Need To Know 1999-07-23

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"During the transition, there had been some talk of Pournelle becoming head of NASA..." - NORMAN SPINRAD on sci-fi's most expensive, least successful prank ...Larry Niven: Surgeon General, Robert Heinlein: PRESIDENT OF EARTH [ http://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/en/1999/07/?c=14star ] >> HARD NEWS << raspberries, fools At the last possible moment, the Government published its draft E-COMMERCE BILL. And, while all that key escrow stuff has evaporated, guess what took its place? Blank pages? A sensible policy aimed at *encouraging* electronic commerce? How about: a bunch of vague hand-waving secondary legislation hooks, that mean that key escrow could be introduced any time without further parliamentary supervision? Plus (and pardon us if we see the Long Arm Of The Straw all over this) incredibly draconian potential punishments for key-holders. Business incentives like: two years in jail if you fail to reveal a key to data in your possession, WITH THE OBLIGATION ON YOU TO PROVE THAT YOU DON'T HAVE IT. Or: five years imprisonment if you reveal to someone that their key has been compromised by law enforcement - with no limit on how long you have to keep mum. Equivalent to, say, us revealing that Jack Straw's communications were monitored in the Seventies - and then being sent to jail until 2004! Building confidence in secure transaction? My god, anyone with any sense wouldn't go *near* a secure transaction! Oh, yes, but that's the real point, isn't it. Sorry. Sorry, Mr Spook. I'll get off line now. http://www.dti.gov.uk/cii/elec/ecbill.html - we're running out of "encrypted in PDF" jokes http://www.ntk.net/ecbill/ - e-mail it pdf2html@adobe.com please? Pretty please? Spurn the Freeserve? Mmm. We have our principles, but we're not idiots. Well, we are (and we don't) but we're positive we're not the biggest idiots, and that's what's important with these Internet stocks. Si, the Freeserve model is dumb. Uhuh, the only bit of it that works is the free ISP model and the associated smarties who developed that all live at Energis/PlanetOnline, and not the Freeserve everyone is buying into. The Freeserve you're buying into is a few blokes in a room drinking beer, watching PA press stories upload themselves, and copying out other people's help pages. And after all, if there was real solid tech there, why would Freeserve be running around London trying to hire a CTO? But all that doesn't matter, because if share-dealing had anything to do with future yields, we'd all have BT shares and stockbrokers would be wise, Yoda-like figures who don't touch cocaine for fear of the long-term risks. Hats off to those dutiful NTK readers who *did* bother reading the prospectus, though: one noted that Freeserve users seem to average about 48 page hits a month. Hmmm - going to have to pipe a lot of e-commerce through those 1.6 daily pages... And thanks to Ben Lamb, who spotted the subliminal "SEX" logo on the baby's Internet Explorer on the back cover. Now *that's* the beginning of a realistic business model... http://www.freeserve.net/ - if you see Sid, tell him: SELL! SELL! SELL! http://www.freeserve.net/support/test/glossary.htm - we're sure they must have paid... http://www.matisse.net/files/glossary.html - ...them in shares... While NSI and ICANN continue their informal shivving sessions in darkened alleys around Washington, isn't it a relief to know that our own Nominet, keeper of .uk, is above such things? They're acting very decently at the moment, with rumours the the price of registration will drop in the next few weeks. But, what's that? Nominet are thinking of IPOing themselves? Great! I guess that means that everyone in the UK gets a share, right? Because it's our domain, right? Right? Hello? http://nic.uk/ - "nic", hey? http://www.usatoday.com/life/cyber/tech/ctf633.htm - "using smoke and mirrors", NSI? suggest you look in one yourself [CORRECTION: While the above would have been a terrific analysis of the opportunities and threats by posed the 1999 Nominet AGM, the AGM had already taken place when we wrote it. The carpet-baggers were vanquished, and the price drop confirmed. See http://www.nic.uk/news/AGM.1999.html . Also see the look on our face when we found out. Doh!] >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious "Top DJs can command up to UKP8000 for a two-hour set, and some play several sets in one night at different locations, says one club source" - THE TIMES' shocking insights into that high-rolling Tim Westwood lifestyle... JFK Jnr "shoo-in" for DARWIN AWARD... DAWKINS freaked by spread of "meme" meme... bankers prepare for that tricky Y10K bug: http://www.ntk.net/doh/990723y10k.gif ... FRENCH CONNECTION suing to obtain www.fcuk.com - owner claims was innocently providing service for people who mistype "fuck" ... surprising swearing results when you search YAHOO for "UPS howto txt"... MICROSOFT WINDOWS MEDIA would like to recall the message, "Welcome to the Microsoft Windows Media Technologies Weekly International Newsletter!"... as "supreme arbiters of taste", you'd think they'd work out how to use <PRE>: http://www.yesmate.com/misc/ntk.htm ... "Do not proceed in this site if you are not located in the United States" tempts http://www.nipper.com/ ... DARTH MAUL's eyes identical to INKTOMI logo... ORACLE's billion dollar doh!: http://osiris.978.org/~brianr/oracle-gpl.gif ... our traditional APPLE dismissal: iBook? girly Kia-Ora handbag with bugger-all RAM, more like... and the grim inevitability of: http://www.firstusa.com/woodstock/ ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful One thing we've always liked about the Amiga community is its solidarity, that spirit of unity and sense of purpose where Commodore had *always* been at war with Atari, and "Intel - Outside!" was a rallying call that, more often than not, would end with a Windows user receiving a well-earned beating in the car park. How ironic it would be if they turned those fearsomely honed self-defence skills on *each other*, at WORLD OF AMIGA 99 (1999-07-24/25, Kensington Town Hall Conference Centre, London) - the first gathering since spurned QNX's announcement that they'll be building their own PowerPC Amigas to foster bitter ST-style infighting with those pursuing the current Linux path. There are also unconfirmed rumours that Nicholas Negroponte's bits 'n' atoms will be appearing at the ICA on the evening of Tue 1999-07-27, for those who really want to get off on that early 90s nostalgia. http://www.phase5.de/amiga/qnxp5e.html - we once wrote some Intel consultancy on an A1200. Ha. http://www.worldofamiga.com/xindex.html - (optimistically?) refers to "ticket queue" Tony Hoare's work influenced a generation of programming languages and thousands of CS studients. He invented great chunks of modern parallel programming, tried to save Algol, managed to kill Ada, helped with Z, did that Occam stuff, and seemed, in retrospect, to be much less up his own bottom than some academics we could mention. And we bet he could have that Tom Christiansen in a fight, easy. He is retiring this year, and a Valhalla of deities are dropping into Oxford for a few illicit global declarations. We're talking Dijkstra, Knuth, Wirth, and Meyer people! And we're talking three hundred quid if booked before 31st of July, (bit less if you plead poverty). Or some of you Perl Mongers could upload "Time::Bomb" onto the platform and exterminate the opposition forever. Fun extends from 1999-09-13 - 1999-09-15. http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=501336905 - presumably they'll all happen in parallel http://cs.ru.ac.za/homes/cspt/hoare.htm - he suffered for your art >> TRACKING << making good use of the things that we find As we all know, history repeats itself: first as tragedy, then as farce. Then history is copied by Microsoft, who use it to create Microsoft Farcical Tragedies for Windows. Viz: it was barely weeks ago that we chuckled at that mock configurable Blue Screen Of Death press release. Now we discover it really is possible: hidden registry settings (available since Windows 3.1) allow you to select a Cyan Screen Of Death, a Bright Yellow on Gray Screen of Death: any colour you want, as long as it's broke. Even better, Nathan Lineback managed to gather his disbelieving wits long enough to create BSOD PROPERTIES - a Visual Basic program that provides an attractive UI for those endless BSOD choices. Never let it be said that MS isn't about choice. http://pla-netx.com/linebackn/news/bsod.html - does that mean the BSOD is one of the stablest bits of Windows code? >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista first JFK, now the http://www.jonestownreenactment.org/ ... BO2K: the fun begins: http://www.ntk.net/bo2k/ ... good news for drivers, bad news for SIMON DAVIES: http://www.audicoupe.demon.co.uk/speedtrap_notatrap.html ... LEONARD MALTIN fesses up at last (strong language) http://www.voicenet.com/~xavier/scripts/maltin.html ... SCOTT "The Onion" DIKKERS: do chicks really go for this "sad clown" schtick?... training wheels for SNOWCRASH fanboys: http://zapbikes.com/powerski/ ... HAL JORDAN is the new SPECTRE... is that PALMPILOT GAYDAR in your pocket, or http://drunkenmonkeys.com/palm.html ?... "The only reason I play ULTIMA ONLINE is for all the 'Britishing': paying real world dollars to people for cyber-sex, then player killing them as I climax. That's the only reason anyone plays UO - all the violent sex. Jesus, man, where have you been?" ... scariest explanation so far for huge MICROSOFT apps - there's something *else* in there: http://www.zikzak.net/~acb/writing/ms-illuminati.html ... >> GEEK MEDIA << the less rude http://www.ntk.net/tvgohome/ TV>> former host Nick Hancock pops up in Paul Merton's new ROOM 101 (10pm, Fri, BBC2) - though, ironically, it's as Paul's first guest, not as one of the most loathsome things that humanity can imagine... "starring Ron Perlman" isn't a phrase you hear every day, but remains perhaps the most coherent description of Jeunet & Caro's Gilliam-esque Alien: Resurrection tryout THE CITY OF LOST CHILDREN (12.15am, Fri, BBC2)... it doesn't seem to be the scheduled rave episode of INSPECTOR MORSE (8.10pm, Sat, ITV) after all, but some stupid holiday opera one... and Mark "Mac Daddy" Morrison reveals a previously unexpressed concern for the health of "hos" and "bitches" everywhere by contributing to breast cancer concert WICKED WOMEN (10.50pm, Sat, BBC1) - maybe he misunderstood the title... on consecutive days, C4 examines both DYSLEXIC GENIUS (8.30pm, Sun, C4) - Peter Molyneux, Richard Branson, etc - and DYSLEXIC CRIMINALS (8.30pm, Mon, C4) - yet, annoyingly, no DYSLEXIC CRIMINAL GENIUSES... rubbing in the fact that there's only about 8 or 9 more episodes left *ever*, BBC2 seem to be showing an out-of-sequence double-bill of THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW (11.10pm, Sun, BBC2)... Carol Vorderman's apparently bottomless appeal is hopefully among the items TESTED TO DESTRUCTION (9pm, Mon, ITV)... Jake "young Anakin" Lloyd and Mimi "X Files" Rogers go all cyber-thriller in VIRTUAL OBSESSION (9pm, Mon, C5)... while "orgone energy" madman and Kate Bush-inspirer Wilhelm Reich lends a whiff of pseudoscience to the first edition of docu-porn THE SEXUAL CENTURY (9.30pm, Mon, ITV)... FILM>> another week of post-Star Wars oddities, with faux- Peckinpah testosterone-fest arthouse Western THE HI-LO COUNTRY (imdb: friendship / brothers / love-triangle / cattle / post- wwii / friends / poker / snow) marking another entry on the erratic CVs of director Stephen Frears (The Grifters, My Beautiful Laundrette, The Comic Strip Presents), Woody "Cheers" Harrelson, and Patricia Arquette (True Romance, Ed Wood)... and you're thinking: blimey, the accents in these Ken Loach films are getting hard to understand nowadays, but that's because hard-hitting Brassed Off Poets Society limited-release docu-like IT ALL STARTS TODAY (imdb: also known as "Ca Commence Aujourd'hui") is directed by Bertrand "L.627" Tavernier and they're actually all speaking French... FEEBDACK>> hot on the heels of last week's dead-tree round-up, "Why nothing on the Playboy/ Lara Croft/ Nell McAndrew pharce?" inquires MATT HALL, on behalf of old-school porn- purchasers everywhere. "Nearly the first Playboy issue ever pulled from UK newsstands," he elaborates, "and they have to sticker *all* the copies to cover up the 'Tombraider' logo on the cover". News 'n' sycophancy site CROFT TIMES has the full story http://www.cubeit.com/ctimes/news/199907/news0438.html - Eidos claimed Lara's "squeaky clean image" could be "tarnished for all time" (that's "squeaky clean" as in "violates ancient burial sites, shoots people and animals"); maybe the clamp-down's to create demand for their own inevitable "adult" version... "Stop slating Amiga so much at NTK!" pleads MICHAEL COPPINS, apropos, it seems, of nothing in particular. "It seems that NTK spends its time slating every platform - is any platform any good?" Not that we've noticed, Mike. Next!... "Ta for the story" quips Britain's hardest games journo and destroyer-of-worlds STUART CAMPBELL, still high from defeating the mighty EMAP [NTK 1999-07-09]. "You'll probably be too scared not to plug my ace archive of Digi[tiser] columns," Campbell continues. "See me be exactly right about the videogames business, 42 times in a row." Yup, as soon as you get the hang of Usenet naming conventions, Stu, you'll be unstoppable http://ds.dial.pipex.com/thumbs_aloft/digi/ ... "Re: your mention of 'The Great Egg Race'[NTK 1999-07-09]", begins NIGEL LUCAS, promisingly. "We [a discerning subversive minority at ICL] want to see a return to harmless boffin- orientated fun where it's not the winning, but the strange hairdos that count. What *did* happen to Heinz Wolff?" Well, using a bit of our own Egg Race-style ingenuity, Nigel, we used a "search engine" to discover that he made a toothpaste ad http://www.westwood.u-net.com/ads/m_art_w.htm , wrote for lame pop-sci mag Frontiers, and was last seen at a conference for Vacuum Technology And Semiconductor Processing Equipment And Materials http://www.vacandsemi.co.uk/showinfo.htm . The Great Egg Race is often shown at anti-social hours on UK Horizons; a full retrospective appears at the madly comprehensive TV Cream http://tv.cream.org/arkg3.htm - we advise you click around there for a few weeks and, please, *never* email us about children's television again... >> 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 "Fur alle Freaks ... Sarkasmus ist garantiert!" http://zhol.ch/pubs/redaktion/sub/computer/ 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'. 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