I really can't bypass the update. not even the dangerous method of connecting to the given dns server works for me, it doesn't work for the uk updatelist.txt perhaps.

Do you need to jailbreak before the bypass works? I'm not interested in the backup manager so I have no intention of jailbreaking yet but I'd like to keep the current firmware just in case the homebrew community really takes off. So is the firmware bypass jailbreak dependent somehow?