Need To Know 1998-04-17

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"NT 5.0 will build on a proven system architecture and incorporate tens of thousands of bug fixes from 4.0" - MICROSOFT on the not-quite-imminent new NT while NT 6.0 will have *hundreds* of thousands of bug fixes! >> HARD NEWS << hitting "snooze" You're smart people: you can probably make more of this than we can. Here are the clues. Murdoch's coalition for the repeatedly delayed digital TV, BIB, announces they're to be "Internet compatible". Groups working on BIB content are told to forget about all about the proprietary systems in BIB's proposed set-top box (the one they've already ordered a million of from Pace, Amstrad and others). Stick to HTML, BIB say - even though HTML on that set-top boxes' OpenTV system is a dog. Meanwhile, Microsoft's WebTV wing suddenly loses interest in talking to any of BIB's competitors. Then, we get dozens of tips that say little else than "*cough* Microsoft *cough* NewsCorp". What can it all mean? http://www.webtv.net/ - apart from another tough week for our solicitors http://www.bib.co.uk/ - this is getting silly now, guys. Guys? It couldn't happen here (because it already happened last week). As if to prove that whatever Europe does, the US can do better, AT&T's entire frame relay network went up in a "cloud" of smoke (clever comms joke, I know - cheers) this Monday. That neatly excised much of Canada of the Internet (see last week's "did anyone notice?" comment), and destroyed every Americans' God-given right to bargain-hunt for Easter eggs on their credit cards. The mess took the long weekend to fix, and as of yet, AT&T aren't sure what the problem was. They're currently blaming two Cisco boxes - which, oddly, is exactly what our network people say when *they* don't know what the hell is going on. http://www.att.com/speeches/98/980414.maa.html - love the way the operator calls the AT&T CEO "sir" http://www.nwfusion.com/forum/att.html - "I lost 4 million!" "I couldn't buy coffee!" Not a good Easter for the Intel bunnies, either. Profits were announced down 27% to a measly $1.3billion, requiring a ritual slaughter of 3,000 jobs. Their bargain basement Pentium, Celeron, whose name unfortunately reminds many less of "celerity", and more of "celery", was viewed as too bland and weak even for poor people, and few PC makers will use it. As part of their lawsuit with Intergraph (who have been trying to put Intel Inside for allegedly forcing them to hand over patent rights), a US district judge declared Intel CPUs as "an essential facility" - like water, or air - so Intel might have to give away the details of how to make them. And, potentially most worrying of all, SGI have entered into a "strategic parnership" with the chip manufacturer. Hope whatever SGI has got isn't contagious... http://www.findmail.com/listsaver/noframes/rre/792.html - smells like another open source story to us http://www.sgi.com/vision/ - behb by friend! Blease don't bun away! >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious INTERFACE's "Dr Keyboard" advises readers to use PGP, but warns that public key should be kept secret, and Fedexed to the recipient, or maybe transmitted via a "secure ftp site"... Thursday, AM: RICHARD "TREK WAR" BARRY "on holiday" from Guardian Online... EMAP pull out of selling banner advertising: Real Media take their place... Tower Records place MUTE next to BBC LEARNING IS FUN and 2000AD... Steve Jobs said to measure stupidity in "Gils"... FAST "pleasantly surprised" that 58% of 8 to 16 year olds claim they're not using illegal software: "They weren't under any duress, so they probably were being honest," says chief exec GEOFF WEBSTER... Thursday, PM: RICHARD BARRY reappears at ZDNet UK, files a single two- line story in which he manages to misspell the word "Windows" (www.zdnet.co.uk/news/ns-4195.html)... PSYGNOSIS Hangar Lane to close ... access rights on DOWNING STREET SITE set so only government officials can reach it... "Ask for your salary to be paid by cash or cheque in January 2000; make sure you have enough cash, food, bottled water and coal to last a few weeks," advises 7-day mag summary THE WEEK... LIAM GALLAGHER on "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" : "I love the idea of opening a cupboard door, you step inside, there's a lion and you're being chased through the snow." Cupboards full of snow, Liam? >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Bloody Antirom, bloody irational and bloody, bloody KOAN. But it's not just familiar faces at the veteran LOVE BYTES arts festival in Sheffield this weekend. In fact, there appears to be quite a nice collection of new media artworks taking form, including some intriguing observations on the nature of tribality, a genuinely really good set of Web postage stamps, and an appearance by the "Cult of the Inserter Seat", who are attempting to "reverse the trajectory of the ejector seat by pushing against the tide of disembodiment in favour of re-inserting the body back into the fridlock of the earth". Great fun, unless you're planning on doing some quiet shopping in Sheffield city centre this weekend. Bloody freaks. http://www.lovebytes.org.uk/ bloody ALT tags http://www.hypertribes.org.uk/ bloody football Relax. It's still okay to like DOUGLAS COUPLAND, at least around here. He's touring the UK promoting his new(ish) book GIRLFRIEND IN A COMA, a Scooby-Doo-meets-Rip-Van- Winkle-Meets-Douglas-Coupland-Still-Hanging-Out-With- Michael-Stipe-Backstage-At-The-X-Files-Set book that is better than his last one, but not as good as Microserfs. You can meet, greet, and ask him really obscure stuff about Michael in Books Etc, Charing Cross Road, London on Monday 20/4/98, 1900BST, or Tuesday 2000BST 21/4/98 at Cambridge University at, we think, the Union. Wednesday 1900BST 22/4/98 sees him at Dillons in Newcastle upon Tyne, and on Thursday 1900BST 23/4/98, he'll be hanging out at Waterstones, Princes St, Edinburgh. And on Friday at 1900BST, he's going to be in Waterstone's Deansgate, Manchester. http://www.coupland.com/ - so much to answer for. Oho-wo-ho-oh. >> TRACKING << you've turned off your targetting computer - what's wrong? I'm an open format! No, I'M an open format! As Adobe and Macromedia race to give their proprietary vector file formats away, the release of a new version of the MACROMEDIA FLASH editor has been somewhat missed. It's looking fairly good, with some charming morphing and transparency features, some stupid animated button bloatlets, and a slightly better drawing tools. And it's in beta, so therefore it is free! http://www.flash.com/ - Gordon's *alive*? >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista where has a.b.s.mp3 gone from the Demon "censorship free" newsfeed?... Amiga Quake! Jurassic Quake! Same difference?... ISO8601 now!... Voice of God: http://kiev.wall.org/~larry/keynote/keynote.html ... channel stuffing... boy, those 20th Anniversary Macs sure look shit now, don't they?... sound of God: http://www-cs- staff.stanford.edu/~knuth/organ.html... how did they do that? Type +"Rudy Rucker" into Altavista... BNC T-Pieces are the new Tazos... your Y2K beta site: www.kcbbs.gen.nz/users/peterg/power.txt ... Resident Evil 2's secret Tofu character... NY POST headline, about AOL user who kidnapped and sexually abused a girl he met in a chatroom: YOU'VE GOT JAIL!... how dense is your town? - http://www.geog.ucl.ac.uk/casa/martin/internetspace/ ... GIMP approaching 1.0 asymptotically: do you think Slashdot will shut the HELL UP when it does? >> GEEK MEDIA << catch it while it's still analogue TV>> after last week's crash-happy Comic Strip Presents, maybe the BBC could console Rik Mayall with a (rare) head- trauma free episode of BOTTOM (9pm, Fri, BBC2)... as you suspected, the bonkers parachuting hackers in DROP ZONE (9.30pm, Fri, BBC1) - think Point Break without the surfing - are the handiwork of gimmick-crazed WarGames director, John Badham... and don't bother with Have I Got News For You, because Lilith is back on FRASIER (10pm, Fri, C4)... Saturday is now officially theme night, with BBC2 commemorating not-dead-yet? comic SPIKE MILLIGAN (from 9pm, Sat, BBC2), and C4 doing 2 hours on the first year of Labour government (from 9pm, Sat, C4) - apparently that Rory Bremner Max Headroom thing is supposed to be Peter Mandelson, though it looks just like the weird eye-lined new Lottery bot (and we don't mean Anthea Turner)... instead, stick with the first, cheapest, best MAD MAX film (10.55pm, Sat, ITV), or Wes Craven's social comment horror romp - with guns - THE PEOPLE UNDER THE STAIRS (12.30am, Sat, BBC1)... not-so-bad before-it-was-"cool" online-chat action in JUMPIN' JACK FLASH (10.35pm, Sun, BBC2), plus great NICAM sound, but: warning! Whoopi Goldberg! Twice!... similarly, urban thriller JUDGEMENT NIGHT (11pm, Sun, BBC2) has a great rap/rock crossover soundtrack, and intriguing cast, but *shame about the film*... Lee & Herring host last year's Montreal comedy interviews in FESTIVAL OF FUN (10.50pm, Sun, C5)... new half-hour adult cartoon STRESSED ERIC (10pm, Mon, BBC2) seems unlikely to really be a Brit version of The Simpsons, but - still - can't be as bad as Crapston Villas... the ESP debate hots up - hopefully using "Scanners" tactics - on COUNTERBLAST (7.30pm, Wed, BBC2)... best title-battle of the week: between ANIMAL CANNIBALS (10pm, Thu, C4), and HORIZON's space station disaster diagnosis, "Mir Mortals" (9.30pm, Thu, BBC2)... FILM>> a compulsively semi-autobiographical account of the compulsively semi-autobiographical Woody Allen, DECONSTRUCTING HARRY (imdb: comedy / writing) also features *tremendous swearing*... it's updated Charles Dickens, without the funny character names, but with Ethan Hawke, Gwyneth Paltrow, and added nudity: so, don't have too many GREAT EXPECTATIONS (imdb: drama / romance / art-market / love / revenge / based-on-novel / broken-heart / dickens / ladybug / class-differences / painter / fugitive / spinster / gallery )... Clint Eastwood directs John Cusack, "gay" Kevin Spacey in lengthy, indulgent period murder mystery MIDNIGHT IN THE GARDEN OF GOOD AND EVIL (imdb: crime / gay / drama)... some of the folks responsible for Kids are behind limited-release filth-fest GUMMO (MPAA rated: R for "pervasive depiction of anti-social behavior of juveniles, including violence, substance abuse, sexuality and language")... somehow, somewhere they've sneaked out excellent giant Japanese flying turtle nonsense GAMERA: THE GUARDIAN OF THE UNIVERSE (imdb: also known as "Gamera: Giant Monster Midair Showdown")... and, finally, Travis Bickle's box-office prediction for a soggy thriller called HARD RAIN (imdb: thriller / action / heist / disaster) - it's gonna fall... FEEBDACK>> well, we thought we were being rhetorical when we wondered if The Three Musketeers use the word "tits" in the original novel of The Man In The Iron Mask [NTK 20/03/98], but PAUL BLEZ still puts us straight: "I can say for sure that they wouldn't have used the word 'tits' because of course they were speaking French in the original, hee haw hee haw. They might however have used the word 'nenes' or 'nichons'." Thanks for sharing Paul, this isn't Loaded you know... leading us quite nicely to ADRIAN MOULDER, who inquires, "How long before Official Playstation Magazine and Edge bow to what looks like Future Publishing official policy and stick semi-clothed women on the front of every issue?" Well, our clock is ticking... sticking with Edge, DANIEL JAMES is our first error-spotter in the humourless games glossy, claiming, "They misquoted me this month... and pretty much everyone else in their lame 'lets write up the shorthand from that conference' Online Games article." Great start, but NTK still wants *your* Edge goofs and blunders, at edged@spesh.com... we always knew you were funny: 'toon terrorist CHARLIE BROOKER remarks, "the recent 'kaylo koverage in NTK has brought a higher class of readers flocking to my site. Some of them even write to me" - as the final letter on http://www.superkaylo.com/super/html/post_room.htm demonstrates all too well... BENET ALLEN felt it necessary to inform us that the word "Ulay" is short for "underlay" [NTK 03/04/98], which is either "(a) stuff that goes under carpets, or (b) mute video pictures that the newsreader voices over during the news." Cheers Benet, though how does one go about extracting the *oil* of it?... and finally, showing he's fully grasped our hard-hitting issues-driven campaigning jounalism, NTK intern LEE MAGUIRE contends: "According to recent USENET rumours ITV won't be buying the final seven episodes of Reboot due to its 'diminished appeal' (possibly caused by 'shoddy scheduling'?)" He advises angry fans "to make Brooker-style phone calls to Meridian on (01703) 222555 or, for a less confrontational approach: sign the petition at http://www.geocities.com/TelevisionCity/Studio/3016/ "... >> 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 "grepped for Easynet references". NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Excuses - http://www.spesh.com/ntk/ Unsubscribe? Mail majordomo@unfortu.net with 'unsubscribe ntknow'. Subscribe? Mail majordomo@unfortu.net with 'subscribe ntknow'. NTK now is helped by VIRGIN NET, VENUS INTERNET and UNFORTU.NET. They worry about us, but we don't worry about them. (K) 1998 Special Projects. 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