Need To Know 1999-03-26

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"I have the equivalent of a PalmPilot installed neurally." - ERIC S RAYMOND, New York Times, 1999-03-25 ...although I wouldn't like to say where it was inserted *** STOP-PRESS TRIBUTE ISSUE: GOOD LUCK IN YOUR NEW JOB, jwz! *** >> HARD NEWS << collecting dues It was only a matter of time before requests to "whois internic.net" met with the reply: "We're NETWORK SOLUTIONS. Who the hell are you?". This week, NSI did the next best thing. Visitors to the previously neutral (and useful) Internic site were redirected to networksolutions.com, NSI's commercial site - not at all the sort of thing that Eugene Kashpureff faced 5 years' jail for [NTK 1997-11-07]. Remarkably, the usual locations for ftp'ing registration forms, accessing the whois server, and generally doing anything useful without paying for the nose for it, vanished. Reactions from the sysadmins on NANOG list were predictably withering: given that the Internic was a US government trademark, suggested one, couldn't they sue NetSol for domain squatting? And if this is what they do when they're being public-spirited, imagine what they're going to be like when their monopoly ends, and they're going to have to start *competing*. http://webdeveloper.com/noname/noname_032599.html - careful what you say - whois knows where your office is... http://www.cctec.com/maillists/nanog/current/maillist.html - NANOG mumbles as loud as they can We could probably grab some much needed kudos from *not* being invited to Monday's closed-doors meeting between civil rights campaigners and ISP orgs - given the LINX's rather pointed comments in the invite about unhelpful muck-raking journalists. Sadly, we *were* invited, but overslept. The deliberations were covered by "Chatham House Rules" (translation: we'd have to append "but I couldn't possibly comment" to every quote people sent us), but we *can* report that it seemed a darn sight friendlier than the next day's SCRAMBLING FOR SAFETY. There, the annual DTI Spokesman Gets Chewed Up And Spat Out competition smashed even previous year's records, and various mauled civil servants broke with tradition to say that it *wasn't* their fault that the crypto proposals were late/wrong/deluded or mad. No, it was everyone else's fault for whinging too much. And they're not late/ wrong/deluded/mad, they're just "under consultation", and thus eminently fixable. Until next week, that is, when the April 1st deadline passes, and the government representatives begin an entirely new phase of going "Wah Wah Wah! Not listening!" http://news.bbc.co.uk/low/english/sci/tech/newsid_302000/302233.stm - thank god TV's Chris has an alarm clock Usually we'd be tempted to side with plucky Essex online girl band AOL GIRLS - currently pursued by America Online for inadvertently appropriating their subscribers' popular search term (and clarion mating call?). After all, both The Guardian and BBC Online were convinced that the Girls' $9.95 monthly membership ("discreetly appears" on your credit-card statement as "DMR") offers merely "Exclusive Pics" and "Saucy Secrets", rather than, say, some dodgy porn scam. However: a quick visit to "Dr whois" shows aol-girls.com is owned by obvious domain speculators photoagency.com - also behind adolfhitler.com, 18andnew.com, nazigirl.com - while AltaVista reveals the Stalin-esque "disappearance" of three previous members, apparently after "animal sex", "big tits", and "nasa starcraft movies" appeared in their <meta> tags. http://www.aol-girls.com/girlcarly/carly.html - that guy who wrote moaning about our "adult links"... http://www.aol-girls.com/sarah/sarah.html - ...please don't "View Source" on these http://www.guardianunlimited.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3839669,00.html - Did they test the $9.95 subscription? Did they hell. http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_301000/301543.stm - E17's Tony Mortimer was "head of music" at their school? >> ANTI-NEWS << special IE5 edition "Internet To Change The Face Of The PC World", reports LYCOS... UK ONLINE goes free... IE5 "smart search" goes to http://auto.search.msn.com/default.asp - NT4 Option Pack default page... "One in Five US Households Is Convergent", finds SHOWTIMEONLINE - that's "convergent" defined as "simultaneously accessing the Internet and viewing television"... DEMON compo discriminates against non-IE5 users: http://www.demon.net/win/ie5/ (well, only ones who don't use "View Source")... THE EDITOR's favourite titlebar typo: http://www.libertynet.org/artguide/new.html ... no, we meant the resignation of Virgin Net MD DAVID CLARKE - not the car crash guy... John Sculley uses PALMPILOT... (temporary) MEDIA JUSTICE!: http://www.ntk.net/doh/pin990326.jpg ... BECKS "pull out half way through" sponsorship of QUEER AS FOLK... IE5 mail filters NINFOMANIA as "junk", NTK as valid - oh well... Brit ROYAL FAMILY still use Apache/1.2b7 http://www.netcraft.com/cgi-bin/Survey/whats?host=www.royal.gov.uk >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful "3 solid days of LAN Quake gaming" is the Wireplay-sponsored promise of bring-your-own-PC party INSOMNIA '99 (from 9am Fri today, in an "old Army theatre" outside Bicester Army Base, UKP40): not just Quake 2 but also Starcraft, Quake World, and Total Annihilation - a bit like a Scandinavian demo party but without all that late-night video projection and last- minute coding nonsense. Speaking of which, Norway's THE GATHERING (from Wed 1999-03-31, The Viking Ship, Hamar, NOK 425) is of course the real thing: 5 full days of Quake, Quake 2, Half Life and Starcraft leavened with the very cutting edge of Amiga / Commodore 64 / BeBox apologists. Insomnia has a bar, alcohol is forbidden at The Gathering ("We don't have any minimum age requirements, but we expect attendees to be able to feed themselves"); both ban "water boiling equipment" so nor will you be able to survive on melted snow. Hell, go to both and make an 10-day session of it. http://www.multiplay.co.uk/insomnia/ - programme: "Bar opens", "Bar closes", "Bar opens" (repeat) http://www.gathering.org/ - Last year we tipped Amiga winners Nerve Axis UK. As a joke. >> TRACKING << look what the mouse dragged in "Yes, it's buggy and slow and awkward but IT'S JUST SO COOL", gushes our favourite browserwatcher about the new "dogfood-ready" Mozilla release, SeaMonkey. The work-in- progress browser from Netscape is *just* about usable, and beta-victims everywhere now have a smashing new opportunity to crash their machines in the pursuit of open source quality control. Is it worth it? Well, our correspondent writes: "It took me five minutes to work out how to add a button with my face on it to the main toolbar. I guess you can do a lot of this customisation stuff with IE5 .hta's as well. BUT THEY'RE NOT AS COOL." Further fun lies in writing informative yet bitingly sarcastic bug reports to Bugzilla, especially when you get e-mails back with Netscape's engineers equally bitchy comments appended. Now *you* could "be" jwz! http://www.mozilla.org/quality/bug-writing-guidelines.html [sic] - hope Microsoft don't subpoena these mails too http://www.eeggs.com/pc/apps/egg_412.html - hmm. plenty bitching fun over the IE5 codebase http://cinepad.com/mslex.htm - "eating your own dogfood": lovely imagination, those MS boys >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista http://www.rodhull.com/ ... ARMY (ever topical) to launch "range of branded clothes"... GREG EGAN'S Teranesia... PLANCK FROTH... PIRACY hurts fans as well as studios - just another good reason for it: http://saginaw.simplenet.com/rrmvpira.htm ... PALMPILOT beam spamming... LINEONE moving from Wapping to Covent Garden - literally *and* metaphorically?... WHEN BASTARDS ATTACK, pt2: http://www.spacebastards.com/vote ... WINSTAR snag 38GHz, plan wireless broadband rollout in London this year... can ANYONE work http://www.smallfish.co.uk ?... fake "Vonnegut" SUNSCREEN speech now a major US dance hit... Clash tribute album BURNING LONDON... new, beard-free PR: http://pringle.oaktree.co.uk/~jbaker/pics/0wn.jpg ... call the COPS: http://warhammer.mcc.virginia.edu/cars/radio.html ... well, have *you* seen any official merch with THE PHANTOM MENACE printed on it? Ahhhh... WATCHMEN coming true at last: http://www.msss.com/mars/global_surveyor/camera/images/3_11_99_happy/ >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> noted non-geek Janet Street-Porter pursues a totally un- obsessive 350 mile walk in a (largely) straight line, helpfully titled AS THE CROW FLIES (8pm, Fri, BBC2)... Steven "Press Gang" Moffat wrote this MURDER MOST HORRID (9pm, Fri, BBC2), which may make Dawn French's constant mugging more tolerable... and following When Eagles Dare three weeks ago, Friday is Eastwood WW2 night again with zany tank heist caper KELLY'S HEROES (10.30pm, Fri, BBC1)... oh, cruel fate that saw Kubrick die merely *weeks* before a major BBC2 retrospective of his work: in particular, DR STRANGELOVE (10.35pm, Sat, BBC2) hasn't been on terrestrial since the far- off days of last November... anyone who didn't get the "SkyNet" gags in NTK 1999-03-05 is advised to pay attention this time to THE TERMINATOR (9.05pm, Sat, ITV)... DEADLY INVASION: THE KILLER BEE NIGHTMARE (9pm, Sat, C5) isn't a sensational "When Insects Attack" docu but just the start of many dreadful looking monster movies - culminating in non- Alan-Moore Heather Locklear GMO parable THE RETURN OF SWAMP THING (9.55pm, Sun, C5)... and no wonder Arlington Road's Jeff Bridges is paranoid after Tommy Lee Jones's Mousetrap- inspired IRA bombs leave him feeling BLOWN AWAY (12midnight, Sat, ITV)... Sandra Bullock's THE NET (10pm, Sun, C4) creates a more convincing sense of social isolation than it does of lethal hacker-viruses - largely by not casting any other characters... post-Reboot CGI romp SHADOW RAIDERS (nee "War Planets") shows twice every day this week (10am; 4.30pm, Mon- Fri, SkyOne)... and god, not the rubbish Abel Ferrara version of BODY SNATCHERS *again* (10pm, Mon, C4)... psychic animals rescue humans, redecorate each other's homes in predictable cross-genre combination SUPERNATURAL (8.30pm, Tue, BBC1)... remember the '70s? weren't they *hilarious?* inquires hideous New Romantic comedy HUNTING VENUS (9pm, Wed, ITV) - unlikely to touch those excellent TOP TENS (9.30pm, Sat, C4)... while mock-French restaurant chain Pierre Victoire's appearance on TROUBLE AT THE TOP (9.30pm, Wed, BBC2) confirms suspicions of diners who thought their "3 course meal for 5.95" offer was slightly too good to be true... FILM>> of course, cuddly monster movie MIGHTY JOE (MPAA: Rated PG for some menacing action violence and mild language) really does need a surname to avoid confusion with MEET JOE [BLACK] - see NTK 1999-03-19 (the largely appalling CineZine argues Joe shouldn't be forced to use the "slave name" of his human "wife", Charlize "2 Days In The Valley" Theron)... whatever the X stands for in vicious message-heavy Romper- Stomper-inspired skinhead saga AMERICAN HISTORY X (imdb: based-on-novel / neo-nazism / racism / white-supremacists), it doesn't seem to be the removed credit of director Tony Kaye (and no, you don't need to have seen American History I- IX to understand it)... those who prefer their violence a little more morally motivated should cheer Mel Gibson's semi- comic table-turning Point Blank-remake PAYBACK (imdb: robbery / money / narrative / revenge / doublecross / based-on-novel / prostitution / black-comedy / twist-in-the-end / pickpocket / blood / s&m / drugs / crooked / organized-crime / kidnapping / torture) - re-teams Mel with Conspiracy Theory/ LA Confidential writer Brian Helgeland (who Mel then fired), plus Deborah Kara Unger from "The Game"... NTK's pre-school readers will know that nappy-filling golden shower THE RUGRATS MOVIE (imdb: based-on-tv-series / kids-and-family / sequel) picks up from the end of season 7 cliffhanger to extend many of the major plot arcs previously raised in the Rugrats "mythos" - but is it showing with the "CatDog" short as seen on US screens?... and no Oscars but plenty of exposure for more gay, less camp version of "Ed Wood" GODS AND MONSTERS (imdb: not to be confused with "The Crow 3: World of Gods and Monsters") - a more sensitive look at horror films and unrequited love than the same director's "Candyman II: Farewell to the Flesh"... MUSICAL THEATRE [WITH YOUR HOST, THE "BUTCHER OF BROADBAND", CHARLIE BROOKER] - Review of Virus The Musical, as requested in NTK 1999-03-05: SAM FOX was "indisposed" and replaced by her understudy. JACK WILD - Artful Dodger in the 1968 movie of "Oliver!" - plays a mouse. He has to wear a costume with two buttons on his chest. His arse is the rollerball. He does a little jig and sings a song called "Double Click". There's another song called "You're Going To Get Your Interface Kicked In" and a touching sequence in which a 3.5" floppy sings of her unrequited love for a hard drive... in one early scene, a character explains the advantages of file compression; adult dancers in silver catsuits ("files") climb into a mysterious box-like machine, and reappear through a hole in the base - as children. "FILE MANAGER" and his cronies go on to sing about the joys of conserving hard disk space. By this point I was slack-jawed with astonishment, like someone watching the opening sequence of Saving Private Ryan for the first time... the programme includes a glossary of computer terms "for the unsure, the uninitiated, and parents", and peppered with typos ("countrys", "Chernobyll", "beetamax", "miniturized"). I sat in on a matinee and was surrounded by schoolchildren who seemed to be enjoying themselves. Still, they were probably all on crack or something... to cap off the weirdness, it's all being backed by LEE TAYLOR-RYAN, the guy who won 6.5m on the lottery, then had to serve time for dealing in stolen cars. He was apparently so impressed by the cast's "will to succeed" that he agreed to save the show from financial apocalypse. There is currently no news of their planned "national tour"... [ Hear Charlie's audio report about 7 minutes in - plus our other shared obsession, those sexy, sassy AOL Girls - at http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/onair_extra/media/digital.ram ] [ This review appears in place of our scheduled Richard Stallman report by NTK's full-time Katz-hater, which was so darned heartfelt we couldn't bring ourselves to cut it: http://www.dejanews.com/[ST_rn=qs]/getdoc.xp?AN=459219329 ] >> 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 "like Wired in its early days" (overheard in Guardian New Media Lab) 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@lists.ntk.net with 'unsubscribe ntknow'. Subscribe? Mail majordomo@lists.ntk.net with 'subscribe ntknow'. NTK now is supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.ntk.net/books (K) 1999 Special Projects. Non-business copying is fine, but retain SMALL PRINT. Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com - remember your work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material.