"You look at France and Germany - and to a lesser degree
the UK - and it's like the Third World"
- NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE, keynote address, European IT Conference
oh, fuck off
>> HARD NEWS <<
weak lemon drink
"The only tunnelling you'll be doing is out of Statesville
Prison!" Thus chuckled the gathered ISPs of the London
Internet Exchange (LINX) this week, after throwing rogue
ISP BACTEL off the shared network and into Net oblivion.
Bactel had been caught smuggling data to the US via
transatlantic bandwidth belonging to three other companies:
a simple enough error, caused by Bactel accidentally
reprogramming their two principal routers to hide their
packets within an entirely spurious protocol, then - by
chance - setting the routes of that protocol to tunnel the
data via another ISP (or three). Whoops. Reports say that
Bactel's tech representative at the LINX was "very quiet
indeed" during the excommunication meeting. Ah, but maybe
he was throwing his voice?
http://www.linx.net/bactel-suspend.html
and we woulda gotten away with it too if it wasn't for you kids
http://www.linx.net/tunnel-advisory.txt
- admit it, you'd have been tempted
Suave scene hacker KUJI strolled away from court this week,
with all charges regarding his alleged "infowar" with the
US military dropped. The judge said that conducting a trial
wasn't worth the expense. Funny - that wasn't what the
Americans were saying at the time of the 1994 attacks.
Then, Kuji and his "accomplice" (penitent music student THE
DATASTREAM COWBOY) were twin Satans, stealing valuable
secrets for foreign powers, wreaking havoc on sensitive
mainframes, and almost tipping North Korea into war. Or
that's what Air Force Office of Special Investigations told
Congress, in an attempt to increase "awareness" (*cough*
funds *cough* status) of the hacker threat. As it turned
out, the AFOSI had little evidence of any serious breach of
security - and what they did have was profoundly flawed
through their own sloppy procedures. Still, plenty more
young hackers to demonise, and if the authorities are more
careful, they'll ruin peoples lives properly next time.
http://sun.soci.niu.edu/~crypt/other/crypt38
- George Smith de-crypts the media brouhaha
http://online.guardian.co.uk/theweb/880564579-fumble.html
- Duncan "the other, famous Duncan Campbell" Campbell's take
After the first and second World Wars, the Treaty of
Versailles and the Geneva Convention decreed that such
horrors must never happen again. And now, according to
COMPUTER TRADE WEEKLY, the portentously named BERKELEY
GROUP are attempting an similarly laudable (if foolhardy)
mission: "to tackle the obstacles currently hindering PC
games sales in the UK". The industry working party will be
trying to figure out why only few PC titles sell in
comparable quantities to console releases. They reckon they
can sort it out it by targetting the "non-standard
packaging sizes and materials" used by PC releases, the
"possible introduction of a kitemark" to show that a game
may run at an almost-acceptable speed without a top-end CPU
or 3D card, plus, perhaps most adventurously, the "need to
reduce number of titles released with bugs".
http://www.paragon.co.uk/charts/
- oh, and that PC games are so easy to rip off, perhaps?
http://www.bsi.org.uk/bsi/services/kitemark.html
- that notoriously safe and stable aircraft, the kite
>> ANTI-NEWS <<
berating the obvious
MICHAEL HUTCHENCE was about to start his "Lose Your Head"
tour... full daily newsfeed 4.5 gigs in Jan, now 9 gigs...
Japanese naturally name their first divorce magazine LIZ -
after international break-up icon Elizabeth Taylor... IBM
closing down OS/2 unit... parents complain that REBOOT's
bad guys "too realistic"... Bill Gates' roving eye...
www.stim.com tries to "go mainstream"... HUTCHENCE hanging
prompts recall of INXS INTERACTIVE SONGBOOK CD-ROM
(singalong to "Suicide Blonde")... Anastasia CD-ROM "isn't
as good as the movie", NANDO is amazed to discover...
DRUDGE REPORT seeks donations for legal defence fund...
"Y2K" now copyrighted... old couple drive 50 miles to BBC
monitoring station, hoping to see the "BBC Web site"... is
it just us, or is the whole HUTCHENCE/GELDOF thing just a
bit too much like the plot of FACE/OFF (on whose soundtrack
INXS coincidentally appear)...
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
pointers with references
Not perhaps the obvious way to celebrate World AIDS Day,
but each to their own: EROTICA '97 takes over London
Olympia this weekend (perhaps better known to NTK readers
as the venue for rather more chaste gatherings, like Mac
Expo and the ECTS). The Website both criticises a
Victorian-era attitude to sex, then adopts its terminology,
promising an "erotic extravaganza in the form of a Public
Exhibition... entertainment designed to tantalise and
fascinate." No info yet on exactly what the seedy
attractions might be, but even the stand specifications
sound a bit racey: "White Octanorm with white infill wall
panels... Ceiling Grid with muslin ceiling... Black Fascia
infill with white letters for exhibitor name..."
http://www.erotica-uk.com
- of course, that depends what you mean by "exhibitor"
Eroticism of a more subdued form takes the stage as LEE AND
HERRING continue their live try-outs before returning to TV
early next year. The show's called THIS MORNING WITH
RICHARD NOT JUDY II, and it's at the Battersea Arts Centre
(near Clapham Junction rail station, and the big Asda) for
at least the next couple of Sunday lunchtimes, tickets
UKP5. Mail us if you're going and we'll see you there.
http://www.bac.org.uk
- we'll be the dweeby studenty-looking blokes laughing at all
the obscure references... oh, never mind
>> TRACKING <<
Web site come by this way two moons past
FACEIT! is a PC facial recognition program that, barring
Travolta/Cage-style test-cases, actually works. The free
time-limited download can use QuickCam and standard video
inputs: featured progs are an access-control screensaver
which will only unlock when it sees your face, and an
encryption program that uses your head as a key. But our
correspondents agree that the best bit is the passive-
recognition system, which will pluck out and circle up to
six faces from a continuous realtime video feed. "It's like
having a desktop-mounted gunsight", they are pleased to
report.
http://www.faceit.com/pcaccess/pcaccess.html
- now we want one of those "Resurrection" breath scanners
ICQ failing to scale; Microsoft submitting its own
competing standard to the W3C; Netscape teaming up with AOL
- are these the last days of the "buddy list" pioneers?
Hell, no! Out of the wilder fringes of Appledom comes
HOTLINE! A palpable hit with Mac users for months, HOTLINE
has been billed "the BBS for the Nineties". It's got
threaded discussion groups, chat, and a fast ftp system.
It's also eminently hackable, with all kinds of nice
extensions to try out. Out on the PC by the end of year,
too, although apparently there's some sort of bootleg PC
version going around the Hotline sites. As it is, the
downloadable Mac client is time-limited to 15 minutes.
Although apparently there's some sort of bootleg crack...
ah, you get the picture.
http://www.hotlinesw.com/
- talk about creating a Frankenstein's monster...
We haven't covered record releases much recently (well, not
since the MPEG3 scene took off again), but here's two
import curiosities you can order now so your family can
enjoy them this Christmas. First up, THE MOOG COOKBOOK's
second album, YE OLDE SPACE BAND, sees the retro-synthers
re-cheesing rock classics like More Than A Feeling, Whole
Lotta Love, and Born To Be Wild. And second, that new
WARREN G single (an imaginatively neo-classical cover of
Prince Igor, by Borodin) is but the tip of the hip-hopera
crossover scene - there's a whole German-originated album
of it, called RAPSODY, and featuring rap versions of Tosca,
Swan Lake, and Mobb Deep's Nessun Dorma.
http://www.tpu.ee/~ryytel/lyrics/prince_igor.html
- Warren's biggest MP3 hit so far, btw
http://bubblegum.uark.edu/Moog_Cookbook/
- rhymes with "vogue"? yeah, *right*
>> MEMEPOOL <<
hasta la altavista
BT to buy DEMON?... BIO TETRIS... case-insensitive URLs on
MICROSOFT ads... death of SUCK? Or is it just Thanksgiving?
... LOUISE NURDING follows NTK advice in her new video,
attacks CCTV camera with laser pen... GameBoy digital
camera... JESSE BIRST - the new Pournelle... Barbie-size
Realdolls: www.racydoll.com ... Meat Bomb...
www.xtra.co.nz/content/loveman/cag-v0.9b/part3/ ... HARRY
"ain't it cool" KNOWLES tempted by high life...
www.fiorella.com/equipment.html ... BLADE RUNNER movie
sequel to reunite original cast... speleonics
http://members.tripod.com/~cnet_truth ... BUGTRAQ finds
security vulnerability in John Madden Football '97...
easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~stephenbalchin/zoe.html
spizzerinctum... and if *anyone* can take over the world,
CANON can: www.canon.co.jp/Philosophy/century-e.html ...
>> MO' MEDIA <<
why don't you turn in and do something less interesting?
TV>> well, we're convinced - TFI FRIDAY (6pm & 11.25pm,
Fri, C4) would *never* circulate bizarre rumours about its
guests for cheap PR purposes - like last week's ill-timed
"Paul Weller has committed suicide"... more delightful
Niles/Daphne awkwardness in FRASIER (10pm, Fri, C4)... a
"predominantly female" crowd constitute AN AUDIENCE WITH
THE SPICE GIRLS (7.30pm, Sat, ITV) while, equally true to
its title, INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE (10.35pm, Sat, ITV)
genuinely drains your will to live... you're never too
young to learn Klingon, growls maybe-not-as-good-as-it-
used-to-be AS SEEN ON TV (11.20am, Sun, BBC2)... the
promisingly titled AGAINST NATURE (8pm, Sun, C4) says a
long-overdue hoorah for industrialisation - a sentiment
later queried by PLANET OF THE APES (10pm, Sun, C4)...
autism may be a continuum, with Rain Man at one end and
"normal male behaviour" at the other, drones EQUINOX (9pm,
Mon, C4), at the start of Autism Awareness Week... heck,
Tuesday sounds weird: Zoe Ball "explains ESP" on IT'LL
NEVER WORK (4.35pm, Tue, BBC1), followed by AQUILA (5.10pm,
Tue & Thu, BBC1) - a "comedy drama series about two boys
who discover an ancient spaceship"... but nowt so weird as
Wednesday: Jodie Foster voices the talking tattoo that
brings out Scully's "darker side" in the X FILES (10pm,
Wed, BBC1), some spooky anti-cloning arguments in creepy
docu TWINS - THE DIVIDED SELF (9pm, Wed, ITV), and - more
sinister still - there's THE REAL HOLIDAY SHOW (8.30pm,
Wed, C4), where "a teenager goes to Yorkshire... and comes
back with a special boyfriend in a box"...
MOVIES>> there's three big challenges in an Alien film: 1)
be more extreme than your predecessors; 2) continue the
weird childbirth metaphors. ALIEN RESURRECTION (imdb:
action / sci-fi / horror / aliens / genetics / android /
human-duplication) pretty much succeeds on the first two,
but not even a script from Joss "Buffy The Vampire Slayer"
Wheedon can achieve the third - generating genuine suspense
when you figure "they can always bring them back from the
dead anyway"... some interesting elements (Kyle
MacLachlan?) fail to reconcile Wesley Snipes and Nastassja
Kinski's ONE NIGHT STAND (imdb: drama / advertising /
affair-extramarital / hospital / adultery / fidelity /
marital-crisis / aids / love / relationship /
miscegenation)... and Julianne Moore, Roy Scheider and Noah
"ER" Wyle would probably have more fun battling monsters
than Thanksgiving family tension in THE MYTH OF
FINGERPRINTS (imdb: drama)... hard to decide which is less
funny: Richard E Grant as George Orwell in 1930s class
tourism KEEP THE ASPIDISTRA FLYING, or Joe Pesci's
decapitation-friendly Home Alone variant, 8 HEADS IN A
DUFFEL BAG (both imdb: "comedy")...
BOOKS>> somehow we doubt that the K FOUNDATION BURN A
MILLION QUID will be up to the standard of their previous
"manual" on how to make a number one record; it's equally
unlikely to feature the same money-back guarantee -
www.ellipsis.com/k/ ... tragically, JC Herz's vidgame
odyssey JOYSTICK NATION (How Videogames Ate Our Quarters,
Won Our Hearts, and Rewired Our Minds) is a Rise Of The
Robots-sized disappointment. Some good moments, but they're
buried in so much Rushkoff-style "outsider's guide to the
crazy world of games" bullshit, and the slightly out-of-
datedness that endeared in her previous SURFING ON THE
INTERNET is here just embarrassing (eg, no mention of
Quake)... conversely, Mark Leyner's THE TETHERBALLS OF
BOUGAINVILLE is indeed much better than we could ever have
hoped, like a sophisticatedly remixed ET TU, BABE, that's
almost a "proper" novel too (despite being listed on
www.randomhouse.com under "Literary Criticism & Essays")...
California uberzine BEN IS DEAD have compiled their epic
RETRO HELL: LIFE IN THE 70s AND 80s issues into handy book
form - "from Atari to the A-Team, Boogie Boarding to
Blaxploitation, Disco Duck to Day-glo, Square Pegs to
Studio 54, Weird Al to Wonderama, Zoom! to Zots -
www.benisdead.com ... yikes, even the current issue of
Escape magazine is getting into culture jamming, but for a
less breast-fixated approach, try Gareth Branwyn's JAMMING
THE MEDIA (http://home.earthlink.net/%7Egarethb2/jamming/ )
... and finally, NOIR, next year's novel from cyberpunk god
(and Blade Runner sequeliser) KW Jeter depicts a future
where "intellectual property is so valuable that copyright
infringement is punishable by death". If anyone knows
anything more about this, do get in touch (preferably with
a photocopy of the manuscript)...
>> COMPO <<
congratulations. you're fired.
An emotional competition last week, as competition winner
Jay slipped in on Thursday after a week of struggling
through every foodstuff URL known to man - "Did you know
even *Ryvita* have a Website?", he writes. The eureka
moment came as "we were massaging hungover headaches in a
greasy cafe. A friend of mine buys a can of Diet [CLUE
CENSORED], we all look at each other, look at the [OBJECT
DELETED], look back at each other again - and slap our
heads in unison". It's just like Willy Wonka, isn't it? Jay
and friends win the new Metallica album RELOAD, sci-fi
Command & Conquer clone DARK REIGN,and a child's T-shirt
advertising Shell smart cards. (Oh and special kudos to the
perpetrator of the URL, who "resigned" from his job on the
same day as the competition. Webmasters should check out
http://www.ntk.net/compo/ to find out how they too can
spend Christmas poor and alone.)
To this weeks URL. It takes the form http://www.a*****o.com
and it's the answer to this question: "cosa significa
'absurd'?". Answers to tips@spesh.com. Corporate queries to
ourlawyers@spesh.com.
>> 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.
It is registered at the Post Office as "subscriber 2000 compliant".
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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