Need To Know 2000-09-29

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"I was very sorry to hear of the passing of Bryan Smith," King said in a statement. "The death of a 43-year-old man can only be termed untimely." - STEPHEN KING mourns the guy who hit him with that van http://uk.news.yahoo.com/000926/80/akn1v.html ...the subsequent deaths of all the other townsfolk who failed to come to my aid - now *that* would be mysterious... >> HARD NEWS << eating our shoes Peering points like LINX are one of those weird overhangs of the pre-commercial Net, their quaint share-and-share-alike routing deals all cuddily mutual, and frozen in a time before anyone realised what a lucrative piece of prize co-loc estate they'd turn out to be. It couldn't last. At RIPE 37, an eager new company, iPoint (made up of such old suspec^H^H^H^H^H^H hands as Randy "Verio" Bush, Alex "Cap'n" Bligh, etc) painted in glorious PowerPoint a more modern view. Europe, they say, needs a proper holding company, owning a network of principal exchanges, otherwise those poor little collective farms will run out of cash, bandwidth dust-bowls everywhere, end of the Internet inevitable, GIF at eleven, etc. No prizes for guessing which company iPoint thinks should be Mr Big. There's some good arguments pro (and boy, if you're a ISP kid, will you hear them in the next few weeks), but handing all the European exchanges over to one not-so-.org org would make it a reeaal pretty target for the big telco carrier multinationals. iPoint say that they'll plant the routers and cages with a contractual minefield that'll stop such a takeover. But when the legal eagles of the multi-nationals come dive- bombing, are you sure you want to put all the tasty eggs in one handy basket? http://www.ripe.net/ripe/mail-archives/eix-wg/current/msg00009.html - yeah, look what happened to Russia http://www.nic.uk/nominet/arts.html - although, to be fair, it hasn't happened to Nominet. Yet? The Labour Party Conference hall *is* hot this year, but we think something else's bringing the previously gung-ho Regulation of Investigatory Power-mongers out in a sweat. Jack Straw ducks out of an online chat at the last minute; the Lib-Dems call for a RIP repeal next government; Patricia Hewitt suddenly starts putting the "RIP saves us from pedophiles" mantra into heavy rotation. Has the government finally clocked what a hasty civil rights nightmare they've wrought? Work on enforcing the law has now hit a speed-bump, with the new schedule for releasing its accompanying Codes of Practice. RIP doesn't truly come into play until these extra-parliamentary rules are published: and the schedule is much longer than the governor's implied: the interception regulation draft appeared this week, rules for grabbing traffic data (ie URL snooping) is delayed until April 2001, and the private key seizure bit won't happen for another year. A chunk of each of these is taken up in a "consultative period". Judging from how carefully the listening government paid heed to the last - three? four? - consultations, we're viewing this as a "find out what they're going to moan about next, and try and cut them off at the pass", but you never know. Send your suggestions on the interception regs by the 17th November: but remember, they only accept Word files. Well, security, openness and privacy in government are important, aren't they? http://deniability.org/uk-crypto/sep-oct/0383.shtml - that should stop those Unix security freaks http://www.fipr.org/rip/#Resources - and their pesky mutt http://www.vnunet.com/News/1111590 - "my first reaction was this is ridiculous" - Hewitt on free speech As is so often the case, another NTK side-project that began as a bit of harmless fun has swiftly descended into bitter ad hominem attacks, leaving us on the sidelines and wondering if perhaps this wasn't what we'd subconsciously hoped for all along. Thanks to everyone who posted their goof-spotting comments for BBC2's ATTACHMENTS on Tue - many simultaneous with transmission, for that full "Mystery Science Theater 3000" effect. Contenders for the first week's eagle-eyed "I Spy" award include OGDEN's "net startup [doing] file transfer by throwing floppy disks across the office", SKOOB's "Laserjet 5 printing... with the colour text coming out on top! Text is face down, and it should be b+w anyway", and THE ARTFUL BADGER's "NO O'REILLY BOOKS!?! Deleting from root on Unix w/o rm -i aliased to rm? Also who the hell would give a designer root access?". The first episode gets a repeat at 12.30am on Sat, so there's still time for you to take part - unless of course you agree with the inspirationally paranoid suggestion of WOODEN SPOON, who proposed that the near-constant stream of criticism was merely an ingenious "affiliate marketing scheme for you and your mates at TVgohome and their mates at BBC2". http://www.everyonehatesattachments.com/ - well, let's hope *they* see it that way, anyway >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious pallid "Unnovations" imitator INNOVATIONS put MACOS 8 on your TV for 100 quid: http://www.ntk.net/2000/09/22/dohinnov.jpg ... http://www.ntk.net/2000/09/29/dohlotto.gif - BACK *OFF*, BRUSSELS!... when oh when oh when will the public tire of inappropriate "How To Negotiate The Best Car Deal" sidebars? http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/2000/20000926/lo/212606_6.html ... well, you wouldn't want Windows-incompatible PENS, would you? http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00004XS51/ ... "We cannot send bills in plain text as it is an unsecure format in which any person can get hold of your bill," reveal FREESERVE support, pioneers of encrypted HTML mail. "Outlook Express will automatically decipher an E-Mail into a format you can understand"... link to "Modernising Government White Paper" http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/egov_index.htm - gives 404... you can't catch it via "Welcome to Adobe GoLive" <title> tags: http://www.stanford.edu/group/virus/herpes/2000/herpes2000v1.html ... http://www.McAfee.com/ *requires* scripting to be switched on, possibly for some of that sneaky "viral marketing"... http://www.sugababes.co.uk/cgi-bin/logs/analog - and they call it "popular" music?... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful From the UK UNIX USER GROUP, the folks who brought you talks by Richard Stallman and Eric Raymond, comes a slightly more corporate-friendly appearance by JAMES GOSLING, Vice President of Sun Microsystems - and "designer" of Emacs - who'll be explaining the circumstances that "led to Java and what today's development community needs next" at 5pm, Wed 2000-10- 04, UCL, Gower Street, London WC1. Entry is free, advance booking is not required, and Gosling's party-piece is throwing custard pies at Bill Gates lookalikes, so it might be worth digging out that old billg Halloween costume just to check if it's an automatic reflex... http://www.ukuug.org/events/gosling.shtml - M-x eject-eyeballs ! "Enjoyed your digs at aspects of [South Kensington arts 'n' science fest] Creating Sparks," congratulated reader Jonathan Hewett, the inevitable preamble to telling us that one of the final shows is actually "thought-provoking", "entertaining" and "a bit different", because he once saw it in "a pub". Recalling those Science Museum reconstructions where actors impersonate historic scientific figures like Galileo, Michael Faraday, or characters from Star Trek, PARACELSUS THE GREAT is a one-man show on the work of the eponymous 16th century alchemist and physician, featuring puppets, multimedia projections, and live on-stage chemistry experiments (they don't mention whether protective eyewear will be provided). It's 3pm, Sat & Sun, UKP5 at the V&A Museum and, at the very least, offers some kind of alternative to the week's apparently endless season of undifferentiated medical-student dramas about ethical dilemmas and "playing God". http://www.britassoc.org.uk/creatingsparks/cs2.htm - click on "Performances". Then, on 2000-10-01, of course it's... http://www.greyday.org - vs http://www.grayday.org , http://www.ntk.net/grey.html >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering The only complex bit of Bruce Schneier's Street Performer Protocol, that crypto God's ingenious solution for remuneration in a copyright-free world, was always going to be getting it *onto* the streets. It's a nice idea, but will it work? Openculture.org is the first non-case-specific implementation we've seen. An artist puts a proposal on the site for a creative work; if you pay up, it publishes; if you don't, they don't bother, and the puppy gets it. Openculture have sorted out some of the minutiae: they're forming as a charity so the donations will be tax-deductible; and they've set up an infrastructure to manage the payments. It doesn't quite ring of killer appness yet - apart from anything else, the 10% fee OpenCulture lops off sounds like a reason for someone to do a cheaper clone. And when fans want to spend their adoration on T-Shirts and merchandise, and artists still crave to be as rich as Britney, getting them to trade up to a more equal relationship will be tricky. But who knows? Maybe artists and fans are smart enough to evade the economic Prisoner's Dilemma they're all heading for. Heck, it worked for Stephen King. http://www.stephenking.com/sk1_082500.html - of course, if you don't pay Stephen, it's not the puppy who gets it http://www.openculture.org/ - let's force Iain M. Banks to do a Technical Reference http://www.firstmonday.dk/issues/issue4_6/kelsey - if only they'd called it the Major Rockstar Who Gets Laid Alot protocol >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista view source of http://www.algore2000.com/ for secret message from inventor-of-the-Internet himself... hey hey, even less than 16K: http://www.retrogames.com/misc/Vcsclip.mov ... real SCI-FI BUFFS: http://www.mbay.net/~cgd/naturism/nudesf.htm - oddly omits cover from "Slave Girls of Gor"... sometimes credited as: "DER FUHRER", not usually noted for his "TV guest appearances" or work as "Actor, Writer, Miscellaneous crew": http://us.imdb.com/Name?Hitler,+Adolf ... When TVGOHOME Fans Go Bad #3: http://nakedchef.freeservers.com/ (strong language, fake cockney accents)... "Please don't emphasise your bell- end" advise http://www.nobscan.com/ ... WEBSITE DEFACER: gigs of warez, seeks "total hard body" with GSOH, Unix experience: http://www.attrition.org/mirror/attrition/2000/09/25/www.dominatrixdiva.com/ ... presumably using the "All Things Bright And Beautiful" tune - "Have you got an eagle-eye, or the vision of a mole?": http://search.bbc.co.uk/search/search.shtml?DB=all&P=Songs+Of+Praise EVANGELISTS hit on TV fandom: http://www.barneyfife.com/ ... at last, a scientifically rigorous FLUID MECHANICS drinking game: http://www.ast.cam.ac.uk/~pak/misc/hunter.html ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> in accordance with NTK prophecy, this week's excellent Spike-crossover episode of ANGEL (6pm, Fri, C4) follows on from the Buffy episode "The Harsh Light of Day", which BBC2 should be showing in about 2 weeks' time... interchangeable C4 Friday evening Brit-com BLACK BOOKS (9.30pm, Fri, C4) appears to be identical to Dylan Moran's HOW DO YOU WANT ME? (11.20pm, Tue-Fri, BBC2), except with Bill Bailey instead of Marmalade Atkins, and set in a bookshop instead of a farm... while Sat becomes a cross-channel shoot-your-celebrities evening, with unexpected fans Paul Weller and Noel Gallagher paying tribute to JOHN LENNON NIGHT (from 9pm, Sat, C4), plus star-studded suspicion-allaying Dando memorial A SONG FOR JILL (8.55pm, Sat, BBC1)... thank goodness for Arnie actioner PREDATOR (10.45pm, Sat, ITV), antichrist sequel DAMIEN - OMEN II (12.40am, Sat, ITV), and John Carpenter's low-budget "Hitch Hiker's Guide To The Galaxy" inspiration DARK STAR (3.50am, Sat, C4)... Joe Dante successfully spoofs "Fantastic Voyage" in tolerable Meg Ryan flick INNERSPACE (2.20pm, Sun, BBC1)... the usual caricatures appear to be spoofing traditional "Blackadder" script cliches in lame Millennium Dome-escapee BLACKADDER BACK AND FORTH (9pm, Sun, Sky1)... and the parodies continue with HOT SHOTS! PART DEUX (9pm, Mon, C5), DARKMAN II: THE RETURN OF DURANT (11.20pm, Mon, BBC1) and Scott "Con Air" Rosenberg's self-explanatory rom-con BEAUTIFUL GIRLS (10pm, Mon, C4)... in a sitcom swap with Daisy Donovan - currently appearing in dire dentistry laughtracker MY FAMILY (8.30pm, Tue, BBC1) - Sarah "Coupling, Smack The Pony" Alexander is now co-hosting THE 11 O'CLOCK SHOW (11pm, Tue-Fri, C4)... and the geek/ pseudo-geek action continues with ATTACHMENTS (9pm, Tue; 12.30am, Sat, BBC2); a look at troubled dot-com millionaires in MODERN TIMES (9pm, Thu, BBC2); and Simon "The Code Book" Singh's no-doubt thrilling encrypto-history THE SCIENCE OF SECRECY (9.30pm, Thu, C4)... FILM>> after this and "The Saint", Elizabeth Shue must *never be allowed to make an action film again*, as vacuous dialogue and empty special effects implode in Paul Verhoeven's biggest ever disappointment THE HOLLOW MAN (http://www.cndb.com : "Kevin [Bacon] has many nude scenes in this movie, though most of them involve special effects. The first scene has a good, but brief, penis shot"; "You see [Kim Dickens'] breast moving as if it's being caressed but there is no hand there. Brief scene but nice breast"; "We see [Rhona "Tomb Raider" Mitra] wearing a flimsy robe that comes off to expose her breasts. She's probably a model, she has no actual dialogue in her entire role here"; "invisible Bacon watches from the window revealing Elisabeth [Shue]'s cute ass in thong underwear. Not much, but better than nothing")... but, assuming you can avoid the lure of big-screen sci-fi, there's Famke "Dr Jean Grey" Janssen / Jon "Swingers" Favreau's "Sex In The City"-style remake of that bit in "Clerks" where Dante is over-impressed by his girlfriend's previous sexual experience, LOVE AND SEX (http://www.bbfc.co.uk: Passed '15' for strong language, sex and sex references)... or, in the arthouse indies, sickeningly heart-warming "Flashdance" meets "The Full Monty" kids' "be yourself" feelgooder BILLY ELLIOT (http://www.bbfc.co.uk: Passed '15' for strong language)... or the similarly themed, but perhaps visually darker, JULIEN DONKEY-BOY (imdb: mental- illness; independent-film; dogme-95; schizophrenia) - Ewen "Trainspotting" Bremner, Chloe "Last Days Of Disco" Sevigny, and Harmony "Kids" Korine - together at last!... OH, THE NATHANITY! - SET YOUR EUDORA "MOODWATCH" FILTERS TO "MAXIMUM CHILIES", IT'S OUR LONG-AWAITED "CUNT" ROUND-UP!>> a hectic month for the dedicated Barley-spotter, as mainstream media outlets, like the "Fashion And Style" bit of THE TIMES http://www.the-times.co.uk/news/pages/tim/2000/08/07/timfeafea02008.html joined the Nathan-bashing bandwagon - accompanied by features discussing a trinket "designed to strengthen the body's natural energy and rhythms" and the "shahtoosh, a gossamer- light shawl" made from antelope fur... NINFOMANIA (or whatever they're calling themselves nowadays) hit unexpected heights of self-parody when they searchingly asked "Why is an obsession with '70s kids TV symptomatic of the New Media condition?" http://www.protein.co.uk/article.asp?id=1771&ch=monitor ... and the "Tristan" who originally caused all the trouble by abusing the "Jamie" who put "I am the real Nathan Barley" on his webpage [NTK 2000-08-04] was good enough to contact us directly with the succinct comeback "And you lot can fuck off as well!"... SIMON CLARE reported that, whilst attempting to sign in to http://www.reachoxbridge.co.uk/ as cunt@cam.ac.uk, "the site 405'ed. Obviously POST is feebly underpowered for the might of the Oxbridge [elite]"... but the readers who explored most fully the self-referential implications of our "I've stumbled across the webpage of a Nathan Barley-style 'Cunt' (or, perhaps, I am one!)" appeal were IANs HOLMES and MILLER - one of whom, in a moment of tortured insight, realised "NONE of my friends are *anything like* Nathan Barley... if anything, it is me that comes closest", concluding between them that "the point is, Nathan Barley *IS* the entire crew of NTK... And [they] think [they're] being 'self-deprecating' or something. [They're] not. And [they] shouldn't use the word 'cunt' unless [they're] prepared to back it up with [their] fists, the posh London [cunts]"... hohoho, of course we're not - though what we've hopefully all learned from this is "Battle not with Nathans, lest you become a Nathan", a lesson perhaps emphasised by EDWARD WELBOURNE, who thoughtfully cc'd us his advice to Mat Hunt, author of http://members.tripod.co.uk/mathunt/dissertation.html . Ed pointed out that the thesis had mis-spelled "music magazine Uncut" as "Uncunt" in the "Repetition and Over-Use" section, and went on to note that "the characters you have used for left and right quote aren't recognised by HTML standards, which speak of ASCII and 'character entities' for representing anything else, possibly grudgingly allowing the ISO 8859 Latin-1 character set." "You need to use the character entities &lsquot; and &rsquot;" Ed explains, in excruciating detail - NTK regrets that this correspondence is now closed... >> 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 "misfits and weirdoes" http://www.arcataeye.com/police/000919police01.shtml 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. Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/ Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com All communication is for publication, unless you beg. 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