Need To Know 1999-05-28

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"Slurping a bowl of tortilla soup in a Dallas restaurant, Romero is fed up with the criticism. Daikatana will give fans an 'awesome' ride through 4,485 years of human history, he says." http://www.nytimes.com/library/magazine/home/19990523mag-keegan.html ...what, until it's released? >> HARD NEWS << obtaining clues So, *are* BT going to introduce free weekend calls for Net users? And would they be so cheeky as to announce it on the weekend of the Trans-European Net Strike, 1999-06-06? Well, something weird's going down, that's for sure. The telco who says it's good to talk (because actually doing anything for once might derail up the gravy train) is behaving verrrry strangely. From hemming-and-hahhing just months ago about ADSL, they've gone to shipping out truckloads of the tech. And from the standard bleating that "Oftel wouldn't like it", they're planting rumours of limited free local calls to everyone but the supposedly all-powerful regulators. "We did an internal report", we hear BT people say, "and realised we must devour our own business before someone else does": words previously uttered only by readers of Fast Company and unhygienic paranoid schizophrenics. So, what's better? A sedentary BT that we can all complain about? Or the unedifying site of watching a tripping Buzby eat itself whole rather than have anyone else in on the action? http://www.theregister.co.uk/990528-000011.html - feel sick http://www.unmetered.org.uk/ - what we want? Oh, ta! When did we want it? Now? Cheers. Also partaking in the clue lucky dip, that CABINET OFFICE unit set up to provide solutions to the government's crypto mess [NTK 1999-03-05] doled out its recommendations on Wednesday. Sense prevailed - to a point. Key escrow nutty, stop now: check. Key warrants to be signed by Home Secretary or other big time politician, rather than just your friendly local copper: check. "The onus is on the recipient of a disclosure notice to prove to the authorities that the requested keys or plaintext are not in his possession" - uh, hello? They're going to try and draft a law where you have to prove you *don't* have something? "I have forgotten my passphrase". Prove it. "There are no files concealed in my pornographic photograph collection". Prove it. "I am not guilty". Prove it. Prove you're not guilty. http://www.cabinet-office.gov.uk/Innovation/1999/encryption/ - exciting, colour PDF file with intro from Prime Minister http://www.ntk.net/tony/ - from which we extract more fresh sigs. Prove it ain't his! "Throwing another book on the barbie", is how the Australian's are describing their government's ingenious new Net censorship law, which perceives the Internet as pornography, and roots around futilely trying to stop it. We'll just stick to the usual fun, pointing out that among the sites that Australia will miss out on will be BUGTRAQ ("detailed instruction in: matters of crime"), Anonymiser (because you'll be able to reach the whole Web from there), any shell account on any non-Australian machine (ditto), Google (cached pages), and Altavista's Babelfish (can access banned pages - and they'll sound even ruder in French). http://www.aph.gov.au/hansard/senate/commttee/s-it.htm - what do we have to do to get banned around here? We didn't put a link to Duncan Campbell's Echelon report in last week's issue. Either that, or it was taken out en-route: http://www.iptvreports.mcmail.com/interception_capabilities_2000.htm - Cue that ANSI Twilight Zone theme we mentioned last week http://www.textfiles.com/art/twilight.vt - Ta. >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious FREESERVE mailserver down (fortunately, everyone too ashamed to use their freeserve mail account anyway)... AOL user tries to sell 8 year-old daughter online: doesn't have sense to try Ebay http://www.denverpost.com/news/news0525l.htm ... MS OUTLOOK can't even remember when US Memorial Day is... AMAZON return anti-Scientology book "A Piece of Blue Sky" to catalog: sales put it in Amazon's top 200... USENET2 dying ... people get angry with their computers, blame BILL GATES, GOD, uncovers survey... official FREEDOM OF INFORMATION ACT proposals are corrupt and unreadable (and that's just the PDF file!)... google touted as "the next best thing to the CIA" - best not to use it to find embassies then ... BARBRA STREISAND addicted to day trading: stocks collapse ... "why will criminals use government-supported crypto?", asks a US congressman; WILLIAM REINSCH, govt. crypto spokesman: "Never underestimate the stupidity of some of the people we have to deal with"... wrong kind of tunnelling on the line: http://www.ntk.net/doh/19990525railtrack.gif ... this week's winner on the http://www.cynicalbastards.com/wankometer/ : http://www.imc.com with an astounding 9.79... uniquely timely: http://www.ntk.net/doh/19990525xstream.gif ... BBC's WATCHDOG complains about games needing patches: often runs its own - from the Press Complaints Commission... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful If you've been putting off revisiting the regular 2600 monthly meetings until you've found the perfect rollerblades and mirrorshade combo, it may be time to cut to the chase. Next Friday (1999-06-04) is international FREE KEVIN day, and Mitnick symps from Moscow to Spokane will be rallying, somewhat futilely, outside court houses and embassies to protest. New York gets "Free Kevin" skywriters: no such luxuries for the London and Manchester 2600 meets, who'll have to swim over and wrestle him out of prison with their bare hands. http://www.KevinMitnick.com/news-040499.html - yep, he's still in prison http://www.2600.com/demo/index.html - yep, there are still 2600 meets >> TRACKING << making good use of the things that we find Talking of which, here's a mail from John Drake, aka smiling Mark Bennett, erstwhile editor of 1993's leading cyberpunkzine, Black Ice (issues still available). Mark's branched out into other media since those heady days: mainly the new 2600 T-Shirt, for which he needs scans of old newspaper hacking headlines to spruce up the rear. If you or your solicitor have kept "Freshly born child could have brought ASDA to its knees"-stylee headlines, get in touch. Mr T is on blackice@pavilion.co.uk. Scanning protocols follow. http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=480963509 - and no forgeries! Oho. Put the idea into your head Many of you e-mail us - oh, thrice a day tops - to suggest that we repackage NTK so that you can read it on your Pilots. A few of you may have received our standard reply that we cannot do that because we're going bowling now. Well, we also serve Open Source, we who bowl and wait, because it's exactly that kind of offhandishness that encouraged Justin Mason to write his excellent SNARFNEWS program. Snarfnews grabs NTK, parses it into a Palm DOC file, and squirts it into your Palm, all in one tidy Perl script. Win and Unix supported - as are a bunch of other sites that we never look at or nick links from, including http://tbtf.com/ , http://www.robotwisdom.com/ , http://lwn.net/, and any RDF-supporting site.. http://www.clubi.ie/jmason/software/snarfnews/ - must be annoying to see these URLs on your Palm http://www.users.dircon.co.uk/~crypto/snarf.html - of course, now Muffett's going to want the name changed >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista oh, it's easy to knock: http://www.gluetrain.com ... WILLIAM SHATNER has been attending Trek conventions in disguise - as who? His parallel universe twin?... VideoCD STAR WAREZ ... gettingit.com - dooomed! doooooomed!... unpleasant GIFs at http://www.dirtdirt.com/dreems.htm ... "It seems the only aspect of Microsoft NT which scales well is the price"... http://www.oakland.edu/~zztasesk/jarjar.html ... TERENCE MCKENNA sick (and not just on those shrooms): he asks fans to think of him, 2200GMT 1999-28-05... guys, it's 25 years ago: http://av.com/cgi-bin/query?pg=q&q=swallow+airspeed:W ... STAR WARS personality tests - there were personalities in that film?... WALTER MILLER never left the building: http://www.geocities.com/Heartland/Prairie/9179/walter.htm ... and you thought turning the monitor off was going to work http://www.forbes.com/forbes/99/0531/6311070a.htm ... "Disturbed by the fact that I'm gonna bone you in EPISODE TWO?" http://www.deja.com/=dnc/getdoc.xp?AN=481263843 ... better than that ASCII WARS rubbish: http://world.std.com/~buzzard/meatwars/ ... suddenly, not so hungry: http://members.xoom.com/gnulix_guy/geek-gourmet/ ... what he would have wanted: http://www.wireplay.co.uk/html/stories/250599zulu.htm ... >> GEEK MEDIA << the less rude http://www.ntk.net/tvgohome/ TV>> the last ever ADAM AND JOE SHOW (11.05pm, Fri, C4) in this tired old format has to be, sadly, a good thing... BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (8pm, Fri, Sky One) reappears on Sky soon after leaving BBC2, due to complex cross-licensing deals... the evidently still-alive Jimmy Saville joins other sinisterly well-preserved freaks on HAVE I GOT NEWS FOR YOU (9pm, Fri, BBC2)... and the cinema-to-terrestrial holdback of just 13 months doesn't bode well for transsexual romace DIFFERENT FOR GIRLS (9.35pm, Fri, BBC1) - still, it's got Charlotte Coleman in it... with MAD MAX 2 (10.50pm, Sat, ITV), PSYCHO (10.40pm, Sat, BBC2) *and* PSYCHOS (11.10pm, Sat, C4) all scheduled against each other, does this make EUROVISION (8pm, Sat, BBC1) the only sane choice?... well, no - there's always above- average fake-news meteor drama WITHOUT WARNING (10.45pm, Sat, C4)... only 7 months since last showing on 1998-10-30; C4 clearly can't get enough of MEN AND THEIR SHEDS (3.45pm, Sun, C4)... more Hitch peeping out his REAR WINDOW (10pm, Sun, BBC2)... ITV's thinly disguised Notting Hill promo FALLING FOR A STAR (10pm, Sun, ITV) oddly coincides with another outing for ultra-conformist toff-com FOUR WEDDINGS AND A FUNERAL (9pm, Sun, C4) - still, it's got Charlotte Coleman in it... and FOR THE LOVE OF (2.05am, Sun, C4) repeats the one on Diana Conspiracy Theories... Bank Holiday highlights are largely restricted to THE GREAT ESCAPE (1.40pm, Mon, ITV) plus C4's celebration of '70s homoerotic cop partners, STARSKY AND HUTCH NIGHT (from 9pm, Mon, C4)... this past week has already seen some rather more surprising "insights and contributions from friends and ex-boyfriends" than expected by SOPHIE: THE NEW PEOPLE'S PRINCESS (8pm, Tue, C5)... and readers of "I Am Spock" will recall that NEVER FORGET (1.10am, Tue, BBC1) is Leonard Nimoy's very own Schindler's List... of course, the movie WIRED (1.25am, Wed, ITV) hasn't got anything to do with the San Francisco tech mag; it's the story of John Belushi's death through excess - though, then again... that really is Charlie "Superkaylo" Brooker presenting new On-digital tech show THE KIT (10.30pm, Wed-Fri, BBC Knowledge)... Jonathan Ross presides over idiotically titled panel game IT'S ONLY TV BUT I LIKE IT (10.05pm, Thu, BBC1)... and despite being made by the same folks as Vidz, it seems unlikely that the 3 "glamorous babe" presenters of 4Later's video game round-up BITZ (12.15am, Thu, C4) will be making the same liberal use of the phrase "wanking with envy". Still, here's hoping, eh?... FILM>> yes, everyone else reviewed it last week, but only now can the rest of the country revel in toothless paparazzi quipfest NOTTING HILL (MPAA: Rated PG-13 for sexual content and brief strong language). It'd be edgier if Julia Roberts was *actually playing herself* (you know, like Jennifer Grey in "Like, You Know"), but instead it features - get this - an unhygenic Welsh flatmate (tee hee!), plus Hugh Grant as a posh bloke - who sometimes says things that sound a bit rude!... otherwise, a notable lack of complimentary poster quotes for lame half-term juve-trash like MY FAVOURITE MARTIAN (imdb: based-on-tv-series / kids-and-family / sequel)... uninspired animated musical THE KING AND I (imdb: not to be confused with the upcoming Jodie Foster remake of the same film)... and indeed by-the-book Bob Hoskins quest-for-the-real- Captain-Birdseye odyssey CAPTAIN JACK (imdb: also known as "An Inch Over the Horizon")... RED BOOK AUDIO>> yeah, we know it's usually "Magazines" around this point in the month, but frankly we've been banging on about OFFICIAL PLAYSTATION MAGAZINE for months now and it still doesn't seem to have had any effect... so, pausing briefly to commend EDGE on its *two* specially commissioned Wipeout 3 covers, designed exclusively by the "Designers Rupublic" (p3, sic), plus FRONTIERS for surely the worst "Science Of Star Wars" feature ever - "The Force" is a form of psychokinesis, apparently - time again for more real-life cases of pop eating itself... having convinced ourselves that BRYAN ADAMS' "Cloud 9" is mighty close to Air Supply's "Lost In Love", we're still a bit stuck on who *else* girl cockney- rockers HEPBURN sound like on their single "I Quit" - the obvious comparison being of course "Bitch" by Meredith Brooks. Hey, maybe it's Dubstar... DOM "THE DOMINATOR" MCCLANE meanwhile fingers JEWEL's forthcoming "Down So Long" as a soundalike of Shawn Colvin's "Sunny Came Home" (re-released in May 1998), inquiring if perhaps other NTK readers might be interested in his DVD reviews at http://www.sonicstate.com/ . Well, are you?... but similarity-spot of the month goes to MARTIN FROST, who thinks "When We Are Together" off the new TEXAS album is a ripoff of "Science Fiction Double Feature" from The Rocky Horror Picture Show, and that "Female Of The Species" by SPACE takes almost all the backing from the Procol Harum B-side "In The Wee Small Hours Of Sixpence". We must admit we've never heard either, but why would he make it up?... following NTK speculation [1999-04-23] over the copyright in GERI SPICE's lower case "g", reader ED AVIS contends that "actually, Geri's logo is copied from OpenBSD", citing both http://www.dotmusic.co.uk/geri/bg.gif and http://www.openbsd.org/images/openbsdpower.gif as proof... a bit late on this, but we're pretty sure that DESERT EAGLE DISCS are still the only upcoming hip-hop act to combine the name of a popular Radio 4 show with that of an Israeli firearm http://www.island.liu.se/~i97joajo/deserte.html ... Now That's What I Call Music To Make Me Shoot My Classmates: new from famed non-German Glaswegians ATARI TEENAGE RIOT, noise nostalgia chaos "60 Second Wipeout" (RRP 16.99, Borders 13.99) sounds almost exactly like long-lost demo tapes of Mark E Smith yelling over experimental drum and bass beats from 1992 with someone tuning in and out of John Peel's punk guitar round-up in the backgroud. Still, over 13 tracks (plus live "Bonus CD"), it does eventually outstay its welcome... >> 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 "a bit techy... the best way to stay up to date on new biscuits and cereals" [.NET MAGAZINE, June 1999, p52] 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. 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