_   _ _____ _  __                4/07/97       NEED TO KNOW NOW
| \ | |_   _| |/ /   _ __   _____      __ o Ack ack ack UK ack ack
|  \| | | | | ' /   | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ / / o ack ack geek ack ack
| |\  | | | | . \   | | | | (_) \ V  V /  o tv ack ack movies ack
|_| \_| |_| |_|\_\  |_| |_|\___/ \_/\_/   o ack news ack MARS! Ack!


         "A 15-year-old Protestant in Holland is not the same as a
         15-year-old Muslim in an Arab country."
         - David Kerr, Internet Watch Foundation, on rating porn sites
                the quality of some of those GIFs, it's hard to tell


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                               for hard drives

         INTERNET CONNECTIVITY to the States took an early weekend
         last week: a construction crew cut through one of the
         principal NY-Washington cables around 3pm BST on Fri
         27/6/97; routing was fritzed for the rest of the afternoon.
         That's okay, though, because UUNET-Pipex customers were
         recovering from repeatedly engaged dialup lines the day
         before, and Demon customers were still wondering what
         happened to their DNS server on Wednesday.
         http://www.internetweather.com
         - "The only fault-tolerant part of the Net is its users."

         A bittersweet week if you had deadpool bets on Jimmy
         Stewart, Robert Mitchum - or APPLE COMPUTER. On Thursday a
         block of 1.5 million Apple shares were sold - just
         coincidentally the same amount as Steve Jobs owns. Or
         owned. Then Apple clone-maker Power Computing stated that
         they'd be expanding into the PC market. You know things are
         bad when no-one wants to even compete with you... Stock
         prices are currently at an 11-year low. Find out whether it
         was an insider Jobs deal on Monday, when the SEC releases
         full details.
         http://www.apple.com
               Remember: somebody bought those shares. Probably Woz.

         Stock evaporation closer to home with Hampshire-based
         SUPERSCAPE. Shares in the perennial 3D tools provider have
         been sliding over the last four months from c.400p to the
         current c.80p. Superscape boss John Chiplin says this is
         due to the stockmarket's current anti-VR vibes, and the
         mistaken belief that the Scapesters have been betting
         everything on the Net. As opposed to that booming immersive
         3D environment market?
         http://www.superscape.com
         - a far cry from their promising early Dragon 32 work

         As reported in NTK (and if we didn't, we should have done,
         because everyone kept telling us about it), Web ad agencies
         ONLINE MAGIC and AGENCY.COM have teamed up. Online Magic
         was based in London with an NY office, and Agency.com was
         NY with a London office. Now Agency.com own a substantial
         chunk of OM, so we guess they'll centralise operations in
         Bermuda. Ahaha. Upshot: They'll look more impressive,
         they'll do some bigger corporate sites, and if you know
         HTML, you'll probably end up working for them. Move along
         now. Entertaining Web bankruptcies come later this year.
         http://www.agency.com      Look, just go read New Media Age
         http://www.onlinemagic.com      or something, okay? Sheesh.

         WINDOWS 98 got its first beta to around 100,000 'carefully-
         selected' sites. Because of non-disclosure agreements, no-
         one revealed to us that the upgrade contains an improved
         (FAT32) filing system, support for faster (USB, DVD)
         interfaces and some mildly cool macro/scripting language
         support. No-one did this and no-one cares, because Windows
         98 is dull, dull, dull. Everyone's waiting for the new
         Internet Explorer 4 beta. Which, some say, is *very* close.
         http://browserwatch.internet.com/news/news-current.html
                                         - you'll hear it here first


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

         New NT server bug... 'Pol Pot in hiding in Sweden' just a
         net.rumour... 'MICROSOFT buying CBS' just a net.rumour...
         '"Caesar the Geezer" going to jail' not a rumour at all...
         The Spot closes down... MATSUSHITA M2 game console
         pulled... "The Web May Be Killing Old-Fashioned CD-ROMs" -
         DAILY SCOOP... "A Million Intranet and Internet sites Need
         Microsoft Site Server", estimate - MICROSOFT... IT Managers
         don't read e-mails, says NETWORK NEWS... MEN IN BLACK movie
         webverts will "give users the impression the site they are
         visiting has been sabotaged"... "Majority of small firms
         not on-line" reports UK survey... new DOUGLAS ADAMS game to
         feature the "Wild Squid of Shrdlu" and (oh, our sides) the
         "Pulsating Inconvenience from Planet Sprod"...


                                >> CULTURE <<


         It's not often we'll cower from an expression of true geek
         might but THE MIND SPORTS OLYMPIAD, taking over the Royal
         Festival Hall from 17/8/97-24/8/97, has even us gibbering.
         Imagine - eight days of continuous mental battle in the
         ancient arts of Magic (the Gathering, that is), Continuo,
         Hare and Tortoise, Mastermind, Stratego, and Twixt
         (Twixt?). Also featured: challenges in Speed Reading and
         Memory skills AND a computer programming contest with
         categories for speed of writing, execution speed and code
         compactness. Anyone can enter. There are special under-16
         sections. We're leaving the country.
         http://www.mindsports.co.uk/
         - Who's got the TV rights? Don King must be kicking himself!

         Not on our UK tellies yet but still worth looking forward
         to: new US series of Egyptology-sci-fi STARGATE (featuring
         Richard Dean "MacGyver" Anderson), TIMECOP, and Gene
         Roddenberry's EARTH: FINAL CONFLICT (it's an old
         Roddenberry script from before his death, not his Omen-
         style return from beyond the grave). There's always a
         downside, however, and this time it takes the form of a
         fifth 22-episode season of BABYLON 5, plus *two* feature-
         length spin-off movies next year. Like individual Bab-5
         episodes weren't tough enough to follow...

         How about this? We broke into Simon "Non-hacker, honest"
         Gardner's mail account, ripped off this Saturday's ACCESS
         ALL AREAS provisional running order, and posted it onto our
         Website. Are we elite yet?
         http://www.spesh.com/aaa/agenda.html
                               - will trade for cracked copy of mIRC


                                >> TRACKING <<
                              good bot - fetch!

         We knew you like your PC AUDIO CD PLAYING SOFTWARE heavy on
         the obsessive features (like play statistics and automatic
         Internet CD database interrogation) so we knew you'll like
         DiscPlay 4. What we also knew is that you knew that
         DiscPlay has been crashing on CD database look-ups and
         pissing off the CDDB overlords. Well, we knew that you knew
         too, but we also knew that there was a new one out. And
         *that's* why we're called Need to Knew New.
         http://www.obvion.com/discplay/                or something
         http://www.cddb.com
             - and if you don't know what CDDB is, it's time you did

         Dull public service announcements a-go-go: geek wonks may
         like to check out our copy of the LAW SOCIETY's reaction to
         the (awful) DTI Proposals on Crypto Key Escrow. Executive
         summary for lazy busy folk: they don't like it, they don't
         want it, and (subtext) they smell a big fat MI5 rat.
         http://www.spesh.com/crypto/lawsoc.html

         Got NETSCAPE 4? Bored mindless with what to do with it? Why
         not quickly peruse the freebie dynamic font add-ons of
         HexMac? Then, for an encore, why not begin worrying about
         how really slow BitStream is, and how maybe fonts weren't
         what your design lacked after all...
         http://www.hexmac.com/
          - although we're getting pretty tired of courier ourselves


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                    Meme meme meme... all we think about 

         Nissan Cars launch mobile phone division... vibrating
         joysticks... US military say selling off of RF spectrum
         means they don't have enough for war... Makers of Spam
         intend to sue Sanford "Spamford" Wallace... Microsoft
         Expedia will tie up with AT Mayes in the UK...
         Tama*goth*i... No information without representation,
         reckon webster.aip.org/physnews/preview/qinfo/...
         Panasonic's latest Japan mobiles - 8 hours *talktime*,
         32Kbps... Carmageddon developed on the peace-lovin' Mac...
         Romana Machado stops charging; Jennicam starts... "Dream:
         Le Magazine de la Micro Alternative"... Grant "Animal Man"
         Morrison writing screenplay for LAWNMOWER MAN 3... Tasty
         Buzz Taffy...


                               >> MO' MEDIA <<
                         caution! diversions ahead

         TV >>  ITV may have ventured Into The Unknown, but the BBC
         goes one better with A WEEKEND ON MARS (from 6.10pm, Fri,
         BBC2), with live news of the NASA Pathfinder landing hosted
         by Clive Anderson, who'll presumably be making lots of
         topical Mars-related gags and constantly referring to his
         baldness... probable highlights include sci-fi round-up
         FEAR OF A RED PLANET (9.15pm, Sat, BBC2), technicolor
         classics THE WAR OF THE WORLDS (12noon, Sat, BBC2) and
         INVADERS FROM MARS (12.35am, Sat, BBC2), Mars-astronaut
         selection docu MARS: DEATH OR GLORY? (8.30pm, Sat, BBC2),
         plus exobiology speculation in THE NATURAL HISTORY OF AN
         ALIEN (8.55pm, Sun, BBC2)... of course, it could all be
         faked, as they then tacitly admit by showing conspiracy
         thriller CAPRICORN ONE (11.20pm, Sun, BBC2)... elsewhere,
         there's further outer-space fun with that cheery sextet of
         surrogate FRIENDS (9pm, Fri, C4), back with the start of
         their third series and already looking like an improvement
         on the patchy second one, as Ross confides his secret
         fantasy involving Princess Leia... SECRET HISTORY (9pm,
         Mon, C4) gets a bit more technical in its behind the scenes
         gossip about breaking the sound barrier in the 1940s... and
         Whole-Earther Stewart Brand gets all anthropomorphic about
          bricks and mortar (to the accompaniment of, you've guessed
         it, Brian Eno) as he explores HOW BUILDINGS LEARN (7.30pm,
         Thu, BBC2)...

         MOVIES >> One-man action spectacular Jackie Chan
         commemorates the return of Hong Kong to mainland China the
         only way he knows how - with a series of loosely connected,
         farcically complicated and, (in one case) genuinely ankle-
         busting stunt spectaculars in the limited release of RUMBLE
         IN THE BRONX (thank you, The Onion -
         www.theonion.com/onion3120/index3120.html )... PREACHING TO
         THE PERVERTED (no-one you've heard of) is a Brit-made S&M
         smut comedy, which takes its title from an old Pop Will Eat
         Itself song - this is not a recommendation... while ONE
         FINE DAY (Michelle Pfeiffer, George Clooney) brings you
         formulaic screwball romance enlivened by snappy mobile-
         phone swapping - and, intriguingly, continues the tradition
         of adapting song titles into films: the above-mentioned
         Preaching To The Perverted, Pretty Woman, The Gambler,
         David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers (For Love)...

         MARS! MARS! MARS! >> Whooooooosh... blat.......boiiiiing.
         Yup, it's time for another landing on Mars. Twenty years
         ago, Viking went to Mars the old-fashioned way, parking in
         a nice sedate orbit and sending in a cute little lander.
         Mars Pathfinder is bombing in, blazing a trail across the
         darkened Martian sky and coming down on a parachute --
         until, that is, it inflates a load of giant beach balls and
         bounces to a stop across the rubbly Martian plain. We'll
         know at about 6.30BST on Friday evening whether it's
         survived touchdown, and the first pictures will be beamed
         back to Ops Control (as they now seem to call it) at JPL by
         about 11pm... Pathfinder has a dinky little six-wheel rover
         aboard called Sojourner (crazy name, crazy 'bot) which will
         wander around the neighbourhood zapping rocks with a laser
         and using a spectrometer to sniff the debris. Lander and
         rover are expected to last about a month on the Martian
         surface, barring horrendous sandstorms or removal to the
         trophy halls of Barsoom. Expect some GREAT stereo QTVRs
         within days. What Clive won't tell you: Sojourner's running
         on a 2Mhz 80C85 (like in the Tandy Model 100) with 576KB of
         RAM, 176KB nonvolatile RAM, and 16KB ROM. And apparently
         the original proposal was for a big Mars buggy: after a
         baad funding meeting, the dejected lads at JPL came back,
         stared at their 1/8th scale model - and said "Hold on...."
                                                   - mattb@spesh.com
         http://www.audionet.com/events/nasa/mars/   live broadcasts
         http://mpfwww.jpl.nasa.gov/webcams/marsroom.html- 'Ops' Cam
         http://mpfwww.arc.nasa.gov/rover/faqs_sojourner.html
         - FAQ with the really *tough* FAQs
         - (like, what happens if it lands next to a huge rock?)
         http://www.moron.com/~techno/model_100.html


                              >> SMALL PRINT <<

    Need to Know Now 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 "increasingly self-indulgent".
                            (Get well soon, Z.R.)

                                 NEED TO KNOW
            THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
                           http://www.spesh.com/ntk
               
       Unsubscribe? Mail now-l@spesh.com with 'unsubscribe' in the body.
        Subscribe? Mail now-l@spesh.com with 'subscribe' in the body.
      NTKnow is helped by VIRGIN MEDIA, VENUS INTERNET and FLIRBLE.ORG.
             They worry about us, but we don't worry about them.

    (K) 1997 Special Projects. Copy at will, but retain this SMALL PRINT.

                   Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com.