"Matsushita is to demonstrate 3D human characters at next
week's SigGraph '97 that can move naturally and dance to
music."
- Matsushita press release
an improvement on the rest of the attendees, then
>> HARD NEWS <<
soft wariness
APPLE COMPUTER increased its share of the lucrative
"foundationless gossip" industry this week, with excellent
results. The first we heard was from our Hot Apple Source,
who sent the cryptic "We hear our female execs are in for a
few Lexuses". Next, weirdness spilled forth from Amiga-
eater GATEWAY 2000: was their resigning CEO Apple-bound?
The Tuesday SF Chronicle said Steve Jobs as chairman was a
done deal, and then the excellent MacOS Rumours site maxed
out after hinting a Sun-Oracle buyout. Apple stocks bounced
up all week - and Apple still hadn't had to do a thing. We
can only note that PC Pro's news page headlined with
"Apple's job of jobs could be the job for Jobs", implying a
joke that got out of hand. Slightly more usefully, someone
leaked Jobs' e-mail to his Pixar employees denying
everything. You know, it's a sad world when the only guy
whose word you believe is Steve Jobs.
http://www.macresource.pair.com/mrp/contributions/pixar.shtml
- trusssst in meeeee ...
http://www.apple-history.pair.com/H3.html
- mind you, I wouldn't book any trips to China...
http://www.macosrumors.com misspelt for some reason
"Computers need more Africa in them" said Brian Eno,
misquoting Lenny Henry's Theophilus P Wildebeest. Others
plan the exact reverse. MICROSOFT this week announced their
intent to invest millions in (as they pointedly describe
it) "building an African market for its products". And
where Microsoft stomps, can NEGROPONTE be far behind? Old
Nick's son, Dmitri, has just wrapped up the first 2B1
conference, where children from developing countries were
invited to learn about the Digital Revolution(tm) at MIT.
"We're trying to bypass the politicians," Dmitri, 27, says.
Sadly, the history of young people being taught a novel
ideology by confused Western academics and then returning
to their communities to create their own unique
interpretation is *not* too good these days. Meanwhile, the
eminently practical clockwork inventor, Trevor Bayliss,
premiered a clockwork Newton for Commonwealth officials. It
can, reports say, run for over 16 minutes without crashing.
http://freeplay.pair.com/
- twice as long as an OS7.5 PowerPC
http://www.2b1.org/ more well-meaning wind-up artists
http://www.eu.microsoft.com
- Microsoft's new site for that developing European market
Peter Dawe, millionaire ex-head of PIPEX, this week handed
over control of the Internet Watch Foundation, *the*
phoneline for grassing up pornographers, con-men and other
net.ne'er-do-wells. Under the benevolent gaze of new
Internet Minister Barbara Roche, power passed into the
eminently trustworthy, cough cough, hands of Demon,
LineOne, UUNet and BT, who are now sponsoring it, and the
LINX and the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA),
who will be assisting in a general revamp. The group has
ambitious plans, including hosting the first international
working group on rating and filtering software. It's not
clear whether all this will still take place around Dawe's
kitchen table - like in the good old days.
http://www.iwf.org.uk/press.html
-or "the IWF's office in rural Cambridgeshire" as this calls it
http://www.ispa.org.uk/ hey, ISPA! Professional site!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/politics97/mps/746.shtml
- here starteth the RocheWatch
The newspaper tech pages were abuzz (well, as abuzz as the
tech pages get) with a doom-laden study that declared that
the Net was suffering from a bandwidth "crisis of the
Commons". The Xerox Parc research team based their findings
on timing packets between Stanford and the UK's Cranfield
Uni (lot of traffic there). They noted from the delays that
when users are encouraged by fast response times, they
increase their net activities. When the response time then
slows to a crawl, users back off. The researchers' were
horrified by this "feast-and-famine" scenario, and
suggested charging everyone for bandwidth used to stamp it
out. Fine. Now given that's never going to happen, how
about a better set of Internet weather indicators, so this
"crisis" (or "equilibrium-seeking system" as we'd more
positively describe it) can be fine-tuned? Oh shut up, us.
http://www.parc.xerox.com no mention of the report
http://www.cranfield.ac.uk which saves some bandwidth
- whatever next, more roads cause more traffic?
>> ANTI-NEWS <<
berating the obvious
"Windows 98 takes on the set-top box with video, radio and
TV capabilities" - reports MSN... UK Net users not nerds
says survey by Yahoo! Europe... rich source of anti-news IT
Informer shuts down (in itself anti-news)... UK Net users
rich, earn 44,000UKP says survey by Yahoo! Europe...
Ukrainian believers flock to cross in tree stump - AP
report... Microsoft to lose "hundreds of millions" on media
ventures... www.yahoo.fr most popular French site says
survey by Yahoo! Europe... Updike writes collaborative Net
story (imitating successful Troma filmscript compo at
www.troma.com/contest.html ) ... new "Bitch" song reveals
women to have complex, multi-faceted
personalities... Yahoo! Europe plan to increase ad rates...
budget (UKP 2.99) CD-ROM range to feature games
compilations, Doom add-ons, erotica...
>> CULTURE <<
celebrate your inner geek
Stargate has a lot to answer for - Bournemouth University's
appealingly titled Theoretical Archaeology Group ("Go and
dig something up!" "I'll think about it") are calling for
papers for December's even cooler-sounding conference: WHEN
WORLDS COLLIDE: ARCHAEOLOGY AND SCIENCE FICTION. "More
people have seen Raiders Of The Lost Ark than Time Team,"
ponders dashing academic Miles Russell, adding: "Can we
learn anything from the popular perception of archaeology
in the public consciousness? Are those involved in
archaeology secretly pleased by the heroic pose of Indiana
Jones, Jean-Luc Picard or Lara Croft?" Shamefully, we only
found out about this via the chat-forum for the launch of
new mag CULT TV, an event marred by troublemakers
discussing the allegedly made-up kids' show, CANOE SQUAD.
http://csweb.bournemouth.ac.uk/consci/tag97/
- quite a way down the page. get digging.
http://www.futurenet.com/forum/_culttvforum/00000027.htm
- does no-one else remember "Android Barge"?
It's a worldwide multinational conspiracy to silence
veteran net.pranksters! Or maybe it's the inevitable price
of "asking for it" in too strident a voice. Synchronicity
or conspiracy, both RU SIRIUS and HEATH BUNTING are in
trouble with the Big Guys this week. Heath's
Irational.org's messings with the loyalty card schemes of
major shopping chains has led to legal threats from
SAINSBURY'S plc - the company has demanded that he hand
over "stolen" personal data gathered from individuals
visiting the fake Sainsbury's Web site. Meanwhile,
corporate lawyers have noticed that RU SIRIUS's
www.revolting.com, while festooned with banner ads
advertising MICROSOFT, IBM and US ROBOTICS, has never
actually been paid for any of them. Or indeed, requested
permission to reproduce them. Both RU and HB are shockingly
unrepentant, and have chosen to stare The Man out.
http://www.revolting.com two MacTrials to go, please.
http://www.irational.org/tm/clubcard
-hey, free credit card blanks! Thanks, supermarkets everywhere!
A quick reminder that next weekend is the hacker conference
double-bill of XS4ALL's HIP '97 (Amsterdam) and Emmanuel
Goldstein's HOPE (New York). NTK hopes to be feeding out a
live report from the 'Dam, but we're sure that they'll be
enough "Hackers To Destroy World As We Know It" articles
for you to glean what went on without us. If you're there,
we're the ones looking like we've never put up a tent in
our lives. Again.
http://www.hip97.nl - transatlantic link-ups promised too
http://www.2600.com - hope we live long enough to see them
Meanwhile, that same weekend, on the Lizard Peninsular in
Cornwall, PAUL MARTIN is running a Symbiotic Infotainment
show. This (of course!) involves "an interesting mix of
multimedia activities" connected with visual feedback,
credit unions, entertainment, and the inevitable
alternative-currency LETS schemes. He's looking for someone
to help him take the video they're taking of the event, and
feed it onto some one of those Web server things.
Interested? Cornish? Give Paul a call via us, at
paulmartin@spesh.com.
>> TRACKING <<
Web site come by this way two moons past
MICROSOFT snuck out the V1.2 "upgrade" for its notorious
DIAL-UP NETWORKING support this week. Preeeetty featureful:
client support for point-to-point tunneling protocol is
introduced, letting Win 95 users connect to NT servers over
the Net instead of direct-dialling in. Plus there's support
for internal ISDN adapters and extra scripting commands.
All this, and a less buggy TCP/IP stack too! Wonder why
they're keeping it so quiet?
http://www.eu.microsoft.com/ntserver/info/pptpdownload.htm
- oh yeah. It was supposed to work the first time
You'll either spooge or you won't, so we'll say it as it
is: A complete royalty-free VT100 TELNET client written in
Java, with source. Yes?
http://www.nacse.org/web/webterm/ off you go.
We've always held a soft spot for STEVEN K ROBERTS, creator
of the million dollar Microbike, proprietor of Nomadic
Research Laboraties and the original footloose technomad.
Now he's fallen head over heels with a British geek girl,
we're all the happier. Steve and Liz's new project, a cut-
down Microship flotilla, has been completely revamped, and
they've got a new resource site too. Ahhh.
http://www.microship.com/latest.txt ahhhHHhhhh
http://www.microship.com/technomads tn'ing around the world
Just what you wanted, Mac folk- MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER
4.0 (preview 1) for the Macintosh! Read about it. Download
it. It looks so beautiful doesn't it? So tasty. So sweet.
What a kind man that Mr Gates is, to give you it for free.
http://www.eu.microsoft.com/ie/mac/home_top.asp
http://tcp.ca/gsb/Mac/
- spit or swallow? A 3rd party writes
>> MEMEPOOL <<
hasta la altavista
"Arial is the cruellest font"... 6-channel surround sound
on audio DVDs? Oh, *sure* that'll make us throw away our
CDs... www.gmsv.com's Minister of Information... PC games
"out-speccing" consumers, fears INTERPLAY - and they've got
some *pretty speccy* customers... SLURPEE BRAINFREEZE...
Phone up, ask "how much to make my site incompatible with
your competitors' browser?"... the terrifying REBECALIST
stalkers... Thresh - a new kind of human?... 120 UKP - for
a DEMON leather jacket?!... Concealed in all TTF fonts -
"Copyright Microsoft from now to eternity"... Bulgaria:
home of CD piracy... Top three bestsellers at
WWW.BOOKSHOP.CO.UK: Inside Com (P Rogerson), Teach Yourself
Microsoft Internet Studio In 21 Days (M Van Hoozer) and, at
number 3, THE BIBLE (various artists)... note to
shadow.dra.hmh.gb - hey, try www.anonymizer.com, Mr Spy!
>> MO' MEDIA <<
why don't your turn in and do something less interesting?
TV >> ROOM 101 (10pm, Fri, BBC2) returns to draw a bead on
comedy's most obvious objects of mirth, though that doesn't
include tonight's guest, Jeremy Clarkson... "Beavis And
Butthead meets The Simpsons" is how one traditionally
cheers cartoon trash-com KING OF THE HILL (10.30pm, Fri,
C4)... THE GAME OF WAR (8pm, Sun, C4) sounds like a TV
tourney of Command And Conquer, but BBC2 has the real thing
in Moviedrome's urban unrest double-bill THE WARRIORS and
LA HAINE (from 10.15pm, Sun, BBC2)... no-one seems much
shocked by the new drugs/youth/road-protesters strand
they're calling RENEGADE TV (from 11pm, Mon) on, you've
guessed it, Channel 4... the Tomorrow's World team use
archive nostalgia to deny that appearing on their show
"curses" inventions in TW TIME MACHINE (7.30pm, Wed,
BBC1)... INSIDE STORY (10pm, Wed, BBC2) tries to get inside
the "containers" of the Heaven's Gate suicide HTML cult,
tastefully followed by two X FILES, the second of which is
the cool one with the circus freaks... Tarantino geek-
cameos near the end of fun but patchy 20-something drama
SLEEP WITH ME (10.35pm, Thu, C4), but REBOOT (4.40pm, Thu,
ITV) interrupts with an "Is Enzo dead?" cliffhanger, though
you can eliminate any undue stress by consulting
www.meridian.tv.co.uk/preview/reboot3.html ...
MOVIES >> We're as disappointed as you are - MEN IN BLACK
(Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones) has the cast, the jokes, and
the effects of an ID4-style blockbuster, but just hasn't
got the *soul*, and consequently feels short, empty,
insubstantial, like a cheaper Ghostbusters 2... it's
unclear if its title is supposed to be funny but B*A*P*S
(Halle Berry, Martin Landau - it stands for "Black American
Princesses") may be the worst film released so far this
year... which leaves us with surprise recommendation
ADDICTED TO LOVE (Matthew Broderick, Meg Ryan), an often
dumb but at least bizarrely obsessive romantic comedy
directed by Griffin Dunne (from "American Werewolf In
London", and this week's surprise Saturday FRASIER repeat -
7pm, C4)...
RADIO >> Radio 4 new guard announce a "science zone" after
audience (average age 53) are revealed "to have great
interest in computers"... No Lydon, lots of Eno condemns
Ian Dury's sixties-focused artschool rock history ART GOES
POP, POP GOES ART (11pm, Sun, R2) and it's Warhol not Woody
with archetypal R4 doc A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE BANANA
(9PM, Mon, R4)... A mini-series of electronic music
"pioneers" features bonkers ( and great) Fifties avant-
garder Pierre Henry in ICONOCLASSICS (10.45pm, Mon, R3)...
Usual suspect Steve Jones insists Flann O'Brien's ludicrous
"The Third Policeman" was inspired by physics of the time
in SCI-FI: FICTION SCIENCE NOT SCIENCE FICTION (2pm, Tue,
R4)... Ignored lo-fi veterans Yo La Tengo plug fab LP "I
Can Hear Heart Beating as One" in session on JOHN PEEL
(8.40pm, Tue, R1)... and if only Alan Turing's affairs
could have been as lasting as the BBC's enduring romance
with him, as the wartime valve god's role in Bletchley
Park's codebreaking is picked over once more in GOING BACK
(7.20pm, Thu, R4)... - wireless@spesh.com
>> ERRATA <<
and other apologies for apologies
Yes, we confess, it was us who "took down" the world's best
TELETUBBIES site (aka Riddle Of The Teletubbies, formerly
at www.mitt.demon.co.uk) by foolhardily plugging it in The
Guardian last weekend. Apparently Demon will suspend any
homepage shifting more than "100 megabytes transferred to
non-Demon hosts for any three days in a month". So now you
know, you warez, porn, or kids' TV barons. As penance, NTK
is currently working with host Moose to transfer the
offender to a better, fatter-piped home. We're fairly sure
we didn't cause the firing of Tinky Winky (aka the
Nietzschean Cluub Zarathustra's Dave Thompson). In
addition, a letter in this month's issue of The Face
reveals that Tinky Winky (the Teletubbie, not the actor) is
probably gay - rather than transvestite, as we may have
previously claimed. NTK regrets all these errors.
http://moose.spesh.com/
- NTK giveth, but it can also taketh away
http://news.uk.msn.com/news/3377.asp
- shocking tell-all fully illustrated expose
Another kick in the face for our predictive powers: the
LINX, heart of the UK Net, performed flawlessly during its
transplantation last weekend. Apologies to the LINX staff
for implying any different. (The appearance of this
correction has nothing to do with the anonymous "Very
funny. Say sayonara to your connectivity" mail we received
on Saturday.)
http://www.linx.net - great guys. Big axes.
Finally, the URL for the disturbingly misogynistic "How to
Kill the Spice Girls" site has been printed incorrectly in
this weeks' Time Out. Nothing to do with us, but we thought
we'd correct it anyway. You see, it isn't all take, take,
take.
http://www.geocities.com/~-needle/spice.htm
http://www.timeout.co.uk - now, about that "Spyder"...
>> 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 "viewdata compatible".
( http://www.heaven.affection.net )
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
Archive - http://www.spesh.com/cgi-bin/now
Excuses - http://www.spesh.com/ntk
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NTK now is helped by VIRGIN MEDIA, VENUS INTERNET and UNFORTU.NET.
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.