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                 "Everything that we have seen over the last 10 days
           [concerning communication problems with Pathfinder probe]
           is like a twisty little maze with passages all the same."
    - Jennifer Harris, NASA mission manager (and current NTK obsession)
                                            > TALK TO PROBE
                                            Nothing happens.
                                            > EXAMINE PROBE
                                            You see nothing special.
                                            > HIT PROBE WITH STICK


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                                same old feuds

         NASA's Cassini probe failed to deliver its expected payload
         of 72 pounds of plutonium to the people of Florida on
         Wednesday. Embarrassed officials admitted that the probe,
         which cost $1.2 billion dollars, is now instead en route to
         irradiate evolving lifeforms on the moons of Saturn, some
         2 billion miles off the predicted course. Cassini, one of
         NASA's last "large, slow, and please God not out of
         control" projects, has only one more chance to devastate
         Earth when it returns for a final swingby of America in
         August 1999. It will then be travelling at 43,000 miles an
         hour, at a distance of about 500 miles above the planet's
         surface - coincidentally about the same distance as Bill
         Gate's Teledesic satellites (let's hope he's contracted out
         the navigation software). Apart from the lethally toxic
         isotope, the satellite also carries a CD-ROM with 600,000
         signatures from well-wishers, although NASA look unlikely
         to refer to it as "the probe that has your name on it"
         until way past Mars.
         http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/
               - includes unfortunate use of the phrase "What's Hot"
         http://www.animatedsoftware.com/cassini/index.htm
                                        - in the interest of balance
         http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/model/
                                            - in the interest of fun

         Those loony Eurocrats have done it again! In another insane
         set of inpenetrable and imperious directives, they've
         announced that restricting strong encryption "could well
         prevent law-abiding companies and citizens from protecting
         themselves against criminal attacks", and that the US's
         favoured key escrow system would give criminals "additional
         ways to break into a cryptographic system." Also, they're
         looking at investigating Bill Gates for monopoly practices.
         Once again, big government has shown itself to be out of
         step with the fast-moving world of the Net and ... hold on.
         Those are both really good moves. What's going on?
         http://www.ispo.cec.be/eif/policy/97503.html
         - you can't even trust the government to be wrong these days
         http://www.yahoo.com/headlines/971016/tech/stories/ms_1.html
         - next step: a pan-european ban on Macromedia Director

         Record-breaking sales of FORMULA 1 '97 swerved for an
         unscheduled pit-stop when Formula One Administration Ltd
         (FOA) took cheeky Scouse joyriders Psygnosis to the High
         Court and asked to see their license (specifically, the
         license Psygnosis thought they had from FOA to use F1
         logos, teams, cars, tracks and drivers in the game).
         According to COMPUTER TRADE WEEKLY, FOA dispute this,
         especially since the rights may not be FOA's to sell - many
         teams, drivers and circuits now prefer to do their own
         deals (Jacques Villeneuve wasn't in F197 for this very
         reason). Currently, F197's main problem may be just one
         unauthorised logo; Psygnosis hope to start re-supplying the
         game with just this changed in a week or so. But if your
         copy invites you to go for a spin round "Bronds Hotch" as
         "Damien Hull" or something, now you know why.
         http://www.psygnosis.com/
         - apparently got their track info "by watching F1 on the telly"
         http://cygnus.uwa.edu.au/~snowmanf/pages/slotcircuits.html
                 - can you really copyright a big wiggly oval shape?

         The MIT Media Lab put on a show for the luminaries of the
         stick-machines-on-your-head world this week, at the FIRST
         INTERNATIONAL SYMPOSIUM ON WEARABLE COMPUTERS. Beta test
         cyborgs got to rub enhanced shoulders with Leonard Nimoy,
         author Frederick Pohl and whale pal Sylvia Earle (what were
         they planning - an "unplugged" rendition of Star Trek IV?).
         The usual demos were shown, including Steve Mann's ongoing
         headcam experiment (plus his recent foray into what is best
         described as "underwearables"), and presumably BT's rubbish
         "office on your wrist" mockup. Best paper by far sounds to
         have been "Stochasticks", a "Billiards augmentation system"
         that provides you with a heads-up set of strategic shots in
         the game. As if no-one would notice.
         http://mime1.marc.gatech.edu/wearcon/call/
                 - please drag your visitor pass around at all times
         http://www.computer.org/conferen/proceed/8192abs.htm#E37E2
            - I think the guy in the crash helmet might be a hustler

         Bunch of ex-students with nothing better to do set up a
         shoestring company, call themselves a Net consultancy and
         sit around all day reserving plush sounding domains like
         "bt.org" and "virgin.org". It's the start of that multi-
         million pound Web design industry all over again, isn't it?
         Not this year it isn't. BT, MARKS & SPARKS, LADBROKES,
         SAINSBURYS, VIRGIN and SECURICOR took the founders of One
         In A Million, Richard Conway and Julian Nicholson, not out
         for lunch, but out to court, accusing them of trademark
         infringement and "passing off". Fair cop? Well, maybe "the-
         spice-girls.com" (one of the registrations) *was* pushing
         it. But these days, even the gentlest of registration
         intention could land you in court. For instance, Compassion
         Net, a consultancy who help charities go online, are
         currently suing Compassion International, another charity,
         over who has the rights to compassion.com.  And if *they*
         can't get along...
         http://www.gina.com/wire/tn/tn970663.htx
         - one day those N2K people are gonna come after us big time
         http://www.mercurycenter.com/news/compassion101497.htm
         - "We are the owners of Compassion.com and we don't like to be 
                                                           bullied."
         http://www.nocompassion.com/                    ...no mercy


                               >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         APPLE posts losses... MICROSOFT buy popular festival;
         rename it "E-Christmas" (no, for once, we're not
         kidding)... GEOCITIES gets more visitors than MSN...
         www.bookshop.co.uk has new sections just for erotic fiction
         and comic strips... PSION MD Peter Norman "retires" at
         39... PBS snaps up TELETUBBIES... ACORN posts losses... Net
         full of "unsavoury losers who warp young minds", discovers
         NATIONAL ENQUIRER... Spam cites Neiman-Marcus cookie urban
         legend, offers to sell recipe for $5... BT Wireplay
         relaunching... MIT MEDIA LAB to diversify into toys - you
         mean that billiards stuff had serious applications?...
         much-plugged subscription-only Net Soap "Londoners" runs
         off free Webspace account, is shockingly dull... Steve Jobs
         "may stay on as CEO"... study shows ergonomic keyboards to
         be bad for you... same study shows there's a "rise in
         tension level whenever a computer user approaches a
         keyboard"... EDGE reports development budget for Fin Fin
         cyberpet as a "ludicrous" $70bn - maybe they mean yen, as
         $70bn is approx the gross national product of Portugal...


                              >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                            your personal cronjob

         You'll wish that the world *would* end, when Guardian
         columnist DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF parks his latest bandwagon to
         discuss all things millennial at tonight's inaugural
         CYBERIA LIVE chat/channel/live-link up thing. Supposed
         cyber-dude author of Media Virus, The Ecstacy Club etc,
         Doug will no doubt be wowing the crowd with side-splitting
         observations like "the saddest thing is for the so-called
         counter-culture and pagan culture to put so much faith in
         the notion of an apocalyptic discontinuity". Translation:
         Doug says everything's going to be fine - though would you
         believe a man who thinks that British people refer to the
         security services as "the MI5" (page 132 of The Ecstacy
         Club) or that Public Enemy are "gangsta rap" (page 261)?
         http://www.cyberialive.com/
               - biggest debate so far: millennium - one 'n' or two?
         http://www.users.interport.net/~rushkoff/
         - "social theorist, journalist and software developer". Riight.

         MARK PAULINE, by contrast, will be using his chat/ channel/
         live-link up thing to remotely operate SURVIVAL RESEARCH
         LABORATORY'S Air Launcher - a high pressure teleoperable
         gas launcher "capable of automatically loading and firing
         26 beer can sized projectiles weighing 2 lbs each at 500
         feet per second." Even better, he's then going to pass the
         remote control of this "lethal mechanical device" to ZKM,
         The Art and Media Technology Centre, in Karlsruhe, where
         native Germans will have the opportunity to redefine chunks
         of the Californian landscape for themselves. Full
         audio/video feeds are available, although only on CUSeeMe.
         The SRL guys promise better compression next time: though
         whether that's compression of video, air, or innocent
         bystanders they don't specify. The show starts at 19:00 BST
         on Saturday 18/10/97, and lasts approx 30 minutes "or until
         all rounds have been detonated".
         http://www.srl.org/
         - when SRL played Austria, they thought Serbia was invading
         http://www.srl.org/shows/austin/show/airlauncher1.JPEG
                    - now THAT, Mr Rushkoff, is a software developer


                                >> TRACKING <<
                                 obey the bot

         After months of rank staleness, the search engines are
         trying to get their acts together. Altavista announced a
         new 100 million page index, three times larger than before,
         with "virtually no duplicate pages". Wired recently
         revamped Hotbot, and has re-introduced its topical search
         engine Newsbot onto the Web after an ill-fated flirtation
         with an ActiveX-only service. You'd have trouble finding
         much to get excited about there, though: certainly compared
         to AskJeeves, the first "natural language" engine that we
         haven't want to punch in its natural gob. It stomps on
         Newsbot's "intelligent filtering", which last time we
         looked had managed to file a Disney Halloween press release
         under News/Entertainment/Net.Sex.
         http://www.altavista.digital.com
                      - about the only thing Digital does these days
         http://www.askjeeves.com
                             - even tries to solve personal problems
         http://www.newsbot.com
                          - more like the butler in "The Missionary"

         It's not free local calls - strictly speaking, it's the
         exact opposite - but for most Net users with cable, this is
         just as good. If you get your telephone line from CABLE &
         WIRELESS (that is, if you used to get your line from
         Mercury, NYNEX CableComms, Bell Cablemedia or Videotron
         before they all got sucked up), you can phone any national
         number for any length of time on Saturdays for only 50p. So
         from now until the end of December, you'll be paying only
         2p an hour for a day's permanent Net connection - if you
         can get one. The catch is that your ISP must have at least
         one dial-up line that you can call that *isn't* local to
         you. Check your ISP for details of faraway POPs.
         http://www.cwcom.co.uk/  oddly quiet about this

         Is the fast Net connection criminally underused at your
         company? Then you might like to waste both your time and
         bandwidth on NBC TV's well-hidden but smart PRETENDER
         ADVENTURE. I know what you're thinking: It's an "online
         mystery adventure" produced by a US TV company about a TV
         show we'll never see. It's also image intensive and uses
         Java and Javascript and, you know, we think it might not
         even *exist* via a Lynx text browser. All reasons why we'd
         never let it get anywhere near this section unless it was
         very, very good indeed.
         http://www.nbc.com/thrillogy/pretender/adventure/
              - we're going to do a Great Pretender joke, aren't we?


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                              hasta la altavista

         New biography of Oracle CEO titled "The Difference Between
         God And Larry Ellison"... Windows NT 5.0, beta one, is now
         up to 27 million lines of code... Star Trek, Las Vegas
         style... www.theobvious.com RIP ... what's the editor of
         SFX doing on "Style Challenge"?... the "real" Lara Croft
         sacked, then instantly re-instated?... monitor Andreessen
         replacement Eric Hahn's workload with his winebottlecam,
         hosted by www.hahnfamily.com ... baby boom to follows
         recent Diana trauma... Poet Laureate Ted Hughes was obliged
         to excise anti-tech verses from recent work in praise of
         literacy... "Do you know why we stopped the car?"...
         Tomorrow's World Magazine to launch... does the CIA troll
         soc.culture.*?... LOST IN SPACE'S Jupiter 2 launched
         yesterday... BBC to unveil own US cable channel... If
         they're not being sold, why are MSN freezing so many
         external projects? Huh? Huh?... And did Steve Bowbrick cut
         back Webmedia to pay for his wedding?... ICQ: the fastest
         chain letter conduit existent... Playstation skipping?
         Either pay for the 60UKP fix or alternatively - turn it
         upside down... And the difference? God doesn't think He's
         Larry Ellison...


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

         TV >> Stephen Fry rounds off 7 days of trying to appear on
         *everything*, but can even he can get a plug for Wilde into
         the ill-fitting socket of SHOOTING STARS (9.30pm, Fri,
         BBC2)?... this week, Andi Peters' PR-puff piece is called
         STAR WARS, THE MAGIC AND THE MYSTERY (5.20pm, Sat, ITV) -
         apparently to commemorate the special editions' recent
         release on video earlier this month... mad IRA bomber Tommy
         Lee Jones seems chiefly inspired by kids' board game
         Mousetrap in BLOWN AWAY (9pm, Sat, ITV), while ROCKY III
         (11.15pm, Sat, ITV) faces his most terrifying opponent ever
         - Mr T, from The A-Team... Donna MacPhail no longer shouts
         through every episode, but THE SUNDAY SHOW (12.15pm, Sun,
         BBC2) is still evil itself; hold out for Lee & Herring's
         triumphant shift to this prestigious slot soon... gun porn
         docu DECISIVE WEAPONS (8pm, Mon, BBC2) was only
         *pretending* to be dead (hoping to catch the enemy off
         guard!), and resumes with a repeat about the UK's "novelty"
         Harrier jump-jets winning the Falklands... how dull is the
         "revised" EQUINOX (9pm, Mon, C4) about the "world's biggest
         cybercrime"? Let us count the ways... one of the more
         light-hearted X FILES (9.30pm, Wed, BBC1) recounts the
         story of Cancer Man, and may even be a spoof of Dark Skies
         (itself surely just a spoof of The X Files)... the usual
         cliches ("eugenics", "master race", "playing God") pop up
         on the HORIZON (9.25pm, Thu, BBC2) about Dolly the sheep.
         But will they also question those hideous, supposedly
         natural "clones" - identical twins?...

         MOVIES >> Eric Bogosian wrote Talk Radio, Richard Linklater
         made Slacker, so no surprise that their collaboration on
         SUBURBIA (imdb: comedy / drama / racism / generation-x /
         suburban) consists of twentynothings sitting round talking
         in a grim, but entertaining, way... official site for WILDE
         (imdb: biographical / drama / playwright / poetry / rights
         / gay / historical / homosexuality / love / obsession) must
         be the first for months without a Shockwave game (not even
         a CGI that produces witty epigrams). Still, it does quote
         reviews like "an upfront portrayal of the scribe's gayness"
         (Variety)... sadly, SHOOTING FISH (imdb: romance / comedy)
         isn't a dramatised history of www.suck.com, but a daft
         kiddie caper whose neatest con is getting any over-5s to go
         see it in the first place...

         SLASH >> Fresh from FrisCon, the private convention for fan
         writers who enjoy the premise of their two favourite male
         TV or movie heroes getting into bed together: The location
         was a smart hotel near San Francisco airport, where staff
         are more used to professional travellers than Professionals
         fans... 90 women checked in plus the cousin of one of the
         con committee and his lover - they went down well, or so it
         was claimed... At the con party, most turned up wearing
         this year's theme of cowboys and indians. Winners were the
         boys, one wearing just a fur skirt and the other a
         transparent cowboy outfit, his modesty hidden beneath a
         very tight pair of cycling shorts - yum, yum... The latest
         slash zines were available in the dealers rooms, and the
         art show revealed recognisable characters in some very
         interesting positions together... The music video comp on
         Sunday had those magic moments set to popular songs... Top
         new slash show this year was US TV cop series The Sentinel,
         although Kirk and Spock, Starsky and Hutch, and Bodie and
         Doyle remain long-time favourites... The con raised over
         $1600 for a local AIDS charity, with my contribution for
         some raffle tickets winning me a set of spurs and handcuffs
         - wonder what I'll do with them?
                                                - slashfan@spesh.com


                                 >> KWIZ <<
                               win UKP UKP UKP

         Congrats to Dave Phelan, who tracked down last week's
         elusive link, and thus wins a REBOOT fun pack, a copy of
         C&C-in-space clone CONQUEST EARTH for the PC, the new
         Sleeper album (which isn't nearly as bad as everyone's
         making out), and an elusive ticket to the prestigious .NOT
         awards. Calm down, Dave. You can collect them after class.

         Here's this week's link:

                            Vector then digit
                            Combine like a telco
                            with aussie, tight.

               (the format is http://www.xxxxxxx.net/now.fhtml )
                       ( and it's a haiku, you idiot )

          First correct entry randomly clicked open on Monday AM
          gets next week's prize. And remember, the grand prize for
          best site to carry a now.html is still anybody's game.
          Although we have to say, this week's URL is a contender.

          Details for the confused on http://www.ntk.net/compo/
          Still time to join in the morally ambiguous fun!


                               >> CORRIGENDA <<
                        for when we're extra "special"

         The meme titled "the best error message put out by IE4.0"
         unexpectedly quit last week, so here it is again: "We need
         your fax number so that we can respect your wish not to
         receive unwanted faxes". And, no, we didn't hear anything
         back from the Website we gave for games-coder conference
         Develop '97, so here's the phone number for registrations:
         0181 742 2828. But be as swift and smooth as the scrolling
         in Defender, for it starts tomorrow (18/10/97).


                              >> 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 "Tourbus roadkill".

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