Need To Know 1999-01-08

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"He [David Talbot, CEO of Salon] wants to go public; to partner with any number of European media companies; to start a Salon UK; a Salon Germany; he wants a Salon television show." - "The Salon Makeover", Wired 7.01 ...he wants to watch where he leaves that Wired business plan >> HARD NEWS << brightly hued Cupertino Kool-Aid - now in five delicious flavours! STEVE JOBS, CEO of the Thousand Year Interim, unveiled staggering new technical innovations at MacWorld, with five new types of plastic iMac cover. "We think", he declared, "the most important question this year is going to be: What is your favorite colo[u]r?". That bodes ill for anyone planning a decent conversation with a Mac user, but then, when did Apple product launchs ever help that? Collectors can now buy iMacs in strawberry, original blueberry, grape, lime and tangerine: all the colours of the Apple logo apart from, you can't help but notice, "lemon yellow". Unconnected research shows the new flashy G3s have beautiful organic lines, diddy little round mice, no SCSI support, no serial port and no floppy drive, but that's okay, because all the Mac peripheral manufacturers will be going bust trying to inventory all these new colours anyway. And what if you liked beige? http://www.apple.com/powermac/benchmark.html - innovative new spelling of integer, too... http://www.microsoft.com/mac/whoarewe/whoarewe5.htm - "We don't wake up in the morning dreaming of world domination" we live it! Jobs also used the keynote to plug CONNECTIX's new Playstation emulator - an instant solution for the Mac game famine, he said. Connectix themselves were eyeing the exits. Scared silly of a pre-launch injunction by Sony, the company is now waiting for the cold hand of the multinational "fixers" to fall. Their unofficial defence, should anyone ask before shuriken-ing them to the walls and sending the pieces to Tokyo, is this: Given that Sony make a loss on the PSX itself and only make cash on game sales, they would be fools to sue, wouldn't they? Unless, that is, somebody points out that it's a *lot* easier to chip an emulator than a black box. Hell, out here in insecure platform land, you can't even tie down a pre-release PSX emulator beta for the PC without... I think we've said too much. http://www.davesclassics.com/psxemu.html - Well, it was here, all 110KB of it... called bleem.zip http://astalavista.box.sk/ - hold on, let me... you didn't see this, okay? http://dialspace.dial.pipex.com/town/estate/dh69/clear/ - bringing "gamers into contact with the seedier parts of the Net" And pity now, if you did not pity them before, the citizens of MILTON KEYNES. Many years ago, as a bright New Town, the planners decided on a municipal TV cable system, free for all. Economic fashions changed, though, from Maynard Keynes to Milton Friedman, and that monopoly was privatised - to that native son of the free market, British Telecom. They set about charging 30 quid a year - even though both satellite and RF alternatives were impossible for most Keynesians, due to restrictive planning regulations and poor signal strength. Imagine, then, the localised rejoicing when the EC demanded that BT sell its franchise. The bidding is up this month the MK's new Info-Laird. Surely anyone must be better than BT? Guess what, Milton Keynes? Microsoft wants the franchise. Oh, and Westminster? You're next. http://www.bt.com/ - frying pan http://www.microsoft.com/ - rotisserie >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious NYT pronounces "Linux" like "Cynics" - we wish... LIAM drops ten places in "most popular baby names" poll... INTERNETFCI taking this Euro thing a bit too far at http://www.thenet.co.uk/ ... MICROSOFT Tinky Winky planned... +++ ATH for HAYES... GATES piemen fined 50UKP - catch it again at http://www.ntk.net/gates/creamedgates.mpg ... Teens Can Refuse Gang Membership Without Serious Harm, study reveals ... ABC News repeat "funny foreign film re-titling" list: claim Chinese correspondent checked out details... MICROSOFT BACKUP 95 proves to be incompatible with Microsoft Backup 98... Hacker crew announce they've changed their mind about declaring war on China, Iraq... ZAPATA stocks leap after press release announces intention to become an "Amazon associate"... MS buys MechWarrior, plans to port exo-skeletons to Windows CE... http://beta.go.com/Community/Entertainment/Food_and_drink/ Cooking/Nutrition/Eating_disorders - so that's Bulimia as a category of entertainment?... Linda Tripp welches on paying for lindatripp.com ... .NET MAGAZINE plugs Ninfomania - yeah? huh? We'll take you all on, we don't care... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Well, if you didn't make it to the CES, let SGI's "Visual Computing Breakthrough" come to you, in a semi-simultaneous worldwide launch next Mon 11/01/99. "Any workstation can do graphics," SGI reveal, but "only one is designed to make you say 'IT'S ALIVE'". Frankenstein/ NT comparisons aside, the question that'll bring these events alive is apparently not "When's the Linux port?" (soon, my children, soon) but "Why is the Softimage performance so poor?" http://www.cesweb.org/ - well, it's near the Star Trek Experience http://www.sgibreakthrough.com/worldevents.html - hope they do songs like for the Octane... http://www.ntk.net/ads/dream.mp3 - "I have a dream - and it's called a graphics pipe" >> TRACKING << making good use of the things that we find "It may not physically *be* a C64, but ethically it's similar" wrote one comp.sys.cbm revisionist about the WEB.IT. We spent forty-five seconds with one, physically if not ethically. Extensive tests show cover of box to be cardboard. Inside, it really does look like a C64 from a reality where the Amiga never happened. It has a C= key. It's got 16MB of RAM, 16MB ROM, and 2MB of flash ROM, but no hard drive. PCMCIA, pen pad and infrared, but you have to plug it into the telly. The CPU is an AMD variant called an ELAN (not an Enterprise Elan?), which broadly equates to a 100Mhz 486. We have Lotus AmiPro, 1-2-3 Netscape 3.0, Lotus Organiser, IBM PC-DOS (yes!), and Windows 3.1 - oh, and that C64 emulator - in ROM. IBM, Lotus, Phoenix and AMD logos all over the box, but no mention of Microsoft, until you read the fine print that explains that Windows has been licensed by IBM courtesy of a legal loophole that Microsoft can do nothing about. Such pluck! Due in this country "uh, soon", at "uh, 300UKP? 400?". Doomed to fail. But what glorious protracted swansongs these Commodores machines do have. http://www.commodore64.com/ - anyone got the rights to the PET? >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista relativistic nonlinear optics... BLUE JAM returns ... location, location, location: ftp://opensores.thebunker.net/ ... Jubilee line tubes to have "black box recorder"... MCDONALDS runs out of Big Macs... what UFOlogists do on their days off: http://www.synicon.com.au/sw/yhead/yhead.htm ... Best meme of 1999: Cypherpunk Porn http://www.sfweekly.com/archives/1998/123098/nightcrawler1.html ... real cypherpunk porn at: http://www.zks.net/ ... Which of these images is not like the others? http://machines.hyperreal.org/manufacturers/Sequential/images/ ... "one of the judges is the famous VF tetsujin and expert Wolf player Bun Bun"... kind of want them to stay that way, don't you - http://www.silentmajority.co.uk/ >> GEEK MEDIA << may contain strongly-typed language TV>> Kathy Burke! The camp bloke off The Thin Blue Line! A title borrowed, a la Knowing Me Knowing You, from an Abba song! The portents are, we're sorry to say, not good for dire-looking sex sitcom GIMME GIMME GIMME (9pm, Fri, BBC2)... oh, and maybe they should set up a helpline for those disappointed by the new series of freshly on-the-dole FRASIER (10pm, Fri, C4)... C5 strays into actual '70s soft-porn with EMMANUELLE (11.15pm, Fri, C5) to tempt you away from the story of sci-fi synthers The Human League on YOUNG GUNS (GO FOR IT) (11.20pm, Fri, BBC2) - apparently Phil Oakey found one of those singer girls "working as a waitress in a cocktail bar"... BBC2's "Time Season" warps between HG Wells classic THE TIME MACHINE (2.15pm, Sat, BBC2), mental perception docu WHAT MAKES US TICK (6.50pm, Sat, BBC2) and, further taunting dedicated fans, a completely out-of-sequence off-schedule flashback-based SEINFELD (12.05am, Sat, BBC2)... ITV a little more honest than usual about its peaktime offerings in transmission-blooper clip show TV NIGHTMARES (9pm, Sat, ITV)... and genuine serial fans will know that the "Scorpio" guy in DIRTY HARRY (10.15pm, Sat, ITV) is based on the real-life "Zodiac killer"... mysteriously, last year the BBC showed the movie version of STARGATE (7.25pm, Sun, BBC1) exactly 15 days later and 15 minutes earlier... it's a repeat, but Steve Coogan has never been funnier as when rabidly declaring I'M ALAN PARTRIDGE (10.40pm, Sun, BBC1)... sticking with lady-boys, unfortunate scheduling threatens to confuse anyone who tunes into the transsexual taxi driver in strange but funny THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN (9.30pm, Mon, BBC2) while looking for the transsexual prostitute in London docu-soap PADDINGTON GREEN (9.30pm, Mon, BBC1)... well, we didn't think the William Gibson episode of The X Files was that bad, at least compared to the hacker story in NASH BRIDGES (10.40pm, Mon, ITV)... and Ken Loach's KES (10pm, Mon, C4) depicts the tragedy of young geeks forced into amateur falconry before low-cost home computers became widely available... BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (6.45pm, Wed, BBC2) perks up again with the virgin Xander vs preying mantis episode... check http://www.schnews.org.uk/ for how train hijacking made THE MARK THOMAS COMEDY PRODUCT (11pm, Wed, C4) Britain's first light entertainment show with a nuclear capability... and attention all borderline-clinical musical prodigies! As SHINE proves (9.30pm, Thu, BBC1), all you need is a good woman to take you in, listen to your problems, then charge large crowds lots of money to come and see you... FILM>> by now you should be aware of the rich disappointments within both STAR TREK: INSURRECTION (imdb: youth / based-on-tv-series / futuristic / honor / patriotism / sequel / spacecraft / space / star-trek) and gross made-for-TV Irvine Welsher THE ACID HOUSE (imdb: based-on-novel), but this week's releases bring even greater controversy... thoughtful but confused anti-American actioner THE SIEGE (imdb: army / bombing / cia / fbi / new-york / terrorism) has already caused US reviewers to question its depiction of "Marshal Law" (sic), while the second issue of "Arcade" magazine boldly and consistently spells the title as "The Seige"... Gus Van Sant puts the "Master" back into "Norman Bates" in his not entirely pointless PSYCHO (imdb: based-on-novel / controversial / cult-favorites / detective / dominant-mother / rain / masturbation-scene / money / mother / birds / dead / shower / house / murder / bathroom / psychological / stolen-money / swamp / thief / toilet / transvestitism) - a terrifying glimpse of what Hitchcock could have achieved if only he'd been able to draw on acting talent like Anne Heche and Vince Vaughn, had been able to film it in colour (wait a minute, it was 1960, he could have!), and had wanted to make it, inexplicably, much less frightening... London-release mental mayhem PI (imdb: paranoia / pi / self-mutilation / surreal / chaos-theory / computers / cult-favorites / delusion / judaism / low-budget / mathematical-equation / mathematics) is far from perfect, but steals from all the right places (a camera strapped to the hero's chest, Jim Flint's Habitus, Arthur C Clarke's The Nine Billion Names Of God). "Maybe Pi is the name of God," ponders one imdb comment. "Try pronouncing an infinite random number!"... but infinitely preferable to Jane Horrocks's follow-up to impersonating the whole Eastenders cast in her stupid LITTLE VOICE (imdb: based-on-play). This time she sings in such unerring mimicry of Judy Garland, Shirley Bassey, Marilyn Monroe etc that you're convinced it's lip-syncing - wouldn't it have been cleverer to have her doing songs that *they never actually sang* in their distinctive style, like genius Elvis tribute act, The King?... THEY TRIED TO LAY THEIR "FOUL EGGS" IN OUR MOUTHS>> the NESTLE ROLO COOKIES 'N' CARAMEL EGG is at least a step in the right direction, but CADBURY continue senseless experimentation in the form of their sickly oversweet ORANGE EGG - like the standard Creme Egg (or Velvet - see [NTK 1998-01-23], but stuffed with yucky choccy-box filling... continuing the Alien theme, big tip for '99 is CADBURY'S YOWIE, the eco-friendly incitement to "collect a series of easy-to-assemble replica creatures from within the chocolate tummies of the lovable Yowie characters"... our current chief source of Phenylalanine? HORLICKS MALTISSIMO low-cal instant chocolate drink, available in plain, Mocha or Tiramisu (can't wait for Buddy Holly TV ad: "if you knew/ Tiramisu"), and price-fighting those innumerable OPTIONS and a CADBURY'S CARAMEL CHOCOLATE BREAK hybird we spotted briefly last year... roving snack spotter LEE MAGUIRE is first to report the truly dramatic sounding CRUNCHIE EXPLOSION (UKP0.38): honeycomb slab replaced with "granules", of which 7 per cent are Space Dust-style "popping candy". Subject describes the experience as "fantastic, like eating a Crunchie while it's still alive"... while we await further confirmation of MATT LOCKE's sighting of the (biscuit-free?) MUNCHIES BAR (UKP1.20) - not to be confused with the shameless counter-intuitive downsizing of MONSTER MUNCH: "From now on, Monster Munch will come in New Bitesize, so there will be more pieces in every bag, ensuring even more monstrous fun every time!"... on the streets (of London at least): redecoration of tasteful SEATTLE COFFEE HOUSEs as garish STARBUCKS has begun, also slight price hike in the form of discarded "small" size (though apparently they still have it if you ask)... this month's taste abomination: even SMARTIES (UKP0.30) aren't revealing what their new "Mystery Blue Flavour" is supposed to be, because it's part of a competition to win 100 PlayStations. Our current best guess: blueberry bubblegum. Our backup option: just revolting... >> 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 " under more bloody ISO8601 peer pressure from http://www.tbtf.com/ " NEEED 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 helped by THE ILLUMINATI and UNFORTU.NET. They worry about us, but we don't worry about them. (K) 1999 Special Projects. Non-business copying is fine, but retain SMALL PRINT. Contact terry@spesh.com for commercial license details. Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com.