"CORRECTION: This column made a mistake last night in
saying that AOL was taking control of Prodigy. The column
meant, of course, CompuServe. The column is sorry."
- Today's Papers column in Slate, last Weds
"CORRECTION: Anne Archer won't be starring with Montgomery
Clift and Jennifer Jones in the remake of INDISCRETION OF
AN AMERICAN WIFE, as both happen to be dead."
- issue 68 of weekly news email ZENtertainment
>> NEWS IN BRIEF <<
jokes in parentheses
The two jobs that people actively cross the road to avoid -
the CEOship of APPLE, and Steve - merged this week, as Mr
"I’m with you guys at Pixar" reluctantly took over the
helm, apparently chiefly to legitimise all his previous
terrible decisions rather than to scare off all the other
candidates... PSION’s make-or-break Series 5, er, broke and
the company is now girding itself to recall all the UK
mains adaptors - that’s the old Sinclair spirit! Disturbed
early adopters should call 0800 018 6637 for their
replacement... Just when everyone thought that crippled
crypto was off the agenda, the American legislature started
backtracking: disturbed experts in the UK took a deep
breath and started bellowing again to stop the DTI
following suit... And original Man-In-Black JOHNNY CASH
pleaded for tougher copyright laws, citing reports of
Slovenian warez pirates offering "Ring Of Fire" without
paying him a penny, then - in an unprepared aside -
admitted that he’d flogged the foreign rights years ago, so
wouldn’t be getting any of the dirty namesake, anyway... in
an unrelated move, US campsites now pay $1 per camper per
year performance royalties so that you can - legally - sing
your favourites round the campfire. And they say that
intellectual property's dead, eh?...
>> TINY ANTI-NEWS <<
no big surprises
"The Site" cancelled... SPOCK is "dangerous stereotype of a
cold, emotionless being without a moral side" , warns
BRITISH ASSOCIATION FOR ADVANCEMENT OF SCIENCE... WIN 98
delayed till Q2 of next year; blamed on troublemakers
wanting Win 3.1 upgrade... BOTTLED WATER may be "vast con",
say - Water Companies... BILL GATES' new house ships - only
2 years late... KLF thing "was shit"... "Java is the
Monkees, Microsoft is the Beatles", says - MICROSOFT... NEW
ART THING at www.channel.org.uk/metropolis "uses the sewer"
as metaphor for net... Average US PC user only runs 13% of
their installed applications (and that includes Solitaire
*and* Minesweeper)...
>> MICRO CULTURE <<
celebrate your inner geek
American digital democracy pioneer Steven Clift is in the
country, and will be rabble-rousing using a soapbox and
some Powerpoint slides on 23/09/97 at the Global Cafe,
Golden Square, W1. Mail aspects@gold.globalcafe.co.uk for
details of how to get tickets. Steven will have some real-
life stories to tell, and hopefully it won't be as tedious
as these 'online community' meets usually turn out to be.
And if you think that's bitter, you should have seen what
we were going to write about the "Digital Storytelling"
conference that's running this weekend. Dave Winer (not
Winder) is going to that, and it takes place at "Crested
Butte, Colorado". The joke here is left as an exercise for
the reader.
http://www.e-democracy.org/do/library/build/
- yeah, Powerpoint to the *people*
>> KIDDIES MEMEPOOL <<
hasta la altavista
267 Di*na domains registered, including xxxdianaxxx.com ...
lame HTML obfustication... THE ONION now weekly, all other
humour redundant... Camp Rena... fanfic of week: NEW
ADVENTURES OF SUPERMAN fans revive cancelled show at
http://members.aol.com/thenando/tufs.htm ... art vending
machines... www.shodouka.com ... sequel to WARGAMES?...
BOEING took rap for TWA "crash" in return for McDonnell
Douglas buyout - allegedly... Bimbos Of The Death Sun...
Happy Birthday, FRAY... IE4.0 beta apparently "dials up
Microsoft" while you sleep... MYERS-BRIGGS making a
comeback... mercury amalgam superbugs...
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
electronic *fun* transfer
TV >> all true cyberpunks must pretend to like ponderous
manga classic AKIRA (12.40am, Fri, BBC2) but even dedicated
fans require abnormal telepathic insight to work out what
happens in its last hour (or two)... impressively, a
cobbled together "best of" compilation of SHOOTING STARS
(9.30pm, Fri, BBC2) is even more disorientating than the
original shows; good job there's a special Reeves-and-
Mortimer OMNIBUS (10.25pm, Sun, BBC1) explaining them...
BBC2's bizarre "theme evenings" are looking a bit desperate
as they launch into RADIO 1 NIGHT (9pm-12.30am, Sat, BBC2),
although going behind the scenes with a Chris Evans
roadshow (10.45pm) and a Tim Westwood rap show (11.45pm)
could be interesting... "7.15pm. New Series: BLIND DATE
[...] In future weeks, winning contestants will be
returning to the studio to reveal whether romance blossomed
between them" - well, thanks for that one, RADIO TIMES...
EQUINOX (9pm, Mon, C4) devotes an hour to how fighter
pilots cope with extreme G-forceszzzzzzzghfhdfxcvb, ohh,
sorry, fell asleep at the keyboard again... out-geeking
Anne Robinson and all those other Watchdog idiots are "The
Complainers", first in a new series of CUTTING EDGE (9pm,
Tue, C4)... NETWORK FIRST's tribute to Record Breakers' Roy
Castle (10.40pm, Tue, ITV) is unlikely to feature the gag:
"They said he was going to die from cancer in five months -
*but he's going to try and do it in three*"... Leslie
"Dirty Den" Grantham's created his own spooky-village drama
vehicle in the form of THE UNINVITED (9pm, Thu, ITV), but
greater respect is due to C4's new late-night
Blaxploitation strand, kicking off with the unapologetic
SWEET SWEETBACK'S BAADASSSSS SONG (12midnight, Thu, C4)...
MOVIES >> SPAWN (Motion Picture Association of America:
rated PG-13 for "demonic underworld, violence, intense
fantasy action, crude humor") is - wait for it - another
cheesy CGI-heavy comic adaptation, so instead we'd go for
Julia Roberts continuing to redeem herself (after the
really quite cool Conspiracy Theory) by playing a
dislikable email spoofer in MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING (MPAA:
PG-13 - for "one use of strong language, brief sex-related
humor")... CAREER GIRLS (MPAA: R for "language and some
sexuality") is like the characters from all Mike "Secrets
And Lies" Leigh's other movies, but when they were
students, and PHOTOGRAPHING FAIRIES (MPAA: no cert)
purports to be a "British X Files", but then again -
doesn't everything?
CONFECTIONERY >> Cadbury's ASTROS (the "3D snack") seem to
be trying to counter the threat of the not-exactly-2D GIANT
SMARTIES, but, with their "chocolate covered biscuit
centre", are actually grittily disgusting... POPPETS have
relaunched (www.poppets.com - oh yes), but are in fact
exactly the same, though in a slightly more colourful
box... OPAL FRUITS to be renamed "Starbursts" (as per US
brand), in line with the Marathon/Snickers debacle - stop
them now before they make us call all chocolate "candy"...
SPRITE to be reflavoured to "be more like 7-Up" after
abortive attempts to make it "more lemony" (this may be the
other way around, we always did get those two confused...)
>> SMALL PRINT <<
Need to Know is a useful and interesting UK digest of things that
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