_   _ _____ _  __               13/06/97       NEED TO KNOW NOW
| \ | |_   _| |/ /   _ __   _____      __ o news, views, and unsigned
|  \| | | | | ' /   | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ / / o confessions on UK NET
| |\  | | | | . \   | | | | (_) \ V  V /  o GAMES CULTURE TV FILM TECH
|_| \_| |_| |_|\_\  |_| |_|\___/ \_/\_/   o SCIENCE and ERR.. and... UM


         "Cronenberg's new $40 million film EXISTENZ depicts a
         society where interactive game designers are society's
         powerbrokers."
                                                - FILM THREAT WEEKLY
                                    and you thought 'Crash' was sick


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                         hard on the *causes* of news

         MICROSOFT dipped into its $9 billion reserve of mad money
         to invest a billion in COMCAST, a US cable provider.
         Commentators say it's a long term move, designed to boost
         the rollout of high bandwidth connections within the cash-
         strapped cable market. Or maybe it's like The Cable Guy,
         and Bill's trying to buy pals with cheap connections.
         http://www.comcast.com
                              - There's no such thing as free cable!

         TOTALNEWS cocked a snook at all those Big News Media Guys
         who sued it last month [NTK now 6/6/97], by (a) promising
         never ever knowingly to frame their content again, and then
         (b) allowing their *users* to frame the content using a
         special 'customise your news' option on the Totalnews Web
         page. Ahhah, do you see the difference, Mr Big News Media
         Solicitor? Ahhaaahhh.
         http://www.totalnews.com        - Plucky to a stupid extent

         Danish company CABOCOMM soured NETSCAPE's launch of its new
         browser by announcing a major security bug in all versions
         of Navigator. So far so normal. Except that Cabocomm's
         refusing to tell Netscape what the bug is. Netscape says
         Cabocomm clammed up after demanding - and failing to get -
         a "large unspecified amount" from Netscape on Monday. Thus
         spurned, who did the Danes turn to for assistance? CNN
         News. Nasty.
         http://www.cabocomm.com
         WE H0VE Y00R BR0WSER - LEAVE MILLI0N KRONE AT FTP4.NETSCAPE.COM

         The Internet is being taken over by evil GNOMES FROM ZURICH
         aided by four Californian CS professors. That's the shock
         revelation from the ASSOCIATION OF INTERACTIVE MEDIA, a
         group of industry leaders who are protesting the recent
         'near-criminal usurpation of power' over Internet domain
         allocation by a bunch of weedy engineers who wouldn't know
         a vast multi-billion dollar industry if they started it
         themselves. Er, which some of them did. Watch millionaire
         execs fume at their own impotence:
         http://www.interactivehq.org/oic/
                      let's keep this Net democratic *and* American!
         http://www.itu.int/net-itu/gtld-mou/declare.htm
                  the evil empire in all their bureacratic splendour

         Meanwhile it's chaos as usual in everyday domain name
         world. Take LINEONE.COM: COMPUTING reports that the guy who
         owns that domain, Sean McGregor, gets 20 mails a day from
         people trying to reach LINEONE.NET, BT and Murdoch's online
         service. But despite the hassle and embarrassment, LineOne
         still refuses his asking price to transfer the domain to
         them. Sean thinks they may change their minds - now he's
         getting mis-mailed docs from BT chief Sir Peter Bromfield.
         Forwarded from? A certain 'Rupert' account.
         http://www.lineone.com            - Memo to Sean: Call CNN.


                               >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                            news we knew you knew

         NetGuide magazine to close... Digital Diaspora featured
         'Stereophonic Retina', 'Gaiatronyx' and MC Beans...
         Internet Dealer magazine to close... DVD "already
         obsolete"... "Hard, Soft and Wet" (Melanie McGrath) is -
         wait for it - another travelogue book about the Net...
         Internet Age magazine "on holiday"... IBM's Net Shopping
         Mall to close... QuickTime 3.0 delayed... Gene analysis
         proves men socially inept... High street retailer Comet
         offer checks to see if PC hardware is "millennium ready"...
         Michael Jackson now wearing "pants on head": Muslims
         horrified...


                                >> CULTURE <<
         putting the style into 'lifestyle' - then removing the life

         Probably too late now to book your flight to next week's US
         games biz showcase E3 (19/6/97-21/6/97) in Atlanta,
         Georgia. Expect the usual news about end-of-year releases
         that'll slip to mid-1998 (best so far: videogame version of
         seventies future-sport movie ROLLERBALL); an ongoing "no
         comment" from Sega about their Saturn follow-up hardware
         (codenamed Black Belt); plus the usual swathe of tedious
         announcements about (a) online gaming really taking off,
         and (b) 3D graphics cards that make PCs nearly as good as
         consoles that cost about a tenth of the price.
         http://www.mha.com/e3/ - dull corporate info
         http://www.e3.net/ - GamePen mag shows how it should be done

         Things you never heard on Stars In Their Eyes: "Tonight,
         Matthew, I'm going to be... LAURIE ANDERSON!" The
         hyperventilating "Oh Superman" songstress/performance
         artist continues to host her MELTDOWN festival at London's
         South Bank Centre until 6/7/97. Among the model planes,
         synthetic snow, and animatronic parrots are human delegates
         Spalding "Swimming To Cambodia" Gray, Lou Reed, Ivor
         Cutler, DJ Scanner, and Laurie herself, with an interactive
         installation (Dancing In The Moonlight With Her Wigwam
         Hair), plus her new solo show, The Speed Of Darkness, an
         "informal evening... which probes... the role of coffee,
         cybersex and therapies for people who have used too much
         technology." We ain't making this up, you know.
         http://www.meltdown.co.uk/
         layout so avant-garde it's impossible to tell when it's 
                                                finished downloading
         http://www.sbc.org.uk/meltdown.htm
                                      get more sense out of this one

         SERIOUS GAMES is an installation of interactive artworks at
         the BARBICAN ART GALLERY, based on principle that Games are
         the New Art, although they usually clock a little faster
         than this bunch. Highlight of the exhibition has to be
         OSMOSE, described by our more embittered colleagues as "the
         only decent VR experience". Show begins on 19/6/97 until
         17/8/97; OSMOSE participants should book their 20 minute
         session in advance. And be quick, 'cos they're selling out.
         http://www.ace.co.uk/seriousgames/
                 yeah, because no-one's *serious* about Quake, are they?

                                 >> TRACKING <<
                        where other bots fear to tread

         For those who sneakily updated to MICROSOFT WORD 97 and
         then discovered that it completely messes up your friends'
         WORD 95 files - Microsoft have the fix - sorry - "update".
         http://www.microsoft.com/OfficeFreeStuff/Word/

         Fans of the great ROBERT X. CRINGELY's "Triumph of the
         Nerds" TV series will be overjoyed to discover there's a
         weekly site devoted to the tanned geek gossip. Anyone who
         can make a critique of object-oriented programming read
         like Private Eye should be worshipped.
         http://www.pbs.org/cringely/home.html home of "I, CRINGELY"
 
         Yeah, yeah, it's an e-mail to fax gateway. Big whoop. But
         it works, it's based in the UK, it lets you send images,
         and we don't *think* it's going to die overnight.
         http://www.faxware.uk.tobit.com

         Do you harken back to the good old days of 1200/75 baud
         modems, teletext-style graphics and obscure bulletin boards
         that were always engaged? Then perhaps you too could join
         the VIEWDATA REVIVAL MOVEMENT. Genuine mid-eighties BBSs
         restored to their former glory using custom terminal
         software and covertly networked Acorn machines.
         Bizarre, but... something feels so *right* about this.
         http://www.heaven.affection.net/
                              the future's bright, the future's cyan



                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                      propagation, that's what you need

         Bands design own fonts... the great MPEG3 clampdown... Star
         Wars beat'em-ups... caffeine addiction as legal defence...
         www.sundaybusiness.com... Reboot! New series! ... using
         motherboard fans to ventilate protest tunnels... PalmPilot
         as euphemism for 'wanker'... SimTunes!... Reboot! Video
         games!... "ed agencies"... So where's the UK 56K modem
         code, USR?... telecommuting - the downsizing your employees
         volunteer for... Orbitz!... "tell *that* to the moderated
         newsgroups"... And who's that presenting ITV's Sunday
         lunchtime youth issues show Straight Up? Could it be top UK
         hacker SIMON GARDNER???


                               >> MO' MEDIA <<
              tv, movies and other valuable learning experiences

         TV >> So-called psychics submit to so-called scientific
         testing as PREDICTIONS (8.15pm, ITV, Sat) compares their
         prophecies with what really happened over the last 6
         months... Sunday's remarkably dull "machines go mad" double
         bill has Yul Brynner gunslinging through WESTWORLD
         (10.15pm, BBC2) and Julie Christie being attacked by a
         giant Rubik's snake that's attempting to hatch THE DEMON
         SEED (11.45pm, BBC2)... with the start of the fourth
         series, surely it's time someone based a Quake patch round
         the remarkably mobile camerawork of NYPD BLUE (10pm, Mon,
         C4)... Barry Norman fawns over new Batman (oh, you've
         heard) George Clooney in a special FILM 97 (11.05pm, Tue,
         BBC1), before he (George, not Barry) has to go off and save
         the drowning kid in a pipe in a viewers'-favourite repeat
         of ER (10pm, Wed, C4)... real doctors reassure concerned
         locals that a cluster of leukaemia cases are "statistically
         unremarkable" in ANXIETY ATTACK (7.30pm, Wed, BBC2)... and:
         is WAVELENGTH (4.40pm, Wed, ITV) just kids' classic Press
         Gang, only set in a radio station and with not very good
         actors? You decide...

         MOVIES >> NATIONAL CINEMA DAY (Sun June 15) means it's only
         a quid to get in to most places - which makes it an extra
         shame that there's nothing new out that's much good... look
         out for special previews of upcoming summer hits especially
         Howard Stern's hilarious PRIVATE PARTS) - otherwise, the
         best of a bad bunch is THE SHADOW CONSPIRACY (Charlie
         Sheen, Linda Hamilton, Donald Sutherland), a frankly absurd
         tale of White House corruption and remarkably powerful spy
         satellites... TRIGGER HAPPY (Jeff Goldblum, Diane Lane,
         Kyle MacLachlan,) is a zanily lame gangster parody, but
         surely the presence of Burt Reynolds clued you in to
         that... while, tragically, the funniest thing about
         feminist-impersonation comedy THE ASSOCIATE (Whoopi
         Goldberg, Dianne Wiest) appears to be the poster, whose
         byline ("This is Terrific Entertainment... Smart, Edgy &
         Refreshingly Funny") has its source (WBCS-TV, no less)
         printed in such small writing that you assume it's the
         distributor's description of their *own movie*...

         SCIENCE >> As T. Rex snack on San Diego on the big screen,
         American palaeontologists detect traces of blood on
         dinosaur bones... Swedish geneticists reckon that old
         people depend as much on their genes for their smarts as
         younger ones, so maybe you don't live and learn after
         all... Earth has another moon: an asteroid locked into a
         bizarre horseshoe orbit... meanwhile, out in the cold
         beyond Neptune lurks a strange object 500km across:
         abandoned star destroyer in a parking orbit or big chunk of
         ice? we know which we'd prefer... shock news: "it is not
         likely to be useful or practicable to explain many
         biological processes in terms of particle physics,"
         according to Nature. Damn.                - mattb@spesh.com


                                 >> ERRATA <<

         As well as running the official Oasis Web site, the
         "Ignition" organisation attempting to clamp down on
         unoffical Oasis sites [NTK now 16/05/97] are actually also
         Oasis' management company. And now we reckon they're doing
         it to improve sales of the OASIS INTERACTIVE SONGBOOK CD-
         ROM, published here by Europress at the end of June...

         Previously we reported that Wired 5.06 was worth purchasing
         and "apparently quite good" [NTK now 23/05/97]. Further
         investigation has proved otherwise; W5.06 is "rubbish",
         with the Apple article in particular taking the piss. NTK
         regrets the error.


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