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         "For programmers and other tech people who work in companies
         where Microsoft (MSFT) products are the norm, the knowledge
         base functions as a kind of Yoda, guiding them through their
         thorniest Windows endeavors."
         http://www.wired.com/news/business/0,1367,41398,00.html
                  ...unhelpful, defensive, hazy grasp of basic syntax


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                               see if I don't

         Just when it seemed all was lost for Douglas Adams's Plucky
         British Startup, H2G2 (hiding behind the banks of servers,
         being fired at by the intergalactic liquidators), they get
         sucked through a wormhole and land - back at the BBC, which
         has that pleasantly English sense of bureacratic circularity
         that we're sure Hitchhiker fans are already savouring. Not
         that there isn't a certain amount of hyperspatial
         disorientation ; half the staff have already left
         (especially after being encouraged by their editor "not to
         take the piss" with off-days, during the two-month no-pay
         period). We see the never-profitable h2g2 community site is
         putting a very Don't-Panic face on things, considering that
         nobody's actually sure whether Auntie's interested in
         keeping it going. In fact, the only real survivors are the
         now-separate games company, working on the new HHG game,
         which will be sold in boxes that people pay actual money
         for. Those old-economy ways... so quaint!
         http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hitchhikers/
                         - "I wonder if it will be friends with me?"
         http://www.h2g2.com/faq.html
                                                   - whale meat again

         Something strange happened up in Redmond shadows this week.
         MICROSOFT asked for help. While everyone was guffawing at
         the disappearance of their nameservers, they were quietly
         calling in all the favours at Cisco and elsewhere. Bad
         config change Tuesday eve, they pinned it down to, in the
         end, and after over 22 hours (precious few favours around)
         Microsoft's domains were back online - only to be minced
         again in a Denial Of Service attack. But why were
         router-admins frobnicating things around at 6.30 on a
         weekday? Was it a hint of the later attack that the
         impromptu config change was supposed to be protecting
         Microsoft from? All we know is this: as of today, "nslookup"
         shows Microsoft (wisely) outsourcing a chunk of its DNS to
         Akamai; and now they're called in the Feds -  the fricking
         *government* - to check out the DoS. We really don't know
         what's scarier: paranoid Microsoft against the World, or
         smart Microsoft getting the World in to help.
         http://www.microsoft.com/backstage/column_T2_1.htm
                                        - Uptime with Wanke and Weeks
         http://cryptome.org/gates-paupers.htm
                - uh-oh: turns out Bill Gates *does* run the Internet

         Our pet theory that Brighton's SCHNEWS is written in a
         protest tunnel - or maybe up a tree - have been confirmed,
         albeit at terrible personal cost. The lives of several
         helpless PCs of that direct action zine have been brutally
         ended, due they claim, to excessive dampness in their
         "offices". But what do you care, reading this in your suit
         and tie and sensible shoes? When you started in this
         business, you had dreams, didn't you? I remember talking to
         you about them in that field off the M25. Going to create
         some sort of artists community Web forum, weren't you? Well,
         sometime after you've finished that Gantt chart for the new
         ad sales inventory system, why don't you see if you can send
         the Justice? kids an old PC or something, and prove you
         STILL CARE. HUH? +44 (0)1273 685913 And tell them to get
         their hair cut, while you're at it.
         http://www.schnews.org.uk/
                                   - they'll kill you last, I'm sure.
         http://www.weliveinpublic.com/
                      - otherwise, you're no better than these people
         http://www.wirednews.com/wired/archive/8.11/luvvy_pr.html
                                           - which is pretty damn bad
         http://www.spy.org.uk
                                 - yeah, go on, rub their noses in it


                                >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

         dumb American melonfarmers confused by Google ratings, *and*
         vote for http://www.ntk.net/2001/01/26/whitehouse_doh.gif ...
         "Asimov is a scientific sci-fi writer and his laws are best
         known from the film Robocop" reports THE REGISTER's KIEREN
         MCCARTHY, under influence of OCP... FREEDRIVE shuts down
         50MB of public file-sharing, shocked by reports of "software
         piracy"... "Linux-powered" http://www.sys-con.com/linux/ vs
         http://uptime.netcraft.com/up/graph?site=www.sys-con.com ...
         truth in advertising (for hints, check the seller feedback)
         http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1204183251
         ... "75% of every person on the internet is paying/looking at
         porn right now", claims http://www.xsitecreator.com/index5.htm
         - accurately, if you all go there ... BRUCE STERLING posts
         attachments to Viridian list using "dead media" Macintosh
         word processor WriteNow ... Kieren McCarthy now THE
         REGISTER's chief correspondent in "matters of the heart":
         http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/16403.html ... no
         reverse-engineering those PEANUT BUTTER AND JAM SANDWICHES:
         http://www.mlive.com/news/stories/20010119bpeanut.frm ...
         http://www.theonion.com/onion3702/infograph_3702.html vs:
 http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/americas/newsid_1133000/1133743.stm


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

         It's Friday, it's half-past-five: time for those Cambridge
         college kids to prove they really know how to cut loose and
         let their hair down - by going to another lecture! Sadly,
         you've already missed Warwick-apologist SUSAN GREENFIELD's
         appearance at the DARWIN COLLEGE LECTURES 2001, but there's
         still about 6 or 7 left in the run, all loosely themed around
         the word "Space" from the looks of it: "Virtual Space",
         "Exploring Space", "Trying To Find A Parking Space", and so
         on. "Get there early", our tipster advises, as the events,
         evidently a social highlight in this quiet market town, draw
         mobs of up to 600 people - possibly under the impression that
         the series has something to do with the Darwin _Awards_, and
         that the lecturers conclude each performance by killing
         themselves in the stupidest manner possible.
         http://www.dar.cam.ac.uk/lecture01.html
          - yes, a college named after the dolphin in "Seaquest: DSV"
         http://www.computing.surrey.ac.uk/personal/st/I.Kuscu/present.html
                         - catch lastminute.com, while you still can


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         Ah, Alphaworks! Every few seconds, it seems, IBM's R&D labs
         wheel another crashed-saucer-technology there, be it "Speech
         for Embedded Noses", or "StudlyCaps for Java in XML". And
         it's mostly there they stay, languishing in pre-development
         hell, no matter how cool. Take EASYCONNECT, a "simplified
         connection management for the mobile 'road warrior'" that's
         been smiling hopefully at visitors since August 2000. Ignore
         the Mad Max imagery and instead think of MacOS's Location
         Manager, that genuinely useful connection-settings-chooser
         that Microsoft have stubbornly refused to rip off and thus
         condemning every poor sucker moving between two offices with
         a Windows laptop to hours of fiddling with the Network
         settings. EasyConnect manages all that, and it does file and
         email synchronisation too, and it schedules web caching for
         offline reading, and the interface is lovely, and it
         actually works, and on top of all that the help file has a
         list of phone numbers for hotels and car rental places in
         the US. Bless.
         http://www.alphaworks.ibm.com/tech/easyconnect
                             - no bumper-mounted machine-guns, though


                                >> MEMEPOOL <<
                            gesundheit the "excite"

         when they're weakened by their attempts to contact us, we will
         ATTACK: http://www.tidbits.com/tb-issues/TidBITS-564.html#lnk2
         ... forget Tomlinson's MI6 book, maybe only FREENET can save:
         http://cruel.com/sub/bonsai.shtml ... searching Napster for
         BRITNEY SWEARS (sic)... 'cos, to scale, the walls really *are*
         that thin: http://www.marscenter.it/iss/paper_iss_model.html
         ... EA "Director of Front End Dev" imitates rubberburner:
         http://www.stimulus.com/members/msl/msl.html ... wasabi
         TOOTHPASTE... http://www.ai.mit.edu/~vona/xtal/ vs
         http://www.stellar.demon.co.uk/ ... a more philosophical
         review of Apple's writable DVD drive than you'd expected:
         http://cryptome.org/jg-wwwcp.htm ... PLANET OF THE BELGIANS:
         http://www.timburtoncollective.com/pota_offsumm.shtml ...
         http://www.hugeglobalnet.dial.pipex.com/orgchart.shtml vs
         http://www.buymybook.co.uk/altubemap.jpg ... DINNER in
         disguise: http://minidisco.com/minispecs/lunchbots.html ...
         "BILL JOY complains about the collapse of humanity? He started
         it with that fucking editor"... and "must look good in khaki"? 
         http://www.efashionshowjobs.com/careers/softwareengr/index.html
         ... am I partying hard at RIPE38 or not? http://photos.jml.net/
         ... tolerate this, and your kids' school photos will be next:
   http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/wales/newsid%5F1129000/1129197.stm


                               >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                    the less rude http://www.tvgohome.com/

         TV>> of course, when the guy says "We've never lost an
         American in space" in APOLLO 13 (7.50pm, Fri, BBC1), he's
         carefully omitting the three Apollo 1 astronauts who burned to
         death while sitting on the launchpad... co-written by "a
         secret person from a secret celeb gossip website" (no, not
         us), PEN MONKEYS (1am, Fri, C4) is the world's first CGI-
         animated (ie: poorly lip-synched?) topical sketch show...
         then, on Saturday, there's a choice between commemorating the
         liberation of Auschwitz, in REFLECTIONS ON THE HOLOCAUST (from
         5.35pm, Sat, BBC2), or the death of Buddy Holly, in THE DAY
         THE MUSIC DIED (11.50pm, Sat, C4)... filling out the weekend's
         tech-entertainment quota, there's CD-ROM clean-room drama
         DISCLOSURE (10.30pm, Sat, ITV), Hitchcock-in-space knock-off
         LIFEPOD (12.50pm, Sat, ITV), and little-known black-and-white
         identity-crisis sci-fi SECONDS (1am, Fri, BBC2) - not based on
         the Human League song of the same name... the dabbling with
         black hole-science, the robotic monotone, the whole
         exoskeleton thing - maybe someone's not as defenceless as he
         makes out, argues THE REAL STEPHEN HAWKING (9pm, Mon, C4)...
         the current series of LIVING BY THE BOOK (9pm, Wed, C4)
         concludes without even mentioning some of the classic self-
         help/ managerial manuals, like "The Bible", Nietzsche's "Also
         Sprach Zarathustra", and Mark Leyner's "Et Tu, Babe"... subtle
         pro-Glock product-placement enlivens lacklustre "The Fugitive"
         followup US MARSHALS (9pm, Tue, C5)... DISINFO NATION (1.05am,
         Thu, C4) talks to Grant Morrison about "The Invisibles" -
         hopefully not overlooking his excellent work on "Animal
         Man"... and Amanda "Max Headroom" Pays shows up in SOLITAIRE
         FOR TWO (11.40pm, Thu, BBC1) - yet another wacky romantic
         comedy featuring a body language expert and a palaeontologist
         who can read men's minds (oh, can't they all?)...

         FILM>> acclaimed for daring to suggest that the drugs issue is
         "quite complicated", Steven sodding Soderbergh wrecks a
         perfectly good Mexican cop thriller with endless hand-wringing
         by Michael and Catherine Zeta-Jones, who should go play in the
         TRAFFIC (imdb: drugs / helicopter / addiction / assassination
         / assassin / attorney / based-on-tv-series / car-bomb /
         cellular-phone / cocaine / corrupt-official / courtroom /
         crack-house / desert / drug-abuse / drug-war / epic / father-
         daughter-relationship / food-poisoning / ghetto / heroin /
         informant / kidnapping / kids-and-family / mexico / murder /
         organized-crime / plastic-surgery / poisoning / police-
         corruption / prostitution / rehabilitation / remuneration /
         runaway-child / runaway / san-diego / sexual-favor / sniper /
         stolen-car / suburbia / surveillance / teenage-prostitution /
         tijuana / torture / twist-in-the-end / vulgarity / white-house
         / wiretapping) - not a biopic of the Steve Winwood "Hole In My
         Shoe" rock band of the same name... all it takes is for you to
         stop three other people (then they stop three more, and so on)
         from going to see Kevin Spacey memetic weepie PAY IT FORWARD
         (http://www.cndb.com : Nothing really. Although [Helen Hunt]
         does go around in a bra a lot and at one point you can see a
         bit of her nipple) - it could be just us, but maybe random
         acts of kindness just aren't going to do the trick in a world
         of systematic exploitation... and, in ongoing attempts to
         assuage the complaints we've received recently about quoting
         the "Celebrity Nudity Database", we're pleased to report that
         only mild nakedness mars the magical-realism sex=cookery
         nonsense of WOMAN ON TOP (http://www.cndb.com : I think I saw
         the side of [Penelope Cruz's] ass but it's too quick to really
         dwell on)... oh and some British movies are once again
         confounding the multiplexes, with straight "Queer As Folk"-
         alike THE LOW DOWN (http://www.bbfc.co.uk : contains coarse
         language, drugs and sexual references)... and Redbus' latest
         crowd-pleaser, DEAD BABIES (http://www.bbfc.co.uk : passed
         '18' for drugs, sex, violence and coarse language). Joe from
         "Killer Net", Katy "Spaced" Carmichael (also credited as "Mad
         Puppet Woman" in 1996's "A Midwinter's Tale"), and a story by
         Martin Amis - together at last!...

         NASTY, BRITISH, AND SHIRTS>> (being a suggested T-shirt slogan
         from reader JOHN CHRISTIAN - thanks for that, John, we'll put
         it with the others, which have recently included BERNIE
         ROBINSON's "Why not print a shirt with a picture of sick or
         spilt food down the front especially for wannabe slobs?"). On
         a brighter note, in response to your pleas, we're pleased to
         report that http://www.ntkmart.com/ should be back up by now,
         featuring new stock of those old favourites "I got UKP80
         million in venture capital for my blah blah blah" and "Viral
         marketing doesn't work - but at least you save on the ad
         spend". Plus: a special topical addition to our usual line-up
         - yes, make Valentine's Day unusually poignant this year with
         a bittersweet reminder of the ultimately destructive nature of
         all interpersonal relationships, the ILOVEYOU.VBS T-shirt...
         created by Modesty B Catt - who, reassuringly, seems to be
         something to do with "Illuminati Online" http://www.io.com -
         the design consist of the words "I love you" in an emotive
         handwritten font, with ".vbs" a bit lower down, against a
         background of the source code to the notorious macro virus of
         the same name, arranged in the form of a big soppy heart. It's
         sensuously printed on a sumptuous burgundy shirt, and Modesty
         (and the "in-jokes for outcasts" guy) have generously asked
         for all its royalties to go to Sheffield-based pro-Linux
         computer recycling nuts the Redundant Technology Initiative
         http://www.lowtech.org . Let's face it, it's the perfect
         (sarcastic) way to show someone how you really feel... oh, and
         there's also a really basic "They Stole Our Revolution" one
         (in blue) that we did last year for a laugh but turned out
         better than we expected. And we'll be doing a proper "Spring
         Collection" in February as well. And we're making a few
         concessions to everyone who wrote in saying XL was "like a
         tent" ("Yesyesyes! Banish that annoying ridge around arses
         worldwide which is caused by tucking outsize T-shirts into
         stretch jeans! Let me buy sarcastic torso coverings that don't
         reach my knees!", deadpanned VICKY CLARKE). Most designs are
         now available in "Large", and we're even trialling "iloveyou"
         in "Medium", though AIDAN WARNER wins the no-prize for taking
         matters into his own hands, reporting that "Washing the
         garment [an orange "80 million" XL] at 50 degrees c, rather
         than the recommended 40, shrunk it by about 15 percent (that's
         a very rough guess) (though oddly it appears to shrink
         slightly more vertically than horizontally, though that might
         just be me)". NTK regrets that such DIY modifications (by non-
         qualified service personnel) do invalidate your warranty -
         but, that aside, let us know how you 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
                          "stalking the wily editor"
            http://website.lineone.net/~enigma23/echelon/danny.html

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