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                    "I might be threatening to write code."
                                    - BILL GATES, ex-CEO of Microsoft
                                ...or I might not. Get my drift, DOJ?


                                >> HARD NEWS <<
                                 fernando poos

         Plenty of corporomancy in the air this week, as pundits
         attempted to guess the future by observing movements in the
         heavens. AOL entered into conjunction with the
         Time Warner constellation, prompting the prophet of
         slashdoterati, Jon Katz, to doomsay the end of the world.
         Microsoft was occluded by Caldera in a $150 million plus
         settlement in the DR-DOS case, followed by the declension of
         now ex-CEO Bill Gates, to be replaced by a Steve Ballmer
         ascendant in the astro-organisational charts. But do stellar
         movements like this have any bearing on life in the real
         world? After all, there's not much evil AOL Time Warner
         can wield that they couldn't have managed in their slightly
         less fat bastard previous incarnations. And the
         Gates/Ballmer shuffle was just the final precession of
         Bill's longterm move from daylight operations at MSFT, all
         the better to skulk in preparation for the DOJ split.
         http://www.earthchangestv.com/breaking/January2000/0110dawn.htm
         - so moved with what I experienced today, I will set up a new page

         A Damnable Subscriber Loophole: BT Internet's engineers
         discovered they weren't the only people fiddling with the
         settings of their ADSL set-up this week. In December, the
         telco had tweaked the routers to prevent their customers
         from opening static incoming ports (and thus preventing such
         obscure Network services as passive ftp, online gaming, ICQ
         etc). Sadly for BT, the customers tweaked back: prising open
         the DSL adaptors and re-configuring them to not only
         re-instate the services, but also to change the security
         passwords so that BT couldn't change them back. In a
         heart-warming New Years Message, BT threatened its own users
         with breach of contract, and re-asserted its powers to mess
         about until it gets a service that keeps pesky consumers
         where they belong - forking out extra for anything but the
         more asymmetric of Internet services. Expect locked
         cages for the DSL roll-out next year, kids
         http://www.flowpoint.com/support/dsl/dsl_faq.htm
                                   - get it while you can, triallists

         Just when you thought the continuiiiiing story of "Mir in
         Space" couldn't get any weirder, another Western business
         partner has emerged to save Mir and convert it into that
         anti-news stalwart "an orbiting space hotel for
         billionaires". This time, who should it be but Gold & Appel
         Transfers, of the Cayman Islands. Yup, "Gold & Appel
         Transfers": last observed in Shea and Wilson's ILLUMINATUS!
         trilogy as the front organisation for neophile outlaw
         Hagbard Celine and his Legion of Dynamic Discord.
         Terrifyingly for the few who still believe that book to be
         fiction, G&A is a real company with funds of over $300
         million. President Walt Anderson made his money as
         co-founder of Esprit Telecom, and is now a major investor in
         the Space Frontier Foundation and the Roton, the orbital
         transfer system that looks like a beanie. G&A have already
         offered $21 million to the Russian government to maintain
         Mir in a serviceable orbit, with more, they say, to come.
         It's unclear whether the group of investors can really
         rustle up the huge amounts needed to maintain Mir; but
         wouldn't it be nice if, when the ISS finally boots in the
         22nd century, NASA found that a bunch of Discordians had
         beaten them to it?
         http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/front/docs/mir13.htm
 - financier "reclusive"; Cayman Islands last outcropping of Atlantis
         http://www.reston.com/nasa/watch.html
                                                              - fnord


                                >> ANTI-NEWS << 
                             berating the obvious

         CEO of Apple now officially Steve ... VIRGIN NET mess up
         e-mail passwords: but it could be worse -
         http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/emergency/ ... CEO of AOL
         Time Warner as of now, a Steve ... from the Millennium
         Doh!me: http://www.ntk.net/2000/01/14/doh/dohme1.jpg ,
         http://www.ntk.net/2000/01/14/doh/dohme2.jpg ... METACREATIONS
         seamlessly erase 100 from staff photo ... CEO of Microsoft -
         from this week, a Steve ... "Internet may be crowded". Sure
         it is, http://www.ntk.net/2000/01/14/doh/go.jpg ...
         http://www.cesg.gov.uk/news/ mildly alarming ...
         http://www.aol-girls.com/ now hosting "Street Walking The
         World Online Escort Magazine" ... explaining Y2K to any kids
         you didn't smother in their beds to save them the horror:
         http://www.fema.gov/kids/wytookie1.htm ... so bad it broke
         the wankometer: http://www.get-time.org/thinking_article_2.htm ...


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

         First the mild ripples of netfreedom's Internet Article Of Shame
         [see NTK 1999-12-24], and now some shadowy security dudes propose
         the "E-nsecure Awards" - this could be the year to redress the
         balance of all those backslapping "best of" giveaways. The
         "E-nsecures" are aimed at naming and shaming award-winning,
         beautifully designed sites that, nonetheless, ignore basic
         security precautions, thus exposing their owners to the "e-
         gnominy" of receiving an "e-gnoble" E-nsecure Award. We have
         little to add to this clearly worthwhile goal, other than maybe
         they should shorten the name (in the style of the Oscars, Tonys
         etc) to "the Ians" - partly in tribute to BT's Iain Vallance,
         partly because trying to read their manifesto is, perhaps
         intentionally, like that old "Ian (and Iain) News" sketch by Lee
         and Herring.
         http://www.netfreedom.org/
                  - No list of nominees? Did they only get 3 or something?
         http://www.e-nsecure.net/
           - yes, it *does* look a bit like that London 2600 party page...


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

         On the happy assumption that everybody else shares the same
         obsessions as we do (hey, it's worked so far), here's
         another solution to that perennial "trying to log into our
         shell account from a cybercafe because we've locked
         ourselves out of the flat" issue. MINDTERM is a Java
         implementation of an ssh client. Actually, it has been for
         ages, but it's recently got much much better (no flickering,
         signed applets so you can log into arbitrary machines, very
         cool scp file-transfer utility). Do remember: you should
         assume somebody's sniffing all your keystrokes anyway and do
         all your private correspondence by Post Office mail.
         http://www.mindbright.se/mindterm/
                                                - from sshweden
         http://www.bootlace.co.uk/space/
                                - Elite: *that's* the Java killer app

         If you haven't heard already: MP3.COM, in a Napsterish fit
         of legal hubris has created MY.MP3.COM. It's an elegant
         scam, uh, customer service, whereby you download an app that
         checks for the presence of an audio CD in your drive,
         cross-references the ID with MP3.COM's own monster track
         cache, then creates a streamable MP3 copy of the album
         tracks in a mp3.com hosted directory (without that tedious
         uploading of the ripped files). Obvious applications:
         instantly ripping all your album collection, sneakily
         ripping other people's album collections when you go around
         their house, publicly putting out your id and password so
         that everyone can auto-rip their collections for you, and
         generally undermining intellectual property rights in the
         music industry. Again. Catch it while it's uninjuncted.
         http://my.mp3.com/
         - worth checking out, no matter how badly we explained it.


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                              hasta la altavista

         SHATNER PRICELINE ads: we want MP3s ... media-map that's out
         of date already: http://www.cjr.org/owners/index.asp ... BSD
         vs BDSM: http://www.digitaldiscipline.com/products.html ...
         SANDRA in EASTENDERS another Demon exile ... Beano hits prog
         3000 - http://www.beano.co.uk/ ... the future of heavy metal
         karaoke: http://antonmaiden.eu.org/am.html ... spot the pot
         with http://www.geekhaus.co.uk/teapot/ ... 2001: A SPACE
         ODYSSEY, compressed to 1 pixel: http://www.isness.org/2001*1/
         (no, really) ... "not that I'm bitter or anything":
         http://www.hackernews.com/bufferoverflow/00/scenewh.html ...
         SAGAN on drugs! http://ftrain.com/index.php3?fileid=2000-01-11 ...
         http://www.bbc.co.uk/tw/stories/technology/0001wheeldrive.html vs
         http://www.4wdonline.com/LandRover/Series/Cuthbertson.html ...
         interesting take on "public relations":
         http://www.lewispr.com/uk/competitor/subpage.html ...


                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                      the less rude http://www.tvgohome.com/

         TV>> good to see Andrew Chitty - MD of digital TV company Illumina
         - helping Shirley Manson collect her award at the (repeated) VH1
         FASHION AWARDS (6pm, Fri, C4)... "*Do* give up your day job", we
         advise "New Adventures Of Dr Who" author Mark Gatiss, who returns
         in a new series of ubercamp "broken" comedy THE LEAGUE OF
         GENTLEMEN (10pm, Fri, BBC2)... and, yes, new post-Beadle prank
         slot TRIGGER HAPPY TV (9.30pm, Fri, C4) looks all very amusing,
         but it's no http://www.tomgreen.com/ ... after boring us all to
         death with The Exorcist, Mark Kermode lauds *another* dated 'n'
         overrated '70s genre movie THE FRENCH CONNECTION (8.55pm, Sat,
         BBC2)... similarly, Channel 4, inexplicably, devotes an evening to
         a show it doesn't seem to own the rights to, in CHARLIE'S ANGELS
         NIGHT (from 8pm, Sat, C4) - unless it's still part of their
         "cocaine" season... and "watch the skies" for Howard Hawks '50s
         scifi THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1.20am, Sat, BBC2), though
         John Carpenter's shape-shifting remake is actually closer to the
         short story original... enthusiastically casting doubt on parents
         who make tearful televised pleas to "help catch our daughter's
         killer", CROCODILE TEARS (10pm, Mon, ITV) focuses on 15 recent
         cases where it was *actually them who did it*... should anyone
         still care, THE X FILES (10.20pm, Wed, BBC1) is the "long take"
         time-travel Bermuda Triangle one... and notorious spoilsports
         HORIZON (9.30pm, Thu, BBC2) reveal that that Peru's "Nasca Lines"
         *aren't* alien runway markings after all, but the work of some
         fucked-up ancient religious cult or something...

         FILM>> a triple treat this week for fans of serial killers and/or
         human remains as, for starters, Spike Lee churns out his grittily
         overwrought Italian-American remake of "Do The Right Thing" (with
         sex scenes instead of Public Enemy) in '70s disco heatwave soap
         SUMMER OF SAM (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ : The listing is
         not fit for display due to the vulgarity of the movie). It's a bit
         like "This Life" set in the "Boogie Nights" era with someone
         picking off characters with a .44 handgun, though not as much of a
         recommendation as that sounds... despite the presence of Married
         With Children's Ed O'Neill, Angelina "Hackers" Jolie's ongoing
         audition for Jodie Foster's "Hannibal" role is by far the best
         thing about graphic sub-Silence Of The Lambs knock-off THE BONE
         COLLECTOR (imdb: new-york / brooklyn-bridge / police / destiny /
         quadriplegic / helicopter / serial-killer) - although action hack
         Philip "The Saint" Noyce keeps sticking her in contrived "Crystal
         Maze" set-ups where bedridden Denzel Washington, against the
         clock, yells murder-solving instructions at her... and salt-of-
         the-earth Oirish folk may be poor - *but they've got each other* -
         reveals ponderous vomit-packed poverty porn ANGELA'S ASHES (imdb:
         drama) - the ashes are a cremated serial-killer-style "trophy"
         taken from one character, possibly "Mrs Doyle" from Father Ted...

         THE BONER COLLECTOR>> full report on our apocalyptic server-
         busting Y2K Kwiz next week (so still time to mail in *your* DIY
         compositions) - though, it's official, you *can* stop sending us
         "19100" pages now (especially http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~lenzo/yapc/
         which, believe us, has been "wrong" for some time)... NICK DRAGE
         leapt to attention over last week's assertion regarding "season 3
         of Buffy The Vampire Slayer", enquiring "Tut, tut, what kind of
         nerds are you? It's season FOUR", though then spoiled the effect
         by failing to get NTK 1999-12-24's reference to the "Argos dog
         penis" nicked off us by The Graham Norton Show. No, Nick, we
         meant *this* Argos dog penis: http://www.ntk.net/doh/991210dog.jpg
         ...subsequent to which, MARK WHITAKER mailed us his "treasured"
         (yet popular) piece of phallic clip art, an ad for the
         Northumberland Lawn Tennis & Squash Rackets Club in the Newcastle
         Yellow Pages: http://www.ntk.net/2000/01/14/doh/tennis.gif . Please
         stop sending us these, you're ruining the "boner" section's
         sophisticated tone... similar concerns were raised by the
         Mimesweeper program at FLEMINGS.COM, which rejected NTK 1899-12-31
         "because it contains unacceptable words or phrases, e.g. jokes or
         profanities". The handy output log enclosed ("Found phrase Value
         20, Text 'sex ', Found phrase Value 100, Text 'COCAINE '") gave
         some indication of how amusing or profane it thought we were
         being, while (at last!) establishing than cocaine is, officially,
         5 times more profane (or amusing) than sex... clearly not a
         problem for ANDY ISAACSON, who mailed to confirm unsubstantiated
         reports of Richard Stallman singing the "Free Software" song at an
         NTK "event" in London, then being rushed by geeks who wanted him
         to sign their copies of the sheet music, and "at least one girl
         who got him to sign her collar bone". Well, we've checked, and
         we're sorry to say these rumours are false: the girl concerned
         insists it was her breast that RMS signed. Yup, we don't get out
         often, but when we do: "hoo, boy"...


                               >> 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.
               Registered at the Post Office as "Web Activists"

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