Need To Know 1998-05-15

archive

"Erotic fiction on the Web merits all the usual criticism of writing on the Web -- there are tons of typos, and no editorial hand whatsoever." - JACK MURNIGHAN, editor of tasteful porn site NERVE <http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/12240.html> pls ekuse speling - editril hand buzy >> HARD NEWS << turning to booze Bill Gates may be able to turn his company around on a dime, but only STEVE JOBS keeps his organisation swivelling like a top. At the Apple Developer Conference this week, he announced yet another graceful arc in corporate direction. Gone is the "I had to run NeXT: now you will too" mantra he'd been pitching to scared Mac developers for the last year: Rhapsody is no longer a separate product, and the previously fuddy-duddy MacOS is back, back, BACK! There are some changes: Jobs, inimitably, has taken his frustration out on low-level MacOS functionaries: around 2000 of the Mac's 8000 API calls have been slaughtered. That's okay, apparently, because no-one used them. And anyway, they disagreed with him. Rumours that calls to the old addresses will be secretly intercepted by NeXT managers hiding underneath the hardware abstraction layer, are, we assured, to be disbelieved. http://www.apple.com/pr/library/1998/may/11strategy.html - Well, doh! We were holding the roadmap upside-down! "Sorry we're late: the government made us do it" is an original excuse for MICROSOFT blowing shipping dates, but in this case, it's the truth. In a last minute face-off, Gates agreed to delay delivering Windows 98 to manufacturers until the DOJ could decide whether they want to sue his ass or not. Bill's generosity knows no bounds - the new shipping date is Monday, giving the DOJ less than 72 hours to pull him in. Expect top government counsel to hand in their badges and go undercover to nab the international fugitive, who, as we speak, is planning to blow up Seattle's Space Needle using an embedded-NT timebomb and the wiles of his beautiful - yet deadly - assistant, Myhrvold. http://www.microsoft.com/ - putting the nervous back into "digital nervous system" Remember when NORTEL announced the IP-down-the-power-lines hack, and everyone racked their brains to work out the killer flaw? Was it, perhaps, the isolation equipment you'd have to install into every house that used it? Or the fibre lines Nortel would have to spool out from each substation? Well, here's a likely contender: Nick Long from the Low Power Radio Association reports that streetlamps in the Nortel trial region have been acting as highly efficient antennae, merrily broadcasting packets across much of the shortwave radio bands. Bad for radio hams, not brilliant for personal privacy - but what a great solution for multicasting Web events! http://www.gcd.co.uk/comment.htm - see, we told you it was the new CB radio http://www.lpra.org/ - get IE4.0 to play "Daisy, Daisy" on your radio >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious LINEONE Beginner's Guide To Net links to wrong AltaVista... Apple press ads offer Macs with 384MB RAM; boast it's "enough to keep several applications open at the same time" ... INTERNET WORLD UK Exhibitors' Page links to - wrong AltaVista... alt.ph.uk-ers plan to call James Whale's Talk Radio show all at the same time - don't bored BT employees^H^H^H Britain's top hackers have better things to do?... "cyber-conversation", "cyber-confessions", and "cyber-sighs" all used in same dreadful cyber-WEEKEND GUARDIAN cyber-article... NEW REPUBLIC publish *entirely* fictional hacking story - editor fails to notice... DAVE WINER wants Microsoft to "take it up the butt"... MSN FRANCE vanishes - who next?... BRITISH COMPUTER SOCIETY'S "Computer Driving Licence" displays date of issue- using just two digits... ACTIVISION license "Soldier of Fortune" mag for games titles... Times' INTERFACE section dispenses with services of editor Kathryn Bailey; new guy Alan Copps kicks off with up-to-the-minute review of Quake 2... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful There's some twitch in the old corpse yet! Gateway, praisers-not-buryers of the AMIGA legacy, are planning a big announcement at the World Of Amiga show in Hammersmith today, and Amigans everywhere are buzzing with excitement. Or is that just the flies? Whatever - icons on the rumours Workbench vary from the release of version 3.5 of ye anciente operating system, to the launch of sub-$500 PC/Amiga hybrid, to Gateway giving up altogether on the hardware and telling everyone to scarper and buy third party mods (like Phase 5's PowerPC co-processor add-on) instead. Alas, our sources in the Amiga scene have all dropped dead or gone mad, so we don't know. See you at seven. http://www.cu-amiga.co.uk/woa/index.html - Amiga! Amiga! http://www.phase5.de/products/powerup2e.html - Andale, andale! Thanks to everyone who's joined the slagging of Lynda LaPlante's KILLER NET drama series (10pm, Tues, C4), including many of those involved as "technical consultants" on the show. We'll add them to the site soon - *and* feature them in next week's NTK first anniversary "Right To Reply" special, where we'll give people who feel they've been "wronged" by us a chance to air their grievances, by printing their objections and reactions in full, then taking the piss out of them some more. Yes, this means you, "Dr Keyboard". http://www.ntk.net/killer/ - laplante.demon.co.uk is, sadly, just the production company >> TRACKING << they've even got a shoe-shop! Sure, from the description of Sonic Foundry's ACID (shipping next week), you'd assume that it was one of those fun but limited TechnoMaker CDROMs. But, based on the, ahem, "beta" that we've seen, $400 buys you some very cool time-stretching, auto-BPM calculating, etc. - essentially casseroling *any* bunch of .WAV files into authentically tasteful Norman Cook-ery. "This is going to be huge, I could do so much with this," says David McCandless, bedroom musician and winner of Q Online's Search For A Star competition, hastily adding, "...if I had no musical ability." http://www.sonicfoundry.com/Acid/ - from the makers of popular warez title, SoundForge ANARCHIST STUDIES, the revolutionary yet curiously academic journal of potted Kropotkins everywhere, is climbing to the top of the barricades and shouting, delirious with new- found freedom: "OUR AUTUMN 1999 ISSUE WILL BE DEVOTED TO EXPLORING THE RELATIONS BETWEEN ANARCHISM AND SCIENCE FICTION! BROTHERS, SEND US YOUR 500 WORDS ABSTRACTS, NOT LATER THAN 1ST JUNE!" A call to arms, or a call for papers? E-mail john.moore@luton.ac.uk, or storm the following location. http://www.erica.demon.co.uk/AS602.html - Ursula LeGuin a popular choice, then? >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista clothes with Sun Protection Factors... religions with Millennium Bugs... Mr Media to retire - boo!... http://www.icsi.berkeley.edu/~minenko/PalmVNC/ ... www.ussubs.com's only interested buyer so far - a Mr M Jackson... http://www.circle-r.com/ncz/noclowns.shtml ... geek parlour games: "I'll name that software from its version number", "I'll name that mobile service provider from its area prefix"... DON'T DELETE THIS MESSAGE -- FOLDER INTERNAL DATA... the clue's in the password: http://member:trailerpark@www.getjerry.com/area51/ ... GODZILLA vs Tamagotchi vs your Shockwave Plugin - http://www.jitterbug.com/gvt/gvt.shtml ... GATES movie! - with Mike Myers!... Java Lava... Error 'o' the week (Photoshop): "Could not save file because of pixels"... and who'd win in a fight between this and CELEBRITY DEATHMATCH: http://www.snoot.com/cgi-bin/wuss.cgi >> GEEK MEDIA << screen and screen until you're sick TV >> nutty sci-fi fun with Prisoner fans in LOST IN SPACE (7.15pm, Fri, BBC2), followed by Contact-inspiring SETI- heads in new docu series QUANTUM LEAPS (7.30pm, Fri, BBC2)... Michael J Fox twists again in SPIN CITY (9.30pm, Fri, C4)... plus, great-looking Ridley Scott nonsense in Yakuza actioner BLACK RAIN (10.20pm, Fri, BBC1) - but where's The Adam And Joe Show?... early-morning repeat of RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK (10.55am, Sat, BBC1) unlikely to feature the line "Holy shit" when Indy spots the U-boat... don't let your Swiss bodyguard fall asleep during THE GODFATHER PART III (9pm, Sat, BBC2)... and C4's promising "Lolita" theme-night is upsettingly interrupted by Joe Dante's B-movie tribute MATINEE (10pm, Sat, C4) - starring, in something of a trend for this week, Roseanne's John Goodman... MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATRE 3000 (12midnight, Sat, SciFi Channel) rips the limbs from 60's B(rit)-movie Devil Doll... Sunday's John Goodman film is Ellen Barkin erotic thriller SEA OF LOVE (10.25pm, Sun, BBC1)... Arizona-based Brit-thriller WHITE OF THE EYE (11.30pm, Sun, BBC2) has taken 12 years to reach TV screens - maybe the director could have killed himself earlier... at last, it's the free-climbing skyscraper repeat of THEY WHO DARE (7.15pm, Mon, BBC2)... chug a beer every time you spot Robert "T2" Patrick in the drinking game to liven up DIE HARD 2 (9pm, Mon, ITV)... then you're ready for the surprisingly cogent psychedelic sensory deprivation of ALTERED STATES (10.55pm, Mon, C5)... more millennial panic-mongering in KNOCKING ON DOOMSDAY'S DOOR (10.40pm, Tue, ITV)... no Bruce Willis in this DAY OF THE JACKAL (11.15pm, Wed, BBC1), but - of course - *more* John Goodman in EVERYBODY'S ALL AMERICAN (12.15am, Wed, some ITV)... Planet Mirth's Ben Moor plays a "fight-o-gram" in MEN BEHAVING BADLY (9.30pm, Thu, BBC1), and guesting in mildly amusing Tom Hanks stand-up saga, PUNCHLINE (9pm, Thu, C5), why - it's *John Goodman*... MOVIES >> a good week for Bill Murray fans, first with fantastically over-the-top Neve Campbell naughtiness WILD THINGS (imdb: thriller / mystery / crime / police / bisexual / sailing / mother-daughter / pool / drama / erotica / drugs / alligator / high-school / florida / school / sexual-harassment / teaching / sex / doublecross / threesome / lesbian / lesbian-scene / twist-in-the-end / murder / rape) - and, by the way, very little to do with Tone Loc's 1980s rap hit of almost the same name... a bigger role, but fewer laughs, for Bill in overcontrived spy spoof THE MAN WHO KNEW TOO LITTLE (MPAA: rated PG for "language, innuendo, comic violence and sensuality"), like a comedy version of David Fincher's The Game... the touchy- feely title gives a clue that it's the *emotional* impact they're more interested in, in Tea Leoni's DEEP IMPACT (imdb: thriller / sci-fi / action / apocalypse / drama / disaster / meteor-threatens-earth)... Tim Roth denies killing Jerry Maguire's Renee Zellweger in too-clever polygraph puzzler LIAR (imdb: known in US as "Deceiver")... and complex plot-strands meet wacky sex in Almodovar's LIVE FLESH (imdb: drama / adultery / jealousy / birth / based- on-novel / sex / bus / wheelchair / paraplegic / marital- abuse / basketball) - apparently based on a novel by Ruth Rendell... MAGS >> putting the "dead" back into "dead tree publishing" - seems everyone knows about DENNIS PUBLISHING selling their business mags (most too boring to mention) to somewhere in Surrey, especially since the editor of COMPUTER TRADE SHOPPER went mad slagging the company off on his (final?) credits page... also, doesn't look like they'll be doing the official MINISTRY (Of Sound) mag much longer either... ground-breaking retro-fetishising BEN IS DEAD < www.benisdead.com > is, er, dead, though editor Darby will apparently continue with her other zine, Socially Fucking Retarded... from the ashes of misguided "let's put it all on the net" project: OMNI renegades are to start new Webzine ominously called EVENT HORIZON... and is http://fitshaced.com/ the true heir to Jim Goad's hate- fuelled ANSWER ME?... back over here, IPC's VOX is, at last, silenced, following a failed US-style redesign. "Somebody *stop* us," chirrups the final editorial, unwittingly... also rumours that GOAL has been similarly disallowed, just in time not to pick up any new readers from all that exciting World Cup hoo-hah next month... and (very) finally: Future's CULT TV seems to have run its last Randall And Hopkirk Deceased episode guide - though wouldn't it be ironic if a small minority audience suddenly started re-appreciating it in 20 years' time?... >> 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 "the Treat of Versailles". 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. Non-business copying is fine, but retain SMALL PRINT. Contact terry@spesh.com for commercial license details. Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com.