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  • NTK 2007
  • NTK 2006
  • NTK 2005
  • NTK 2004
  • NTK 2003
  • NTK 2002
  • NTK 2001
  • NTK 2000
  • 31/12/99
    #127
    Backspace deleted, Icke vs Illuminati, Quiz Apocalypse '99
  • 24/12/99
    #126
    Unusually resentful Newtonmas edition
  • 17/12/99
    #125
    Tomb Raider - The Worst Revelation, Saving "Crazynet", Party like it's 2600
  • 10/12/99
    #124
    BT "Lollipop" licked, Dreamcast porn, ICA ice-cream
  • 03/12/99
    #123
    agency.com go "public", NSI return to form, retro round-up
  • 26/11/99
    #122
    Sinclair "mare", Reclaim the First Class Carriage, HARRIXOS!
  • 19/11/99
    #121
    Early Edition
  • 12/11/99
    #120
    Bill's new friends, countdown to Napster lawsuits, mondo retro
  • 05/11/99
    #119
    into the valley of death rode the 0800, penny for the GIF, out of Clinky
  • 29/10/99
    #118
    CSS Hissing, 0800 YAH-RIGHT, Neal S exported
  • 22/10/99
    #117
    Stray Ducks, Eggs, Marbles and Mutts
  • 15/10/99
    #116
    ICA hosts more than just fancy parties, give yourself over to the "dark" break
  • 08/10/99
    #115
    NCIS pushes "made-up drug", ritualistic Apple-bashing, and all new NTK live
  • 01/10/99
    #114
    Grey day steals idea of "grey days", quantum uncertainty, Gibson on the streets
  • 24/09/99
    #113
    Scrambling spooks, Aussie proxies, and nothing but the Knuth
  • 17/09/99
    #112
    Nethead is Deadhead, Elite Final Conflict, text browser wars
  • 10/09/99
    #111
    Getting medieval on your math, Space 1999 - '99
  • 03/09/99
    #110
    Hotmail hot water, Matthew Smith found alive, celebrity wrangling
  • 27/08/99
    #109
    Open Scores, the "." in L. Ron, and Mad Magazine
  • 20/08/99
    #108
    God hates Demon, everyone loves the QL, Russian Roulette goes edible
  • 13/08/99
    #107
    Red Hat rising, Martlesham woes, DNS the Secondary
  • 06/08/99
    #106
    Info drought, ancient arcades, and Edinburgh
  • 30/07/99
    #105
    Bloody hell it's ADSL, pan-European Adams-Pratchett wars, K&R warez
  • 23/07/99
    #104
    Nic nic, Freebieserve, Amiga non Amigo
  • 16/07/99
    #103
    DefCon, Moon shots, more D&D than usual
  • 09/07/99
    #102
    Local loopy nuts are we, CU (Amiga) in court, Phantom Menace non-special
  • 02/07/99
    #101
    The gong shows, Virtual depravity, Fear of a Black Hat
  • 25/06/99
    #100
    Special anniversary DTI moan, Sarcastic Bastard of The Year, rubber band massacres
  • 18/06/99
    #99
    You got an 'ology, BSA busted, Space 1999 '99
  • 11/06/99
    #98
    ADSL RSN, Microsoft is wormfood, and sweaty Palms
  • 04/06/99
    #97
    Last year's bits, everyone quits, The FAST Show
  • 28/05/99
    #96
    BT going free?, Kevin Mitnick isn't, Atari Teenage Riot Tryout
  • 21/05/99
    #95
    Russian ruling roulette, whinnying Winn Schwartau, ASCII Star Wars
  • 14/05/99
    #94
    Not-so secret agents, mystery Falco, IP on the radio
  • 07/05/99
    #93
    Clive's Linux, Live Linux, Jive The Phantom Menace
  • 30/04/99
    #92
    Acorn dead again, "Susan" "Blackmore", and more anon
  • 23/04/99
    #91
    anon, gratis and unconventional
  • 16/04/99
    #90
    Crypto Careers, Krause Carouses, Clubbing for Kosovo
  • 09/04/99
    #89
    General public licence to kill, dirty ISPs, and Star Wars lego, hoorah
  • 02/04/99
    #88
    April Fools, Norton Futilities, and Hairy PalmPilots
  • 26/03/99
    #87
    AOL Churls, "Be" jwz, Dumb IE5 tricks
  • 19/03/99
    #86
    Open Mac, Email Alack, Stallman's back!
  • 12/03/99
    #85
    Putting the "ow" in Escrow, Krazy Kubrick Konspiracies!
  • 05/03/99
    #84
    Sat hack hoax, .com con, Virus The Musical
  • 26/02/99
    #83
    Damn it Janet, Amazin' planes, That cheatin' Heat
  • 19/02/99
    #82
    EU fools, sci-fi rules, it ain't COOL news
  • 12/02/99
    #81
    Spice Girls outsmart the EC, OTT anti-artist ranting, and the usual skeptic jokes
  • 05/02/99
    #80
    Demo wars, Superweeds and Hotmail to Pop
  • 29/01/99
    #79
    NCIS, N64 Emus, and roaming POP access
  • 22/01/99
    #78
    Freeserve again, NSI again, and Linux 2.2
  • 15/01/99
    #77
    Undercurrents, Element -snigger- 14, and ESR
  • 08/01/99
    #76
    Green apples, Nightmare at Milton Keynes, C64
  • NTK 1998
  • NTK 1997
  • HARD NEWS
  • ANTI-NEWS
  • EVENT QUEUE
  • TRACKING
  • MEMEPOOL
  • GEEK MEDIA
  • SMALL PRINT
 _   _ _____ _  __ <*the* weekly high-tech sarcastic update for the uk>
| \ | |_   _| |/ / _ __   __1999-04-30_ o join! mail 'subscribe ntknow'
|  \| | | | | ' / | '_ \ / _ \ \ /\ / / o  to majordomo@lists.ntk.net
| |\  | | | | . \ | | | | (_) \ v  v /  o website (+ archive) lives at:
|_| \_| |_| |_|\_\|_| |_|\___/ \_/\_/   o     http://www.ntk.net/
        


         "Sentiment is against us. We can and must turn this around ... We
            need to smile at Novell while we pull the trigger."
            - JIM ALLCHIN, Microsoft, e-mail subpoena'd for DR-DOS trial
             ... puts that little paperclip chap in a whole new light
                   http://www.calderathin.com/fullstory/factstat.html


                                >> HARD NEWS <<
                                bunch of rubes 

         So, the question is this: given that we know they're nice
         people, and that they've got Steve "spinmeister" Bowbrick on
         board, *how* did FUNMAIL find itself the proud owners of
         "yid.co.uk", "jewboy.co.uk", and "nigger.co.uk"?
         Overenthusiastic intern hoping to exploit the recent boom
         in racist violence? Insufficiently parsed dictionary fed to
         registration bot? Or, most sinisterly of all, controversial
         micro-story leaked the week prior to full launch? No, no, no
         - that's *too* cynical. Oh, but we fell for it too! Doh!
         http://www.funmail.co.uk/
                         - "mailbomb" jokes will be bounced at source
         http://www.chinwag.com/html/mailing_lists_3.html
           - watch horrified net.marketeers wish they'd thought of it
         http://www.bunderlife.com/
         - Leslie "Pooter" Bundle scoops everyone with his whois searches

         Last week's stories continue to bounce around like bonus
         balls in an Arkanoid clone. Lo, and TEMPO did announce
         "free" free Internet access, with BT instantly ricocheting
         back with some dumb "free calls with an ad every 2 minutes"
         service that no-one will adopt. And the EU's anonymity
         proposals began to look increasingly low on lives, with
         smart folk in the Netherlands and UK publically supporting
         ZERO KNOWLEDGE's Freedom network, which promises an
         international anonymous network, with -cough- distributed
         liability. Or in other words, Europe's too small a place to
         stop this kind of thing.
         http://www.zeroknowledge.com/company/pressrel.asp
                      - we hope. remember anonymous digicash, anyone?
         http://www.bt.com/World/news/newsroom/document/nr9934.htm
         - you know, with two lines you *could* do something with this
         http://x11.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=472259159
         - Localtel/Tempo without the IE5 (or the free local calls, natch)

         Let's get this straight. ARM bought out ACORN, its own
         parent company, which is a bit sick. Only it didn't, because
         even though Acorn was paid for in ARM shares, the shares
         belonged to MORGAN STANLEY: so it was this bank who now own
         Acorn. Except that everyone's saying that was just a tax
         dodge, and ARM will end up buying up the Acorn shares off
         Morgan Stanley in the end (which is still a bit sick).
         Except that the only bit of Acorn that has any emotional
         appeal, the bit that used to make RISC PCs, wasn't sold to
         Morgan Stanley - it was sold to PACE TECHNOLOGIES for 200K.
         So it's not so bad, because Pace is an oldskool company too.
         Except that, actually, the only people interested in
         supporting RISC OS now aren't Acorn at all, but RISC OS
         LIMITED, who bought the license for RISC OS before all this
         happened. Except that Acorn used to own 20% of RISC OS Ltd.
         So who owns that? And why in God's name can't these companies 
         go Falco in a dignified fashion?  
         http://www.msdw.com/
         - of course, this Morgan Stanley isn't called Morgan Stanley
         http://www.e-14.com/
                                  - and this Acorn isn't called Acorn
         http://www.theregister.co.uk/990429-000009.html
         - and: you know, this is what drives the Register kids to drink


                                >> ANTI-NEWS << 
                             berating the obvious

         same subnet, and spot the diff: http://www.msn.co.uk/ vs
         http://www.whsmith.co.uk/ ... MARK LAWSON announces STAR
         WARS to premiere on May 17th (may be including 2 days
         queuing time)... patriotic "new British bookshop on
         Internet" BOL.COM of course stands for BERTELSMANN ONLINE
         ... GUARDIAN's Annie Leibowitz "on-set" photos include young
         Obi and Darth Maul duelling with *real lightsabres*...
         WALLSTREET.COM sold for $1.03 million... DAILY MAIL thinks
         Jill Dando site was "run by a company called Celebrity
         Webring"... ELECTRONIC TELEGRAPH registration system falls
         over - access suddenly improves... PATHFINDER.COM - FALCO!
         (Noah, come and collect your prize after class)... extensive
         Net-wide research shows geeks bullied, misunderstood at
         school... SEGAWORLD London - F-f-fal... DAILY MIRROR's
         guide to Net jargon defines: "HACKER: Idiot who thinks it's
         clever to break through computer security. CRACKER: A
         criminal hacker."... "Faster access for BT customers is
         already available through services such as ISDN 2 and BT
         Highway. Effective demand is, therefore, being met":
      http://www.bt.com/corpinfo/regulatory/response/bandwidth/file4.htm
         ... BITS (games version of 4Later show "Vids") to be
         presented by three "gaming babes in their mid-20s"...
         ... 75p with an Aussie animal inside? "YOWIE!", indeed...
         "Dandoh!" tributes reached us at a rate of 4 a minute;
         the best: http://www.ntk.net/doh/dandohrt19993004.jpg ...


                               >> EVENT QUEUE << 
                         goto's considered non-harmful

         Of course, May 1st marks the 223rd anniversary of the founding
         of the Bavarian Illuminati, and what better way to dazzle the
         mehums than the digital trickery of ONEDOTZERO3 - "exciting
         new forms and hybrids of moving image work from the most
         innovative and cutting-edge talents in the field". In other
         words, CGI FMV and pop videos, at the ICA, London SW1 from 5pm
         tonight until Sun 1999-05-09.
         http://www.onedotzero.com/
                       - includes famous "Director's Cut" of G-Police 2

         And returning from the US mysteriously "changed", psychologist
         SUSAN BLACKMORE reveals to Cambridge, Swindon and London
         susceptibles how the unseen forces behind human history were
         Richard Dawkins' "memes" all along (from Wed 1999-05-05).
         Fresh from her free-will-deconstructing New Scientist piece
         "Meme, Myself, I", NTK's ever-vigilant Lloyd Wood advises "you
         wouldn't want to go see her, because there really is no you.
         And no her. And there's no debate; just a couple of memes
         competing for the same conceptual space in the memeplex and
         the attention of your selfplex as a potential host for onward
         propagation." A fun night out for all the family.
         http://www.memes.org.uk/                   - tell your friends


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

         This side of the utility twilight zone, here's one which
         fulfills that "code you'd write, if only you had six months
         of your life to waste". KLEPTOMANIA lets you screengrab an
         arbitrary piece of your desktop - then uses simple OCRish
         techniques to convert the image to text. Snatch directory
         listings from Explorer! Save your device list or registry
         details in a readable format! Sadly, it can't cope cope with
         huge anti-aliased GIFs on lamer Websites (registered fonts
         only) - but that's what your next six months are for.
         There's a 21 day trial to gawp at, $30 buys the full version.
         http://www.structurise.com/kleptomania/
                                         - come on, he deserves it... 


                                >> MEMEPOOL << 
                              hasta la altavista

         run out of swap space? too many PIDs? Share the world's
         resources at http://www.urps.org/ ... "Ha! You are too
         trusting, Son of God!" http://www.visi.com/~bull/fistsgod.htm 
         ... it may mean "Hope" in Japanese, but to USENET:
         http://www.spaceviews.com/1999/04/25b.html ... what CLIFF
         STOLL did next: http://www.kleinbottle.com/why_acme.htm ...
         CAFES SCIENTIFIQUES... Philip K Dick, patents officer: 
         http://dips-2.dips.org/dips/viewer?PN=GB1426698&CY=gb&LG=en&DB=EPD
         ... competing with MICROSOFT at their own game
         http://www.magister-lex.at/CRASHit/ ...  off-the-shelf startup
         http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=96369441 
         ... but we can do better than that:
         http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=98002118
         ... what you will look like to the people of 2039
         http://www.mallard.org/more/mtv01.htm ... FUD on demand -
         http://www.gingerspice.demon.co.uk/tmp/netspies/... which one
         is ANNIE SPRINKLE? Anyway, she's in trouble:
         http://www.heck.com/annie/ ... obvious POLICE TROLL:
         http://www.bravo.co.uk/latelounge/html/celebrity_executions.html
         ... at last, the *facts* on MICROSOFT: http://www.thestormcenter.com/ 
        
                               
                               >> GEEK MEDIA << 
                  the less rude http://www.ntk.net/tvgohome/
              
         TV>> FRASIER (10pm, Fri, C4) is always funniest when it's
         about food... David STRASSMAN (10.30pm, Fri, ITV) pioneers the
         field of animatronic swearing... and ITV cunningly combines
         two of TV's most popular genres as one upcoming youngster
         turns out to be DESPERATELY SEEKING STARDOM - in the porn biz!
         (10pm, Fri, ITV)... "We can put a man on the moon, but we
         can't bomb a minor Eastern European country back to the stone
         age" ponders Tom Hanks's reverential 12-part NASA docu-drama
         FROM THE EARTH TO THE MOON (12noon, Sat, C4)... everyone raves
         about doddery Eastwood Western UNFORGIVEN (10pm, Sat, ITV) -
         but it's no "The Quick And The Dead"... and the rest of Bank
         Holiday weekend is dominated by a foul-mouthed feast for SOUTH
         PARK fans, with a 2-hour special on cable/ satellite (from
         9pm, Sat, SkyOne) including an hour-long "South Park
         Discovered"... C4 picks up the squishy baton on Mon with 5
         hours of OH MY GOD, IT'S SOUTH PARK (from 9pm, Mon, C4),
         featuring season 2 opener "Not Without My Anus" and Parker/
         Stone's "Cannibal! The Musical". Then, as if to prepare you
         for the upcoming "Mechastreisand" episode, behold: GODZILLA VS
         MECHAGODZILLA (2am, Mon, C4)... both FRENCH AND SAUNDERS
         (9.55pm, Sun, BBC1) and RORY BREMNER (9pm, Sun, C4) continue
         to confuse dressing up as famous people with actual comedy...
         Jon Ronson interviews subterranean enthusiasts on FOR THE LOVE
         OF (2.50am, Sun, C4)... and it's a real grab-bag of sci-fi
         elements behind ROBIN COOK'S INVASION (9pm, Sun & Mon, C5) -
         like The Last Train; a meteor impact or suspended animation
         just doesn't cut it any more, you've got to have *both*...
         disappointingly, food show BIG KEVIN LITTLE KEVIN (8pm, Tue,
         BBC2) is not a rapid weight-loss sequel to the "Fountain Of
         Youth" kids' classic... sympathetic Spice-umentary GERI (9pm,
         Wed, C4) nevertheless records some of the "criticism and
         ridicule" levelled at the talentless ginger trollop... while
         hard-hitting heavily promoted mental asylum drama PSYCHOS
         (10pm, Thu, C4) comes of course from the writer who translated
         "Mad About You" into "Loved By You" for the British screen...
         
         FILM>> "geek heaven" is NTK reader Reverend Joe McNally's
         praise for Cronenberg's icky new Videodrome-II VR-parable set
         in biotech parallel universe EXISTENZ (imdb: computers /
         futuristic / virtual-reality), largely for its spot-on
         spoofing of in-game NPCs with dodgy accents and bad AI - were
         Mark Hamill and Tim Curry somehow not available? Oddly, the UK
         launch is being sponsored by fellow Dreamcasters Sega,
         implying (Rev McNally again): "(a) they have a much more
         highly-developed sense of humour than one might normally
         associate with games companies, or (b) they haven't actually
         seen it"... rather less effective art-horror surfaces from
         Annette Bening's fruity underwater nightmare IN DREAMS (imdb:
         psychological) - remember: "down to earth" Neil Jordan (Mona
         Lisa, The Crying Game, The Butcher Boy) good; "supernatural"
         Neil Jordan (A Company Of Wolves, Interview With A Vampire)
         *bad*!... and while the plot of Adam Sandler's latest retard-
         makes-good irritation THE WATERBOY (imdb: football / sport)
         sounds like it *might* be lifted from an Oliver Sacks case,
         that honour actually goes to vision-returning neurology-
         romancer AT FIRST SIGHT (imdb: blindness) - not a fantastic
         job by Val "The Saint" Kilmer, Irwin "The Net" Winkler, though
         it has provoked the most OTT Christian review seen so far:
     http://www.startext.net/homes/chldcare/capreports/at1stsight99.htm
         
         DEAD TREES>> you can already hear the ASA sharpening their
         blue pencils over the lame "Get some coke for Jamie's party"
         campaign for elderly-lads' mag LATER (launch price UKP1.50).
         We've no doubt that there *is* a good article to be written
         about future-sport violence-movie Rollerball, though Later has
         run something else entirely... FHM (UKP2.80) leads, once
         again, with "GAIL PORTER: She's Stunning, She's Nude" - And
         Missing Her Right Nipple, from the looks of things... oh well,
         it was an abridged version of David Scheff's excellent "Game
         Over" book on the front of ARCADE (UKP2.80). Still, good to
         see their dreadful pic of 4 drongos playing video games over
         beer 'n' pizza has been swiftly replaced by 3 even worse
         caricatures (p130), the girl of which is so captivated by
         their subs offer that she's neglected to put a cartridge in
         her Game Boy... "Is PIRACY killing the Amiga?" bravely ponders
         AMIGA FORMAT (UKP5.95) - well, either that or someone's
         stopped manufacturing the hardware... editorial of current
         INTERNET magazine is "such rubbish" it "must be a troll",
         readers report - is that why subs cut the last line?... "like
         a slimmer, cheaper version of Wired but with Douglas Rushkoff
         writing for it" isn't a great recommendation for SHIFT
         (Borders, UKP3) http://www.shift.com/ - plus, being Canadian,
         it's depressingly obsessed with both US *and* UK style
         culture... but STEVE CIARCIA'S CIRCUIT CELLAR INK (Borders,
         UKP3), the "Mork And Mindy" to Byte's "Happy Days", drags
         itself over here at last, whispering that the BYTE home
         automation system isn't Y2K compliant... finally, a swift
         round-up of the new "Internet for Idiots" mags: the debut
         issue of INTERNET MONTHLY ("The *real people's* guide to the
         Internet"; UKP1.99) takes a firm stand against the
         "jargonauts", goes on to reveal that those real (patient)
         people are logging on with "28bps, 36bps or 56bps modems"
         (p139), then concludes with - you've guessed it - a guide to
         smilies (p149)... "Don't take too much advice from anyone who
         has been online earlier than 1996" chortles Future's INTERNET
         ADVISOR (p85; UKP1.99) - yeah, what would they know, eh?...
         yet the ultimate irony goes to Paragon's erratically
         distributed WEB PAGES MADE EASY (UKP3.95) - we'd have more
         confidence in their clunky FrontPage / PageMill / HotMetal
         tutorials if it didn't look like they'd borrowed their entire
         (dreadful) design from .Net Magazine...
         

                               >> 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 
             "steering away from the celebrity gossip these days"
     http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/The_Paper/Daily/Story/0,3604,46112,00.html

                                 NEED TO KNOW
            THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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           (K) 1999 Special Projects. Non-business copying is fine,
                            but retain SMALL PRINT.

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          work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material.
    
  • HARD NEWS
  • ANTI-NEWS
  • EVENT QUEUE
  • TRACKING
  • MEMEPOOL
  • GEEK MEDIA
  • SMALL PRINT