Need To Know 2000-08-04

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"Dot.net is like an elephant" - BILL GATES, on the new Microsoft standard, RED HERRING http://www.redherring.com/mag/issue82/resources/mag-gates-82-p5.html ...and the IETF is like a monkey with a cork >> HARD NEWS << hiding the bruise So, let's get this straight: first, Network Solutions changed their contracts so that they now own all the domains you've registered with them. Next, they withheld the release of unpaid domains, so that they own *those* as well - to be auctioned by them at some unannounced date. What's next for the domainitrixes? Well, how about trying to charge for stuff that they *don't* own? For the last few months, the NSI have been sending out bills for .COM, .ORG and .NET addresses - *even though their users have transferred the accounts to other registrars*. This is a little reminiscent of the "magazine subscription: final demand" scam that Ziff Davis used to put out. And even if you do pay for the domains, it's not as if you've got any guarantee that they'll work: witness the blanket denial by the G root name server this week that any .COM existed at all. That said, G isn't run by NSI, so we can't place all the blame with NetSol. Although if we did, we bet they'd work out a way of billing us for it. Ha. (Oh, and we know it's not authoritative any more; but it's supposed to remember something). http://www.opensrs.org/archives/discuss-list/0006/0786.html - ICANN *on* the case! Case *on* its way to the Bahamas! http://www.enteract.com/~lspitz/whois.html - uh-uh. it's the DoD. Which brings us neatly to... DERA, the MOD's Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, are probably best known for that time they appeared on TV as bumbling boffins messing around with impractically futuristic Clive Doig-style home-made weapons systems. (Or is that just what they *want* you to believe?) Either way, it's good to see that "gentleman amateur" ethos extended to their website, which this week turned out - via some "unofficial" evaluation and research - to have what's best described as a "whopping great open SQL pipe" into their jobs database. DERA said "The developer has simply used a SQL like set of parameters to aid him in the parsing of the application parameters", but pulled the page anyway; our correspondent regrets not trying "INSERT INTO job_spec(jobtitle,salary,area,ref) values('warmonger','6 pieces of silver','genocide','your-developers-suck')". http://www.dera.gov.uk/html/news/deranews/census_goes_online.htm - or they could just employ more long-term prison inmates http://www.ntk.net/2000/08/04/dohdera1.jpg - even 1901 census data still falls under Official Secrets... http://www.dera.gov.uk/html/it/it_security_health_check.htm - ...to protect our 100 year-old citizens, eg: The Queen Mum New Rules for a New Economy: never rhyme your company with "falco". Example number one: the spectacularly badly-branded ClickMango, which disappeared with little mourning earlier this week. Next victim: plucky start-up Bango, which owns what has to be the *dumbest* idea we've heard since Real Names. Real Names, you may recall, was the plan to replace domain names with ... more names. Bango's ruse is to replace domain names with numbers. So the plan here is that you take an IP address, which is a number, then turn it into a domain; then turn it *back* into a number: presumably one of those number you can turn upside down to make a word. Ahh, say, Bango: but this time, it's for WAP. Good old WAP-O. http://www.bango.net/ - cisco is an exception http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/archive/12080.html - Register not quite as cynical as it used to be... http://194.159.40.109/ - as these easy-to-remember numbers show http://www.independent.co.uk/news/Digital/Update/2000-08/time010800.shtml - second stupidest idea this week: hello? NTP? HELLO? >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious BALLMER says Linux "communism", FRED MOODY says Linux "worst operating system in the world", world says "uh-*huh*" ... Spielberg's POP.COM goes way of 1942 ... "BT phone bills are cheaper than major cable companies" - reports BT.CO.UK ... ... "POST OFFICE of the future" features authentic "Position Closed" sign: http://www.relayone.com/ ... "invisible dot on your screen is watching every move you make", reports OBSERVER, on acid: http://www.observer.co.uk/focus/story/0,6903,348648,00.html ... BBC ONLINE introduces new, gritty, swearing preview section: http://www.ntk.net/2000/08/04/dohenders.jpg ... TONY BLAIR rants against private e-mails falling into wrong hands, excessive surveillance: *cough* ... "bold, space-saving design" conceals HTML source's INSANE, STREAM-OF-CONSCIOUSNESS SPAMDEXING http://www.pc.ibm.com/us/netvista/tour/allinone/allinone.html NEW SCIENTIST tests Jamie Oliver's overall "funniness": http://www.keysites.com/keysites/site/site.html ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Take one of your favourite screen-based activities, combine it with seasonal peer-pressure to venture outdoors from time to time, and you've got this summer's STELLASCREEN TOUR, a travelling 60 x 30 foot weekend cinema which appears to try to match the movie to the location (eg, tonight, there's "The Beach" on Brighton Beach, then "Deep Blue Sea" on Liverpool Pier in two weeks' time). The big-screen competition comes to a head over the August Bank Holiday weekend, when "The Italian Job", "Austin Powers", "The Matrix" and "Lock Stock And Two Smoking Barrels" square up against an exclusive IMAX presentation of the first 3 "Alien" films. http://www.stellascreen.co.uk/summer/stellascreen/outdoor.php3 - "like seeing the films 'live'", they promise, confusingly http://www.bfi.org.uk/showing/imax/afterdark.html - "none of the films are in IMAX format, nor... shown in 3D" With even Ben Moor and Quake-theatre pioneers Strange Company staying away from the Edinburgh Fricking Festival this year, there's always the live recordings of TIME GENTLEMEN PLEASE, Al "The Pub Landlord" Murray's upcoming Sky sitcom, apparently recording near Waterloo, Thursday evenings until 2000-10-05. Critical opinion is divided ("The sitcom equivalent of The 11 O'Clock Show" - self-appointed comedy curmudgeons Some Of The Corpses Are Amusing; "The best thing I have ever written" - Richard Herring, same forum), but then that's exactly the kind of rigorous nit-picking we know you Lee & Herring fans love ("The best thing you've ever written? Do you seriously include Lionel Nimrod and TMWRNJ in that assertion?" - ibid). http://mudhole.spodnet.uk.com/fist/news/index.html#End - scroll up to "30 May 00" for details of ticket hotline http://mudhole.spodnet.uk.com/~frogger/corpses/edin_index.html - though, admittedly, this is amusingly/depressingly accurate http://www.strangecompany.org/ - .plans all last updated October 1999, strangely >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Remember back in November, when we reviewed NAPSTER and said it was going to *really* annoy the music industry? Well, the alpha of MOJO NATION is now out, and while we're not sure that it's going to have the same uptake as the Nap, if it does it'll piss off the music industry *and* every revenue-gathering government in the world. Currently an endearing mess of Python scripts and hardcore protocol specification, Mojo Nation uses machine resources as a anonymous micropayment currency to fund file storage, search engines and firewall proxies on a massively distributed network of machines. The idea here isn't to charge for MP3s (as some have intimated), but to charge for the cost of maintaining a file-sharing network, using an internal currency which you can top up just by offering those services yourself. The Mojo Nation creators, Evil Geniuses for A Better Tomorrow, promise to offer a real money->mojo tokens exchange for those too wimpy to pay in cycles: but what's rather more interesting is keeping all your accounts in pure, untrackable Mojo's, and then widening the economy to cover a whole range of other services. Oh, The Man is going to *love* this. http://www.mojonation.net/ - LGPLed too, and launched at DefCon. This is so anarcho-PC, it hurts. http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=archive99/now1112.txt&line=137#l - in accordance with prophecy >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista Tonight, Matthew, I vill be JARVIS COCKER http://www.zrs.de/tdx2000/personality/person.htm ... somebody tell KIBO: http://www.supersig.com/ ... Shouldn't there be a label marked "Put your mouse on this and move it around?" http://www.cafepress.com/peterme/ ... META tags at http://www.bnp.org.uk/ indicate search for critical-minded, non-credulous types ... teaching those robotic Germans how to RHUMBA: http://www.fe.org/artists/senor.coconut.html ... SIR ALAN AYCKBOURN is TV Go Home fan, believes "it's written by someone who sounds like he'll be dead within 5 years" ... MP3z, musical drama, and ELITE: how could we resist: http://www.iancgbell.clara.net/elite/musical/ ... DOUG COUPLAND reviews this year's cereal nominations: http://www.coupland.com/writtenword/nonsense/spokestoons.html ... http://www.createonline.co.uk/ vs http://www.create-online.co.uk/ (vs http://www.cre@teonline.co.uk/ even) ... the first rule is: you do not talk about STITCH CLUB: http://www.latimes.com/news/state/20000801/t000072072.html vs http://www.onion.com/onion3621/quilting_society.html ... manga "Revelations" http://www.e-sheep.com/apocamon/01.html vs POKEMON "Revelations" http://www.e-sheep.com/apocamon/apocadex/ ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> despite their recent near-random scheduling of the peerless original series, MTV *do* seem to be broadcasting extreme reality-com TOM GREEN'S CANCER SPECIAL (10pm, Fri, MTV), followed by two THE BESTS OF TOM GREEN (10pm, Sat; 9pm, Sun), the latter as lead-ins to the ominously titled "Richard Blackwood's Comedy Weekend"... if they wanted to avoid unflattering comparisons with "Father Ted", why did the makers of THE FITZ (9.30pm, Fri; 11.10pm, Sun; BBC2) fill it with goofy Oirish stereotypes?... and, clearly being groomed for that prestigious Star Trek repeat slot, it's now possible to catch THE FRESH PRINCE OF BEL AIR three times a week on BBC2 alone (6.45pm, Fri; 11am, Sun; Mon, 6.20pm)... ITV heads off BBC2's simultaneous tribute to Lauren Bacall with a triple bill of Peter Sellers programming, starting with one of his hilarious "Indian" character-slapsticks THE PARTY (2.15pm, Sat, ITV)... sniggering po-mo cultural commentators largely survive their feature-length transition BEAVIS AND BUTTHEAD DO AMERICA (9.50pm, Sun, BBC2) - despite two elementary "You'd think with an animated film they would be able to get it right" firearm goofs http://www.recguns.com/MGM-BABDA.html ... while the maker of the documentary BLOKES (11.40pm, Sun, BBC2) re-examines notions of editorial distance by sleeping with at least one of her subjects... SECRETS OF THE DEAD (9pm, Mon, C4) reveals staggering evidence that the Salem witch-trials may have been caused by - ergot wheat poisoning!... we refer you to NTK 1999-05-14 for our definitive gag about fighting- Kylie beat-em-up STREET FIGHTER (9pm, Tue, C5)... still plenty of episodes left of SNL-alumnus vehicle NORM (2.10am, Tue, C4) - in the ongoing absence of Seinfeld and Sanders, easily terrestrial's cruellest sitcom... and, finally, Jeremy "Airport" Spake investigates whether inseminating turkeys is, indeed, among THE TOUGHEST JOBS IN BRITAIN (8pm, Thu, BBC1)... FILM>> Jerry "The Rock, Armageddon, Bad Boys" Bruckheimer reassembles his wacky-name "Con Air" writing team for Angelina "Hackers" Jolie / Nic Cage wig-out car-porn GONE IN SIXTY SECONDS (imdb: los-angeles-storm-drain / brother / organized- crime / auto-theft-ring / auto-theft / police / remake / surveillance / twist-in-the-end / waitress / crime-boss / detective / drag-racing / burglary / car / chase / convicted- felon / hacker / auto-mechanic / mother-son / drugs / computer-cracker / heist / lock-pick / machismo) - that's just the one "car chase", singular, of any significance but, hey, it's big-screen Bruckheimer!... otherwise it's the voices of Kenneth Branagh, Kevin Kline, Rosie Perez and Edward "Blade Runner" James Olmos - together at last! - in Dreamworks' light-hearted retelling of the systematic exploitation and smallpox-assisted extermination of the native South American peoples - with songs by Tim Rice and Elton John! - on THE ROAD TO EL DORADO (http://www.capalert.com : monster attack; consistent theme of lust and greed; treating two men as gods; God's name in vain once without the four letter expletive; sensuality and scant dress; full rear [cartoon] nudity - male)... INTERNECINE NATHANIC INFIGHTING>> the confession of CHARLIE "TVGoHome" BROOKER (currently tipped as the next "Tapehead" in the "Guardian Guide") to being the prototypical "Nathan Barley" [NTK 2000-07-21] has prompted an unexpected number of Spartacus-style counter-claims. "I am the real Nathan Barley" proclaimed JAMIE KING on his http://www.jamie.com/ page, after being nominated in NTK 2000-06-09; within weeks, he'd got back in touch with us, gobsmacked that this had led to his receiving "regular abuse mail" from "various parts of the West London noomedia fraternity looking, maybe, to transfer a little of their Nathanness on to me". "I can't believe anyone would happily compare themselves to Nathen fucking Barley," begins one. "You KNOW you're going to get hate mail [...] soulless public school mockney talentless smartarse gadget- obsessed tosser fuckwit [...] piss off back to obscurity [...]" "This, from someone called Tristan!", Jamie seethes, before launching his own polite little tirade against "public school people in West London"... meanwhile, multiplying the unwitting Nathanity ironies still further, ex-NTK music columnist JAMES "Habitus" FLINT reveals privileged details about his new novel (which due to market pressures will not now be called "Habitum"). While writing, he came across TVGoHome, and "in partic., the wonderful Nathan Barlow [sic]", a character which he would like to licence to appear in his new book, as "a young web journalist who has telephone sex with one of my characters before bounding off to eagerly interview another"... yes, the Nathan-on-Nathan action is definitely hotting up, and will hopefully now be recognised with a special "Nathano di tutti Nathani" (lit: the "Nathan's Nathan") award at next year's Milia show in Cannes - so if you stumble across the webpage of a Nathan Barley-style "Cunt" (or if, perhaps you are one!) do get in touch with us soon, using the subject line "I've stumbled across the webpage of a Nathan Barley-style 'Cunt' (or, perhaps, I am one!)"... >> 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 "don't thank us, thank whois -h whois.networksolutions.com name FALLON MC*" http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,37985,00.html 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. Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/ Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com All communication is for publication, unless you beg. Press releases from naive PR people to pr@spesh.com Remember: Your work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material. Sending >500KB attachments is forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Your country may be at risk if you fail to comply.