Need To Know 1998-02-20

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"AOL lets this little girl talk to animals!" - AOL UK's new campaign slogan ...and future Daily Mail "Net-child-molesters" headline? >> HARD NEWS << your right to choose "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't for you darn kids!" Well, that wasn't *quite* what DTI mandarin NIGEL HICKSON said when he explained the non- appearance of that government statement on crypto this week - but it's what he meant. An announcement was due, he said at the ICX conference on Thursday, but was delayed - thanks to "completely wrong announcements on the Internet". Weird. Surely it would be better to announce it *quicker*, in order to scotch those scurrilous reports? And wasn't it strange that those incorrect tittle-tattlers got the timing of the proposed statement exactly right - as Nigel admitted - even as the DTI were denying it even existed? Never mind. The delay allowed several civil liberty organisations to prepare statements and various news outlets - who would have been taken off-guard by a unannounced statement - to get fully up to speed with the issues. Oh, and it also let a few nasty, scurrilous gossipmongers realise that there *is* something individuals can do about wrongheaded government initiatives before they get cast in stone. http://www.liberty.org.uk/cacib/crypto.html - and that goes for your darn mutt, too! STEVE JOBS, the man behind "insanely great", is again trying the adverb and the adjective bits the other way around. APPLE sources have him in a boardroom brawl with prospective CEO, Jim Cannavino. Cannavino turned up Wednesday at 1 Infinite Loop to discuss contract terms, meet Larry Ellison and the guys - maybe a game of pool? Instead, he found himself slugging it out with Jobs, who wanted to stay on at Apple for a year, getting paid a nominal $1 wage (presumably to go with the one Apple share he now owns), but calling most of the shots. Cannavino baulked; Jobs told him to walk. Shouting continued within the boardroom as Jim did just that. Meanwhile, in the world of the grown-ups, multimedia developers are getting increasingly touchy as Apple puts a hold on QuickTime licensing. They're scared that Apple may start demanding hefty royalties for use of the technology. Well, they've got to find that dollar a year from somewhere. http://www.apple.com/ - have you tried looking under the sofas? http://www.macosrumors.com/ - so, what did your last CEO die of? ISPA - the non-political, non-partisan INTERNET SERVICE PROVIDERS ASSOCIATION, popped out an interesting press release this week. In it, they condemned as "distasteful" and "offensive" a Princess Diana car racing game, in which you have to avoid motorcycles and cones, while speeding through a dark tunnel. The ISPA - which purports to speak for the service provider industry, and is funded by your 10 quids a month - reassured journalists that the site was hosted in Germany, so there was nothing they could do about it, but they said they were working hard to stamp out this sort of thing with help from the Internet Watch Foundation's plans for a global rating system. A rating system, incidentally, that is rumoured to be the subject of the British government's next pronouncement on Net liberties. Oh, and they provided the URL, which they requested should not be publicised further. Well, we did plug it in memewatch two weeks ago, but if you insist... http://www.fork.de/games/diana/play.htm - wait until they find www.dianabear.com ... >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious MICROSOFT "moving away" from ActiveX... THE TIMES picture desk uses a hotmail account... GCHQ jobs' e-mail is recruitment.gchq@dial.pipex.com... POLICE OFFICERS chat up 17-year-old girl online: lawyer describes cops as "very vulnerable element of society"... WWW.CAPITALISM.ORG's defence of Microsoft doesn't display properly in Explorer 4.0... lame E-CHRISTMAS site only sold 500 items... Too many venture capitalists spend too much money in Silicon Valley, uncovers shocked ESTHER DYSON... "Online News Readership on the Rise" - says INTERNETNEWS.COM ... GRAND THEFT AUTO banned in Brazil... MICROSOFT tests ingenious new data broadcast system in US: also known as teletext... UN Peace Plan "may end in failure" - reveals CEEFAX... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful We may not know much about art at NTK, but we do know we don't like it. Except, perhaps, this. It's a performance that claims to be modelled on the OSI seven layer model of art. It includes extracts from the Physical, Network, Session and Application layers of the TCP/IP protocol stack. It will take place at the ICA bar and CB1 cybercafe in Cambridge on Monday 23/2/98, at 2000GMT. There will , we genuinely lead to believe, source code readings afterwards. We are speechless. http://www.newmediacentre.com/ - still an absolutely appalling site. Some kind of statement? There's still tickets for BRUCE STERLING and BRIAN ALDISS, the twin big-gobbed Gods of Sci-Fi theory,as they talk at the Purcell Rooms, dans la South Bank Centre en 24/2/98. SARAH LEFANU will be trying to get a word in edgeways. Show starts at 7.30PM. Tickets are 6UKP. Oh, and this is a serious cultural event, so don't come dressed as the Artificial Kid or something. http://www.sbc.org.uk/literate.htm#f24a - goodness. A venue Website you can actually use. Situations (Pretty) Vacant: it's coming up to the Easter hols, and you've got a choice: that cushy, lucrative work- experience job with that nice corporate IT department, or a few days on the very barricades of the Digital bastille, scrabbling over a hot Webserver, spitting at your crazed compadres as they struggle to unjam their sarcastic flamethrower, snorting technical manuals, spewing pure code, laughing in the face of the "traditional" technology press and trading sexual favours with Linux-mad programmers of whatever gender your heart desires. Yes, there's not much money involved, but NTK (and its shadowy sugar-daddy, Virgin Net) are nonetheless LOOKING FOR INTERNS. Work in London's seedy Soho! Meet influential New Media bosses! Insult them in public! Could you take what its got? E-mail us now on recruitment.gchq@ntk.net with CV and a fifty word explanation as to why this is in no way a career-limiting move. Frankly, we're kind of curious ourselves. >> TRACKING << look what the mouse dragged in There was a time when home-made shareware games had a chance. But after years of installing DOS app after DOS app from scratched cover-mounted CDs that fell off our Jabba- sized Ziff-Davis magazines, we somehow lost interest. Which is a shame, because we otherwise might have spotted ACTION SUPERCROSS a little earlier. A monstrous, yet 1.4MB hybrid of Evil Knieval and Thrust for the BBC Model B, it's the program your mates talked about writing at school, but never did, never could and never will. Kudos to NTK tipster Goat Boy, who spotted it after reading a thread on rec.games.programmer, which started with a Bullfrog programmer hailing it the best program he'd seen for ages, and ended with a ninety-post flamewar arguing about how programmer Csaba Rozsa did it. http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/balazs/across.htm - "all it lacks is the Peter Purvis commentary" - GB http://www.pik.com/ much faster download site http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/5171/ - fans! ALL SAINTS are paying bigtime for uncleared samples on their album, THE VERVE lost the publishing rights to Bittersweet Symphony and therefore can't stop it being used on ads (or techno remixes) - so it's good to see media terrorists RTMARK turning this massive legal bug into a feature. Their new album, DECONSTRUCTING BECK, is a collection of "brilliant but allegedly illegal" resamplings of that universally reviled corporate rock whore, Beck Hansen, which they've put out under the slogan "using artwork illegally helps to fight the stranglehold that corporations have on our lives". Right on - and we're sure The Verve and All Saints would agree. The (only mildly unlistenable) CD is not available in stores, but their site also details other anti-corporate activism, including their hilarious sponsorship of "New York Welcomes Saddam Hussein" banners, plus a vegan-friendly US$5000 reward for anyone who can "find and administer a substance to a great number of cattle that will make their beef unfit for consumption". British ingenuity triumphs once again! http://www.paranoia.com/~rtmark - I'm a loser baby; so why don't you sue me? >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/lockpick.html ... http://members.aol.com/Jesus316/index.htm ... NATWEST using NT in new cash-machine network: free money... forget quantum transistors - here's the TRANSCAPACITOR: http://americancomputer.com/Transcap.htm ...New BATGIRL Adventures Comic implies Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are, ah, more than friends ... www.appletshirts.com ... VOYAGER 1 overtakes Pioneer 10 as furthest man-made object - it's like Wacky Races out there... Tamagotchi for Playstation... They're remaking CITY OF ANGELS? Nooooo ... www.woodcutter.com ... http://shockrave.macromedia.com .... CARL STEADMAN returns to Suck! >> GEEK MEDIA << what's killing the radio star these days TV>> remote-control beardie weirdies twitch uncontrollably through bizarre routines to occasional comic effect. But that's enough about IS IT BILL BAILEY? (11.15pm, Fri, BBC2) - because ROBOT WARS (6.25pm, Fri, BBC2) promises to be more disappointing than even the presence of Jeremy Clarkson and Philippa Forrester would normally indicate... AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE (6pm, Sat, BBC2) features fans talkin' about JRR Tolkien - some in genuine Elvish... the profile/ interview of SCENE BY SCENE WITH STEVE MARTIN (9pm, Sat, BBC2) is ingeniously followed by two of his dullest films: Grand Canyon and LA Story... 2-part drama HEAVEN ON EARTH (9pm, Sun, BBC1) depicts a Witness/ Waco- style religious cult populated by ex-cast members of cop shows: Neil Pearson from Between The Lines, Penhaligon from Cracker... THE ENTERTAINMENT BIZ (9.30pm, Sun, BBC2) laughs at stand-up comedians, something which interviewee Donna McPhail must know about from having been on the same bill as them... the night-long Ethan Hawke/ Julie Delpy romance in BEFORE SUNRISE (10pm, Sun, C4) isn't actually filmed real-time - it just seems that way... at last: a fly-on- the-wall docu about a workplace you *don't* see every day, when THE WAR MACHINE (9pm, Mon, C4) goes hilariously behind the scenes with weapons-inventing nutters at the UK's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency... looking at previous guests, it shouldn't be too hard to work out why the obsessives on FOR THE LOVE OF (11.55pm, Mon, C4) "chose" a life of celibacy... Hitchcock parody HIGH ANXIETY (11.45pm, Tue, C4) could be Mel Brooks' most sophisticated spoof to date - for what that's worth... former Marmalade Atkins Charlotte Coleman (also in Oranges Are Not The Only Fruit) reappears in non-citrus-themed Men-Behaving-Rurally sitcom HOW DO YOU WANT ME? (10pm, Tue, BBC2)... MODERN TIMES (9pm, Wed, BBC2) makes a film about the making of a film about the shooting of Gianni Versace... and, as predicted, REBOOT (4.45pm, Thu, ITV) skips to season 3 episode 2 to avoid that notorious Evil Dead chainsaw bit... FILM>> a triple treat for fans of movies named after professions, with THE BUTCHER BOY (imdb: comedy / horror / drama / 1960s) serving up surreal trash-culture horror from Neil "The Crying Game" Jordan, including another starring role for Stephen Rea, and - in a stylistic nod to Father Ted - Sinead O'Connor as The Virgin Mary... THE BOXER (imdb: drama) re-teams In The Name Of The Father director with Daniel Day-Lewis, in a Troubles romance-weepie that, surprisingly, is nothing like the Simon & Garfunkel song of the same name... and finally, Kev Costner puts the "post" back into "post-apocalyptic" in his cheesily overlong Dances-With-Waterworld hybrid THE POSTMAN (imdb: action / sci-fi / adventure / thriller / based-on-novel / drama / futuristic / post-apocalyptic)... PRISONER OF THE MOUNTAINS (imdb: war / drama) is the best of the subtitled former- Soviet rebellion hostage-swappers - based on a story by Tolstoy originally optioned 150 years ago... and the touching teen female friendship in ALL OVER ME (imdb: lesbian) completes this month's cycle of faintly homoerotic films with titles based around prepositions (see also In And Out, Up And Under)... GAMES>> top-rated Japanese PlayStation racer GRAN TURISMO (sadly, nothing to do with grandmas) isn't due out here till May, but will run "between 15 and 30% faster" than the import. It'll also get a new soundtrack with usual suspects Ash, Garbage and a - now-obligatory - Chemical Brothers remix of the Manic Street Preachers. "I believe that this will be the first game ever to have a full, 12/13 track soundtrack with all music recorded by 'actual' music bands," chortles what seems to be an internal company memo, "as opposed to a track by Prodigy, a track by Orbital, and ten by company musicians"... till then, why not deck it out the Station's quirky new beat-em-up trend: genuinely shocking pseudo-Victorian Goth Raider NIGHTMARE CREATURES and/or Monkey-Magic-inspired subtitled Samurai slasher BUSHIDO BLADE - hwiyahhhhh!... and of course don't bother with RESIDENT EVIL DIRECTOR'S CUT when RE2 is just round the next shadowy corner... the N64's revving up its own nice but dull driving games in the form of CRUIS'N USA (which wasn't even a good coin-op) and TOP GEAR RALLY, which - inexplicably - is co-sponsoring London Fashion Week... over on the PC, disgruntled coder Derek Smart (great name!) is releasing the complete version of BATTLECRUISER 3000AD v1.01D7C into the public domain (previously published by famed quality-merchants Take 2) - a move which we (naturally) applaud, though wonder if it's unrelated to reviews like "I have never, ever, in 17 years of computer gaming, seen a game that hated being played the way this one does" and "It will go down in legend as the most bug-ridden, unstable, unplayable pieces of software ever released" - www.gamespot.com ... thus the scene is set for the battle of the great battle- games, with demos now available of Activision's reworked 3D arcade classic BATTLEZONE - www.activision.com/games/strategy/battlezone/ . It's got new weapons, new Command-And-Conquer-style strategy mode (bring on DUNE 2000!), but we bet it's not as good as the freeware BZ demo on the SGI, which lets you add unlimited new guns, unfair advantages etc - because they give you the source! >> 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 "messenger of the gods". ( http://www.heaven.affection.net ) 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.