Need To Know 1999-02-12

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"Negroponte is just like any ordinary rock star. He gets out of the plane and when he walks down the stairs he still doesn't know which country he is in." - ex-DIGICASH employee on the bankrupt company's board member ...well, it's all atoms, right? http://jya.com/digicrash.htm >> HARD NEWS << lack of clues "Just give us your fokking MONNY!" pleaded this week's rather more self-serving version of Live Aid, seemingly daring Euro MEPs to see who could propose the craziest online anti-piracy measure. International petitioners including The Corrs (Ireland), Jean Michel Jarre (France), and The Spice Girls (2 years ago) scored a rare hit with a ban on unauthorised web cacheing (which surely wouldn't affect those "secure" new distribution systems that the music biz has so much faith in); next is a levy on blank CDs, guaranteed to win the sympathy of everyone who uses them as, say, the data storage they were originally designed for. We're with Malcolm McLaren on why record sales are really in decline: because punters can hear their favourite genre, varying endlessly, on the multiplicity of FM radio stations. As the Phonographic Industry's Frances Moore pointed out, it's "like a music company giving away its most precious asset" - only he was referring to MP3s appearing on "an Internet bulletin board". http://www.ntk.net/euro/ - they come up with all these cool amendments... http://www.ntk.net/euro/nonsense.html ...then (natch) stick with the original After this ear-bashing, the EC wouldn't do anything as stupid again, would they? Hey, perhaps they *already are*. Last month, during the ongoing privacy discussions between the US and Europe, officials representing the EC began suggesting that not only is caching illegal, but so is storing IP numbers. Because IP quads can refer to an "identifiable person" (well, no, they refer to identifiable machines, but do carry on), even those logs that your Webserver holds could be in breach of EC law. Thankfully, we're guessing that the British Data Protection People wouldn't be so insane as to implement this - but, it's still a sparkling demonstration of the clue-vacuum at the heart of government. On the other hand, this one's been fed to us third hand and via the US authorities but when the second hand was Vint Cerf, who exactly were they trying to fool? http://lyris.isoc.org/cgi-bin/lyris/lyris.pl?visit=isoc-members-discuss - search for "privacy". ironic, since it's supposed to be a closed list From four sources this week, we've had tales of woe regarding WHICH ONLINE. How their marketing department has gone rogue, how they're now flogging products from their Website (legit, but not quite right, yes?), and - most damnable of all, how if you want to escape from their free trial offer without paying for the full month, you have to *write* to them, begging to be taken off. And if we don't investigate them, who will? Let us know if you've any stories, and we'll entertain you with a Cook Report style punch up involving plenty of white goods. http://www.which.net/ - ISP of the Consumers' Association? When do we get shares? http://www.cookreport.com/ - not that cook report. idiot. >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious the Cringely on that free PC thang: http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19990211.html ... new king of Jordan appeared in Star Trek: Voyager once... old king however no good at Web design deadlines: http://www.kinghussein.gov.jo/day.html ... "Couples break up because of decreased levels of satisfaction in the relationship - not because they stop loving each other", uncovers REUTERS ... best Tinky Winky site: http://www.liberty.edu/chancellor/nlj/feb99/politics2.htm - "Parents should be aware that the cards feature the same impudent and vile language as the series" ... British Police Unpopular, suggests poll... not even the HOME SHOPPING NETWORK can flog HOTWIRED? ... ICA local funding halved - this time not by PC thefts... Linus don't surf SLASHDOT... BT considering postponing ADSL to "end of this year", the *bastards*... trial MICROSOFT shows speed difference between Windows 95 and 98 (by using different speed modems)... SF restaurant offers free food to those tattooing themselves with their logo... NZ to give Great Apes rights, Gibraltar less enthusiastic - and Charlton Heston *furious*... >> ANTI-NEWS OF THE YEAR << "Grateful Dead to release MP3s" >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Tech journo Wendy Grossman may lead a double-life as a folk singer, but somehow we doubt she'll be kicking off her talk MY LIFE AS A SKEPTIC with EMF's incredulity anthem, "Unbelievable". Be cool though, wouldn't it? It's all part of Skeptics In The Pub, believed to be Britain's only regular skeptics event: 7.30 pm, usually the third Thursday of each month (in this case 1999-02-18), upstairs in the Florence Nightingale pub, London SE1. Skeptics and non-skeptics are welcome to discuss science, pseudo-science, the paranormal, alternative medicine and postmodernism, and presumably to have huge arguments about whose turn it *really* is to buy a round... http://linus.mcc.ac.uk/~moleary/ASKE/ - "some British skeptics appear to have reservations about ASKE" http://www.skeptic.org.uk/ - that's the spirit! >> TRACKING << making good use of the things that we find We all know that net.artists are absinthe-swigging buffoons, with not the wit to sponge their drool-stained chins as they stare uncomprehendingly at Macromedia Lingo manuals; half-lifes who spend their fat grant cheques in the bawdy-houses of Hoxton and clog up the arteries of The Great Work with their sclerotic Web pages clogged with feckless, Photoschlocked mundanity. Bleating non-descripts, crowing at their own uncommercial purity even as they lick the ass of state and commerce with their manipulative talk of Interactive TV and Educational Community Projects. Stupid people who... who... smell of wee. Anyway, the 12-HOUR ISBN JPEG PROJECT, we like. Firstly, it does what it says on the TCP/IP packet: a brand new monochrome JPEG to download every twelve hours. Secondly, the creator, Brad Brace, has been doing it for FOUR YEARS. Thirdly, he uses ftp and an alt newsgroup to propagate it: protocolically correct and righteously old skool. Fourthly, it has some hack value: cronjobbed with a shell script, it makes a charming, low-bandwidth, desktop wallpaper. And finally, he *really* pisses net.artists off by spamming their mailing lists with ASCII art. Reeespect. http://www.teleport.com/~bbrace/12hr-isbn-jpeg.html - hey, looks pretty geeky http://art-bin.com/art/rbrad.html - oh. oh, well http://www.ntk.net/12hr/get12 - cronjob for bash 'n' WindowMaker >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista http://www.evl.uic.edu/caylor/MONKEY/famousmonkeys.html ... DAVE WINER apparently unaware that killer app for http://www.mailtothefuture.com/ is suicide notes... oh no! *more* Heath Buntings! http://www.d-b.net/dti/ ... using whois as a contact manager... Joe-Bob Briggs back from grave: http://www.tnt-tv.com/monstervision/this_week.html ... ORANGE going 14.4K?... "rock the deathstar" seems too easy http://mosespa.starwars.com/products/large_product.gsp/id=201/ the Americans are "adapting" FAWLTY TOWERS... you know, we preferred it when he was just eating our balls: http://www.pcgamer.com/thl/ ... STARSHIP TROOPERS: ANIMATED SERIES - yes to mobile infantry power armour, no to mixed shower scenes... maybe it is all weather balloons: http://www.accuweather.com/weatherf/ufo_qx01 ... Trip and the 3DO guys get it in the -uh, neck at http://www.gaminginsider.com/ ... bad handwriting = bad person http://www.myhandwriting.com/analyze/hlltrt5.html ... they *wish* http://www.tnt-tv.com/movies/tntoriginals/pirates/ >> GEEK MEDIA << may contain strongly-typed language TV>> BBC2's Comedy Zone has never looked funnier: unconvincing nostalgia rubbish DAYS LIKE THESE (8.30pm, Fri, ITV) is literally Carsey-Warner's search-and-replace on the US "That 70s Sh**" (s/Red Forman/Ron Forman/ s/Jackie Burkhardt/Jackie Burget/)... presumably her involvement in that dire Spice Girls "spoof" qualifies Kathy Burke to spoil the flow of Mark Lamarr's gags in NEVER MIND THE BUZZCOCKS (9.30pm, Fri, BBC2)... and, in common with over 58 per cent of her output from 1982 to 1992, there is either partial or full Greta Scacchi nudity contributing to WHITE MISCHIEF (10.25pm, Fri, BBC1)... Howard Stableford gazes enviously on the Ballykissangel success of former colleague Kieran Prendiville, while he is left probing the mind and brain on OPEN SATURDAY (9.15pm, Sat, BBC2)... another WW2 weekend, with apologetically titled ONE OF OUR AIRCRAFT IS MISSING (12.35pm, Sat, BBC2) and A BRIDGE TOO FAR (8.55pm, Sat, C4), plus sci-fi's David McCallum in the plywood-framed MOSQUITO SQUADRON (2.15pm, Sat, BBC2)... surprisingly, it's the same Colin Wilson who wrote both "new existentialism" bible The Outsider and the trash space opera Space Vampires, inspiration for lively Dan "Alien" O'Bannon, Peter "Double Deckers" Firth slash nonsense LIFEFORCE (10.50pm, Sat, C5)... no wonder Peter Berg went mad and directed those Very Bad Things, after the sex-toy treatment he gets in THE LAST SEDUCTION (10pm, Sun, C4) - 18 months since last showing... other Valentine's Day treats include MEN BEHAVING BADLY, a god-awful documentary about Gretna Green, a rape trauma episode of THE LAKES, and the "Noreen Sleeps With Warren Show" of DWEEBS (2.25am, Sun, C4) - believed to be the CGI Keanu Reeves episode, not shown as part of original US run... we've got ANIMAL POLICE (9.30pm, Mon, BBC1) and ANIMAL ER (8.30pm, Mon, C5) but oddly no-one's doing ANIMAL FIRE-BRIGADE... a nervous RIAA would very much like to BLAME IT ON RIO (10pm, Mon, C4) but Michael Caine and Demi Moore have little on Keri "Felicity, Dead Man's Curve" Russell in an early TVM role in THE BABYSITTER'S SEDUCTION (10.45pm, Mon, BBC1)... BBC2 flagrantly interrupts its regular snooker coverage for some of those occasional episodes of SEINFELD (11.15pm, Tue, BBC2), LARRY SANDERS and BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (6.40pm, Wed, BBC2)... isn't it weird how Alan J Pakula "died" after making conspiracy-revealing movies like All The President's Men, tonight's similar THE PARALLAX VIEW (11.50pm, Thu, BBC1), and, er, The Pelican Brief... and, in a plot twist we've seen only 5 or 6 times before, nanobots aboard RED DWARF VIII (9pm, Thu, BBC2) have built a tiny version of the old ship from 10 years ago, complete with crew - minus those who had too much self-respect to return... FILM>> Londoners obviously have different expectations of what makes a good Valentine's date movie, with the ultra-bleak talk-heavy Ben Stiller sex games of YOUR FRIENDS AND NEIGHBOURS (imdb: sauna / sex / adultery / art-gallery / black-comedy / cruelty / dysfunction / infidelity / lesbian / mysogynists / relationship) - after this, Neil "The Company Of Men" LaBute hopes to move to screwball slapstick comedies... or Roberto Benigni's Italian-made sub-Chaplin homage LIFE IS BEAUTIFUL (imdb: holocaust / wwii), which is either a charming triumph of clowning over adversity, or an irresponsible Allo Allo-style attempt to make fun out of concentration camps... fans of naming films after songs will be pleased to see that the poster for mildly unusual hypnosis love-story DON'T GO BREAKING MY HEART (imdb: comedy/ romance) features the tagline "He couldn't if he tried!" - clearly an improvement on the original title, the motivational soundalike "Us Begins With You" (geddit? "U"! oh, never mind)... and maybe it's half-term or something, going by the frenzy of daft family films: least annoying should be semi-Romanian Billy Crystal curio MY GIANT (imdb: car-crash / monastry / monks / movies / sport / wrestling)- Michael Lehmann's gone from Heathers, Meet The Applegates, to The Truth About Cats And Dogs - and this... the naughty 8-year-old antics of MADELINE (imdb: based-on-novel / family / kids-and-family) sound silly, but not as dumb as bad dad Michael Keaton coming back to life as a snowman in largely pointless f/x weepie JACK FROST (imdb: MPAA: Rated PG for mild language) - not to be confused with the similarly themed straight-to-video horror release of the same name... A PUNISHMENT YOU CAN TASTE>> the egg-spawning continues, with the crazy paved Easter grenade fragmenting into CHEWITS BUBBLE-EGGS (25p packet of 6) - hollow dino eggs, related to the original Chewits genus in name only, much like other Leaf bubblegums, but with fantastic "foaming" flavours. All the fun of eating soap, without that unpleasant "soap" taste... upcoming CADBURY'S YOWIE - http://www.cadbury.com.au/yowie - is already usurped by euro-Kinder-clone CRAZY ZOO (40p), also offering mutatable animals for the junior geneticists of tomorrow... meanwhile Cadbury's excellent MINI EGGS have jumped species to the thriving ecosystem of chocolate "pudding corners" - not as good as the MUNCHIES choc/toffee version, Mini Egg lids tend to peel off in supermarkets and refrigerate rock-hard... the "fat free" revelations continue, with FRY'S (ie CADBURY'S) TURKISH DELIGHT relaunching as "92% fat free (and always has been)", but it turns out that an ordinary Mars Bar is (and always has been?) 82.4% fat free - presumably better for you than a bag of GO AHEAD CRISPS - only 80% fat free ... reader "recommendations" have flooded in for HARIBO MILLENNIUM BUGS ("repackaged Starmix gelatine gum sweets labelled 'Bugs, Viren, Virus'" - seen in Sainsburys, anon), MACCORNS CHEESE, CHOCOLATE AND BACON FLAVOURED POPCORN (http://www.maccorns.co.uk - 99p, seen in Aberdeen Spar, Ali Daniels), and Nestle's rapid response to the Crunchie Explosion, the WONKA EXPLODER BAR ("Chocolate and space dust: one of the more bizarre oral experiences" - Jane L Trobridge)... most romantic Valentine's cash-in strangely isn't TESCO'S "KISS KIND" GARLIC BREAD (95p - 10p more than usual), nor MR LAZENBY'S SPECIAL SAUSAGE (59p, 4oz, contains oysters, premium pork, ginger), but none other than KP SKIPS stepping on Lovehearts territory with a "secret love message" revealed to your beau when they vigorously rub your packet (ho ho). Not sure that empty crisp bags have the emotional impact of cards and flowers and chocolate, but it couldn't hurt to try... >> 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 "liking boiled food" (http://www.multimap.com/uk/ still intact. phew.) 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) 1999 Special Projects. Non-business copying is fine, but retain SMALL PRINT. 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