_   _ _____ _  __ <*the* weekly high-tech sarcastic update for the UK>
| \ | |_   _| |/ / _ __   ____03/10/97_ o Join! Mail 'subscribe ntknow'
|  \| | | | | ' / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ / / o  to majordomo@unfortu.net
| |\  | | | | . \ | | | | (_) \ V  V /  o Website (+ archive) lives at: 
|_| \_| |_| |_|\_\|_| |_|\___/ \_/\_/   o   www.spesh.com/cgi-bin/now


          "It will be available within two weeks, or maybe sooner
           than that..."
            - Microsoft's Andrew Dixon, on a patch for new Excel bug
          He'd be more precise, but the spreadsheet says -3.33 years


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                               storms in brews

         Once again taking their first name a little too seriously,
         WORLDCOM this week swatted BRITISH TELECOM out of the way
         and made a bid for MCI, the US long-distance telco that BT
         craved so greatly earlier this year. If it succeeds,
         WORLDCOM, who own UUNET-Pipex, the old Compuserve backbone,
         and your mother, would then control around 60% of US
         Internet traffic and be "a new world player in the telco
         industry", according to our dictionary of unimaginative
         tech-biz journo cliches. Similarly, BT were described by
         all as "tight-lipped" and "shaken" by the move. Well, they
         could have been stifling giggles of relief - despite all
         the effort, the combined MCI/BT "Concert" was looking an
         increasingly tough gig to pull off. Meanwhile, Worldcom's
         CEO Bernard Ebbers told the excellent COMPUTERGRAM: "After
         we have got a deal finished with MCI, we might acquire BT."
         Hahaha ha ... hello? HELLO?
         http://www.wcom.com/  - live from Bernard's underwater base
         http://www.world.com/
                   - Jesus : how much is *this* guy holding out for?

         MICROSOFT INTERNET EXPLORER 4.0 was launched on Tuesday. By
         Wednesday, it had almost finished loading. Reviews were
         mixed, yet universally scared: impartial observer Marc
         Andreessen described it on CNN as "a 60MB hairball" (as
         opposed to those 30MB Netscape snowflakes, we guess).
         Still, it wasn't a complete rout - and Microsoft's early
         beta back in July may well have set the seeds for future
         troubles: journalists were seen running from the launch to
         test months-old security flaws they'd discovered then and
         kept quiet about. Not us, mind. We joined the crowd
         crashing it right there at the launch. Hey, you want beta-
         testers, you pay us in T-shirts, okay?
         http://www.yoz.com/ie40/
         - includes not-so-dynamic HTML, inActiveX pages...
         http://www.microsoft.com/ie40/
         - see the all-new scaleable Windows NT 'Server Busy' errors

         Amiga Inc designed the AMIGA - and was bought out by
         Commodore. Commodore marketed the Amiga - and went bust.
         Escom purchased the rights to the Amiga - then filed for
         bankruptcy. GATEWAY 2000 purchased the Amiga from Escom,
         and has just revealed plans to release the new AmigaOS 4.0
         series within the next year, with an interim 3.5 release
         before that. Promised goodies included extended graphics
         card compatibility, and possibly a new machine with USB and
         other goodies. Oh, and Gateway announced an expected
         company loss for the third quarter of 1997, and this week,
         as news of the Amiga return spread, sacked 500 workers,
         with rumours of another 500 to go shortly. Gateway blame
         inventory problems for their fall from grace, but, come on,
         join the dots, guys - the Amiga's image test file is the
         DEATHMASK OF TUTANKHAMUN, for God's sake! DUMP THE
         CONTRACT. BURN THE MANUALS. SOW SALT IN THE SOIL OF THE
         CURSED R&D'S CAMPUS BUILDING - WHILE YOU STILL CAN. Oh, and
         there might be an embedded AmigaOS for industrial
         applications, such as Web TV.
         http://www.gw2k.com    it's called "going down the blitter"
         http://www.nfinity.com/~amicom/auohsep97.html
                   - Amiga announcement made to audience of over 20!


                               >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         INTERFACE section in THE TIMES describes "contraptions that
         look like Captain Kirk's chair on the bridge of the USS
         Enterprise" in arcade review... psychological profiling
         actually next to useless... Government seems to be
         distancing itself from Taskforce 2000... more column inches
         written about Di than all of WWII... Moore's Law to fail
         "perhaps as soon as 2017"... many stories in THE TIMES'
         INTERFACE now adhere to template "X looks set to be
         revolutionised by new product Y", followed by quote from
         manufacturer... "We're still here", claim OLIVETTI... Sega
         Saturn version of WIPEOUT 2097 lacks hip techno
         soundtrack... CJD *is* somehow linked to BSE, after all!...
         60% of businesses "overcharged by Web design agencies"
         reports - A WEB DESIGN AGENCY... INTERFACE section (in THE
         TIMES) recommends URLs www.thenametocome.com and
         www.anothername.coming (sic)...


                              >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                           thy buffer overfloweth

         The more tedious of the Nobel prizes are announced next
         week, which can only mean - it's Ig Nobel time again.
         Treats to be savoured at the awards ceremony (where Ig
         Nobels are bestowed upon those whose achievements "cannot
         or should not be reproduced") include an operatic version
         of the Big Bang, "Il Kaboom Grosso" (featuring live
         Laureates as sub-atomic particles), and the auction of
         plaster casts of scientist/supermodel Symmetra's left foot.
         Naturally, there's a live Webcast of the event, which
         starts at 00.30 GMT, Thursday evening. You won't be able to
         tell what's going on, but for once in a Webcast, this is
         deliberate.
         http://www.improb.com
                            - check out the AIRhead 2000 project too
         http://www.netwalk.com/~popev/paperair/ask1.htm
                                            - the beautiful Symmetra

         Well, we missed the actual start of the MC ESCHER
         exhibition but, frankly, with his stuff, *who's gonna
         know*? The show devoted to every Quake player's favourite
         engraver continues at The Croydon Clocktower till 04/01/98,
         complete with walk-through "giant models", "tessellations",
         "moebius bands", and "optical paradoxes". Plans to link the
         show with a Bach recital in Romford and a Godel
         retrospective in Harrow (thus completing London's "Orbital
         Golden Braid") are as yet unconfirmed.
         http://www.croydon.gov.uk/cr-exhib.htm
                                    - MC Hammer: Can't touch this...
         http://www.donsplace.com/gallery/gallery.htm
                                   - MC Escher: Can't *draw* this...

         Music usually goes under NTK's "media" heading, but the
         release of a new NEGATIVLAND album is invariably something
         of an event as well, particularly for those in the legal
          profession. This time the copyright-flaunting media junkies
         (still reeling from that hilarious U2 lawsuit) have had
         some decent professional advice, and aren't even spelling
         the new album's name in full (pssst - it's DISPEPSI).
         There's 13 tracks of "original music, songs, and collaged
         advertising", creating "an unusually large serving of
         carbonated controversy". Somewhat disappointingly, Pepsi
         are reported to be "amused" by the whole business
         and have "no plans to sue".
         http://www.negativland.com/
                    - for god's sake, no-one show them the Tango ads
         http://www.addict.com/issues/3.09/html/lofi/Cover_Story/
                  - hey Casey, what does "diddley shit" mean anyway?


                                >> TRACKING <<
                                clots of bots

         Up until now, PC users could talk behind Mac users' backs
         using ICQ, the original "Is my mate online? Oh no, he is,
         better pretend to be out" buddy monitor and chat system. No
         longer - Macintosh users now have a beta to pester their
         "friends" with. And there's even a very rough-and-ready
         Java version, so even the most anti-social and insolent
         UNIX system administrator in your office can be forced to
         join in. Now, if only they'd implement a brawl function.
         http://www.mirabilis.com
                           - platform will speak peace unto platform

         Informal surveys show our readers to be mostly senior
         executives in established firms, controlling an annual IT
         budget of, on average, 6 million UKP, manage 100-200 staff
         and plan to buy any product that they see advertised in NTK
         ever. Or that's what you always write on those little
         reader survey cards. What we know for sure is that you
         *love* exploitative Star Wars merchandise. The demo of Dark
         Forces II : Jedi Knight, LucasArt's Quake-a-like is now
         out. 20Megabytes. Get one of your staff onto it.
         http://www.lucasarts.com/static/jk/default.htm
         - a million ftp servers cried out and were suddenly silenced


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                              hasta la altavista

         in the new Spice Girls video, are they *saving* the world
         from a dystopian future dictatorship, or *actively
         perpetuating it*?... recalled NINTENDO 64 power supplies
         "may pose a safety risk" - not quite the "jolt pack" we
         were expecting... USS Hopper... www.turnleft.com/apple/ ...
         search for +"ball lightning" +"microwave oven"... Mariah
         Carey video "could be" analogy for her escape from former
         husband/Sony music boss Tommy Mottola... www.xybernaut.com
         ... AIIEEEE!! pop artist ROY LICHTENSTEIN - DEAD!... hack
         the Hewlett-Packard MOPy-fish: points stored in first two
         bytes of brain.dat, little-endian format: set it to 0x0C,
         0x80 for aphrodisiac... The Pope books Bob Dylan?... spam
         pretending to be from wired.com... 3D Dilbert...


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

         TV>> FRIENDS (9pm, Fri, C4) returns to form with more
         Smelly Cat songs and Sherilyn "Twin Peaks" Fenn guesting as
         an amputee - contrast with the consistently brilliant
         romantic goofs from FRASIER (10pm, Fri, C4)... in a
         surprising break with tradition, manga movie PATLABOR
         (12mid, Fri, BBC2) features futuristic police, a nightmare
         cyber-Tokyo, and *large robots*... tragically, only
         Meridian and Anglia viewers may enjoy the new prime-time
         series of CYBER CAFE (12.30pm, Sat, ITV regions only)...
         CLIVE BARKER'S A-Z OF HORROR (11pm,Sat, BBC2) skips A-F
         pretty quickly to get to serial killer Ed Gein, who partly
         inspired (and presumably would have hugely enjoyed) the
         movies Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Silence Of The Lambs, and
         PSYCHO (11.55pm, Sat, BBC2)... apparently there's a fan
         club entirely dedicated to Chris Reeve's otherwise
         unremarkable time-travel romance, SOMEWHERE IN TIME
         (3.40pm, Sun, BBC1)... startling doubts are cast on the so-
         called "official" version of events in Oliver Stone's
         interminable JFK (9pm, Sun, C5)... HERE AND NOW (7.30pm,
         Mon, BBC1) tests the Church of England's new marriage
         compatibility software; EQUINOX (9pm, Mon, C4) asks "What's
         in a number?" (featuring a "scientific poet"!)... don't
         expect any startling insights if you go delving into
         MYSTERIES WITH CAROL VORDERMAN (8pm, Tue, BBC1), while
         David Duchovny materialises on THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW
         (11.40pm, Tue, BBC2)... the appallingly titled ANIMAL
         PEOPLE (7pm, Wed, BBC1) has actually been really good so
         far, and this week features Californian mountain lion
         attacks and an "incredible moustache"... the new TOMORROW'S
         WORLD (7.30pm, Wed, BBC1) takes some getting used to, but,
         promisingly, plans to examine "the hype surrounding digital
         TV"... HORIZON (9.25pm, Thu, BBC2) advises sending killer
         viruses after antibiotic-resistant bacteria (is that
         wise?)... FEAR OF A BLACK HAT (12.15am, Thu, C4) isn't
         really "a rap Spinal Tap", but does have characters called
         "Tone Def", "Ice Cold" and "Tasty Taste"...

         MOVIES>> Disappointingly only released at "selected
         cinemas", FIRST STRIKE (Motion Picture Association of
         America rated: PG-13 - "for plentiful action/violence") is
         exactly what you'd expect from Jackie Chan (alternative
         titles: Police Story 4, Piece Of Cake, Story Of The CIA, or
         Jing Cha Gu Shi IV: Jian Dan Ren Wu). Still, it's a
         livelier James Bond spoof than, say, Austin Powers... Tommy
         Lee Jones and Anne Heche (aka Mrs Ellen DeGeneres) battle
         that hot LA lava in VOLCANO (MPAA: PG-13 - "for intense
         depiction of urban disaster and related injuries"). An
         improvement on Dante's Peak, but then again, so's being
         burned alive... drowning's too good for Harvey Keitel and
         Cameron Diaz in their Norwegian comedy thriller remake HEAD
         ABOVE WATER (MPAA: R - "for language, nudity, violence, and
         another hopeless performance by a former model" - yeah, I'm
         making them up again, did you guess?)

         COMPO>> Spot BILL GATES - win a prize! Okay, we admit, it's
         not the competition we were planning (more on that, ahem,
         next week) but Bill *is* in the country next week, and to
         celebrate, we've arranged a contest that could earn you UKP
         UKP UKP. Mr Gates is visiting Tony Blair at Downing Street
         on Monday, then travelling up to speak at St John's
         College, Cambridge on Tuesday afternoon. If you can furnish
         photographic proof that you saw the Redmond giant during
         this period, and are first to send it to us, we'll furnish
         *you* with ten whole pounds and just some of the many
         rubbish CDs that we get sent by fool PR agencies who think
         we review music. Yes. Be impressed. Contestants who use
         digerazzi-style rudeness will be summarily disqualified -
         but there *is* an extra fiver in it for anyone who
         *politely* asks him "I heard from a friend that you
         promised to release the source to your original 4K
         Microsoft Basic - are you?". You may not know what that's
         about, but we do. And we want that code.


                              >> SMALL PRINT <<
       Need To Know 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 "ditherated".

                                 NEED TO KNOW
            THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
                  Archive - http://www.spesh.com/cgi-bin/now
                      Excuses - http://www.spesh.com/ntk

      Unsubscribe? Mail majordomo@unfortu.net with 'unsubscribe ntknow'.
        Subscribe? Mail majordomo@unfortu.net with 'subscribe ntknow'.
         NTK is helped by VIRGIN NET, VENUS INTERNET and UNFORTU.NET.
             They worry about us, but we don't worry about them.

    (K) 1997 Special Projects. Non-biz copying ok, but retain SMALL PRINT.

                   Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com.