Need To Know 1999-02-26

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"...it was just the best fun ever. Keep your dreams alive, your hearts open, and your hands on the keyboard... cuz even on the web, Girls Do Rule!" - "games for girls" company PURPLE MOON signs off (http://www.purple-moon.com) ...and you know, after that summer, I was never the same again >> HARD NEWS << garbled adieus Sunday, and somewhere off the coast of Iceland, a Teleglobe cable snapped like taffy. And while mostly everyone blundered through with only a few DNS slowdowns, JANET, the academic network, treated the damage as permanent, and rooted around for some excuses. Could have happened to anyone, of course (anyone who hadn't forked out for some redundant backup), but there's a special irony for JANET users, who have are among the few to pay a per-byte charge for transatlantic data transfer. Guaranteed quality of service - wasn't that the billing everyone gives for priced bandwidth? http://www.teleglobe.com/media/index.html - Russian connectivity to MIRnet? Uh-oh... http://www.ja.net/press_release/charging.html - how come we never get student sit-ins for this stuff? Eagerly awaited PlayStation game METAL GEAR SOLID sneaks into our British retail installations today, a sprightly 6 months after its Japanese release - and surely of interest to anyone who hasn't already been forced to get a pirate copy following Konami's grey import clampdown. We know the game is supposed to take things cautiously, but this is ridiculous: Sony blame "localisation" for the delay, but were able to launch a complete English language version for the US market within two months of the Japanese original - a fact conveniently ignored by the Brit magazines that all but pleaded with you to wait for the official UK one. http://eagle.ca/~cadams/mgsout.html - yeah, admittedly, there's NTSC to PAL recoding in there too http://www.consolecity.com/metalgear/fanart.htm - but the art still looks like those terrible Zzap!64 covers that were done by a relative of the publisher or something And draconian Euro ISP-bashing is one thing, but when it's combined with hilarious mistranslation humour, how *could* we resist? THE REGISTER reports that Valentin Lacambre, owner of French webspace provider Altern.Org, has chosen to "return his apron" after legal actions taken against him for copyrights infringed by members' pages, including nude pics of model Estelle Halliday. A typically gallic tiff over a beautiful woman, perhaps: Lacambre's Babelfish-translated statement swiftly descends into a heart-rending description of how his 48,000 accounts will either have to "go disparaitre" or "transform itself into bibendum advertising elsewhere". Though oddly, when you go to his site, his English isn't that bad... http://195.89.1.232/990225-000010.html - is that why don't they link to http://www.altern.org ? http://www.ntk.net/aus/ - meanwhile some Aussie ISPs want more than just caller ID >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious new BRITNEY SPEARS album includes "godawful ballad" titled EMAIL MY HEART... http://www.lloydsbank.co.uk won't let you use numbers or symbols in password... this week's pointless email campaign: http://www.bpm.ai/~sameer/ - but don't go too far: http://www.imrg.org/survey/questions/virgin.htm ... maddest Y2K quote: "The DNS serial number is the key to the problem, as many dates only use six digits to represent the year in a byte with eight digits, the other two digits being used to represent a negative or positive number. This means that in 2000 several years will disappear, as they will no longer exist" ("INS", NetworkNews) *or* "In the year 2000, your computer will literally go back in time 100 years!" (BBC kids' show "Short Change")... why are ISPA's press releases always the worst formatted?... average monthly wage for trainee coder in Moldova: UKP10... webmaster at http://www.elonex.co.uk might not have spotted that http://www.gvsystems.com/home/ took his gifs, till the borrowed links showed up in his referrer logs... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Last we checked, Michael Moore's "culture jamming workshop" at Channel 4 (Tue 1999-03-02, UKP10) was all sold out and, let's face it, Jerry Springer "ringmastering" the stuck-up weirdos at the Oxford Union (also Tue 1999-03-02, 8.30pm) could get a bit *too* freaky. Fans of the adage "When I hear the word 'culture', I reach for my gun" are instead directed to Chris Burden's WHEN ROBOTS RULE: THE TWO MINUTE AIRPLANE FACTORY at the (ahem) Tate Gallery, London SW1 - a "fully automated assembly line manufacturing rubber-band-powered aeroplanes from tissue paper, plastic and balsa wood". The guy appears to be for real, a cross between Tim "The Rudiments Of Wisdom" Hunkin and William "oops I just killed my wife" Burroughs: his previous works include standing in an art gallery and getting a friend to shoot him in the arm. Entrance (from Tue 1999-03-02) is free; assistants will be catching the planes as they're launched and selling them to punters for UKP5. And at least if you happen to get in the way, there's less muzzle velocity this time. Michael Moore info: bcu@spanner.org, voice: 0171 247 8881 - you could always stand outside dressed as a chicken http://www.oxford-union.org/ - not quite the voice of the disenfranchised working class http://www.ntk.net/planes/ - anyone know what happened to that lego car factory? We're always skeptical of events claiming to be "the biggest thing to hit the European Quake scene" (that would be "puberty", surely?) but we're assured that EUROQUAKE - The "defacto European Quake Championships" are the real deal. The actual UK team, not some goofs off Wireplay, will be taking on Clan 9, who took down Thresh's clan, Death Row, and it's all on LAN, so no whingeing about international ping time. http://www.theplayingfields.co.uk/home/990220-08.htm - no moaning about the puberty joke, either. Where's yAARGH >> TRACKING << look what the mouse dragged in Until recently, if you wanted a Windows secure shell connection to your Unix box, correct medicinal procedure was to download the official Data Fellows software, use it until the trial period expired, try to crack it, fail, then give up and install Linux. Nowadays, even that doesn't work, because those same fellows of Data are trying to encourage everyone to upgrade to their new SSH2 protocol (special powers include ultra-secure complete-incompatibility-with- the-ssh-your-Unix-box-uses mode), and only the most outrageous warez dudes can find their original, working, software. Thus, the sudden renaissance of TERATERM PRO, an ancient Windows terminal program that has the singular advantage of having an ssh plug-in. Okay, it's not new, exactly, but one day soon you'll need to find it, and careful observers will note that no new software has been invented since Netscape 1.1N. And even that was just Hypercard with a glowing 'N', right? http://www.zip.com.au/~roca/ttssh.html - caution, Americans! RSA don't want our stinking foreign code in your PCs http://hp.vector.co.jp/authors/VA002416/teraterm.html - Japan, too. Smacks of World Government to me. >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista EBAY's lucrative slave-trade: http://208.169.218.91/kids.html ... this stuff gives us a headache: http://www.hedweb.com/ ... new KFC ad set in heart of rival franchise territory, SHEPHERD'S BUSH... justify that most tempting bugfix of all: http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n58272 ... AMAZON files Michael Marshall Smith's "One Of Us" under "Family & Health"... this week's monkey-themed Brit ONION http://www.gorillagorillagorilla.freeserve.co.uk/ ... forget "steps", it's the EMACS workout: http://www.bilbo.com/ (to http://www.broadcast.com/shows/loosebrucekerr/Y2K/ ?) ...subscribing to http://slab.org/void.html and checking headers - higher X-MAILER to Outlook/AOL ratio, the better... filth *everywhere*: http://www.global-image.com/eXonizer/ ... http://www.boxing.com/live-event/delahoya-quartey/round_0.html >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> THE NEW ADDAMS FAMILY (5.40pm, Sat, ITV) will really have to try to be as bad as The New Munsters ("We went to sleep many years ago/ Now we're back with a brand new show!")... the phrase CRIMSON TIDE (9pm, Sat, ITV) makes useful shorthand for any office authority face-off situation, we find... "Make Room! Make Room!" on your video for dullish Harry Harrison Charlton Heston future euthanasia weepie SOYLENT GREEN (9pm, Sat, C4)... apparently there's a massive Dr Who subtext in repeated new gay soap QUEER AS FOLK (11.15pm, Sat, C4)... 4LATER is, perhaps unsurprisingly, "on drugs" (from 12.30am, Sat, C4), featuring THE TRIP (2.50am, Sat, C4): space techno footage compiled by the guy who does the club page in some editions of The Guardian Guide, plus timeless student-pleaser THE CLANGERS (3.25am, Sat, C4)... otherwise provide your own MST3K comments for BBC1's showing of TERROR FROM THE YEAR 5000 (1.45am, Sat, BBC1)... just after DWEEBS, LABYRINTH (2:55am, Sun, C4) is a black and white Czech movie - and not the Bowie Muppet-fest of the same name... Christian Slater is oddly proud of his work in teen pirate DJ romp PUMP UP THE VOLUME (10pm, Mon, C4) - oh dear... and NTK ed Danny O'Brien inexplicably pops up presenting wacky new weekend travelogue DOORS TO MANUAL (8.30pm, Wed, C4) - he assures us that the title is what they say on planes when they land, and not a Trek reference at all... the political comedy continues with MICHAEL MOORE: THE AWFUL TRUTH (10.30pm, Wed, C4) - hopefully TV Nation in all but name... followed by past-its-sell-by-date MARK THOMAS COMEDY PRODUCT (11pm, Wed, C4)... complemented by Sly Stallone's one-man eviction of the Russians from Afghanistan in RAMBO III (10.10pm, Wed, C5)... oh, and there's obviously an echo when you're standing on the hastily scheduled EDGE OF ETERNITY (1.45pm, Fri, C4) - Radio Times lists it as: "to come come come come come come come come come come come"... FILM>> you've guessed it, Nora Ephron's low-tech cyber-romance YOU'VE GOT MAIL (imdb: internet / new-york / bookstore ) is indeed packed with sappy soppy stupidity that only an AOL user could love. And *what is* shameful-looking Tom "rhyming slang" Hanks fiddling with under the table in the ubiquitous press ad and poster?... UL reference-spotting, Alicia Witt (Cybill's sarcastic daughter), and "inventive death scenes" are the memorable bits of latest production-line Scream-alike URBAN LEGEND (imdb: serial-killer / teen / urban-legend / splatter) - better than I Know What You Did Last Summer, if only 'cos the killer wears a giant Adrian Mole-style coat... along with George Clooney, John Travolta, and the rest of the world, Jared Leto also appears for a minute or more among the near-3 hours of determinedly unconventional great-looking dreamy nature-parable photo-poem THE THIN RED LINE (imdb: based-on- novel / wwii), believed to be the first arty war flick for chicks. Shame Krzysztof "Three Colours" Kieslowski isn't around any more - what with this and Errol Morris's 1998 miscarriage of justice docu The Thin Blue Line (unsatisfactorily adapted into Ben Elton's 1998 sitcom), he could have finished off the whole epically wide-ranging trilogy... MAGS>> we're enjoying our free subscription to INTERNET.WORKS http://www.futurenet.com/internetworks/regcard.asp enormously - where else can you learn that WebObjects were designed by the ever-prescient Steve Jobs in "the 1980s" (p33), and that "over 8000 orders were taken [by UK AOL ecommerce] during the Christmas period, with an average cost of UKP35 per item. The total amount taken has yet to be calculated but it will certainly be in the millions" (editorial, p5). Almost exactly UKP 0.28m, according to those figures and a grasp of basic multiplication... despite a cover featuring Lara "Annabel" Croft and being racked with the games mags in some newsagents, ACE *isn't* the return of "Advanced Computer Entertainment" that your father might recall, but rather a games/footie/etc mag that's "great for boys" - great for boys whose mums won't let them buy Front, perhaps... the "Music For The Rollcage Generation" music CD on the front of PLAYSTATION POWER crams 12 Peel Show-standard drum and bassy bits into its disappointing all-one-track 27-minute runtime. Still, unlike OFFICIAL PLAYSTATION MAGAZINE, at least the mag isn't half- written in bad fake Japanese English, nor does it devote its letters page to patronising its - apparently numerous - 12 year-old readers... issue 7.03 of WIRED completes its decline into a new-jobs-list for men in suits, pix of the hottest new desktop calculators, and fashion spreads of models dressed in fanfold paper. Only reason to buy is Chuck D promising to "ride the MP3 like a mutha-fuckin' cowboy" - "if you pirate something of mine, I just have to make sure to do nine or ten new things. I mean, you can't download me". There. Saved you four quid... sadly, after they were so nice to us last month, the new EDGE is largely tolerable, interviewing self-made DMA games theorist Gary Penn, plus a bland Amiga retrospective. Don't know the difference between Dune and Dune 2, though (p55)... and the early ardour of "ENTERTAINMENT" HEAT now seems to have cooled - apparently banned from reading (and scooping) EMAP's monthlies, they seem to be seeking inspiration elsewhere: http://www.ntk.net/heat/ . They do, however, remain in the running for "Poorest Video-Grabs In A Mass-Market Publication", going on to meet the winner of RADIO TIMES vs TOTAL FILM... >> 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 "most important [wrong URL]". (Computer Weekly's "Alan Smithee") 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 supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.ntk.net/books (K) 1999 Special Projects. Non-business copying is fine, but retain SMALL PRINT. Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com. Cheers.