[Happy New Year! As perhaps befits the home of the digital
         antichrist, our server crashed over the holiday period, but
         that's OK because we weren't planning on doing our usual
         Friday-afternoon sarcastic round-up of technology news
         anyway. What do you think we are, insane? So, to tide you
         over until the return of NTK Classic next Friday
         (09/01/98), here's a special retro-update of last year,
         plus a bumper edition of TV and misc media that you've
         probably missed already. And before you ask, MiniNTKs are
         traditionally always slightly larger than the real thing.
         For historical reasons, you understand.]


 __  __ _29/12/97 _   _ _____ _  __     <Xmas '97/New Year '98 special>
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         "If you're talking about the costumes, then they're way
         different. Marine pulse rifles were cosmetically customised
         Tommy guns, while the Starship Troopers' ones are obviously
         cut-down pump-action 12-gauge shotguns mounted underneath
         M16s sheathed in a fibreglass stock that converts them to a
         'bullpup' configuration (ie, the magazine is behind the
         pistol grip)."
         - Cam Winstanley (Total Film magazine) convincingly nails        
           that old "Starship Troopers is just like Aliens" argument      
              - though in perhaps a bit more detail than we required      


                              >> '97 REFRESH << 
                      truth at 8 million polygons/second

         CENSORSHIP: in '97, the Net ingeniously thwarted would-be
         Evil Nazi-like Censors, generally by propagating Evil Nazi-
         like Websites < http://www.godhatesfags.com >. Prospective
         Lord Chamberlains included NOTTINGHAM COUNTY COUNCIL
         < http://www.xs4all.nl/~yaman/jetrep.htm >, JIMMY HILL (who,
         the Observer reported in May, threatened to sue the Tartan
         Army Website for slagging him off - unprecedented
         disrespect!), EAMONN HOLMES (who was, Teletext reported,
         horrified at comments made about him on a newsgroup, and
         wanted it all stopped), and PAMELA LEE ANDERSON (who
         unsuccessfully petitioned to retrieve her stolen honeymoon
         video - < http://wouller.person.dk/textual.htm >, ya
         perverts).

         GAMES: "Plucky British start-up" continued to be a by-word
         for "imminent bankruptcy proceedings". Lame face-sucker
         makers VIRTUALITY at last gave up the ghost, while
         Leicester-based ENTERTAINMENT ONLINE fooled everyone into
         thinking they were going to buy the Sega Channel, then
         ingeniously went bust instead. (In unrelated news, anyone
         heard from BT's WIREPLAY recently?) Elsewhere, VIRGIN
         INTERACTIVE continued scraping by despite low morale, no
         buyers, and bitter ex-employees ranting about how doomed
         they were < http://www.atgp.com/rblts/vie.htm >. Like the ZX
         Spectrum before it, the PLAYSTATION proved that rubbish
         graphics were no obstacle to mass-market dominance, kicking
         the N64's Diddy Kong demographic right in their tri-linear
         mip-map interpolations.

         HARDWARE: PSION introduced their new Psion Series 5, which
         everyone liked even when the power supply turned out to be
         dodgy and the lettering started rubbing off the keys.
         Psion, by way of celebration, ran out of stock, but was
         saved from financial embarrassment when DELL bought loads
         of their cellular modems because no-one in the States
         understands how GSM phones work. HERMANN "Doogie" HAUSER
         (Britain's Angel Of Death venture capitalist) introduced
         his NetStation Web TV's to the British market a good
         century before they were expected to take off.

         COMMS: 3COM and ROCKWELL offered the market two
         incompatible 56Kbps modem standards, and were surprised
         when sales were "disappointing". They turned to the
         INTERNATIONAL TELECOMMUNICATIONS UNION to sort out the
         problem, somehow ignorant that the rest of America thought
         the ITU were Satan-inspired Swiss bureaucrats who were
         going to steal "their Internet" < http://www.domain-
         name.org/ >.

         SPACE: The first barrages of the future satellite clusters
         went up, offering exciting lightshows for those who can
         tell the difference between degrees and radians
         < http://wwwvms.utexas.edu/~ecannon/iridium.htm >, and more
         reasons to believe BILL GATES will one day control ze vurld
         < http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/L.Wood/constellations/
          >. NASA's ultra-cheap PATHFINDER project landed a Connectix
         QuickCam stuck on a Big Trak on Mars, thanks to a party
         pack of balloons and a dodgy modem. MIR did everything it
         could to be an orbiting disaster short of crash into the
         Plutonium-laden CASSINI. The space probe PIONEER 10 left
         the Solar System, only to be destroyed by Klaa of the
         Klingon battleship Okrona in "Star Trek V" (3.30pm, Fri Jan
         2, BBC1).

         MEDIA: Your Net-hating friends gloated as newspapers
         endlessly reported how the Net had "crashed" (when the
         domain naming system collapsed), "blundered" (when JUDGE
         ZOBEL e-mailed his Woodward judgement to an ISP in the
         middle of a power cut), and "was on the edge of collapse"
         (every time a clueless hack couldn't get his e-mail).
         Simultaneously, the media raved about how the Net was
         "creating a new economy" (so, when was the last time you
         visited www.BarclaySquare.co.uk?), "revolutionising
         medicine" (CU-SeeMe remote bypass operations, anyone?), and
         "helping kids in school" (to download pornography and run
         warez sites, perhaps). The BBC spent millions on the now
         *fascinatingly appalling* www.bbc.co.uk . WIRED UK shut
         down, along with a whole newsagent's POS display of other
         useless net mags. WIRED US talked about how great it had
         been, and pundits raved about LARA CROFT, DVD and DIGITAL
         TV without having played with any of them.

         NET CRIME: Shetlander sued Shetlander over hyperlinks
         between their sites. Everyone sued www.totalnews.com for
         framing their news stories with ads. Hackers worked out a
         bazillion ways to make [INSERT YOUR BROWSER HERE] crash.
         One guy tried to blackmail Netscape into paying him for his
         crash code, and got threatened with jail. EUGENE KASHPUREFF
         exploited a bug to take over the Internic for a day, and
         went to jail. The Labour Party hackers and COLDFIRE helped
         the police with their enquiries. KEVIN MITNICK remained in
         jail (without trial) for another year.

         BUSINESS: IE4 came out, NETSCAPE went down, APPLE went
         random. The HEAVEN'S GATE web designers beat the rest of
         the industry to mass suicide by a good 12 months. IBM gave
         up trying to beat Microsoft with OS/2, and took it out on
         Gary Kasparov. The US forbade companies from exporting hard
         crypto, so Bill Gates bought out Cambridge University
         instead. JAVA replaced VRML and NetPhones as The Year After
         Next's Big Thing. The Year After the Year After Next's Big
         Thing, the MILLENNIUM BUG, showed its earth-shattering
         nature by retrospectively boring everyone to death.

         AND FINALLY: on August 29, at 2.14am Eastern Time,
         Terminator's SKYNET became self-aware. Unfortunately, it
         picked the same week as the death of Princess "Sarah
         Connor" Diana, so no-one noticed. It "decided our fate in a
         microsecond", apparently...


                              >> EVENT QUEUED << 
                    never seen gatecrashers look so scared

         Thanx to everyone who made it to NTK's real-world Xmas
         "DON'T" event - and for the rest of you, you missed: free
         drink, MIDI Karaoke, forced viewings of a bootleg video of
         Mystery Science Theatre 3000 - and a small sideshow where
         you could "Shoot Bill Gates In The Face" with a full-size
         replica Uzi (which the lively Quake-playing contingent then
         used to terrorise the streets of 3am South London).
         Admittedly, labelling everyone with their domain name
         wasn't perhaps the ice-breaker we had hoped, causing
         instant rivalry between dial-up users and vanity-domain
         owners, plus a shortage of stickers when enthusiastic cash-
         for-registers ONE IN A MILLION turned up. Perhaps we should
         have gone for a DNS lookup party game (match the guest to
         the IP number!) instead of the not-yet-out-of-beta Video
         Game Charades. Best gossip: the story about BT tech-guru
         PETER COCHRANE apparently driving through a security
         barrier. Coming up next: GeekCon '98 - and the .NOT awards.
         http://www.ntk.net/not.cgi            - parity on, d00dz...          


                              >> GEEK MEDIA << 
                               electric dreams

         TV>> WEEK 52: this no-man's land between Xmas/New Year
         indulges all our child-prodigy nostalgia, as Prof Ian
         Stewart (the practical mathematician) commands junior spod-
         fest THE ROYAL INSTITUTION CHRISTMAS LECTURES (around 1pm,
         Sun-Thu, BBC2) - not to be confused with the adventures of
         "computer enhanced teenager" FREAKAZOID (10am, Mon-Wed +
         Fri, ITV)... there's a space-camp's worth of young people's
         sci-fi films, making the jump to light (entertainment)
         speed with relativity parable FLIGHT OF THE NAVIGATOR
         (3.40pm, Mon, BBC1)... spoiler! knowing that the title
         stands for "Data Analysing Robot Youth Lifeform" almost
         completely ruins the twist of David Ambrose-scripted
         D.A.R.Y.L (10.30am, Tue, ITV)... a computer holiday goes
         awry in Christopher Lloyd vehicle (and excellent Quake
         advice) CAMP NOWHERE (10.30am, Wed, ITV)... and it's
         actually a remake of Disney's telekinesis classic ESCAPE TO
         WITCH MOUNTAIN (10.50pm, Thu, ITV)... elsewhere, the Geiger
         clicks excitedly over nuclear thrillers like Tommy Lee
         Jones' marital meltdown drama BLUE SKY (10pm, Mon, C4) and
         Homer Simpson safety manual THE CHINA SYNDROME (2.15pm,
         Thu, ITV)... mock documentaries try to out-Spinal-Tap each
         other, with promising kid comedy COPING WITH (12.05pm, Mon-
         Fri, C4) vs never-heard-of-them cop spoof OPERATION GOOD
         GUYS (9.30pm, Mon, BBC2) - plus an episode of EERIE INDIANA
         (12.35pm, Wed, C4) that's even more self-referential than
         *this sentence you are reading now*... never mind the UFO
         cover-ups, OFFICIAL DENIAL (10.30pm, Wed, BBC2) reveals
         what really happened to Erin "Wilma Deering" Gray (from
         Buck Rogers In The 25th Century)... and if you can't decide
         between the various madcap, irreverent etc hosts to see in
         the New Year, set your clock for "20 minutes into the
         future" - the original TV pilot movie for MAX HEADROOM
         (9pm, Wed, C4), featuring the boardroom from "Network",
          blipverts, digital watch tunes, and - of course - the
         ZikZak Corporation ("We make everything you need/ You need
         everything we make")...

         WEEK 01: a mildly autistic child composer is surprised to
         find himself described as a "nerd" in VIDEO DIARIES
         (10.55pm, Sat, BBC2)... we don't normally do satellite, but
         then they don't usually show anything as good as the TV
         spin-off of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (8pm, Sat, Sky 1):
         cute, violent, astonishingly funny - it's a barely-legal
         Sabrina The Teenage Witch!... Meryl Streep is trapped in a
         nightmare game of Six Degrees Of Kevin Bacon on THE RIVER
         WILD (7.15pm, Sun, BBC1), while Luc Besson draws a bead on
         useless Hollywood remakes in his assassination actioner LA
         FEMME NIKITA (11.50pm, Sun, C4)... you guessed it, the two-
         part "sequel" to sixties sci-fi THE INVADERS (9pm, Sun-Mon,
         C5) is yet duller than the original, though it still
         features Roy Thinnes as "architect David Vincent"... oh,
         the irony that pits NEIGHBOURS FROM HELL (8.30pm, Mon, ITV)
         against NEIGHBOURS AT WAR (9.30pm, Mon, BBC1) - better off
         with Steve Martin's spectacular "special purpose" in THE
         JERK (9pm, Mon, BBC2)... Oliver Morton (something to do
         with Wired) and Ben Woolley (off BBC2's The Net) each do 5
         mins on the future in THINGS TO COME (7.55pm, Mon-Fri, C4)
         - Woolley appears to propose "reinventing time", and
         where's that idiot Michael Marshall Smith when you need
         him?... scrub up for the return of ER (9pm, Wed, C4), and
         with rather less fanfare, superior teen soap PARTY OF FIVE
         (6pm, Wed, C4)... another unusual scheduling coincidence
         sees SOS PACIFIC (3.30pm, Thu, C4) on the same day as SOS
         TITANIC (8pm, Thu, C4), while some wag has stuck a HORIZON
         SPECIAL on car crash fatalities (9.30pm, Thu, BBC2) half an
         hour after the opening edition of JEREMY CLARKSON'S EXTREME
         MACHINES (8.30pm, Thu, BBC2)... and with the addition of
         ad-quiz THE BEST SHOW IN THE WORLD - PROBABLY (10.20pm,
         Thu, BBC2), the only thing there isn't a blokey late-night
         game show about is the proliferation of late-night blokey
         game shows - called something like: They Think It's All
         Have I Got Shooting Buzzcocks For You - Or Do They?...

         FILM>> it's probably the first sci-fi movie in decades to
         acknowledge, spoof and embrace the fact that the entire
         genre is essentially appalling right-wing techno-porn - in
         other words, an entirely accurate film version of
         Heinlein's STARSHIP TROOPERS (imdb: adventure / war /
         action / sci-fi / alien-attack / military / part-animated /
         infantry / space / asteroid / futuristic / fascism / aliens
         / giant-insect / violence / part-computer-animation / gore
         / horror / dismemberment / decapitation / shower). But
         great fun as well as being profoundly disturbing - that
         kind of goes without saying... a laptop-controlled machine
         gun is the only highlight of THE JACKAL (imdb: thriller /
         assassination / russia / mafia / ireland / chase / murder /
         terrorism)... while SPICE WORLD (musical / comedy / music /
         british / concert) is, disappointingly, not a new sequel to
         Frank Herbert's Dune, and also not as good as you thought
         it was going to be when you thought it wasn't going to be
         as bad as you thought, if you know what I mean... on the
         heels of critical acclaim for his costume drama WINGS OF THE
         DOVE (imdb: drama / romance), director Iain "Soft Lad"
         Softley now reckons that his previous movie, Hackers, is
         being reassessed as a "youth cult classic" - well, not
         round here it fucking isn't... in US news, apparently the
         funniest bit of new release MR MAGOO is the disclaimer that
         Disney has added to the credits, after complaints from The
         National Federation For The Blind that "the film does not
         portray people with sight problems in a positive way"...


                              >> READER'S SITES << 
          (being a brief, completely arbitrary, one-off end-of-the-
         year round-up of some homepages that subscribers have asked
          us to "check out". And yes, we have deliberately reviewed
         them in the style of one of those dreadful net mag features
          where they've just typed something into Yahoo and written
                        up the first 10-15 results...)

         OBSESSIVE MEDIA
         http://www.obsess.com/
         Not only does this one have a great name, but it used to
         exploit that odd Yahoo bug (see NTK 12/12/97) to create
         stream-of-consciousness free verse themed around users'
         current search terms - appalling misspellings and all.

                                                         UPSIDE NEWS
                                         http://www.upside.com/news/
           No idea which shadowy media giant is secretly behind this
           one, but actually quite a smart daily news/analysis page.
         Often gives you a snappier overview than paging through all
          the TechWeb and PC Week headlines at www.newshub.com/tech/
                                                             anyway.

         FROGGER'S WEBBED WONDERS
         http://mudhole.spodnet.uk.com/~frogger/
         Enormous site with sections devoted to the "Addicted"
         telnet talker, the semi-official Lee And Herring page (new
         TV series starts 15/02/98), one of those celebrity-slapping
         Java apps, and updates on what's going on in Neighbours
         nowadays. Weirdly, not very much on the classic video game
         Frogger - though presumably that's what the Arcade
         Emulation forum is there for.

                                                      THE CURMUDGEON
                      http://www.pheasnt.demon.co.uk/MUDGE/INDEX.HTM
               Slightly wordy film and comedy fanzine, featuring (as
           appears obligatory for NTK readers) an interview with Lee
           and Herring. Presumably they think they've got a uniquely
            wacky British title, but they've reckoned without rivals
                              like http://worldclassdogs.com.bs/WCD-
           Features/CurmudgeonArch3.html - "an irreverant [sic] look
                      at the world of show dogs and their owners..."

         MEDIAEATER
         http://www.mediaeater.com
         They say: "a call for accountability in media,
         responsibility in reporting, a cry for media literacy." We
         say: "Great links page!" (to all kinds of news sites etc)

                                                          SUPERKAYLO
                           http://www.cex.co.uk/cex/kaylo/kindex.htm
               Charlie Brooker does the cartoons for the ads for the
          Computer And Video Games Exchange, and here continues that
          same endearingly offensive style over many, many pages. To
            wit: an Innovations catalogue spoof that includes "Onion
            Sock Patrol" and "Puerile Calculator Makes Light Work Of
         Geek Tormentation", plus a software selection that features
            "Sim Tits" and "Al Pacino's Cakey Wakey" ("47 fun-packed
                                    levels of cake-waking action!").

         (And finally, special respect to ERICH WEHMEYER, who
         doesn't have a site, but mailed to say that, in South
         Africa, Cadbury's ASTROS [see NTK 19/09/97] are much nicer,
         because they make them with Bourneville chocolate instead.
         This was confirmed by the sample he sent us, along with a
         South African Crunchie and a mildly worrying "PS Forever
         Yours" love bar. NTK regrets that the correspondence
         regarding the relative merits of Smarties vs Astros - UK or
         South African varieties - is now closed.)


                              >> SMALL PRINT << 

      Need to Know is (usually) an 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 "walking in a woman's wonderbra".

                                 NEED TO KNOW
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