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                             "There is no fine; nobody pays a fine."
           BILL GATES, on the threatened $1million-a-day DofJ charge
         - this explains Seattle's mysterious "empty library" syndrome


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                              singing the blues

         It's the scandal they're already calling "Gatesgate" (and
         if they're not, they should be): Janet Reno and her US
         Department of Justice claimed that MICROSOFT put pressure
         on COMPAQ and others to preinstall Internet Explorer on
         their machines - and threatened to stop their Win95 license
         if they didn't. (Forcing anyone to use Win3.1 is now
         recognised as "cruel and unusual punishment" in many US
         states.) Microsoft counter-claims that Explorer is actually
         an integral part of the operating system, as anyone who's
         tried to uninstall IE will confirm. Gates seems unconcerned
         - to a lavish degree - with the prospect of a $1M per day
         fine, but Microsoft are preparing for a real fight. For
         starters, they've updated their mail filters: every time
         something like this happens, reports the San Jose Mercury,
         the company is besieged with "teasing, dire and merciless"
         e-mails. "Have they taunted me? Yes. Of course," said one
         nameless employee. "And I guess I've responded at their
         level." That nameless employee could well have been Steve
         Ballmer, Vice President of Marketing, who was heard yelling
         "to heck with Janet Reno!" to anyone who'd listen. Expect
         he'll include that in the deposition.
         http://www.sjmercury.com/business/microsoft/react102297.htm
                                - keep thinking "vesting party" guys
         http://www.usdoj.gov/atr/cases3/micros2/1237.htm
                - also available as a Wordperfect file - nice touch!

         Pulling out all the special moves, and only just in time:
         NINTENDO have dropped the price of the N64 by 50 quid to
         UKP99 (as predicted in NTK 12/9/97, and effective from
         today) - and if that's not incitement enough, they even
         plan to bring out some games for it. Before the cut, the
         PlayStation was said to be outselling the N64 by about 5:1,
         sending a clear message to Nintendo management: make your
         console more like the Sony - or else. So they've also
         slashed the software to around UKP50 a throw, and - genre
         fans will be pleased to hear - are also rushing out a load
         of indistinguishable beat-'em-ups and racing games. SONY
         maintain that they won't be copying the N64 price-point,
         and that their new "Xmas package" (PlayStation + 2
         controllers + memory card) will stay at UKP129. But don't
         underestimate the power of a sub-100-quid console: last
         time Nintendo pulled a stunt like this, they got loads of
         free publicity - from all the "I just bought one and could
         have saved a packet" complaints on Watchdog.
         http://www.delaney.demon.co.uk/PSX/
                   - PlayStation titles: around 300. N64: around 30?
         http://www.geocities.com/WallStreet/4240/Beatles-Parodies.html
              - but with customer loyalty like this, who's counting?
         http://www.nintendo.com/product/n64/64dd.html
         http://www.users.rapid.net.uk/ja88/V64PAGE.htm
                  - see, N64 disk drives: JUST LIKE THE PLAYSTATION!

         When COOL SITE OF THE DAY failed to announce an IPO in
         1995, most people assumed it would go to the wall or,
         worse, be bought out by AOL for $6million, then go to the
         wall. But no - Glenn Davis' replacements are still trotting
         out that eclectic pick of hard-to-download, impossible to
         read, "ground-breaking" pages, and somebody, somewhere is
         still reading them, nodding sagely and maybe even taking
         notice of their COOL SITE OF THE YEAR AWARDS. By all
         accounts a more muted affair than previously, this year's
         prime sources of "Coolium" (their word) were declared on
         Wednesday to be THE ONION, THE FRAY, SALON and BEZERK, with
         REALVIDEO reaping the Cool Innovation title. GLASSDOG, THE
         BIG GUN PROJECT, and WATER also won, but we haven't *quite*
         got around to evaluating those sites yet, because we surf
         with images off. BEZERK's YOU DON'T KNOW JACK WEBSHOW won
         the overall Coolest Site - which just goes to prove that,
         sooner or later, CD-ROMs were going to come back into
         fashion.
         http://cool.infi.net/  whatever happened to Mirsky's Worst?
         http://www.fray.com/  disgruntled ex-employees of Wired Inc
         http://www.bezerk.com/     we're still under NDA about this
         http://www.salonmagazine.com/         quite good these days
         http://www.theonion.com/               funny. We hate them.
         http://www.glassdog.com/ "ground-breaking"/incomprehensible
         http://www.kia.net/maggy/  Web diary _ GREAT FUCKING IDEA!!


                               >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                            news we knew you knew

         Internet "failed less" this quarter, study says... HATE
         SITES on the Web double in the past year, report seethes...
         www.hmv.co.uk "does not allow you to buy records"...
         MOTOROLA study shows 66% of parents believe it's
         *computers* that are making their kids anti-social and
         lazy... PRINCE CHARLES advocates alternative remedies,
         ignores new evidence that they have "no effect"...
         bookshop.co.uk sales up 90% - still makes loss... STOCK
         MARKET "steered by greed", uncovers author... Internet
         "popular in Japan"... BOND COVERS album "largely
         terrible"... SEGA and MICROSOFT alliance: developers now
         fist-fighting... Airline Pilots With Drunk Driving
         Convictions Are More Likely To Have Accidents, find
         scientists... prince.com case dropped... IBM offers
         employees a "voluntary separation program"... Indian
         Minister sprays 44,000 Goa citizens with DELTAMETHRIN,
         claims heard about treatment "on the Net"...


                              >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                                  busy ports

         When it comes to general practitioners of modern prose, the
         doctors are *in*. Former Doctor Who TOM BAKER (also known
         to radio listeners as the voice of Lionel Nimrod) winds
         down his "Who On Earth Is Tom Baker?" signings tomorrow
         (25/10/97) at Books Etc in Croydon and "Hammicks" in
         Redhill, then concludes Monday at the Guilford Literary
         Festival, University Of Surrey. As if regenerated into non-
         fiction form, NTK contributor Matt Bacon will be at
         London's Forbidden Planet on Sat to sign his coffee table
         expose of the JIM HENSON CREATURE SHOP (as plugged in
         current issue of The Face, along with a good bit of JC
         Herz's upcoming Joystick Nation). And sewing up the whole
         operation, would-be surgeon MARK LEYNER is, of course, "the
         most intense, and, in a certain sense, the most significant
         young prose writer in America." He's traversed the whole US
         plugging his new novel, The Tetherballs Of Bougainville,
         and seems to have abandoned his tour diary after just a
         week. Yet there's more drama in those 7 days than most so-
         called "novelist's" lifetimes.
         http://www.dcs.ex.ac.uk/~dma/ProfX/
                      - ask Tom which was his favourite "professor"_
         www.nanothinc.com/Nanothinc/NanoPeople_Frames/npinfo/MattBacon.html
                         - that's *Mr* Bacon to you nanotech weenies
         http://www.spesh.com/leyner/
         - "execute my father, get high, and have sex with the warden"

         Hey! Ya Basta! Every desktop revolutionary's favourite
         post-modern guerrillas, the Ejercito Zapatista de
         Liberacion Nacional have a representative in town. Rosario
         Ibarra de piedra is a well known spokesperson for the
         Mexican Zapatistas, a presidential candidate and human
         rights activist. She'll be speaking - at short notice -
         today (Friday 24/10/97), 7pm GMT, at PRAXIS, Pott Street,
         London.
         www.eco.utexas.edu/Homepages/faculty/Cleaver/zapsincyber.html
             - For those of you that get NTK at 9pm : it was *great*
         http://www.streetmap.co.uk    you'll be wanting a map, then


                                >> TRACKING <<
                            upgrade your attitude

         The Quake II demo is out. As ever, it gives only the barest
         nuts-and-bolts glimmer of the glory that is to come. As
         ever, the Quake team are changing the final design based on
         people's comments on the test file. Before you say it, yes,
         the gun's going to be moved. And the deaths will be longer
         and noisier. THIS is what beta testing should be about.
         http://www.gamesdomain.com/demos/demo/q2_test.html
                               - drown out those bleating Riven fans

         We do try out this stuff, you know. Well, almost always. We
         can't give you a review of the new beta of EUDORA 4.0,
         because the idea of handing our mail over to fresh software
         gives us the heebie-jeebies (maybe it's that whole IE 4.0
         beta disaster still creeping us out). However, if you
         desperately need a usable IMAP client, or a better HTML
         parser for your e-mail, or really want to spend time
         learning a brand new interface re-think, by all means let
         us know what happens. By phone, preferably.
         http://www.eudora.com     a new look for mail conservatives

         No interesting new software releases for Macs (everyone's
         busy with Rhapsody and printing out their CVs right now),
         but, hey, don't despair. Why not spend your time designing
         a MacOS8 button? Come on, it's what you Mac users are
         supposed to be *good* at.
         http://www.larisoftware.com/lovemacos8/buttons.html
                   - only bitter because we didn't spot this earlier


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                              hasta la altavista

         www.browse.net/techfelch/ ... STAR WARS Micro Fax(TM)
         books... Soldier of Fortune (new A-Team clone) features
         character based on CARMACK/ROMERO... www.3gcs.com/tron/ ...
         Viacom to VIRGIN INTERACTIVE: the clock is ticking...
         www.crocodile-clips.com/education/... there's now more data
         traffic between SWEDEN and the US than voice... "Better to
         keep BOROMIR alive, use him in later scenes"... average
         life of Web page is 75 days... okay, now what happened to
         ANDREW FLUEGELMAN?... MAX CLIFFORD moves into phonecards,
         telcos... www.mrmedia.com/ .... superprogrammers... JOHN
         DENVER was born in Roswell, New Mexico, 1943 - 
         "experimental aircraft", hmm?... companies with millennium
         bug IN THEIR NAMES: 2000AD, 20th Century Fox, Grecian
         2000... "The Prion Series 5"... what the hell is ABRASH
         doing working on the Word grammar checker?... new threat to
         self-images of young women: RENDERBABES


                               >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                 get out less

         TV>> satire is officially dead, as RORY BREMNER (10.30pm,
         Fri, C4) returns with new material comparing Blair and
         Hague to Beavis and Butthead, plus another series of the
         same jokes every week in the (presumably rhetorical) HAVE I
         GOT NEWS FOR YOU (10pm, Fri, BBC2)... this week's movie
         title to try to slip unnoticed into office conversation is
         Jackie Chan actioner THE YOUNG MASTER (12.45am, Fri, C4) -
         as in "I notice sir is dining with the *young masters*
         again tonight"... a lifetime of making superior trash like
         HALLOWEEN (11.15pm, Sat, BBC2) seems to have sucked the
         very life-force from director John Carpenter, one of
         several loose pages in CLIVE BARKER'S A-Z OF HORROR
         (10.30pm, Sat, BBC2)... it normally takes three hours to
         watch THE GODFATHER (11.45pm, Sat, ITV), but now they're
         showing it exactly when the clocks go back, so you can see
         the whole thing in two!... a topical outing for crusading
         journo classic ALL THE PRESIDENT'S MEN (11.25pm, Sun,
         BBC1), preceded by an OMNIBUS docu about how they brought
         down the Clinton, sorry, Nixon administration... so, can
         laconic US comic Rich Hall save JACK DEE'S SUNDAY SERVICE
         (10pm, Sun, ITV) from resembling an extended beer ad?...
         pretty ladies are the only reasons to watch either "erotic
         comedy" SIRENS (10pm, Sun, C4) or Brooke Shields' "sit-com"
         SUDDENLY SUSAN (11.45pm, Sun, C4)... increased sun-spots
         could interfere with electronics, weather systems etc, but
         even they couldn't cause an interesting edition of EQUINOX
         (9pm, Mon, C4)... shocked Unijet director discovers that
         his holidays are terrible, in weirdly named In-At-The-Deep-
         End-for-bosses series, BACK TO THE FLOOR (Tue, 9.50pm,
         BBC2)... HOCUS POCUS (8pm, Wed, ITV) is as cursedly evil as
         only a Disney version of The Witches Of Eastwick could be,
         but fortunately the "alien oil" returns to lubricate the
         clunky plots of THE X FILES (10pm, Wed, BBC1), in the two-
         part "Tungusksa"...

         MOVIES>> remarkably, we chose not to choose A LIFE LESS
         ORDINARY (imdb: romance / comedy) - those Trainspotting
         guys make a kidnapping-gone-wrong caper that's typically
         off-beat, quirky etc, though not particularly funny. It's
         even got angels in it, for heaven's sake... instead,
         there's THE PEACEMAKER (imdb: thriller), with George "ER"
         Clooney and Nicole "Batman Forever" Kidman battling an
         attempt by Spielberg's new Dreamworks studio to make a
         nuclear-sized bomb out of its effective, but unoriginal,
         first feature. Still, plenty of explosions, and should
         hopefully popularise the phrase "Take the shot!" as a
         trendy alternative to "Go for it!" or "Carpe diem!"...

         FEEBDACK >> RE: CASSINI - Lee <lee@wetware.demon.co.uk>
         ponders "waitaminute, dangerous nuclear probe, satellites,
         end of 1999 - why isn't Wim Wenders suing NASA over
         copyright infringement?" A video/merchandising tie-in?...
         RE: SURVIVAL RESEARCH LABORATORIES - Ben Moor
         <aai11@dial.pipex.com> complains "Austria couldn't have
         thought Serbia was invading, as they don't have a common
         border" - well, just shows how scary SRL must be, then...
         RE: FORMULA ONE '97 - Adrian Moulder <amould@hotmail.com>
         asks "If they don't get the rights, will the game now just
         be called '97?"... RE: STEPHEN FRY - James Coates
         <shag@delic.org> writes: "*I* designed the Oscar Wilde
         site, and we *have* got a CGI that produces witty epigrams
         - in audio, too! And can I plug www.heaven.affection.net/
         again?"... not now James, we're busy - and anyway, we meant
         a CGI that produced *new* witty epigrams based on an
         analysis of Oscar's existing work. Get to it...


                             >>CHRISTMAS CHWIZ<<
                                 ho ho hacks

         Our seasonal foray into Other People's Websites continues.
         Joy Jones <joy@corbeau.demon.co.uk> correctly identified
         last week's URL (we'd tell you what it was, but then we'd
         have to kill you). She wins a copy of Modified Chillas, the
         new Neil Gaiman graphic novel, a stuffed, squeaking Fin Fin
         and, naturally, an invite to our far-better-than-Cool-Site-
         Of-The-Year .NOT Award Ceremony. This week, we are using
         the limerick form, as perfected by Edward Lear and Frank
         Carson.

                    There once was a site with an URL
                    whose first, an pejorative, is hurled
                    at a genre begotten
                    by the vicious and rotten
                    but now heard all "round the world"

         Remember, the site takes the form www.xxxx.com/now.html.
         And, just to prove that people *are* sending in URLs, we
         got this one last week. Thanks ...err, whoever. Full
         details of the competition remain at
         http://www.ntk.net/compo/ until the authorities catch on.


                              >> 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 "read by government spooks".

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