Need To Know 1999-10-29

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"We don't make these investments to get a return," said Andersen spokesman Andrew Giangola. "We make them because we want to be involved in a hot and exciting online business." http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1008-200-922493.html?tag=st.cn.1002newsfd ...perhaps not the management consultancy you'd paid good money for >> HARD NEWS << they thought they knew Just when you thought you'd wait forever for a free DVD player, along come two cracks at once. The first was the leaking onto the Linux LIVID player mailing list of the DVD Content Scrambling System code used by the Jon Johansen's cracker for Windows, DeCSS. Bits of the code was already written and GPL'd by Derek Fawcus - which means that the rest of the code could end up under GPL - hence the leak. More importantly, though, it also meant that the CSS decryption algorithm was now open to public scrutiny. It only took a few hours to confirm what everyone's been suspecting for a while. The CSS decryption system sucks. It works by storing a whole bunch of keys on each DVD. Industry overseers, the DVD Forum, hand out one matching decryption key to each manufacturer: if any of these company's equipment got cracked, future DVD disc's were to be pressed without this key, making the crack (and that company's hardware) unusable with new movies. Quite whether the Forum would ever dare to carry out this threat against its own licensees is unclear. It's a bit moot now, though, since open cryptanalysis of the CSS algorithm showed that it was possible to brute force *all* of the current keys in a few days. In order to preserve the system, the DVD Forum would have to disable all keys, turning every hardware player sold so far into a pile of scrap iron. Boy, these Hollywood guys are *smart*, aren't they? http://livid.on.openprojects.net/pipermail/livid-dev/1999-October/000548.html - the story in a nutshell http://livid.on.openprojects.net/pipermail/livid-dev/1999-October/000430.html - next round: let me see you wobble those tracks Who do you trust? The people at THE NEW YORK TIMES, or a porn site manager? What a relief to know that sometimes it's the same thing. The NYT was the first (but not the only) Proper Media outlet to report, open-mouthed and panting, that on the Web, "Models Auction Their Eggs to Bidders for Beautiful Children". A story like that is fit to print whether it's true or not, so maybe it's understandable that the Times' journalists didn't bother to look too closely at the RONSANGELS.COM's credentials: like, for example, the fact that the site invited potential fathers to pay $24.95 a month to look at "larger pictures" of said models. Or that RONSANGEL's sister sites included eroticboxoffice.com and the Creative Nude Network. Without getting too distasteful about it, it looks like RONSANGELS ovary play was rather more intent on re-directing sperm than distributing eggs. The good Professor, Feed's CLAY SHIRKY, has the details: http://www.shirky.com/ - CLICK HERE FOR XXXXX NYT EGG FACIALS! http://www.panix.com/~clays/biff/ - TR0ST B1FF! http://www.ronsangels.com/ - sure *looks* like a bona fide medical facility Even we can't be bothered to follow the Stray Duck/Lame Duck/Spruce Goose/Goose Chase route to its bitter end, with TELINCO's foray into the Not For Profit world of 0800 ISPs panning out, as expected, to a disappointing two-week's 0845, one week free operation. Still, there's always another more rainbow to chase. Is CALLNET0800, due to launch 1999-11-01, really what it claims? No call charges, no sign-up fee, no adverts, no time limits, and no ads, claims the press release from parent company, NORTH AMERICAN GATEWAY. No history, no reputation, and - in the case of NAG's 51% owner, Highpoint, no Website, mutter the cynics. So is NAG another cowboy Telco? Well, it doesn't look *great*. NAG themselves describe the company as having a "small and scrappy" background, having spent most of its history battling with Canada's own monopolistic telco, Teleglobe over the legality of switched hubbing (the redirecting hack that allows non-US telcos to charge cheap US international rates). Global Light Telecommunications, who own Highpoint, were a spin-off from GST Networks that turned acrimonious following a law suit. Ah, but who cares - the real question is: do they have the bandwidth and funds to cover an 0800 service? NAG, who've been building up a transatlantic ATM link for some time, seem to think so, but then they're only estimating 200,000 users before Christmas. If this is the real thing, they're going to have to handle a lot more than that. And excuse us if we don't believe their claim that they can cope with everyone in the UK subscribing. This might be one scrap which they don't want to win. http://www.callnet0800.com/ - still, we've registered. No point in being *too* prissy, is there? http://www.nag.ca/investor.htm - worrying >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious FUTURE PUBLISHING'S http://www.linuxanswers.co.uk has problems with linux browsers... AMAZON London bus ads claim company is "irresistable" (and "iliterate" too, we guess)... US ISP receives British spam, blocks all .co.uk mail... from the makers of BIBLE TRIVIA http://www.cadaco.com/prod8.htm comes http://www.cadaco.com/prodsn2.htm ... OBSERVER "POWER LIST '99", chosen by scientists, journalists, TV "celebrities", includes odd preponderance of scientists, journalists, TV "celebrities"... BBC NEWS ONLINE celebrates 2nd birthday by messing up content management system, falling over... get naked with QXL: http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Images/Misc/qxl.jpg ... YAHOO downplays Compuserve membership: (see bottom of) http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/19991025/wr/tech_americaonline_1.html KEVIN WARWICK garners yet more pointless publicity: http://www.ntk.net/doh/991029cat.jpg ... ALTAVISTA http://www.altavista.com/av3/promo/19_ads_launch.html announces that "beneath humanity's raging debates, there is a common element that unites us all. We're curious. We're all searching for our own answers" - and the answer to "how do you evade the new crap design?" is http://av.com/?text=y ... CLIFF STANFORD cancels own Demon subscription: http://x42.deja.com/getdoc.xp?AN=538965832 ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Blah blah ICA blah blah how new media is transforming contemporary narrative blah blah - blah blah speakers include one of Peter Molyneux's "young friends", Jeff Noon, Alan Welsman (of "Sony Playstations UK"), blah blah NEAL STEPHENSON blah blah UKP10 all day next Sat (1999-11-06). Alternatively, get him to hand-correct the perl code in your copy of Cryptonomicon at London's Forbidden Planet (5-6pm, Tue 1999-11-02) http://www.newmediacentre.com/talk/convergingstories/ - occasionally down due to "building work" http://www.well.com/user/neal/cypherFAQ.html#12 - still waiting for a patch file that includes the *non-crypto* errors >> TRACKING << making good use of the things that we find If we had our way, there wouldn't be any of these stinking Weblogs, and you'd be forced to get all your links and shit from the us and the New York Times. But, time moves on, and if you'd like to run your own regularly-updated page of musing and memage, BLOGGER is just the online app for you. It's a toolkit for entering, archiving and URL-catching for your own daily diary that uses ftp to transfer the page (together with your own choice of design) straight to your Website. We're a bit cagey about the whole handing over your ftp password bit, but apart from that, it seems perfectably loveable, and reputable folk like Keith "TBTF" Dawson seem to be down with it, so it's got to be okay. http://www.blogger.com/ - content management for the people http://www.tbtf.com/blog/ - and we can't even get it up for Friday afternoons no more >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista follow-up to SPECTRUM TECHNO: http://listen.to/HeyHey16K ... too much "sonic hedgehog" makes your eyes go funny: http://www.newscientist.com/ns/19991030/nshorts.html#9 - could explain girl in PLAYSTATION ads... KUNGFOO HOW-TO: http://easyweb.easynet.co.uk/~dee/kungfoo.html ... FLASH now up to 1989 videogame standards: http://www.gigablast.com/ ... weblogs slagging off DAVE WINER in return for lucrative scripting.com referrals... Yet Another WORLD'S SMALLEST WEBSERVER: http://people.ne.mediaone.net/fwhite/ace/ ... TRANSMETA update: http://www.transmeta.com ... tempting invite of the week: http://www.temporal.org/girlfriend/ vs http://members.xoom.com/_XOOM/primall/mahir/ ... but can you snap your high scores? http://members.aol.com/JWSurine/ ... "A stomach-turning tale so sexually offensive, even that ungodly crippled pervert Larry Flynt would hurl his fat little body from his wheelchair to avoid seeing it", reports (spoof) http://www.landoverbaptist.org/ of TOY STORY 2... that SCARY DEVIL MONASTERY just got a whole lot scarier: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/kpix/19991021/lo/19991021229.html ... OGHAM gets Unicode allotment: useful for fixing those Y0K problems... >> GEEK MEDIA << the less rude http://www.ntk.net/tvgohome/ TV>> Harrison Ford runaround THE FUGITIVE (9pm, Fri, ITV) slips back into the schedules, postponed from 3 weeks ago for featuring a spectacular train crash... not too many tricky choices for Victor Lewis-Smith best-of TV OFFAL - PRIME CUTS (12.10am, Fri, C4), given there was, at most, 24 minutes of decent stuff in the whole series... while MEMOIRS OF AN INVISIBLE MAN (11.05pm, Fri, BBC1) forms a handy, pre-Escape From LA reminder of how terrible John Carpenter is nowadays - and frankly, HALLOWEEN (9.40pm, Sat, BBC2) isn't no Nightmare On Elm St either... a treat for the discerning cineaste on Sunday: semi-witty Clooney/ Tarantino gorefest FROM DUSK TILL DAWN (10pm, Sun, C4); famously porn-packed Roman orgy CALIGULA (12am, Sun, C4); and, of course, MIGHTY MORPHIN POWER RANGERS: THE MOVIE (5.40pm, Sun, C5)... confusingly, John Gordon-Sinclair is credited as Gordon John Sinclair in classic teen footy romance GREGORY'S GIRL (10pm, Mon, C4)... Bruce Willis plays two Prohibition -era mobs off against each other in Yojimbo remake LAST MAN STANDING (9pm, Tue, C5)... and Jodie Foster falls for a couple of highly gifted blokes who, in their own way, have each been "failed by the system", first in child prodigy weepie LITTLE MAN TATE (8pm, Wed, C5), then in definitive serial chiller THE SILENCE OF THE LAMBS (10pm, Thu, C5)... FILM>> obviously tricky to assess its original impact after all the hype, but that doesn't stop THE BLAIR WITCH PROJECT (imdb: low-budget / map / maryland / myth / witchcraft / film-maker / cinema-verite / fake-documentary / legend / forest / lost-in-woods) from being a lazy-paced dud-ending big-screen disappointment - you know, Americans must *love* passably competent executions of moderately original ideas. Still, the bickering film students are convincingly annoying - get ready to root for the bad guy... slightly more promisingly, John "Sure Thing" Cusack battles Billy Bob "Armageddon" Thornton over Angelina "Hackers" Jolie in air-traffic-control unofficial-Sling-Blade-sequel geekmatch PUSHING TIN (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ : a married man taking a married woman other than his wife to a restaurant; wearing underwear as street clothes; open mouth kissing and exchanging the contents; "The universe tends toward chaos" which is a lie about God's Perfection. Things in the universe tend toward equilibrium, not chaos.) Mike "Four Weddings And A Funeral" Newell fumbles the romantic comedy but almost recaptures the testostero-fest videogame faceoffs of "Tron"... James Woods, Sheryl "Laura Palmer" Lee, and straight-to-video stalwart Thomas Ian Griffith mark the B-movie status of sub-Buffy shoot-em-up JOHN CARPENTER'S VAMPIRES (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : "Passed '18' for strong, gory vampire violence") - nonetheless, a vast improvement on unfunny Aussie-in-London carry-on carrion MAD COWS (imdb: comedy): Anna Friel, Noel Gallagher, Mohamed Al-Fayed and Sophie Dahl - *together at last!*... FEEBDACK>> not often we get to revel in what the imdb calls "incorrectly regarded as goofs" (great name for a band, by the way), but thanks to everyone who wrote in alleging the GOLDFISH credit card was "run by Centrica" (nee British Gas) and not HFC, the folks behind "Marbles" [NTK 1999-10-22]. Well, http://biz.yahoo.com/prnews/991005/il_hfc_ban_1.html clarifies that HFC "issue" these cards on behalf of third parties, while http://www.marbles.co.uk explains why they're promoting the rather less-than-snappy getmarbles.co.uk... a similar case of mistaken identity seems to be the chief concern of GREAT WESTERN TRAINS, who've apparently contacted the ISP hosting http://stop.at/signal.109 [NTK 1999-10-15], citing an attempt to "pass off" their logos as well as calling the content "offensive and insensitive". Not so, says the webmaster, who "got an email from a passenger from coach G the other day telling me it was the funniest thing he'd seen for a long time"... and two readers praised our regular links to http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ - ROBERT BASKERVILLE reporting that searching the front page for "Not computed" takes you instantly to the kind of film you're looking for. CHRIS O'SHEA further added "How about a competition to find the stupidest sentence/paragraph made from the NSA spook keywords list?" [as in NTK 1999-10-22: http://www.attrition.org/attrition/keywords.html ], with his own examples; if you don't send in any better ones we'll print them in a future issue... no howls of outrage from defensive Dreamcast owners as yet, though "GRAF" alerted us to the fact that the Sonic Adventure music "when Tails and Sonic get split up (also acessible as the sound test - events -> sadness)" sounds like the track "After All", from The Cardigans' album, "Life"... but the biggest reaction, as ever, was to last week's comics review [NTK 1999-10-22]: "It really winds me up when fanboys fall for the hype around X-Men", frothed MATT HALL, going on to recommend Bryan Talbot's Heart Of Empire ("sequel to original steampunk classic Luther Arkwright"), Preacher, and the collected first part of DC Batman's No Man's Land, as if we hadn't heard of them. In his defence, "I didn't fall for the hype about the comics, just the movie", pleads review writer BEN MOOR, dissing all Matt's choices in return. NTK regrets that this correspondence is now closed... >> 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 "favourite, snide" http://www.mouthorgan.com/bin/nimue?type=article&date=19991014 NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Unsubscribe? Mail ntknow-unsubscribe@lists.ntk.net Subscribe? Mail ntknow-subscribe@lists.ntk.net NTK now is supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.ntk.net/books/ (K) 1999 Special Projects. 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