Need To Know 1998-05-22

archive

"The launch event... will focus on the two specific issues of copyright and education which we believe pose the greatest threat to music and its creators." - invite to launch of British Music Rights manifesto (Royal Festival Hall, 27/05/98, e-mail britishmusic@bmr.org) they'll never find the MP3 sites if they can't read... >> HARD NEWS << in garish hues MICROSOFT continued to act out their "weakest 800-pound gorilla ever to stalk the Earth" routine this week, as they reeled in mock astonishment from the inevitable DOJ/State Attorneys General lawsuits. Bill played for time, pleading with the authorities to postpone the wrangling over Windows 98 until 1999, when he was sure it would sort itself out. There were signs, however, that Gates' wimp mask is beginning to slip. Shortly after the action was filed, a US communications satellite "ceased to function", taking out vital pager services and public radio across the continent. Was this the "damage to the economy" Bill was hinting at last week? One satellite per week, Mr Klein, until you submit to our demands... http://www.news.com/News/Item/0,4,22227,00.html - no, Mr Andreessen - I expect you to *die*! http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases3/micros/ms_index.htm - world domination. The same old dream http://www.microsoft.com/games/urbanassault/ - they trying to tell us something? Probably not an auspicious week, then, for MOTOROLA to ink a deal with TELEDESIC, merging their high-bandwidth, global data wherever you want it, low-earth-orbit satellite constellations. Or maybe it is _ after all, Teledesic is backed by Bill G, and with their main competitor now their bestest friend (to the tune of some $750 million for a 26% share in the project), Teledesic looks to be developing a monopoly in the space-based Net, too. That is, of course, if it all works. Everyone's waiting for this September, when Motorola's lower-fi proof-of-concept voice 'n' pager network, Iridium, gets plugged in. So who do you get to cheer? Well, UK/French Matra Marconi is in the Teledesic deal somewhere, and you can always put a shout out for Hammersmith-Broadway-Shopping-Centre-based ICO, who aren't as flashy, aren't as rich, are only providing global mobile phone functionality, and haven't really got going yet. But *they* are British. Hoo...ray. http://www.teledesic.com/ - what to call the new system? Mmm. "Skynet" has a nice ring... http://www.ico.com/ - "bent-pipe analogue transponders" http://www.sat-net.com/L.Wood/ - orbiting NTK subscriber Some tricky decisions for our automated FALCO monitor this week. *Another* Brit Web agency (CHBi) got bought by *another* bunch of brash New Yorkers (but this time, Razorfish, have the nicer GIFs). Following Online Magic's almost total assimilation by agency.com, we're pegging this as a Falco for CHBi. Elsewhere, academic cleverclogs KBW merged with Oyster "10 Downing Street" Systems, to become Oyster Partners. We'll peg that down as death to KBW, which is unfair, but - nah, we don't care. FalcooOoo! http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?back=a98/now0213.txt&l=306#l - So let's imagine I'm a new subscriber. What's "Falco?" http://www.teammanager.com/falco/ - Way New Dead >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious AOL to nab ICQ for $300 million - who says you can't buy off your buddies?... Keith Teare's REALNAMES are *paying* Altavista for their appearances... TRIPOD offer "Ask Evel Knievel" column... EU currency hologram "goes missing"... Members of SCOTTISH FREE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH slam *own* Website: "Two thirds of all downloads on the Internet are pornographic. Do we want our magazine to appear on something, two thirds of which is for utter depravity?"... RIAA begins suing MPEG3 IRC channel ops... COMPUSERVE announces Sinatra death: runs picture of Curly Watts... Porn as percentage of total video sales in AUSTRALIA: 20% - anyone told Lynda La Plante? ... Future's PLAYSTATION TIPS mag gives cheat for ReBoot that lets you play "as Eno" - what, *Brian* Eno? ... THE ONION'z timing strikes again: http://www.theonion.com/onion3319/schoolshooting.html >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Appropriately enough, the year's sweatiest video game tradeshow, E3, happens next week in Atlanta, Georgia - unofficial humidity capital of the Deep South. Among the "still going" claims from Nintendo, Sega et al, will be formerly cred Gen X author DOUGLAS COUPLAND, adding weight to the claim that he's "lost it" with his inspired, insightful new title for Prima Games Publishing: Lara's Book - Lara Croft And The Tomb Raider Phenomenon. http://e3.emu-land.org/ - "through the eyes of two computer nerds" (unique perspective) If it's May, then it must be SCRAMBLING FOR SAFETY time. If you want to hear the people behind the DTI and EC crypto proposals, and then hear lots of other people ask entertainingly awkward questions back, this is the event for you. All the usual suspects are attending - DTI spokesman Nigel Hickson, the gentle Mr Ross Anderson, the God-like Whit Diffie, and Simon "How did you find out I work for Privacy International?" Davies. More fun than bear-baiting and with greater ramifications for the online community too. Install a backdoor in *your* diary for Friday, 29/05/98, 9.50AM - 1700PM, at the Bloomsbury Theatre, London. Tickets are free for the general public, but you should register first (with your PGP key) at the URL below. http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/users/rja14/sfs98.html - Can I bring my nyms? The KLF clearly left room for improvement; Londoners everywhere can join this year's attempt to hack the Turner Prize at the LONDON BRIDGE event from 7.45-9.15am next Fri (29/05/98). Passing commuters will be issued with "designer headwear made from paper card... constructed on the split headband principle... customarily referred to as 'ears'" - to make for a funnier-than-usual webcam netcast. Remarkable ears are also a minor selling point of Planet Mirth's Ben Moor, and his one-man high-energy physics family drama A SUPERCOLLIDER FOR THE FAMILY - your "last chance" to catch it is at the Grace Theatre at the Latchmere, London SW11, 2000PM next Thu or Fri, or possibly in Bath sometime in June. http://www.londonbridge29may.com - then they split the cash between participants? http://www.latchmere.co.uk/grace.htm - "The world's best feelgood movie that never got made" (The Times) >> TRACKING << head up! load down! Enough selfless dedication to the Mozilla project! Enough ceaseless work on XML parsers, IRC Perl interfaces, and dull bug patches to GNU libraries! You're the very model of a Open Source contributor, and now you want to HAVE SOME FUN. Can we suggest you take a look at SABRE, the Free Software flight simulator? It runs on Linux and Windows 95, looks smoochy in hi-res SVGA graphics, and has all the source you'd ever want to idly toy with. Alternatively, you could download, kick it up, and watch the flashencockpits und blinkenHUDs. As an added bonus, the "Flight Model" is so simplistic, you can actually fly the plane without having taken a degree in aeronautics. http://sabre.cobite.com/ - the original homepage... http://sabre.cobite.com/guide6.html - but this is why we like it By now, you've probably heard what the big AMIGA news was last week. If you haven't, we bet you don't even care. But for those of you who love the Amiga scene, not for the the endlessly postponed OS announcements, but for the flush- faced camaraderie, the real news is the release of the brand new Amiga theme song, "Back for the Future". Teutonic in flavour, and insufficiently martial for our liking (we hoped it would sound like the Red Army Choir on the eve of the Battle of Stalingrad), it should nonetheless bring a tear to anyone who had an Amiga Forever sig. A CD of the song is also available, which features an extended remix, the Boing Ball noise and a speech by Petro Tyschtschenko. You think we'd make this stuff up? http://www.amiga.de/gb/Produkte/ThemeCD.html - only 14,95 Deutschmark! http://www.epicmarketing.ltd.net/theme.html - or 4.99UKP + 1UKP P&P! http://home.t-online.de/home/ripera/nxef-1.htm - Pop-up on ANNEX, the band: they are "fine dancers" http://www.amigainc.com/051598-woa.html - oh, alright, have your boring Amiga OS news, then. >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista TOM CHRISTIANSEN sets off nukes in the Perl vs gnu.misc.discuss wars... SPRINGER does bestiality... BlueTooth ... Dreamcast - yuk... arrosage vs polluriel ... http://emptywebsite.com/ ... PANAMSAT was in "safe mode" before accident, press officer claims - but was networking turned on?... referring to domestic/work problems as "planet killers/extinction level events"... http://google.stanford.edu ... So is DIMENSION MUSIC buying up *everybody* in the MP3 community? ... forget digital cameras: www.imagek.com ... www.denounce.com ... This week's tip comes from LYCOS: "The minus sign (-) excludes words from your search. Example: bill clinton -roger" ... Adam and Joe meet TROOPS.MOV - www.jedinet.com/cinema/ ... >> GEEK MEDIA << what the well-read autistic is watching TV>> some tasty morsels, but surely EC health regs prevent excessive consumption of Victor Lewis-Smith's TV OFFAL (11pm, Fri, C4)... fans *wish* there had "only one" with the arrival of HIGHLANDER III: THE SORCERER (10.25pm, Fri, BBC1)... sadly, it isn't Kevin Kelly on the receiving end of a fatal drugs overdose in John Belushi bio-pic WIRED (12.40am, Fri, "some" ITV)... and, enraged by Lewis-Smith's pranks, a wheelchair-bound physicist goes on a murderous rampage in THE CRIMES OF STEPHEN HAWKE (2.40am, Fri, C4)... this week's C4 theme night based around cheaty-pants panel- game re-creation QUIZ SHOW (9pm, Sat, C4)... if you only ever see one episode of SOUTH PARK (10pm, Sat, Sky1; repeated 11pm, Sun), make sure it's the debut of magic excrement, and '90s icon, "Mr Hankey"... Roger Corman's "cult" (ie dreadful) THE DAY THE WORLD ENDED (1.30am, Sat, BBC2) unwittingly heralds a brief sci-fi season called - unbelievably - "Out Of This World"... and two words sum up Altman's SHORT CUTS (2240, c5): *long film*... Muhammad Ali docu WHEN WE WERE KINGS (9.50pm, Sun, BBC2) punches out parping Brit comedy BRASSED OFF (9pm, Sun, C4) - like The Full Monty, but with trombones!... 15 years, and they still haven't made a hacker movie more elite than WARGAMES (3.55pm, Mon, BBC1)... Rachel "Chain Reaction" Weisz looks less attractive than ever in Euro '96-set romance MY SUMMER WITH DES (9pm, Mon, BBC1)... and Hollywood's obsession with Tibet now traced back to bizarro Eddie Murphy vehicle THE GOLDEN CHILD (10.40pm, Mon, BBC1)... self-flagellating heavy-handed beeb satire IN THE RED (9pm, Tue, BBC2) unlikely to be as funny as US teens vs Commies classic RED DAWN (9pm, Tue, C5)... plus: repeats for award-winning I'M ALAN PARTRIDGE (10pm, Tue, BBC2).... FOR THE LOVE OF (2.20am, Tue, C4) looks at numbers - especially 23... best www.ntk.net/killer comment for the final episode of KILLER NET (10pm, Tue, C4) comes from Keith Lawler: "I waited patiently for someone to point out that he [DS Collingwood] played Jerec in Jedi Knight. You'd think he'd remember."... and no doubt it's logical chronology rather than pseudo- porn ratings-grabbing that ensures an early outing for the "reproduction" episode of THE HUMAN BODY (10.20pm, Wed, BBC1)... FILM>> cyborg powersuit comedy STAR KID (MPAA rated: PG for "fantasy combat violence and language") is, at last, a kids' version of The Terminator - and no, Terminator 2 doesn't count... low-key indie smartass Tom DiCillo turns on the modelling business in THE REAL BLONDE (imdb: satire / gay / career / film-industry / dog / sexual- harassment / actors / soap / money / waiter / modelling / acting) - but hasn't twigged that he'll never be as good again as Living In Oblivion... like any good car crash, move on, there's nothing to see in wholly unnecessary sequel BLUES BROTHERS 2000 (MPAA rated: PG-13 for "exotic dancing and some language") - worst of all, it isn't even set in the year 2000!... FIGHT TO REPLY>> many have leapt to the defence of Lynda LaPlante's much maligned Killer Net, some not even directly linked to the making of the programme... DAVID AMOR confesses "I was the consultant that LaPlante Productions hired to advise on the script," and goes on to reassure us that the tech stuff *was* all theoretically possible, albeit highly unlikely. "I know what can and can't be done on the Internet," he concludes. "Please keep my e-mail address anonymous." Smart move, David - apparently there's some real nutjobs out there... MARK JORDAN of Compuhire wasn't too proud to admit that "I run the company which provided Killer Net with all the computer hardware and software... as well as your Technical Criticisms I would also welcome any comments on how you would prefer to see the net portrayed on UK film & TV productions." Hmm, how about moderately sensibly, like in Neighbours? That'd be a start... and re: the "75 [or 90] per cent of material on the Net is porn" debate [see NTK 08/05/98], .net editor RICHARD LONGHURST responds "It heartens me to see that you at NTK bother to read .net, though you obviously failed to appreciate the Killer Net rent-a-stat irony." Oh, .net is supposed to be *ironic* now is it? Well, *that's* a relief... Arawak's SHANE WALTER ingeniously queried our description of the ICA's ONEDOTZERO2 [also NTK 08/05/98] as the "usual blurry nonsense", proclaiming "nothing usual about this stuff matey! ...we replaced the workstations with Sony PlayStations for the week... conceptual art went out the window as the black sweatered art elite tore up track in Gran Turismo!" Hey, maybe that'll get them to up the frame rates in their "art"... "Thanks for mis- representing my comments about PGP so wildly in your newsletter," chortles Chris Ward-Johnson (aka The Times' Interface DR KEYBOARD). "Pity you didn't see fit to carry my subsequent article on it - or perhaps you do know some way to ensure the provenance of a public key without some secure method of transmission?" Well, you could just phone them up with your PGP *fingerprint* (unless you don't trust the phones, in which case your "secure FTP" solution sounds a bit silly, doesn't it?), or build up a trust network using the public keyservers - though surely a *real* doctor would know that?... and finally, thanks to everyone who pointed out that typing "Need To Know" into www.realnames.com [NTK 08/05/98] actually takes you to a syphilis information page, but the last word goes to LLOYD WOOD, who contrasts line 171 in NTK 17/04/98 ("...shut the HELL UP") with line 52 in NTK 18/07/97 ("...shut the fuck up!"), positing that we used "hell" more in 1998 and "fuck" more in '97 - "Either all the amusement's gone out of it now the CDA's toast, or you guys are slowly losing your balls... still, it's a necessary move for mass-market American acceptance." Au contraire, Lloyd, au contraire - a quick session with our search CGI reveals that NTK has *already* used as many cuss-words in 1998 than in the whole of last year, ie (1997 values in brackets): 9 (9) fucks, 9 (12) shits, 1 (0) cunts, 5 (2) bollocks, 1 (0) use of the phrase "sucks dogs' cocks in hell" and - for all you www.screenit.com fans out there - 3 (6) uses of "God" and 0 (2) uses of "Jesus" as exclamations... >> 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 "sharing its birthday with Java. *Uh*-oh." 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@unfortu.net with 'unsubscribe ntknow'. Subscribe? Mail majordomo@unfortu.net with 'subscribe ntknow'. NTK now is helped by VIRGIN NET, VENUS INTERNET and UNFORTU.NET. They worry about us, but we don't worry about them. (K) 1998 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.