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     * APPLE FAILS TO FAIL * CLAN NEGROPONTE "HELPS" AFRICA * MAC IE4.0 *
   SCI-FI ARCHAEOLOGY * TOMORROW'S WORLD, MEN IN BLACK, AND THE WIRELESS *


           "Matsushita is to demonstrate 3D human characters at next
            week's SigGraph '97 that can move naturally and dance to
                                                             music."
                                          - Matsushita press release
                   an improvement on the rest of the attendees, then


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                                soft wariness

         APPLE COMPUTER increased its share of the lucrative
         "foundationless gossip" industry this week, with excellent
         results. The first we heard was from our Hot Apple Source,
         who sent the cryptic "We hear our female execs are in for a
         few Lexuses". Next, weirdness spilled forth from Amiga-
         eater GATEWAY 2000: was their resigning CEO Apple-bound?
         The Tuesday SF Chronicle said Steve Jobs as chairman was a
         done deal, and then the excellent MacOS Rumours site maxed
         out after hinting a Sun-Oracle buyout. Apple stocks bounced
         up all week - and Apple still hadn't had to do a thing. We
         can only note that PC Pro's news page headlined with
         "Apple's job of jobs could be the job for Jobs", implying a
         joke that got out of hand. Slightly more usefully, someone
         leaked Jobs' e-mail to his Pixar employees denying
         everything. You know, it's a sad world when the only guy
         whose word you believe is Steve Jobs.
         http://www.macresource.pair.com/mrp/contributions/pixar.shtml
                                            - trusssst in meeeee ...
         http://www.apple-history.pair.com/H3.html
                   - mind you, I wouldn't book any trips to China...
         http://www.macosrumors.com         misspelt for some reason

         "Computers need more Africa in them" said Brian Eno,
         misquoting Lenny Henry's Theophilus P Wildebeest. Others
         plan the exact reverse. MICROSOFT this week announced their
         intent to invest millions in (as they pointedly describe
         it) "building an African market for its products". And
         where Microsoft stomps, can NEGROPONTE be far behind? Old
         Nick's son, Dmitri, has just wrapped up the first 2B1
         conference, where children from developing countries were
         invited to learn about the Digital Revolution(tm) at MIT.
         "We're trying to bypass the politicians," Dmitri, 27, says.
         Sadly, the history of young people being taught a novel
         ideology by confused Western academics and then returning
         to their communities to create their own unique
         interpretation is *not* too good these days. Meanwhile, the
         eminently practical clockwork inventor, Trevor Bayliss,
         premiered a clockwork Newton for Commonwealth officials. It
         can, reports say, run for over 16 minutes without crashing.
         http://freeplay.pair.com/
                                 - twice as long as an OS7.5 PowerPC
         http://www.2b1.org/       more well-meaning wind-up artists
         http://www.eu.microsoft.com
         - Microsoft's new site for that developing European market

         Peter Dawe, millionaire ex-head of PIPEX, this week handed
         over control of the Internet Watch Foundation, *the*
         phoneline for grassing up pornographers, con-men and other
         net.ne'er-do-wells. Under the benevolent gaze of new
         Internet Minister Barbara Roche, power passed into the
         eminently trustworthy, cough cough, hands of Demon,
         LineOne, UUNet and BT, who are now sponsoring it, and the
         LINX and the Internet Service Providers Association (ISPA),
         who will be assisting in a general revamp. The group has
         ambitious plans, including hosting the first international
         working group on rating and filtering software. It's not
         clear whether all this will still take place around Dawe's
         kitchen table - like in the good old days.
         http://www.iwf.org.uk/press.html
         -or "the IWF's office in rural Cambridgeshire" as this calls it
         http://www.ispa.org.uk/       hey, ISPA! Professional site!
         http://www.bbc.co.uk/politics97/mps/746.shtml
                                      - here starteth the RocheWatch

         The newspaper tech pages were abuzz (well, as abuzz as the
         tech pages get) with a doom-laden study that declared that
         the Net was suffering from a bandwidth "crisis of the
         Commons". The Xerox Parc research team based their findings
         on timing packets between Stanford and the UK's Cranfield
         Uni (lot of traffic there). They noted from the delays that
         when users are encouraged by fast response times, they
         increase their net activities. When the response time then
         slows to a crawl, users back off. The researchers' were
         horrified by this "feast-and-famine" scenario, and
         suggested charging everyone for bandwidth used to stamp it
         out. Fine. Now given that's never going to happen, how
         about a better set of Internet weather indicators, so this
         "crisis" (or "equilibrium-seeking system" as we'd more
         positively describe it) can be fine-tuned? Oh shut up, us.
         http://www.parc.xerox.com          no mention of the report
         http://www.cranfield.ac.uk       which saves some bandwidth
                     - whatever next, more roads cause more traffic?


                               >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         "Windows 98 takes on the set-top box with video, radio and
         TV capabilities" - reports MSN... UK Net users not nerds
         says survey by Yahoo! Europe... rich source of anti-news IT
         Informer shuts down (in itself anti-news)... UK Net users
         rich, earn 44,000UKP says survey by Yahoo! Europe...
         Ukrainian believers flock to cross in tree stump - AP
         report... Microsoft to lose "hundreds of millions" on media
         ventures... www.yahoo.fr most popular French site says
         survey by Yahoo! Europe... Updike writes collaborative Net
         story (imitating successful Troma filmscript compo at
         www.troma.com/contest.html ) ... new "Bitch" song reveals
         women to have complex, multi-faceted
         personalities... Yahoo! Europe plan to increase ad rates...
         budget (UKP 2.99) CD-ROM range to feature games
         compilations, Doom add-ons, erotica...


                                >> CULTURE <<
                          celebrate your inner geek

         Stargate has a lot to answer for - Bournemouth University's
         appealingly titled Theoretical Archaeology Group ("Go and
         dig something up!" "I'll think about it") are calling for
         papers for December's even cooler-sounding conference: WHEN
         WORLDS COLLIDE: ARCHAEOLOGY AND SCIENCE FICTION. "More
         people have seen Raiders Of The Lost Ark than Time Team,"
         ponders dashing academic Miles Russell, adding: "Can we
         learn anything from the popular perception of archaeology
         in the public consciousness? Are those involved in
         archaeology secretly pleased by the heroic pose of Indiana
         Jones, Jean-Luc Picard or Lara Croft?" Shamefully, we only
         found out about this via the chat-forum for the launch of
         new mag CULT TV, an event marred by troublemakers
         discussing the allegedly made-up kids' show, CANOE SQUAD.
         http://csweb.bournemouth.ac.uk/consci/tag97/
                           - quite a way down the page. get digging.
         http://www.futurenet.com/forum/_culttvforum/00000027.htm
                        - does no-one else remember "Android Barge"?

         It's a worldwide multinational conspiracy to silence
         veteran net.pranksters! Or maybe it's the inevitable price
         of "asking for it" in too strident a voice. Synchronicity
         or conspiracy, both RU SIRIUS and HEATH BUNTING are in
         trouble with the Big Guys this week. Heath's
         Irational.org's messings with the loyalty card schemes of
         major shopping chains has led to legal threats from
         SAINSBURY'S plc - the company has demanded that he hand
         over "stolen" personal data gathered from individuals
         visiting the fake Sainsbury's Web site. Meanwhile,
         corporate lawyers have noticed that RU SIRIUS's
         www.revolting.com, while festooned with banner ads
         advertising MICROSOFT, IBM and US ROBOTICS, has never
         actually been paid for any of them. Or indeed, requested
         permission to reproduce them. Both RU and HB are shockingly
         unrepentant, and have chosen to stare The Man out.
         http://www.revolting.com       two MacTrials to go, please.
         http://www.irational.org/tm/clubcard
         -hey, free credit card blanks! Thanks, supermarkets everywhere!

         A quick reminder that next weekend is the hacker conference
         double-bill of XS4ALL's HIP '97 (Amsterdam) and Emmanuel
         Goldstein's HOPE (New York). NTK hopes to be feeding out a
         live report from the 'Dam, but we're sure that they'll be
         enough "Hackers To Destroy World As We Know It" articles
         for you to glean what went on without us. If you're there,
         we're the ones looking like we've never put up a tent in
         our lives. Again.
         http://www.hip97.nl   - transatlantic link-ups promised too
         http://www.2600.com  - hope we live long enough to see them

         Meanwhile, that same weekend, on the Lizard Peninsular in
         Cornwall, PAUL MARTIN is running a Symbiotic Infotainment
         show. This (of course!) involves "an interesting mix of
         multimedia activities" connected with visual feedback,
         credit unions, entertainment, and the inevitable
         alternative-currency LETS schemes. He's looking for someone
         to help him take the video they're taking of the event, and
         feed it onto some one of those Web server things.
         Interested? Cornish? Give Paul a call via us, at
         paulmartin@spesh.com.


                                >> TRACKING <<
                   Web site come by this way two moons past

         MICROSOFT snuck out the V1.2 "upgrade" for its notorious
         DIAL-UP NETWORKING support this week. Preeeetty featureful:
         client support for point-to-point tunneling protocol is
         introduced, letting Win 95 users connect to NT servers over
         the Net instead of direct-dialling in. Plus there's support
         for internal ISDN adapters and extra scripting commands.
         All this, and a less buggy TCP/IP stack too! Wonder why
         they're keeping it so quiet?
         http://www.eu.microsoft.com/ntserver/info/pptpdownload.htm
         - oh yeah. It was supposed to work the first time

         You'll either spooge or you won't, so we'll say it as it
         is: A complete royalty-free VT100 TELNET client written in
         Java, with source. Yes?
         http://www.nacse.org/web/webterm/               off you go.

         We've always held a soft spot for STEVEN K ROBERTS, creator
         of the million dollar Microbike, proprietor of Nomadic
         Research Laboraties and the original footloose technomad.
         Now he's fallen head over heels with a British geek girl,
         we're all the happier. Steve and Liz's new project, a cut-
         down Microship flotilla, has been completely revamped, and
         they've got a new resource site too. Ahhh.
         http://www.microship.com/latest.txt              ahhhHHhhhh
         http://www.microship.com/technomads tn'ing around the world

         Just what you wanted, Mac folk- MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER
         4.0 (preview 1) for the Macintosh! Read about it. Download
         it. It looks so beautiful doesn't it? So tasty. So sweet.
         What a kind man that Mr Gates is, to give you it for free.
         http://www.eu.microsoft.com/ie/mac/home_top.asp
         http://tcp.ca/gsb/Mac/
                               - spit or swallow? A 3rd party writes



                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                              hasta la altavista

         "Arial is the cruellest font"... 6-channel surround sound
         on audio DVDs? Oh, *sure* that'll make us throw away our
         CDs... www.gmsv.com's Minister of Information... PC games
         "out-speccing" consumers, fears INTERPLAY - and they've got
         some *pretty speccy* customers... SLURPEE BRAINFREEZE...
         Phone up, ask "how much to make my site incompatible with
         your competitors' browser?"... the terrifying REBECALIST
         stalkers... Thresh - a new kind of human?... 120 UKP - for
         a DEMON leather jacket?!... Concealed in all TTF fonts -
         "Copyright Microsoft from now to eternity"... Bulgaria:
         home of CD piracy... Top three bestsellers at
         WWW.BOOKSHOP.CO.UK: Inside Com (P Rogerson), Teach Yourself
         Microsoft Internet Studio In 21 Days (M Van Hoozer) and, at
         number 3, THE BIBLE (various artists)... note to
         shadow.dra.hmh.gb - hey, try www.anonymizer.com, Mr Spy!


                               >> MO' MEDIA <<
          why don't your turn in and do something less interesting?

         TV >> ROOM 101 (10pm, Fri, BBC2) returns to draw a bead on
         comedy's most obvious objects of mirth, though that doesn't
         include tonight's guest, Jeremy Clarkson... "Beavis And
         Butthead meets The Simpsons" is how one traditionally
         cheers cartoon trash-com KING OF THE HILL (10.30pm, Fri,
         C4)... THE GAME OF WAR (8pm, Sun, C4) sounds like a TV
         tourney of Command And Conquer, but BBC2 has the real thing
         in Moviedrome's urban unrest double-bill THE WARRIORS and
         LA HAINE (from 10.15pm, Sun, BBC2)... no-one seems much
         shocked by the new drugs/youth/road-protesters strand
         they're calling RENEGADE TV (from 11pm, Mon) on, you've
         guessed it, Channel 4... the Tomorrow's World team use
         archive nostalgia to deny that appearing on their show
         "curses" inventions in TW TIME MACHINE (7.30pm, Wed,
         BBC1)... INSIDE STORY (10pm, Wed, BBC2) tries to get inside
         the "containers" of the Heaven's Gate suicide HTML cult,
         tastefully followed by two X FILES, the second of which is
         the cool one with the circus freaks... Tarantino geek-
         cameos near the end of fun but patchy 20-something drama
         SLEEP WITH ME (10.35pm, Thu, C4), but REBOOT (4.40pm, Thu,
         ITV) interrupts with an "Is Enzo dead?" cliffhanger, though
         you can eliminate any undue stress by consulting
         www.meridian.tv.co.uk/preview/reboot3.html ...

         MOVIES >> We're as disappointed as you are - MEN IN BLACK
         (Will Smith, Tommy Lee Jones) has the cast, the jokes, and
         the effects of an ID4-style blockbuster, but just hasn't
         got the *soul*, and consequently feels short, empty,
         insubstantial, like a cheaper Ghostbusters 2... it's
         unclear if its title is supposed to be funny but B*A*P*S
         (Halle Berry, Martin Landau - it stands for "Black American
         Princesses") may be the worst film released so far this
         year... which leaves us with surprise recommendation
         ADDICTED TO LOVE (Matthew Broderick, Meg Ryan), an often
         dumb but at least bizarrely obsessive romantic comedy
         directed by Griffin Dunne (from "American Werewolf In
         London", and this week's surprise Saturday FRASIER repeat -
         7pm, C4)...

         RADIO >> Radio 4 new guard announce a "science zone" after
         audience (average age 53) are revealed "to have great
         interest in computers"... No Lydon, lots of Eno condemns
         Ian Dury's sixties-focused artschool rock history ART GOES
         POP, POP GOES ART (11pm, Sun, R2) and it's Warhol not Woody
         with archetypal R4 doc A CULTURAL HISTORY OF THE BANANA
         (9PM, Mon, R4)... A mini-series of electronic music
         "pioneers" features bonkers ( and great) Fifties avant-
         garder Pierre Henry in ICONOCLASSICS (10.45pm, Mon, R3)...
         Usual suspect Steve Jones insists Flann O'Brien's ludicrous
         "The Third Policeman" was inspired by physics of the time
         in SCI-FI: FICTION SCIENCE NOT SCIENCE FICTION (2pm, Tue,
         R4)... Ignored lo-fi veterans Yo La Tengo plug fab LP "I
         Can Hear Heart Beating as One" in session on JOHN PEEL
         (8.40pm, Tue, R1)... and if only Alan Turing's affairs
         could have been as lasting as the BBC's enduring romance
         with him, as the wartime valve god's role in Bletchley
         Park's codebreaking is picked over once more in GOING BACK
         (7.20pm, Thu, R4)... - wireless@spesh.com



                                 >> ERRATA <<
                      and other apologies for apologies

         Yes, we confess, it was us who "took down" the world's best
         TELETUBBIES site (aka Riddle Of The Teletubbies, formerly
         at www.mitt.demon.co.uk) by foolhardily plugging it in The
         Guardian last weekend. Apparently Demon will suspend any
         homepage shifting more than "100 megabytes transferred to
         non-Demon hosts for any three days in a month". So now you
         know, you warez, porn, or kids' TV barons. As penance, NTK
         is currently working with host Moose to transfer the
         offender to a better, fatter-piped home. We're fairly sure
         we didn't cause the firing of Tinky Winky (aka the
         Nietzschean Cluub Zarathustra's Dave Thompson). In
         addition, a letter in this month's issue of The Face
         reveals that Tinky Winky (the Teletubbie, not the actor) is
         probably gay - rather than transvestite, as we may have
         previously claimed. NTK regrets all these errors.
         http://moose.spesh.com/
                           - NTK giveth, but it can also taketh away
         http://news.uk.msn.com/news/3377.asp
                        - shocking tell-all fully illustrated expose

         Another kick in the face for our predictive powers: the
         LINX, heart of the UK Net, performed flawlessly during its
         transplantation last weekend. Apologies to the LINX staff
         for implying any different. (The appearance of this
         correction has nothing to do with the anonymous "Very
         funny. Say sayonara to your connectivity" mail we received
         on Saturday.)
         http://www.linx.net                 - great guys. Big axes.

         Finally, the URL for the disturbingly misogynistic "How to
         Kill the Spice Girls" site has been printed incorrectly in
         this weeks' Time Out. Nothing to do with us, but we thought
         we'd correct it anyway. You see, it isn't all take, take,
         take.
         http://www.geocities.com/~-needle/spice.htm
         http://www.timeout.co.uk      - now, about that "Spyder"...


                              >> 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 "viewdata compatible".
                     ( http://www.heaven.affection.net )

                                 NEED TO KNOW
            THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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