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         "I feel like Boies [the DOJ lawyer] was doing his best over
         many, many long days to put words in my mouth."
                  - BILL GATES on his performance in his video deposition
          ...maybe he's pretending to be one of those autocorrect wizards? 


                                >> HARD NEWS <<
	                       strangely skewed                                
         
         The clips on the Net show it all - the wide-eyed child looking
         on helpless: dragged away from everything that he knows,
         transported to the byzantine world of the court, where
         familiar, powerful figures debate whether he is yet too
         powerful and must be... destroyed. Yes, we sense much fear
         in BILL GATES. This week saw SUN using the force of law to
         stop Windows 98 shipping with an incompatible Java VM, AOL
         opening talks with Netscape, and the anti-trust trial judge
         laughing out loud at Bill's soulful silences in the video
         deposition. Meanwhile, Senator Ellison appears to be having
         another one of his fits, in which he suggested that perhaps
         Oracle servers could do without an full OS at all. Yeah,
         let's just do it with a bunch of PEEKs and POKEs, Larry.
         Sheesh, whose dark side are you on?
 http://oracle.com/cgi-bin/press/printpr.cgi?file=981116.11652.html&mode=corp
                               - Fear leads to suffering fools gladly
         
         Okay, so we've got two governments, both eager to encourage
         the new media sector of their economy. Both decide to
         commission a report. One goes to Vint Cerf, Don Heath, and
         the chair of Bell Atlantic. The other goes to a DIGITAL
         MEDIA ALLIANCE STEERING GROUP, including members of the
         Arts Council, a CD-ROM company, a media consultant, and
         someone from Channel 4. After some months, the first group
         recommends privatising the local loop, flat-rate charges for
         Net calls, and heavy investment in a public IP
         infrastructure. Within days, a scared national telco
         announces 33% cuts in Net phone charges, a flat-rate system
         to be implemented in two months and a "competitively-priced"
         DSL system by March. The other group recommends forming four
         new committees - one of which, intriguingly, will be
         called the "Alliance of Digital Media", and will initially
         consist of the same people who commissioned the report. Oh,
         and they also propose a special "zone" on the Web to
         showcase new, "grassroots" talent. Our question is: who had
         the prettier-looking report?
         http://act.iol.ie/
                  - still, good to see Web forums suck over there too
         http://www.telecom.ie/cgi-bin/PressRelease.pl
              - of course they're lying - but at least they're scared
         http://www.artec.org.uk/dma/
           - we'd get more bandwidth if they all lost these PDF files 
         http://www.pact.co.uk/
            - pretty shit-hot, these "Digital Media Alliance" leaders 

         No news on the crypto front, thank God: this week's
         WASSENAAR CRYPTO MEETING isn't happening, which is a good
         sign. Wassenaar is the widely-signed international agreement
         not to export weapons of mass destruction, dual-use
         technologies and - say France, Russia, the US and (quietly)
         the UK - strong cryptography. Apparently, most of European
         countries disagreed so heavily with the anti-crypto US line,
         that there was nothing to discuss. More no news, we hope on
         Tuesday, when the Queen's speech will reveal whether the DTI
         are leaving their own half-baked crypto controls in the oven
         for just a little bit longer...
         http://www.telepolis.de/tp/english/inhalt/te/1646/1.html
                    - or maybe we should all move to Finland instead?
         http://www.cyber-rights.org/crypto/wassenaar.htm
        - skip this bit: the funny URLs and TV reviews are down there
         

                                >> ANTI-NEWS << 
                             berating the obvious
                   
         www.eff.org down for a week: no-one notices... loss-leader
         for gamesandvideos.com at http://www.ntk.net/doh/gandv981120.gif
         ... Guardian's FOOTBALL UNLIMITED mailing list echoes
         subscribers' "fuck off" messages... band calls itself HORACE
         GOES SKIING... "None of us likes the idea of another strike
         in the Middle East" (except us, who make seven grand a shot
         out of it): http://www.viewpoint.com/gulfcrisis/ ...
         Microsoft BARNEY "not a success"... couple more radomes
         going up at MENWITH HILL... NICHOLAS NEGROPONTE writes his
         last WIRED column: how long before *he* turns up on bloody
         Slashdot?... http://www.yell.co.uk/ re-design far, far
         worse than previous... ZDNET reveals the top buzz at COMDEX
         is (drum roll) THE INTERNET... NETSCAPE buys NEWHOO (lucky
         they changed the name, right?)... BILL GATES meets REBECCA
         EISENBERG, describes her as "most offensive person I have
         ever met"... Lee Maguire gets the AMIGA OS FALCO, for
         correctly predicting the shift to QNX in *May*...


                               >> EVENT QUEUE << 
                         goto's considered non-harmful
         
         Normally when we hear the phrase "digital art", we reach for
         our railgun, but San Jose web mag SWITCH seems to be
         saluting the true cutting edge with its upcoming exhibition
         Cracking The Maze: Game Plug-ins And Patches As Hacker Art
         (submission deadline 10/12/98) - possibly to tie-in with
         current tweakable releases Carmageddon 2: Carpocalypse Now
         and Tomb Raider 3. It's either art-school lamers finally
         realising that they're outclassed by real coders, or -
         equally understandable - the world's most desperate trawl
         for the semi-mythical, barely stable "Nude Raider" patch.
         http://switch.sjsu.edu/web/v4n1/annmarie.html
       - "It's nice to think of artists as hackers". Nice, but wrong.
         http://www.planetquake.com/que/haiku/haiku.htm
                                 - "Shimmering with hopes/ trembling,
                             speeding toward you/ My rocket is yours." 


                                >> TRACKING <<
                  making good use of the things that we find 

         Tim Berners-Lee, as we recall, is always moaning about how
         the Web was *supposed* to be annotatable - it should be as
         easy to add and edit Web documents, he says, as it is to
         browse them. To see what kind of mess that would have lead
         to, you might like to check out the WIKI WIKI WEB, an easy
         to set-up, easy-to-understand, impossible-to-administrate
         "collaborative environment". In many ways, it's a
         self-perpetuating mess (it took us half an hour to work out
         how to get the source), but - like the Xanadu project it
         superficially resembles - it can't help but gland a few key
         geek hormones. The original Wiki is a tiny Perl script, but
         versions now exist in Python, Squeak, and other places where
         geeks do the Right Thing so much it becomes Wrong Again.
         http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WelcomeVisitors
                                               - start here, we guess
         http://c2.com/cgi/hp?WikiInHyperPerl
                                                      - aha! found it


                                >> MEMEPOOL << 
                              hasta la altavista

         ROBBIE WILLIAMS' Antmusic... POKEY THE PENGUIN's dark side:
         http://forbidden.dough.net/~archon/rwallace/ ... "favourite"
         banner ads: http://www.microscope.com/ ... locking on target
         market - fire! http://www.offcolor.com/blast-xy.html ... QT
         goes open source - now who are we supposed to like?... KEN
         CAMPBELL to adapt INFINITE JEST?... put your HANDS on the
         CAR and YOUR BROWSER at http://www.apbonline.com/...
         horizontal flies... all-new SCHNEWS moved along to
         http://www.schnews.org.uk/ ... BEN STILLER is: Mr Furious -
         GREG KINNEAR is: Captain Amazing... Truth in Advertising:
         http://www.kvetch.com/ads/barnesandnoble.gif... FRANKIE says
         http://www.geocities.com/SunsetStrip/Stadium/1123/ ...
        

                               >> GEEK MEDIA << 
                       may contain strongly-typed language

         TV>> celebrities in need of a good kicking, more like, with
         the usual B-list nobodies and bands plugging Christmas
         singles supposedly in aid of CHILDREN IN NEED (from 7pm,
         Fri, BBC1)... maybe Simon "Alan Parker" Munnery and techno
         uber-spoof The Pod can transcend the dire low-budget
         limitations of COMEDY NATION (12.30am, Fri, BBBC2)... BOOKED
         (8pm, Sat, C4) tries to establish if nature or nurture
         produces pop-sci books like Richard Dawkins' new "Unweaving
         The Rainbow"... and while they marketed Crichton thriller
         DISCLOSURE (9pm, Sat, ITV) as the latest Michael Douglas
         battle of the sexes romp, in fact it's a daft VR thriller
         about the use of clean rooms in CDROM drive manufacture...
         with b&w nuke parable THE DAY THE EARTH STOOD STILL (4.05pm,
         Sun, C4) following last week's Forbidden Planet, looks like
         Sunday afternoon is "scifi classic with a robot holding a
         swooning girl on the poster" time. Oi! Channel 4! Klaatu
         barada nikto!... still, better than F/X-lite Marvel
         adaptation GENERATION X (9pm, Sun, C5) - for Matt "Max
         Headroom" Frewer completists only... WORLD IN ACTION (8pm,
         Mon, ITV) cynically targets parents of kids cynically
         targeted by TV ads... and C5's porn schedule has a lot to
         answer for, as WITNESS (9pm, Mon, C4) casually observes
         naturists vs nudists, and BBC2 starts a pioneering series of
         ugly people talking about their bodies while NAKED (9.50pm,
         Wed, BBC2)... MODERN TIMES (9.30pm, Tue, BBC2) rides the
         rollercoaster history of Alton Towers pleasure park...
         across the ITV networks, an interdimensional portal has
         opened - to reveal minor recent parallel universe movie
         DOORWAYS (12.30am, Wed, ITV)... and: "I am *disgusted* to
         notice that you've *completely* failed to take the piss out
         of us Acorn users again," complains one self-loathing
         RISC-taker over the non-existent Acorn Phoebe machine used
         as a non-linear edit suite in extreme sports vehicle PIRATE
         TV (around 1.40am, Thu/Fri, some ITV). See comp.sys.acorn.*
         for further details...

         FILM>> casting Matt Damon in virtually his Good Will Hunting
         role again makes ROUNDERS (imdb: judge / law-school / mafia
         / new-york / poker / prison) a bit of a gamble, but it's a
         safe bet for fans of poker or John "The Last Seduction" Dahl
         - and at least it's not the girls' version of baseball...
         DEAD MAN'S CURVE (imdb: black-comedy / college / humor /
         suicide / urban-legend) almost combines Scream humour (and
         Hackers "star" Matthew Lillard) with student murder,
         sub-Heathers-style... Roger Ebert hypothesises that the
         mystery briefcase in lame De Niro nothing-to-do-with
         Frank-Miller Euro yawn RONIN (imdb: betrayal) contains "the
         briefcase from Pulp Fiction". Either that or an explanation
         of whether the car chases are trying to re-enact a) Diana's
         death crash, or b) Konami arcade game GTI Rally Cote
         D'Azur... "miserable" accurately describes the cast, tedium,
         song-free plot of LES MISERABLES (imdb: based-on-novel /
         historical / paris) - Neeson! Thurman! Danes!... so probably
         more laughs in taking your Heinlein-loving libertarian pals
         to risible Ayn Rand re-release THE FOUNTAINHEAD (imdb:
         architect / courtroom / heiress / newspaper / suicide)...

         "OUT OF MY WAY, FANBOY", WITH LEE MAGUIRE AND BEN MOOR>> Top
         of the pile is YOU ARE HERE (UKP15) by Kyle "Why I Hate
         Saturn" Baker, an extension of some of the bits from Dark
         Horse's much missed 'Instant Piano'... also in the comedy
         section, Kevin Smith's slackfest JAY AND SILENT BOB finally
         gets to its second issue - a good bet if you're interested
         in the backstory of upcoming anti-religion comedy 'Dogma'.
         Smith is also writing the only one of the new Marvel Knights
         books nearly worth reading: DAREDEVIL. It's like reading a
         teenager's essay titled "Does God Exist? And if He Does, Why
         Does He Let Pretty Girls Get AIDS?" but with better pictures
         (the Black Widow hasn't looked so great in years). Bullseye
         returns next month: corny issue zero shockwave preview at
         http://www.marvel.com/special_events/mknights/mknights.html
         But best Smith-based book has to be: the manga Chasing Amy
         (http://www.viewaskew.com/jsbstash/chasingamy.html#amymanga)
         ... SPIDER-MAN's relaunch with two new number ones has been
         welcomed with altogether controlled excitement in shops:
         DC-heads are meanwhile coveting the hardcover, slipcased
         limited edition of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, probably the
         best maxi-series in superhero history and almost worth the
         near infinite price of UKP75... but the toys for Christmas
         have got to be the 6-inch SPY VS SPY action figures -
         available in the next couple of weeks, around UKP10. They
         each come with their own suitcases of bombs and hammers and,
         brilliantly, you really need a pair. Buy! Fight! Spy! Vs!
         Spy! Life's a riot, as they say...


                               >> 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 "real people" 
       http://www.latimes.com/HOME/NEWS/SCIENCE/SCIENCE/t000104876.html

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