Need To Know 1999-06-18

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"Humans are two kinds of thing, Blackmore has concluded: meme machines and selves. Having read this several times, I have no idea what it means. Or why anybody would care." - JON KATZ, http://www.slashdot.org/ ...wait - is he referring to the book, or his previous sentence? >> HARD NEWS << us versus you Volume XXVII of that endless Dianetics saga, BATTLEFIELD: ALT.RELIGION.SCIENTOLOGY. In the last fortnight: Scientologists cheered a Dutch court's ruling that hyperlinking to a pirated doc is itself an infringement of copyright. But some pretty bad engrams must have clouded the rest of that decision - those leaked Church docs they'd sought to ban online *weren't* copyright, and so stay up and linked - including the scurrilous (and yet oddly dull) Fishman Affidavit. Not so good news in the States, where a.r.s litigant KEITH HENSON (ex-husband of happy hacker hate figure CAROLINE MEINEL, obscure gossip fans) did indeed lose his appeal against the Scientologists in a case that suggests (in the US) that copyright can protect even alleged criminal material... http://www.xenu.net/ - all the clams you can eat http://www.demon.co.uk/castle/woods.html - interesting blind-spot in the Bonnie Woods press release too ...but not, it seems, the other way around. We covered the BUSINESS SOFTWARE ALLIANCE's tactics of "opt-out" piracy investigations back in NTK 1999-06-11. The routine then was - you reply to the BSA's unsolicited spam asking nosy questions about your business, or they put you on their suspected pirate list. The follow-up mailing was apparently even cheerier - "imprisonment... prosecution... damage to an organisation's reputation can also be irreparable ... It is highly advisable for companies to return the duplicate form enclosed within the next 7 days, or we'll have to break your legs..." The Advertising Standards Authority have upheld the complaint, saying that business circulars generally don't "warrant this tone of fear". Whose fear, though? The small companies, or the increasingly desperate BSA? http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?back=a98/now1106.txt&l=62#l - imagine if RMS had these people on his side http://www.asa.org.uk/adj/adj_3637.htm - ok, we lied about the broken legs. so who you gonna call? Consider it a Falco across the bows. The omphalos of high weirdness, Austin's FringeWare store, is beeping a quiet SOS. We can't tell from here whether they're genuinely closing down, or if the 75% OFF - EVERYTHING MUST GO signs, and a unusually coherent plea for help from certified cyber- psycho Don Webb is just an ingeniously direct media hack to up sales. We can't test either theory though, because their online catalog is on the fritz, and their website's got bad links hanging off it like an explosion in a frankfurter factory. Nonetheless, you should know that FringeWare has been, if not the home, then the battered half-way house for half of the memage in your head. Schwa, SubGenius, the FringeWare review, BoingBoing, them Bots which win the Turing Contest, the Dead Media Project. I'm sure they'd consider it an honour if you were in the area and find out - as was always FringeWare's creed - WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON. http://www.cyberpsychos.netonecom.net/fringe/185th.html - oh, what do we look like, journalists? Find out for yourself >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious Annual AMATEUR PHOTOGRAPHER "erotica" issue is "best selling of year"... NSI "dragging feet" over domain transition... Nana Visitor: "DS9 movie not likely"... VIGNETTE claims they are "ranked among the top in the field of so called 'content management systems'" - well, quite... tickets "still available" for British Interactive Multimedia Association Awards... BBC ONLINE extensively plug SETI@HOME screensaver - internal BBC IT ban it for fear of [spaceborne?] viruses... money supply must be tighter than we thought: http://www.currency.com/ ... http://www.divx.com/ attempts upbeat tone over inevitable Falco: "View Rebate Form!"... US still reticent to put in ground troops, we see: http://www.ntk.net/doh/bbc990618a.gif ... and what happens when you don't pay your TV license: http://www.ntk.net/doh/bbc990618b.gif ... use your PSION 5mx to make yourself up to 9 years younger than your ALT tags: http://www.series5mx.com/New_user/profiles/index.asp ... http://www.boyzone.co.uk/ strangely slow this week: but http://www.boyzone.com/ keeping up with demand, though... proper media oddly one-sided with their J18 reports: http://bak.spc.org/j18/site/uk.html for a tot of balance ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Borrowing both Access All Areas' acronym and venue, THE ASSOCIATION OF AUTONOMOUS ASTRONAUTS begin a 10-day festival of pie-in-the-sky amateur spaceflight antics with an "Intergalactic Conference" at London's University of Westminster, from noon tomorrow 1999-06-19. We don't know whether to be pleased or disappointed since one of them discreetly explained that they *know* they don't have a chance of reaching space in the forseeable future; they're just a bunch of like-minded ne'er-do-wells having some sort of art-hippy pseudo-sci-fi laugh. Still, sufficiently "autonomous", we note, to pick a launch window when many of their core audience will be at Glastonbury. Had they scheduled it a month later, it would have been the 30th anniversary of Apollo 11's landing on the moon, arguably the most visible achievement of the military-industrial complex in this particular field. http://www.deepdisc.com/space1999/ - see this week's "The Onion" for Space: 1999 '99... >> TRACKING << making good use of the things that we find Flash! We love you! But we only have fourteen hours to download this page! Macromedia Flash 4 - both the editing software and the plugin everyone will have upgraded to by about year 2015 - are now officially available. On the whoop-de-fucking-doo list: now-mandatory MP3 audio support, forms, importable palettes, and some kind of admittedly cool state persistence that lasts between sessions. Available now for Windows 95/NT, MacOS and oh. Sorry, Linux users - oh *dear*. Did we forget about you again? http://www.macromedia.com/software/flash/ - and here it is all "free sourced" as well >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista UK public not buying PHANTOM MENACE games to "avoid spoiling the film"... hmm: BT INTERNET doesn't stop simultaneous logins... CHRIS MORRIS re-appears: as Observer's suicidal RICHARD GEEFE... Citizens of KAMCHATKA OBLAST *ask* to be UN protectorate... this explains *a lot* about JAVASCRIPT http://people.netscape.com/brendan/ ... http://slashnull.org - it's like an alternate universe SLASHDOT. Oh, wait - it is ... the "ANSWER ME" games news has been waiting for http://www.oldmanmurray.com/realnews.wc ... fog in a bottle, cloud chamber, TESLA COIL, toast: things you can make in a kitchen at http://freeweb.pdq.net/headstrong/Index.htm ... 3D sculptures of CGI classics - gloriously missing the point http://www.xs4all.nl/~notnot/ ... well, here we go again: http://www.irishnews.com/k_archive/180699/nnews1.html ... sub-"Thrift Score" zine CHEAP DATE falls in with bad crowd: http://www.observer.com/cgi-win/homepage.exe?nyo1/sd062199 ... looks like ADAM AND JOE got out just in time: http://www.geocities.com/~bjruef/Action/icepicktures.htm ... ... and find out who really would win in a fight: http://www.the-movie-times.com/thrsdir/titanicVSmenace.html ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> FRASIER (10pm, Fri, C4) switches seamlessly to repeats of early season 2... can't wait to see Amanda de Cadanet's brother again; it's a fine line between the worst and THE BEST OF THE WORD (10.30pm, Fri, C4)... and Jonathan Ross gets ironic Mini-Me sidekick Phill Jupitus to ask: who'll be the first cast member to break ranks, Alec Guiness-style, and start openly dissing The Phantom Menace, and will they do it on the FILM 99 SUMMER SPECIAL? (11.10pm, Fri, BBC1)... tons of Chaplin, Alexei Sayle, Frank Spencer falling over during BBC2's CRASH! BANG! WALLOP! (from 9pm, Sat, BBC2) slapstick evening - plus, at 10.10pm, Alan Partridge (fictional) and Sally Phillips (believed real) discussing home videos... a fast repeat for compellingly overlong Ginger idiotumentary GERI (7.10pm, Sat, C4)... followed by Graham Norton's *shocking* revelations that Hollywood stars use drugs, have sex etc in HOLLYWOOD UNZIPPED (9pm, Sat, C4) - good to see that his recent TV Unzipped didn't feature his own show's blatant faking of phone calls with "webpage designers"... Daniel Pemberton emails to boast he did the music for DICEWORLD (11.05pm, Sat, C4) based around the "cult" Luke Rhinehart sex-novel; let's face it, it doesn't really undermine free will, because *who picks all the dice-options in the first place?*... it's Ardal "Father Ted" O'Hanlon's turn to appear in yet another interchangeable 30something ITV dramedy featuring a comedian: BIG BAD WORLD (9pm, Sun, ITV)... up against Pauline "Mrs Doyle" McLynn in latest lah-di-dah costume nonsense ARISTOCRATS (9pm, Sun, BBC1)... "set in the 21st century" no longer has quite the same allure for cheap Comedy Nation-slot multichannel spoof HAYWIRE (10.40pm, Sun, BBC2)... AMERICAN SEX sniggers over teledildonics (10pm, Sun, Sky 1)... and, just this once, cult solo Cannonball Run road movie VANISHING POINT (11.55pm, Mon, BBC1) *does* seem to be based around the Primal Scream song of the same name. Or maybe it's the other way around... new headmaster Lenny Henry is lucky enough to be posted to a school where they don't make jokes about his wife, in sounds-like-a-hospital drama HOPE AND GLORY (9.30pm, Tue, BBC1)... while C5 - perhaps inevitably - combines its most popular strands in the form of "adult quiz show" 100 PER CENT SEX (11.35pm, Thu, C5)... FILM>> despite a dull third act and overdone social comment ("e-mail is for geeks and pedophiles"), it'll be hard to resist the lure of the latest Buffy/ Dawson's Creek crossover, Sarah Michelle Gellar's teenybopera remake of Les Dangerous Liasons CRUEL INTENTIONS (www.bbfc.com: uncut; passed "15" for strong language, moderate sex scenes and drug use). It's directed by an uncredited writer pal of the Farrellys, and the trailer makes liberal use of the Psychedelic Furs' cover of How Soon Is Now by The Smiths, last heard in the trailer for teen wicca smut "The Craft"... Jennifer Tilly follows her acclaimed turns in "Bullets Over Broadway" and "Bound" with arguably the best of the notorious "Child's Play" films; plenty of zany mayhem in BRIDE OF CHUCKY (imdb: dolls / evil-doll / sequel / supernatural / toys / cemetery / motel / wedding), directed by the bloke who did hushed-up kung-fu kangaroo nonsense "Warriors Of Virtue"... yes, this time it's unappealing Allen-impersonator Ken Branagh besieged by beautiful women, *but maybe that's part of the joke* in effortful elderly Woody Allen cry-for-help CELEBRITY (imdb: celebrities / film-making / producer / actress / model / editor / tv); also answers the "Where are they now?" question for the once-promising Winona Ryder... otherwise it's wait-for-video time for: undistinguished romantic comedy JUST THE TICKET (imdb: con-artists), featuring unusual "Andie / Andy" action in the form of leads MacDowell and Garcia, plus a gag involving a "laserdisc of Stargate", from the director of "National Lampoon's Attack Of The 5'2'' Woman"... Sharon Stone tends to (another?) orphan child in largely unnecessary '80s remake GLORIA (imdb: chase / mafia), directed by Sidney "Network, Dog Day Afternoon" Lumet, and possibly based around the Laura Branigan song of the same name... and some old black-and-white re-releases in the form of Orson Welles' CITIZEN KANE (imdb: sled / mansion / christmas / alternative-history / opera / political / singer / 1870s / newspaper / wealthy / film-in-film / deep-focus / 1920s / 1930s / scandal / mistress / business-tycoon / business / journalism / death / classic / famous-line / 1890s / great-depression / dying-words / millionaire / fictional-biography / library / flashback / newsreel / narrated)... plus the posthumous Director's Cut of TOUCH OF EVIL (imdb: based-on-novel / famous-entrance / border / mexico) - apparently re-edited according to the master's wishes, but not so that you'd notice or anything... FEEBDACK>> following those "One Year On" flashbacks we ran a couple of weeks ago, TAMSIN HUGHES asserts: "this Belgian dioxin scare: it struck me that chlorine is proving to be a problem in all these products - including chicken". Is this perhaps what we meant by our Nostradamusly-cryptic warning in NTK 1997-06-27: "next food scare: chlorinated chicken"? Well, this happens to be one of those memes where a) we can no longer remember what we meant by it and b) we're not even sure we understood it at the time. So, to sum up: yes, we did... on a more serious note, a tipster asks: are the "Bindman & Partners" acting for online libel- winner LAURENCE GODFREY [NTK 1999-06-04] the same ones as behind this stirring Charter 88 free-speech declaration http://www.charter88.org.uk/pubs/violations/bindm.html ? (in fact those weren't his exact words, but obviously we're treading *very* carefully here)... echoing NTK 1999-05-07, the excellently-named ALAN MOUNTAIN describes The Weekly as "a fair attempt at an English Onion", though his favourite page http://www.theweekly.co.uk/further_purchases.html is of course much more closely "borrowed" from the National Lampoon, which - in its turn - clearly influenced The Onion. In response, The Weekly this week chose to go "on holiday"... keen to see us resume our temporarily-truced vendetta against OFFICIAL PLAYSTATION MAGAZINE [NTK 1999-05- 28], ADRIAN MOULDER remarks: "That largely uncritical review of Star Wars: Episode 1 in the last issue - I wonder if it was 'approved' by Lucasarts?"... PAUL RANDALL reckons that last week's "Spectrum techno" [NTK 1999-06-11] sounds "an awful lot more like an Amstrad CPC. Especially the repeated short/long two tone burst, which sounds a lot like the initial burst that the CPC used to gauge motor speed, and hence the following data frequencies". Lay off Paul, you're scaring the straights... and finally, after our claim that DESERT EAGLE DISCS are "the only upcoming hip- hop act to combine the name of a popular Radio 4 show with that of an Israeli firearm" [NTK 1999-05-28], reader AQUARIUS adds: "apart from 'I'm Sorry I Haven't An Uzi'". Well *done*, Aquarius - a phrase we love typing because it makes us feel like the boss-character from a 1980s Glen A Larson action series... >> 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 "often, or at least sometimes know what they're talking about." - John Browning, First Tuesday Forum (no figures available) 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. Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/ Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com - remember your work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material. Remember: Sending >500KB attachments is forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Your country may be at risk if you fail to comply.