"There is no fine; nobody pays a fine."
BILL GATES, on the threatened $1million-a-day DofJ charge
- this explains Seattle's mysterious "empty library" syndrome
>> HARD NEWS <<
singing the blues
It's the scandal they're already calling "Gatesgate" (and
if they're not, they should be): Janet Reno and her US
Department of Justice claimed that MICROSOFT put pressure
on COMPAQ and others to preinstall Internet Explorer on
their machines - and threatened to stop their Win95 license
if they didn't. (Forcing anyone to use Win3.1 is now
recognised as "cruel and unusual punishment" in many US
states.) Microsoft counter-claims that Explorer is actually
an integral part of the operating system, as anyone who's
tried to uninstall IE will confirm. Gates seems unconcerned
- to a lavish degree - with the prospect of a $1M per day
fine, but Microsoft are preparing for a real fight. For
starters, they've updated their mail filters: every time
something like this happens, reports the San Jose Mercury,
the company is besieged with "teasing, dire and merciless"
e-mails. "Have they taunted me? Yes. Of course," said one
nameless employee. "And I guess I've responded at their
level." That nameless employee could well have been Steve
Ballmer, Vice President of Marketing, who was heard yelling
"to heck with Janet Reno!" to anyone who'd listen. Expect
he'll include that in the deposition.
http://www.sjmercury.com/business/microsoft/react102297.htm
- keep thinking "vesting party" guys
http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases3/micros2/1237.htm
- also available as a Wordperfect file - nice touch!
Pulling out all the special moves, and only just in time:
NINTENDO have dropped the price of the N64 by 50 quid to
UKP99 (as predicted in NTK 12/9/97, and effective from
today) - and if that's not incitement enough, they even
plan to bring out some games for it. Before the cut, the
PlayStation was said to be outselling the N64 by about 5:1,
sending a clear message to Nintendo management: make your
console more like the Sony - or else. So they've also
slashed the software to around UKP50 a throw, and - genre
fans will be pleased to hear - are also rushing out a load
of indistinguishable beat-'em-ups and racing games. SONY
maintain that they won't be copying the N64 price-point,
and that their new "Xmas package" (PlayStation + 2
controllers + memory card) will stay at UKP129. But don't
underestimate the power of a sub-100-quid console: last
time Nintendo pulled a stunt like this, they got loads of
free publicity - from all the "I just bought one and could
have saved a packet" complaints on Watchdog.
http://www.delaney.demon.co.uk/PSX/
- PlayStation titles: around 300. N64: around 30?
http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/4240/Beatles-Parodies.html
- but with customer loyalty like this, who's counting?
http://www.nintendo.com/product/n64/64dd.html
http://www.users.rapid.net.uk/ja88/V64PAGE.htm
- see, N64 disk drives: JUST LIKE THE PLAYSTATION!
When COOL SITE OF THE DAY failed to announce an IPO in
1995, most people assumed it would go to the wall or,
worse, be bought out by AOL for $6million, then go to the
wall. But no - Glenn Davis' replacements are still trotting
out that eclectic pick of hard-to-download, impossible to
read, "ground-breaking" pages, and somebody, somewhere is
still reading them, nodding sagely and maybe even taking
notice of their COOL SITE OF THE YEAR AWARDS. By all
accounts a more muted affair than previously, this year's
prime sources of "Coolium" (their word) were declared on
Wednesday to be THE ONION, THE FRAY, SALON and BEZERK, with
REALVIDEO reaping the Cool Innovation title. GLASSDOG, THE
BIG GUN PROJECT, and WATER also won, but we haven't *quite*
got around to evaluating those sites yet, because we surf
with images off. BEZERK's YOU DON'T KNOW JACK WEBSHOW won
the overall Coolest Site - which just goes to prove that,
sooner or later, CD-ROMs were going to come back into
fashion.
http://cool.infi.net/ whatever happened to Mirsky's Worst?
http://www.fray.com/ disgruntled ex-employees of Wired Inc
http://www.bezerk.com/ we're still under NDA about this
http://www.salonmagazine.com/ quite good these days
http://www.theonion.com/ funny. We hate them.
http://www.glassdog.com/ "ground-breaking"/incomprehensible
http://www.kia.net/maggy/ Web diary _ GREAT FUCKING IDEA!!
>> ANTI-NEWS <<
news we knew you knew
Internet "failed less" this quarter, study says... HATE
SITES on the Web double in the past year, report seethes...
www.hmv.co.uk "does not allow you to buy records"...
MOTOROLA study shows 66% of parents believe it's
*computers* that are making their kids anti-social and
lazy... PRINCE CHARLES advocates alternative remedies,
ignores new evidence that they have "no effect"...
bookshop.co.uk sales up 90% - still makes loss... STOCK
MARKET "steered by greed", uncovers author... Internet
"popular in Japan"... BOND COVERS album "largely
terrible"... SEGA and MICROSOFT alliance: developers now
fist-fighting... Airline Pilots With Drunk Driving
Convictions Are More Likely To Have Accidents, find
scientists... prince.com case dropped... IBM offers
employees a "voluntary separation program"... Indian
Minister sprays 44,000 Goa citizens with DELTAMETHRIN,
claims heard about treatment "on the Net"...
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
busy ports
When it comes to general practitioners of modern prose, the
doctors are *in*. Former Doctor Who TOM BAKER (also known
to radio listeners as the voice of Lionel Nimrod) winds
down his "Who On Earth Is Tom Baker?" signings tomorrow
(25/10/97) at Books Etc in Croydon and "Hammicks" in
Redhill, then concludes Monday at the Guilford Literary
Festival, University Of Surrey. As if regenerated into non-
fiction form, NTK contributor Matt Bacon will be at
London's Forbidden Planet on Sat to sign his coffee table
expose of the JIM HENSON CREATURE SHOP (as plugged in
current issue of The Face, along with a good bit of JC
Herz's upcoming Joystick Nation). And sewing up the whole
operation, would-be surgeon MARK LEYNER is, of course, "the
most intense, and, in a certain sense, the most significant
young prose writer in America." He's traversed the whole US
plugging his new novel, The Tetherballs Of Bougainville,
and seems to have abandoned his tour diary after just a
week. Yet there's more drama in those 7 days than most so-
called "novelist's" lifetimes.
http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~dma/ProfX/
- ask Tom which was his favourite "professor"_
www.nanothinc.com/Nanothinc/NanoPeople_Frames/npinfo/MattBacon.html
- that's *Mr* Bacon to you nanotech weenies
http://www.spesh.com/leyner/
- "execute my father, get high, and have sex with the warden"
Hey! Ya Basta! Every desktop revolutionary's favourite
post-modern guerrillas, the Ejercito Zapatista de
Liberacion Nacional have a representative in town. Rosario
Ibarra de piedra is a well known spokesperson for the
Mexican Zapatistas, a presidential candidate and human
rights activist. She'll be speaking - at short notice -
today (Friday 24/10/97), 7pm GMT, at PRAXIS, Pott Street,
London.
www.eco.utexas.edu/Homepages/faculty/Cleaver/zapsincyber.html
- For those of you that get NTK at 9pm : it was *great*
http://www.streetmap.co.uk you'll be wanting a map, then
>> TRACKING <<
upgrade your attitude
The Quake II demo is out. As ever, it gives only the barest
nuts-and-bolts glimmer of the glory that is to come. As
ever, the Quake team are changing the final design based on
people's comments on the test file. Before you say it, yes,
the gun's going to be moved. And the deaths will be longer
and noisier. THIS is what beta testing should be about.
http://www.gamesdomain.com/demos/demo/q2_test.html
- drown out those bleating Riven fans
We do try out this stuff, you know. Well, almost always. We
can't give you a review of the new beta of EUDORA 4.0,
because the idea of handing our mail over to fresh software
gives us the heebie-jeebies (maybe it's that whole IE 4.0
beta disaster still creeping us out). However, if you
desperately need a usable IMAP client, or a better HTML
parser for your e-mail, or really want to spend time
learning a brand new interface re-think, by all means let
us know what happens. By phone, preferably.
http://www.eudora.com a new look for mail conservatives
No interesting new software releases for Macs (everyone's
busy with Rhapsody and printing out their CVs right now),
but, hey, don't despair. Why not spend your time designing
a MacOS8 button? Come on, it's what you Mac users are
supposed to be *good* at.
http://www.larisoftware.com/lovemacos8/buttons.html
- only bitter because we didn't spot this earlier
>> MEMEPOOL <<
hasta la altavista
www.browse.net/techfelch/ ... STAR WARS Micro Fax(TM)
books... Soldier of Fortune (new A-Team clone) features
character based on CARMACK/ROMERO... www.3gcs.com/tron/ ...
Viacom to VIRGIN INTERACTIVE: the clock is ticking...
www.crocodile-clips.com/education/... there's now more data
traffic between SWEDEN and the US than voice... "Better to
keep BOROMIR alive, use him in later scenes"... average
life of Web page is 75 days... okay, now what happened to
ANDREW FLUEGELMAN?... MAX CLIFFORD moves into phonecards,
telcos... www.mrmedia.com/ .... superprogrammers... JOHN
DENVER was born in Roswell, New Mexico, 1943 -
"experimental aircraft", hmm?... companies with millennium
bug IN THEIR NAMES: 2000AD, 20th Century Fox, Grecian
2000... "The Prion Series 5"... what the hell is ABRASH
doing working on the Word grammar checker?... new threat to
self-images of young women: RENDERBABES
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
TV>> satire is officially dead, as RORY BREMNER (10.30pm,
Fri, C4) returns with new material comparing Blair and
Hague to Beavis and Butthead, plus another series of the
same jokes every week in the (presumably rhetorical) HAVE I
GOT NEWS FOR YOU (10pm, Fri, BBC2)... this week's movie
title to try to slip unnoticed into office conversation is
Jackie Chan actioner THE YOUNG MASTER (12.45am, Fri, C4) -
as in "I notice sir is dining with the *young masters*
again tonight"... a lifetime of making superior trash like
HALLOWEEN (11.15pm, Sat, BBC2) seems to have sucked the
very life-force from director John Carpenter, one of
several loose pages in CLIVE BARKER'S A-Z OF HORROR
(10.30pm, Sat, BBC2)... it normally takes three hours to
watch THE GODFATHER (11.45pm, Sat, ITV), but now they're
showing it exactly when the clocks go back, so you can see
the whole thing in two!... a topical outing for crusading
journo classic ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (11.25pm, Sun,
BBC1), preceded by an OMNIBUS docu about how they brought
down the Clinton, sorry, Nixon administration... so, can
laconic US comic Rich Hall save JACK DEE'S SUNDAY SERVICE
(10pm, Sun, ITV) from resembling an extended beer ad?...
pretty ladies are the only reasons to watch either "erotic
comedy" SIRENS (10pm, Sun, C4) or Brooke Shields' "sit-com"
SUDDENLY SUSAN (11.45pm, Sun, C4)... increased sun-spots
could interfere with electronics, weather systems etc, but
even they couldn't cause an interesting edition of EQUINOX
(9pm, Mon, C4)... shocked Unijet director discovers that
his holidays are terrible, in weirdly named In-At-The-Deep-
End-for-bosses series, BACK TO THE FLOOR (Tue, 9.50pm,
BBC2)... HOCUS POCUS (8pm, Wed, ITV) is as cursedly evil as
only a Disney version of The Witches Of Eastwick could be,
but fortunately the "alien oil" returns to lubricate the
clunky plots of THE X FILES (10pm, Wed, BBC1), in the two-
part "Tungusksa"...
MOVIES>> remarkably, we chose not to choose A LIFE LESS
ORDINARY (imdb: romance / comedy) - those Trainspotting
guys make a kidnapping-gone-wrong caper that's typically
off-beat, quirky etc, though not particularly funny. It's
even got angels in it, for heaven's sake... instead,
there's THE PEACEMAKER (imdb: thriller), with George "ER"
Clooney and Nicole "Batman Forever" Kidman battling an
attempt by Spielberg's new Dreamworks studio to make a
nuclear-sized bomb out of its effective, but unoriginal,
first feature. Still, plenty of explosions, and should
hopefully popularise the phrase "Take the shot!" as a
trendy alternative to "Go for it!" or "Carpe diem!"...
FEEBDACK >> RE: CASSINI - Lee <lee@wetware.demon.co.uk>
ponders "waitaminute, dangerous nuclear probe, satellites,
end of 1999 - why isn't Wim Wenders suing NASA over
copyright infringement?" A video/merchandising tie-in?...
RE: SURVIVAL RESEARCH LABORATORIES - Ben Moor
<aai11@dial.pipex.com> complains "Austria couldn't have
thought Serbia was invading, as they don't have a common
border" - well, just shows how scary SRL must be, then...
RE: FORMULA ONE '97 - Adrian Moulder <amould@hotmail.com>
asks "If they don't get the rights, will the game now just
be called '97?"... RE: STEPHEN FRY - James Coates
<shag@delic.org> writes: "*I* designed the Oscar Wilde
site, and we *have* got a CGI that produces witty epigrams
- in audio, too! And can I plug www.heaven.affection.net/
again?"... not now James, we're busy - and anyway, we meant
a CGI that produced *new* witty epigrams based on an
analysis of Oscar's existing work. Get to it...
>>CHRISTMAS CHWIZ<<
ho ho hacks
Our seasonal foray into Other People's Websites continues.
Joy Jones <joy@corbeau.demon.co.uk> correctly identified
last week's URL (we'd tell you what it was, but then we'd
have to kill you). She wins a copy of Modified Chillas, the
new Neil Gaiman graphic novel, a stuffed, squeaking Fin Fin
and, naturally, an invite to our far-better-than-Cool-Site-
Of-The-Year .NOT Award Ceremony. This week, we are using
the limerick form, as perfected by Edward Lear and Frank
Carson.
There once was a site with an URL
whose first, an pejorative, is hurled
at a genre begotten
by the vicious and rotten
but now heard all "round the world"
Remember, the site takes the form www.xxxx.com/now.html.
And, just to prove that people *are* sending in URLs, we
got this one last week. Thanks ...err, whoever. Full
details of the competition remain at
http://www.ntk.net/compo/ until the authorities catch on.
>> 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 "read by government spooks".
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
Archive - http://www.ntk.net/
Excuses - http://www.spesh.com/ntk/
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