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    "And as we were lying there after, falling slowly asleep, pressed
    close to each other in the twin size bed, I whispered the words I
    had been waiting our whole trip, the whole night to say, 'I love
    you.'
    
    There was a moment of silence, and I heard his reply whispered
    back.

    'I know.'"
          - http://www.jennicam.org/~jenni/journal/1003.html
      ...Jenni Jennicam dating man who THINKS HE'S HAN SOLO!


                                >> HARD NEWS <<
                                  sick views

         Only a few months to go before the definitive "Most
         mind-bogglingly confused Internet story of the Millennium"
         can be awarded - and from nowhere, THE OBSERVER leaps into
         the lead. Judge's checklist at the ready, everyone!
         Ulterior-agenda touting source, check: "At an FBI-sponsored
         gathering of international law enforcement agencies in
         Germany last month, one National Criminal Intelligence
         Service (NCIS) officer claimed that criminals ... were now
         developing a new generation of drugs, the effects of which
         could be experienced without actually possessing them.".
         Pseudo-scientific justification straight outa Snowcrash,
         check: "digital stimulants and hallucinogens, transmitted
         across the Internet... could create new forms of addiction
         rivalling heroin and cocaine". Extra bonus for gratuitous
         Kevin Warwick appearence: "'The question is not whether
         virtual-reality narcotics can be created, but how soon they
         can be put on the market.' said Professor Warwick". And
         finally, dry online dismissal from saner counsel: "I can see
         John Abbott [head of NCIS] holding up a microchip to the
         next Select Committee session saying 'This is what we're up
         against - The nam-shub of Enki'. " - Caspar Bowden, FIPR.
         Who can possibly beat this? 
http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/observer/uk_news/story/0,3879,88419,00.html
                                   - Jonathan U-T? Are you out there?
http://www.hyperreal.org/intersection/tools/msdos/graphics/eye_candy/pc-dope.txt
                                               - we're so there, dude

         Lots of finger-twiddling and money-wasting in the moribund
         ISP market these day. VIRGIN NET, always eager for a bit of
         publicity, abandoned their plans for a call centre just a
         few days before it was due to open, gathering some great
         "Branson puts 150 people out of work" headlines on HTV and
         the local press. The company has sworn to re-employ all the
         staff: which should be pretty simple, given the number of
         vacancies that have cropped up ever since new MD ALEX HEATH
         arrived. Demon's grouchy scottish step-father, SCOTTISH
         TELECOM, also conducted some curiously counter-productive
         rebranding, naming themselves with great fanfare (and too
         much bloody Flash), "Thus". And thus, it came to be that
         disgruntled Demon employees provided their own coverage of
         the launch (see below). In an unfortunate turn of events,
         Demon's MD Chris Goodall was caught in the Paddington train
         disaster: and no, we're not going to make any "off the
         rails" jokes here.
         http://www.let-it-be-thus.com/
                              - it crashes Navigator. Still no jokes.
         http://www.what-is-the-fuss.com/
                - oh, yeah, Demon users love this kind of spending 
         http://www.newsunlimited.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,89634,00.html
                                   - a soupcon of perspective, please
         http://www.great-western-trains.co.uk/news/pressrelease/template/
                         - now do your own damage limitation campaign

         "No, no! I said rip *off* the iMac fans!" screams STEVE
         JOBS, but it's too late: The new Apple machines are leaving
         the factory, and the new low low price point of $999 is
         already in place. It only leaves Steve to give his usual,
         crowd-pleasing launch speech, rich with ironies for those
         too bitter and twisted to concede how well Apple's doing
         these days. Steve proudly declares Mac OS as the best
         multimedia OS around, minutes after the live Webcast has
         ground to a halt with too many users. And he ends with
         moving tribute to the families of employees, praising them
         for their tolerance as their loved ones are worked into
         states of nervous exhaustion to obey his commands. He's
         still refusing to reveal were the bodies are buried, though.
         http://www.ntk.net/doh/19991008jobs.jpg 
- good to see Steve one inch shorter: but that "integrated vent" worries us


                                >> ANTI-NEWS << 
                             berating the obvious
        
         SPRINGFIELD massacre family sues Kinkel parents for giving
         Kip a gun... canny telcos start raising local call
         charges... EASYEVERYTHING blocks access to www.2600.com and
         www.hackernews.com ... EIDOS "unhappy" about new URWIRED ad
         campaign... DREAMCAST TITLE WATCH: new releases: "Seaman",
         "Soul Calibur", and the gripping "Let's Make A Professional
         J-League Soccer Club"... REGISTER moves into post-modern
         critique: http://www.theregister.co.uk/991007-000015.html
         ... SPRINGFIELD massacre family's son shoots brother dead in
         hunting accident... MICROSOFT adds bloat to abbreviations:
         http://www.ntk.net/doh/19991008ms.jpg ... Pee-Wee Herman to
         host TV gameshow of YOU DON'T KNOW JACK... "THESHARE.COM,
         an online brokerage, has tried to do something new in four
         key technical areas." - FINANCIAL TIMES, : one being the
         look of their Website, http://www.theshare.com/ ...
         "Dartmouth College is offering a $100,000 prize to the first
         programmer that can pass the Turing Test.", says SLASHDOT:
         guess Hemos isn't up to it... "If I do cowboy novels I'll be
         Iain Z. Banks. And Iain X. Banks for pornography." - and we
         thought Z was for the erotic vampire stories ...
         http://www.google.com/search?q=more+clueless+than+Slashdot+posters
         uncovers the complete JON KATZ archive... Unfortunate lead sentence: 
         http://cnn.com/US/9910/06/legalizing.drugs.01/index.html ...


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

         "When, oh, when," you asked us, "are you planning on doing
         another NTK LIVE? That combination of obscure technical
         jokes read out in nervous middle-class voices plus overlong
         'comedy' sketches was surely one of the webcast highlights
         of 1998!" Fortunately, we've assembled a rather more varied
         line-up for our next online audio outing, with something of
         a musical theme: duelling theremins, ALEXEI SHULGIN's
         singing 386DX, squealing miked-up vegetables, the unveiling
         of our electro-acoustic "hacker filk" project LAMER VS
         KRAMER, Free Software square dancing, plus a
         yet-to-be-confirmed mystery guest who "may have had
         something to do with the KLF". We're currently aiming for
         (mid? late?) evening on Wed 1999-10-20, at The Foundry, nr
         Hoxton Square, London EC2 (Old St tube); admission is free
         but numbers are limited so mail advance@spesh.com to be sure
         of getting in.
         http://www.ntk.net/live/
                                 - no, not Tammy Wynette. She's dead.
         http://www.audiorom.com/presence/
                      - should be more laughs than these guys, anyway


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

         In this, the final, most decadent phase of the
         Retrocomputing Era, we see two mannerist tendencies emerge.
         There is the school of the remake: re-implementing classic
         games from scratch to take advantage of the latest PCs. More
         than two colours per character space is encouraged. Haunting
         MIDI reinterpretations are composed. Three-D, fully-rendered
         intros are willfully inserted. Disgusted by the betrayal,
         purists turn inward to their final refuge: implementing a
         UNIX game server for the ZX Spectrum that lets the user
         download emu game dumps, and then pipes them back into the
         original hardware by simulating a ZX Spectrum tape-recorder.
         Questions: Which is the perfection of reality? Who are the
         true inheritors? And when's Mire Mare due?
         http://remakes.wax.nu/
                                                  - how retro-fitting
         http://www.philosys.de/~kunze/zxlink/
                               - for those that prefer the real thing
         http://www.multimedia.lth.se/~m96mma/donkey2/ 
                                           - or the really real thing


                                >> MEMEPOOL << 
                              hasta la altavista

         I think you underestimate the power of
         http://www.microsith.com/ ... "Some environmental issues." at
         http://www.missilebases.com./ ... voices from the L0pht
         http://www.theconnection.org/connection/archive/1999/10/1007a.shtml
         ... for tabloid readers who'd rather not read any more:
         http://www.dailynewspix.com/ ... fully GPL-compliant Tux at
         http://rio.dhs.org/penguin.html ... Slashcix! D. Evnull
         hosts http://www.waitstate.com/ ... LART, San Fran style
         http://www.srl.org/machines/pitching/index.html ... gibber:
         http://www.linas.org/linux/i370.html ... the puppet love of
         http://bak.spc.org/radio/datacide.ram ... Hurray, James: we
         only have ten minutes of battery life left !
         http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/features/1999/09-27bond.htm


                               >> GEEK MEDIA << 
                                 get out less
         
         TV>> biggest surprise of THE NATION'S FAVOURITE SONG LYRIC
         (10.20pm, Fri, BBC1) will be if the voting public don't
         confuse it with a) their favourite *song* - "Imagine",
         "Bridge Over Troubled Water" etc, and/or b) their favourite
         tune from the last 18 months... the ever-excellent POP-UP
         VIDEO UK (1.15am, Fri, C4) promises "popped" versions of
         promos from UK artists - as opposed to, say, Sting And The
         Police http://www.spinthebottle.com/pop_stop3.asp ... and
         following last-week's Arnie double-whammy, ITV wheels out a
         patchy Harrison Ford on-the-run double bill, with the ace
         THE FUGITIVE (9pm, Fri, ITV) lamely pursused by Euro-
         nonsense FRANTIC (10.55pm, Sat, ITV)... "overrated at the
         time", "still embarrassingly smug" unlikely to be among the
         plaudits in yet another BBC tribute to one of their own
         sodding shows, MONTY PYTHON NIGHT (8.55pm, Sat, BBC2) - do
         you have to sit through the whole thing to see the South
         Park "This Kenny is dead" sketch?... C5 at least stays true
         to its roots with toe-tapping glam-trash celebration ABBA
         DAY (from 12.30pm, Sun, C5) - unlikely to trouble the
         "Nation's Favourite Song Lyric" unless there's a category
         for "Oddest Imagery By Scandinavians Using English As A
         Second Language"... and there's three dire blockbusters to
         see you through the rest of the week: Kenneth Branagh
         creating a frickin' monster in MARY SHELLEY'S FRANKENSTEIN
         (10pm, Sun, C4)... Geena Davis' dull chick action-flick
         "Total Recall" retread, THE LONG KISS GOODNIGHT (9pm, Tue,
         C5)... and the appallingly episodic recent Bond effort
         TOMORROW NEVER DIES (8pm, Wed, ITV), in which the
         quick-thinking secret agent tackles an in-cockpit villain
         garroting him from behind by activating the bad guy's
         ejector seat - a course of action which would surely have
         torn his own head off...
         
         FILM>> yup, the trailer does show all the best bits of well-
         meaning dweeb smut AMERICAN PIE (imdb: masturbation-scene /
         diarrhoea / sperm / pie / vomit - too much "ingominy" to be
         listed at http://www.capalert.com/capreports/) - but oddly
         that doesn't spoil its endearingly filthy hilarity. As
         usual, it's not particularly based around the popular song
         of the same name, but you can always amuse yourself trying
         to work out whether the lead looks more like Matt Jones or
         Yoz Grahame... vying with "Mickey Blue Eyes" for the "Most
         Photoshopped-looking Poster Of The Year" comes Richard "OAP"
         Gere and Julia "oddly wide mouth" Roberts in RUNAWAY BRIDE
         (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ : reckless driving;
         sexual comments, printed and spoken, some by a grandmother;
         dialogue of a topless photo, no visuals; "The beast is in
         her heart" in a background song) - both Roberts' head and
         pose look very odd, with Gere's boots apparently sticking
         out of her ass... and while we searched frantically for a
         female perspective on controversial French degradation drama
         ROMANCE (imdb: sex), reader Vicky Clarke fortuitously
         alerted us to the verdict of Marie-Claire magazine: "should
         be banned for pomposity, not sex"...

         FEEBDACK>> thanks to everyone who wrote in supporting last
         week's "Grey Day vs Gray Day" campaign [NTK 1999-10-01];
         even http://www.cometosilver.com/please.html ("Look But
         Don't Steal!) replaced its clueless reference to that
         famously in-copyright author, William Shakespeare, with a
         link to the New York Times - but then neglected to change
         the now-incongruous comment "Lets (sic) go back to
         Shakespeare" later on... helpfully providing a variation on
         our "it's 'Yankee Doodle' on the TRS-80 all over again -
         again" tagline, "I take it when I heard 'The William Tell
         Overture' on an ASR-33 (that was the teletype we used with
         the PDP-8), you hadn't been been born yet", remarked JON
         SHEMITZ, nostalgically adding "Paper tape. Feh. You're lucky
         you missed it"... while MARTIN WARD focused on the (equally
         important) job of saving humanity, pointing out that the
         flowchart for the transactional barcode tattoo
         http://www.patents.ibm.com/cgi-bin/viewpat.cmd/US05878155__
         [NTK 1999-09-17] puts "the CPU" in an infinite loop if the
         tattoo is not in the database - "a single point of failure
         with a trivially simple denial-of-service attack". Phew,
         that's the events of "Revelations" postponed for another
         applications round, at least... an individual known only as
         "MINDBREAKER" leapt to the defence of semi-syndicated
         Canadian action show "La Femme Nikita", harshly dismissed in
         NTK 1999-10-01, unreservedly recommending its "staggeringly
         lethal office politics" in addition to "gunplay and
         explosions" and the fact that the lead is "a fresh-faced,
         6-foot looker from Down Under"... but most alarming bits of
         TV feedback ever are (unconfirmed) reports that child-genius
         composer DANIEL PEMBERTON, skimming NTK's regular gag that
         the film "Young Einstein" features new media's very own
         Yahoo Serious lookalike Matt Jones, *actually rang Matt up*
         to inquire if they really were making a film of his life,
         and (presumably) could he do the soundtrack? Well, obviously
         we were joking - but if Davey Winder reckons he can get
         funding for his life-story, why not Matt Jones? Eh? Eh?...


                               >> 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 
              "search engines, in general, more evil than satan"
                    http://www.ntk.net/doh/19991008ntk.gif

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