Need To Know 1999-07-02

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"Customers have responsibility too. They are foremost responsible for taking care of their own emotions, to know when they're projecting, and when they have a real issue." - DAVE WINER, living up to his surname http://discuss.userland.com/msgReader$8034 "...Customer support: key 1 for your emotions, 2 for projection..." >> HARD NEWS << little to choose Another week, another "prestigious" four hundred new media awards ceremonies. Most desperate, it seemed, was the British Interactive Media Association, where you got to dine with a bunch of CD-ROM refugees claiming to be have been "in new media for 17 years, darling", and a shortlist randomly picked out of the .CO.UK root files. Their host: a singing ventriloquist (hey, seventeen years ago, that *was* multimedia). New Media Age was slightly better, though both its choices and its home page's ALT tags seemed convinced it was 1998. The Online Journalism Awards, in the face of no-one entering, mostly divvied up the prizes among sites run by its own judges. The New Statesman had McSpotlight and shell.com up for the same Net Advocacy award: maybe Shell has a cheeky "Slap A Nigerian Community Leader" game somewhere. Uniquely, the MacSpot guys were frisked on the way in, and had their extensive J18 coverage excised from the presentation because "it wasn't appropriate" for Jack Cunningham to see it. Mmm. Liberal. All in all, the usual seasonal shambles: and there's still Yell and the Interactive BAFTAs to go. (And no, we're not bitter: NTK's agitprop sister site, STAND, won a NMA special commendation, two NS gongs including the one McSpotlight should have got, and we were on the bloody *judging* panel for the Online Journalism ones. Perhaps the industry should all lay off self-congratulatory awards for a bit, and see if we can't spare some precious time to do some half-decent bloody Websites for a change.) http://www.bima.co.uk/awards/short/content.htm - who *are* these people? And why do they use so much Flash? http://www.jour.city.ac.uk/olja99/ - ok, not *all* the prizes http://www.stand.org.uk/ - how could you ever accuse us of being bitter http://www.nma.co.uk/ - be thankful it has any ALT tags at all Hey! In the ISP world, is getting crazy, yes? The paying customers of PIPEX scraped through a week with mail running at postal speeds, the CURRANTBUN had a script kiddie magicking out passwords through their own registration CGI scripts like pennies from behind a child's ear, and even the sainted FREESERVE had threats of major hack attack over the weekend (although they didn't know it, because no-one at their ISP PLANET remembered to tell them). But there's crazier next week! That's when 4THENET, another ISP/Telco you haven't heard of, starts offering to pay *you* to use its services. Admittedly, the cashback works out at something of the order of 25UKP for every 300UKP of calls, so it's not exactly a bargain, and the Website has that eery "DON'T TRUST ME! I BREAK MY OWN GIFS AND CANOT SPELL" subliminals all overit, but you know. At least you know how low they'll stoop to get your previous interconnect charges. http://www.4thenet.co.uk/pays/howitworks.htm - MAKE $$$ SLOW ON THE INTERWEB! This week's Sarky Audience Question: "I asked someone from the Adobe booth how to draw a box using Photoshop 5.0, and they gave me a big runaround, ending in 'use Illustrator'". Congratulations, MORBUS IFF of disobey.com, who wins that zipped tar of all our back issues that we promised him about six months ago! Send *your* humiliating destruction of weak and nervous corporate stooges to: cuttysark@spesh.com . http://www.disobey.com/low/ - if you've enjoyed this, you may like them >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious DOUGLAS ADAMS tells Paxman he's "not a SF writer"... Russian fund-raising day for MIR brings in 50UKP... LUCAS "thinking of using Japanese people extensively" in SW II... AZTEC - now *officially* Falco... COMPUSERVE going free in 8 weeks ... all but one of the staff listed on SAATCHI AND SAATCHI'S http://www.redkite.com/ have left... after 2 years' research, WIMBLEDON interactive TV trial consists of showing the other matches... Net.art browser NETOMAT rethinks the structure of the Web, wows art critics, shows any idiot can write a browser these days... next year's Yet Another PERL Conference to be called YAPC 19100... EXCLUSIVE: REGISTER'S MYSTIC MIKE IS ASTROLOGY LOON: http://www.magee.demon.co.uk/ ... CONSERVATIVE PARTY website is "wierd", says Perl code: http://www.conservative-party.org.uk/newspags/newsadd1.pl ... 2 weeks before UK release, www.starwars.co.uk registered to HANKYMAN, still showing APACHE default page... world's worst "SEARCH" button: http://www.fujitsu-europe.com ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Oddly, physical attendance appears to be mandatory for anyone who'd hoped to just send their avatar to the first VR WORLD CONGRESS (1999-07-05/06/07, Hotel Le Plaza, Brussels, Belgium), a veritable who's-still-going of this once-thrilling Mondo 2000-championed field. Entrance appears to be free, though that might just be a Babelfish artefact (the European Commission subsidise anything classified as a "Concertation Meeting" - good to see they've got their finger on the pulse); you do, however, have to authorise "Cyber Wizard" to debit your credit card. Sounds like something that escaped from a mid '80s MUD - and, given this crowd, we wouldn't be at all surprised... http://inf2.pira.co.uk/agenda12.htm - aka "interactive 3D" (avoids stigma now attached to "VR") And surely some dumb bureaucrat somewhere will pay for you to go to Secure Computing's BLACK HAT BRIEFINGS (1999-07-07/08, Venetian Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, registration now $1,195): "vendor neutral" security professionals, "underground" security specialists, and, continuing the Spy-Vs-Spy theming, the NSA-organised "White Hat" track as well. And you know how some airline tickets are cheaper if you stay overnight on a Saturday? Well, then you may as well stick around for free entry to Vegas hacker fest DEFCON 7.0 too... http://blackhat.com/html/bh-usa-99/bh3-index.html - "Do not be discourage [sic] by its splendor!" http://www.defcon.org/ - you know, we don't use the phrase "brilliant misguided youth" *enough* >> TRACKING << making good use of the things that we find REVENGE OF MOZILLA isn't, as you'd expect, an app that rages futily through your files, installing BLINK tags and non-standard HTML code at random, sprouting features and interface changes faster than you can track, before cravenly turning itself into the nearest AOL client pack. Oh no. It's actually quite a nifty companion to the NTK-recommended 98Lite installation pack. 98Lite, as you no doubt recall, lets you install Windows 98 without any of that disgusting IE4.0/Folder Explorer overkill. REVENGE OF MOZILLA runs through the remaining install, trimming down the unnecessary registration entries. All 200Kb of them. Nift. http://www.silverlink.net/~jensenba/index2.html - here's where you end http://www.98lite.net/ - here's where you start >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista COLT + QWEST = QWOLT? CWEST?... what's worse: coke or warez? http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/ebay1.shtml ... CALL MINDER bug rumoured to play "all your messages" to incoming callers... as if we didn't hate BT enough: http://www.bt.be/survival/aday_fr.htm ... you'll go BLIND: http://www.vuk.org/ascii/deep.htm ... ESTHER DYSON vs Esther Rantzen: http://www.icannwatch.org/ ... repeating all Anakin's lines in a JAMES EARL JONES voice... C|NET @ London... ... sweet like VINYL: http://www.cyberden.com/sleeves/ ... stay away from the Himalaya rides, and STAY AWAY from CAR 19 http://members.aol.com/rides911/accidents.htm ... "topless" game characters in GIANTS? Oh, spoil the fun of patches... "Favourite programmer/mathematician: JOHN ROMERO"? - http://www.intelligentfirm.com/eugenia/ ... online magic EIGHTBALLing the Right Way: http://8ball.federated.com/ ... DREAMCAST to have 60Mhz mode ... they watch, they learn, they bear grudges: http://www.hackfurby.com/rebuild.html ... not the 3D "models" you'd normally associate with the ELITE author: http://www.cix.co.uk/~ibell/bodyart/models.htm ... JAR-JAR love: http://www.landoverbaptist.org/news0899/jar.html ... and all hail the future leader of Planetary Government: http://www.pournelle.com/html/family_photos.html ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> newly described by Radio Times as a "comedy series", we fear 4Later's SPY GAMES (1.10am, Fri, C4) - featuring a defence contractor and his "android son" - is in fact deadly serious... Peter Cook highlights the dangers of both e-democracy and set-top boxes in THE RISE AND RISE OF MICHAEL RIMMER (1.10am, Fri, C5)... and Space:1999 fans are saved from total cold turkey by a double-bill of semi-official Anderson prequel UFO (3.25pm, Sat, BBC2) - tough call against epic '60s variety Bilko cameo-fest IT'S A MAD MAD MAD MAD WORLD (2.10pm, Sat, ITV)... C4 dredges up NOSTRADAMUS NIGHT (8.30pm, Sat, C4); BBC2's live coverage of "the great king of terror" descending from the sky may be postponed if the tennis over-runs... and C5 celebrates its own apocalypse with a Rachel Talalay double-bill: non-Manga electro-monster nonsense GHOST IN THE MACHINE (9pm, Sat, C5), plus proto-Virgin Cola ad TANK GIRL (10.50pm, Sat, C5); part of a "Sci-Five" weekend which also features RUSSELL GRANT'S POSTCARDS (4.35am, Sat, C5) from a Dr Who exhibition; friendly-grey propaganda CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND (9pm, Sun, C5); plus horrific-sounding MORWENNA BANKS' SCI-FI SPECIAL (11.30pm, Sun, C5)... elsewhere, in post-Duty-Free sitcom BARBARA (8pm, Sun, ITV), Gwen Taylor's husband is "ambushed outside a Star Trek convention"... Y2K week on satellite: "the Praetorians prematurely trigger the Millennium Bug in an effort to create havoc with the world's computers" in THE NET (10pm Sun, 8pm Wed, Sci-Fi) - how'd they do that? Send the whole world forward in time? - plus a similarly themed DILBERT (8pm, Thu, Sky1) featuring the line: "The Millennium Bug! Are you telling me that Han Solo's ship is here?"... another series of dayglo DIY cycling inventor travelogue LOCAL HEROES (8pm, Mon, BBC2) almost makes up for BBC2's dire Monday comedy line-up: a new run of laugh-free copumentary OPERATION GOOD GUYS (9.30pm, Mon, BBC2) sandwiched between repeats of GIMME GIMME GIMME and THE ROYLE FAMILY... and last week's uncomfortably live low-tech phone-in MICHAEL MOORE TALK SHOW (11.30pm, Tue, C4) confirms that the chubby, now-bearded liberal commentator mistakenly thinks he's a stand-up comedian... key cast members begin to turn, dissing Lucas's "unspeakable" dialogue in OMNIBUS: THE STORY OF STAR WARS (10pm, Wed, BBC1)... and somehow it slipped beneath our radar, but we're fairly sure that militarist-industrialist Grumman ad FLIGHT OF THE INTRUDER (12am, Thu, BBC1) was postponed from its original scheduling during the bombing of Kosovo... FILM>> who'd have guessed it: elderly Sean Connery clean-fun bungee-crime ENTRAPMENT (imdb: computer-fraud / twist-in-the- end / robbery / skyscraper / technology / double-cross / computers / laser / insurance / master-thief / new-year's-eve) turns out to be a load of arse - mainly Catherine Zeta-Grey's, by all accounts... nor do we have particularly high hopes for Brit-made cross-dressing Weird Science nerd-rescue teen smut VIRTUAL SEXUALITY (bbfc: passed '15' for moderate sex references and nudity), adapted from the kids' novel "Virtual Sexual Reality" by (clearly her real name) "Chloe Rayban": http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/Author=Rayban%2C%20Chloe/ ... on limited release, there's dependably Canadian black- comedy psycho-drama Nostradamus schedule tie-in LAST NIGHT (http://www.igs.net/~mtr/haiku-reviews.html : "The end of the world/ occurs in six hours. Will we/ really miss it much?") - stars David Cronenberg, Genevieve Bujold and touts the fact that it *doesn't* have Bruce Willis trying to save the world from an unspecified disaster. Yeah, that'll pull in the punters... still, probably more fun than promo-director Hype Williams' gang-banging crack-em-up BELLY (bbfc: passed '18' for strong violence and language), featuring the long-awaited acting debuts of Nas, DMX, Method Man from the Wu-Tang Clan and TLC's Tionne "T-Boz" Watkins, and not - as far as we can tell - based on the biography of the Tanya Donnelly indie-rock band of the same name... RED BOOK AUDIO>> no prizes for spotting that WHITNEY HOUSTON's "My Love Is Your Love" ("/ so please close the door, love") sounds like she's singing over Bob Marley's famed double- negative imperative "No Woman, No Cry"; or that JASON NEVINS VS CYPRESS HILL sounds exactly like Jason Nevins Vs Anyone Else. But special NTK crypto-credits awarded for recognising the opening line of the VENGABOYS toe-tapper "Boom, Boom, Boom, Boom!!" as the tune from Abba's "Lay All Your Love On Me" ("I wasn't jealous before we met/ Now every woman I see is a potential threat")... haven't downloaded the whole CHEMICAL BROTHERS album yet, but that "Let Forever Be" track with Noel "Galaga" Gallagher raises the exciting possibility that they *could* just be this year's Jesus Jones. Excellent mind- bending Michel Gondry video, too; show it to your f/x fan pals and watch their brains dribble out their ears... DOM "THE DOMINATOR" MCCLANE hasn't tired of this game either, sourcing "Once In A Lifetime" - from notorious soundalike-merchants TEXAS - back to "Hong Kong Garden" by Siouxsie And The Banshees... and FI CRAIG points out that INTEL's ubiquitous 4- note jingle is "a dead ringer for Hank Marvin's guitar riff on Jean-Michel Jarre's Revolutions - track 2", thoughtfully enclosing a WAV file for those of us who don't have that one in our collections: http://www.ntk.net/ads/jarre.wav ... international webdesign playboy MATT JONES meanwhile raises the stakes, noting that "track 2 of the new BETA BAND LP samples heavily from Disney's 1979 singularityfest The Black Hole. *Kill* them, Maximillian!". Is that what they put in when JIM STEINMAN wouldn't let them use "Total Eclipse Of The Heart"?... and finally, in the "real CD" world: ex-PWEI/BRA drummer FUZZ TOWNSHEND'S "Far In" album is out at last [predicted NTK 1998-10-16], and should be showing up on MP3 searches soon; but WEIRD "AL" YANKOVIC's latest, "Running With Scissors", is there already, featuring "Pretty Fly For A Rabbi", "It's All About The Pentiums", and Phantom Menace tribute "The Saga Begins", to the tune of "American Pie" (what else?): http://www.sagabegins.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 "100 issues on, getting the readers we deserve" http://www.ntk.net/linuzx/amstrad.txt NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. 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