Need To Know 2002-11-22

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>> HARD NEWS << tentative phews Ding dong, the witch is - well, not dead, exactly, but certainly trapped in an environmental stasis field for the holidays. The EUROPEAN COPYRIGHT DIRECTIVE, aka the evil EuroDMCA, has been postponed. Thanks to your three hundred or so comments on the UK Patent Office's consultation document, the government has admitted that it'll have to go back to the drawing board. They've postponed the law until March 2003 instead of the 2002 Christmas pressie we were all expecting. An excellent result, given that a) the original British draft had almost all of the bad bits of the EUCD with none of the handy get-out clauses, and b) up until now, the government has claimed that to miss the original deadline would be "In Serious Breach Of Treaty", with punishments including exile from the EU and being forced to beg for subsidies on the streets of Norway. http://www.patent.gov.uk/copy/notices/report.htm - "the degree of importance attached by certain correspondents" http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/54/28202.html - "not in the business of locking up content", a Reg reader claims So will the Patent Office listen to your complaints? Odder things have happened - are happening, indeed. We're currently watching the Home Office with something almost approaching sympathy, as they attempt a new consultation over this year's RIP "give spying powers to parish councils" statutory instrument. Their first port of call, naturally, was the wise yet opinionated folk of the ukcrypto mailing list. Three weeks on, dozens of longwinded threads, a smattering of Ross Anderson prophecies of doom, and hundreds of emails later, the list is still in major thrash mode. Three hundred comment documents must look like a couple of Post-Its to the beleagured HO subscribers. Unless, of course, drowning us all in nitpicking discussions while they get on with the dirty work is exactly what our betters *want* to happen... http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcrypto/2002-October/020853.html - starts here http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcrypto/ - two megs on, it's still going http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/~rnc1/APIG021115.pdf - plus: a data retention inquiry? Whatever next? Looks like JASON CLIFFORD, a man who has had his fair share of ups and downs on the Usenet reputation rollercoaster, has been wheeling out another well-meaning, if slightly controversial, project. The father of UK distro Definite Linux and founder of uklinux.net split with the latter company earlier this year after he felt that their plan to plough money into the Free Software movement from UKLinux's dialup ISP profits wasn't really happening. Now he's launched the UK Free Software Network - a new ISP which, he says, really will pay back the community. In a nice twist, he's setting up public accounts to show what's going on. Really public. Every month, UKFSN promises to post up the company's profit and loss on their website, for everyone to see. It's an ambitious undertaking, and seeing as UKFSN seems to be a bit of a one-man operation, we hope Jason hasn't bitten off more than he can chew. But even if you don't support it, it'll be interesting to see if these mini-ISPs really are a Perl script for making money (Clifford claims that UKLinux pulled in over 120,000UKP a year). And for the time being, who can fault a dial-up service whose current status report includes "In what I can only describe as a screw up of monumental proportions, I had forgotten to turn on PHP support" from the CEO? http://www.ukfsn.org/status/ - bless http://www.jasonclifford.com/uklinux.html - Jason's side of the story so far http://groups.google.com/groups?q=jason+clifford - the court of usenet opinion >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious "clean underwear" recommendations were "joke", AMAZON claim: http://www.goodexperience.com/columns/02/1121.amazon.html ... enjoy taking surveys? "Enter survey number" from 1-3000, press "Go": http://www.advancedsurvey.com/ ... MISSPELLINGS AHOY: http://www.google.com/search?q=%22buggers+belief%22 , "bomb treats", "prictical", "jewish setters" and, following on from last week's "risumi", the increasing pressure to decriminalise middle-class use of http://www.google.com/search?q=canapis ... http://ak.bluestreak.com/adv/aol-uk/^1941/^79772/lfstyl_skyscraper_600x120.gif imitates http://www.epigee.org/ocd/graphics/scream-md.gif ... BILL THOMPSON describes first right-hand link as "blah blah blah": http://www.bbc.co.uk/webwise/column/col157.shtml ... "Yatter yatter yatter" help desk informatively agrees: http://www.encorecbt.com/clients/nationwide/ ... not sure what ads are trying to say about thrift shopping for video games: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=395CBB2B.58CEB7B5%40earthlink.net ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Want to be part of the increasingly fragmented UK new media "networking" scene, but can't tell the difference between one bunch of braying self-congratulatory wankers and the next? Then you'll be pleased to hear that NOTJUSTANOTHERFAILING.COM shares your exasperation, and sent out their invites to December's THE RED SIDE CHRISTMAS PARTY (Thu 2002-12-05, The Propaganda Bar, London W1, UKP15) with the generic mailmerge instructions still in them. "This Christmas, [insert name of community here] has joined up with 14 other online communities to bring you the best party of the season", they enthuse. "[Add community comment or promotional offer here]", they continue, before making you feel really special with the personalised signoff, "Wishing you a very merry Christmas, [insert community name here]". The descriptions of the other participants are no more reassuring: "physical e-business community" METROCUBE; "intelligence for digital business" NETIMPERATIVE; plus the lone, terrifying epithet CHINWAG - no further description apparently required. http://www.theredside.com/ - OK, so it's a cool name for it. We'll give 'em that. http://g2002.bash.sh/cgi-bin/gwi?mode=page&pg=home - also in Dec: return of the LAN bash in a bunker http://www.ica.org.uk/index.cfm?articleid=10701 - or 6 quid to listen to Bill "Tiddly Om-Pom" Thompson http://www.bath.ac.uk/~su1fish/ - tonight: your last chance to see Ben Moor. In Bath. >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Anyone who saw his storming depiction of weird-ass NAT tunnelling at last year's Codecon knows that you don't get much more twisted copper-pair than Dan Kaminsky. That boy is to data packets what Magneto is to iron filings. So it's with some trepidation that we announce a public snapshot of Dan's current mental state in PAKETTO KEIRETSU, a grab-bag of sick and evil things done with bits on a wire. Stateless port-scanners, traceroutes so far down the OSI Networking model they're into the negative numbers, ethernet trailer steganography, a userland "virtual router" that uses ethernet multicast to let machines on a network share the same IP address (think of it as NAT turned inside out). If that's not enough, there's a graphics dumper that takes those strange-attractor fingerprints of sequence ids and turns it into a 3D voxel plot, and the usual fine caffeinated stream o' consciousness Kaminskytron prose to penetrate. As ever, it's not quite what these mini-utilities do as much as how the hell they do it. Not black hat or white hat but *deep* hat going on here. http://www.doxpara.com/ - person most likely to be digitised by the MCP >> MEMEPOOL << ceci n'est pas une http://www.gagpipe.com/ great gift ideas #1 - t-shirts, coffee mugs, keyrings from "merchandise" page at: http://www.neuticles.com/index1.html (via http://www.indiana.edu/~wanthro/museum.htm )... ladies and gentlemen, may we present - Al-Qaeda's Winter Collection: http://www.oxbridgecasuals.co.uk/millennium/fleece.htm ... vs: http://www.utilikilts.com/ ... on a similarly Scottish note: http://www.limmy.com/playthings/xylophone/ ... found photo fun: http://www.diddly.com/random/ ... very prior art: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_709660.html ... set your clock to 23:59: http://www.yugop.com/ver3/stuff/03/fla.html ... look-o-like-o JACKO: http://anomalies-unlimited.com/Jackson.html ... MARK WARD revives last year's "not a fruit at all" gag: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/1560419.stm for "not an interview at all": http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/2488049.stm - ah-haaaaaa!... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> sci-fi classic THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1.20am, Fri, BBC2) didn't have the special effects to do the shape-shifting alien from the original short story, subsequently resurrected by John Carpenter's "The Thing"... Billy Connolly is the voice of a computer-literate dog in Aussie soap-actor kiddie caper PAWS (4pm, Sat, C4)... and FAME SET AND MATCH (8.55pm, Sat, BBC2) looks at the jetset lifestyles enjoyed by Peter Cook, Dudley Moore, Jonathan Miller and Alan Bennett following their appearance in "Beyond The Fringe"... the BBC counterprogrammes ROBIN HOOD: PRINCE OF THIEVES (7.50pm, Sun, BBC1) against ITV's all-star remake of DR ZHIVAGO (9pm, Sun, ITV) and C4's incisive analysis of the significance of the female bottom in modern society, BOOTYLICIOUS (10pm, Sun, C4)... REAL LIFE: FLEUR'S STORY (10.30pm, Mon, ITV) looks at a kid with progeria, the accelerated ageing disorder suffered by JF Sebastian in "Blade Runner"... Mark Kermode continues his mission to shock "normals" out of their complacency with previously unshown footage from THE DEVILS (11.10pm, Mon, C4) http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,843371,00.html ... and the perils of not keeping offsite backups are once again highlighted by the interminable TERMINATOR 2: JUDGEMENT DAY (9pm, Mon, C5)... the former owners of HMV trace their roots back to the military-industrial-entertainment complex in EMI - AND ME (9pm, Wed, BBC2)... Crystal, De Niro and Kudrow look on the lighter side of "The Sopranos" in ANALYZE THIS (9pm, Wed, C5)... James Randi's $1m Homeopathy Challenge is put to the test in HORIZON (9pm, Thu, BBC2)... as Ewan McGregor chooses weird Cthulhu sex in Lovecraftian Ian McEwan adaptation SOLID GEOMETRY (10.35pm, Thu, C4)... FILM>> as if they hadn't all been made to a rigid formula anyway: http://www.langleyhigh.com/english/bond/formula.htm , they're making a big thing out of the "references" to all the preceding Bond films - mad millionaire, terrible sub-"Carry On" dialogue, invisible car etc - which appear in DIE ANOTHER DAY ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2002/die_another_day.html : [Halle Berry] shows cleavage and other skin in various scenes; We see [Rosamund Pike] in something akin to a sports bra top; some kids many want to imitate Bond or Jinx's adventurous stunts, fighting and/or the double entendres they deliver)... otherwise it's another wistful 1970s Midlands/Asian coming-of- ager ANITA AND ME ( http://www.bbfc.org.uk/ : Contains moderate language, violence and sex references) - not to be confused with brutal fact-based crime drama TED BUNDY (imdb: masturbation-scene/ painful-sex/ rape/ serial-killer)... >> 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 "easily confused with NeedtoKnow.Com" http://media.guardian.co.uk/newmedia/comment/0,7496,843324,00.html NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Unsubscribe? Mail ntknow-unsubscribe@lists.ntk.net Subscribe? Mail ntknow-subscribe@lists.ntk.net NTK now is supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.ntkmart.com/ (K) 2002 Special Projects. Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/ Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com All communication is for publication, unless you beg. Press releases from naive PR people to pr@spesh.com Remember: Your work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material. Sending >500KB attachments is forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Your country may be at risk if you fail to comply.