Need To Know 2000-09-08

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"Microsoft could have incorporated effective security measures as standard, but good sense prevailed. Security systems have a nasty way of backfiring." - RICK MAYBURY, in DOTCOM.TELEGRAPH's Boot Camp week 140 http://www.telegraph.co.uk:80/et?pg=/et/00/9/7/ecrcomp07.html ...whereas insecure boxes end up exploding in *all* directions >> HARD NEWS << malheureuse Elections for the ICANN nomination pool end today. And like any other pool, it looks like the Germans got there first. Thanks to a prolonged campaign by the German press (and less assiduous Europeans' tendency not to not pogo-ing reload all day on the ICANN registration form), the Teutonic tendency has leapfrogged their European counterparts. Rest easy, though, little Englander: the nominee uber alles so far turns out to be ANDY MUELLER-MAGUHN, smartcard-cracking speaker of the infamously pro-liberty CHAOS COMPUTER CLUB. Ceterus paribus, and assuming constant apathy in the other continents, the real election for the precious two board seats should go to him and everyone-but-Microsoft's favourite pet legal eagle LAWRENCE LESSIG. And while the real TLD decisions will continue to be made by chuckling corporate lawyers in closed hotel rooms and conference calls, at least we'll have one member who has might just install Back Orifice on their machines. In the interests of civic transparency, naturlich. http://librax.freeservers.com/txt/positionofhackers.htm - now here's a candidate we *can* support http://members.icann.org/nom/cp/90.html - still, if Andy's not Little Englandish enough... Continuing the jocular racism: what about those French, hey? Blocking our ports and jamming our tunnels like the overzealous firewall admins they so vividly resemble. As a race. All of them. All the time. Anyway, after the French stranded thousands of holidaymakers and effectively held their own entire country to ransom, it's up to Britain's own "Expo Protest Team" to show them some *real* direct action, by disrupting Steve Job's keynote at the Paris Mac show next week. The group says that they're pissed off at Apple's treatment of its UK customers, pissed off at the legalling of Mac gossip sites, pissed off that the London Apple show was cancelled, and pissed off that Steve Jobs still wears a cheesy grin when they're still forking over thousands for the latest Apple glittercake. The causal link between the last grievance and the rest appears not to have occurred to them as yet. The group has its half-baking supporters: "If Apple is just another corporation existing solely for the purpose of making money, what is 'Think Different' all about anyway?", wrote The Mac Junkie's Charles Moore, his own penny slowly beginning to drop. But the protestors should beware. Those "Steve Jobs Dancers" in the background may look harmless, but everyone knows they can pole-ax a heckler at fifty paces - as Wired News reports "the protesters may be clubbed like baby seals if they dare to interrupt his spiel". http://www.themacjunkie.com/archives/moore.9.7.00.html - let them eat cube http://www.wired.com/news/business/0%2c1367%2c38607%2c00.html - Apple: think "snarky" How's about this then, guys and gals? Someone seems to have "fixed it" so that irrepressible Brit-comedy criticism site SOME OF THE CORPSES ARE AMUSING has disappeared. Frankly, we have no idea why, though readers of rec.arts.tv.uk.comedy may recall that their forums were one of the very best places to discuss the mysterious origins of the HOAX JIMMY SAVILLE "HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU" TRANSCRIPT that did the rounds back in July. But, hey, SOTCAA's stringent (and now mildly ironic) anti-censorship stance could have made them any number of powerful enemies in the UK laughter-biz: who could forget, for instance, their hard-hitting parody of the Edinburgh Fringe programme, or the controversial "congratulating" of Rich Herring for finally dating Julia Sawalahalahalaha? http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/tv_and_radio/story/0,3604,345583,00.html - so fake, even THE GUARDIAN didn't fall for it... http://www.deja.com/ - [ARTICLE NUMBER REMOVED] - next, arrest all subscribers to "rec.arts.tv.uk.comedy"... http://www.deja.com/ - [ARTICLE NUMBER REMOVED] - ...no particular reason, we'd just sleep much better at nights >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious BBC News now offering free Webspace to employees: http://www.bbc.co.uk/politics97/news/05/0511/keith/keith.shtml ... slash fiction discovered by WIRED NEWS, now exactly 720 days behind cutting edge... JACK VALENTI says new copying tech is "to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston Strangler is to the woman alone". In 1982. About VCRs: http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/09/biztech/articles/02napster.html GREENHAM COMMON protesters all set to leave airbase at last: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid_910000/910669.stm - you know how long it takes women to get ready to go anywhere: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/wales/newsid_439000/439596.stm ... FUTURE's sycophantically unofficial PSM2 mag quotes director of LARA CROFT film (p8): "Everyone wants to be her, or be her girlfriend". And that's just the boys!... WORD.COM up! down! up! FALCO!... VIZZAVI.COM aims to be world's largest mobile portal; launches in 3 weeks; just hired its WAP program manager; FALC-... BURNING MAN drugs just starting to kick in: http://www.newscientist.co.uk/features/features.jsp?id=ns225415 ... proof for all those who just knew that H2G2 *was* true: http://www.bbchomevideo.com/bbchv.asp?WCI=Category&WCU=5 ... DELL overclocks RAM: http://www.ntk.net/2000/09/08/delldoh.jpg ... "I've been off on holiday jetting round the world, and I've squandered a fortune!", chuckles MISS BOO, humiliating herself for her new masters, like Princess Leia in that bra: http://www.boo.com/large.html ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Disappointingly, Future's COMPUTER ARTS LIVE SHOW (Business Design Center, Islington, from Tue 2000-09-12) isn't billing itself as "the cheaper, less controversial alternative to Apple Expo Paris" (see this week's news) - though you've got to agree, as little as UKP18 (advance ticket price) for 3 days of software publishers flogging you half-arsed "creativity tools" surely represents *remarkable* value for money. Guests on the "main stage" are largely a bunch of Nathanic has-beens - out-evolved organic graphics guru WILLIAM LATHAM, pompous fools TOMATO - though we're pleased to note the attendance of no less than *2* "PETER SCOTT"s: one presumably the cheap CGI pioneer behind C5's "Too Much TV"; the other the - even more famous? - dead proprietor of the Slimbridge Wildfowl Trust. https://www.futurenet.com/secure/arts/live/ca_stage.htm - entire site appears to be SSL'd; hey, design is money! >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Just when you thought they'd drowned for good, our favourite low-tide low-technicians, Backspace.org, are back with a brand new gig. As befits their more virtual status these days, they working on a plan to jerry-rig a dynamically-routed, 2400Mhz, 802.11 wireless network across as much of London as they can muster. Judging from previous efforts in this arena, it's not quite as simple project as it looks - the 802.11b standard is a bit rubbish at coping with bridges between wired networks, security is probably going to require some messing around with IPsec, and according to the letter of the law it's all a little bit wayyy: a little bit tasty. Still, with the price of 2MB wireless cards plummetting and with a few good people already involved, maybe now's the time. They'll need help, though. So if you're somebody with kernel driver-hacking experience, or you can do more than pretend to understand routing, or you've ever done things to your rig of which the Radiocommunications Agency would not approve, or you simply don't mind hiding a 486 laptop up on your roof give them a buzz. If nothing else, the interference will piss off those snooty Apple Airport owners. And that's all we can ask of any community effort. http://www.consume.net/ - these wlans are going to turn out cancerous too, aren't they? >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista leprechauns wreak revenge on family who stole their "LUCKY" CHARMS: http://www.cnn.com/2000/US/08/28/parents.killed.ap/ ... some VERTICAL BLANK INTERRUPTS last longer than others: http://www.mb21.co.uk/teletext/ceefax/evening/ ... hang on: don't most SUPERHEROES owe their very existence to unregulated genetic experimentation? http://www.enviroweb.org/shag/ ... typically, they're not real "robots", but looks a lot more fun than ROBOT WARS: http://www.boxerjocks.com/ ... TWIX launches groovy new branding for US market: http://www.twix.com/ (where it still tastes disgusting)... battling the CHUCKIE EGG Menace: http://www.geocities.com/TimesSquare/Ring/6690/ ... first step to revitalising the SPACE PROGRAMME: bring back http://home.epix.net/~tjwagner/tab.html ... heart of - well, not glass, anyway: http://www.ucc.ac.uk/research/blondie/ ... NASA accepts no responsibility for predicted asteroid impacts: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db?name=2000+QW7 ... poet's corner: http://www.linuxworld.com.au/news.php3?nid=200&tid=1 http://www.hacktree.org/fcgi-bin/ref-hacktree?command=view&group_id=9 >> GEEK MEDIA << the less rude www.tvgohome.com TV>> Zoe Ball, aptly enough, presents the convolutedly titled 100 GREATEST TV MOMENTS FROM HELL (9pm, Sat, C4)... Carrie Fisher declares I LOVE 1977 (9pm, Sat, BBC2), fondly recalling "Saturday Night Fever", "Star Wars" and, on a more personal level, vast quantities of cocaine... and for the meme-complex who wrote in complaining it "kept missing" Richard Dawkins' MIND BITES on Saturday mornings, there's a repeat of his 5- minute musings on science fiction (10am, Sat, BBC2)... TWENTY FOUR SEVEN (10pm, Sun, BBC2) answers the largely unasked question "What would 'Fight Club' be like if had it starred Bob Hoskins and been set in Nottingham?"... a double-dose of Victor Lewis-Smith infects both ADS INFINITUM (9.50pm, Mon, BBC2) and nerd garbologist docu SCANDAL IN THE BINS (10pm, Mon, C4)... C4 spins its "Monday Night Nam Movie" chamber and - click! - it's THE DEER HUNTER (11.05pm, Mon, C4)... while Sky, as is their wont, stick all their new shows into an undistinguished weeknight slot: HARRY ENFIELD'S BRAND SPANKING NEW SHOW (10pm, Sky1, Mon); Al Murray's TIME GENTLEMEN PLEASE (10.30pm, Sky1) - "the best thing [Rich Herring] has ever written"; and critically acclaimed import TITUS (11pm, Sky1) - which is the sitcom that last week's Anthony Hopkins movie isn't based on, or vice-versa... frankly we're more excited about about the return of STARSHIP TROOPERS: THE ANIMATED SERIES (7am & 3pm, Mon-Fri, Sky1)... supporting the theory that they've accidentally swapped movie schedules, C5 are showing nice-but-dull GROSSE POINT BLANK (9pm, Tue, C5) while C4 woos its arthouse crowd with SCANNER COP (2.35am, Sat, C4) - which spawned its own short-lived franchise, in the form of "Scanner Cop II: Volkin's Revenge"... and in another piece of genius acquistion, C4 commence showing shockingly good Buffy spin-off ANGEL (6pm, Fri) - here's hoping they somehow manage to sync up those vital crossover episodes with BBC2... FILM>> meticulously spoofing the "Scream" films, right down to losing it about half-way through, comes the impressively rude SCARY MOVIE (http://www.screenit.com : spoilers for most of the gags, http://www.cndb.com : "Carmen Electra runs through a water sprinkler in her bra and panties in slow motion [...] Luckily she decided to wear a thong for this awesome scene. So we see her nice ass!"; "[shower-scene] girl (unknown) revels her breasts after taking off her towel"; "only one scene comes close to nudity for the incredibly cute [Anna] Faris [...] you see her bare butt [...] huge torrent of her boyfriend's semen [...] it's possible this is a dummy, or maybe even a stunt/ body double [...] We'll have to wait for the DVD to find out for sure")... which, frankly, should see off the competition from Barry Levinson's rather less graphic 1950s-set Jewish- American coming-of-ager LIBERTY HEIGHTS (imdb: / independent- film / anti-semitism / baltimore / numbers-racket / premature- ejaculation / race-relations)... some Oirish romantic nonsense THE CLOSER YOU GET (http://www.screenit.com/ : Profanity is rated as heavy due to 1 use of the "f" word)... plus John Turturro, Emily Watson and Vladimir Nabokov - together at last! - in THE LUZHIN DEFENCE (imdb comment: A brilliant, visually stunning film about the madness of big time chess)... FEAR OF A BLANK NAPSTER>> rapidly developing a taste in MP3s that can only be described as "near-random", unofficial NTK music critic ADRIAN MOULDER has compiled an epic list of recent pop soundalikes, attributing RICHARD ASHCROFT's "C'mon People" to "Reach Out (I'll Be There)" by The Four Tops, DAVID GRAY's "Babylon" to "Breakfast At Tiffany's" by Deep Blue Something and, perhaps most improbably of all, "the new STEPS single" to Europe's "The Final Countdown". He goes on to plead for "a reassessment of pioneering '90s girl-popsters SHAMPOO", having "invented both the expression 'Girl Power' and, in their song 'Delicious', BILLIE's catchphrase 'Because We Want To'" - a defence, you've got to admit, it would be tempting to try in Billie's current court-case: "Why did you say you'd have my client killed? Because I wanted to! Because I wanted to!"... we've been investigating the hypocritical world of TV/ radio censorship, noting that foul-mouthed Yanks EMINEM and THE BLOODHOUND GANG don't seem to be allowed to say "ass" (eg in the Bloodhounds' new "Ballad Of Chasey Lain"), even though cheeky Brit ROBBIE WILLIAMS has been (eg in "Let Me Entertain You"), and now gets away with "Give no head, no backstage passes" in "Rock DJ". It doesn't seem to be entirely pro- British, however, as the BBC cut promotional references to "Channel 4" and "MTV" from Richard Blackwood's recent "Who The Man", while permitting the ever-controversial Bloodhound Gang to extensively plug The Discovery Channel on their previous single. Evidently, clearer guidelines are required!... and, finally, an answer for MARTIN WHITE who, after reading our "Where Are They Now?" on Zero Magazine back in NTK 2000-03-10, wrote to say that "[child techno genius] DANIEL PEMBERTON came round my house one day six years ago and promised me he'd write the music for my first film. Do you know how I can get in touch with him?" Well, he mails us all the time, Martin - about a month ago with the startling revelation that "the whole Big Brother thing is a scam - it's never actually been on TV in these other countries before". "The whole thing is scripted," Pembo alleges, "[and] will start off quite normal [...] but it's going to end one week early in a horrific bloodbath as one of them goes nuts with the kitchen knife killing three of the remainding people and then himself - ALL ON 'LIVE' TV! Everyone will think it's real - C4 will only announce the next week it wasn't." "I didn't tell you this," he concludes, "but trust me: this is the new 'Ghostwatch'". As a composer widely respected by the Space: 1999 fan community http://www.newsgate.co.uk/uk/uk.media.tv.sf.misc/msg00050.html Daniel's media credentials are, of course, impeccable - though we haven't seen this "Big Brother" show ourselves, so please do let us know if it ends in some hideous bloodbath, just in case the mainstream media miss that episode or something... >> 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. Registered at the Post Office as "second generation HTML these days, mate" http://www.lesmania.com/sputniklinkslesmania.htm NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Unsubscribe? 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