dohmiss.gif ... visible 
         integrity: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/20/dohdotpro.gif ... 
         Aussie government approves little-known "Annie Lennox" 
         distro: http://www.ntk.net/2004/02/20/dohlen.gif ... 


                               >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                         GOTOs considered non-harmful

         "Have just read latest Wired", writes NTK's ever-vigilant 
         reader/enforcer, LLOYD WOOD. "Want to hear Minibosses vs MJ 
         Hibbett remixed by any DJ that JWZ has recently taken a 
         disliking to". Well, we can't promise the other two, but 
         Lloyd's former schoolmate MJ HIBBETT is currently embarking 
         on a tour of London and Scotland (starts 9pm, Thu 2004-02-
         26, Hieronymous Bisch Bosch night, 12-Bar Club, 22-23 
         Denmark Place London WC2, UKP5) - and most likely also 
         unveiling his first ever "Hey Hey 16K" official t-shirt 
         merchandise. But there's more to the IT industry's very own 
         Billy Bragg than novelty techno-nostalgia anthems; Rolling 
         Stone Online described his latest album as "hilarious, 
         heartbreaking and chock-a-block with brass, twee girly 
         backing vocals and songs about pints", albeit in a column 
         that also provided such penetrating critical analysis as 
         "The Rapture? The *Crap*ture, more like!"
         http://www.mjhibbett.net/gigs.htm
                - mmm, popups *and* frames: http://www.12barclub.com/
         http://www.rollingstone.com/news/newsarticle.asp?nid=18689
                      - still, they've got a point about "The Shield"
         http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/12.02/miniboss.html
                   - no mention of http://www.theadvantageband.com/ ?
         http://www.rfh.org.uk/main/series/185.html
               - circuit bending + soft-synths at RFH, from March 6th


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         More cheap hacks to counter-impress smug MacOS X owners.
         Yes, Panther's "Preview" app is a super-fast PDF viewer that's 
         a lot snappier than Adobe "OMFG! A vector! How do I draw
         that??!!" Acrobat. Close the gap of shame (and stop yourself
         eating your own fist off waiting for Acrobat to start up) by
         running ADOBE READER SPEED-UP, a eensy-weensy Windows
         program that deletes a bunch of Adobe plugins that you don't
         care about. Voila: spend your spare time reading your doc
         rather than watching Adobe go "Loading dumb-ass marketing
         rubbish/lousy DRM feature" for a thousand hours.
         http://www.tnk-bootblock.co.uk/prods/misc/index.php
              - also check out Sub7 Faker for those quiet evenings in
http://www.groovymother.com/archives/2004/02/19/acrobat_degumphe.html
             - tip of the beanie to the ever lilac-scented Rod Begbie


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

         real reason Barbie split up with that Windoze Luser Ken: 
         http://www.divisiontwo.com/articles/barbieOS.htm ... re 
         "An English Inquistion" etc - don't give up the day job: 
         http://spruce.he.net/~paulmars/poem-index.html ... Usecrime 
         in progress: http://humane.sourceforge.net/the/mission.html 
         does "not exclude from our audience the poor, the blind, 
         the young, the aged" - then again, "Humane Environment" 
         header made up of individual letter GIFs, none with ALT 
         tags... "one of these not safe for work like the others" 
         #395-6: http://images.google.com/images?q=blue+sky , 
         mario64 - proving the web isn't full of pictures of naked 
         women, though on the other hand: peasant, Katy Hill ... all 
         things considered, not the best filename for the main jpeg: 
         http://www.meenakshimission.org/cont.htm ... wot no "Purple 
         Bayes"?: http://www.biostat.umn.edu/~brad/cabaret.html ... 
         

                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         TV>> it's not every day we find ourselves agreeing with the 
         Radio Times, but the agreeable surrealism of HARRY HILL'S 
         TV BURP really does deserve a better slot than 11pm, Fri, 
         ITV (repeated midnight on Sat)... Sly Stallone weekend 
         takes in both the reassuringly downbeat COPLAND (11.30pm, 
         Sat, BBC1) and the mildly satirical DEMOLITION MAN (9pm, 
         Sun, C5)... BBC2 devotes Saturday night to relative unknown 
         Ross Noble with his stand-up show UNREALTIME (11.15pm, Sat, 
         BBC2) bracketed by repeats of his appearances on "Room 101" 
         and "Have I Got News For You"... as the BBC's Brendan 
         Fraser season goes from nuclear-bunker-family cultureshock 
         BLAST FROM THE PAST (10pm, Sun, BBC2) to a slightly more 
         homoerotic take on the 1950s in James Whale biopic GODS AND 
         MONSTERS (12.30am, Thu, BBC1)... C4's search for THE 
         ULTIMATE POP STAR (9pm, Sun, C4) seems unlikely to include 
         Jamie Cullum's apparently straight-faced Mike Flowers Pops-
         style cover of Radiohead's "High And Dry" on THE SOUTH BANK 
         SHOW (11.05pm, Sun, ITV)... this week's CSI (9pm, Tue, C5) 
         appears to be the one set at a fictional Furry convention, 
         in a bid to antagonise both "furs" and "mundanes" in one 
         go: http://www.csiguide.com/forums/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=190 , 
       http://www.parentstv.org/PTC/publications/bw/2003/1030worst.asp
         ... and new conman drama HUSTLE (9pm, Tue, BBC1) implies 
         that the makers of "Spooks" specialise in glamorising 
         actually quite dull professions - sending out "advance fee 
         fraud" emails, making bogus house calls to OAPs, etc - see 
         also THE STING (11.15pm, Wed, BBC1)... 
         
         FILM>> the casting of several "former child stars" seems to 
         be the funniest part of DICKIE ROBERTS: FORMER CHILD STAR 
( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/dickie_roberts_former_child_star.html :
         [Alyssa "Charmed" Milano] shows some cleavage and makes 
         what could be an innuendo-based comment about needing to 
         "see my Dickie")... Johnny Vegas, Gareth and Dawn from "The 
         Office", and Adrian "Working Lunch" Chiles don't even have 
         that going for them in Birmingham-based would-be farce SEX 
         LIVES OF THE POTATO MEN ( http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : Contains 
         very strong language and strong sex references)... and this 
         week's arthouse limited releases are all based around 
         terminal illness (for a change), albeit played for laughs 
         slightly more in shot-on-video indie comedy PIECES OF APRIL 
        ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2003/pieces_of_april.html :
         We see [Katie Holmes] and [Derek Luke] snuggling in bed and 
         then a brief shot of [Holmes] in her panties; we see a 
         photo of a person hanging a spoon off their nose), compared 
         to LES INVASIONS BARBARES/ THE BARBARIAN INVASIONS (imdb: 
         cancer / fear-of-death / heroin / hospital / christianity / 
         father-son-reunion / political-commentary / depiction-of-
         corrupt-society / last-reunion / lasting-friendship / 
         reflection-on-life / social-portrait / independent-film)... 
         
         BONERS: CORRECTIONS, CLARIFICATIONS, AND "INCORRECTLY 
         REGARDED AS GOOFS">> first off, our gratitude (as ever) to 
         all those who wrote to point out that 2004-02-06's "Google 
         Goof" http://www.google.com/search?q=singer+dongwriter , 
         was almost certainly "a deliberate reference to Bill 
         Callaghan (Smog)'s 'Dongs of Sevotion' album </indie dork>" 
         (reader FORREST NORVELL, among many others) - the fact it 
         only showed up once really should have tipped us off. 
         There's no such excuse for us not having noticed that the 
         prior art for JWZ's "penis-shaped sound wave" [NTK 2004-01-
         02/09] appeared in the 2001 "Brass Eye Special" (ADRIAN 
         FIRTH, et al) that we rather inadvisedly linked to that 
         other time, while TOBY CORKINDALE was inspired by our same 
         end-of-year quiz to ponder that we might (but "probably 
         won't") be interested to know that Mugwhump Jism "was a term 
         used in Bomb the Bass' track 'Bug Powder Dust'", seemingly 
         unaware that it all comes from Bill Burroughs' "The Naked 
         Lunch" http://www.cdtimes.co.uk/content.php?contentid=87 in 
         the first place... on a more mathematical (and somewhat 
         less phallic) note, we hope DR PETER J. LOVE didn't tie up 
         too many mainframes at his Department of Mathematics, Tufts 
         University, Ma., to work out that "The moon didn't blow up 
         in Space: 1999 [NTK 2003-12-05], it just mysteriously 
         wandered out of its orbit. I know, because I got one of 
         those albums when I was six. Given that the moon's orbital 
         velocity is 0.64 miles per second, the events depicted in 
         the album (regularly encountering inhabited planets, etc) 
         are somewhat implausible. I know that because I have a D. 
         Phil in theoretical physics. You're still wrong, though" - 
         sounds like the "album" was a bit different to the TV show: 
         http://www.eyespider.freeserve.co.uk/space/one/ep01.html . 
         Still, we were more persuaded by his defence of the book 
         ending of "Contact" [NTK 2004-01-30] - as Peter points out, 
         "because the decimal expansion of Pi is infinite and non-
         repeating, every possible message occurs in it, eventually. 
         So Jodi Foster would find all messages, but only after an 
         infinitely long search"... 
                                             

                               >> 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
                     "more or less the stand-up comedian"
                  http://multiplicity.dk/archives/000610.html 

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