Need To Know 2000-03-31

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"In keeping with SKY's movement towards a new interactive age, Nate Smith, SKY's Chief Executive Officer, has decided to make the wearing of suits and ties at SKY strictly optional." - New Zealand's SKY Network TV (no relation) press release ...and who lent marketing "Nudist on the Lateshift"? >> HARD NEWS << weird crews Good to see somebody's taking that stooge of the Conspiracy, the FORTEAN TIMES, seriously. We've somewhat lost track of the internecine battles between the UK anarchist factions that led up to this, but it appears that GREEN ANARCHIST (Affiliation: Radical ALF caucus. Likes: direct action, Oxford pubs, dislikes: Special Branch raids) are still very miffed at STEWART HOME (Neoist Alliance. Likes: his own "shopping, fucking, fermenting proletarian revolt" novels, dislikes: not being noticed). To the point where, on hearing that Home will be speaking at the notoriously light-hearted Unconvention, GA has decided to picket the con. And lest anyone doubt the seriousness of the FT's threat to the ecological struggle, GA add that "This protest is part of a general struggle against the activities and influence of the secret state... Hepple [a UFOlogist who GA believes is a 'state-sponsored infiltrator'] is pushing a Nazi saucers thesis, and Home is part of a general state attempt to disorientate people by branding anarchists the same thing as fascists." Well, the disorientation bit seems to be working: we're still unsure whether this is just another Home plot to up his cred amongst the three people who still care. We do however, admire the Unconvention's own response to the picket. They're planning on joining it, and will be taking time out from organising the event to pop outside and demand that they should be shut down as enemies of the people. Oh, this should be *fun*. http://www.stewarthomesociety.org/feud.htm - your guess... http://www.freespeech.org/anarch/connor.htm - is as good as ours... http://www.forteantimes.com/uncon/uncon2000/uncon2000.html - "Nudity, witchcraft and gay Nazi cryptozoologists!" may not help matters If CURADOR, the "other" Welsh hacker, really had snagged Bill Gates' credit card details, you just know that he'd be in Rio by now, rather than merely on bail in his home town of Clynderwen. Still, that didn't stop the Telegraph from reporting his boast as human interest after his bust, then Reuters taking it as read, then the whole world running the story untainted by fact-checking. Fact checking, like: the alleged credit card had the wrong number of digits. Or that Bill got his middle initial wrong. Or that he spelt his company "microsfot". And we're left wondering who, exactly, comes out looking stupider here: Curador, for crowing about his ph33rsom skills and getting busted, the media for stoking up the sad story - or the FBI, for travelling 6000 miles to nab yet another script kiddy for their quotas? http://www.telegraph.co.uk/et?ac=000116582908977&pg=/et/00/3/26/nhack26.html http://www.attrition.org/mirror/curador/curador02022000/ - password hint "something i have lots of" http://www.internetnews.com/ec-news/article/0,2171,4_328071,00.html - would you buy a second-hand quote from this man? http://www.cubicle2.freeserve.co.uk/ - not quite the "downloads" area you were hoping for Whatever it is that's fuelling the British Net stock boom, it's certainly not powered by clue. Example no. 94: AMSTRAD finally announced their thin Net client, and it turns out to be thinner than anyone could have dreamed. A souped-up fax machine that can't browse, and, in this age of free dial-ups costs you UKP UKP UKP per e-mail you send. Still, at least it can cope with GIF attachments - tapping into that lucrative monochrome CCITT porn market. But even if the thing is clearly as dead as an Acorn NetStation, that didn't stop Amstrad stocks sextupling in price as a result. And this from the man who, not so long ago, said that he didn't really get the point of e-mail... http://www.amstrad.com/HTML/emailer.htm - almost as powerful as ... http://www.nenie.org/cpcip/ - its power-user predecessor http://www.foomoon.com/imode/index_e.html - the electronic mail transmitting person is possible, too >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious Ogilvy and Mather spin-off RMG publicises client Lotus Notes rather too heavily: http://www.rmgint.com ... stop sending us fake MAHIR wannabes: http://www.pinktuxedo.co.uk/ - at least one pic also appears on http://www.fugly.net/g8/9m12.html ... http://www.ebooknet.com/printerVersion.jsp?id=1671 - taking PROJECT GUTENBERG too far? http://wsmf.org/texts/emonks/doc/ ... "Microsoft is [reluctantly] a partner in MSNBC": http://www.msnbc.com/news/387569.asp ... and this is a *pro*- peace site: http://www.gush-shalom.org/punch/ ... IAN FENN "rather disturbed" by allegations in last week's "Fenn Denn" fansite (now strangely down)... one use for SELLAFIELD's depleted Uranium: http://www.ntk.net/2000/03/31/dohsella.jpg ... odd product placement for imminent PHANTOM MENACE video release: http://www.excite.co.uk/news/news_story/technology/pa_tech_20000329203000_2.txt >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful So our new excuse for not having updated Kevin Warwick Watch is that we're at Boston's GEEK PRIDE this weekend (it's distributed! hold your own!) - and also we're awaiting the reports of operatives attending the great man's appearance at DUBLIN UNIVERSITY INTERNET SOCIETY (7pm, Wed 2000-04-05). He'll be delivering a paper entitled "Will it be Super Intelligent Machines or Cyborgs?" (no, we can't think of any possible alternatives either) - hopefully to the tune of the old "Will it be chips?" ad off the telly. http://netsoc.tcd.ie/events/9900/warwickk.html - acclaimed by noted AI expert Gillian "X-Files" Anderson http://www.geekpride.org - also, we haven't quite finished the "Linus play" yet >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Multiple partitions ahoy! While you're trying to work out what to do with the new, free, Be 5 ("did we say we made money from our OS? Non, non, non! Je suis un internet appliance partner!"), why not waste more premature bandwidth on Perl 5.6, which at least has a chance of not breaking everything you depend upon? The new version is dripping with features we're not going to understand until the next Camel book comes out, but to give you a taste: forking for Windows, Unicode support (kinda), 64-bit support (kinda), that whole sick code-in-a-regexp functionality, "autovivifying file handles", a matching set of new warnings and errors (including a "Y2K warning" whenever you do something odd with the number 19), and, apparently about 15% slower than the last one. Our favourite feature: not only has the version numbering system changed to a "v5.6.x" format, the Perlporters have introduced a special pseudo-type to support such version numbers, right damn well into the freaking language. Sauron's work, I tell you. http://www.be.com/ - the multitasking may be steady, but the business plan sure thrashes http://news.perl.org/ - sensitive souls should wait for 5.6.1. I SAID ... oh, forget it http://www.xray.mpe.mpg.de/mailing-lists/perl5-porters/2000-03/msg02269.html - even Tolkien appears to be speechless on this one http://www.netscape.com/ - and Netscape 6.0.0.0.0 comes out next week. It's like 1994 all over again! >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista liberal guilt dilemma: NETNANNY now sponsoring HUNGERSITE http://www.ntk.net/2000/03/31/netnanny.jpg - but *what* is that banner ad?... ASK JEEVES passes the Turing Drug Test: http://www.fnwire.com/features/satire-jeevesinterview.html ... 4 bits o' fun: http://www.16color.com/ ... saveglobalstar.com still available... Flintstones may be accurate, says BIBLE: http://www.christiananswers.net/dinosaurs/journey0.html ... http://www.portia.org back up... at last: ROMULAN CRUISERS you can afford to self-destruct: http://www.aricraft.com/ ... http://video.gamespot.co.uk/stories/ps/news/0,8323,2347935,00.html - hail to the KEN, baby... *too* much fucking creative: http://www.creativecomputer.freeserve.co.uk/ ... but *which is a spoof of which*: http://www.geocities.com/disturb8/ vs http://www.riot9.com ... GORE imitates chicken + onion: http://enquirer.com/editions/2000/03/24/loc_gore_does_chicken.html ... and can anyone bring "balance" to the FENG SHUI scene? http://www.fengshui-fanzine.co.uk/Editor%20Speaks.htm ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> enraged videogamers dispute Dispatches' "aggressiveness" claims on tonight's RIGHT TO REPLY (7.30pm, Fri, C4)... either they've taken the unusual step of trailing the very worst bits from the new series, or this new solo run of DA ALI G SHOW (10.30pm, Fri, C4) is shit... DV-camcorder docu THE OTHER SIDE (2.25am, Fri, C4) goes to Nevada's "Burning Man" festival - so-called 'cos of all the pale white guys who, every year, forget their sunblock... while Shannon Doherty sub-Buffy witchery CHARMED (8.05pm, Sat, C5) appears to be an unofficial spin-off of the movie "The Craft", right down to featuring that same Psychedelic Furs cover of The Smiths... Harry Hill tries to put a new spin on the old "Nil points" gags in the Eurovision TOP TEN (8.55pm, Sat, C4) - though wasn't there some overlap between last week's "Novelty" hits and the previous "One Hit Wonders"?... we're still convinced that the famous "Monsters from the Id" speech in FORBIDDEN PLANET (3.20pm, Sun, C4) is a prescient description of the internet (or possibly, Quake servers)... and supposed Michael Barrymore Larry Sanders-style vehicle BOB MARTIN (10pm, Sun, ITV) in fact appears to be a reworking of writer/standup Bob "In Bed With Medinner" Mills' dire previous stab at the genre, "The (Bob Mills) Show", right down to Garry Shandling/ Larry Sanders-like euphony between "Bob Mills" and "Bob Martin"... C4 celebrates Mother's Day with a double-bill of low-budget DIY horror DRILLER KILLER (11.15pm, Sun, C4) and close-up genital examination DICK (1.10am, Sun, C4)... Pam Grier's inexplicably badly dubbed dialogue is one of the few "highpoints" of leaden John Carpenter sequel ESCAPE FROM LA (10.10pm, Sun, BBC1)... PANORAMA (10pm, Mon, BBC1) mocks lastminute's ailing fortunes... and STAR TREK: DEEP SPACE NINE (8pm, Mon, Sky1) is finally put out of our miseries, following a 5-hour "best of" compilation - including "Trials and Tribble-ations" - all Sunday afternoon... FILM>> the ever-inconcise Oliver Stone returns with an extended Al Pacino experimental-film-techniques Nike ad testostero-fest, sure to take a hefty chunk out of ANY GIVEN SUNDAY (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ : exaggerated football violence with injuries; sex talk, comments, and innuendo, some vulgar; multiple intentional exposures of male posteriors; many thong bikinis fully exposing female posteriors; man in woman's restroom; woman in man's restroom; hate from marriage mate)... or there's the unexpected Venn diagram ignorance shown by poster claim "from the creator of Ally McBeal" for Bill Pullman / Bridget Fonda comedy croc horror LAKE PLACID (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ : ominous danger; urinating in the open; body bitten in half, showing innards spilling out; offer of sex; discussion of how crocodiles were worshipped more than Jesus; disembodied moose head)... otherwise there's the even-worse sounding prospect of Harvey "The Piano" Keitel teaming with Kate "Hideous Kinky" Winslet for a weird combo of both films in Jane Campion's HOLY SMOKE (imdb comment: "definitely the worst [movie] I have seen in a long time")... Kenneth Branagh directing Matthew "Scream" Lillard in a WW2 musical version of LOVE'S LABOURS LOST (MPAA: rated PG for sensuality and a brief drug reference)... or Jonny Lee "Hackers" Miller in another goddam period romance MANSFIELD PARK (MPAA: rated PG-13 for brief violent images, sexual content and drug use), featuring the Evening Standard poster-quote "the newest and steamiest adaptation" of that notoriously racy and still-prolific author, Jane Austen... PRO-CELEBRITY FEEBDACK>> "may Postel forgive us all" we pleaded, discussing IP-over-email protocol Mailtunnel [NTK 2000-03-10], but none other than JOHN GILMORE put us straight, revealing "Jon was a big proponent of this sort of effort" and, while RFC editor, approved publication of a number of "experimental standards" - IP via avian carriers (RFC1149), 14-line sonnets (RFC1605), and M1A1 tanks (RFC1217) - which, tragically, space considerations prevent us from reproducing in greater detail... raising the celebrity/obscurity bar still higher, ASHLEY POMEROY (believed author of "The Little Book of Living on the Edge") sent in this now-out-of-date little doh http://www.ntk.net/2000/03/31/dohstraw.jpg , positing that the picture (James Bulger, presumably) implies that Jack Straw is actually a small boy with a Teenage Mutant Hero Turtles T-shirt - something Ashley "knows for a fact to be untrue"... moderately well-known comedy writer, former NME journo (and coiner of the phrase "Pop Will Eat Itself"), DAVID QUANTICK thoughtfully let us know that his Peter Baynham/ Sally Phillips smack-com http://www.thejunkies.com is now online (Quicktime only! Feel the rush!). Thrilling new digital street-tech outsiders overturning the established media hierarchy - or just some well-established industry figures dicking around in an edit suite? You decide... ANNE WEALE, who writes the "Bookworm on the Internet" column for The Bookseller (and was once described to us, in tribute to the former Time Out net columnist, as "the new Spyder"), quite appropriately bemoans her "6th or 7th unsubscribe attempt" from lastminute.com, but then goes and spoils it all with: "Perhaps I missed something when NTK started up, but I feel it would be easier to read your amusing comments if they were arranged in conventional lines. Agreed, content is king, but not all your readers have twentysomething eyesight." Damn, you're right, Anne (if you can read this at all) - no wonder those pesky dead tree media have proved so devilishly hard to finish off... re: NTK 2003-03-17, "What do you have against Wired/ Lycos?", inquired PETER SANDERSON from commodified dissenters unamerican.com - if you've got to ask, dude, you'll never know... and, finally, previous Cinergy host and "The Word" presenter ALAN CONNOR (then HAMILTON?) picked up both the "teenage crushes" thread [NTK 2000-03-10] and our general interest in celebrity nudity, and wove them into a charming tale describing his "confused feelings" on discovering http://www.peejo.demon.co.uk/lattara/lists/drwho.htm . "You have directed us to this assiduous collator of the Splendor that is Woman once before," Alan graciously conceded, before spontaneously offering no less than *two* disclaimers: "1. I came across these sites while trying to find about Jayne Ashbourne's performance in Troilus and Cressida" and "2. And I was using Lynx, so I have no idea what the soft-porn shots with Dalek look like." Bad news Alan - most of the GIFs are broken. The frustration continues... >> 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 "Neohuman: Trained for Killing" http://www.brunching.com/cgi/toy-cyborger.cgi?acronym=NTK 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) 2000 Special Projects. 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