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  • NTK 2007
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  • NTK 2004
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  • NTK 2002
  • NTK 2001
  • NTK 2000
  • NTK 1999
  • 25/12/98
    Holiday Special #8
    Christmas InDin with all the trimmings
  • 18/12/98
    #75
    politic, politics, quake fragfests, politics
  • 11/12/98
    #74
    making a stand, cyberstrikes and proof of a CONSPIRACY
  • 04/12/98
    #73
    Wassenaar, Flavor Flav, Zope!
  • 27/11/98
    #72
    Netscape dies, Cliffilms, Chocolata
  • 20/11/98
    #71
    Phantom Menace, Patches as Art, and Wiki
  • 13/11/98
    #70
    Domains, Ataris, and Tommy Flowers
  • 06/11/98
    #69
    Mark thingy, Christian whatsisname, and Scawen scary name
  • 30/10/98
    #68
    HipCrime, Tron and Halloweeeeen
  • 23/10/98
    #67
    More Tales From The Crypt, Sunbather Falco and Roobarb
  • 16/10/98
    #66
    ADSL, John Prescott, and the Anarchist Bookfair
  • 09/10/98
    #65
    DVD 1 Industry 0, XFM, and Funny Food
  • 02/10/98
    #64
    Sky Digitalis, Clickety-Click
  • 25/09/98
    #63
    Dixons Docks, Orwell Knocks, but Flash gets it clean
  • 18/09/98
    #62
    ISP trust, RISC PC busts, and homeless IT bosses
  • 11/09/98
    #61
    Starr networks, Ya Basta Blasters, token Windows software
  • 04/09/98
    #60
    Explorer runs out of memories, PGP 6, and Pat
  • 28/08/98
    #59
    Whose whois, Gameboy hacking, San Francisco
  • 21/08/98
    Holiday Special #7
    BT Highway Robbery, Bab5 Wrap Party,
    CU Amiga RIP
  • 14/08/98
    Holiday Special #6
    Strange Customs, OpenSource Meet, Victorian Net
  • 07/08/98
    #58
    Microsoft doublethink, Beebisms, Resfest
  • 31/07/98
    #57
    Net myths, Spy cams, and Hartley Hare
  • 24/07/98
    #56
    Beeb Falco, Millions Lost, and Dave "King Stupid" Green
  • 17/07/98
    #55
    Apple booms, DES doomed, DEFCON reaches VI
  • 10/07/98
    #54
    iMacs, Script Kiddies, and Is He Serious?
  • 03/07/98
    #53
    Ireland, Italy, and the End of The World
  • 26/06/98
    #52
    Net censors, Psion, and dead as a SOHO
  • 19/06/98
    #51
    Nominaughtiness, databastardery, and Patrick Moore event
  • 12/06/98
    #50
    BT goes cheap, Doc Solomon goes West, and ICQ goes downmarket
  • 05/06/98
    #49
    No news, street news, sweet news
  • 29/05/98
    #48
    @Home, Ross' Foundation, Power Renames
  • 22/05/98
    #47
    Gateswar!, Open Source flightsim, and a happy birthday
  • 15/05/98
    #46
    MacOS X, Anarchist Studies, and bloody Killer Net
  • 08/05/98
    #45
    Red Buses, Apple iMacs, more Killer Net
  • 01/05/98
    #44
    Crypto policy, IMDB sales, MP3 in your car
  • 24/04/98
    #43
    Falcomania, ICA knobbled, Spacewar!
  • 17/04/98
    #42
    BIB rumours, Intel downturn, and Dougie Coupland
  • 10/04/98
    #41
    RIPE.NET, Microsoft bribes, Richard 'Trek Wars' Barry
  • 03/04/98
    #40
    Demon sales, USENET wars, MOZILLA!
  • 27/03/98
    #39
    JavaOne, Edge Dunderheads, Virtual Turntables
  • 20/03/98
    #38
    LineOne, Scallywag, and Fete de l'Internet
  • 13/03/98
    #37
    Crypto, Technorealists, Crypto-Technorealists
  • 06/03/98
    #36
    Gates and the Senators, IWF takes their PICS, Bull Electronic
  • 27/02/98
    #35
    BIB backtracking, Hacker witch hunts, UKCAC
  • 20/02/98
    #34
    Crypto shenanigans, Alledged Jobs nuttiness, Action SuperCross
  • 13/02/98
    #33
    Key escrow, Tempest spooks, XML
  • 06/02/98
    #32
    Bill flanned, Postel goes postal, mealy MILIA melee
  • 30/01/98
    #31
    Compaq gobble DEC, Bill damage-limits, Time Crisis 2
  • 23/01/98
    #30
    Netscape lose the source,
    CU Amiga "sucks dogs", Pinker speaks!
  • 16/01/98
    #29
    Excite gets kids, Dennis has kittens, Webmedia kicks bucket
  • 09/01/98
    #28
    Microsoft mad, Apple make money, the zine scene
  • NTK 1997
  • HARD NEWS
  • ANTI-NEWS
  • EVENT QUEUE
  • TRACKING
  • MEMEPOOL
  • GEEK MEDIA
  • SMALL PRINT
 _   _ _____ _  __ <*the* weekly high-tech sarcastic update for the UK>
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|_| \_| |_| |_|\_\|_| |_|\___/ \_/\_/   o     http://www.ntk.net/


                        "AOL lets this little girl talk to animals!"
                                      - AOL UK's new campaign slogan
            ...and future Daily Mail "Net-child-molesters" headline?


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                             your right to choose

         "And I would have gotten away with it, too, if it wasn't
         for you darn kids!" Well, that wasn't *quite* what DTI
         mandarin NIGEL HICKSON said when he explained the non-
         appearance of that government statement on crypto this week
         - but it's what he meant. An announcement was due, he said
         at the ICX conference on Thursday, but was delayed - thanks
         to "completely wrong announcements on the Internet". Weird.
         Surely it would be better to announce it *quicker*, in
         order to scotch those scurrilous reports? And wasn't it
         strange that those incorrect tittle-tattlers got the timing
         of the proposed statement exactly right - as Nigel admitted
         - even as the DTI were denying it even existed? Never mind.
         The delay allowed several civil liberty organisations to
         prepare statements and various news outlets - who would
         have been taken off-guard by a unannounced statement - to
         get fully up to speed with the issues. Oh, and it also let
         a few nasty, scurrilous gossipmongers realise that there
         *is* something individuals can do about wrongheaded
         government initiatives before they get cast in stone.
         http://www.liberty.org.uk/cacib/crypto.html
                            - and that goes for your darn mutt, too!

         STEVE JOBS, the man behind "insanely great", is again
         trying the adverb and the adjective bits the other way
         around. APPLE sources have him in a boardroom brawl with
         prospective CEO, Jim Cannavino. Cannavino turned up
         Wednesday at 1 Infinite Loop to discuss contract terms,
         meet Larry Ellison and the guys - maybe a game of pool?
         Instead, he found himself slugging it out with Jobs, who
         wanted to stay on at Apple for a year, getting paid a
         nominal $1 wage (presumably to go with the one Apple share
         he now owns), but calling most of the shots. Cannavino
         baulked; Jobs told him to walk. Shouting continued within
         the boardroom as Jim did just that. Meanwhile, in the world
         of the grown-ups, multimedia developers are getting
         increasingly touchy as Apple puts a hold on QuickTime
         licensing. They're scared that Apple may start demanding
         hefty royalties for use of the technology. Well, they've
         got to find that dollar a year from somewhere.
         http://www.apple.com/
                           - have you tried looking under the sofas?
         http://www.macosrumors.com/
                                - so, what did your last CEO die of?

         ISPA - the non-political, non-partisan INTERNET SERVICE
         PROVIDERS ASSOCIATION, popped out an interesting press
         release this week. In it, they condemned as "distasteful"
         and "offensive" a Princess Diana car racing game, in which
         you have to avoid motorcycles and cones, while speeding
         through a dark tunnel. The ISPA - which purports to speak
         for the service provider industry, and is funded by your 10
         quids a month - reassured journalists that the site was
         hosted in Germany, so there was nothing they could do about
         it, but they said they were working hard to stamp out this
         sort of thing with help from the Internet Watch
         Foundation's plans for a global rating system. A rating
         system, incidentally, that is rumoured to be the subject of
         the British government's next pronouncement on Net
         liberties. Oh, and they provided the URL, which they
         requested should not be publicised further. Well, we did
         plug it in memewatch two weeks ago, but if you insist...
         http://www.fork.de/games/diana/play.htm
                        - wait until they find www.dianabear.com ...


                               >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         MICROSOFT "moving away" from ActiveX... THE TIMES picture
         desk uses a hotmail account...  GCHQ jobs' e-mail is
         recruitment.gchq@dial.pipex.com... POLICE OFFICERS chat up
         17-year-old girl online: lawyer describes cops as "very
         vulnerable element of society"... WWW.CAPITALISM.ORG's
         defence of Microsoft doesn't display properly in Explorer
         4.0... lame E-CHRISTMAS site only sold 500 items... Too
         many venture capitalists spend too much money in Silicon
         Valley, uncovers shocked ESTHER DYSON... "Online News
         Readership on the Rise" - says INTERNETNEWS.COM ... GRAND
         THEFT AUTO banned in Brazil... MICROSOFT tests ingenious
         new data broadcast system in US: also known as teletext...
         UN Peace Plan "may end in failure" - reveals CEEFAX...


                              >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                        goto's considered non-harmful

         We may not know much about art at NTK, but we do know we
         don't like it. Except, perhaps, this. It's a performance
         that claims to be modelled on the OSI seven layer model of
         art. It includes extracts from the Physical, Network,
         Session and Application layers of the TCP/IP protocol
         stack. It will take place at the ICA bar and CB1 cybercafe
         in Cambridge on Monday 23/2/98, at 2000GMT. There will , we
         genuinely lead to believe, source code readings afterwards.
         We are speechless.
         http://www.newmediacentre.com/
         - still an absolutely appalling site. Some kind of statement?

         There's still tickets for BRUCE STERLING and BRIAN ALDISS,
         the twin big-gobbed Gods of Sci-Fi theory,as they talk at
         the Purcell Rooms, dans la South Bank Centre en 24/2/98.
         SARAH LEFANU will be trying to get a word in edgeways. Show
         starts at 7.30PM. Tickets are 6UKP. Oh, and this is a
         serious cultural event, so don't come dressed as the
         Artificial Kid or something.
         http://www.sbc.org.uk/literate.htm#f24a
                   - goodness. A venue Website you can actually use.

         Situations (Pretty) Vacant: it's coming up to the Easter
         hols, and you've got a choice: that cushy, lucrative work-
         experience job with that nice corporate IT department, or a
         few days on the very barricades of the Digital bastille,
         scrabbling over a hot Webserver, spitting at your crazed
         compadres as they struggle to unjam their sarcastic
         flamethrower, snorting technical manuals, spewing pure
         code, laughing in the face of the "traditional" technology
         press and trading sexual favours with Linux-mad programmers
         of whatever gender your heart desires. Yes, there's not
         much money involved, but NTK (and its shadowy sugar-daddy,
         Virgin Net) are nonetheless LOOKING FOR INTERNS. Work in
         London's seedy Soho! Meet influential New Media bosses!
         Insult them in public! Could you take what its got? E-mail
         us now on recruitment.gchq@ntk.net with CV and a fifty word
         explanation as to why this is in no way a career-limiting
         move. Frankly, we're kind of curious ourselves.


                                >> TRACKING <<
                        look what the mouse dragged in

         There was a time when home-made shareware games had a
         chance. But after years of installing DOS app after DOS app
         from scratched cover-mounted CDs that fell off our Jabba-
         sized Ziff-Davis magazines, we somehow lost interest. Which
         is a shame, because we otherwise might have spotted ACTION
         SUPERCROSS a little earlier. A monstrous, yet 1.4MB hybrid
         of Evil Knieval and Thrust for the BBC Model B, it's the
         program your mates talked about writing at school, but
         never did, never could and never will. Kudos to NTK tipster
         Goat Boy, who spotted it after reading a thread on
         rec.games.programmer, which started with a Bullfrog
         programmer hailing it the best program he'd seen for ages,
         and ended with a ninety-post flamewar arguing about how
         programmer Csaba Rozsa did it.
         http://ourworld.compuserve.com/homepages/balazs/across.htm
         - "all it lacks is the Peter Purvis commentary" - GB
         http://www.pik.com/               much faster download site
         http://www.geocities.com/SiliconValley/Lab/5171/
                                                             - fans!

         ALL SAINTS are paying bigtime for uncleared samples on
         their album, THE VERVE lost the publishing rights to
         Bittersweet Symphony and therefore can't stop it being used
         on ads (or techno remixes) - so it's good to see media
         terrorists RTMARK turning this massive legal bug into a
         feature. Their new album, DECONSTRUCTING BECK, is a
         collection of "brilliant but allegedly illegal" resamplings
         of that universally reviled corporate rock whore, Beck
         Hansen, which they've put out under the slogan "using
         artwork illegally helps to fight the stranglehold that
         corporations have on our lives". Right on - and we're sure
         The Verve and All Saints would agree. The (only mildly
         unlistenable) CD is not available in stores, but their site
         also details other anti-corporate activism, including their
         hilarious sponsorship of "New York Welcomes Saddam Hussein"
         banners, plus a vegan-friendly US$5000 reward for anyone
         who can "find and administer a substance to a great number
         of cattle that will make their beef unfit for consumption".
         British ingenuity triumphs once again!
         http://www.paranoia.com/~rtmark
                        - I'm a loser baby; so why don't you sue me?


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                              hasta la altavista

         www.fourmilab.ch/babbage/lockpick.html ...
         http://members.aol.com/Jesus316/index.htm ... NATWEST using
         NT in new cash-machine network: free money... forget
         quantum transistors - here's the TRANSCAPACITOR:
         http://americancomputer.com/Transcap.htm ...New BATGIRL
         Adventures Comic implies Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy are,
         ah, more than friends ... www.appletshirts.com ... VOYAGER
         1 overtakes Pioneer 10 as furthest man-made object - it's
         like Wacky Races out there... Tamagotchi for Playstation...
         They're remaking CITY OF ANGELS? Nooooo ...
         www.woodcutter.com ... http://shockrave.macromedia.com ....
         CARL STEADMAN returns to Suck!


                               >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                   what's killing the radio star these days

         TV>> remote-control beardie weirdies twitch uncontrollably
         through bizarre routines to occasional comic effect. But
         that's enough about IS IT BILL BAILEY? (11.15pm, Fri, BBC2)
         -  because ROBOT WARS (6.25pm, Fri, BBC2) promises to be
         more disappointing than even the presence of Jeremy
         Clarkson and Philippa Forrester would normally indicate...
         AN AWFULLY BIG ADVENTURE (6pm, Sat, BBC2) features fans
         talkin' about JRR Tolkien - some in genuine Elvish... the
         profile/ interview of SCENE BY SCENE WITH STEVE MARTIN
         (9pm, Sat, BBC2) is ingeniously followed by two of his
         dullest films: Grand Canyon and LA Story... 2-part drama
         HEAVEN ON EARTH (9pm, Sun, BBC1) depicts a Witness/ Waco-
         style religious cult populated by ex-cast members of cop
         shows: Neil Pearson from Between The Lines, Penhaligon from
         Cracker... THE ENTERTAINMENT BIZ (9.30pm, Sun, BBC2) laughs
         at stand-up comedians, something which interviewee Donna
         McPhail must know about from having been on the same bill
         as them... the night-long Ethan Hawke/ Julie Delpy romance
         in BEFORE SUNRISE (10pm, Sun, C4) isn't actually filmed
         real-time - it just seems that way... at last: a fly-on-
         the-wall docu about a workplace you *don't* see every day,
         when THE WAR MACHINE (9pm, Mon, C4) goes hilariously behind
         the scenes with weapons-inventing nutters at the UK's
         Defence Evaluation and Research Agency... looking at
         previous guests, it shouldn't be too hard to work out why
         the obsessives on FOR THE LOVE OF (11.55pm, Mon, C4)
         "chose" a life of celibacy... Hitchcock parody HIGH ANXIETY
         (11.45pm, Tue, C4) could be Mel Brooks' most sophisticated
         spoof to date - for what that's worth... former Marmalade
         Atkins Charlotte Coleman (also in Oranges Are Not The Only
         Fruit) reappears in non-citrus-themed Men-Behaving-Rurally
         sitcom HOW DO YOU WANT ME? (10pm, Tue, BBC2)... MODERN
         TIMES (9pm, Wed, BBC2) makes a film about the making of a
         film about the shooting of Gianni Versace... and, as
         predicted, REBOOT (4.45pm, Thu, ITV) skips to season 3
         episode 2 to avoid that notorious Evil Dead chainsaw bit...

         FILM>> a triple treat for fans of movies named after
         professions, with THE BUTCHER BOY (imdb: comedy / horror /
         drama / 1960s) serving up surreal trash-culture horror from
         Neil "The Crying Game" Jordan, including another starring
         role for Stephen Rea, and - in a stylistic nod to Father
         Ted - Sinead O'Connor as The Virgin Mary... THE BOXER
         (imdb: drama) re-teams In The Name Of The Father director
         with Daniel Day-Lewis, in a Troubles romance-weepie that,
         surprisingly, is nothing like the Simon & Garfunkel song of
         the same name... and finally, Kev Costner puts the "post"
         back into "post-apocalyptic" in his cheesily overlong
         Dances-With-Waterworld hybrid THE POSTMAN (imdb: action /
         sci-fi / adventure / thriller / based-on-novel / drama /
         futuristic / post-apocalyptic)... PRISONER OF THE MOUNTAINS
         (imdb: war / drama) is the best of the subtitled former-
         Soviet rebellion hostage-swappers - based on a story by
         Tolstoy originally optioned 150 years ago... and the
         touching teen female friendship in ALL OVER ME (imdb:
         lesbian) completes this month's cycle of faintly homoerotic
         films with titles based around prepositions (see also In
         And Out, Up And Under)...

         GAMES>> top-rated Japanese PlayStation racer GRAN TURISMO
         (sadly, nothing to do with grandmas) isn't due out here
         till May, but will run "between 15 and 30% faster" than the
         import. It'll also get a new soundtrack with usual suspects
         Ash, Garbage and a - now-obligatory - Chemical Brothers
         remix of the Manic Street Preachers. "I believe that this
         will be the first game ever to have a full, 12/13 track
         soundtrack with all music recorded by 'actual' music
         bands," chortles what seems to be an internal company memo,
         "as opposed to a track by Prodigy, a track by Orbital, and
         ten by company musicians"... till then, why not deck it out
         the Station's quirky new beat-em-up trend: genuinely
         shocking pseudo-Victorian Goth Raider NIGHTMARE CREATURES
         and/or Monkey-Magic-inspired subtitled Samurai slasher
         BUSHIDO BLADE - hwiyahhhhh!... and of course don't bother
         with RESIDENT EVIL DIRECTOR'S CUT when RE2 is just round
         the next shadowy corner... the N64's revving up its own
         nice but dull driving games in the form of CRUIS'N USA
         (which wasn't even a good coin-op) and TOP GEAR RALLY,
         which - inexplicably - is co-sponsoring London Fashion
         Week... over on the PC, disgruntled coder Derek Smart
         (great name!) is releasing the complete version of
         BATTLECRUISER 3000AD v1.01D7C into the public domain
         (previously published by famed quality-merchants Take 2) -
         a move which we (naturally) applaud, though wonder if it's
         unrelated to reviews like "I have never, ever, in 17 years
         of computer gaming, seen a game that hated being played the
         way this one does" and "It will go down in legend as the
         most bug-ridden, unstable, unplayable pieces of software
         ever released" - www.gamespot.com ... thus the scene is set
         for the battle of the great battle- games, with demos now
         available of Activision's reworked 3D arcade classic
         BATTLEZONE - www.activision.com/games/strategy/battlezone/
         . It's got new weapons, new Command-And-Conquer-style
         strategy mode (bring on DUNE 2000!), but we bet it's not as
         good as the freeware BZ demo on the SGI, which lets you add
         unlimited new guns, unfair advantages etc - because they
         give you the source!


                              >> 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 "messenger of the gods".
                     ( http://www.heaven.affection.net )

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  • HARD NEWS
  • ANTI-NEWS
  • EVENT QUEUE
  • TRACKING
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