Need To Know 1999-07-30

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"Every day you come to this site and check the daily news. Every day you give blind trust to it's contents. Hackers with more malicious meanings could have easily put up some fake news bulletins, saying anything they want you to believe, without you even noticing." - Cracked INDEPENDENT SITE http://www.ntk.net/doh/19990730indi.gif ...yeah, though usually there's better grammar and spelling (when the hackers are doing it) >> HARD NEWS << some you win, some you lose ADSL! ADSL! Thank God almighty, ADSL! But what's this? Was it not ordained for September, when BT now say November? And was not the plan for cheap and retail, when BT now hand-waves 40UKP-150UKP for reselling to ISPs only? What of ordained Prophecy? Put it down to OFTEL once again using their Bene-Gesserit-trained Voice on BRITISH TELECOM. The unspoken command: either you can jump into subsidised retail ADSL next month without adequate warning to the rest of the ISP community, in which case we unbundle your local loops so fast your shareholders will squint for a decade. Or you can do it wholesale and give the competition the trad 90 days to get their acts together and - hey, we can take it a little slower on that whole co-location jag, man, okay? So, it's the latter, ADSL is later, and the price is fixed higher, but at least BT isn't blatting every ISP out of existence. Those meddling government tyrants, eh? George Gilder must be spitting blood. Mind you, datastream junkies that we are, our off-the-record stance remains: "They could install it up our arse, and make us pay double, and we'd still be up for it." Lucky that's also BT's consumer charter. Now, wonder what happened to the other secret piece of "New BT"'s Autumn strategy: free weekend local calls? http://www.bt.com/world/news/newsroom/document/nr9956.htm - although the engineers will probably install it on our elbow http://www.ntk.net/media/knowhow.ram our first high bandwidth presentation - the horrors of corporate rap. Mind you, BT hardly needs to push its ISP competition around when they're so busy kicking their own teeth in. Take one leading brand, currently in the middle of switching from one network provider to another. This week they transferred their registration system to point at the new telco. And watched, aghast, when somebody in the old network operation centre locked them out of their own systems, re-pointed it back, and disdainfully restored from backups. The battle of who "owns" the server is still going on, with his own senior management still trying pursuade the employee to unchain himself from the server rack and come quietly. Don't listen to them, kid! The war never ended! http://www.lineone.net/ - nope, it isn't. But we thought we might need a decoy SILLY SEASON SMORGASBORD>> Last week's thrilling conjecture regarding a threatened Nominet IPO coup and domain price-cuts would have been eerily prescient, were it not for the fact that both events had already occurred two days previously at the UK domain authority's AGM. Carpet-baggers were routed, and the cost (to Nominet members) of a .co.uk dropped to a fiver. Sorry: we're not used to your species' linear conception of time. Thank goodness we have NTK near-regular STUART CAMPBELL to point out us that Heinz Wolff is *not* dead in this dimension, and was due to bellow "Beware - I LIVE!" at the launch of SINISTAR UNLEASHED yesterday. Gratifyingly, however, it seems that FRONTIERS magazine *has* recently suspended publication; some would say, not before time. Plus, it turns out that Commodore *had* been at war with QNX all along, according to the World Of Amiga "special edition" of Amiga Insight (official publication of the Amiga Kickstart User Group), who kick off with: "QNX: The embedded OS is by no means inferior, but has less of an industry profile today than the Atari ST!" Full show report at the end of this issue... >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious INTERNET MAGAZINE's "Web Professional" Steve Patient (p117) claims UDP stands for "Unacknowledged Data Protocol"... "OLD" NICK NEGROPONTE refuses a Webcast from ICA for "intellectual property reasons": how very quaint... as easy to read as a PDF document: http://www.ntk.net/doh/19990730acrob.gif ... T3 MAGAZINE visits Demon (p96), cites "192.342.153.2" as DNS example... http://www.solutions.ie/ "temporarily unavailable" - "as a result of our continued success and business development" (what else?)... Gibson wrote NEUROMANCER on a typewriter; http://www.neuromancer.org/ runs NCSA 1.1... hard to get to http://www.coi.gov.uk/ht_summary.html using LYNX... no online registration for MOBILE COMPUTING '99; print out http://mobicom99.research.microsoft.com/regform2.htm and "fax or post" it to them... DEMON re-allocating free staff Fulham tickets for "corporate use": management enquire why morale is low... my browser's supposed to support *what*? (section 4.4, p.4 in ftp://ftp.isi.edu/in-notes/rfc2616.txt - or search for ARSE)... MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR master of understatement: http://www.ntk.net/doh/19990730jfksim.gif ... BT INTERACTIVE believe their own URL to be "BT Interactive.com"... SRL's MARK PAULINE heckled at WebZine '99: uses rocket launcher as put-down... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Once you've got your Interactive BAFTA entry in the post (closing date next Fri 1999-08-06), why not head out to the continent, and see how our Germanic friends celebrate the gradual shut-down of summer? CHAOS COMPUTER CLUB are holding a HIP-style camp-out next weekend (from 1999-08-06), with a Douglas Adams-themed hacking fest in a "field near Berlin". Given it's only a week after the Britain's own Terry Pratchett-obsessed CLARECRAFT 1999 (this weekend: camping, ubiquitous Discworld dressing-up, scary David Hodges in "a field near Suffolk"), we hope both events are a cover for the long-awaited ADAMS-PRATCHETT ARMAGEDDON, when the two fan armies destroy each other, to the relief of all. Amiga users will be partying like it's 1989 at the 8th ASSEMBLY DEMO PARTY (also from 1999-08-06), at the Hartwall Areena, near Helsinki. And, most innovative of all, there's the LINUXBIERWANDERUNG (from Sat 1999-08-07), where - of course - Linux users hike the hills, caves and "brewpubs" of North Eastern Bavaria. Following recent tourist tragedies, let's hope they don't attempt any "extreme OS advocacy" without the aid of properly trained instructors. http://www.lbw99.eu.org/ - can we do our "pingtime for Hitler" joke again? http://www.clarecraft.co.uk/ccde99.html - Hodges has a *figurine*? http://www.assembly.org/ - and isn't this last year's design? http://www.ccc.de/camp/ - Douglas Adams: so uncool he's almost cool again http://www.bafta.org/ - c'mon, we need the competition >> TRACKING << making good use of the things that we find IMPRISE/BORLAND/IMPRISE/BORLAND's generous release of centuries-old Turbo C and Pascal binaries (on a dual PIII machine, short pieces of 1986 Turbo C code will now compile and run before they've been written), the trend is on for companies to release their older development environments. Jumping the gun somewhat is UNCREATIVE ARCHIVES, which contains links to such unsanctioned memorabilia as WINDOWS 1.04, and GW-BASIC. Please do not download these, as that's piracy, and anyway they'll have gone before you've read this. Amazingly, though, they will still have lasted longer than Dennis Ritchie's warez cache of vintage pre-struct C compilers from the mid-seventies (he can't date them exactly because "we kept changing the epoch"). We're assuming some disaster on the Bell Labs Web server has deleted this directory. Unless it's Kernighan slapping a cease and desist? http://community.borland.com/museum/ - also in the museum: Borland itself http://members.primary.net/~cholowat/utility.html - bye! http://www.cs.bell-labs.com/~dmr/primevalC.html - ah! solution to the Y2K bug - get dmr to change the epoch again http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=506491026 - but it was there on Thursday night! >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista http://www.nmia.com/~roberts/tvro-dx recommends "fantastic shows like Neal's House Party and The Big Break - unlike any TV you have ever seen before". No kidding - he appears to be watching them in ALTERNATE FRAMES... PORN the filters won't get: http://www.maths.tcd.ie/~sprooney/pub/ ... PORN no-one should get: http://www.britney-nude.com ... you are here: http://www.peacockmaps.com/ ... ORANGE pseudo-WILDFIRE easter eggs (try: "I'm depressed")... all-too-believable NT user http://www.freeyellow.com/members7/geraldholmes/ ... starting to "get" RU Sirius' http://www.gettingit.com ... 23 voters can't be wrong! http://vote.Pollit.com/webpoll2/95704 ... phew, now "you can spend your time creating great Web pages and great COBOL programs, not struggling to integrate them!": http://www.netins.net/showcase/etsinc/cobolcgi.html ... DETAILS' new band-names round-up includes JFKFC, PHLEGM FATALE, JEHOVAH'S WITNESS PROTECTION PROGRAM, and KATHLEEN TURNER OVERDRIVE ... "darling, I can see right through you": http://www.roadsideamerica.com/set/transparent.html ... 404 found at last: http://www98.room404.com/content/room404.asp who's watching http://www.msu.edu/~whitero2/watchmen.html ?... tots TV totty: http://www.bud.com/99/07/tkles/22.bjorn.totporn/ .. >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> the only VIRTUOSITY (9.30pm, Fri, BBC1) visible in the Denzel Washington VR flop is in the title; director Brett "Lawnmower Man" Leonard went on to make 3D Imax clunker "T-Rex: Back to the Cretaceous"... to our jaded eyes, SciFi's cyber-anime double bill AKIRA (9.30pm, Fri, SciFi) and GHOST IN THE SHELL (12am, Fri, SciFi) resemble super-long cut-sequences from PlayStation games - though they're often the best bits, aren't they?... and C4 embarks on a long, wasted WITHNAIL WEEKEND (from 12.05am, Fri, C4), with the "cult" Richard E Grant shouting vehicle at 11.15pm, Sat, plus a Kevin Bacon-like link to the pre-Powers WAYNE'S WORLD (10.40pm, Sat, BBC1), where Ralph Brown all but reprises his "Danny" role in the sequel... thanks to whistle- blowers like http://www.templarlodge.com , we now know that above-average sci-fi spin-offs like STARGATE SG-1 (7pm, Sun, C4) are merely an AOL-backed CIA plot to foster belief in ancient Egyptian gods and space aliens... again underestimating public opinion, C5 settle for WIN BEADLE'S MONEY (7pm, Mon, C5) rather than guaranteed ratings-winner KICK BEADLE'S HEAD IN... groping for a plot even more preposterous than "Face/Off", John Woo directs Dolph Lundgren in BLACKJACK (9pm, Tue, C5) - "a former US Marshall turned bodyguard must overcome his phobia of the colour white"... and uber-geek stand-up Simon "League Against Tedium" Munnery hopefully serves up some hand-held vidcam construction tips to enliven this year's run of Festival frolics, EDINBURGH OR BUST (11.40pm, Thu, C4)... FILM>> not so much "more of the same", but rather just "the same" is the verdict on AUSTIN POWERS: THE SPY WHO SHAGGED ME (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/austinpowers.htm : fighting including Springer type fighting; punk dress; machine gunfire from the breasts of a fem-bot; dancing to entice; adult underwear; suggestive eye movement; picture nudity; nudity under sheets; Dr Evil sensually sucking his little finger; 1 use of "Oh, thank God" after inspecting self for explosion damage to genitalia; mockery of Christ - "The power of Christ compels you" from The Exorcist). As in cult hit original, cleverly crude set- pieces wallow in plotless, paceless mire, and Dr Evil eventually steals the show, (though the songs were better in the first one). Then again, all Bond films are exactly the bloody same, so maybe that's what they're spoofing... IT'S A SMALL WORLD (OF AMIGA) AFTER ALL>> well, we were happy to come away with a UKP20 composite monitor and a hard drive for the office A1200, but NTK's Amiga-owning readers are, naturally, a more discerning bunch. EDD DUMBILL enjoyed the free orange squash and choc-chip biscuits given away by one exhibitor, reminding him of a "WI coffee morning", but the most extensive coverage came from PHILIP "Groovy Gadgets" CORNER http://www.aurora1.demon.co.uk/gadgets , who we hand you over to, now, live from the floor... highlight of the show is the first public display of OS 3.5, featuring such revolutionary features as: printer drivers that drive printers; icons that glow when you click them; an installer that lets you go (shock) *back*!, and can open its window on its own screen, which could be any colour; and an e-mail client, internet stack and web browser which nobody will use because we already have better ones. Turnout is good - about 300-400 people on Saturday alone, checking out treats like Javascript-enable IBrowse, games T-Zero and Wasted Dreams, a working demo of Wipeout 2097 for Power Amiga, and Amiga girl band Annex performing hits like "Back For The Future" and "Keep The Momentum Going" - amusing mistranslated lyrics at http://www.perez.de/annex/ . The winner of a brand new one-off specially painted A1200 is not in the crowd when his name is called, and neither is the second person... many attendees seem unaware of the OS fiasco for the new machine, by now immune to the apparent "Okay, we've got 18 months to do this. No hurry. Anyone for a four player game of Worms?" attitude of Amiga management. It looks like the AmigaNG will be significantly diluted from its original grand aims, becoming another doomed "me too!" PC-beater (!) like the Acorn Archimedes. We don't need a machine to run Linux on; I can already do that with the machine on my desk right now. Gateway owner (and hence owner of Amiga technology) Ted Waitt concludes that Amiga was "definitely not a computer business". Hmm. Perhaps he thinks they're re-working all those A1200 cases into novelty door-wedges... >> 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 "looking forward to www.nkt.net" [ http://www.wried.com ] 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 supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.ntk.net/books (K) 1999 Special Projects. 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