Need To Know 2000-07-14

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"We are completely network agnostic. In fact, we would invest in broadband carrier pigeons if someone could find a way for them to deliver two megabits into the home." - BRUCE LYNN, group manager of network solutions at Microsoft http://www.zdnet.com/intweek/stories/news/0,4164,2603396,00.html ...and they didn't threaten our monopoly of shitting on the customer >> HARD NEWS << badly skewed As NTK readers' attention spans collapse under the barrage of our saturation RIP coverage, we thought we'd enter a bit of a quiet period. But afore we go, one final glimpse at the one remaining pressure group still supporting the Bill: self-proclaimed protector of the kids, BARONESS THORNTON (wife of anti-RIP rentaquote, John Carr). In the dying moments of the Lords debate, the good Baroness launched a spectacular, and somewhat desperate, attack on critics of the Bill. To a rapt house, the Baroness unveiled a conspiracy in which RIP critics "would like to have the regime which exists in America, which is protected by the First Amendment and which has no constraints at all." And what could such extremism lead to? "In America, children are kidnapped. In America, there is no restriction on the paedophile activity which can take place... I do not want the Internet in the rest of the world to operate under that regime." Unfortunately for the Baroness, the kidnappers have already taken over by fooling us into signing the European Convention on Human Rights. We'll see whether RIP makes it past that. Oh, and the eagle-eyed Baroness "noticed that not a single childcare organisation or organisation involved with the education of the young and their relationship to the Internet is involved in [the RIP] campaign." Well, Baroness, maybe you'd like to visit www.peacefire.org, where views of "the users with whom we are concerned - the children, the young and those who are vulnerable" are given. Weirdly, a lot of kids seem to quite like this free speech filth. Hope that doesn't mean you won't listen to what they have to say. Or give them a chance to say it. http://www.fipr.org/rip/RIPLordsReportDebate2.htm#00713-06_spnew0 - of course, RIP has little to do with Free Speech http://www.fipr.org/rip/RIPLordsReportDebate2.htm#00713-12_spnew0 - unless, of course, they're planning to use it to silence critics On the other hand, those God-fearing Yanks who regularly pepper Demon subscribers with accusations of Satanism must have felt vindicated this week, when DIS's ancient sacrificial pit at Finchley finally burst into flames. Recollections are a little confused: initial reports suggested that the remaining staff had self-immolated; subsequent enquiries showed it to be a tar boiler on the roof. Brave descriptions of company directors battling it out on the rooftops of North London contrast with more anonymous messages from Demon employees complaining about having to stand around in the rain. We did, though, like the dry Demon de-briefing report which paused in mid-drama to not that just as everyone was running around with extinguishers, "a passer-by came in through the front door and explained that the building was on fire". The man was thanked for his powers of observation. You see, all that diplomacy on demon.service proved useful after all... http://www.ntk.net/2000/07/14/demonfire.jpg - piccie moved just in case it's a sackable offence or something http://gr.mlive.com/news/index.ssf?/news/stories/20000218gprofilte113811.frm - this is because they run those dirty newsgroups http://www.the-times.co.uk/interface/insight/story667.html - unfortunate use of phrase "hardcore option" >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious RAILTRACK finally spring for a disk drive for the BBC Micro: http://www.ntk.net/2000/07/14/dohtrain.jpg ... no, JIMMY SAVILLE Have I Got News For You "transcript" cannot be "for real" ... Q Magazine looks close to home for its Website picks: http://www.ntk.net/2000/07/14/dohq.jpg ... "Around 75pc of Britain's dotcom millionaires live within a 10-mile radius of Notting Hill, W11" - ie: *in London*, reveals DOTCOM.TELEGRAPH ... English innings collapse again, thanks to "triangle" http://www.ntk.net/2000/07/14/dohsport.jpg ... . Our Campaign to Keep Small Business Off The Internet, Pt 2: http://www.briarmistcats.btinternet.co.uk ... taking the title http://www.useit.com/ a bit *too* literally: http://www.classicbookshelf.com/ ... more advertising truth in javascript - see the 'offer legal notice' link at http://www.ondigital.co.uk/getondigital_form.asp ... http://www.macthings.net/ webmaster apologises for "the Japanese Porn website which was replaced with Mac Things" - but did the Japanese Porn fans notice? ... wash mouth out with SOAP http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/reg/soap4j.nsf/resultsQ4www >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Rather more on-the-ball (than us) reader Michael Bluett pointed out that ARS DIGITA's LONDON 3-WEEK BOOT CAMP [NTK 2000-07-07] has been full since "3rd July", boasting that he is "attending the event along with 19 other initiates". So, by way of apology, this week we've pulled out all the stops to find the dream assignment for NTK's core demographic: the OPEN AUDITION FOR STAR TREK CREW MEMBERS - from 9am, Thu 2000-07- 20, Science Museum, London. The positions involve showing punters round the Museum's forthcoming "Star Trek: Federation Science" exhibition from Sept 2000 to April 2001. Salary (full- or part-time) is a Ferengi-esque UKP6.07 per hour though "all successful applicants will be provided with Star Trek costumes" (wear it to the audition if you've already got one); candidates should additionally bring a CV, a 200-word piece on "What I see the role of a Star Trek Crew Member at the Science Museum to be", and - presumably - an inability to distinguish fantasy from reality. http://www.nmsi.ac.uk/science_museum_fr.htm - no mention here; it was a job ad in "The Metro". No, really. http://www.arsdigita.com/events/event-info?event_id=1610 - Ars Digita threaten even *more* intensive "long weekend" http://laughpage.com/archive/jokes/j-par-10.html - "cause ev'ry girl's frightened/ of a Star Trek fan" >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Far be it for us to intimate that MOZILLA has been hijacked by the same naive completeness fanatics that collapse so many free software projects into development black-holes, but ... oh come on, two years and counting? Seventy megabytes of swap? Per *window*? Hello? Is there some kind of AOL/ crack cocaine stock-swap going down at Mountain View? The beauty of Open Source, though, is that say you *could* do without Mozilla's built-in WYSIWIG HTML editor, Mail handler, News reader, IRC client, xterm replacement, run-time XML UI interpreter, cross-platform high-level C++ widget set, and re-implementation from scratch of Microsoft's entire COM system, you can. And, thank God, someone has. GALEON is a Gnome application that uses Chris Blizzard's minimalist wrapper around the Mozilla HTML rendering routines. It's little. It's fairly stable. It takes less than an hour to load. It lets you look at Web pages. Think of it as salvage. http://galeon.sourceforge.net/ - you'll still need to download Mozilla for now http://www.mozilla.org/ - we're on a mission from God. Still. >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista BUENA VISTA FIGHT CLUB ... off-cam and well out of order at Jennicam: http://www.latitude11.com/laststory.html ... Gameboy Slim: http://remix.overclocked.org/ ... HOLY GRAIL found: http://home.earthlink.net/%7ebhami/rosetta.html ... will the public ever tire of pictures of puppets having sex? http://www.kama-sooty.co.uk/ ... the anti-Martin Lewis: http://www.brutal.com/ ... how about "because it crashes Netscape?" http://www.whynotchemeng.com/ ... the ASDA difference: http://www.shinylime.free-online.co.uk/Asda.html ... first blue "Cheese and Onion" crisps, now GREEN KETCHUP http://www.infobeat.com/stories/cgi/story.cgi?id=2567997089-b5d ... I am not a hideously deformed NATHAN BARLEY - I'm a human being! http://www.hoki.com/hoki_newmedia/flash/who.htm ... Diana may have been decapitated by sheet of glass: http://dccsa.com/greatjoy/anti.html ... DIY MACOSrumors: http://www.themacjunkie.com/archives/7.11.00.rumors.html ... "Adam & Joe Show" makers WORLD OF WONDER imitate THE ONION http://www.thesmokinggun.com/doc_o_day/plumbingsuit1.html http://www.theonion.com/onion3601/plumbing_industry.html ... at last! a site *entirely* devoted to (dismissing rumours about) BRITNEY SPEARS' BREASTS http://bsrumor.8m.com/ vs http://www.britney-spears.com/images/boobs.gif ... >> GEEK MEDIA << the less rude www.tvgohome.com TV>> hopefully realising that the film is effectively *about* the artificiality of "authenticity", Mark Kermode grills Ridley Scott about what's "really going on" ON THE EDGE OF BLADE RUNNER (11.10pm, Sat, C4) - preceded by the rubbish voiceover-free "DIRECTOR'S CUT" (9pm). Most plausible theory: the film's full of wacky continuity errors ignored by style- over-content director Scott, then over-analysed by detective- mystery-crazed fans... almost exactly a month and 2 years since its last orbit comes above-average Arthur C Clarke adaptation TRAPPED IN SPACE (12.10am, Sat, BBC1)... and C5 interrupts its epic "Disaster Weekend", for blaxploitation classic ELECTRAGLIDE IN BLUE (12.30am, Sat, C5) - not based around the Apollo 440 album of the same name... even their own "panel of experts" have swiftly spotted the glaring flaws in the "best" e-business ideas sent in to THE E-MILLIONAIRE SHOW (9pm, Sun, C4) - we tip humble wheelchair guy to win the final, helpfully preceded the day before by laboured historo- analogy WHEN MONEY WENT MAD: THE STORY OF THE SOUTH SEA BUBBLE (7pm, Sat, C4) and immediately followed by the aptly titled MISERY (10pm, Sun, C4)... TV's "other" neurological Susan [Greenfield] wheels out more brain-damage deficit edutainment in BRAIN STORY (9pm, Tue, BBC2)... Davina "Face of Evil" McCall hosts overhyped survival-webcam yawn BIG BROTHER (9pm, Tue, C4)... while so-called "personalities" discuss their own *fascinating* life stories, in YOU ONLY LIVE ONCE (10pm, Mon, BBC1); their drink/ drugs "hell", in CELEBRITY REHAB (8.30pm, Wed, C4); and how to set the world to rights in terrifying "comedy debate" HEAD ON WITH JO BRAND (10.50pm, Thu, BBC1)... FILM>> for the second time in 3 weeks, controversy-magnet Mel once again implies that the British are "a bunch of chickens" in Roland "ID4" Emmerich's overblown revenge-fuelled shoot- 'em-up THE PATRIOT (http://www.capalert.com: Mel Gibson was perfect for the part of a once-warrior turned pacifist who was forced to return to being a warrior because of the brutality at the hands of another perfectly cast actor; even I queried myself whether I could do what [Gibson] did if one of my sons was murdered before my eyes and to rescue another from hanging - the answer was 'Yes')... otherwise it's Bruce Willis' foolhardily bonkers Vonnegut adaptation BREAKFAST OF CHAMPIONS (imdb: based-on-novel / motor-car-dealer / commercial / cross- dressing / ex-convict / infidelity / lingerie / lounge-singer / nervous-breakdown / writing / black-comedy)... or a double- bill of British-made transport-related romps: Sean Bean, Alex "ER" Kingston's "inspired by the Rettendon Range Rover murders" taste triumph ESSEX BOYS (http://www.bbfc.co.uk: passed '18' for violence, sex, drug use and coarse language) - hopefully paving the way for further dramatisations of ultra- recent mass gangland killings... plus shameless Ringo-free Peter Fonda/ Alec Baldwin Americanisation THOMAS [THE TANK ENGINE] AND THE MAGIC RAILROAD (imdb: henchman / kids-and- family / independent-film) - a project dogged by no little controversy of its own: http://uk.imdb.com/WN?20000710#7 ... PRO-CELEBRITY FEEBDACK>> after our enthusiasm [NTK 2000-06-30] for the US Burger King "Chicken Run" tie-in, STEVE LOUGHRAN added the details that: the TV ad features Aardman chickens pleading with customers to "Eat more [beef] Whoppers", leading to accusations of plagiarism from a fried-chicken chain - full story at http://www.chick-fil-a.com/content/about/news32.htm , http://www.burgerking.com/company/press_releases/07_07_00.htm ... still with film, West End theatre star BEN MOOR queried our dismissal of M:I2 [NTK 2000-07-07], the "slow-mo kung-fu, gravity-defying stunts, and 'Sydney' locations" leading him to the inevitable conclusion: "It's the first film to be set in 'The Matrix' universe!"... while MG MILLER irresistibly combined two of NTK's ongoing fixations by pointing out that Robbie Williams' new single "sounds a bit like" the theme tune from best-selling Amazon video "Chorlton And The Wheelies": http://www.chorltonandthewheelies.co.uk/sounds/chorlton.wav - a theme continued in Williams' own roller-skating body-horror video: http://www.nme.co.uk/newsdesk/20000707130211.html ... Shooting Stars' "George Dawes" and former Creme Egg spokesman MATT LUCAS slammed last week's NESTLE EXPLODING ZOOM sighting, stating they were "actually available last year. I like them", before going on to recommend ROLO BISCUITS: "a delight [which] far outpleasure the Rolo" (well, the new ones are about 6 times the size)... perhaps inspired by BBC2's "Simpsons" night [NTK 2000-06-16], CHRIS TAYLER took it upon himself to contact capalert.com directly over the toon's suitability for family viewing - and they wrote back, warning of "extreme adolescent arrogance against fair parental authority, blatant promotion of freedom from accountability and consequences, too much independence and autonomy too soon for adolescents, many lies about nuclear power, full male rear cartoon nudity"... while, finally, ex-'The Word' presenter ALAN CONNOR thanked us for highlighting screenit.com , where he enjoys gems like "this soundtrack from the movie, Grosse Pointe Blank contains very few examples of objectionable content" - "not including," Alan notes, "the fact that the first minute includes the Violent Femmes' 'Blister In The Sun', a paean to wanking"... but we're sure this is just the tip of the iceberg. Have you tricked a well-meaning Christian reviewer into unwittingly advocating self-abuse? If so, NTK would like to hear from you... >> 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 "between oxbridge and newsgroups" http://www.the-wibble.co.uk/edigi/main.htm#NTK 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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