Need To Know 2000-09-15

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"Users in the survey who spend more time online were found to be more likely to provide information about themselves, the study found. However, users who expressed 'little to no concern' for Internet privacy were less likely to provide details than those who were 'somewhat concerned.'" - REUTERS, on new Andersen Consulting report http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,38766,00.html ...and just how did they find this out? >> HARD NEWS << fossil fuels Crisis? Which crisis? Locally, we share subscriber CAM WINSTANLEY's analysis that there's nothing useful petrol can do that "two part epoxy glue with industrial floor wax in a shopping bag, inhaled deeply" won't replace. However, your local apocalypse may be trickier to evade. En France, they'd moved on from the Europe-wide MadMax style armageddon to the Waterworld-themed Mac Expo, where an unfortunate sprinkler mishap drowned most of the exhibitors stalls. Like everyone else, we're assuming this was last week's Apple rebels [NTK 2000-09-08] commenting on the premature release of Aqua. And in Australia, riot police fenced off the streets around the Crown Casino to prevent suspicious crowds of scruffy-looking weirdoes from disrupting the World Economic Forum. Or administering their co-loc boxes, as the sysadmins running boxes at the nearby Globalcenter DCO discovered. Hey, let us in! We're fascists too! http://www.theage.com.au/news/gallery/20000911/I58810-2000Sep11.html - Nice LART, man! Where'd you get it? http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2628268,00.html - oh yeah. that'll work, Apple. http://www.planetvom.co.uk/petrol/ - oh, and that BP "Fuc You All" pic... http://www.ntk.net/2000/09/15/dohitn.gif - ...is from a) Australia (natch), and b) weeks old Windows Me: but not *you*, PAUL MARITZ, who resigned from Microsoft this week on the eve of the new product launch to spend some quality time down at The Village. Maritz, who according to himself *didn't* say "We are going to cut off [Netscape's] air supply. Everything they're selling, we're going to give away for free", no matter what the DOJ, the New York Times and an Intel Vice Prez claimed, was a senior VP in charge of Visual C++ and Handing Out Crates of New APIs to Goggle-Eyed Developers. Now he's just a regular seventy-millionaire Joe. So, who's next? JIM ALLCHIN, mild-mannered janitor, who is due to return from a two-month "vacation" any day soon? Could be... http://biz.yahoo.com/t/81/2872.html - like you wouldn't quit at this point http://linuxtoday.com/stories/2699.html - son is a Redhat user, a dismissable offence Seems no-one watches, or cares about, the MERCURY MUSIC PRIZE any more - or, at the very least, can be bothered to keep an eye on its website. Consequently it provided visitors with surreal updates throughout the evening, courtesy of some "security enthusiasts" off IRC, who managed to award the honours to "Toby Slater" (believed friend of Daniel Pemberton - see NTKs passim), "Purple Munkie" (sic) and "Badly Drawn Boy's hat", before the site was eventually fixed at 10am the following morning. Kudos, however, to LEGOLAND UK who have stood firm on their company policy of "encouraging youthful curiosity" and, at time of writing, are still hosting both the DeCSS source code and step-by-step instructions on how to own their SQL server, after originally being hacked on Monday. http://www.ntk.net/2000/09/15/dohmercury.html - Nitin Sawhney admits "not even he knows who he is" http://www.legoland.co.uk/css-descramble.c http://www.legoland.co.uk/explain.txt - hey, trust a Lego fan to give detailed cutaway diagrams >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious so, just how long did it take the security geniuses reading SF-NEWS@SECURITYFOCUS.COM to spot it was an open listserv? ... RADIO TIMES stumbles from Watergate to another "whitewash makeover": http://www.ntk.net/2000/09/15/dohradio.jpg ... BT suspends service guarantees: no-one notices ... zero-DAILY RADAR warez: http://www.ntk.net/2000/09/15/dohradar1.gif , http://www.ntk.net/2000/09/15/dohradar2.gif ... "Defragmenting really speeds up Windows NT machines" uncovers the latest http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/contents/ ... ah, but what about copyrighting all those images in the *current* directory? http://www.masterlock.com/general/Legal.html ... formerly free movie mag FLICKS http://www.flicks.co.uk/ has yet to master directories at all... not to mention the 46% who don't know how to use CMS: http://www.ntk.net/2000/09/15/dohcontent.jpg ...chiselled from finest FRONTPAGE: http://www.draper.co.uk ... NINFOMANIA does "sly dig" at NTK: fails to notice that matching self-indulgent retrospective URL doesn't actually work... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful No definite date as yet for October's BIG BROTHER AWARDS (presumably the ballots have been packed with wags nominating "Big Brother", the TV show - ah yes, do you see?), but our round-the-clock monitoring of Simon Davis indicates he's planning a free, public INTERNATIONAL FORUM ON SURVEILLANCE BY DESIGN at London's LSE from 9.30am, Fri 2000-09-22. With a line-up including the ACLU, ZeroKnowledge, and UMTS surveillance techniques, it's probably the closest we'll get over here to an all-day RSA patent party. http://www.privacyinternational.org/bigbrother/ - in the US, the show's made by "Orwell Productions" http://www.cs.ucl.ac.uk/staff/I.Brown/ifsd.html - well, at least he doesn't call himself "Simon Magnum (PI)" Next weekend's YAPC::EUROPE (from 2000-09-22) has been sold out for months, though there's some consolation to be had just going through the list of talks and trying to work out which ones were bolted on to make it "arty" for the ICA: "Simon Cozens will explain the entirety of the Perl 5 internals. In 5 minutes. In verse." Somewhat forgiveably, we feel, we've also ignored the similarly conflicted CREATING SPARKS arts' n' sciences collaboration between The Natural History Museum, The Royal College Of Music and all the other fancy buildings around South Kensington (continues until 2000-09-30). At time of going to press, tickets were still available to see novelist Stephen Baxter and Blur bass-player Alex James discussing Mars (7.30pm, tonight) while, on Tue, you can pay 12 quid to hear Richard Dawkins reading from his own books, accompanied by "actress and artist" Lalla Ward who, for some reason, the site neglects to point out, is perhaps best known as "the second Romana" from Dr Who. http://www.britassoc.org.uk/creatingsparks/cs2.htm - oh, and as alpha-male Dawkins' wife http://www.yapc.org/Europe/ - though we always preferred http://www.marytamm.co.uk/ And, presumably not timed to coincide with either, there's consumer electronics jamboree LIVE 2000 (from Thu 2000-09-21, Earls Court, London), an event unashamedly aimed at readers of the ever-popular publishing genre "this attractive young woman on the cover has nothing to do with the gadget she's holding". Promising "the latest, sexiest kit" ("I don't know how I survived without a WAP phone!", says the show's spokeswoman, apparently called Kit), the site immediately blows it with a contest to win a Sony Memory Stick Walkman featuring "a robust copyright protection system" - like *that's* some kind of incentive! http://www.live2000.com/comp.asp - new addition to the field: Dennis' PC GEAR. Oh, who cares... >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering The embarassing thing about everyone shifting over to the slim GNOME wraparound of Mozilla, GALEON, is that MOZILLA itself is finally becoming usable. The new Netscape skin is tolerable, there have been leaps in its lizardly speed, memory shag is decreasing, and the bugcount looks to be finally contained (we think: the Bugzilla chart-drawing page broke some time back, ironically). But who cares about that, when there's an even *titchier* wraparound for the 10MB Mozilla binary. SKIPSTONE spurns all those GNOME libraries that Galeon revels in, and remains a raw GTK app that you can compile on anything that's got the Moz libraries hanging around. It's still relatively cruddy compared to Galeon (which is getting damn near to an everyday browser), but we like the way it fobs off the downloading to 'wget'. And the fact it's only 57K. And that it's already in Debian's unstable distribution. http://www.muhri.net/skipstone/ - and that it's different and new and therefore good >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista good precedent for tax-protests on the UK's other favourite HYDROCARBONS: http://www.dumpthepubs.com/ ... hacking the HUBBLE: http://www.foxnews.com/science/082500/hubble.sml ... well, if BRITNEY's diversifying into high-energy physics: http://www.mchawking.com/ ... and what's "PERL" a euphemism for? http://walkingdead.net/perl/euphemism (as if we didn't know)... ANARCHIST COOKBOOK blows up in "author"'s face: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0962303208 ... i feel so used: http://www.geekculture.com/culture/erotica/ ... "be" KEV SPACEY (no price given; presumably you can "negotiate"): http://www.eroi.com/html/negot.htm ... the bulk-buying B2B BULL ELECTRICAL: http://www.73.com/a/0012.shtml ... cheer up, JESUS!: http://home.earthlink.net/~hainbros/jesusdressup.html ... BBC NEWS ONLINE starts imitating ONION "infographics": http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_921000/921923.stm >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> the process of elimination that's had the entire country on tenterhooks reaches its spectacular climax, as we at last get to find out whether Bradley and Rachel really *are* leaving the band in the second part of S CLUB 7: ARTISTIC DIFFERENCES (5.25pm, Sat, ITV)... while tonight's SOUTH PARK (11.35pm, Fri, C4) has mysteriously been moved back in the schedules, presumably to avoid a clash with excellent CGI geek-fest TWISTER (9pm, Fri, ITV) - scripted by Michael Crichton and his wife Anne-Marie Martin, formerly the lovely assistant to "Sledge Hammer"... the Crichton theme-park re- opens later the same night with Westworld sequel FUTUREWORLD (1.30am, Fri, ITV) - oh, the hubris of man and his never- ending quest for "progress"... a motif continued in what seems to be a new run of TEAM KNIGHT RIDER (4.05pm, Sat, ITV), the increasingly surreal impersonations of CELEBRITY STARS IN THEIR EYES (7.20pm, Sat, ITV), and the triumph of schlocky snakes-in-ventilation-shafts chiller VENOM (10.40pm, Sat, C5) over John Carpenter's BIG TROUBLE IN LITTLE CHINA (10.25pm, Sat, ITV)... jaded schedulers have now realised, since the original event lasted about 5 years, it's *always* some sort of WW2 ANNIVERSARY (from 10.30am, Sun, BBC2)... thank heavens the title explains MY NAME IS JOE (11pm, Sun, C4) because the lead's broad Glasgow accent is otherwise incomprehensible... Jean-Claude Van Damme battles himself once again in TIMECOP (10pm, Mon, BBC1) - last shown August 1999 ... "not as good as the other two" is the Radio Times' sage verdict on RAMBO III (10pm, Wed, C5)... and, in a hint of trends to come, Michael Caine plays the central "Woody Allen" role in arguably the pinnacle of Allen's numerous New York comedy-dramas, HANNAH AND HER SISTERS (12.40am, Wed, ITV)... FILM>> it's Samuel L Jackson vs American Psycho - nice touch getting Chef from "South Park" to do the theme tune, though - for competent but uninspired cop-show retread SHAFT (imdb: basketball / limousine / murder / witness-protection / mugger / racism / desert-eagle / sequel / racial-slur / chrysler- building / racial-injustice / crooked-cop / professional-hit / urban / foot-pursuit / violence / car-wash / undercover / cocaine / new-york-city / defenestration / police-brutality / drug-dealer / new-york / chase / hitman / uncle-nephew / media-coverage / revenge / twist-in-the-end / detective / brother-sister / drugs / private-detective / vengeance)... lovely Jennifer Lopez borrows "Dreamscape", "Coma" movie-tech to find that the nightmarish inner thoughts of a serial killer resemble nothing so much as bad 1980s pop videos, in stylishly daft psychoanalysis nonsense THE CELL (http://www.capalert.com : using [child] for an ironing board; corpses "dolled up like dolls"; spooling of intestines on to a "rotisserie" as it is pulled from the gut of a live man)... in the arthouse ghetto: critics'll love it, but not even a gurning George Clooney can generate any box-office for yet another self-consciously wacky Coen effort O BROTHER WHERE ART THOU? (imdb: crime / adventure / comedy / musical)... or it's Bjork and Lars Von Trier - together at last! - in harrowing mental torture singalong DANCER IN THE DARK (imdb: drama / musical) - not based around the Bruce Springsteen song of nearly the same name... so our surprise, low-expectation recommendation goes to Ben Stiller / Edward Norton/ Jenna Elfman religious There's Something About Mary-alike KEEPING THE FAITH (http://www.capalert.com : sexual drawing; crotch hit; crotch kick; cohabitation; sex song) - not based around the Bon Jovi track of nearly the same name... FEEBDACK>> in accordance with prophecy [NTK 2000-09-01], response to our exciting website redesign has been overwhelmingly negative, with a lone voice ("FWIW *Love* the new look!") swiftly drowned out by a combination of ALAN CONNOR ("I think I'll find it 'virtually unreadable' and suggest 'you may as well go and write for Wired or something'"); PETER J SMITH ("OK apart from the BODY tag which uses marginwidth and marginheight instead of leftmargin and topmargin"); and, of course, a hail of invective from self- appointed compliance officer LLOYD WOOD, who slammed us for *not* having changed many of the expiry date, doctype and table problems he first pointed out in Christmas 1997. It's heart-warming pedantry from readers like this that really makes doing NTK worthwhile - keep it coming!... thanks to all of you who submitted your own suggestions for the Kabalarian's "Choose The Ideal Name For Your Child" generator [NTK 2000-08- 18], including YOG-SOTHOTH and CHEWBACCA... and to the totally unalarming number of readers who, after our sex offenders gag [2000-08-18], felt we'd also enjoy ALIEN VERSUS CHILD PREDATOR http://www.oldmanmurray.com/features/avcp/page1.shtml ... while a clearly-chastened CHET from the nearby "Portal Of Evil" was prompted by numerous responses to the same issue's http://www.portalofevil.com/eatme.shtml link to politely inquire "You guys know we are just playing over at POE, right? Some of your countrymen have sent me some crazy misguided emails, what can I say... I am bound to respond publicly". Hey, c'mon Chet - maybe they're just "playing" too? Where's that famous American sense of humour?... NICOLA PEARCE, after reading NTK 2000-08-04, claimed she'd "have to wash [her] hard disk out with soap and water. First we have a German guy being Hitler. Then we have the BNP. And lastly we have Rec.Guns. Have you been infiltrated by gun-worshipping fascists?" Ho ho Nicola, of course not - links from NTK, particularly to extremists such as the BNP, or Mac users, are often satirical in intent and should not be taken as endorsements. You should see the links we *don't* run, like this charmingly Freudian refugee from alt.sex.stories.catfights.sex.with.your.mother : http://www.seakingsfemfight.com/storymikejv1.html ... and finally, to the anonymous tipster who commented "Why have you taken to saying 'fricking' you fucking pussies? Cancel my subscription etc", can you please supply quantitative evidence (a la http://www.ntk.net/?back=archive98/now0522.txt&line=314#l ) - but wait until we've done our next expletive-packed "Cunt" round-up in two weeks time!... >> 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 "yet another media outlet falls for the 'Dave Green' hoax" http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,38467,00.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. 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