Need To Know 1998-12-11

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"The real question I've been working these past 50 years on is how to augment the human intellect through collective thinking" - DOUG ENGELBART, inventor of the mouse ...click on my head for more info! >> HARD NEWS << your right to choose More CRYPTO idiocy, as the UK government continues to prepare its new E-commerce law... to ... oh, for God's sake, what's the use? We're *so* preaching to the converted here. *You* know how dumb these proposed restrictions on strong crypto are. You've clocked that, unchecked, the government is going to stuff e-commerce, stomp on civil liberties, and catch exactly zero numbers of drug barons and kiddy pornsters. But what can you do? The only people with any influence on this issue are MPs. And they're so ignorant about tech that even if you did tell them that we'd built a postcode-to-constituency database grepped from public domain sources, and linked that (using a Web subscription system) to a low-traffic mailing list and a standard fax engine and a plugin that serves customised GIFS of every MP in the country, so that you can "adopt" your local MP, and put an adoption certificate on your Webpage, and then with a simple e-mail in a few weeks let your local MP learn that this issue *is* important, local people *do* care, and if she doesn't do something about it, thousands of people (all with monstrous levels of IQ and technological nous) are going to kick up such a fuss that they'd wish they'd banned the Internet when they'd had the chance - you know, I don't think they'd understand a word you were saying. Fortunately, they will - once you've finished with them. Welcome to WWW.STAND.ORG.UK, a site that let's you be lazy, geeky *and* make a difference. Share and enjoy. http://www.stand.org.uk/ - also, nobody bought us a Furby this year stand@stand.org.uk - it's in beta, so let us know any problems So now we've sloughed our sneering apathy and become crusading activists, we *must* remind you all to strike for fixed-rate local calls this Sunday, as the successful German/Spanish cyberstrike attempts to take fire over here. Unfortunately, even our pals at THE CAMPAIGN FOR UNMETERED COMMUNICATIONS think this Sunday's action a little... premature (proletariat still suffering from false consciousness, illiterate advocacy spammed to uk.* newsgroups in HTML, BT actively not giving a fig, etc.) Perhaps a better way to show your support for a flat rate would be to take *full* advantage of BT's 50p per national call (no time limit) offer on Christmas Day and January 1st. Offer only available for "geographical" STDs (no credits for 0645, 0845, etc), so check the national numbers for your ISP. Come on - who'd be calling you on Christmas Day anyway? http://www.ukgn.net/cyberstrike/ - "we'll be checking USENET for scabs" http://www.zanshin.com/~bobg/ - then take the Monday off to recover http://www.bt.com/world/news/newsroom/document/nr9884.htm - your mum's on ICQ, right? Wow, it's already worked! BRITISH TELECOM announced a fixed-price permanent connection for anyone using ISDN in London this week. Using the always-on ISDN D-channel, the upgrade to BT's system allows a constant 2400 baud stream. [actually, it's 2.4Kbps. Ignore subsequent sarcasm - d.] That means you could run a mailserver at home, or even get your ISP to signal you when an incoming packet is received, letting you "wake up" your home machine, and access it remotely. Well, you *could*, if BT had wanted it like that. The D-channel is built into the ISDN spec, so the cost to BT is vanishingly small. As you'd expect, the altruistic corporation has passed on that benefit to ISPs, who will have to pay around 400UKP per annum, per line. And it won't be available for Home Highway users. And that's for a whole 2400 baud, remember! http://www.serviceview.bt.com/list/current/docs/Exchange_Lines/00135.htm http://www.serviceview.bt.com/list/current/docs/Exchange_Lines/00136.htm - twice as fast as Prestel was! http://www.unmetered.org.uk/news/news291198.htm - Tim B-L on permanent connections (and "click here" links) >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious "Community: The New Internet Buzzword", scoops the NEW YORK TIMES ... Microsoft's innovative new CLEARTYPE system invented by Woz in '76 ( http://grc.com/cleartype.htm )... FURBY factory workers have 14-hour shifts, earn $20 a week- yumMMM!... 14yr old certified by MICROSOFT... PRIVATE EYE recycling ONION's "Crazy Old Man Plans to Shout at Cars All Day" story... Java 2? Solaris 7? Marketing tricks, or more rounding errors? ... staff at ZIFF-DAVIS San Francisco accused of calling employee "pretty boy," "bitch," "little faggot", "failed our benchtests", "good but pricey"... one URL you won't be seeing in the TELEGRAPH's "Connected": http://www.blackenvy.com/ ... NINFOMANIA recycles Onion "Instant-Win" airbag story as news... thanks to the unique way it is funded, BBC hopes to continue patronising the LITTLE PEOPLE well into the future... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful "If the cops come up here, say we're a Eighties Punk Band reunion!" Not much to report in the pre-Crimbo lull, so allow us to reminisce on last week's CONSPIRACY HACKER CONFERENCE. It was, attendees must agree, a positively Edwardian affair. In a delightful gentleman's apartment above Manchester's fashional Tapas Tapas bar, restaurant and wrestling pit, young larval types listened wide-eyed to tales of masonic control, as their elders leant on nearby consoles, in spirited recitation of seasonal exploits. After port, cigars, and the obligatory bust-by-cops/ row-with-mafioso-landlords, revellers moved through to a stately council home in Manchester's Mosside district, enjoying on the way the cheerful banter of the helpful cabbies, unruffled by the 3am pavement appearance of an entire intranet, with support staff. And so, as dawn beckons, and the youngsters gather to steal electricity from a dead telephone socket to drive a acoustic coupler they've gaffer-taped to a mobile phone, so we must bid our farewells, and ask, in the morning chill: can the UK underground truly be dead? And if so, does that mean all the charges are dropped? >> TRACKING << making good use of the things that we find LITESTEP is the what you get if you pull out the Explorer bit of Windows, engineer a super-slim NeXTish interface, then fatten it out with lots of funky Enlightenmenty themes. Heavens to Murgatroyd, you say, can't these people just install Linux, and get it out of their system for good? Ah, but by being so much *more* perverse in their mongrel OS tastes, they get to win. Do you see? http://www.litestep.net/ - now, a desktop as colourful as your school exercise book http://www.litestep.net/themes/ - everyone loves screenshots >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista Matt and Trey to run COMEDY CENTRAL?... the model CV: http://www.europa.com/~dogman/resume/ ... click, and destroy a life: http://www.geocities.com/Paris/Arc/7406/ ... by contrast, see what love did to HARRY KNOWLES at http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=2637 ... 30 years of the mouse: five years of its killer app: http://5years.doomworld.com/ ... "Gordon Joly Lives Next Door" ... internationally renowned Websites, and their pathetic pleas for presents... you use BeOS, you need humour: http://www.be.com/aboutbe/benewsletter/volume_II/Issue49.html#Workshop ... hold on, isn't that Microsoft Building 27, home of Win98? http://www.iamdrunk.com/temp/postal.htm ... Miko spam... and you thought DREAMCAST was a crap name: http://gameboy.s-one.net.sg/didknow03b.htm ... well, tech support *is* stressful - http://www.rug-rats.org/me/index.html >> GEEK MEDIA << may contain strongly-typed language TV>> the long-latent gay subtext surfaces in a particularly erudite FRASIER (10pm, Fri, C4), effectively apologising for the hour-long London indulgence of FRIENDS (9pm, Fri, C4)... but could even Steve Martin's cut-up classic DEAD MEN DON'T WEAR PLAID (12.05am, Fri, BBC1) make up for Ridley Scott's cod-feminist blockbuster THELMA AND LOUISE (9.30pm, Fri, BBC1)?... BBC2 follows its previous zany theme evenings with the rather more sobering HUMAN RIGHTS NIGHT (from 7.05pm, Sat, BBC2), featuring trailer tongue-twister Daniel Day-Lewis in IN THE NAME OF THE FATHER (9.30pm, Sat, BBC2), and a look at more local violations in PEOPLE VS UK (11.25pm, Sun, BBC2) - hopefully to feature that old Ross Anderson chestnut "If the Allies had lost WW2, the Dambusters missions would have been tried as war crimes"... flagrant abuses continue meanwhile on ITV with the dual torture of Steve Guttenberg's POLICE ACADEMY (12.05am, Sat, ITV) rubbed into the still-raw wounds inflicted by THE BRITISH COMEDY AWARDS (9pm, Sat, ITV)... and a chance to re-record the mysteriously worn title sequence on your video of cheerfully stupid Pamela Anderson Casablanca remake BARB WIRE (10.15pm, Sun, C4)... PANORAMA (10pm, Mon, BBC1) unwittingly explores the psychological need of surviving relatives to find "explanations" for unexpected suicides... Jonathan Demme makes amends for the gay serial killer in Silence Of The Lambs with Tom Hanks disease-of-the-week weepie PHILADELPHIA (9pm, Mon, ITV)... and Carol Vorderman, the richest woman in British showbiz, is evidently qualified to help viewers FIND A FORTUNE (8pm, Wed, ITV)... SCIENCE AT WAR (9.25pm, Thu, BBC2) concludes with a promising look at "Full Spectrum Dominance" - robot planes, smart bombs, big lasers, and infowar... and SEX AND SHOPPING (10.50pm, Thu, C5) now seems to be taking a more consumer tack, this week comparing gay porn from the US and UK - presumably on criteria like camerawork, value for money, and so forth... FILM>> noisy trailer doesn't convey the comedy in good old-fashioned swashbuckling romp THE MASK OF ZORRO (imdb: epic / father-daughter / gold / hacienda / heroine / horses / mask / mexico / murder / period / revenge / slave-labor / superhero / swashbuckler / swordfight / teacher-student / tragedy / zorro / bandits / brothers / california / church / confessional / defenestration). Hey, the script has to be spectacular to coax decent performances from Antonio Banderas and Catherine Zeta "Grey" Jones, here playing a 19th century Bond girl, in not too much of an imaginative stretch for director Martin "Edge Of Darkness / Goldeneye" Campbell... thinking of getting divorced? Create unrealistic hopes of parental reconciliation by taking your kids to well-made transatlantic family feelgooder THE PARENT TRAP (MPAA rated: PG "for some mild mischief"). And what is it with those Richardson girls (Natasha here, Joely in 101 Dalmations) and recent Disney remakes?... rather grimmer limited release action, with Toni "Muriel's Wedding" Collette living unhappily ever after in gritty post-heist containment drama play-adaptation THE BOYS (imdb: Australian)... and Mulder gets high on his own supply in neo-noir David Duchovny vehicle PLAYING GOD (imdb: medical) - no info yet available on freeze-frames of Angelina "Hackers" Jolie... FERROUS PARTICLES' DAY OFF (WITH YOUR HOST, DAVID COVERDISC, OF "WHITESNAKE")>> big win time for those of us who've put off buying CDs all year in the hope that the good tracks always get given away free on Xmas magazines. For UKP3 or less, these free gifts - or "unprotected MP3 source files", as we prefer to think of them - also make ideal Christmas presents (bin the mags, obviously; they're terrible), and you can even use the weird rubbery glue they stick them on with as fake bogies... WOMAN AND HOME (UKP1.90) is the cheapest, but their covermount cassette "Christmas Music 1998" delivers just "A 30-minute selection of *glorious carols* and *classical music*" (their emphasis): Joy To The World, Good King Wenceslas, Silent Night and a rousing accappella I Saw Three Ships... Q MAGAZINE's self-effacing "The Best Tracks From The Best Albums Of 1998" (UKP2.80) is no less mainstream, with only Marylin Manson breaching the peace of Air, Catatonia, Madonna, Fatboy Slim, Massive Attack and REM singles, and inoffensive album tracks from the Manics, The Beautiful South. But where, oh where, are Q indispensables Paul Weller and Ocean Colour Scene?... higher hopes dashed slightly by UNCUT's foolhardily titled "Unconditionally Guaranteed: The Coolest Sounds From The Hottest Bands Of 1998" (UKP2.85), largely featuring Brit bands trying to sound American (eg Silversun perfecting their impersonation of the Foo Fighters), and vice-versa... and further disappointments from NEON's "15 Great Tracks From" (UKP2.60). From where? From forgettable soundtracks like A Life Less Ordinary, Mojo, Scream 2, and - of course - Velvet Goldmine. Fluke at last do a track that doesn't sound like Atom Bomb, unfortunately it doesn't sound very good either... MUZIK's "1998: The Tunes" (UKP2.60) covers a broad church of dancefloor fillers - Freestylers to speed garage - but doesn't quite match the cool cost-effective moogy knob-twiddling of the "All Back To Ours Exclusive Mix By Jacques Lu Cont" on last week's MELODY MAKER (UKP0.95)... ultimate party album? Either the refreshingly honest "All The Stuff You Know You'll Dance To When You're Drunk" (LIVING ETC, UKP2.40) - cacophonous High Energy start mellows to respectable versions of '60s/'70s faves: Sam & Dave's Soul Man, Gloria Gaynor's Never Can Say Goodbye, a non-recent Midnight At The Oasis... or similarly retro-flavoured "Classic Movie Themes 2" off the current TOTAL FILM (UKP2.40). Some odd choices - 7 mins of Braveheart? And that's not "Empire Strikes Back", it's Star Wars Imperial March! - but enough instrumental Titanic, Kraftwerk-esque Clockwork Orange, and comedy Dambusters march to get everyone re-enacting their favourite scenes, 'specially when you can stomp around to the closing 4 mins 36 of The Terminator... >> 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 "snarky" http://www.tcf.ua.edu/classes/jbutler/t389/i98/syllabus.htm NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Excuses - http://www.spesh.com/ntk/ Unsubscribe? Mail majordomo@lists.ntk.net with 'unsubscribe ntknow'. Subscribe? Mail majordomo@lists.ntk.net with 'subscribe ntknow'. NTK now is helped by THE ILLUMINATI and UNFORTU.NET. They worry about us, but we don't worry about them. (K) 1998 Special Projects. Non-business copying is fine, but retain SMALL PRINT. Contact terry@spesh.com for commercial license details. Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com.