Need To Know 1998-10-02

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"Gordon Moore and Intel have greatly speeded up science by improving computers. I know because I'm Intel inside myself!" - STEPHEN HAWKING, on Moore's donation to Cambridge Uni ...those dancing bunnymen must piss you off, though? >> HARD NEWS << siouxsie sues As indentured servants on the Murdoch plantation, we're obliged to cover the launch of SKY DIGITAL as our headline story. Catastrophically for them, no-one invited us to the UKP1million party, making their stupid new service nothing more than bunch of Digera-doo-box losers with a "mmm I'm a first adopter how many Discovery channels can I take in one go, mmm?" rip-off starter pack, especially that [.tv] rubbish. Now, what's the excuse of the websites for Capital Radio and the Daily Star? They replaced their front pages with 640x480 Sky banner ads, praising the revolution in television non-viewing to the heights. An astounding rebranding, given that the Capital site consists almost entirely of attempts to establish its own micro-brand, and the Daily Star is actually owned by United News & Media, sworn enemy of Murdoch and investor in competing multiplex, SDN. So, how much does the front page of your flagship site cost? Would 50,000UKP sound about right? http://www.skydigital.co.uk/ - don't click on the dingo! DON'T CLICK ON THE -- A few branding cock-ups with BT's big launch too. BTClickPlus, as the penny-a-minute, dead-on-arrival Net service is now called, launched yesterday to a chorus of slapped foreheads. Not only has that whole Dixons thing queered the pitch, but - it seems - Oftel insisted that the service have the "Plus" suffix added (so competing telcos can make clicking noises too?). Continuing the naming disasters, BT launched www.talk21.com, their hotmail-clone which manages to incorporate the worst aspect of freemail systems - those stupid numbers at the end of your username - INTO THE ADDRESS ITSELF. Fans of BT senior management figures immediately grabbed the two most promising usernames - peter.cochrane@talk21.com, and ian.vallance@talk21.com. "Ian" even e-mailed the head of the service, and asked him to phone his enclosed mobile immediately. Which he did. And was very put out when "Ian" turned out not to be the MD of BT, but a normal punter. On a Cellnet phone. http://www.btclickplus.com/ - Click! Brrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr... http://www.talk21.com/ - Ingenious! A Y199* bug. BACKSPACE, the relaxing Net club in London's medieval district, has a problem. Not the most affluent of dives, and still some centuries away from that lucrative public offering, they've always had a bit of a slack server presence. Well, after scraping enough money to buy a Sun Ultra-1, they spent three weeks moving over the many non-profit Websites they've hosted for years. Then, a couple of Apache conf file statements away from going live, those bloody London Sun thieves popped in and took it to wherever all these boxes are going. Unlike the ICA, whom we hate, Backspace don't have any sponsors or insurance, and are now stuffed. So here's their plea: if you've got a spare box, and want to put the Web space back into Backspace, contact Harl at the address below. They haven't said what the reward would be, but I reckon it'll work out at free lifetime membership and guest of honour status at the NTK Christmas party (right guys?) http://www.backspace.org/ - we still think there's going to mafia-run prime-cracking nest mailto:harl@backspace.org - "corporate tattoos" also offered >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious EASYJET to diversify into creating "first chain of cybercafes" - hey, they could call them EasyNe-- hmm, hold on... HOMEHIGHWAY uses unique byte->bit compression scheme: http://www.homehighway.bt.com/trafficxxx/cut_3/how-work/l_1.htm ... TOMB RAIDER movie script "really bad"... AMAZON down again... HOTBOT moves from UNIX to NT - "Server Busy!"... HUMANS have destroyed "30% of world", says eco report (hope it wasn't the bit we were standing on)... APPLE pull out of Apple Expo UK - say it's "insufficiently Mac-oriented"... DUBLIN uploads Y2K bugfix - traffic grinds to halt... NINFOMANIA uncover ingenuous "jive" filter... Inevitably, THE CROW III... victims of school bullies often anxious, younger than bully, avers BRITISH MEDICAL JOURNAL ... ALTAVISTA EUROPE - say Falco to the camera! ... the folks who did "Toilet Mouth Bob Hope" move into IT consultancy - http://www.balaams-ass.com/journal/theworld/y2k.htm ... http://www.netscape.com/download/ -- doh!... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Sadly, UK TECHNOLOGY WEEK doesn't seem to be a national 7-day celebration of the practical applications of scientific principles, but just the sinister tri-partite confluence of UK COMDEX, NETWORLD + INTEROP, and the equally oddly-named EXPO COMM 98 rewiring the entire Earls Court complex from Tue-Thu, 06-08/10/98 (free entry if you register online). No-one's heard of the Telecommunications Users' Association, who present their UK COMMS AWARDS on the evening of 07/10/98, but they surely deserve a little prize of their own for Most Creative Spelling - or Clumsiest OCR - On An Official Webpage, with "catergories" like "Best Costomer Service", "Most Innovative Use of LANIWAN", "Best Corporate Web of Internet", or even "Best Advertising Campagne" (sic). http://www.uktechweek.co.uk/ - "What will I see there?" "Manufacturers and providers!" http://www.tua.co.uk/awards_Catergories.html - "Best Total Sohmun Dealership", "Best IT Manger" - and so on Um big APACHECON pow-wow is um due next um 14/10/98-16/10/98 in San um Francisco. Chief Behlendorf talk to um geek tribe: smoke patch pipe with um cypherpunks from c2net. Heap Big Blue sponsorship mean raids from um forked-tongue suit-skins. Conference big-wigs see suit-skins: scalp 'um big time with respectable "conference fee" pricing. Reckon real hacker might blag 'em discount if they ask right people. Mail um apachedeal@spesh.com, write um subject line "thankyou c2net", they cut registration price $695 instead of $1295. Hush mouth you no tell um told you. http://www.apachecon.com - if you squint, you can barely tell how racist this humour is >> TRACKING << making good use of the things that we find Sure, you can have free Webspace servers, and virtual mail accounts, and multiple pops, and even a freebie shell account, but if you want to point your domain where you wish, you'd still have to talk a Bastard Operator from Hell into giving you a DNS record. Until, that is, now. Well, actually, the PUBLIC DNS Server has been around for ages, but we've only just spotted it, and a straw poll said that not many others knew about it either. Granite Canyon lets you insert your A and MX records for your domain into their server, pointing where'er you want, for free. Simply register your domain with your local NIC, nominate the correct NS servers, and away you go. Downside? Well, you do still have to know what A and MX records are, which practically makes you BOFH yourself: but then, all newbies become sysadmins eventually. Just before they transform into beings of pure energy. http://soa.granitecanyon.com/ - we *know* YOU knew. Think of the little people... >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista COLIN POWELL on the AOL board? What kind of CD-ROM "roll-out" are they planning?... uniquely British surname humour at: http://www.microsoft.com/backstage/default.htm... BUFFY coming to BBC2... a whole TLD - on hold? http://rs.internic.net/cgi-bin/whois?tv17-dom ... MACOS for the rest of us http://members.xoom.com/yaro/macos/unload.htm ... one more weapon in the war against design: http://webreview.com/wr/pub/web98east/24/spooltut.html ... Cameron's SOLARIS?... ohuh - NEW SCIENTIST has gone mad: http://www.newscientist.com/ns/981003/editorial.html ... so AMIGA is still alive - but what's that clambouring out from a nearby grave?! It's an Atari ST bent on revenge! http://www.milan-computer.de/html_gb/produkt.html ... NASA, 40 year old organisation, prepares to send John Glenn, 77 year old senator, on Discovery, 15 year old shuttle - per senilia ad astra... drug driving... Dan says give him your CACHE - http://www.shout.net/~nothing/cache-cow/ http://wwww.upmystreet.com versus http://www.jang.dircon.co.uk/arse.gif ... from the makers of REBOOT: Gulliver 3D?... "Let's face it - people eat with their eyes, right?" - well, no, but don't let that stop you, http://www.faxfoods.com/ ... >> GEEK MEDIA << may contain strongly-typed language TV>> future Mike Myers sidekick Dana Carvey co-pilots the surveillance-obsessed movie original BLUE THUNDER (10.30pm, Fri, LWT)... "Do I look at all funny in this?" inquires irritating Arabella Weir in Hunter & Docherty ad agency sitcom THE CREATIVES (10pm, Fri, BBC2) - not quite the Absolutely reunion we were hoping for... but - wheel out the Stonehenge set! - it seems to be Unofficial Prog Rock Week, starting with Yes / Emerson, Lake & Palmer tracing their ROCK FAMILY TREES (11.15pm, Fri, BBC2), and continuing with a whole Roger Dean landscape's-worth of MUSIC MACHINE (4.45pm, Mon-Fri not Wed, Radio 3)... BBC2 gets "Knievel" on your ass by devoting EVEL NIGHT (8.55pm, Sat) to the cult '70s accident victim... C5 makes a near-identical copy of the theme night idea in its CLONE ZONE weekend - with monozygotic triplets competing on gameshow 100 PER CENT (7pm, Sun, C5), and docu THE CLONE RANGERS (8pm, Sun, C5) featuring promisingly named IVF advocate, Dr Richard Seed... cute casting (Linda Hamilton, Liv Tyler) fail to get much sense out of autism drama SILENT FALL (11pm, Sat, most ITV)... http animal Tim Berners-Lee sure to enliven the final GLORY OF THE GEEKS (8pm, Sat, C4)... and secret origins of The Lone Gunmen should stop it from seeming like it's been 100 episodes of the same old bloody X FILES (9.25pm, Sat, BBC1)... man unjustly convicted on evidence that he enjoys sitcoms, eats cake, lives with mum, in above-average Brit TV movie A LIFE FOR A LIFE (9pm, Sun, ITV)... "*more* Cringely?" you ask, as Bob X hosts new "information revolution" series CONNECTED (11.40pm, Mon, C4) - be patient, they get around to Alan Cox eventually... hard to imagine how they'll get a '90s romance element into largely faithful 18th century seagoing saga HORNBLOWER (8pm, Wed, ITV)... and suitably punishing self-mutilation footage makes you ask: who is the real "sick man" in SICK: THE LIFE AND DEATH OF BOB FLANAGAN, SUPERMASOCHIST (11.30pm, Thu, C4) (- it's the guy who hammers nails through his penis)... FILM>> our favourite themes, done bad - if there is any message in Bruce Willis chase thriller MERCURY RISING (imdb: wine-cellar / cryptography / boy / chicago / autism / secret-service / based-on-novel / puzzle / drama / codes / murder / undercover / secret-agent) it's steganographically buried deep in standard action cliches... is it just us, or does the Shockwaved site for Brit-made Northern Ireland journo-violence farce DIVORCING JACK (imdb: based-on-novel / belfast / ireland / murder / politicians / black-comedy) look just like the beginning of the You Don't Know Jack CD-ROM game?... a wider than usual release (ELIZABETH's kingdom only reaches London) for the exceptionally odd BUFFALO '66 (imdb: kidnapping / drama / comedy / road / football), though its plot - convict grabs Christina "Addams Family" Ricci, pretends she's his wife - surely risks attracting "the wrong element", if you know what we mean... BLITTERATURE>> we fear that longtime NTK contrib Ben Moor may already have purchased the entire UK stock of SHINY ADIDAS TRACKSUITS AND THE DEATH OF CAMP (Berkeley Boulevard, US$14.00), the best-of compilation from San Francisco's erratically brilliant, now-deceased Might Magazine (imagine a well-written, less insufferably posh version of The Idler)... reassuringly, it even has a Michael Moore-style attack on the ever-admirable - yet ultimately disappointing - Michael Moore ("How do you explain your success as a political humorist when you know nothing about politics and you're only occasionally funny?"). MM's recycling skills once again come to the fore in his new tell-all behind-the-scenes self-aggrandising ADVENTURES IN A TV NATION (Boxtree, UKP9.99) - "Most of the 10 million people who watched our show couldn't figure out how the hell we snuck this thing on TV"... ricketiest bandwagon of the month hauls in TOM CLANCY'S NET FORCE (Hodder Headline, UKP6.99 - 4.99 in Tesco's), an awesomely anachronistic attempt to set Clancy thriller cliches in a) the year 2010, and b) at least partly in VR. Regular NTK start-quote provider Lloyd Wood highlights the extent of AOLer Clancy's research at http://www.xprize.org/press/clancy.html.asp , where personal computers were co-invented by one "Bob Wazniak"... and good to see fan webmasters Curtis Saxon and Robert Brown getting a credit at the back of upcoming STAR WARS INCREDIBLE CROSS-SECTIONS (Dorling Kindersley, UKP12.99) - though this slim volume (32 pages) fails to acknowledge their more controversial conclusions, like the Ewok extermination caused by the nuclear-winter destruction of Death Star II (http://www.physics.usyd.edu.au/~saxton/starwars/holocaust.html)... "Hi! This is the ezmlm program. Remember me? I used to manage the ntknow@lists.ntk.net mailing list. Now I'm here in downtown Kosovo, explaining the details of my mail bounce probe to trigger-happy conscript snipers. Thanks to the NTK guys for sorting out the new gig! I also love all the mail I got after I told every subscriber that they were about to be thrown off NTK if they failed to obey my incomprehensible instructions. Thanks, one and all! I think my favourite was from "Mil" from Wolverhampton University, who wrote 'What the hell does all that mean, then? Should I start hoarding canned food in the cellar?' I'm not sure, Mil - although my masters do tell me that I was suffering from "resource starvation" at the time, so maybe it's me who needs the food!!! Haha. Well, time to doff the fluorescent target suit and go dance in the street again. Love you all! Write soon! Failure to do so will need to your removal from the list without further notice!! Byeee! xxxx - ezmlm" >> 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 "haxx0red" 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@lists.ntk.net with 'unsubscribe ntknow'. Subscribe? Mail majordomo@lists.ntk.net with 'subscribe ntknow'. NTK now is helped by THE ILLUMINATI 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.