"Only Scandinavia has more cell phone users, nine out of 10
households have a broadband connection, every second family
has a PC, and one out of three people uses the Net, Tung
Chee Hwa said..."
- WIRED explains how "Internet savvy" Hong Kong is
http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,40533,00.html
...so what do the 4 out of 10 households with
a broadband connection and no PC do?
>> HARD NEWS <<
jobs that blew
Imagine how this feels: a communication that casts
aspersions on your most intimate behaviour is spread around
the Net without your permission, where it ends up at the
REGISTER, which one-sidedly quotes your former partner's
opinion without even checking your side of the story. Claire
who? No: this is the *other* big Net story: the fate of
baa.com, the fan site for sheep. BAA.COM's owner Tom Bourke,
and the previous owner, Michael Lawrie, were sued last year
for passing off baa.com as the British Airports Authority,
registering an instrument of fraud, and attempting extortion
against the non-sheep BAA. Tom, facing massive legal costs,
has buckled, and handed the domain over to the other BAA.
But Michael "Lorry" Lawrie, veteran of many an IRC flamewar,
isn't going down for no-one. His legal costs are lower,
because he's defending himself, and like the man says, if
companies can jump on obviously unconnected personal Website
and bully them into submission, the law's a sheep *and* an
ass. Lawrie's risking his livelihood to set a decent
precedent in British law, and he's going to carry on with
the fight as long as he can. Lawyers (Norton Rose included)
interested in a clear-cut case, and anyone wanting to
contributing to a BaaBalls legal fund, should mail Lawrie on
wool@baa.com. Yum.
http://www.baa.com/
- passing off? baa, humbug
http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/1/15489.html
- kieeeeeeeeeeeeran
http://www.nortonrose.com/email%20_abuse.htm
- sending *and* receipt? ohoh: we see a great need
Last week we mentioned ENVISION LICENSING's enthusiasm for
compulsory registering of anyone who buys any kind of TV
equipment in the UK [NTK 2000-12-08] - including, it now
appears, DVD players, no doubt to root out those deviants
assembling systems specifically designed for aerial-free
entertainment. Since then, suggestions have been flooding in
for a theoretical "secure protocol" for purchasing anonymous,
untraceable TVs. The main constraint is that retailers (new or
second-hand) who don't obtain customer details can be fined up
to UKP1000 per illicit transaction (as discovered by Argos in
August of this year), meaning that the popular solution (where
the shop says "We have to send your details to the TV
licensing authority, so is it OK if we make a name and address
up for you?") isn't entirely ideal. Best suggestion so far:
you could get a friend who already has a licensed TV to buy
one for you; or you could pay cash, and take an address that
actually exists - some stores check the postcode, so you'd use
something easy to remember, like, ooh, 1 Parliament Square.
http://www.tv-l.co.uk/retailers/faq.html
- professionals exempt, unless "in a recreational area"
This Wednesday saw the puttering launch of yet another
rating system for the Web. Sponsored by AOL, On Digital,
Cable and Wireless, NSI, Demon, and Microsoft (which
probably explains why their Webserver is so royally fucked),
the INTERNET CONTENT RATING ASSOCIATION is a flimsy revamp
of the old RSACi rating system it replaces. All the old
categories, including "killing of fantasy characters
(animated)" (given a special exception if massacre "only
appears in a sports-related context") are mixed with some
new international categories including - this should annoy
our miscountin' transatlantic cousins - "promotion of gun
use". Naturally, everybody will ignore this, just as they
ignored the previous system. Except that, over here, this
weeks' Communications White Paper put the backing of the new
OfCom authority behind it (via a name-check with the IWF).
And that nice Mr Bush has been muttering about mandatory
controls in school and libraries too. We may have only weeks
to hunt down and kill all the fantasy characters we can.
http://www.icra.org/_en/register/en_p2.cfm
- female genitals in how much detail, exactly?
http://www.cluebot.com/article.pl?sid=00/10/18/042235&mode=nested
- Bush and Gore engage in passionate kissing-up
>> ANTI-NEWS <<
berating the obvious
after success of viral cookie recipe, NEIMAN MARCUS selling
"118-foot luxury submarine" for $0.00 (gift wrapping $6.50):
http://www.neimanmarcus.com/prod.jhtml?id=102397 ... sharp
new look: http://www.ntk.net/2000/12/15/dohrazor.gif ... "A
despot may be required" for International Roaming, dictates
http://www.mobileshop.co.uk/one2one/covroam.htm ... WAP is the
new web? http://lycos.daclogo.com/uk/film_tv1.phtml?p_id=51
... http://www.equiinet.com/ lets you "send emails with a
single keystroke", superhero-style... another seamless net
acquisition: http://www.netdrive.com/ ... your license fees at
work #49: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/media/g2/ ... Big
Brother awards sponsored by SILICON.COM, ironically for anyone
who's ever tried to unsubscribe from their mailing lists...
"Alors [user], continuez a cocher votre grille quotidienne"
consoles email from French-owned BANANALOTTO.CO.UK ... ONION
http://www.theonion.com/onion3644/black_guy_photoshopped_in.html
imitates http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,39233,00.html
... Blogger - FALCO?...
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
goto's considered non-harmful
Eagerly looking forward to this weekend's G2000 NUCLEAR
BUNKER LAN PARTY, NTK reader SHADE was nonetheless mildly
disappointed to find that, when he entered "Kelvedon Hatch"
into www.streetmap.co.uk, he got a map featuring a large black
arrow with "Secret Bunker" written next to it. Of course, the
only location more closely guarded than this is the venue for
next Saturday 2000-12-23's NTK/ London 2600 Xmas party which,
in order to maintain maximum security, we won't be revealing
to anyone more than 48 hours in advance. And that, ingeniously,
includes ourselves.
http://www.nerve.org.uk/g2000/
- awkward clash with http://www.non-official.com/pbgo/
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/chronicle/archive/2000/12/07/MN154990.DTL
- well, at least they had the distribution sorted...
>> TRACKING <<
sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering
Playing with the 2.4pre's, you get the feeling that it's not
the LINUX 2.4 KERNEL RELEASE that's taking its time - it's
us. Sure, one day, we'll live up to its expectations, with
our multi-processor motherboards, eight gigs of RAM, and
multiple RAID journalling filesystems on twenty IDE
interfaces. But right now? Well, it may be us, but the
Virtual Memory system still seems downright *sniffy*
whenever we ran out of resources. And the low-price fun
stuff (USB, in-kernel PCMCIA, XFree86 4.0 Direct Graphic
support, and snappier ISA plug-and-play) are still going to
require your userland tweaking: the kind of fiddling you
might want to leave to your favourite distrib release. With
the backport of USB to 2.2.18 and Alan's latest intimation
that he's planning to re-tune the 2.2's VM until it bleeps
for mercy, we're going to say keep with the old guard until
Father Christmas buys you that nice new machine. And then
(and is this a prediction?), we reckon that the Great
Penguin will have a lovely little Boxing Day present for you.
http://linuxtoday.com/news_story.php3?ltsn=1999-10-03-001-05-NW-LF
- +/- a week.
>> MEMEPOOL <<
hasta la altavista
"in certain games the females emitted a high-pitched giggle
or sigh in reaction to different actions by the player":
http://www.msnbc.com/news/502854.asp - vs "someone in the next
room could easily assume sexual intercourse was taking place":
http://christiananswers.net/spotlight/games/2000/tombraider.html
"Cannot be read aloud"? Look, it's not THE NECRONOMICON:
http://www.pigdogs.org/art/adobe.jpg ... Simpsons MONOPOLY...
AM-I-HOT-OR-NOT drinking games vs AIHON meta-parodies:
http://www.fairvue.com/?feature=amiornot ... SMELL like Lars:
http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/eo/20001213/en/metallica_perfume_stinks__4.html
... US buy DOTCOMEDY TV show, cancel it after first episode:
http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,40594,00.html ...
holy SHIT: http://www.divine-interventions.com/index2.html vs
http://www.ship-of-fools.com/Gadgets/ ... in accordance with
http://www.ntk.net/?back=archive99/now0910.txt&line=248#l
prophecy: http://www.megaspiele.de/flame/bsbgay.swf ... the
future of NTK merchandising: http://www.andgor.com/FAQ/faq.html
>> GEEK MEDIA <<
get out less
TV>> essentially the plot of the "Charlie's Angels" film, but
instead starring chubby blokes, is now the unique selling
point of Clipper-chip hacking flick SNEAKERS (10.35pm, Fri,
BBC1) - last shown August 1999... prancing teenagers murder
pop classics in MOTOWN MANIA (8.10pm, Sat, ITV)... while smug
Dom Joly introduces his funnier predecessors on CANDID CAMERA
NIGHT (9pm, Sat, C4)... last Sun's "Holy Grail" and this
week's MONTY PYTHON'S MEANING OF LIFE (9pm, Sun, BBC2) sadly
don't continue with a showing of "Life Of Brian" on Christmas
Eve... C4 give ANGEL (11.20pm, Sun) a decent slot just in time
for the spectacular end of the first series, then provide
their own idiosyncratic interpretation of jovial pre-Christmas
cheer in the form of: hideous clean-shaven Robin Williams
travesty TOYS (8pm, Sun); b&w afternoon sci-fi including EARTH
VS THE FLYING SAUCERS (1.30pm, Tue) and THE DAY THE EARTH
STOOD STILL (1.20pm, Thu); plus harrowing home-video geekporn
BREAKING THE WAVES (11.40pm, Tue)... C5's weekly cybertrash
quota is filled by Jake "young Anakin" Lloyd and Mimi "X
Files" Rogers in VIRTUAL OBSESSION (9pm, Mon) - last shown
July 1999 - plus unsensationally titled chatroom docu
KILLME.COM (11pm, Tue), preceded by Bill Murray vs those damn
meerkats golf slapstick CADDYSHACK (9pm, Thu)... either of
which sounds like a job for the "Cybercops" profiled in the
final part of upmarket serial killer docu THE SCIENCE OF CRIME
(9pm, Thu, C4)...
FILM>> after last year's "End Of Days" (and of course 1996's
"Jingle All The Way"), it looks like another Schwarzenegger
Christmas, as Arnie plays an explosion-prone helicopter pilot
in ostensibly insightful futuristic cloning actioner THE 6TH
DAY (http://www.screenit.com/movies/2000/the_6th_day.html :
ARNOLD SCWARZENEGGER [...] kills several people [...] and
briefly uses some strong profanity; MICHAEL RAPAPORT plays his
best friend who uses some profanity and enjoys the company of
his voluptuous virtual girlfriend)... otherwise it's Ethan
"Reality Bites" Hawke, Kyle "Dune Guy" MacLachlan, Bill
"Ghostbusters" Murray, plus William "The Bard" Shakespeare -
together at last! - in their superfuturistic limited-release
HAMLET (http://www.screenit.com/movies/2000/hamlet.html : some
dialogue about "incestuous sheets"; Laertes makes a comment to
Ophelia about all of her "chaste treasure" opened to someone
else; Hamlet comments about the thought, "to lie between a
maid's legs"; although it happens off-screen and before the
story starts, Hamlet's father is murdered by being poisoned)
... probably both better bets than Jay "Austin Powers" Roach's
trademark great-gags-plus-appalling-pacing equals Ben Stiller/
Robert De Niro awkwardness-in-law feelgooder MEET THE PARENTS
(http://www.capalert.com/capreports/meettheparents.htm : a man
and a woman in a bed together (not to mention in her parents'
house); smoking, drinking, and tons of conversational lies
with nearly as much concern for personal honesty as for the
life of a single mosquito at a picnic) - still, there's always
http://www.apple.com/trailers/paramount/tomb_raider/ ...
HARD LIT>> OK, we'll stop plugging the T-shirts for now,
though you can still contribute to NTK's "war chest", and
(allegedly) have your data protection rights violated at the
same time over at http://www.ntk.net/books/ , where Neal
Stephenson's paperback CRYPTONOMICON has steampunked past the
competition to become our first ever Christmas number one (on
the Full Price Bestsellers Chart), dominating other contenders
like Stephenson's own IN THE BEGINNING WAS THE COMMAND LINE (a
surprising seller, despite being available in its entirety
online: http://www.io.com/~mccoy/beginning_print.html ); and
O'Reilly cartoon fave EVIL GENIUSES IN A NUTSHELL which, as
eagle-eyed enforcer LLOYD WOOD spotted, is enthusiastically
described as having "the potential to help foster a greater
sense of cultural identity between O'Reilly and its customer
base [...] to attract a newer, younger audience who are fans
of User Friendly but are not as familiar with O'Reilly" in its
US listing: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/156592861X
... in other categories, and discounting a lot of the really
freaky shit, we nominate the UKP1.50 edition of WAR AND PEACE
as Budget Bestseller Of The Year (due, no doubt, partly to its
Cryptonomicon-rivalling 981 pagecount), and THE A-TEAM: VOLUME
TWO as NTK Readers' Most Popular Movie, Video Or CD, a three-
episode compilation of such haunting first-season adventures
as "Holiday In The Hills", "The Out-Of-Towners", and "West
Coast Turnaround". In the non-fiction runners-up stakes, we
hereby declare it a tie between PROGRAMMING PEARLS: SECOND
EDITION, PERPLEXING LATERAL THINKING PUZZLES, Jakob Nielsen's
DESIGNING WEB USABILITY and, of course, TIGGER'S LITTLE BOOK
OF BOUNCE, all with 4 sales each. Note that, because it's on
"special order", it's probably too late now to get A HAND IN
THE BUSH: THE FINE ART OF VAGINAL FISTING in time for Xmas,
though there's always The League of Gentlemen's nearly-as-
graphic LOCAL BOOK FOR LOCAL PEOPLE, which reuses some of the
old stuff from their excellent "This Is It!" fanzine (though
not their excellent Dr Who spoof "Dandy Lord")... also lurking
in the book-related postbag: apropos of NTK 2000-09-01's plea
to "stop sending us the funny review of THE STORY ABOUT PING",
JOHN FRACISCO wrote: "Yeah, I get NTK every week. Yeah, that's
my review of PING that I copied from somewhere else and put on
Amazon before they got rid of it, and somehow it stuck",
before cryptically adding, "And that's not my picture on my
'personal' page either". On a similar note, IAN LANCE TAYLOR
declared himself "one of the authors" of GNU AUTOCONF,
AUTOMAKE, AND LIBTOOL [reviewed NTK 2000-11-17], confirming
that he "thinks" the writers are "all over 30, and one is over
40" - while, finally, reader CAM WINSTANLEY devised our most
literary T-shirt suggestion so far, with his entry "(Front
print:) FUCK HARRY POTTER. (Back Print:) AND FUCK SMUG SELF-
CONGRATULATORY SINGLE PARENT JK ROWLING TOO." Thanks for that
one, Cam - we'll let you know how we get on...
>> 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
"belongs in a museum"
http://itn.co.uk/news/20001211/business/13ferguscolumn.shtml
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
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