Need To Know 1998-01-23

archive

"[It] is not amusing, it's stalking and the kind of bonehead behaviour that disfigures the Net." - tgreen@cix.co.uk fights back at NTK's Winder-baiting well, two out of three ain't bad >> HARD NEWS << gumshoes Trapped in a corner of the doomed browser complex, the decimated NETSCAPE troops argue futilely over tactics against the spreading Explorer nest. Unable to take it any longer, Netscape sales guy FRANK HECKER blurts it out "I say we take off and GNU the entire code from orbit!" A crazy idea - so crazy that only Hecker and the hardcore Linuxen at www.slashdot.org were even considering it. But the Netscape board listened - and now they're handing out the entire source to Netscape Communicator 5.0 (with minimal copyright) to anyone who wants in. From March, if you have a C++ compiler, a *very big* compile machine, and a few hours to wait for the builds, you too can play around, fix bugs, add features, and customise Netscape's browser all to hell. The source will be collated and then redistributed by Netscape (who will then presumably plug all the proprietary code, like Java and RSA stuff, back in). And once we've done that, all of us working together for the common good, we can climb into these big Gnuscape exoskeletons we've built and go kick Gates' ass. Or that's the plan. So only question we're left asking is: Is this going to be a standup fight, sir - or just another bughunt? http://www.netscape.com/newsref/pr/newsrelease558.html?cp=nws01flh1 - In case you haven't been paying attention to current events, we just got our asses kicked, pal! http://www.openscape.org/ - Oh you want some too, do you? Huh? Do you? http://people.netscape.com/hecker/ - he can't make that kind of decision, he's just a grunt http://www.gnu.ai.mit.edu/philosophy/free-sw.html - Oh, I get it. They're from that "Aliens". And this Gnu thing? http://www.slashdot.org/slashdot.cgi?mode=article&artnum=499 - they had the skinny; they wear the scoop crown NEW SCOTLAND YARD's Vice Squad made another well-researched foray into Net legislation with the successful prosecution of a Net porn site owner under the Obscene Publications Act at Preston Crown Court. Well, successful in the sense that the man pleaded guilty and may well go to prison. Slightly less successful was the spin taken by Superintendent Martin Jauch, who, according to the police press release, claimed the result showed "a hypertext link on the Internet constitutes a publication for the purposes of the Obscene Publications Act." That's to say, if you *point* to a page that is viewed as obscene, you *yourself* are publishing it. Yahoo and AltaVista should expect the knock on the door any minute now. Footnote: At a conference a year ago, Mr Jauch said that he was not an expert on the Net, but that this did not matter in enforcing the law. http://www.ntk.net/hyperlinks/ - the press release http://www.teleport.com/~room101/badthing/police.htm - an inexpert writes At last, someone's found a way to make money out of Net publishing. When former AMIGA POWER staffers Stuart Campbell and Jonathan Nash stuck their "AP2" tribute page online, they must have worried that it would be of little interest (or comprehensibility) to non-readers (or non- staff) of the deceased Future Publishing mag. Thrillingly, they then discovered their entire site - an estimated 200,000 words - on the cover CD of the current issue of EMAP's CU AMIGA magazine, still containing both their copyright symbols and the unusual claim that "CU Amiga sucks dogs' cocks in hell". Hurry if you want a copy, as the authors believe they may be able to: a) sue EMAP for two person-years of writer's salaries; and b) get CU Amiga injuncted off the shelves. Uberfreelancer Campbell sounds more than capable - only this week, he apparently came within 14 hours of "sending the bailiffs round" to the offices of Edge for late payment on a game review. http://www.cu-amiga.co.uk/cucd/index.html - whatever happened to that Amiga public domain spirit? http://prim1.aqcom.com/ap2/comments/footnotes/good_news.html - yes, piracy is *wrong* (well, when it's companies doing it) In other news, blah blah blah Microsoft blah blah Department of Justice blah blah blah settlement. Blah blah Microsoft will remove browser from Windows 95 installation CD-ROMs after they said it was blah blah [EXPLETIVE DELETED] impossible. Blah blah spokesman said rest of case blah blah unchanged. Microsoft continued to claim blah Special Master Lessig blah blah caught dancing in ladies garments blah blah tattoo of Marc Andreessen underneath blah blah possible impeachment. http://www.theonion.com/onion3302/index3302.html - better jokes at the Onion, as ever: MICROSOFT SIGNS JUSTICE ATTORNEY TO $350 M ENDORSEMENT DEAL >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious Microsoft to buy BT rumour "bollocks"... Birt says "BBC will strive to bring the benefits of the new technologies to every home in the land"... same day, beeb.com sends 5 copies of spam to all subscribers... Wired 6.2 raves about Wit Capital Corp, turns out Wired Ventures part-own it... same week, wired.com spams ad for Wit to all its subscribers... at last, a techno mix of Bittersweet Symphony... whatever happened to FLAMINGO, VNU's answer to "Stuff" magazine?... new US TV game show will feature "opening CD wrappers, jumping over puddles" as contests... www.rant.co.uk gone "biweekly"... Future Publishing being sold - FUTURENET looking shaky?... STARSHIP TROOPERS spin- off single due Feb, features Sarah Brightman... DRUDGE fights claims he is illiterate gossip-monger who got lucky, says "I have an incredible level of credibility"... >> EVENT QUEUE << there's more to outside than the newsagents The gene for DNA-hacking gets *fully* expressed at the ICA tomorrow (24/1/98), when straight-down-the-line Darwinians Helena Cronin and Lee Silver (the geneticist who, in an unguarded moment, told the NY Times that "all of science fiction is true") battle it out with sceptical Steven and Hilary Rose (no relation), and disabled campaigner Tom Shakespeare. Steven "Language Instinct" Pinker will also be speaking, presumably in a creole of his own devising. The niche they fight for is called EVOLUTION REVOLUTION, and tickets are available from the ICA box office at 0171 930 3647. www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/excerpts/dab/0195120353.html - my meme's nicer than your meme http://www.redpepper.org.uk/xcronin.html - my meme can beat your meme easy http://www.redpepper.org.uk/xrose.html - yeah? well your meme wears nazi army boots Although their own site denies it (citing "turmoil in European legislation"), we firmly believe next week to be that of the AMUSEMENT TRADES EXHIBITION INTERNATIONAL at Earls Court, London, 27-29/01/98 - a world of not just arcade coin-ops and "cabinets", but also "dark rides", "pushers", "cranes" and "redemption" (which means machines with tickets that you swap for prizes, rather than the Christian concept of deliverance from the bondage of sin). It coincides - perhaps too conveniently - with the LONDON PARKS & ATTRACTIONS trade event next door - featuring "all aspects of park attractions and major rides." Fountains? Slides? Rollercoasters? Benches? http://www.eco.co.uk/cgi-bin/ecosearch/events.conf?1-98 - then it's the British International Toy & Hobby Fair! http://medoc.ipl.co.uk/abe/newprod.html - Starship Troopers pinball: want to know more? Viva Zapatista (again)! Viva Cyberliberties (again)! Supporters of those redoubtable postmodern Mexican freedom- fighters (or are they poststructuralist terrorists? Perhaps we shall never truly know) are launching a "Zapatista Netstrike" on the 29/01/98 at 4.00pm GMT. The plan is to stage a virtual "sit-in" of a number of prominent mexican Websites - all, they state, "simbols of the mexican neoliberalism". Protesters should enter the URLs provided, then repeatedly press the reload button at the appointed time to make their point felt. Hmm. Call us neoliberal lackeys, but we can't help thinking there are less labour- intensive denial of service attacks than this... http://www.dada.it/stranet/news/ - why didn't the IRA think of this? www.eco.utexas.edu/Homepages/faculty/Cleaver/zapsincyber.html - we explained who they were months ago: do try to keep up >> TRACKING << pings for things Big update to MacOS 8.0 kicking around on Apple's site. No big features to speak of (you were all dying for the DVD support, weren't you?), but worth getting as it does one of those "intangible speed-up" tricks. Biggest gain is on a Java virtual machine that is both faster and more ... shall we say, working than the last one. Also packaged is Navigator 4 and, embarrassingly, Internet Explorer 3. http://www.apple.com/macos/macos8.1/ - NO, there's NO BLOODY SOURCE. STOP ASKING THAT. A little bit of Tracking backlog to clear following last week's unpleasant Windernacht - super-generous Ben Thompson sent his fellow NTK subscribers a Christmas gift which we, typically, forgot to pass on. It's a small applet that he says is "designed for those people in your life who cannot use the address bar or bookmark a page or think that the IE4 Channels is the world's greatest invention." I think you know who he means. And similarly useful tool for those "umm... I know haven't spoken to you for 5 years, weird geek acquaintance, but can you fix this?" moments is QNX, a windowing Web browser/mini-realtime UNIXish OS that boots off one floppy and should allow you to at least dial-in to look up technical info from an otherwise broken machine. Been around for yonks, but we kept forgetting. Sorry. http://www.hadida.com/start/ happy Christmas! http://www.qnx.com/ it *is* cool, though >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista Rich Branson to appear in FRIENDS? ... Chen Tao - upcoming HEAVEN'S GATE copycats?... THUNDERBIRDS movie to star Kristin Scott Thomas... winner of LOEBNER prize gives his thoughts: www.fringeware.com/~robitron/ALTALK.TXT ... best title in SCIENCE for months: "Migrating Planets" ... http://www.movioke.com ... who's the biggest sinner? BOB HOPE http://balaams-ass.com/journal/warnings/bobhope.htm or CHRISTA MCAULIFFE www.trosch.org/for/7j05/7oct05.htm ? .... from Spain: a "LADY DI" commemorative macro virus... the Linux PDA: www.mauve.demon.co.uk/tortoise.html ... RUGRATS movie... HITCH-HIKER'S GUIDE movie agaain... QUAKE dolls: www.cybermodels.co.uk ... are you bigger than ELVIS? www.mcs.net/~jorn/html/finder/elvis.html ... AMERICAN PSYCHO movie exec produced by REM's Michael Stipe... that Whitehouse aide? Sources say it was a BJ... >> GEEK MEDIA << video, feeds TV>> chuckle to another frantically farcical FRASIER (10pm, Fri, C4), then what looks like the spitting image of playboy Web designer Matt Jones in the title role of YOUNG EINSTEIN (1.30am, Fri, LWT + some regions)... Dani Behr's ICE WARRIORS (6.15pm, Sat, ITV) struggle to out-daft Gladiators, and hopefully, following last week's Blind Date revelations, will have one called Cosmo The Infiltrator... if it follows the usual pattern (see current Q Magazine), the voting for the MUSIC OF THE MILLENNIUM (6.30pm, Sat & 7.55pm, Mon-Thu, C4) will actually be unusually skewed towards the music of the last six months... it sounds promising, but KNIGHTRIDER 2000 (4.15pm, Sun, LWT only) eventually ditches the KITT Tranz-Am, David Hasselhof *and* the single mothers on which he invariably preyed, clearing the road for US-only sequel series Team Knight Rider... could the ancients really have written the books of Erich von Daniken?, inquires great-looking sci-fi nonsense STARGATE (7.10pm, Sun, BBC1)... RADICAL HIGHS (7.15pm, Mon, BBC2) confirms it's maybe just a not-so-radical reworking of They Who Dare, with a still-welcome look at illegal BASE jumping... tragically, among the now-unmade episodes of SEINFELD (11.15pm, Tue, BBC2) were plans for "The Surprise Claymation Episode" and "The 3-Inch Kramer"... with one called "In Dino Veritas", SLIDERS (6.45pm, Wed, BBC2) slips further into a universe of dull movie rip-offs and terrible episode titles... and they say that the "3" in ROBOCOP 3 (10.40pm, ITV, Thu) isn't an indication of it being the third in the series - but merely a mark out of 10... FILM>> At last! It's Aliens and The Abyss done as a period costume teenage love story! It's, quite literally, TITANIC (MPAA rated: PG-13 for "disaster related peril and violence, nudity, sensuality and brief language")... let's face it, if Alex "Repo Man" Cox can't even be trusted to host that BBC2 movie slot nowadays, who on earth let him loose on Rebecca De "cod" Mornay's bizarre Vegas gamble THE WINNER (imdb: crime / thriller / comedy)?... botched Irish crime thriller I WENT DOWN (imdb: Ireland / UK) has to be funnier than John Godber's UP AND UNDER (imdb: comedy / rugby), if only because the former *doesn't* have Neil Morrissey, Samantha Janus, Tony Slattery, Griff Rhys Jones, and that fat bloke off 2.4 Children... the guy who did Jean de Florette and Manon Des Sources (and, er, Germinal) agonises over meaningful WW2 drama LUCIE AUBRAC (imdb: French)... and romantic-comedy curiosity of the week: Russell "LA Confidential" Crowe and Salma "Mrs Robert Rodriguez" Hayek are the *only characters* in the vignettes and monologues that make up BREAKING UP (MPAA rated: R for "language and sexuality")... FEEDING>> it's an *egg fight* out there! CADBURY'S has hastened the release of its Easter range, with the traditional CREME EGG (in full size and compact formats - www.cremeegg.co.uk), the foully over-chocolatey VELVET EGG (even the name's disgusting), and of course their excellent MINI EGGS, which, after the Astros debacle, are still the Cad's only successful foray into the sugar-coated solid- choc market... of course, that territory rightly belongs to NESTLE'S SMARTIES, who, for the first time, have hit back with their own MINI EGGS, in both GIANT SMARTIES and MILKY BAR variants, implying that the words "Mini" and "Egg" are so generic that they cannot be registered as trademarks. In case that's true, NTK has registered minieggs.co.uk and will sell it to the highest bidder - in eggs!... missing the point a little, MARKS AND SPENCERS have created an edible TAMAGOTCHI choccy egg (packaging shows the nyorotchi, ginjirotchi and kuchipatchi that you may find - and eat - inside)... plus, last we checked, they're still dumping post-Xmas stocks of their edible TRIVAL PURSUIT and POP QUIZ board games... elsewhere in confectioning, the major turf war fought with the soggy biscuits of the unfortunately named OSCAR SPUNKMEYER versus flapjack newcomers THE FABULOUS BAKIN' BOYS hots up with the news that Kentucky Fried Chicken get their muffins from an operation rejoicing in the name of FRANK BRADY'S INGESTIBLES... back with savouries, M&S patron saint ST MICHAEL gazed enviously upon WAITROSE's ingenious PIZZA WRAP (soft base, grill for 3-4 mins, available in cheese & tomato or cheese & smoked bacon), then miraculously created his own PIZZA METRO (stonebaked, oven cook 8-10 mins, available in mozzarella & tomato or the frankly surreal potato, bacon & onion). Pizza Wrap still has the edge, despite Pizza Metro boasting this intriguing warning: "IMPORTANT: A CHARACTERISTIC OF THIS PRODUCT IS ITS IRREGULARITY. THIS DOES NOT AFFECT ITS EATING QUALITY." Bon appetit! >> 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 "art wank bonehead". 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.