Need To Know 1999-12-24

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"Tribe Flood Network and Trinoo launch their attacks from a host of innocent computers that already have been broken into. Then, on a signal from a master computer, the computers simultaneously bombard the victim machine with packets of information so fast that it becomes unresponsive. At that point, the target computer won't respond to commands and can't be taken off the network." http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-1501144.html ... what, not even by unplugging it? >> HARD NEWS << "Humbug!", said Scrooge It's on nights like this that one naturally turns for inspiration to the eternal Christmas story: you know - the one where rampant commercialism devours everything in its path in the pursuit of a quick buck? LEONARDO FINANCE, a French subsidiary of the Transasia Corporation, this week launched a lawsuit against the internationally respected Association Leonardo, publishers of the multimediatronic Leonardo Journal. Transasia claim one million dollars in damages on the basis that a search engine search on the word "Leonardo" brings up not only their Web site but those of the magazine. And so, in this season of goodwill, a squad of eight French policeman broke into Leonardo's legal address in France - the home of the 80-year old widow of the organisations' founder, Frank Malina - and confiscated all paperwork with the word "Leonardo" on it. This all makes perfect sense. "Leonardo" is a mind-bogglingly unique and sufficient descriptor for Transasia's work. And it's not as if "Leonardo" practically connotes the whole tradition of inventiveness and "prior art". And it's definitely worth their while fighting for the word, because once they get hold of that whole Leonardo namespace - no matter *who* used it before - who else might they go after? How about helicopter manufacturers? http://mitpress.mit.edu/e-journals/Leonardo/#raid - "He who controls the language, controls the future" http://www.leonardofinance.fr/anglais/ - who'd have thought they'd do it one word at a time? And if you think the Namespace Wars will be over before Christmas, note that our trusted betters at ICANN are planning to move arbitration of domain names to the National Arbitration Forum. Will this help in matters such as the ongoing battle between etoys.com and etoy.com, where the younger, richer, and more commercial company can sue the award-winning European artists off the face of the Net? Listen to this quote from the NAF Webpages spotted by Lewis Shadoff (c/o the excellent Tasty Bits from the Technological Frontier discussion list): "Forum arbitrators are not permitted to ignore the law and make decisions based on 'equity'." Equity, for those of you who haven't yet the sense to become lawyers, is the principle that justice involves fairness as well as the fixed rules of law. No room for fairness, or for non-profits too poor to fight back, or for the exercise of art: just for the iron rules of law and business. Well, we must have our rules. But who's that out on the streets of London, wailing up at our window on this freezing Christmas Eve? "Business!" cried the Ghost, wringing its hands again. "Mankind was my business. The common welfare was my business; charity, mercy, forbearance, and benevolence, were, all, my business. The dealings of my trade were but a drop of water in the comprehensive ocean of my business!" http://www.literature.org/authors/dickens-charles/christmas-carol/ - the owners of www.dickens.com will be furious http://www.tbtf.com/ - and a Merry Newtonmas to all our sources >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious MODIFY mails from NSI are now dated Dec 31, 1969 - uh *oh* ... BRITISH WEB DESIGN & MARKETING ASSOCIATION ("committed to raising standards") now spamming for members ... you're leaving this a bit late, guys: http://www.millennium.com/ and http://www.millenniumdome.com/ ... how many OSes does it take to "power" a Website? http://www.daemonnews.org/ ... ON DIGITAL in sponsorship deal with Windows error dialogs: http://www.ntk.net/doh/19991224ondig.jpg ... first Net libel case to use the "don't blame us, we're autistic" defence: http://www.ireland.com/scripts/technology/newsshowall.cfm?id=240 ... still running on NT, but trying to open source as much as possible, it's http://www.linuxanswers.co.uk/Includes/ ... NETGUIDE equivalent of "Jackie Harvey's Outside Scoop" http://www.netguide.com/Snapshot/Archive?guide=computing&id=1536 suggests we will "see more PCs which will be coming with dual drives: one for the CD-ROM and one for a DVD." ... searching http://www.eventselector.co.uk/ for aptly-named "Comedy" title "Hiss And Boo Show" ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Jonathan Ungoed-Thomas? Mi2g's bizarre virus warnings? The terror of "downloadable internet narcotics"? Yes, the competition is fierce for the FIRST INTERNET FREEDOM JOURNALISM AWARDS, intended to "name and shame" 1999's worst coverage of online issues. And to make the face-off even more exciting, you have to nominate your favourite scare-mongering fictions before January 1st 2000! (We'll try to provide a retrospective as part of next Friday's "Y2K In The Office Fun Pack", but thought you'd appreciate the extra notice just in case. Some crimes cannot - and must not - go unpunished.) http://www.netfreedom.org/ - there's a "high quality journalism" prize too. Yeah, right. http://www.ntk.net/notw/ - what, no category for "most shameless rent-a-quote pundit"? >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology: the Gathering Oooh, a database library! How seasonal! METAKIT is a curious mix of flatfile, relational and OODBMS features with a small footprint and a big following. For those who don't need a heavy-duty SQL solution, it's tight and fast for <100,000 items, with a snazzy ability to dynamically change data structures on the fly. Interfaces are available for Tcl and Python, with Perl promised soon. METAKIT has been kicking around now for three years or so with good reports, but looks to capture even more hearts now that it's - tara! - open sourced. Happy Christmas! http://www.equi4.com/metakit/intro.html - well, that's Christmas morning taken care of http://www.sunworld.com/sunworldonline/swol-05-1999/swol-05-regex-2.html - addicts drool for the press >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista seasonal pyrotechnics: http://www.sunplan.com/pp/ ... TOPICA buying up more mailing lists ... EWOK apocalypse: http://www.geekhaus.co.uk/toybox/ewok.htm ... break into Ion Storm's HQ and steal the Daikatana master discs: http://www.arrgh.co.uk/ionstorm ... oh, that canny BOFH: THE REGISTER pays for the new columns, but who ends up with the archive? http://bofh.ntk.net/ is your new, ad-free local mirror ... hooray! a pre-millennium socket layer for the Z88! http://www.jb.man.ac.uk/~djm/z88dk/zsock/ ... a Spectrum ZX81 - now they *are* rare: http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=224436737 ... somebody really *doesn't* want cheap Net access in Manchester: http://www.redbricks.org.uk/comms/crisis/matthewa001.htm >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> Andi Peters is compelled to give Disney a free one-hour prime-time advert entitled ANDI MEETS TOY STORY 2 (5.25pm, Fri, C4)... the ropey movie season continues with Adam Sandler/ Brendan Fraser air-guitar collaboration AIRHEADS (9pm, Fri, C5), those "Vids" guys dressing up in lizard suits for a season of original GODZILLAs (1am, Fri night, C4), and mildly watchable Robin Williams CGI showreel JUMANJI (4pm, Christmas Day, BBC1)... and, yes, they did take a few "liberties" with the post-apocalyptic Kevin Costner remake of IL POSTINO (8.30pm, Christmas Day, BBC2)... don't expect the famous fish finger ad to feature in BBC2's 6-hour Orson Welles tribute, including some old black and white yawnathon called CITIZEN KANE (11.45pm, Christmas Day, BBC2) - believed to be the best film ever made, after Star Wars and Blade Runner, natch... and C5 weighs in, perhaps predictably, with a schedule consisting entirely of Abba and porn... this year's junior geekfest ROYAL INSTITUTION CHRISTMAS LECTURES (11ish am, Sun-Thu, BBC2) seem to be nicked from the pop science paperback "The Arrow Of Time"... the MISSION: IMPOSSIBLE (9pm, Sun, BBC1) movie is more incomprehensibly convoluted than even the TV show, and - at last - reveals long-term "sleeper" Jim Phelps as a traitor... after Airheads, the Michael Lehmann disappointments continue with THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS (10pm, Mon, BBC2)... and smug talentless scum FRENCH AND SAUNDERS (9.50pm, Tue, BBC1) dress up as - oh my sides - "The Phantom Menace"... despite strong competition, Kathryn Bigelow's optimistically millennial STRANGE DAYS (11.15pm, Wed, BBC2) is the *worst cyber-VR thriller of all time*... while perfectly capturing the closed-off claustrophobia, steadily building pressure, and Nazi-like discipline of spending time with your family, BBC2 wisely schedules regular showings of U-boat fave DAS BOOT (6ish, Sun-Fri, BBC2)... FILM>> "We've got a blind date with Destiny - and it looks like she's ordered the lobster" chortles wittily scripted Ben Stiller/ Janeane Garofalo undermarketed flop comic book adaptation MYSTERY MEN (imdb: parody / superhero / training), whose top-notch supporting cast - Greg Kinnear, Hank Azaria - even makes up for Eddie Izzard and a farting Pee-Wee Herman... the increasingly overrated Kevin Smith applies his usual laid-back incompetence to predictably inoffensive modern-day Life Of Brian-style Catholic self-exorcism DOGMA (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ : licentious disregard for righteous behavior based on Biblical admonitions) - in what may come to be viewed as his very own "A Life Less Ordinary"... connoisseurs regret to report a failure in meeting previous quality benchmarks in largely Kermit-free sci-fi spoof MUPPETS FROM SPACE (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ : nonlegal custody at gunpoint; false imprisonment; a child character sitting atop a roof; physical violence to gain advantage; Miss Piggy gamming - sitting cross-legged intentionally in a very short skirt showing as much upper leg as possible)... while Martin "Bad Boys" Lawrence takes a short break from his intermittently self-destructive behaviour to head up competent mistaken-identity Beverly Hills Cop remake BLUE STREAK (MPAA: rated PG-13 for action violence, continuous language and some crude humor)... BUMPER CHRISTMAS TURKEY BONER BONANZA!>> and festive greetings to all of ye who cheered last week's "factoring primes" faux pas though it was, of course, an allusion to Bill Gates' famed goof in his book The Road Ahead rather than genuine incompetence on our part. Ahem... extending seasonal goodwill slightly further than is usually recommended, "Where, oh were is David Brake's weblog?" many of you inquired, while not detailing your precise motivation. Well, http://blog.org/ is the URL for both moderately interesting links *and* Brake's own unique brand of earnest, choir-singing commentary... and ADRIAN MOULDER once again fell into the trap of assuming our omniscience, querying the "flagrant omission" from last week's books & zines round-up of both Norman Spinrad's re-released trial-by-TV '60s sci-fi classic BUG JACK BARRON and the latest issue of HULK comic which features a reader's letter from Al "The Pub Landlord" Murray... LLOYD WOOD felt the need to come clean over NTK 1999-12- 10's claim that "Carrie" at http://www.bluenudes.com/ is wearing "Klingon headgear". After re-viewing "Amok Time", Lloyd reports it more closely "resembles the thing T'Pau was wearing", and is "therefore obviously Vulcan"... but beating even that for corrective urgency comes THOMAS KRUEMMER, who (rightly) questions Dave Winer's claim [NTK 1999-12-17] that the SS were the "secret police in Nazi Germany". It would have been hard to keep them that secret, Thomas argues, as they were "a second army, but unlike the regular 'Wehrmacht', the SS troopers were loyal to the NSDAP party. Later the SS received weapons and also heavy equipment, in order to outweigh any potential threat to the government from officers of the regular army, plus the added benefit of being able to commit acts of war which the Wehrmacht might have refused to carry out" - hence, presumably, Winer's confusion. "I hope Dave is more qualified writing about other matters of general interest," Thomas concludes. And a Merry Christmas to you, one and all! >> 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 "holiday, baby, holiday" 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) 1999 Special Projects. Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/ Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com - remember your work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material. 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