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   * APPLE JUDAS! * UUNET LYNCHINGS! * MY NAME IS PRINCE, AND I AM .. UM *
        GAME.COM ARRIVES!  * PLUS SIGGRAPH SPECIAL REPORT, "BREASTS" *

         "We will be looking at how we can move large data files
         around this year... The aim is to find golden nuggets of
         technology that may have been developed by someone else.
         We are taking lots of commercially available off-the-shelf
         equipment and seeing what it has to offer."
         - British Army Officer, Joint Warrior Interoperability Demo '97
                   announcing: the world's first military warez site


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                                  soft heads

         Capturing the spirit of the classic APPLE 1984 advert,
         Steve Jobs announced to a rapt MacWorld Expo that MICROSOFT
         was investing $150 million in Apple, that Microsoft had
         always been Apple's friend, and that Apple was now at war
         with Eurasia. Proles and Apple Developers alike then
         chanted at a huge telecast image of "Uncle" Bill Gates
         (Bill has not been seen outside his Seattle bunker since
         the attempted Netscape putsch of 1995). Evangelists from
         the Ministry of Truth later enthused about how Microsoft
         had agreed at the last minute to a) invest in a company
         whose share price was at an all-time low, b) make its
         browser the default on all new Macs, and c) get out of any
         outstanding Apple patent suits for a widely-assumed
         pittance. It was also revealed that Lawrence Tesler was
         never chief technical officer for Apple, and Mike Makkula
         had never been a board member since the old garage days.
         Victory to Apple! Down with Emmanuel Andreessen!
         http://www.apple.com
               - if you want to see an image of the future, Winston,
         http://www.microsoft.com      imagine a boot taking forever

         MICROSOFT'S new policy of evading anti-trust actions by
         throwing money at the competition (just how *does* that
         work?) continued in the streaming Net video market. A few
         weeks ago, Microsoft bought 10% of PROGRESSIVE "RealAudio/
         RealVideo" TECHNOLOGIES. Now they've bought out
         Progressive's main competitor, VXTREME, the people whose
         plug-in crashed when you were trying to watch the CNN
         coverage of the Mars landing. Both companies have now
         decided to support Microsoft's own streamed video client,
         claiming that it is the industry standard. Well, it is now.
         http://www.vxtreme.com      oh, and Bill holds a board seat
         http://www.real.com     at VDOnet. No monopoly here, uh uh.

         UUNET, the granddaddy of PIPEX, received the Dreaded Usenet
         Death Penalty last Friday. Following the D-UDP, all UUNET
         users' postings to newsgroups were automatically cancelled
         by a diddy 78-line bots put in place by a worldwide
         alliance of vigilante newserver operators (scary, huh?).
         The lynch-team had good cause - at one stage, one
         administrator reported, only 20% of the newsgroup postings
         emanating from UUNET were "legitimate" (people asking for
         warez or porn on just the one newsgroup). The death penalty
         was lifted Wednesday when UUNET announced anti-spam
         measures - ie, blamed its resellers. Meanwhile, in the
         darker waters of Usenet, a more pro-active hacker released
         the complete password files for top spammer SANFORD
         WALLACE's machine. "His userid is wallace,", the bad hacker
         reports, "with a [crypted] password of 'sTUv6x8r.'  Guessed
         the root password yet?" Err... god? Err... sex? Ummm...
         http://www.usa.uu.net/      hilariously, uu.net want to sue
         http://cyberwerks.com:70/cyberwire/howto.html
         - Brock Meek's mailing list, where we stole the Spamford tale
         http://www.intraday.com/spam/spam/spam/
            - unrelated, but still the most annoying page on the Web

         A British judge refused to comment on a fight over the
         ownership of the 'PRINCE.COM' domain name, effectively
         passing .com battles back to the US courts who, it's
         suspected, may favour US-based companies. The two litigants
         were the PRINCE SPORTS GROUP, a US firm, and PRINCE PLC, a
         Brit computer services company who we'd describe as
         'plucky' if they'd actually done more with the domain than
         point it at the Pipex Worldserver Website, the wimps. The
         judge, Justice Neuberger, went against the precedent set by
         a previous UK case, which determined that the singer-
         songwriter "Prince" was not a member of the British Royal
         Family, and could not use the title on UK soil. Prince
         complied by adopting an obscure Zapf Dingbats character as
         his moniker.
         http://www.prince.com 
            relax - we're just trying to freak out the US readership


                               >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         Music videos glamorise tobacco and alcohol use, reports
         study... 30% of City execs use "a sexual position or
         abusive name for the boss" as password... AMAZON/Updike
         story "not very good"... Pathfinder has problems, fix is to
         upgrade software (uh-uh)... UFOs were secret plane project,
         "reveal" CIA... 16% of City execs use their partners' name
         or nickname as password ... WIRED designers, faced with
         major overhaul, losses, decide mag is "basically fine"...
         Excite looks for "the real Dorothy Com!" (or failing that,
         some tacky brand publicity)... automatic docking system on
         Mir fails... Could *any more* film mags put MEN IN BLACK on
         the cover?... Internet "creating computer junkies" - THE
         GUARDIAN... NEWTON 130 price drops to #299... 8% of City
         execs use whatever they first saw on their desk...


                                >> CULTURE <<
                   it's what separates us from the controls

         Not much going on at the moment - possibly because everybody
         (including NTK) is off to HIP '97, Amsterdam's open air, 100
         Megabit-networked hacking, phreaking, singing, political agit-
         propping and all the trimmings show. In a brave show of idiocy,
         NTK has sent its least-travelled editor along, possibly in a
         deliberate attempt to kill him. You can check his daily (ha!)
         reports via our special site, or try and track him down
         yourself. Danny says "Yes. Come and chat about NTK, or just say
         hello to me. I'll be the one wearing a 'STAY ASLEEP' T-shirt;
         or I will if I remember to wash it." Eww.
         http://www.spesh.com/hip97/
                                    - please don't let him come back
         http://www.hip97.nl                          excess for all


                                 >> TRACKING <<
                      something "wicked" this way comes

         Waiting eagerly for the Mac port of Quake?  Want to
         download it right now? Want to strangle us when we tell you
         that LION ENTERTAINMENT, who were porting (by all accounts
         rather successfully) Quake to the Mac, went bust on
         Wednesday? The MacQuake project is now very much up in the
         air, although it's assumed that MacSoft will be able to
         pick up the pieces. Sorry about that. God, we're cruel.
         http://www.grayphics.com/3dmacgames/macquake/about.html
         - Didn't you Mac people have enough good news this week?

         Techno toymakers TIGER have at last trotted out GAME.COM,
         their new 80 quid hand-held personal organiser/game system
         that (with a modem and net cartridge out next month) also
         reads email and browses (text) web pages - via Dircon, of
         all people. The games (Virtua Fighters, Duke Nukem, William
         Arcade Classics) ought to freak out anyone still trying to
         play on a PalmPilot, Psion or Newton, though may suffer a
         little from translation to an 8-bit CPU and B&W (stylus-
         sensitive) screen. That other sound you hear is Nintendo
         audibly kicking themselves for never pushing the
         productivity apps or doing a TCP/IP stack for the world's
         top-selling portable computer, the equally shockingly
         underpowered Z80-based Game Boy. Anyway, how much is a
         VT100 and 1200/75 modem nowadays?
         http://165.247.176.184/tigertoys/gamecom.htm
                                     - counter seems to be *way* off
         http://www.mitt.demon.co.uk/tiger.html
                                       - Moose, as usual, is spot on
         http://www.game.com           but... there's nothing there!

         Dynamic HTML. Oh god. It's a mess, no browser supports the
         same standard, there's no clear use for it, and it's got
         "Microsoft Crack Cocaine" written all over it (no
         development tools FOR AT LEAST SIX MOMTHS?) - but, dammit,
         every geek instinct in your body is telling you to snort it
         up. Then may we suggest you visit Macromedia "w-w-we're d-
         d-doing ok-k-kay" Incorporated's Dynamic HTML site, and do
         your wallowing somewhere vaguely civilised?
         http://www.dhtmlzone.com/
         - oh, if *only* we could make that URL fly around your desktop


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                              hasta la altavista

         relationshippers... www.theobvious.com/wired... laser
         pointers with programmable X-Y modulation (like K-9)...
         dies BURROUGHS eighty-three, WILLIAM aged... CD players
         that can read MPEG3 files... Quake Rally... Ecstasy hits
         Japan... BBC clamp down on Teletubbie pages for
         "compromising the programme's intentions" (and we went to
         all that trouble, too)... MacDonalds accidentally use Nazi
         map of Austria on Austrian placemaps... Tamagotchi
         movies... mini-beasts... Tomb Raider single delayed *again*
         - what, is it rubbish or something?... Bus plunges!
         www.users.interport.net/~tcs/... ICQ to charge?... file
         directory exploring converted to shoot-'em-up (we're not
         kidding)... Pentium 133 what people want; shame Intel
         stopped making them... VR hardware as fomite... Industrial
         Ship Printers... www.spesh.com/louis/ - it's funky disco
         ex-CEO of Wired, Louis Rossetto!...


                               >> MO' MEDIA <<
              as if your social life wasn't busy enough as it is

         TV >> Maximum US comedy tonight with an extra-special
         flashback-funnies FRIENDS (9pm, Fri, C4), nutty younger
         brother Niles stepping up to the mic in FRASIER (10pm, Fri,
         C4), and sex ed southern-style in KING OF THE HILL
         (10.30pm, Fri, C4)... apparently this series of BUGS
         (8.10pm, Sat, BBC1) is concentrating more on
         "relationships" than on high-tech thrills (god help us
         all); stick with the true horror of THE OMEN (10pm, Sat,
         C4)... it's "primates perplexed by 20th century customs"
         when they somehow ESCAPE FROM THE PLANET OF THE APES
         (5.45pm, Sun, C4), not to be confused with dark incest
         comedy SPANKING THE MONKEY (10pm, Sun, BBC2)... HARD DRIVE
         (11pm, Mon, C4) hopes to avoid scaring America's top
         luddites with its infernal TV camera contraption... Shatner
         returns triumphant, with new guests including Angela Rippon
         and Bruce "Iron Maiden" Dickinson, in the cleverly can't-
         decide-if-I-hate-this-or-is-it-actually-alright SPACE
         CADETS (6pm, Tue, & 10.15pm, Wed, C4)... compellingly dull
         Jon Ronson chat show FOR THE LOVE OF (12.25am, Thu, C4) is
         back with 65 minutes on "Trees", but probably won't get the
         same ratings as 22 topless women engaging in an hour-long
         philsophical discussion of BREASTS (10pm, Tue, C4)... a
         young girl struggles to come to terms with her geekiness in
         one of the better repeats of SABRINA - THE TEENAGE WITCH
         (4.45pm, Wed, ITV)... no, we can never remember the diff
         between Cutting Edge, Modern Times and INSIDE STORY (10pm,
         Wed, BBC1), this week examining the best temperature (and
         chefs) for serving revenge... Special Projects co-founder
         Ben Moor had to leave the country before the first episode,
         while co-editor Danny O'Brien fought to get his name
         removed from the credits of new sci-fi sketch show PLANET
         MIRTH (12.40am, Thu, Carlton + some regions) - tune in and
         find out why...

         MOVIES >> GROSSE POINTE BLANK (John Cusack, Minnie Driver,
         and a remarkably good Dan Aykroyd) is a quirky, indie-ish,
         black comedy (aren't they all?) about a hitman going to his
         school reunion; lots of good moments (including a Doom
         arcade machine?!) but never quite as funny as it wants to
         be... on the other hand, ROSEANNA'S GRAVE (Mercedes Ruehl,
         Jean Reno) is a quirky, indie-ish, black comedy about a
         terminally ill woman hoping for a graveyard reunion with
         her dead daughter; some funny scenes (Reno tries to stop
         other townsfolk from dying and taking her plot) but much
         more sentimental than it should have been... perhaps
         unsurprisingly, BEAN (Rowan Atkinson, John Mills, Burt
         Reynolds) is just like three episodes of Mr Bean joined
         together, so depending if you like the show or not, either
         a huge laugh, or simply 90 long, long minutes of hell...

         SIGGRAPH >> The opening party was held at night in the LA
         Zoo - where an interesting mixture of Hollywood movie types
         and heavily bearded academics were entertained by DJs
         and transsexual go-go dancers, as the elephants looked
         on.... The rest was as per - more high volume bad-Prodigy-
         imitation techno and fast-cut "flying camera" CGI than most
         sane people can handle... NewTek refugee Kiki Stockhammer
         was enthusiastically demonstrating PLAY INC's 8-years in
         development son-of-Video Toaster product, TRINITY, which
         seems to provide everything you need to make bad cable TV
         shows for $5000... No one was surprised by the large amount
         of WINDOWS NT graphics products on the floor, but despite
         buying most of the big names (Jim Blinn, Andrew Glassner)
         there was still little evidence that Microsoft really knows
         what they're talking about... Much more interesting was the
         "Electric Garden" which featured a bunch of pretentious
         video art and hacked together student projects, including
         an image processing interface for the PLAYSTATION, allowing
         2 people to fight on TEKKEN 2 by actually jumping around in
          front of a screen, and an innovative 360 degree virtual
         display made from a giant paper dodecahedron and 12 video
         projectors that the participant was actually sealed into...
         Showcases at the ELECTRONIC THEATRE included the most
         impressive impromptu audience-generated laser pointer show
         I've ever seen, and the new TOY STORY shorts showing were
         the highlight for the many (at least those who don't get
         excited by scientific visualisation), but the unforgiving
         audience actually booed at the MICROSOFT and INTEL
         sponsored films - si@spesh.com


                              >> 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 "creating Internet junkies".

                    "I am going off to join the wild boys.
                   When you read this I will be far away."
                             WILLIAM S. BURROUGHS
                                  1914-1997

                                 NEED TO KNOW
            THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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    (K) 1997 Special Projects. Non-biz copying ok, but retain SMALL PRINT.

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