Need To Know 1998-06-26

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"[Blah blah] unorthodox positioning as a magazine 'not for everyone'. This is still true today, of course - perhaps even more so now that the 'uneducated' tastes of the mass market are so sharply at odds with Edge's continued pursuit of excellence." - JASON BROOKS, ex-editor, Edge oh fuck off >> HARD NEWS << new shoes What does the British Net really need? That's right, another committee. Having despatched the crypto debate with such aplomb, BARBARA ROCHE and the wunderkinder of the Department of Trade and Industry are now proposing an independent panel to "investigate complaints over material on the Internet". The body's brief will be confined to civil disputes - in other words, copyright and libel. And how, exactly, will that work? No-one knows; least of all the DTI, who it seems are once again flying a kite to see who takes pot-shots at it. Well, here's a few: one of the defences (we fervently hope) against a libel charge is that you're telling the truth. So, if the committee is supposed to decide what is libellous and what is not, will it also have powers to investigate and call witnesses? Or will it require that sites be shut down, before they have their day in court? And if, as supportive groups (like the ISPA and the Internet Watch Foundation) claim, this is all to prevent ISPs being found liable by third parties, then who is liable when a site is taken down illegitimately? It's clear that the panel will act very quickly if Sony fingers a warez site, but who does the victim of a baaad decision appeal to? http://www.dti.gov.uk/ - we know! Let's have another committee http://194.250.50.200/ - the Court of Human Rights, and it's a number? In a unique example of unlocking the stable door fractionally before the horse has been rendered into glue, a US federal appeal court dropped the injunction on Microsoft's Windows 95 this week - 48 hours before they stopped selling it anyway. The Windows 98 launch party on Thursday was a relatively subdued affair in comparison. In comparison with anything. Bill Gates took the stage on 5PM, San Francisco time, and ran through the list of new improvements to the operating system. Then ran through it again, slowly, in case anyone coughed. http://www.news.com/SpecialFeatures/0,5,23471,00.html - MS-DOS, Windows 3.11 and Win 95 make legal ancient history http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/news/0622/25egot.html - considering a move to Memphis? Not so fast... http://hugin.imat.com/svlug/ - Linux kids getting tear-gassed The European Space Agency and NASA have lost contact with the SOLAR AND HELIOSPHERIC OBSERVATORY. SOHO was responsible for the recent batch of Sol-based discoveries and beautiful images - including sunquakes, comets crashing into the Sun, and the only fart joke we've ever ran (NTK 05/06/98) and solar tornadoes. While SOHO had finished its nominal two year mission, the ESA had recently extended its funding until 2011, in order to cover the expected peak in sunspot activity. here's still a small hope for regaining contact, but they've been trying for over 24 hours now. No joke here; it's all a bit sad. http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/ - although we *told* them not fly that close to the Sun Oh, and almost everyone at Psion Software went off to work for SYMBIAN, a new joint venture between Psion (40%), Nokia (30%) and Ericsson (30%). With the benevolent nod of Motorola, the new company will work on creating WinCE-killing smartphones, based on Psion's properly pre-emptive not-like-that-Microsoft-rubbish EPOC32 OS. The partners, as is traditional in these alliances, spoke highly of the open nature of their OS (not-like-that-Microsoft-rubbish) - and then quickly stuck a free developers' kit on their Webserver, so that nobody could deny it. http://developer.epocworld.com/ - oh, you want to run it on the Series 5? Two hundred quid, mate >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious NSA Chief tells US Senate that Y2K bug-fixers could be employed by "a hostile nation" to *insert* bugs... EDGE magazine's unorthodox pursuit of excellence this month includes claim that Ridge Racer cabinet ran at 0.4FLOPS - an incredible 4/10ths of a floating point operation per second... new KEVIN SMITH film "will contain Star Wars quotes"... fairweather freeware advocate DAVE WINER starts charging for Frontier... author LUCY ELLMAN believes science "escapist hobby for men not fully occupied with football"... just as we're finally admitting that Nortel radio interference story was dodgy, .NET and INTERNET MAGAZINE start running it... @cix.co.uk, @well.com confer status - says BBC's DAVID BRAKE (derb@cix.co.uk, derb@well.com)... the inimitable RICHARD BARRY runs *fourth* ZDNET piece on BT's penny ISP service - even though nothing has happened... GATES richest man in world, uncovers Forbes Magazine... CLIPPER chip crypto algorithms released to public: 24 hours later, weaknesses exposed... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful By rights, they should be able to compress 10 times more talk into the world's first MP3 SUMMIT from 8am, Thu 02/07/98 at UCSD, San Diego. Pre-registration costs a very reasonable US$50 (the price of just a few "commerical" CDs), and the credit-card form gives a fair idea of the target audience: "Any suspicious transactions are immediately reported... please act responsibly." Attendees include musos, coders, lawyers (presumably hoping to shut the whole thing down), and two portable hardware players. Someone better tell T3, whose latest letters page contains the informed editorial opinion that (p18) "we've not heard of hardware devices... would have thought it... prohibitively expensive". http://www.mp3.com/conference/ - delegates requested not to remove their "tags" In an auspicious conjunction unlikely to be repeated in our lifetime, Glastonbury and the World Cup have safely removed the most annoying footie- and hippy-zines at THE NATIONAL SMALL PRESS FAIR this weekend. Visit the Waterloo Foyer at the Royal Festival Hall this Saturday (27/6/98) between 1000 and 1730, and marvel at these early examples of homepages, and the techniques that are still used to craft them. Admission free. And of course there's no URL. Alternatively, if you want to transfer your valuable art & craft skills the other way, you could always go along to the ART SERVERS UNLIMITED day at the- Oh God, it's at the ICA. Well, never mind. If you can make it, there's a discussion panel at 1130AM on Thursday 4/7/98. They'll be talking about how to set up public art spaces on the Net. From 2030, you'll be able to listen to live mixing of various net.radio feeds from across Europe. This will be in the bar. The people will be lovely, and you'll have a good time, but slowly, throughout the evening, you will grow angrier and angrier. This will be because you are at the ICA, and you'll be forced to watch very expensive technology being pissed up the wall in increasingly dreary patterns. Tickets will be 8UKP/6UKP. This will make you even angrier. Perhaps you will consider torching the place. We will be there, handing you the petrol can. Offering you a light. http://www.newmediacentre.com/ - all art is quite useless. this Website, however, is pushing it >> TRACKING << net tucker man The only annoying thing about the PERL FRIDGE MAGNET SET is that there aren't enough "$" symbols and only two pairs of curly brackets. Otherwise, it would be the perfect visual editor for Perl. As it is, you'll just have to make do with creating parsing Perl poems. As infinitely re-usable and free form as the language itself, the set costs $17.50 (outside US) from that commune of outstanding techsmiths, The Perl Journal. http://www.tpj.com/tpj/poetry/ - Rapid prototyping for prosodists http://queue.ieor.berkeley.edu/cgi-bin/andryan/fridge/newpoem_j.pl?words=unix - Perl creating Java quoting Unix emulating fridge Almost worth scrabbling in that big cardboard box for your old Nintendo handheld, with the launch of the delightfully low-res GAME BOY CAMERA and Sticker Printer due here 10/07/98 (UKP 40, 50 respectively). If yours remains lost/ knackered, the COLOUR GAME BOY is slated for November (UKP 80) - or, for real head-jobs, there's the DATEL GAMEBOOSTER (UKP 40, out in July), which plays GB carts on either the PlayStation or N64. Obviously near-pointless, but how would *you* go about building one: PSX emulates GB in software? (And would Sony approve the CD?) Or just take the insides of real GBs and feed the video in through the PSX i/o port? http://www.harvard.co.uk/pressrel/nin/nin104.htm - tragically, killer app Pokemon delayed till 1999 http://www.datel.co.uk/products/index.htm - convert your "Action Replay" into PSX dev kit! >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista TV NATION to return to C4... http://www.shon.ky/ ... Jolt gets UK distributor... Mr Bunting's Experiment: http://www.irational.org/biotech/ ... UNABOMBER has a manifesto sequel, but publishers won't print it (put it on the Web, Ted!)... putting thumb into thumbnails: http://members.tripod.com/~sheerphallacy/indexthumbnails.html ... Yahoo Internet Nolife: http://www.e-z.net/~ed1/yoohoo/ ... pronouncing WIRED MAGAZINE as "Why Read"... NTK subscriber site alert! http://www2.prestel.co.uk/lwtcdi/ ... following AT&T buyout, shares in NYSE quoted company TCI rose 10%, Unfortunately, NYSE:TCI isn't the cableco: it's a real estate company that shares the same initials... Jerky Spice: http://www.znet.com/~dwhite/dance.html ... ENDSLEIGH insurance state that running Linux on your PC *increases* its value... new stuff at http://people.netscape.com/jwz/ >> GEEK MEDIA << may contain strongly-typed language TV>> the schedules go all "if... then...", depending who decides to show the second-round World Cup stuff - so now you can watch ENGLAND VS COLUMBIA (7.30pm, Fri, BBC1) like you really have something at stake... cool f/x and occasional safety tips fan the tedious embers of BACKDRAFT (10.30pm, Fri, BBC1)... while John Peel and possibly the world's worst chatshow host - Jo Whiley - wallow around GLASTONBURY '98 (9pm and 11.15pm, Fri, BBC2)... Bad Taste/ Braindead/ Meet The Feebles director Peter Jackson wimps out with NZ murder frolic HEAVENLY CREATURES (9pm, Sat, BBC2); Kate Winslet plays - wait for it - a posh girl... Sunday goes gangbusters with Bill Murray and De Niro in MAD DOG AND GLORY (10.10pm, Sun, BBC2) - marginally more believable than Pacino and Madonna in DICK TRACY (11.05pm, Sun, BBC1 optional)... it's good to talk, but chaffeuring hookers is better, discovers Bob Hoskins in excellently grim MONA LISA (10pm, Sun, C4) - like The Crying Game, with plot... and, finally, from the home of the Mafia comes projectionist weepie classic CINEMA PARADISO (12.45am, Sun, C4)... THE MOTHERSHIP CONNECTION (2.35am, Mon, C4) looks at African-Americans in sci-fi - like that funny bit in Chasing Amy?... Coogan's run ends with the clarion cry: I'M ALAN PARTRIDGE (9pm, Tue, BBC2) - then cleverly avoids typecasting by voicing the car-obsessed AUTOEROTIC (2.40am, Tue, C4)... tape the first bit and wipe Woody Allen's early, sporadically funny TAKE THE MONEY AND RUN (12.15am, Tue, BBC1)... cute Connected columnist Vanessa Collingridge continues C5's ratings-driven porn trend with subtly-titled docu SEX LIFE (9.50pm, Tue, C5)... it's final cut for Barry Norman in repeated FILM 98 (12.30pm, Wed, BBC2) - if you were too busy watching Anna Friel last Sun... springtime for Mel Brooks in his last genuine comedy, THE PRODUCERS (12.50am, Wed, BBC1)... while the real victims of "new cruelty" sketch show BARKING (11.25pm, Wed, C4) have to be - you've guessed it - anyone trying to watch it... FILM>> yes, it's another Alien/ The Thing/ The Relic remake - what d'you expect from a film called MIMIC? (imdb: sci-fi / horror / thriller / virus / dissection / giant-insect / epidemic / cockroaches / subway / shoes ) But, unlikely bio-theory aside, it's quite a viable mutation... again, no real stretch for Jennifer Aniston in soppy hetero-conversion feel-gooder THE OBJECT OF MY AFFECTION (imdb: romance / comedy / gay / based-on-novel / drama)... another My Bloody Shirley Valentine for Julie Walters and Brenda Blethyn, hitting Vegas for their last GIRL'S NIGHT (imdb: comedy / drama)... PALMETTO (imdb: thriller / mystery) sounds like a chocolate box selection - which'd be more interesting viewing than Woody Harrelson and Elisabeth Shue in this flop Florida noir... going to 'Nam worked for dad Martin Sheen (Apocalypse Now), and brother Charlie (Platoon), but not Emilio Estevez in family flashback effort THE WAR AT HOME (MPAA rated: R for "a war-related shooting, an intense sequence of violent threat, and for language")... SKIENCE>> More horse/stable door/bolting combos: The Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) has just announced they've finished the computer models that will allow them to predict when failures will occur in the wheels and suspension of high-speed trains: the answer "about three weeks ago" won't do, apparently... not content with basking in Bjorn Borg's past glories, the Swedes have statistically proved that our greatest contribution to Wimbledon - Dan Maskell - was full of it: players aren't more likely to fluff the next point after a double fault; new balls don't help: cliche after cliche fails to scrape over the mathematical net... an in-depth Cornell research study reveals why eggs explode in the microwave (they do? let's try)... maybe now they've discovered feathered dino fossils in China, that whole birds<>dinos argument will finally go extinct... get ready for history-making as REALLY BIG PDFs: those nice folks at NASA's History Office have scanned all the Apollo Press Kits: http://www-lib.ksc.nasa.gov/lib/Archives/PressKits.htm ... autonomous 'bot the size of a Greyhound bus to roam America's highways filling in potholes - someone send it up the M11, please... no contest for top new paper at XXX.lanl.gov this month: "Causal Randomness, Complete Wave Mechanics, and the Ultimate Unification of Knowledge"... >> 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 "now powered by VIM". 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.