"If you're talking about the costumes, then they're way
different. Marine pulse rifles were cosmetically customised
Tommy guns, while the Starship Troopers' ones are obviously
cut-down pump-action 12-gauge shotguns mounted underneath
M16s sheathed in a fibreglass stock that converts them to a
'bullpup' configuration (ie, the magazine is behind the
pistol grip)."
- Cam Winstanley (Total Film magazine) convincingly nails
that old "Starship Troopers is just like Aliens" argument
- though in perhaps a bit more detail than we required
>> '97 REFRESH <<
truth at 8 million polygons/second
CENSORSHIP: in '97, the Net ingeniously thwarted would-be
Evil Nazi-like Censors, generally by propagating Evil Nazi-
like Websites < http://www.godhatesfags.com >. Prospective
Lord Chamberlains included NOTTINGHAM COUNTY COUNCIL
< http://www.xs4all.nl/~yaman/jetrep.htm >, JIMMY HILL (who,
the Observer reported in May, threatened to sue the Tartan
Army Website for slagging him off - unprecedented
disrespect!), EAMONN HOLMES (who was, Teletext reported,
horrified at comments made about him on a newsgroup, and
wanted it all stopped), and PAMELA LEE ANDERSON (who
unsuccessfully petitioned to retrieve her stolen honeymoon
video - < http://wouller.person.dk/textual.htm >, ya
perverts).
GAMES: "Plucky British start-up" continued to be a by-word
for "imminent bankruptcy proceedings". Lame face-sucker
makers VIRTUALITY at last gave up the ghost, while
Leicester-based ENTERTAINMENT ONLINE fooled everyone into
thinking they were going to buy the Sega Channel, then
ingeniously went bust instead. (In unrelated news, anyone
heard from BT's WIREPLAY recently?) Elsewhere, VIRGIN
INTERACTIVE continued scraping by despite low morale, no
buyers, and bitter ex-employees ranting about how doomed
they were < http://www.atgp.com/rblts/vie.htm >. Like the ZX
Spectrum before it, the PLAYSTATION proved that rubbish
graphics were no obstacle to mass-market dominance, kicking
the N64's Diddy Kong demographic right in their tri-linear
mip-map interpolations.
HARDWARE: PSION introduced their new Psion Series 5, which
everyone liked even when the power supply turned out to be
dodgy and the lettering started rubbing off the keys.
Psion, by way of celebration, ran out of stock, but was
saved from financial embarrassment when DELL bought loads
of their cellular modems because no-one in the States
understands how GSM phones work. HERMANN "Doogie" HAUSER
(Britain's Angel Of Death venture capitalist) introduced
his NetStation Web TV's to the British market a good
century before they were expected to take off.
COMMS: 3COM and ROCKWELL offered the market two
incompatible 56Kbps modem standards, and were surprised
when sales were "disappointing". They turned to the
INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS UNION to sort out the
problem, somehow ignorant that the rest of America thought
the ITU were Satan-inspired Swiss bureaucrats who were
going to steal "their Internet" < http://www.domain-
name.org/ >.
SPACE: The first barrages of the future satellite clusters
went up, offering exciting lightshows for those who can
tell the difference between degrees and radians
< http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~ecannon/iridium.htm >, and more
reasons to believe BILL GATES will one day control ze vurld
< http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/constellations/
>. NASA's ultra-cheap PATHFINDER project landed a Connectix
QuickCam stuck on a Big Trak on Mars, thanks to a party
pack of balloons and a dodgy modem. MIR did everything it
could to be an orbiting disaster short of crash into the
Plutonium-laden CASSINI. The space probe PIONEER 10 left
the Solar System, only to be destroyed by Klaa of the
Klingon battleship Okrona in "Star Trek V" (3.30pm, Fri Jan
2, BBC1).
MEDIA: Your Net-hating friends gloated as newspapers
endlessly reported how the Net had "crashed" (when the
domain naming system collapsed), "blundered" (when JUDGE
ZOBEL e-mailed his Woodward judgement to an ISP in the
middle of a power cut), and "was on the edge of collapse"
(every time a clueless hack couldn't get his e-mail).
Simultaneously, the media raved about how the Net was
"creating a new economy" (so, when was the last time you
visited www.BarclaySquare.co.uk?), "revolutionising
medicine" (CU-SeeMe remote bypass operations, anyone?), and
"helping kids in school" (to download pornography and run
warez sites, perhaps). The BBC spent millions on the now
*fascinatingly appalling* www.bbc.co.uk . WIRED UK shut
down, along with a whole newsagent's POS display of other
useless net mags. WIRED US talked about how great it had
been, and pundits raved about LARA CROFT, DVD and DIGITAL
TV without having played with any of them.
NET CRIME: Shetlander sued Shetlander over hyperlinks
between their sites. Everyone sued www.totalnews.com for
framing their news stories with ads. Hackers worked out a
bazillion ways to make [INSERT YOUR BROWSER HERE] crash.
One guy tried to blackmail Netscape into paying him for his
crash code, and got threatened with jail. EUGENE KASHPUREFF
exploited a bug to take over the Internic for a day, and
went to jail. The Labour Party hackers and COLDFIRE helped
the police with their enquiries. KEVIN MITNICK remained in
jail (without trial) for another year.
BUSINESS: IE4 came out, NETSCAPE went down, APPLE went
random. The HEAVEN'S GATE web designers beat the rest of
the industry to mass suicide by a good 12 months. IBM gave
up trying to beat Microsoft with OS/2, and took it out on
Gary Kasparov. The US forbade companies from exporting hard
crypto, so Bill Gates bought out Cambridge University
instead. JAVA replaced VRML and NetPhones as The Year After
Next's Big Thing. The Year After the Year After Next's Big
Thing, the MILLENNIUM BUG, showed its earth-shattering
nature by retrospectively boring everyone to death.
AND FINALLY: on August 29, at 2.14am Eastern Time,
Terminator's SKYNET became self-aware. Unfortunately, it
picked the same week as the death of Princess "Sarah
Connor" Diana, so no-one noticed. It "decided our fate in a
microsecond", apparently...
>> EVENT QUEUED <<
never seen gatecrashers look so scared
Thanx to everyone who made it to NTK's real-world Xmas
"DON'T" event - and for the rest of you, you missed: free
drink, MIDI Karaoke, forced viewings of a bootleg video of
Mystery Science Theatre 3000 - and a small sideshow where
you could "Shoot Bill Gates In The Face" with a full-size
replica Uzi (which the lively Quake-playing contingent then
used to terrorise the streets of 3am South London).
Admittedly, labelling everyone with their domain name
wasn't perhaps the ice-breaker we had hoped, causing
instant rivalry between dial-up users and vanity-domain
owners, plus a shortage of stickers when enthusiastic cash-
for-registers ONE IN A MILLION turned up. Perhaps we should
have gone for a DNS lookup party game (match the guest to
the IP number!) instead of the not-yet-out-of-beta Video
Game Charades. Best gossip: the story about BT tech-guru
PETER COCHRANE apparently driving through a security
barrier. Coming up next: GeekCon '98 - and the .NOT awards.
http://www.ntk.net/not.cgi - parity on, d00dz...
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
electric dreams
TV>> WEEK 52: this no-man's land between Xmas/New Year
indulges all our child-prodigy nostalgia, as Prof Ian
Stewart (the practical mathematician) commands junior spod-
fest THE ROYAL INSTITUTION CHRISTMAS LECTURES (around 1pm,
Sun-Thu, BBC2) - not to be confused with the adventures of
"computer enhanced teenager" FREAKAZOID (10am, Mon-Wed +
Fri, ITV)... there's a space-camp's worth of young people's
sci-fi films, making the jump to light (entertainment)
speed with relativity parable FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR
(3.40pm, Mon, BBC1)... spoiler! knowing that the title
stands for "Data Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform" almost
completely ruins the twist of David Ambrose-scripted
D.A.R.Y.L (10.30am, Tue, ITV)... a computer holiday goes
awry in Christopher Lloyd vehicle (and excellent Quake
advice) CAMP NOWHERE (10.30am, Wed, ITV)... and it's
actually a remake of Disney's telekinesis classic ESCAPE TO
WITCH MOUNTAIN (10.50pm, Thu, ITV)... elsewhere, the Geiger
clicks excitedly over nuclear thrillers like Tommy Lee
Jones' marital meltdown drama BLUE SKY (10pm, Mon, C4) and
Homer Simpson safety manual THE CHINA SYNDROME (2.15pm,
Thu, ITV)... mock documentaries try to out-Spinal-Tap each
other, with promising kid comedy COPING WITH (12.05pm, Mon-
Fri, C4) vs never-heard-of-them cop spoof OPERATION GOOD
GUYS (9.30pm, Mon, BBC2) - plus an episode of EERIE INDIANA
(12.35pm, Wed, C4) that's even more self-referential than
*this sentence you are reading now*... never mind the UFO
cover-ups, OFFICIAL DENIAL (10.30pm, Wed, BBC2) reveals
what really happened to Erin "Wilma Deering" Gray (from
Buck Rogers In The 25th Century)... and if you can't decide
between the various madcap, irreverent etc hosts to see in
the New Year, set your clock for "20 minutes into the
future" - the original TV pilot movie for MAX HEADROOM
(9pm, Wed, C4), featuring the boardroom from "Network",
blipverts, digital watch tunes, and - of course - the
ZikZak Corporation ("We make everything you need/ You need
everything we make")...
WEEK 01: a mildly autistic child composer is surprised to
find himself described as a "nerd" in VIDEO DIARIES
(10.55pm, Sat, BBC2)... we don't normally do satellite, but
then they don't usually show anything as good as the TV
spin-off of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (8pm, Sat, Sky 1):
cute, violent, astonishingly funny - it's a barely-legal
Sabrina The Teenage Witch!... Meryl Streep is trapped in a
nightmare game of Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon on THE RIVER
WILD (7.15pm, Sun, BBC1), while Luc Besson draws a bead on
useless Hollywood remakes in his assassination actioner LA
FEMME NIKITA (11.50pm, Sun, C4)... you guessed it, the two-
part "sequel" to sixties sci-fi THE INVADERS (9pm, Sun-Mon,
C5) is yet duller than the original, though it still
features Roy Thinnes as "architect David Vincent"... oh,
the irony that pits NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL (8.30pm, Mon, ITV)
against NEIGHBOURS AT WAR (9.30pm, Mon, BBC1) - better off
with Steve Martin's spectacular "special purpose" in THE
JERK (9pm, Mon, BBC2)... Oliver Morton (something to do
with Wired) and Ben Woolley (off BBC2's The Net) each do 5
mins on the future in THINGS TO COME (7.55pm, Mon-Fri, C4)
- Woolley appears to propose "reinventing time", and
where's that idiot Michael Marshall Smith when you need
him?... scrub up for the return of ER (9pm, Wed, C4), and
with rather less fanfare, superior teen soap PARTY OF FIVE
(6pm, Wed, C4)... another unusual scheduling coincidence
sees SOS PACIFIC (3.30pm, Thu, C4) on the same day as SOS
TITANIC (8pm, Thu, C4), while some wag has stuck a HORIZON
SPECIAL on car crash fatalities (9.30pm, Thu, BBC2) half an
hour after the opening edition of JEREMY CLARKSON'S EXTREME
MACHINES (8.30pm, Thu, BBC2)... and with the addition of
ad-quiz THE BEST SHOW IN THE WORLD - PROBABLY (10.20pm,
Thu, BBC2), the only thing there isn't a blokey late-night
game show about is the proliferation of late-night blokey
game shows - called something like: They Think It's All
Have I Got Shooting Buzzcocks For You - Or Do They?...
FILM>> it's probably the first sci-fi movie in decades to
acknowledge, spoof and embrace the fact that the entire
genre is essentially appalling right-wing techno-porn - in
other words, an entirely accurate film version of
Heinlein's STARSHIP TROOPERS (imdb: adventure / war /
action / sci-fi / alien-attack / military / part-animated /
infantry / space / asteroid / futuristic / fascism / aliens
/ giant-insect / violence / part-computer-animation / gore
/ horror / dismemberment / decapitation / shower). But
great fun as well as being profoundly disturbing - that
kind of goes without saying... a laptop-controlled machine
gun is the only highlight of THE JACKAL (imdb: thriller /
assassination / russia / mafia / ireland / chase / murder /
terrorism)... while SPICE WORLD (musical / comedy / music /
british / concert) is, disappointingly, not a new sequel to
Frank Herbert's Dune, and also not as good as you thought
it was going to be when you thought it wasn't going to be
as bad as you thought, if you know what I mean... on the
heels of critical acclaim for his costume drama WINGS OF THE
DOVE (imdb: drama / romance), director Iain "Soft Lad"
Softley now reckons that his previous movie, Hackers, is
being reassessed as a "youth cult classic" - well, not
round here it fucking isn't... in US news, apparently the
funniest bit of new release MR MAGOO is the disclaimer that
Disney has added to the credits, after complaints from The
National Federation For The Blind that "the film does not
portray people with sight problems in a positive way"...
>> READER'S SITES <<
(being a brief, completely arbitrary, one-off end-of-the-
year round-up of some homepages that subscribers have asked
us to "check out". And yes, we have deliberately reviewed
them in the style of one of those dreadful net mag features
where they've just typed something into Yahoo and written
up the first 10-15 results...)
OBSESSIVE MEDIA
http://www.obsess.com/
Not only does this one have a great name, but it used to
exploit that odd Yahoo bug (see NTK 12/12/97) to create
stream-of-consciousness free verse themed around users'
current search terms - appalling misspellings and all.
UPSIDE NEWS
http://www.upside.com/news/
No idea which shadowy media giant is secretly behind this
one, but actually quite a smart daily news/analysis page.
Often gives you a snappier overview than paging through all
the TechWeb and PC Week headlines at www.newshub.com/tech/
anyway.
FROGGER'S WEBBED WONDERS
http://mudhole.spodnet.uk.com/~frogger/
Enormous site with sections devoted to the "Addicted"
telnet talker, the semi-official Lee And Herring page (new
TV series starts 15/02/98), one of those celebrity-slapping
Java apps, and updates on what's going on in Neighbours
nowadays. Weirdly, not very much on the classic video game
Frogger - though presumably that's what the Arcade
Emulation forum is there for.
THE CURMUDGEON
http://www.pheasnt.demon.co.uk/MUDGE/INDEX.HTM
Slightly wordy film and comedy fanzine, featuring (as
appears obligatory for NTK readers) an interview with Lee
and Herring. Presumably they think they've got a uniquely
wacky British title, but they've reckoned without rivals
like http://worldclassdogs.com.bs/WCD-
Features/CurmudgeonArch3.html - "an irreverant [sic] look
at the world of show dogs and their owners..."
MEDIAEATER
http://www.mediaeater.com
They say: "a call for accountability in media,
responsibility in reporting, a cry for media literacy." We
say: "Great links page!" (to all kinds of news sites etc)
SUPERKAYLO
http://www.cex.co.uk/cex/kaylo/kindex.htm
Charlie Brooker does the cartoons for the ads for the
Computer And Video Games Exchange, and here continues that
same endearingly offensive style over many, many pages. To
wit: an Innovations catalogue spoof that includes "Onion
Sock Patrol" and "Puerile Calculator Makes Light Work Of
Geek Tormentation", plus a software selection that features
"Sim Tits" and "Al Pacino's Cakey Wakey" ("47 fun-packed
levels of cake-waking action!").
(And finally, special respect to ERICH WEHMEYER, who
doesn't have a site, but mailed to say that, in South
Africa, Cadbury's ASTROS [see NTK 19/09/97] are much nicer,
because they make them with Bourneville chocolate instead.
This was confirmed by the sample he sent us, along with a
South African Crunchie and a mildly worrying "PS Forever
Yours" love bar. NTK regrets that the correspondence
regarding the relative merits of Smarties vs Astros - UK or
South African varieties - is now closed.)
>> SMALL PRINT <<
Need to Know is (usually) an 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 "walking in a woman's wonderbra".
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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