Need To Know 1998-12-04

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"A Sedgwick County Juvenile Court judge will decide today whether four children should be removed from a home police found littered with animal waste... Police also found an abundance of Star Trek magazines, posters and memorabilia, and couldn't understand the father at first because he spoke to his wife and children in Klingon." - THE WICHITA EAGLE, http://newslibrary.infi.net/wichita/ ...why we don't have kids (anymore) >> HARD NEWS << spitting truths Looks like it's not just Pinochet who thinks diplomatic immunity protects him from the truth. This week, it was the turn of the US's "crypto ambassador" DAVID AARON, who came bounding out of the Wassenaar conference in Vienna crowing that almost every other country in the world had agreed to adopt America's dumb-ass "no export of crypto beyond an NSA-crackable 64 bits" policy. Well, up to a point, Ambassador. Odd that the less-developed nations (like Germany, Canada - and even the less than strident UK) had switched from their semi-official "no buggering Yank spooks are going to tap *us*" stance in one day. Odd too, that Aaron's press release was out by 3:30, when agreement was only reached at 3:00. Could it be that Aaron was offered a sop to take home to Clinton: that the Wassanaar signatories agreed to *allow* control of 64+ bit crypto, while at the same time making sure that all the signatories could "disappear" any obligation to enforce such a control? http://www.wassenaar.org/ - ambassador, with your unusual assumptions you are spoiling us http://jya.com/wa-state98.htm - what, no "shut that idiot Aaron up" clause http://www.ntk.net/wassenaar/ - those details in "full" Mind you, the US security services aren't the only ones to have an easy ride in their snooping. The EU, it seems, are planning to mirror the Anglo-Americans' Echelon surveillance system with a dandy new network of their own, designed to tap into mobile and Iridium communications Europe-wide. Of course, the cops were too busy planning this foolproof tapping of their citizens comms to notice when someone of them reversed the polarity on the paper - and leaked it to the excellent Telepolis. Straight back at ya, ENFOPOL! http://www.telepolis.de/tp/deutsch/special/enfo/6329/1.html - hasta la babelfish MP3 bootleggers found some unexpected converts to the cause on Tuesday, when hip-hop old schoolers PUBLIC ENEMY unilaterally planned to stick their underpromoted album Bring The Noise 2000 online - all 27 tracks of it. By Thursday, the show had been officially "bum-rushed" by record label, Def Jam (or "Def Scam" as PE previously described them), and the page replaced by highly critical invective against "execs, lawyers and accountants", concluding "Let 'em all die". Probably not what Def Jam had in mind, but not quite as hilarious as US ska-punk outfit Less Than Jake, who inadvertently placed 3 entire albums on their site, due to a "mistake on the website manager's part". There's clearly only one way to stamp out this dreadful piracy problem - ban music altogether. http://www.mp3.com/news/140.html - this one goes out to the Ninfomania crew... http://www.geocities.com/SoHo/Workshop/1813/communiques/comm3.htm - ...we're shorter, funnier - and later than you >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious now *that's* a comeback (see 1960 in the dateline): http://cgi.pathfinder.com/time/time100/builder/profile/merrill.html ... FT Business Website Award for BBC News Online misengraved to "BBC Online"; News plan to "burn it in middle of office" ... oh those original ad writers: NETWORK SOLUTIONS claim to be the ".com people", SUN reckon they're the "dot in .com"... GUARDIAN runs "Chinese mistranslations of film titles" http://www.topfive.com list as real (well, if the NYT ran it, it must be true, right?) ... are DIXONS trying to tell us something about the new PalmPilot? http://freepages.pavilion.net/users/dphelan/dixons-281198.jpg GUARDIAN fills column by running press releases through jive filter... ID SOFTWARE up for a *serious* man-beating with http://www.ntk.net/doh/id981203.jpg ... and what's the instant prize at the bottom of the http://www.camelot.co.uk/ tree? >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful "The UK hacking scene is all but dead: most of the community's leading lights have retired, no new hacking conferences are planned", writes MICHAEL MCCORMACK in this week's Telegraph - with his usual perfect timing, three days before the biggest conference of the UK haxxor calendar, CONSPIRACY. Here, the British computer underground will be celebrating their non-existence with ten hours of alcohol-fuelled oblivion, games of "Blinds Man's vi", and a old tales told around a roaring Unix LAN ("servers in a seperate room ... for various reasons including local exploits and puke"). The wake will take place at Manchester's Tapas Tapas Nightclub, from 1600GMT this Saturday 4/12/98. The venue holds two hundred persons, so be sure to turn up early to avoid bumping into McCormack sitting on his own, eyes shut and singing "lah-lah-lah" to block out the decks. http://www.dac.org/conspiracy/ - the men in cider and black >> TRACKING << making good use of the things that we find Professional Web content systems companies, switching to Open Source - as recommended by their own *venture capitalist*? That's *sick*. ZOPE is a PERVERTED hybrid of the widely-regarded BOBO object-oriented CGI replacement, and the previously commercial PRINCIPIA Web application system. It's also got the Aqueduct relational database system thrown in. It's all free, source code is included, and even more horrifically, it's centered on the PYTHON language, that politically-correct, nicely-formatted, easy-to-read OPEN BLOODY SOURCE scripting language. ZOPE's creators will be releasing the source later today, so we haven't had a chance to play, but we hope it's bloody rubbish, otherwise we'll have nothing nasty to say at all. http://www.zope.org/ - nice clean well-written Website too. CURSE THEM! >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista if LARA CROFT *is* nominated as British Technology Ambassador, does she get diplomatic immunity for all those people she shot in South America? ... SIEGEL finally eats his words - http://www.it.fairfax.com.au/981103/webmechanic1.html ... Internet Explorer "Platinum Channels" now Windows Media Showcase... http://www.planetquake.com/titanic/ ... http://sgi.impact.nl.com/ - what did I miss ? ... http://cvs.anu.edu.au/andy/beye/beyehome.html ... DOUGIE COUPLAND wants a $1 mill for his next novel... we're assuming this isn't an official TELE*UBBIES site: http://newgrounds.com/tubby/ ... as if life isn't depressing enough: http://www.brunching.com/toys/toy-alanislyrics.html http://www.userfriendly.org/cartoons/archives/98dec/19981203.html - STALLMAN for Chewie! >> GEEK MEDIA << may contain strongly-typed language TV>> yeah, we know, we should be doing a TV version of NTK for this groovy new 4 LATER strand (after midnight, most nights, C4 ), maybe like a webpage version of VH1 pop subversion classic POP-UP VIDEO (1.15am, Fri, C4)... oh, and please note that it's a subjunctive, not an imperative in the title of Bruce Lee chop-socky cracker ENTER THE DRAGON (10.20pm, Fri, BBC1)... more martial arts lore with Beat Takeshi's acclaimed SONATINE (1.10am, Sat, BBC2)... and Verhoeven uses the "and then I woke up and it was all a dream" excuse for the euphoric violence (and hair-trigger Sharon Stone performance) of class Arnie sci-fi TOTAL RECALL (9.55pm, Sat, ITV)... 4 Later offers North London slacker sitcom TOTTENHAM 2 (12.20am, Sat, C4) followed by '70s cop spoof (and "Funky Squad" inspiration) THE MOD SQUAD (12.50am, Sat, C4)... and further Sharon Stone shenanigans in underrated Sam Raimi designer Western THE QUICK AND THE DEAD (10pm, Sun, C4)... disappointingly, new pathology one-off MCCALLUM (9pm, Mon, ITV) isn't about the adventurs of eternal special guest star David McCallum, trapped in endless series of satellite sci-fi shows, struggling to find his way back home... ADULT RICKI (10.45pm, Tue, C4) tackles the very modern dilemma of how to get sex videos back from your ex (Pamela Anderson, Kelsey Grammer please note)... a buttock-numbing *two-and-a-half hours* devoted to animation in new run of DOPE SHEET (11.30pm, Tue, C4) - probably without even a Disney musical number to change the pace - seems unlikely to trouble the intermittent return of SEINFELD/ THE LARRY SANDERS SHOW (11.10pm, Tue, BBC2)... the showing of stupid-dumb overlong Queen video HIGHLANDER (9.30pm, Tue, BBC1) is inexplicably "postponed in some regions from 24 November", presumably due to some clashing news story about decapitation, immortals or Sean Connery... and you'd hope that, coming from Roger & Me / TV Nation leftist prankster Michael Moore, CANADIAN BACON (10pm, Thu, C4) would be a cooler, funnier version of "Wag The Dog". You'd be wrong... FILM>> turning a bug into a feature, top-notch non-stop action spoof RUSH HOUR (imdb: police / trust / bravery / detective / friend / hero / hostage / kidnapping) neatly sidesteps Jackie Chan's delicate grasp of the English language, and lets The Fifth Element's Chris Tucker - and Jackie's fists - do all the talking... George "Mad Max" Miller ditches the farmyard promotion milieu of the first film for the darker, crueller, more ironic odyssey of BABE: PIG IN THE CITY (imdb: animals / kids-and-family / sequel / talking-animal), doing for singing mice what Scream did for slasher films... and seeing Kathy "Waynetta Slob" Burke and Meryl Streep on the same screen may be the only reason for oestrogen-heavy Oirish blarney DANCING AT LUGHNASA (imdb: based-on-play / sisters) - no pronunciation info available at present, we suggest you try "Lufthansa" and the box office people will understand... DEAD TREE>> it's following in the steps of Martin "Invasion Of The Space Invaders" Amis, but LARA'S BOOK (Prima, UKP15.99) is one of the one-in-three terrible Douglas Coupland novels, with maybe one perceptive comment (around p18), dull tips (no Tomb Raider 3!), an appalling "action/adventure comic" that sounds like it's written by a 12 year-old ("and then there was a hurricane and Lara got blown up into the air onto an aeroplane and she climbed in through the window") - plus many many renders of the overexposed heroine looking increasingly like a blow-up sex doll... despite the usual uncritical fawning over Tomb Raider, Myst etc, pricey video game coffee table tome RE:PLAY (Laurence King Publishing, UKP19.99) scores bonus points for including shots of Speccy classic Way Of The Exploding Fist, big maps of Sim City and Zaxxon, and printing Goldeneye grabs small enough so you can't see the horrible N64 anti-aliasing... taking a slightly broader view of life, John Horgan's THE END OF SCIENCE (Abacus, UKP8.99) purportedly ponders the future of empirical research via the hilarious technique of going round and interviewing the biggest names in philosophy of science (Karl Popper, Thomas Kuhn, Noam Chomsky, Steven Jay Gould, Marivn Minsky - even Roger "Quantum Consciousness" Penrose) - and then *taking the piss out of them*... could make useful reading before attempting Greg Egan's masterful compilation LUMINOUS (Millennium, UKP9.99), featuring post-cyberpunk science-heavy shorts from '93 to '98, and confirming Egan's rep as the *hardest* sci-fi author ever. Also good to see he's not spending all his time indexing: http://www.netspace.net.au/~gregegan/IZ/index.htm ... and finally, Andrew Calcutt's WHITE NOISE: AN A-Z OF THE CONTRADICTIONS IN CYBERCULTURE (Macmillan, UKP14.99) is pretty much the mix of provocative concepts and sociologist nonsense you'd expect from someone who's worked for Channel Cyberia and LM magazine (Living Marxism, not Leisure Monthly), and has learned everything from reading The Guardian, the Telegraph's Connected section, and .net magazine. Living up to its contradictory subtitle, the front even claims that the book is "Copyright 1999" so you've got a whole month to rip it off if you like... >> 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 "ahem! cough cough" http://www.dti.gov.uk/e-envoy 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.