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          "The Internet is extending the United States' thinking and
           principles. If anybody benefits, the United States does -
               but I think it is good for every other country, too."
                       - DON HEATH, Internet Society President
        today president of the internet society,
                                ...tomorrow, president of the WORLD!


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                                  easy jibes

         Osteopathy and spinal tap treatments continue on the UK's
         creaking Internet backbone. At midnight this Saturday, deep
         down in the chock-a-block Docklands Telehouse where all the
         UK ISP spaghetti meets, someone will have the unenviable
         task of unplugging the beating heart of the British Net,
         the LINX, manhandling it into a side-room which isn't quite
         as knee-high in cables, and then try and put it back
         together again. Nothing will go wrong. Of course, if
         something did go wrong, you wouldn't know about it, because
         with the LINX dead, practically every bit of UK traffic
         would back up through those oh-so-expansive US connections
         your ISP has been promising to improve, and the whole thing
         would freeze like ... well, it did last time the LINX blew
         a fuse, two months ago. But that won't happen again. Trust
         us. Not even an atomic bomb can destroy the Net, remember?
         http://www.spesh.com/cgi-bin/now?b=archive97/now0509.txt&l=40#l
                                            - or a nasty mains spike
         http://www.linx.net/moveinfo.html
                                      - or a well placed banana skin

         LINX is what is defiantly *not* known on the Net as a
         "single point of failure". Good news then, that the other
         bit of Net surgery this week was the insertion of a second
         UK ...err, point of failure. The Manchester Network Access
         Point was launched this week by a group of northern ISPs as
         a "major step towards building an ultra reliable UK
         Internet". Unfortunately, there's just six of them (because
         someone forgot to ask the 'southerner' ISPs, even though
         most of them have some connectivity in Manchester), and
         they haven't got a .uk nameserver (which is a bit vital in
         a LINX-crashing scenario). Still, g'luck - and see you on
         Sunday, right? Right? Hello? HELLO?
         http://www.manap.net/
              - hey, what happened to that i-exchange peering point?
                                                     - hello? HELLO?

         Anti-virus programmers - they're the good guys, yes? Not if
         you listen the cuss-words from SYMANTEC and MCAFEE these
         past few months. First Symantec (that's Norton Utilities
         Inc) rudely accused McAfee of nicking their code and using
         it in the McAfee PC Medic 97 program. Pause for out-of-
         court negotiations. This week, Symantec spotted the same
         (allegedly) nicked code in loads of other McAfee programs,
         did a comedy double-take and formally accused McAfee of
         *taking the piss*. Full war recommenced this week with
         McAfee countersuing for defamation. Moral? Well, casting no
         aspersions, but if there are companies whose code you
         shouldn't rip off, it's probably the ones whose software is
         *specifically designed* to scan executables. (Hilariously,
         both companies are also being sued by TREND MICRO, who say
         they patented this whole idea of catching Net virii, and
         whoever *is* writing this stuff better own up soon so they
         can send them all to jail.)
         http://www.symantec.com     what next? Peter Norton didn't
         http://www.mcafee.com            really write all of Norton
         http://www.trendmicro.com           Utilities? NooooOOOooO!

         It's not often that anyone escapes Microsoft alive. ALEX
         ST. JOHN did, and, boy, is he living to tell the tale. Alex
         used to be the official MS "games evangelist" for DirectX,
         the Windows 95 games programming API. Chief opposition to
         DirectX (the 3D bit of it) is OpenGL, already kicking the
         DirectX butt in the PC 3D cards biz, and backed by the
         mighty Thor-like John Carmack, creator of Quake, Ur-Lord of
         Doom. Alex St. John's job was to persuade people that
         Carmack was wrong, and Bill was right. Last month, St. John
         was abruptly sacked from MS. This week, he revealed why:
         "In my opinion John Carmack", St. John the ex-evangelist
         repented, "is a God, and has my complete respect. In theory
         John is absolutely right about OGL, but in practice it will
         never be for reasons that have little to do with technical
         purity, and a lot to do with cold market forces, politics,
         and NDA's." Ouch: Microsoft fails to put the pin back in.
         http://www.bootnet.com/aliveandwell.html
               - disgruntled ex-employee. Armed with Super Nail Gun.
         http://www.melgir.demon.co.uk/lrp/labyrinthe/alex.html
               - the same ASJ? Who cares? Funny dressing-up picture!


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

         NETSCAPE announce profits : shares drop 18%... UK Home PC
         market "saturated", fear DIXONS... T3 still pondering
         "what's better, Mac or PC?"... FUTURENET claim best ABC Web
         figures (out of two sites audited so far)... CYBORGANIC
         "having financial problems"... EXCITE launch international
         edition... COMPUSERVE to "exploit" pornographic forums...
         EXCITE launches free Web-based e-mail service... Olivetti
         sells ACORN shares... ACCLAIM loses $100m, *despite* Turok:
         Dinosaur Hunter... EXCITE launch "pay us to wash your
         laundry" service... ZILOG bought by Texans... "Most users
         do not need push technology", study reveals... COMPUTER
         CHANNEL "looking for new presenters"... Inkjet printers
         count for 25% of Hewlett-Packard profit, says NEWSWEEK...
         new INTERNET EXPLORER 4.0pr2 does not work with AOL,
         CompuServe - or MSN...

         ANTI-NEWS INTERACTIVE >> NTK readers spread the obvious via
         poorly-filtered letters pages: in TIME OUT LONDON, Jem
         Stone (sub#120) reveals Web-columnist Spyder to be
         "idiot"... in TELEGRAPH CONNECTED, Adrian Mulder (sub#48)
         questions sanity of game journo Steve Boxer... Over to
         you...


                                >> CULTURE <<
             dialing your Penfield to 888 - and leaving it there

         Brighton goes bot mad next week when the FOURTH EUROPEAN
         CONFERENCE ON ARTIFICIAL LIFE bandwagon hits town.
         Registration costs an out-of-control UKP350, but there's
         plenty of free sideshows for rubbernecking boid 'n' droid
         fans: public lectures on evolution by Robin Dunbar and
         Lewis Wolpert, bot art by the usual suspects (Latham,
         Stelarc, and the aptly-named Karl Sims) and the always
         enthusiastically spasticated robot football tournament. Our
         pick, though, has to be the promised demo of a bot that
         "mimics the behaviour of a pre-Cambrian creature, laying
         trails (using toilet paper) just like those found in
         fossils of the period."
         http://www.cogs.susx.ac.uk/ecal97/
         - "Andrex puppy 5 billion years older than previous estimate"

         Form reflects content in a *very real sense* for ALEXEI
         SHULGIN, Russian curator and benefactor of humanity. He's
         offering a thousand dollars to the designer of the best
         piece of Web art to consist only of HTML form elements -
         buttons, checkboxes, text areas and pull down menus. Yes,
         we'll wait while you re-read that sentence. A GRAND FOR ONE
         HTML PAGE: better than even the most confused ad agency
         pays. The artwork created (and it must be art, not a search
         form or something crass like that) should be publically
         accessible, the winner will be announced at the Ars
         Electronica festival in September, and the deadline is
         31/8/97, so get *your* arts over to:
         http://www.c3.hu/hyper3/form/           Submit... submit...
         http://www.roline.ru/sp/cp/shulgin.html
         - Not to be confused with LSD guru Alexander Shulgin. Altho...


                                >> TRACKING <<
             like the Cylons had on their forehead (only in text)

         Don't forget the Mac, writes one reader - presumably an
         altruistic Amiga fan. How could we, in the week when
         MacOS8, the super giant "Aaron" extension, hit the shelves?
         Extensive Internet support, a multi-threaded PowerPC
         finder, some great features ripped off Windows 95, and they
         killed that stupid Quickdraw GX printer rubbish, so that's
         a relief. Also out from Apple is a beta of Java 1.5
         runtime, which, they say, runs Net apps "up to 10 times
         faster" than the instructions-per-fortnight Java 1.0.
         Brings a whole new meaning to "Just in Time", doesn't it?
         http://www.apple.com                      motto: STILL HERE
         http://applejava.apple.com
         - calm down, ladies, it's only SDK 1.0.2 compatible

         Much more hardcore a Mac user than that? Curious to check
         out the Unixy future of the platform (and who'd have
         imagined *that* migration path)? Too stingy to splash out
         on a NeXT box? Alors! Voila Jean-Louis Gassee, making like
         Linus Torvalds and giving away a free preview release of
         BeOS on the cover of the August MacUser. C'est magnifique!
         http://www.be.com   and soon to be as rich as Mr Torvalds,too

         Locate any computer shop in the UK! Well, technically it's
         find any Europress supplier, but with their Oasis
         Interactive Songbook shifting 28,000 units since launch
         ("Fantastic for this time of year" - a company spokesman),
         that's going to be most of them. The parser ain't exactly
         AltaVista, but combine it with the "Where's My Nearest
         Tandy Branch?" CGI and suddenly shopping is fun again.
         http://www.unipower.co.uk/es/wwdistrib.nsf/sales
         - Unipower also offer "competitor intelligence". Which is nice.
         http://www.internexus.co.uk/tandystores/search.htm
                     - And what do they do with all *our* postcodes?

         We're having fun with ALEXA, a freebie PC Net tool that's
         so close to being useful that it's only a matter of time
         before Microsoft rips it off and makes a packet. Alexa lets
         you publicly annotate Websites, publicly vote for Websites,
         and generally confer with other surfers as to the
         suckability of the URL you're viewing. Fatal flaw: the vast
         possibilities for spamming popular site with adult XXX
         links. There's also a bizarro ability to connect to a tape
         backup archive of the entire Internet: we suspect this is
         the Alexa designers' Great Work. Sadly, like all Great
         Works, it doesn't. Yet. But it's fun.
         http://www.alexa.com
         - based in San Fran. I think you know what we're saying


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                              hasta la Altavista

         Life imitates Tap: Christopher "NIGEL TUFFNELL" Guest takes
         seat in House of Lords... majordomo hacking... why aren't
         the Medellin cartel sponsoring Impro comedy clubs?...
         www.spesh.com/nanoguitar/... Oh, Mr Kawasaki? SHUT UP...
         Oh, *sure* you "stepped down", ROSSETTO... Yemeni
         martians... crypt newsletter... FIREFLY should do tapes for
         its friends... nanog flamewars... ICQlones... AIX ping o'
         root... "The witch is late"... www.spacewriter.com... Nick
         Rosen : the new Rasputin... PLAYSTATION pushes rental
         market - anathema to Nintendo... www.milde.no/mars/...
         prepare never to forget: the Ben Hur scene in the STAR WARS
         prequel...


                               >> MO' MEDIA <<
                      the vicarious lifestyle of choice

         TV >> Remark how quickly modern comedy dates, as BBC2
         showcases the first ever episode of BOTTOM (9pm, Fri,
         BBC2), the "Sick" episode of THE YOUNG ONES (9.30pm, Fri,
         BBC2), followed by a compilation of the "best bits" of
         NEVER MIND THE BUZZCOCKS (10pm, Fri, BBC2)... torment
         yourself further with the devil's own movie dilemma of
         Clive Barker's sado-machismo HELLRAISER (10.30pm, Fri, C4)
         vs Joe Eszterhas's FLASHDANCE dancing welder (11.25pm, Fri,
         BBC1) vs Robert Mitchum's tour de force NIGHT OF THE HUNTER
         (11.55pm, Fri, BBC2)... Clive Sinclair is one of several
         experts chatting professional (rather than technical)
         HYPOTHETICALS (7.10pm, Sat, BBC2) for sixty minutes, but
         just half an hour in the company of design poseurs TOMATO
         (1.50am, Sat pm/Sun am, C4) is still half an hour too
         long... despite Thunderbirds-style F/X and stunt casting
         (Rutger Hauer, Martin Sheen) nuke-sub drama HOSTILE WATERS
         (9pm, Sat, BBC1) goes edge-of-seat like Edge Of Darkness,
         but all ITV has to retaliate is a double-bill of POLICE
         ACADEMY 7: MISSION TO MOSCOW (8.15pm, Sat, LWT - watch for
         the Tetris allegory) and - almost certainly - their rubbish
         grainy print of 9.5 WEEKS (10pm, Sat, LWT)... these hard
         s/f OUTER LIMITS (9.35pm, Sun, BBC2) really are an
         improvement, but don't miss the remarkable non-revelations
         in the dramatised ROSWELL (10pm, Sun, C4) or repeated docu
         THE ROSWELL INCIDENT straight after (declassified after 50
         years? Yeah, right)... the evil-looking Carol Smillie
         promotes house-swap vandalism in CHANGING ROOMS (9pm, Mon,
         BBC2) - the newest of many shows proclaiming "Wake up -
         time to DIY"... while historical sitcom fans should lap up
         the first-ever ROSEANNE (6.30pm, Tue, C4), THE GOOD LIFE
         SELECTION BOX (8.15pm, Wed, BBC1), the last ever (?)
         NORTHERN EXPOSURE (10.35pm, Thu, C4) and PILGRIMS REST
         (8.30pm, Thu, BBC1) - set in an isolated transport cafe,
         here's hoping it's more than just a terrible Brit version
         of Cheers...

         MOVIES >> Another of those lean, blockbuster-between weeks
         - PALOOKAVILLE (no-one we'd heard of) may well be yet
         another post-Tarantino failed-heister, but it's got a
         genuine warmth and sense of humour... otherwise WARRIORS OF
         VIRTUE (kung-fu kangaroos) is bizarre mass merchandising
         mayhem, like Teenage Mutant Martial Arts Wallabies, and
         PORTRAITS CHINOIS (Helena Bonham-Carter) is an elaborate
         ensemble romance, like Friends - but in French! We'll take
         the kangas...

         HOLIDAY READS >> Disappointingly, we didn't hate digital
         travelogue HARD SOFT & WET (Melanie McGrath, Harper
         Collins, UKP16.99) anyway near as much as we wanted to -
         sure, it's overwritten and full of lamers, but it feels
         right, has an honest directness, and Dave makes a brief
         cameo on page 230... conversely, Po Bronson's net-top box
         novel THE FIRST $20M IS ALWAYS THE HARDEST (Secker &
         Warburg, UKP 5.99) is much *worse* than anyone imagined -
         if we wanted patronising tech explanations, we'd be buying
         net mags (see also Po's very defensive AOL Website)... Hard
         Drive sequel OVERDRIVE - BILL GATES AND THE RACE TO CONTROL
         CYBERSPACE (James Wallace, John Wiley, UKP 16.99) is - just
         - worth ploughing through pages of monopoly legalities for
         Bill's tell-all personal details... despite the subhead
         "Popular Science And Sex In America" NASA/TREK (Constance
         Penley, Verso, UKP 11) is for cult-studies obscurists -
         lovely jacket design, though... Edward Tenure's WHY THINGS
         BITE BACK (Technology And The Revenge Of Unintended
         Consequences) (Fourth Estate, UKP 8) seems to have
         transferred to paperback with few dramatic side-effects...
         and, as you sit in the sun, spare a thought for occasional
         NTK music columnist JAMES FLINT, rumoured to be getting a
         six-figure advance for forthcoming cyber-novel - so Jim,
         guess you won't be doing this for the free CDs any more...


                              >> SMALL PRINT <<

    Need to Know Now is a useful and interesting UK digest of things that
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