"Cronenberg's new $40 million film EXISTENZ depicts a
society where interactive game designers are society's
powerbrokers."
- FILM THREAT WEEKLY
and you thought 'Crash' was sick
>> HARD NEWS <<
hard on the *causes* of news
MICROSOFT dipped into its $9 billion reserve of mad money
to invest a billion in COMCAST, a US cable provider.
Commentators say it's a long term move, designed to boost
the rollout of high bandwidth connections within the cash-
strapped cable market. Or maybe it's like The Cable Guy,
and Bill's trying to buy pals with cheap connections.
http://www.comcast.com
- There's no such thing as free cable!
TOTALNEWS cocked a snook at all those Big News Media Guys
who sued it last month [NTK now 6/6/97], by (a) promising
never ever knowingly to frame their content again, and then
(b) allowing their *users* to frame the content using a
special 'customise your news' option on the Totalnews Web
page. Ahhah, do you see the difference, Mr Big News Media
Solicitor? Ahhaaahhh.
http://www.totalnews.com - Plucky to a stupid extent
Danish company CABOCOMM soured NETSCAPE's launch of its new
browser by announcing a major security bug in all versions
of Navigator. So far so normal. Except that Cabocomm's
refusing to tell Netscape what the bug is. Netscape says
Cabocomm clammed up after demanding - and failing to get -
a "large unspecified amount" from Netscape on Monday. Thus
spurned, who did the Danes turn to for assistance? CNN
News. Nasty.
http://www.cabocomm.com
WE H0VE Y00R BR0WSER - LEAVE MILLI0N KRONE AT FTP4.NETSCAPE.COM
The Internet is being taken over by evil GNOMES FROM ZURICH
aided by four Californian CS professors. That's the shock
revelation from the ASSOCIATION OF INTERACTIVE MEDIA, a
group of industry leaders who are protesting the recent
'near-criminal usurpation of power' over Internet domain
allocation by a bunch of weedy engineers who wouldn't know
a vast multi-billion dollar industry if they started it
themselves. Er, which some of them did. Watch millionaire
execs fume at their own impotence:
http://www.interactivehq.org/oic/
let's keep this Net democratic *and* American!
http://www.itu.int/net-itu/gtld-mou/declare.htm
the evil empire in all their bureacratic splendour
Meanwhile it's chaos as usual in everyday domain name
world. Take LINEONE.COM: COMPUTING reports that the guy who
owns that domain, Sean McGregor, gets 20 mails a day from
people trying to reach LINEONE.NET, BT and Murdoch's online
service. But despite the hassle and embarrassment, LineOne
still refuses his asking price to transfer the domain to
them. Sean thinks they may change their minds - now he's
getting mis-mailed docs from BT chief Sir Peter Bromfield.
Forwarded from? A certain 'Rupert' account.
http://www.lineone.com - Memo to Sean: Call CNN.
>> ANTI-NEWS <<
news we knew you knew
NetGuide magazine to close... Digital Diaspora featured
'Stereophonic Retina', 'Gaiatronyx' and MC Beans...
Internet Dealer magazine to close... DVD "already
obsolete"... "Hard, Soft and Wet" (Melanie McGrath) is -
wait for it - another travelogue book about the Net...
Internet Age magazine "on holiday"... IBM's Net Shopping
Mall to close... QuickTime 3.0 delayed... Gene analysis
proves men socially inept... High street retailer Comet
offer checks to see if PC hardware is "millennium ready"...
Michael Jackson now wearing "pants on head": Muslims
horrified...
>> CULTURE <<
putting the style into 'lifestyle' - then removing the life
Probably too late now to book your flight to next week's US
games biz showcase E3 (19/6/97-21/6/97) in Atlanta,
Georgia. Expect the usual news about end-of-year releases
that'll slip to mid-1998 (best so far: videogame version of
seventies future-sport movie ROLLERBALL); an ongoing "no
comment" from Sega about their Saturn follow-up hardware
(codenamed Black Belt); plus the usual swathe of tedious
announcements about (a) online gaming really taking off,
and (b) 3D graphics cards that make PCs nearly as good as
consoles that cost about a tenth of the price.
http://www.mha.com/e3/ - dull corporate info
http://www.e3.net/ - GamePen mag shows how it should be done
Things you never heard on Stars In Their Eyes: "Tonight,
Matthew, I'm going to be... LAURIE ANDERSON!" The
hyperventilating "Oh Superman" songstress/performance
artist continues to host her MELTDOWN festival at London's
South Bank Centre until 6/7/97. Among the model planes,
synthetic snow, and animatronic parrots are human delegates
Spalding "Swimming To Cambodia" Gray, Lou Reed, Ivor
Cutler, DJ Scanner, and Laurie herself, with an interactive
installation (Dancing In The Moonlight With Her Wigwam
Hair), plus her new solo show, The Speed Of Darkness, an
"informal evening... which probes... the role of coffee,
cybersex and therapies for people who have used too much
technology." We ain't making this up, you know.
http://www.meltdown.co.uk/
layout so avant-garde it's impossible to tell when it's
finished downloading
http://www.sbc.org.uk/meltdown.htm
get more sense out of this one
SERIOUS GAMES is an installation of interactive artworks at
the BARBICAN ART GALLERY, based on principle that Games are
the New Art, although they usually clock a little faster
than this bunch. Highlight of the exhibition has to be
OSMOSE, described by our more embittered colleagues as "the
only decent VR experience". Show begins on 19/6/97 until
17/8/97; OSMOSE participants should book their 20 minute
session in advance. And be quick, 'cos they're selling out.
http://www.ace.co.uk/seriousgames/
yeah, because no-one's *serious* about Quake, are they?
>> TRACKING <<
where other bots fear to tread
For those who sneakily updated to MICROSOFT WORD 97 and
then discovered that it completely messes up your friends'
WORD 95 files - Microsoft have the fix - sorry - "update".
http://www.microsoft.com/OfficeFreeStuff/Word/
Fans of the great ROBERT X. CRINGELY's "Triumph of the
Nerds" TV series will be overjoyed to discover there's a
weekly site devoted to the tanned geek gossip. Anyone who
can make a critique of object-oriented programming read
like Private Eye should be worshipped.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/home.html home of "I, CRINGELY"
Yeah, yeah, it's an e-mail to fax gateway. Big whoop. But
it works, it's based in the UK, it lets you send images,
and we don't *think* it's going to die overnight.
http://www.faxware.uk.tobit.com
Do you harken back to the good old days of 1200/75 baud
modems, teletext-style graphics and obscure bulletin boards
that were always engaged? Then perhaps you too could join
the VIEWDATA REVIVAL MOVEMENT. Genuine mid-eighties BBSs
restored to their former glory using custom terminal
software and covertly networked Acorn machines.
Bizarre, but... something feels so *right* about this.
http://www.heaven.affection.net/
the future's bright, the future's cyan
>> MEMEPOOL <<
propagation, that's what you need
Bands design own fonts... the great MPEG3 clampdown... Star
Wars beat'em-ups... caffeine addiction as legal defence...
www.sundaybusiness.com... Reboot! New series! ... using
motherboard fans to ventilate protest tunnels... PalmPilot
as euphemism for 'wanker'... SimTunes!... Reboot! Video
games!... "ed agencies"... So where's the UK 56K modem
code, USR?... telecommuting - the downsizing your employees
volunteer for... Orbitz!... "tell *that* to the moderated
newsgroups"... And who's that presenting ITV's Sunday
lunchtime youth issues show Straight Up? Could it be top UK
hacker SIMON GARDNER???
>> MO' MEDIA <<
tv, movies and other valuable learning experiences
TV >> So-called psychics submit to so-called scientific
testing as PREDICTIONS (8.15pm, ITV, Sat) compares their
prophecies with what really happened over the last 6
months... Sunday's remarkably dull "machines go mad" double
bill has Yul Brynner gunslinging through WESTWORLD
(10.15pm, BBC2) and Julie Christie being attacked by a
giant Rubik's snake that's attempting to hatch THE DEMON
SEED (11.45pm, BBC2)... with the start of the fourth
series, surely it's time someone based a Quake patch round
the remarkably mobile camerawork of NYPD BLUE (10pm, Mon,
C4)... Barry Norman fawns over new Batman (oh, you've
heard) George Clooney in a special FILM 97 (11.05pm, Tue,
BBC1), before he (George, not Barry) has to go off and save
the drowning kid in a pipe in a viewers'-favourite repeat
of ER (10pm, Wed, C4)... real doctors reassure concerned
locals that a cluster of leukaemia cases are "statistically
unremarkable" in ANXIETY ATTACK (7.30pm, Wed, BBC2)... and:
is WAVELENGTH (4.40pm, Wed, ITV) just kids' classic Press
Gang, only set in a radio station and with not very good
actors? You decide...
MOVIES >> NATIONAL CINEMA DAY (Sun June 15) means it's only
a quid to get in to most places - which makes it an extra
shame that there's nothing new out that's much good... look
out for special previews of upcoming summer hits especially
Howard Stern's hilarious PRIVATE PARTS) - otherwise, the
best of a bad bunch is THE SHADOW CONSPIRACY (Charlie
Sheen, Linda Hamilton, Donald Sutherland), a frankly absurd
tale of White House corruption and remarkably powerful spy
satellites... TRIGGER HAPPY (Jeff Goldblum, Diane Lane,
Kyle MacLachlan,) is a zanily lame gangster parody, but
surely the presence of Burt Reynolds clued you in to
that... while, tragically, the funniest thing about
feminist-impersonation comedy THE ASSOCIATE (Whoopi
Goldberg, Dianne Wiest) appears to be the poster, whose
byline ("This is Terrific Entertainment... Smart, Edgy &
Refreshingly Funny") has its source (WBCS-TV, no less)
printed in such small writing that you assume it's the
distributor's description of their *own movie*...
SCIENCE >> As T. Rex snack on San Diego on the big screen,
American palaeontologists detect traces of blood on
dinosaur bones... Swedish geneticists reckon that old
people depend as much on their genes for their smarts as
younger ones, so maybe you don't live and learn after
all... Earth has another moon: an asteroid locked into a
bizarre horseshoe orbit... meanwhile, out in the cold
beyond Neptune lurks a strange object 500km across:
abandoned star destroyer in a parking orbit or big chunk of
ice? we know which we'd prefer... shock news: "it is not
likely to be useful or practicable to explain many
biological processes in terms of particle physics,"
according to Nature. Damn. - mattb@spesh.com
>> ERRATA <<
As well as running the official Oasis Web site, the
"Ignition" organisation attempting to clamp down on
unoffical Oasis sites [NTK now 16/05/97] are actually also
Oasis' management company. And now we reckon they're doing
it to improve sales of the OASIS INTERACTIVE SONGBOOK CD-
ROM, published here by Europress at the end of June...
Previously we reported that Wired 5.06 was worth purchasing
and "apparently quite good" [NTK now 23/05/97]. Further
investigation has proved otherwise; W5.06 is "rubbish",
with the Apple article in particular taking the piss. NTK
regrets the error.
>> SMALL PRINT <<
Need to Know Now 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.
It is registered at the Post Office as "unnecessary".
http://www.spesh.com/ntk
Unsubscribe? Mail now-l@spesh.com with 'unsubscribe' in the body.
Subscribe? Mail now-l@spesh.com with 'subscribe' in the body.
NTKnow is helped by VIRGIN MEDIA and VENUS INTERNET. They worry about
us, but we don't worry about them.
(K) 1997 Special Projects. Copy at will, but retain this SMALL PRINT.
Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com.