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          "Child sex offenders must 'get life', says Prescott"
          - TIMES front-page headline, Mon 2000-08-14
     ...develop new hobbies, use net less, make more friends their own age


                                >> HARD NEWS <<
                               calls of Cthulhus

         No news in August, so we had planned to make this a special
         "literary" summer special, prompted by next week's Iain M
         Banks tour for his new novel (called "Return To Widdershins",
         or something). Unfortunately, the only book we actually got
         round to reading was HP Lovecraft's re-released THE CALL OF
         CTHULHU AND OTHER WEIRD STORIES (Penguin, UKP7.99), whose dank
         imaginings so afflicted our well-being that we resolved,
         without delay, to record the week's events in the fashion of
         the Lovecraftian mythos. The first portent was not slow in
         coming: on Friday, a Kansas couple consecrated the life of
         their first-born to a .com, bestowing upon him the unearthly
         moniker of IUMA - signature of that dread fraternity, the
         Internet Underground Music Archive. In eerie synchronicity,
         NTK acolyte Paddy Smith then alerted us to the SOCIETY OF
         KABALARIANS, who offer numerological assistance in selecting a
         name to "harmonize with [your] child's inner potential".
         "Iuma" isn't in their database yet, although Smith reports:
         "Idly, I tried the names of my favourite Old Ones", eliciting
         a response that shocked his very being: "As CTHULHU, you have
         a natural interest in the welfare of your fellow man, and a
         desire to help and serve others in a humanitarian way. You are
         responsible and generous, although somewhat scattering and
         disorganized at times." "Thanks to the insights of Kabalarian
         Philosophy," Smith gibbers, "I now see how Cthulhu's well-
         meaning though disorganized attempts to help might have come
         across as manifestations of an ancient, hideous, evil."
         http://www.kabalarians.com/gkh/yourbaby.htm
                           - goes on to warn of "A tendency to overeat"
         http://www.iuma.com/Baby/
             - hey, it's better than "Zowie Bowie" or "Moon Unit Zappa"
         http://members.xoom.com/TheCulture/
             - "It is a Culture story and Iain is 'very happy' with it"

         Continuing the salutary lessons in the Power of Naming, Katie
         ".com" Jones writes to correct our story last week. "What we
         (katie.com) did was ask them [Penguin] to pull [the book] and
         re-name it. Not to do a deal", she insists. "NOT TO DO A
         DEAL", the walls of the NTK office echo, mournfully. But,
         despite her incantations, the publishers of the forbidden tome
         still remain silent. Katie warns, unless she hears from the
         Orange Catalogue with the Thousand Editions, she'll be
         attempting the dangerous Rite of Litigation within the lunar
         month. And she gathers strength from many letters of support
         she has received: "Even as a Linux user," writes one devotee,
         "I am horrified to see the Penguin [dragged] through the mud
         in this fashion. It is a quite noble animal." Noble, but who
         knows what powers it has drawn from those icy wastes?
         http://www.penguin.co.uk/
                                               - come not in that form!

         And finally, that fiendish sect known as AMAZON have been
         raising authors from the dead. Gentleman truth-seekers THE
         REGISTER have been investigating certain manifestations for
         some time, pressing the book-merchants for details of the
         purported "security checks" intended to prevent any n'er-do-
         well from impostering as a respected man of letters on their
         "comments" pages. It seems these safeguards may be but another
         of the Amazonians' notorious fictions; surely even a cursory
         check of breathing, or pulse, or brain activity would indicate
         whether the original author had, for instance, been dead for
         several decades...
         http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0875482864/
                         - 45 years ago, in the case of Albert Einstein
         http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/067973452X/
                                       - or 119, for Fyodor Dostoyevsky
         http://omor.com/hci/nav/
                               - cleaning up that "tombstone" interface
      http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/newsid_883000/883541.stm
                                             - one bankruptcy at a time


                                >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         terrible "dressing up as Lara Croft" ads maybe not such a good
         idea: http://www.urwired.com - urFALCO'd!... HARRY POTTER fans
         also buy "Stairway to Hell : The Well Planned Destruction of
         Teens": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0937958301/ ...
         company called "Rapid Insure" running CONCORDE competition:
         http://www.rapidinsure.co.uk/competition/competition.html ...
         http://www.f-secure.com/ shares logo of http://www.drevil.com/
         ... Kids Who Threaten Are Likely To Be Violent, study shows:
         http://www.cwru.edu/pubaff/univcomm/threats.htm..."Will OCR
         Ever Replace The China-Man?" http://www.192.com/2000er.cfm
         (Chinese government could now have a complete copy of the UK
         Electoral Roll - then again, how much worse than a credit
         agency can the Chinese Government be?)... not much progress
         since Feb 2000: http://www.ericsson.se/jambala ... US AIR
         FORCE experimenting with gigantic, building-sized modems:
         http://www.gcn.com/vol19_no22/com/2574-1.html ...


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

         You've posted your nomination forms - and cheques for hundreds
         of pounds - to the Interactive BAFTAs (deadline next Fri), and
         you've pre-registered for this year's ECTS (which holds its
         ungodly opening on Sun 2000-09-03). If NTK (or Mini-NTK, or
         whatever the hell it is) is even more bizarrely delayed than
         usual over the next few weeks, it may well be because we're
         trying to mail it out from the BURNING MAN "temporary art
         community" in Nevada's Black Rock Desert (from 2000-08-28), an
         "experiment in radical self-expression" which, pioneeringly,
         charges punters $200 to hang around their great big patch of
         nothing (in their defence, it's kind of like Glastonbury, but
         with the ever-present threat of death by dehydration instead
         of the bands). Of course, if you wish to know true terror,
         there's always the West Coast GEEK PRIDE FESTIVAL (sometime
         around 2000/09/16, precise "San Francisco" location TBA) or,
         for the real hardcore "extreme O/S advocacy" fans, WARPSTOCK
         2000 (downtown Philadelphia, from 2000-09-09), uniting "some
         of the most prominent people of today's OS/2 community".
         http://www.bafta.org/bafta/5_ie/5_AWARDS.htm
            - then they charge you another UKP100 to attend the awards
         http://www.ects.com/
                        - to feature "new video" of Metal Gear Solid 2
         http://www.burningman.org/
          - why don't they just build their "city" and stay out there?
         http://www.geekpride.org/
          - free, because "you shouldn't have to pay to hear Jon Katz"
         http://www.warpstock.org/
          - lots of streams (that's pre-emptive multi-tasking for you)


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         Those who ignore their browser history are condemned to repeat
         it - and none more so than the otherwise ideologically pure
         text-mode browser users, traditionally stuck with bookmark-
         handling that's almost as fiddly and time-consuming as those
         decadent GUI Web clients. Thank goodness, then, for the
         uncompromising "Shell Users' Revolutionary Front Rage Against
         the Web". Their array of little mini-scripts call up the
         repetitively useful bits of HTTP from the shell prompt, with
         command line parameters replacing those niggly on-line forms.
         The collection includes google, deja, linuxdoc, newscientist,
         and for those who like all-fresh physics abstract action,
         "xxx" for the dirty, dirty arXiv archive. It's not perfect: if
         you're using a text-browser to avoid all those irritating
         adverts, for example, the suite's frequent exhortations about
         supporting the Front's efforts may prove a little counter-
         productive. And at the risk of spawning yet another splinter
         group, the routines do tend to throw you into your text
         browser to peruse your results, instead of doing the Right
         Thing, which would be to re-format and pipe the answers to
         stdout for future grinding. But we imagine implementing that
         is a historical inevitability.
         http://surfraw.sourceforge.net/
                                                           - more tee?
         http://arXiv.org/
                                                      - robots beware!


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                              hasta la altavista

         proving not *all* LARA CROFT fans are couch potato obsessives:
         http://www.cubeit.com/ctimes/news/2000/08/news0619.html ...
         RUSSIAN SUBMARINE debacle disproves "Hunt For Red October"
         claim - "It's a rescue sub, we can fly it anywhere in the
         world in 12 hours"... BIG BROTHER grooming replacement
         contestant (ideally less devious, unable to read or write)?:
         http://www.bigbrother.terra.com/sideframe/c11_on_in.gif ...
         http://www.portalofevil.com/eatme.shtml throws down gauntlet
         to ENTIRE BRITISH ISLES... so, do THINKGEEK come round and
         administer http://www.word.com/habit/enema/ in person?... life
         imitates CHRIS MORRIS: http://www.wayne-kerr.co.uk/ ... E-CARD
         site turns to dark side: http://www.hellos.com/about.html ...
         interesting test-case for your workplace surfwatch filters:
         http://members.tripod.co.uk/mathunt/dissertation.html ...
         proving BRITNEY paid attention in class in "Baby One More
         Time" video: http://britneyspears.ac/lasers.htm ... no
         TVGoHome this week, or we'd have submitted "BIG SUBBER - a
         bunch of Russian conscripts get trapped in a submarine, and a
         UK studio audience hears pleas from their families before
         voting on which ones get rescued"...


                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                 get out less

         TV>> like Network 7 never went away, new live riot FRONTAL
         (12midnight, Fri, C4) promises shouting presenters, "banned"
         pop videos, no-holds-barred cybersex, and website reviews by
         MTV's James Hyman who, we believe, emailed NTK's near-sentient
         admin software back in October 1999 with the plaintive command
         line "Add me to your list please"... Roobarb and Custard -
         ner-ner-ner-ner, ner-ner-ner-ner, ner-ner-ner NER - present I
         LOVE 1974 (8.55pm, Sat, BBC2)... C4 counters with "Sex and
         Disability" night, incorporating Lars Von Trier's on-screen
         penetration spazz-fest THE IDIOTS (11.35pm, Sat, C4), and
         delicately introduced by HEROES OF COMEDY: BENNY HILL (9pm,
         Sat, C4)... tough call against craggy Clint Eastwood/ Gene
         Hackman Western UNFORGIVEN (10.50pm, Sat, ITV), and Heather
         Locklear's superhero semi-spoof THE RETURN OF SWAMP THING
         (10.50pm, Sat, C5), followed by John Sayles' hard-hitting
         baseball politics EIGHT MEN OUT (12.25am, Sat, C5)... in
         another unexpected quality vs cheap nudity table-turning, it's
         C5 who are showing BUGSY (9pm, Sun, C5) and C4 SIRENS (9pm,
         Sun, C4)... but things are back to normal later in the week,
         as BLAST (9pm, Wed, C5) features *both* Rutger Hauer and
         Linden "Mortal Kombat" Ashby, while U.S. SEALS (9pm, Thu, C5)
         appears to be a low-rent knock-off of Michael Biehn's "Navy
         Seals", if such a thing is possible... sounding a bit like
         Sky's old extreme sports slot, GRAVITY GAMES (6.45pm, Mon-Fri,
         BBC2) nonetheless broadcasts from Providence, Rhode Island -
         watch out for the team from Miskatonic University... Susan
         Greenfield grapples with the notion that so-called
         "consciousness" (or "free will") somehow arises from physical
         processes (!) in BRAIN STORY (9pm, Tue, BBC2 - last in
         series)... while Jamie Theakston's PHONES, ROBBERS AND
         VIDEOTAPE (10.15pm, Wed, BBC1) has oddly failed to fuel lynch-
         mob outrage against people who steal from telcos since it last
         aired last December...

         FILM>> you'd have to be a pretty big fan - well, aren't you? -
         to be disappointed with the X MEN (http://www.capalert.com :
         exclusion of Creation in favor of the theory of evolution;
         cleverly ambiguous suggestion of support to the alternate
         lifestyle movement; numerous "miraculous healings" maybe lent
         a bit of discomfort for those who love Jesus; [ability] to
         control the weather. Even Satan does not have that power -
         compare and contrast with http://www.mutantwatch.com ). For
         instance, no-one seems to have pointed out it's more closely
         based on the "X Factor" era of Marvel continuity... the spirit
         of mutagenic experimentation goes on to infest all this week's
         other releases: improvised, multi-stranded split-screen DVC
         "Rope"/ "The Player" hybrid TIMECODE (http://www.screenit.com
         : Saffron [Deep Blue Sea] Burrows plays Alex's mostly
         estranged wife who snorts coke and wants out of their marriage
         and seemingly gets involved with Cherine) - cast also includes
         Jeanne "Waterworld" Tripplehorn, Salma "From Dusk Till Dawn"
         Hayek, Kyle "Dune Guy" MacLachlan, but in the end you'd rather
         see them film the pitch about the time-travelling toilet... as
         some sort of weird prequel to the Farrelly's split-personality
         slapsticker "Me, Myself And Irene" comes "Sliding Doors"-style
         alternate reality ME, MYSELF, I (http://www.cndb.com : Nude
         appearances by: Rachel [Hilary And Jackie] Griffiths, David
         Roberts, Sandy Winton) - not based around the De La Soul tune
         of nearly the same name... while terrifyingly atmospheric
         limited-release death-by-movie Videodrome rip-off RING
         (Classification: Hong Kong:IIB / Singapore:PG) has been
         renamed from the original Japanese title, "Ringu", presumably
         in case kids thought it was a feature-length version of
         "Pingu", the animated penguin...


                               >> 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
                "rich, sweet flavour with a hint of acidity"
           http://www.astradyne.co.uk/cheese/cheese.php3?name=NTK

                                 NEED TO KNOW
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