Need To Know 1998-04-24

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"Koko the gorilla will answer questions Monday on America Online. Her tutor, Francine Patterson, will translate questions between AOL users and Koko." - AOL press release I just had cybersex with a WHAT? (asks Koko) >> HARD NEWS << livid bruise The week began with yet another Falco in the communal morgue that is British Web design. Congratulations to Andres Varela, who submitted his LOWE DIGITAL dead pool prediction just minutes before being laid off from the "reforming" Web house. To prevent NTK clogging up with more bloated corpses anytime soon, we've taken up the kind offer of those TeamManager folks and are have automated the whole sick, morbid process. Rules are the same: choose the five companies you expect to go Webmedia in our click-and-damn Web page, and after the carnage, we hand out the spoils. You *are* allowed to nominate your own company, but, please, no individuals (apart from Nick Rosen who, by popular demand, is a "special" case). Friends and relatives of NTK may not enter. And neither can Paul McCartney, the big cheat. http://www.teammanager.com/falco/ - Gentleman: stall your engines http://i.am/looking/ - Andres' reward: a free job listing! http://www.revolution.haynet.com/wall/threads/000258_000464.html - sounds a little worried? Blue scree- uh, skies ahead for Windows 98, as MICROSOFT's latest meet with the US Department o' Justice played to their side. Appeal court judges showed the requisite amount of boredom when faced with the state department's case against integrating Explorer with Windows 95, and noted for the first time that this is all going to be moot when Win98 finally ships. Meanwhile, Jim Barksdale was upbeat about Communicator's chances against 98, and poo-pooed the latest buyout rumours. "We're a public company, so we're for sale every day", he said. Hurry while stocks last! www.cnn.com/TECH/computing/9804/20/gates.comdex/gates.30.240.mov - "he won't hit me in front of all these people, will he?" http://204.57.138.9/cDc_files/cDc-351/ - blue screens, and worse: Unix Fu arrives on the Win platform PLAYBOY Enterprises continue to prove that big money from the Net isn't *just* through porn, but also via America's second-favourite hobby: litigation. The company's already been awarded millions for "misuse" of its copyright online, including suing one of their own models for describing herself as "1981 Playmate Of The Year". And they've just won $3million from AsiaFocus International for using the word "playboy" in their meta-tags. Possible implications for freedom of speech on the net are... ah, yadda yadda yadda. What we want to know is: apart from their lawyers, who's searching Altavista for Playboy, anyway? It's not like the URL's that hard to guess... http://www.playboy.com/ - maybe Keith Teare's RealNames had a point http://www.irational.org/ - still looking for a good bunting... http://199.72.49.25/docs/0198121555.html - OUP had better be careful out there And well done to London's INSTITUTE OF CONTEMPORARY ARTS, who've had anti-elitist thieves liberate the bulk of their workstations from their Sun-sponsored New Media Centre. Sure, sticking the "Media Centre" in the middle of the bar didn't strike us as a very smart move, especially after spending an evening watching drinkers type aimlessly into a root shell. The burglars worked at a less crowded time - the middle of the day - and avoided capture by leaving all the monitors, so no-one noticed anything was wrong. Maybe they even turned up naked and pretended it was all part of some ultra modern mime-ballet, or "de-installation" as we think they're called. An E10000 server (worth around 250,000UKP) may have been among the loot: but as our tipster writes, "with only about 15 manufactured so far, it's going to be easy to spot it in a car boot sale." http://www.newmediacentre.com/ - a lot faster now the server's gone http://www.sun.com/servers/ultra_enterprise/10000/ - police are looking for a Genet reader with an interest in large scale e-commerce >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious WEBSPACE MAGAZINE profiles New Media Factory: "Business for NMF is good", "The Factory also has an eye to the future": NMF went Falco last week... FUTURE publishing sold - back to founder Chris Anderson... "Microsoft PR Operates Openly and Ethically," say MICROSOFT PR OFFICIALS... Game journalists may be influenced by PR freebies, uncovers SALON... NETSCAPE to offer free e-mail, inevitably... IE4.0's Content Advisor won't let you see Microsoft Europe's Website... TELETUBBIES site "educational", misses apostrophe in "browsers"... 83% of British consumers "want to visit local bank"... Times Interface's DR KEYBOARD claims he *did* know how PGP worked. Wrong *again*... DRAGON SYSTEMS claim copyright for phrase "say what you see": somebody tell Roy Walker... Error message of the week: "The Microsoft Exchange Information Store service depends on the Microsoft Exchange Directory service which failed to start because of the following error: The operation completed successfully"... >> EVENT QUEUE << social, engineering Freaks of nature, inexplicable appearances, alien behaviour - and *that's just the delegates* to expect at THE FORTEAN TIMES UNCONVENTION 98 this weekend [25-26/04/98]. Starts 10.30am Sat, at the University of London Union, Malet Street, London; admission 25 of your Earth pounds for both days, 15 per day separately; attractions include the US editor of Strange Magazine, plus the world's worst sci-fi writer, Lionel Fanthorpe, who'll - hopefully - be reproducing Fortean TV's pioneering paranormal filk songs. UnConvention 98 is presented "in association with Agfa Digital Cameras and Scanners" which, given the ease of Photoshop fakery nowadays, is surely taking the piss. http://www.forteantimes.com/uncon/ - but you clairvoyants knew all about this already, right? Access... denied! Looks like Simon Gardner isn't putting down his hard-earned cash (what is you do again, Simon?) to sponsor an Access All Areas this year. So, at short notice, the always-slightly-more-socialised northern phreaks have thrown together a weekend of fun in BLACKPOOL, based around the commonly held hacker principles: a) theme rides are fun, b) trying to get into a contemporaneous proper security conference is fun, c) eating chips is fun, d) getting drunk is fun, and e) sleeping on a floor in a specially-rented flat with a bunch of overexcited, overinformed, grease-smeared layabouts like yourself is... also a good idea. E-mail uk@2600.com for details of accommodation; otherwise, check out the URL for the "itinerary". Quick, quick: the weekend starts here. http://www.aom.co.uk/dns/ - Blackpool crack rock http://members.aol.com/datanetsec/ - said contemporaneosity http://www.infosec.co.uk/ - and for you southerners, a London security conf [28/04-30/04] >> TRACKING << thank god you found her With the Kopyright Kops coming down hard on even MAME ROM sites, lovers of retro games might be close to despair. Hehehe. As if. For, tumbling out of the void, careening wildly to save us all comes: the Originator, the Ur- shoot'em-up, the Pride of '61, the only killer app the PDP- 1 ever needed, the reason why UNIX was written, the only excuse we ever had: SPACEWAR! (Presented in living Java.) http://ars-www.uchicago.edu/~eric/lore/spacewar/spacewar.html - this article made me read EE "Doc" Smith at too early an age http://www.baumgart.com/rolling-stone/spacewar.html - Stewart Brand presents type-in code in a 1972 Rolling Stone "Spacewar serves Earthpeace." Talking of copyright, we're interested in the moral quandaries created by AmpRadio, the streaming MPEG3 server that allows listeners to rebroadcast their choice of songs to other clients. In an interview on mp3.com, its author, Geoffrey Elliott, seems to suggest that because these DJs don't need access to the MP3 file, legal microstations could grow up. We're not so sure. For the meantime, it's hanging out on a obscure port number near you. http://www.cybersnot.com/ampRadio.html >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista SENSAR, company behind the new eye-scanning ATMs, has a pyramid as a logo. fnord... http://dd.sh/ ... SUPERMAN REBORN dead - time to resurrect the Kevin Smith script?... www.undergroundlondon.com/bunny/ ...Catholic priest says VATICAN in contact with extraterrestrials: well, we'd have hoped so... http://www.drue.com/sleeplate/ ... current frontrunners in Time's "Most Important People of the 20th Century" include ROLF HARRIS and Dune's PAUL ATREIDES - www.pathfinder.com/time/special/gdml/time100report.html ... JOBS to appear on Letterman?... Bill Gates: REBOOT fan... Next for Open Source list: IBM... best Web misspelling: "Demonination"... nose leeches... hero for our times: www.bluesnews.com/halflife/gordon_freeman_bio.html ... well, *this* looks familiar: www.techdirt.com/uptodate/ >> GEEK MEDIA << friends who don't answer back TV>> no more Knight Rider or Street Hawk in the eco- friendly '90s: PACIFIC BLUE (6pm, Sat, C5) presents beach cops - on pedal-bikes!... the "get more ratings then get the whole series cancelled" lesbian episode of ELLEN is the main excuse for C4's COMING OUT NIGHT (9pm-5.40am, Sat, C4), "a theme night exploring gay life and, specifically, declaring oneself a homosexual" (thank-you, Radio Times). Maybe it'll have a few surprises of its own, thanks to "special guests" Alan Davies, Ulrika Jonsson, and Barbara Windsor... it's before Thunderdome, but Mel Gibson's still going downhill fast with MAD MAX 2 (10.55pm, Sat, ITV)... similarly inspired, Bruce "Tron, Commander Sheridan" Boxleitner sticks some WW2 fighter parts onto cars to construct failed Glen A Larson pilot ROAD RAIDERS (3.10pm, Sun, LWT + some regions)... Comic Strip director Stephen Frears misses his chance to do a Brit version of BMX Bandits in THE GRIFTERS (11pm, Sun, BBC2)... while Crichton tech-thriller RISING SUN (10pm, Sun, C4) was widely perceived as inflaming anti-Japanese feeling during investigations into Nintendo's US business practices... William Gibson's X FILES (9pm, Sun, Sky1) is just like season one episode, "Ghost In The Machine" - ie, rubbish... in a possible AOL-appeasing move, they've now changed the title of the net-based remake of SLEEPLESS IN SEATTLE (9pm, Mon, ITV) from "You've Got Mail" to "You Have Mail"... what, they thought he'd be so taken in by her chummy charms that he'd just admit the whole thing? strangely, this doesn't happen when RUBY WAX MEETS: OJ SIMPSON (10.15pm, Wed, BBC1)... HORIZON (9.30pm, Thu, BBC2) focuses on movie special effects in movies, some of which are apparently *computer generated* nowadays... cartoon WAYNEHEAD (4.20pm, Thu, ITV) is "drawn from the real-life experiences" of Damon "Last Boy Scout" Wayans, and, let's hope, is like a cross between Eraserhead and Wayne's World... FILM>> it's essentially the Bill Murray/ Woody Harrelson 10-skittle gross-fest Kingpin, plus the usual aimlessly rambling Coen brothers nonsense, and Jeff Bridges as (or not as) THE BIG LEBOWSKI (imdb: comedy / crime / mystery / thriller / rug / porn-makers / wheelchair / paraplegic / hippies / police-brutality / paedophilia / dreams / bowling / kidnapping / nihilism / artist / vietnam)... in one of those odd coincidences, it's a *different*Joel Cohen who wrote lame multiracial buddy movie MONEY TALKS (imdb: action / comedy / murder / media), starring the screaming camp DJ from The Fifth Element... but it's the *same* Jon Voight and Claire Danes both appearing in U TURN (imdb: crime / incest / drama / rape / black-comedy) and THE RAINMAKER (MPAA rated: PG-13 for "a strong beating and elements of domestic abuse")... Rainmaker is another by- the-book John Grisham adaptation, dull if you'd hoped Matt Damon was going to do Good Will Hunting II: "Now the hunting - has become *the hunted!*"... while U Turn is Ollie Stone's typically incoherent rework of new noir like Red Rock West... talking of which, the novelty of reuniting Linda "Last Seduction" Fiorentino with David "NYPD Blue" Caruso is the only promising facet of BODYCOUNT (imdb: crime / art-theft / comedy / drama / heist / doublecross / vulgarity / murder)... which is more than can be said for the direct, Harrison-Ford-free remake of The Fugitive, US MARSHALS, whose description (imdb: action / thriller / falsely-accused / wrongly-convicted / murder / police / plane-crash / escape / chase / fugitive / escaped-convict) could surely *never* be mistaken for its predecessor... EDIBLE>> reader Josh Roulston draws our attention to Kellogg's BRAN FLAKES "changing their name to HEALTHWISE <insert laxative joke about what they should change their name to here>". Thanks Josh, though we suspect that this may be another "Mini Eggs" case [see NTK 23/01/98] of a company trying to differentiate a product whose original name ("Bran Flakes") is too generic to be successfully trademarked (compare the Kellogg's to the very similar blue and white Tesco's BF box). BTW, at time of going to press, the domain branflakes.co.uk remains unreserved, as does the slightly similar-sounding billgates.co.uk ... this month's taste sensation: Cross & Blackwell's oddly titled NEW WAVE "Mediterranean Style Pork Sausages With Tomatoes And Herbs" - largely identical to Herta frankfurters, but with a yummy almost-exotic spicy flavour, and last seen on special offer in some branches of Waitrose... product name of the month: Jaffy's CHE PITTAS "Heat 'n' Eat Cheese Filled Pittas" (seen in Tesco) - tragically, no relation to Che Guevara, the South American freedom fighter, but a "super new teatime/ anytime snack" that cleverly pre-packs the "delicious melted Dutch Gouda cheese" into the pitta for you... abomination of the century: Silver Spoon's FRUIT SPOONERS, a range of individually potted, flavoured "compotes" from the sugar manufacturer - presumably targetting buyers who eat just the watery jam bit of "fruit corner" yoghurts and then throw the rest away... new source for tracking US consumer trends: http://www.brandweek.com/ - 'cos they always arrive here eventually. We're already drooling over this one: "Counting on the broadbased appeal of Nabisco's ubiquitous sandwich cookie, Kraft Foods' cereal division is planning a $45 million-plus marketing splash for OREO O'S CEREAL this August, hoping to create excitement among Oreo lovers both young and old and bring much-needed spice to the sluggish ready-to-eat cereal category"... >> 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 "Gary Numan on 3 cups of coffee". 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'. 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