[Hi, Dave again. Much to everyone's surprise, Dan seems to
         have survived his Burning Man experience, though not to the
         extent of writing anything for this week. So, again, I
         should emphasise that this is *not* the real NTK, whose
         hard-hitting weekly tech news service will resume shortly.
         Think of this as an interesting experimental deviation
         where you can write in and say if there are any new
         features that you think we should include in the real
         thing. Or not, as the case may be.]


 __  __ _05/09/97 _   _ _____ _  __      <Nasty, British and Short>
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         "POOH'S GRAND ADVENTURE: THE SEARCH FOR CHRISTOHPER ROBIN -
         An awful new installment into the Winnie The Pooh series is
                just a waste of time. Christopher Robin heads off to
            school, but the nieve [sic] bear thinks that he has gone
          missing, so he gathers his friends (all of which have seem
         to become more obnoxious), and heads out on a quest to find
                             him. Stick to the older cartoons. 1/5."
             - another scathing critique from kids' movie newsletter
                                                ENTERTAINMENT ONLINE


                            >> MINOR HAPPENINGS <<
                                major overkill

         Yes, the whole world mourned at a senseless tragedy that
         could so easily have been averted, but that's enough about
         APPLE's acquisition of Mac-cloner POWER COMPUTING...
         seriously, Di's death seems to have got quite a lot of
         coverage ("a real JFK moment... almost on the scale of the
         Challenger space shuttle blowing up", wrote one clearly
         moved NTK reader), and the British public showed its sorrow
         the only way it knows how - by forming enormous 14-hour
         queues... some branches of Tesco thoughtfully offered in-
         store books of condolence, presumably so you could get your
         mourning at the same time as your groceries but, on the
         net, it's a much finer line between public grief and just
         cashing in (http://www.haveyoursay.beeb.com/special/ - see
         the threads "An American Poet Pays His Respects" and, for
         some kind of perspective, "Totally Over the Top")... of
         course, as the apparent causes were *so* suspiciously
         obvious (The Independent juxtaposed "Net Users Quick To
         React To News Of Diana's Death" with a link to an online
         breathalyser), there was immediate speculation in many new
         newsgroups, including alt.conspiracy.princess-diana,
         uk.current-events.princess-diana, alt.princess.di.di.die,
         and alt.sex.necrophilia.royal-family... the grassiest
         knolls included "Di was the new Jesus-Messiah", "Di was
         offed by the UK's ailing florist industry", or even "in
         collaboration with the millionaire Al-Fayeds, she faked her
         death then went into hiding on the recently repaired Mir
         space station, where, Moonraker-style, she and Dodi plan to
         re-populate the earth with their shyly beautiful Eloi-like
         aristocratic offspring"... bonus of that last one is the
         extra claim that the body in the car "wasn't Di at all",
         but merely "one of Rory Bremner's uncannily accurate
         impersonations"... well, you can dream, can't you?...
         http://cnn.com/WORLD/9709/02/internet.conspiracy.reut/         
                - warns that "most [Di theories] are morbid and many
              probably wrong." They're not called CNN for nothing...
 
         http://www.navigation-station.com/princess-diana-conspiracy.htm        
                                            - make mine a "landmine"

         IN OTHER NEWS... well, the official position is of course
         that there was no other news, enabling us to overlook the
         rumoured demise of DEFOREST KELLEY (he's probably fine,
         could just be obit writers wanting to use the line "It's
         worse than that, he's *dead*, Jim") - oh, and the Algerian
         government doesn't seem to done anything about the 300
         inhabitants of Rais slaughtered in bed using axes... on the
         tech front, US lawyers OPPEDAHL & LARSON are suing other
         law companies who apparently nick their potential customers
         by putting the words "Oppedahl & Larson" into META tags for
         their rival pages so they pop up first on search engines.
         We say, good for O&L, as their page (http://www.patents.com)
         contains some of the rawest HTML we've seen for a long
         time. At least, we *assume* it's their page... LYCOS claim
         to have patented the web spider, but still, they let
         www.lycos.co.uk slip through their fingers, didn't they?...
         3DFX finally get around to suing SEGA for breach of
         contract (obviously the first share price tumble wasn't
         enough, they now want to get *completely* squished)... oh,
         and for a positive spin on APPLE buys POWER, try
         www.macosrumors.com, which *still* manages to be
         pointlessly optimistic whatever happens. Hell, Cupertino
         could get nuked and they'd see it as a brave new dawn for
         Apple to geographically decentralise...


                             >> TINY ANTI-NEWS <<
                               oh, you've heard

         In fact, this week's main Anti-News is that someone sent me
         some really good stuff, but I've left it on my other server
         - curse my failing memory... otherwise, it's business (or
         should that be 'anti-business'?) as usual: www.msnbc.com
         relaunches... apparently condolences of online celebs go
         straight to the tops of the lists... TOTALLY LIVE NEWS (at
         http://MusicCentral.msn.com) claims to be "relaunching", then
         completely disappears... folks at last getting wise to GOOD
         NEWS and its mutations - if only they'd do something about
         those bloody DARWIN AWARDS... rivalling even "Shamen To
         Release New Single On Internet" comes Anti-News classic #2:
         "New COLDCUT Album To Feature Interactive CD-ROM"... 
         MACROMEDIA fiddled results to boost shares... COMPUSERVE
         currently still up for sale...


                             >> MICRO CULTURE <<
                              stay in your homes

         Lots of stuff cancelled, including the KLF gig (till mid-
         October), though they have set up a premium phone line on
         0890 900 2000 for "people having problems dealing with the
         millennium"... US cable network ROMANCE CLASSIC pulled a
         touring competition for a pair of Diana's gowns purchased
         at an auction at Christie's. The tour was called "A Dress
         To Di For"... Heinz's WEIGHT WATCHERS division was just too
         late for the direct mail part of its new campaign featuring
         Sarah Ferguson and the line: "It's the hardest thing,
         staying on a diet - harder than outrunning paparazzi"...
         just to end on an up note, The Daily Star's SEGA BABES
         promotion (page 3 girls dress as your favourite Virtua
         Fighter characters) has only been "postponed" till 15/09/97


                             >> TEENY TRACKING <<
                    guest edited by Yoz Grahame, Perl fan
         <FROTH> PERL! perl perl perl perl... O'Reilly have taken over
         www.perl.com from Tom Christiansen (the Son in the Holy
         Trinity) and made it actually look nice, as well as getting the
         Perl evangelism truck moving more (http://republic.perl.com/
         ... at last, a usable logo!), shoving out a load more Perl
         books (more bibles!) but the best is the whizzy new Perl-to-
         Java compiler that will be coming out this autumn in the Perl
         Resource Kit (http://perl.ora.com/), furthering the work of the
         bizarrely-named-and-mad-with-it Alligator Descartes
         (http://perl-conf.songline.com/cgi-bin/p/guest.pl?x-a=v&x-
         id=419), which is mainly to get back at all those Java
         programmers who complain that Perl scripts look like you've
         opened a binary by accident - and then go on to write CGI
         "Servlets" that look like this:
         http://jserv.javasoft.com/products/java-server/
         webserver/fcs/doc/servlets/sa mple.html#600                       
           - I mean, look at it! You could do it in 4 lines! </FROTH>

         MACQUAKE did actually make it to the shops due to MacSoft
         picking up the baton from the late Lion Software; so go
         download the demo and play with the load of freebie MacQuake
         editors that have already come out. Still, the source code *is*
         pretty much freely available now - since Sega bought up
         exclusive rights for the Saturn, it looks unlikely there'll be
         an official Quake on the PlayStation (the platform of the
         people!). But we reckon it's just a matter of time till some
         hardcore console hacker knocks together their own dev kit and
         brings the public what the publishers cannot...
         http://www.brutality.com/macquake/         
           - c'mon, design some skins for the "Power Computing" clan
         http://box.argonet.co.uk/users/jgrant/qd/quake.htm
                                    - it's Quake - but on the Amiga!


                            >> KIDDIES MEMEPOOL <<
                     don't have ideas - they'll have you

         Is free health education CD-ROM D-CODE just YOU DON'T
         KNOW JACK - *on drugs*?... new-look PENTHOUSE "not bad at
         all"... AI gets creative at www.imagination-engines.com
         (what, again?) - not to be confused with real tech at
         www.rocketusa.com ... PRIVATE EYE very good on Diana thing
         this week... the guy who killed Lord British in the ULTIMA
         ONLINE beta only did what anyone else would have, ie didn't
         report the bug, but ran around manically killing for all
         the points he could get... JAMES CAMERON to do TRUE LIES 2
         before TERMINATOR 3... www.tired.co.uk to relauch -
         proprietor STEVE BOWBRICK claims *he* originated variant
         "Nasty, British and Short"... win B'OMARR MONK in quiz at
         www.starwars.hasbro.com ... email tmail.xxxxxxx@uk.tobit.com
         with sinister text in message body, and where xxxx is the
         phone number of your most technophobic friend...


                               >> MO' MEDIA <<
                             different time-slot

         TV>> it's going crazy here, so first, some of the bizarre
         schedule changes from last week. The curse of Airplane 2
         struck again (last time it was due to be on, there was a
         plane crash), Lethal Weapon 3 was replaced by Field Of
         Dreams, Channel 4 pulled Rocko's Modern Life, and, more
         intriguingly, both a Sherlock Holmes film and Sergeant
         Bilko early in the week were "not the episodes advertised".
         A reader writes: "The potentially distressing sight, for
         example, of Lionel Atwill as Moriarty heading a Nazi spy
         ring dedicated to air-bombing London, was replaced with the
         soothing tale of a family systematically wiped out by
         needles thrust between the base of the skull and the second
          verterbra and up into the brain." Weirdest of all, however,
         was probably Sky editing just the word "paparazzi" from the
         Rosebud episode of The Simpsons. Sensitive or what?

         aaaaanyway, this week, don't hold out too much hope for
         Friday's actually quite fun FREEJACK (it starts with a car
         crash), though, ironically, they probably will show pseudo
         techno thriller VR5 (11.15pm, Fri, BBC2), which is
         rubbish... the lethal Saturday evening double death blow of
         GLADIATORS and BLIND DATE now must now wait till next
         weekend, probably ditto the ITV Sat films ANGEL OF DEATH
         and THE HAND THAT ROCKS THE CRADLE... by way of prescient
         tribute to the (probably still alive) DeForest Kelley, John
         Peel repeats Trek songs and spoofs in TREKNOLOGY (6.45pm,
         Mon, BBC2), while EQUINOX moves to a new slot (9pm, Mon,
         C4), and this week looks at black holesssssssdgfasgf... oh,
         sorry, dropped off for a moment there...

         FILMS>> quirky Bette Midler romantic comedy THAT OLD
         FEELING was pulled for featuring an annoying photographer
         (no, really), but there's still MRS BROWN (not, we were
         disappointed to learn, a Somewhere In Time-style romance
         about Queen Victoria falling in love with the Billy
         Connolly of 100 years in the future), nice-but-dull legal
         thriller NIGHT FALLS ON MANHATTAN, or (our pick of the
         week), AUSTIN POWERS: INTERNATIONAL MAN OF MYSTERY - the
         usual spot-on Mike Myers spoofery, could do with more Mimi
         Rogers (and less Liz Hurley), good in parts, but ultimately
         suggests that Mike's never seen Casino Royale - or maybe
         seen it *far too many times*...

         GAMES>> be interesting to see if they still release the
         astonishingly violent Chase HQ-style driving frenzy RAY
         TRACERS (Taito, PlayStation), or try and postpone it to
         take out the concrete pillars... the less emotionally
         hyperstable may prefer hauntingly beautiful trad two-player
         top-view shoot-'em-up RAYSTORM (again Taito, PlayStation),
         or much-needed trucks-and-destruction action from BLAST
         CORPS (N64)... releases are now picking up after a slow
         summer, so also watch for LOST WORLD (EA, PlayStation),
         SONIC JAM (Sega, Saturn), or, for real old-schoolers, GAME
         & WATCH GALLERY (Nintendo, Gameboy)...

         [Thanks to this week's special contributors: Y Grahame,
         J Nash, H Jones and 'Mil'. OK, right, what if Di was
         killed by a cabal of professional skeptics? You see, a
         month or so ago, the tabloids were full of psychics'
         supposed 'predictions' about the future for her and Dodi,
         and none of them - *none of them* - came up with anything
         like this - surely, the sort of thing that any half decent
         'psychic' might have spotted...]


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