Need To Know 2000-08-11

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"Will machines soon be smarter than people and could children born today live forever? That's what top British futurologist Ian Pearson says may happen. Pearson is used by communications giant British Telecom ... to make sure companies don't go down the wrong road by developing technologies that date too quickly." - REUTERS, on "top British futurologist" Ian Pearson http://uk.news.yahoo.com/000808/1/afdja.html - see? you *won't* be dead by the time ADSL comes out >> HARD NEWS << strangers intrude It's curious that the row over KATIE.COM, the privately-owned UK domain appropriated by Penguin as the title of a chatroom abuse novel, took so long to become public, when the book first came out in May. But hey, if you discovered a major publisher was cheerily libelling and/or driving traffic to your site, wouldn't *you* try and do a quiet little deal with them first? Proving it is possible to take on the big guys and win is the owner of STING.COM, who fought off an attack by the well-meaning rainforest-warrior of the same name, partly on the grounds that more people might have heard of the site owner (who plays Quake using the handle "Sting") than the middle-aged pop-jazz has-been. And completing the craze is upcoming garage vocalist CRAIG DAVID, whose soft-spoken accounts of "What I Did Over The Half-Term Holidays" have proved so popular among the UK's now largely pre-pubescent record-buying public. Craig apparently namechecks the URL "www.cd.com" extensively during the "Booty Man" track on his new album (out on Monday), seemingly under the impression that this is his own website. Of course, the URL he *should* be publicising is www.craigdavid.co.uk , because cd.com is a domain owned by Digi, "the world's leading supplier of multi- function adapters for server-based communications systems." http://www.katieT.com/guestbook/guestbook.html - leaves you feeling oddly violated http://www.sting.com/WIPO_Decision.asp - of course, Sting could just change his name to "Sting.Com" http://www.cd.com/ - installed it on a Monday, had better LAN performance on Tuesday Despite the recent "online credit card details" hysteria (isn't it the merchants and CC companies who are liable for most fraudulent use, a fact they obviously prefer not to publicise), you can always rely on DEMON to come up with a more low-tech method of exposing that ultra-valuable customer info. Their latest exploit reportedly involved velvet-gloved cat-burglars, who "climbed up the scaffolding and nicked a NT server (which paged down but no on NOC duty knew what the machine did, so they did nothing)." Police were called to the scene, but after they left, the master-thieves (possibly "the same ones", our source believes) "climbed in again and nicked another NT server, this time one that holds company files, templates and manages office printers. Some staff then went home as they could no longer do their work." http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/12354.html - hey, why not cancel your card every time you use it? http://www.the-times.co.uk/interface/insight/story764.html - it's the *only* way to be sure >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious you've got to admit, "Translate into French/ German" adds to the tasteful tone: http://www.concordejokes.com ... home Internet use "growing" unearths BBC ONLINE ... ah, the other meaning of "last": http://www.icalltelecom.com/ ... heard at BOOB night: "Look around: these people are young, they're rich, they want to be in a hip venue. Camden's too far north". And seven foot down's not deep enough, either ... BT's http://www.trustwise.com : not to be confused with http://www.trustwise.co.uk ... JAKOB NIELSEN's fifteen seconds of celebrity download time almost over, so get those parodies in fast: http://useitorloseit.cjb.net/ ... playing to the biggest "at large" constituency of all: http://members.icann.org/nom/cp/1.html ... oh yeah, the folks behind "Rubberburner" and "Super Greg" are *real* smart: http://salon.com/business/feature/2000/08/07/midgets/print.html ... QUEEN MOTHER "may already be dead" concurs NEW STATESMAN http://www.newstatesman.co.uk/200008070003.htm - in accordance with NTK prophecy: http://www.ntk.net/?b=a98/now0130.txt&l=103#l ... life imitates BBC imitating TVGOHOME (note lack of direct link): http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_870000/870270.stm ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Al Gore, inventor of the Internet, has sadly stepped in to fix his http://www.dems2000.com site after our old pals the DATA NETWORK SECURITY COUNCIL had confidently predicted that it might be defaced by the likes of "G-Force Pakistan" if it continued to offer "full read/write and shell capabilities" via default Microsoft Remote Data Services settings. Of course, it would merely be unfortunate coincidence if this had occurred during their annual DNSCON 2000 conference in Blackpool (from next Fri 2000-08-18), where you can check out "Beer, Sandcastles and Computer Security" - and maybe (if we don't make it along ourselves) obtain documentary evidence of a (reputed) "NTK Bar" somewhere in the area. http://www.dnscon.org/dns2000/ - sequel to last year's "Secondary DNS" titling quandry http://www.zeus-net.co.uk/ - "secure" folder something of a misnomer http://www.msdi.co.uk/shop/ - no wonder there's no customers in the database "Out of curiosity, do you play Magic: The Gathering?", inquired JAMES HEAVER, in perhaps the scariest piece of reader feedback we've ever received. "If so, whereabouts do you live?" Tragically, the answers to both queries remain strictly classified, but we suspect James might have been able to find more like himself at the real-life "Eltingville Comic Book, Science-Fiction, Fantasy, Horror and Role-Playing Club" get- together GENCON 2000 (Midwest Express Center, Milwaukee, started, er, yesterday). Attractions include not just Anthony "C3PO" Daniels, J Michael "The Great Maker" Straczynski and KW "Noir" Jeter, but also the unveiling of DUNGEONS AND DRAGONS 3RD EDITION. "This marks the beginning of the attempted assimilation of the entire roleplaying hobby into Wizards Of The Coast's open-licence-but-not-quite-open-source 'D20' mechanic system," writes NTK's resident 7th-level Magic User, "which resembles nothing so much as Chaosium's 'Basic Roleplay', circa 1978." http://www.wizards.com/gencon/GC2K/exh_demographics.asp - "demographics" make predictably depressing reading... http://www.fandomshop.com/store/categories/Calendars.asp - 1996 still a big year for The X Files (see Top 10 chart) >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering We don't usually mention alpha software unless it looks like the developer needs help. And if anyone "needs help", it's RON AARON, author of VINE, a complete POP mail, calendaring and newsreading for Vi. Or its gamma-irradiated descendent Vim, at least. Aaron mutters darkly at Microsoft and the Mutt developers for pushing him into this insanity. With this final keystone, its only a matter of time before Vim 6 includes a shell buffer, folding, vertical split windows, Zippy the Pinhead emulator, Aztec Calendaring, a Lisp interpreter... and then it will TECO's turn to rise against its masters. http://www.mossbayeng.com/~ron/vim/vine.html - the Law of Software Envelopment strikes again http://www.vim.org/ - you will never escape. :q! ^C^C:Exit >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista back in those days, everything was drawn with vectors: http://www.willowsp.u-net.com/andy/atari/ ... new, less cluttered, YAHOO design: http://wap.yahoo.com/ ... from the Powerpoint presentations of the WEYLAND-YUTANI corporation: http://www.iseran.com/Steve/alien.html ... probably not what the visitors meant by "too dark": http://www.wsu.edu/~kgrytdal/lara_dies.html ... NATHAN BARLEY's don't *just* work in new media, implies http://www.lukasburton.com/ of http://www.shippingbabes.com/ ... while waiting for the official NTK merchandise to arrive: http://www.cafepress.com/moose2000/ ... several weeks on, and the "Channel Four News" fans have found that IMDB entry: http://uk.imdb.com/CommentsShow?239164 ... we'd comment, but I don't think we're allowed: http://sbz-s01.websys.aol.com/ ... as if HOTMAIL users don't get enough spam as it is: http://www.samurajdata.se/~cj/hotmail.html ... oh, god, yes: http://www.malemultipleorgasm.com/chats/ch970514.htm ... the lighter side of private geopolitical intelligence-gathering: http://www.stratfor.com/asia/commentary/0008040046.htm ... some sperm more sacred than others: http://clonejesus.com/ ... at last, a Japanese, educational version of http://listen.to/swearing/ http://www.honmanolondon.com/swearing.html ... What's that, Lassie? How many rems? http://www.x-entertainment.com/messages/333.html ... how about we throw in a *free* staircase with your purchase? http://www.oxford-instruments.com/nmr/index.cfm?page=/nmr/900mhz/ >> GEEK MEDIA << the less sold out www.tvgohome.com TV>> ostensibly experimental slot ALT-TV (7.30pm, Fri, C4) enthusiastically confuses physical constants with "lucky numbers" and "numerology"... what began as just the annual four-week fly-on-the-wall docusoap EDINBURGH OR BUST (11.35pm, Fri, C4) is now acknowledged by veterans as more entertaining than the actual Festival... and it's a cross-channel "classic movie" weekend, with Bruce Lee's subjunctive-not-imperative ENTER THE DRAGON (9.55pm, Sat, BBC2), dated Dustin Hoffman dweeb-a-thon THE GRADUATE (9pm, Sat, C4), Cadfael-inspiring monk whodunnit THE NAME OF THE ROSE (10.55pm, Sat, C5), plus the symbols re-aligning once again for this year's showing of STARGATE (8.35pm, Sat, BBC1)... Charlize Theron helps Liv Tyler re-tell the early days of Aerosmith in Tom Hanks vanity project THAT THING YOU DO (9.05pm, Sun, C4)... Lance "Aliens" Henriksen, Nancy "RoboCop" Allen - together at last! - in chemical weapons actioner DUSTING CLIFF 7 (9pm, Sun, C5)... and expect War-Of-The-Worlds-style panic in the streets from elderly viewers of as-it-happens history hoax NEWS 40: THE ATTLE OF BRITAIN (12.05pm & 11.30pm, Mon-Fri, ITV)... Channel 4 criminally neglects their own back-catalogue - something for the weekend, the minipops - in search of a more biologically determined anatomy of disgust (10pm, tue, c4)... family-feud festen (11.35pm, tue, c4) begins a series of dogma 95 films that combine hard-hitting drama with the production values of eastern european camcorder porn... and, is it just us, or are the seductively-voiced "face-to-face encounter" trails for cousins (7pm, wed, bbc1) implying that the beautiful presenter is personally investigating that old "90-something percent of dna in common" claim - by travelling the world and having sex with as many primate species as she can find?... FILM>> gun-mad Arabs start spontaneously shooting Americans in morally ambiguous Samuel L Jackson / Tommy L Jones courtroom shoutfest RULES OF ENGAGEMENT (http://www.capalert.com : apparent homosexual pair in a crowd; Tommy Lee Jones was his usual excellent self [...] but with a potty mouth this time. Probably a dozen times more potty that "The Fugitive") - supposedly based on different events, but it's almost as if it was designed to "re-educate" the public about the massive foreign policy embarrassment of 1993's "Battle of Mogadishu" http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0140288503/ ... else it's the usual crop of kiddie flicks: MY DOG SKIP (imdb: bully / dog / kids-and-family / family / mississippi / tearjerker / baseball / based-on-true-story / 1940s / animal / dog-actor / based-on-novel / bootlegger / cemetery / segregation / football / boy-and-dog / sport / wwii / coming-of-age) - "Air Bud", but without the basketball... or dire Brit stag-night comedy WEDDING TACKLE (imdb: Tony Slattery, Leslie Grantham, the other guy from "Game On" - together at last!)... though of course you fanboys will be saving yourselves for Thursday's advance previews of X-MEN (imdb: blockbuster / wwii / boat / basketball / telekinesis / magnet / flashback / psionic-power / telepathy / motorcycle / helicopter / shapeshifter / spit- in-the-face / magnetism / melting-man / new-york / school / ostracism / morphing / based-on-comic / nazi-germany / senator / showdown / new-york-city / marvel / superhero / anarchy / mutant / paraplegic / statue-of-liberty / runaway / concentration-camp / government / prison / staten-island / tongue / wheelchair / holocaust) - arguably the best feature- length "made for TV" series pilot since "The Matrix"!... CONFECTIONERY THEORY>> something of a "crunchy" texture to this month's sightings, with the national roll-out of NESTLE COLA SMARTIES prompting widespread reaction, from "officially rank" (DAVID GENTLE) to "FLASH" WILSON's more complex theory that preferences are occupationally determined: "The web team eat Cola Smarties, the backend team eat Jelly and Icecream Fruit Pastilles - but I eat strawberry Campini"... while MARK SAVAGE defended the antipodean trend for making sweets out of malted-milk drinks [NTK 2000-07-28], claiming that "the ballerina's favourite - Malteesers - are just chocolate-coated Horlicks powder. Think about it"... PepsiCo-owned Smiths- absorbers WALKERS are up to something, with what they claim is a new "Spicy" version of MONSTER MUNCH debuting in August, plus some sort of legal battle in Ireland (where the Spicy flavour apparently originated) with previous MM licensees, Tayto, who have continued to manufacture a rival brand called "Mighty Munch"... MATT HALL meanwhile describes Golden Wonder's response, WOTSITS WAFFLES, as "cheesy powder OD, huge maize squares guaranteed to choke anyone under the age of fifteen"... as SIMON BRADBURY launches his one-man mission to find out what's happened to GOLDEN WONDER'S WORCESTER SAUCE WHEAT CRUNCHIES - are they being edged out by these fancy new Walker's brands, or perhaps just replaced by GW's own Salt n Vinegar Wheat Crunchies? Bradbury considers both possibilities "unacceptable"... but product-spotter of the month award goes to former face of Cadbury's Creme Eggs MATT LUCAS, who "returned from France" with what's believed to be the first example, captured in the wild, of a TWIX TOP - "about the shape of two Twix sticks side-by-side, but maybe only half as tall." Word is that nationwide sampling of these will continue through August, with a full "back to school" ad campaign (79p for a pack of 6) in September. "It's mainly a bland biscuit," Matt reports, "but has a small amount of chocolate and caramel on top. Hence the title." Either that, or it's an allusion to "Lager top", to create the impression of a lighter, less potent variant of Twix: Classic... >> 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. "*that's* how much an 'Unsub' request hurts us" http://www.weld18.demon.co.uk/fiction/snatcher.htm NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Unsubscribe? Mail ntknow-unsubscribe@lists.ntk.net Subscribe? Mail ntknow-subscribe@lists.ntk.net NTK now is supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.ntk.net/books (K) 2000 Special Projects. 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