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        "Muslim insurgents battling Philippine troops in the south
        have a new weapon. When the shelling and gunfire let up, they
        send a barrage of scathing insults to Manila's forces by cell phone."
http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/07/biztech/articles/05talk.html
                           ...W SHL FGT U N V BCHS! W SHL NVR SRNDR!


                                >> HARD NEWS <<
                                the P. of A.U.'s

         As the anti-spamming civil war enters another round of
         mud-slinging, allow us to slide into the only language the
         computer press understands: a straight fight between good and
         evil. Mainly, GOOD PAUL VIXIE vs EVIL PAUL VIXIE. If Vixie
         is bad, he (and his boss at ABOVE.NET, Dave Rand) have been
         route-blackholing the anti-spam database ORBS just because
         they're on the board of fellow anti-spam list MAPS. And MAPS
         is going to start charging for some of its services, and
         they want stop ORBS from queering their pitch. That's what
         Alan Brown, ORBS' one-man anti-spamming army, rather
         enthusiastically intimated when he shut down his service in
         protest this week. And Alan Cox concurs. So it must be true.
         And if Vixie's *that* evil, then YESMAIL's law suit against
         MAPS is right too: the intimation there being that Vixie is
         putting Yesmail into MAPS' known spammers blackhole list,
         because he's on the board of WHITEHAT, Yesmail's main
         competitor in the lovely opt-in commercial e-mail world. But
         hold on: isn't Vixie a net.god? Didn't Vixie maintain BIND?
         Isn't Vixie running MAPS as a non-profit corp? And if Vixie
         is a *honourable* man, then Above.net is dumping ORBS
         connections internally because ORBS is breaching Above.net's
         Acceptable Use Policy by proactively scanning remote
         machines. And since ORBS's upstream provider is an Above.net
         customer and has chosen to *tell* people to route ORBS
         connections through Above.net (rather than more viable
         alternatives), that means Above.net's re-routing only
         *accidentally* routes non-Above.net connections into
         /dev/null . It's mainly ORBS' upstream provider that's
         caused the problem. And - wait a minute - if Vixie is
         *good*, then Yesmail is being blackholed because loads of
         people have complained to MAPS about Yesmail signing them up
         without their permission. Which they have. Good? Bad? Strap
         him into the IETF-approved witch-dunking apparatus immediately!
         http://tbtf.com/archive/2000-07-20.html#s03
                                 - if that wasn't clear enough...
         http://www.vix.com/
                                     - and Vixie is an honourable man
         http://www.above.net/company/management.html
                                       - money: the evil of all roots

         The UK government's new TrustUK scheme was unveiled this
         week, designed, no doubt, to stop PowerGen from storing
         7,000 credit card numbers on its Website ever, ever, again.
         Compliant Websites will be able to wear the little Java logo
         - a guarantee of security, and good old British corporate
         responsibility in e-commerce - with pride. Typically, on
         their first day, their validation program didn't work, and
         the e-mail and complaints form bounced with a mail loop.
         Also - MAPS take note - their code of practice explicitly
         permits unsolicited commercial e-mail. No, we're not making
         that up. Why doesn't the rest of the world just quarantine
         us now, and get it over with?
         http://www.trustuk.org.uk/
                 - oh, and the Java logo was written in Canada. Sigh.
         http://www.trustuk.org.uk/download/ApprovalsCriteria.pdf
               - Section 6.10. By all means read it twice to be sure.


                                >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         "serious trouble" is JOHN YOUNG's middle two names:
         http://cryptome.org/fbi-psia.htm ... one of those "beyond 
         satire" weeks at: http://mosr.net/macosrumorz/ ... FAST 
         COMPANY oddly excited about "Ideavirus" meme^H^H^H^H ideavirus
         http://www.fastcompany.com/online/37//ideavirus.html ... 
         JIMMY SMITS still battling "fiery Hispanic" typecasting:
         http://www.starwars.com/episode-ii/characters/bail_organa.html
         ... http://www.musiciansfriend.com/ does cover version of
         http://www.amazon.com ... SCOOT search for "B&Q" in Hull:
    http://www.scoot.co.uk/company/company.asp?comp=B+%26+Q&town=Hull
         prefers category "Xxchristmas Novelties in Gipsyville"... "A
         revolution is happening - it's called e-business, and it is
         based on the largest communications network in the world, the
         internet", confides http://www.oracle.co.uk/crm11ipartners/
         ... asked to help find a new name for freebie HomeSite clone
         1STPAGE, 14% of users vote for - a dummy list box item!:
    http://polls.vantagenet.com/zpolls/count.asp?rlt=112654653&id=112654653
         ... software store at http://www.amazon.co.uk recommends running 
         FREEBSD 3.3 on "Platform: Linux"... Ninfo-FALCO-mania! ... "PhD
         programmer" required to make sense of latest MARK WARD scare:
    http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_842000/842624.stm
         "IT'S TOTAL DEVASTATION" boasts http://www.thorpepark.co.uk/ :
         http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid%5F845000/845267.stm


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

         "How about giving those of us way up North a bit more notice
         [of upcoming events]?" inquires reader TONY BLEWS. Well,
         admitedly, we've left it a bit late to plug non-profit get-
         together WEBZINE 2000 (Sat 2000-07-22, San Francisco), where
         the theme is: how the tide is turning against professional,
         well-funded content operations, with the long-term goal of
         *running those varmints out of town*. But, if you're in the
         area (that left-hand half of the USA, we mean), why not make a
         week of it, dropping by SIGGRAPH (from 2000-07-23, New
         Orleans) en route to DEFCON 8.0 (from 2000-07-28, Las Vegas) -
         what better way to celebrate http://www.sysadminday.com/ ?
         http://www.webzine2000.com/
         - also, out of this lot, the highest female:male speaker ratio
         http://www.siggraph.org/s2000/
          - Siggraph 27? That '73 show must have been a real stormer...
         http://www.defcon.org/
         - some streams more popular than others: http://www.h2korgy.net/

         Back in the UK, we're stuck with the multi-layered ironies of
         eco-unfriendly direct action BOYCOTT THE PUMPS WEEK (ah, but
         what if they were going to spend that petrol tax on funding
         RIP measures, eh?) - potentially bad news for the presumably
         petrol-powered ROBOT MAYHEM, the live "Robot Wars" event (from
         Mon 2000-07-24 to 2000-08-03, St Albans). Unless, that is,
         they've taken advantage of recent "gastrobot" developments,
         and modified Sir Killalot, Matilda, Sgt Bash et al to feed on
         animal and/or human flesh...
         http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2000/28/ns-16749.html
           - taking that FBI "Carnivore" concept a little too literally
         http://www.robotwars.co.uk/
         - "Mayhem" does have those mass [human] slaughter connotations
         http://www.enoughisenough.org.uk/
           - text is all one huge GIF; meta tags include "tax, car, sex"


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         Thanks to the usual sources for pointing us to the APACHE
         JAVA project, which, like you, we'd heard of but not yet
         investigated to point of gibbering system shock. They're
         doing *far* too much here: as well as now being the home
         reference implementation for Java Servlet spec, they're
         branching out into terrain reserved for
         world-domination-level open source projects. To wit: a bunch
         of groupware frameworks, including JAMES, the inevitable JSP
         for sending and receiving e-mail. Gulping back our natural
         scepticism regarding Big Projects, java.apache.org does seem
         to be where all server-based Java action is occurring these
         days, and if your knowledge of that language extends only as
         far as that test Pong game you wrote in 1997, this might be
         the place to have another look. Wish them luck: apart from
         anything else, this looks to be where the last stand against
         Microsoft's .NET and C# is going to happen.
         http://java.apache.org/
                                     - bugger all docs. a *good* sign
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/11/16/microsoft_servers/print.html
              - how Apache pulled our arses out of the fire last time


                                >> MEMEPOOL << 
                              hasta la altavista

         sod the BIG BROTHER residents - snoop on the dev team via
         directory browsing: http://www.bigbrother.terra.com/live/ ...
         next APPLE wireless mouse not optical - but GPS... HARRY POTTER
         turns to dark side: http://www.nationallampoon.com/potter.html
http://www.fflibraries.org/Book_Reports/HarryPotter/HarryPotterTakesDrugs.htm
         PIGDOG *almost* got RMS to call it "Linux", rather than "GNU/
         Linux": http://www.pigdog.org/interview_with_stallman.html ...
    http://www.scripting.com/images/microsoftExecsListeningToGates.gif -
         "Five criminals. One line up. No coincidence"... NEIGHBOURS'
         Harold Bishop "forgot" experiments with body-melting drugs:
         http://www.thateden.demon.co.uk/prisoner/showb.htm#bodmel ...
         keep http://www.weblife.org/humanure/chapter8.html away from
         http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000705/ca_shaman_.html ... speaking of
         POOH: http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~assassin/poohbear.mov ...
         over-literal interpretation of the phrase "drinking game":
         http://www.theparkbench.co.uk/superlager/toptrumps.htm ...


                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                 get out less

         TV>> over on On Digital, BBC Knowledge is having some sort of
         "Sci-Fi Night", profiling Aldous "Brave New World" Huxley in
         BOOKMARK (8pm, Fri) and - hopefully more insightful than last
         week's Blade Runner "Future Noir" knock-off - Dick, Dick and
         yet more [Philip K] Dick in ARENA (9pm, Fri)... back on earth,
         there's David Cronenberg's atypically entertaining body-horror
         midlife-crisis metaphor THE FLY (12midnight, Fri, BBC1)...
         and, in the ongoing absence of "Starship Troopers: The
         Series", viewers seeking an early-morning animated rush are
         advised to wake up to Hanna-Barbera manga-alikes THE POWERPUFF
         GIRLS (8.30am, Sat, C5)... BBC2 chases those early-Saturday
         morning ratings with HARD QUESTIONS, SOFT ANSWERS's look at
         object-oriented programming (9.35am, Sat, BBC2)... I LOVE THE
         SEVENTIES, declares BBC2 (from 8.55pm, Sat), largely because
         they're such easy source material for 10 themed nights of
         cheap archive clip-shows... while Emmerich, Van Damme and
         Lundgren - together at last! - pay tribute to "The Terminator"
         in bus-powered shoot-'em-up UNIVERSAL SOLDIER (11.20pm, Sat,
         ITV)... Garry "Larry Sanders" Shandling and Tea Leoni guest in
         another self-referential X FILES (9pm, Sun, Sky1)... bad-taste
         Zucker-style spoof HIGH SCHOOL HIGH (9pm, Tue, C5) starts
         well, until it actually turns into "Dangerous Minds"... NTK
         staffer Danny O'Brien claims to be "spoofing" futurism in
         repeated PREDICTIONS (10.20pm, Tue, BBC2)... and the spectre
         of Meridian's "Cyber Cafe" haunts the late-night schedules
         once again - as THE WEB REVIEW (12.30am, Tue, ITV), with
         Richard Topping, fresh from that noted hotbed of new talent,
         ".tv" http://www.tvchannel.co.uk/tv_shows/presenters/ , and
         Kath Harvey - former pundit on Carlton World's Net.Comedy
         http://www.jgpm.co.uk/kath_harvey.htm ... *someone* sure likes
         Bruce Willis caper-flop HUDSON HAWK (9pm, Wed, C5) - last
         shown about 8 months ago on ITV... and LAMARR'S ATTACKS
         (9.30pm, Thu, BBC2) begin with his lambasting of "morality" -
         not specifying whether he's objecting to "conventional"
         morality, "Judeo-Christian" morality, or just "the overall
         concept of having some sort of moral framework" in general...

         FILM>> following "Fever Pitch", Nick Hornby continues his
         "blokes, relationships and their obsessions" theme, though
         instead of picking one of the more interesting fixations -
         World War Two, or retro video games - he gives John Cusack the
         relatively socially acceptable pastime of listening to old
         records, in HIGH FIDELITY (http://www.screenit.com : "Iben
         Hjejle plays [Cusack's] most recent live-in girlfriend who's
         recently cheated on and broken up with him and has sex with
         him in both the past and present [as well as with another man
         and reportedly had an abortion in the past]") - which, for a
         film supposedly obsessed with pop music, hardly seems to be
         based around the "Kids From Fame" song at all, to the extent
         of not even including it on the soundtrack!... Hugh Laurie,
         Geena Davis, that speccy kid from "Jerry Maguire", and a CGI
         mouse - together at last! - in kids' cross-species adoption
         comedy STUART LITTLE (imdb: cat-versus-mouse / part-animated /
         central-park / part-computer-animation / fake-parent /
         adoption / mafia / anthropomorphic / based-on-novel / cat /
         family-gathering / family-life / boat-race / family-
         relationship / kids-and-family / cat-actor / family / mouse)
         ... so, our - reluctant - recommendation of the week goes to
         Christopher Lambert's patently ridiculous space-prison sequel
         FORTRESS 2: RE-ENTRY (http://www.cndb.com : "Liz May Brice
         [10th Kingdom, A Touch Of Frost]... reveals her taut, olive-
         complected body a couple of times in some juicy albeit
         somewhat discreet co-ed shower scenes. Fans of Pam Grier will
         enjoy her over-dressed, scenery-chewing role in this cheeky
         sci-fi number") - if only for retaining the "Men-Tel"
         Corporation, which everyone immediately assumes is pronounced
         "Mental" instead...

         MAGS AND BAGS>> "You thought the sealed PVC wrapper that EDGE
         came in was stupid?" chuckles too-much-time-on-his-hands NTK
         correspondent BEN MOOR. "Wait till you see the cut-throat
         competition in the Free-Bags-With-Women's-Mags arena!" He goes
         on to list no less than *four* current examples, ranging from
         MARIE CLAIRE's "Only Bag To Be Seen With" (UKP2.70) down to
         MORE's "Free Bag... For Lazy Beach Days And Sexy Club Nights"
         (UKP1.45). Most distinctive at this stage is SHINE's "Funky
         Summer Bag In A Choice Of Three Colours" (UKP2.50) - a lurid,
         i-Mac-like selection of "zingy yellow", "tangerine orange" or
         "hot pink", while comparatively best value for money is the
         "Worth UKP20" "Overnight Bag" that doesn't necessarily lead
         you to any particular conclusion about the readers of WOMAN'S
         JOURNAL (UKP2.70)... bags of comments too (and none of them
         good) about new Future Publishing "for the online creative"
         effort CRE@TE ONLINE - presumably pronounced "Cre-at-te", or
         maybe just "Crete". Following the throwing-himself-at-our-
         mercy approach pioneered by Times Interface's Dr Keyboard [NTK
         2000-05-12], they actually sent us the first issue, goading us
         to spot the "obvious errors". Tragically, by that point, MATT
         JONES had already bought a copy, and was already frothing over
         the contents - by issue 2, SIMON BATISTONI had joined the
         fray, citing "horrendous cover-price, over-designed layout,
         exclusive focus on people who think a 'useful website' is one
         with a 5mb flash intro and no 'skip intro'" (as opposed to,
         say, http://www.createonline.co.uk/ ), and, on the strength of
         ads like http://www.ntk.net/2000/07/21/dohnathan.gif ,
         nominating it "Nathan Barley's all-time favourite magazine",
         triumping over even the similarly punctuation-mark afflicted
         "Wallpaper*"... which brings us to recent revelations that the
         anonymous "boss" of TVGOHOME was - as even the most cursory of
         whois lookups revealed - former PC ZONE misanthrope CHARLIE
         BROOKER all along (did you guess, readers?) who, perhaps more
         surprisingly, has part-sold his scathing critiques of soul-
         destroying, unimaginative TV to none other than GMG Endemol,
         makers of - well, Big Brother, Ground Force, The Pepsi Chart,
         Ready Steady Cook and Changing Rooms. The full story appears
         at http://www.zeppotron.com/press_release.html - in a personal
         communication, echoing nothing so much as Robert Oppenheimer's
         famous "Shiva" quotation, "I *am* Nathan Barley," Brooker
         admits. "Woo hoo." Hey Charlie, don't feel bad about it: all
         NTK's "proteges" are destined to turn against us in the end -
         a process we secretly foster and look forward to - and we
         won't stop linking to it in Geek Media. Or *should we?*...


                               >> 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 
               "completing the series: God, Satan, Nietzsche ..."
       http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/07/18/advogato/index1.html

                                 NEED TO KNOW
            THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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