Need To Know 2001-02-23

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"Think of it as a sandwich," said Linda McNulty, director of worldwide product marketing for Apple's desktop lines. McNulty said the bold colors represent the energy of the music revolution Apple is embracing. "We wanted to further convey what music would look like...as a color." http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1006-200-4921252.html - APPLE EXPLAINS ITS REVOLUTIONARY NEW "WORLDWIDE COLORFUL MUSIC SANDWICH" ...and as the stock falls, the kool-aid gets stronger and stronger >> HARD NEWS << out you goooo! Last week's news that 8-bit classics MANIC MINER and JET SET WILLY would be returning to our modern computer-game consoles came as a surprise to many - including, it appears, the original creator of the titles, MATTHEW SMITH. Sources close to the reclusive author on comp.sys.sinclair claim that Matt will have no input into the new titles, and will not benefit in any way from the deal, in which Jester Interactive acquired the rights to the entire Graftgold back catalogue, including MM and JSW. Now, it takes a lot to rile the diehards on c.s.s, who have, after all, witnessed everything they ever loved crumble into oblivion, but this news appears to have been the last straw - along with an incident when one of the ringleaders, upon contacting a senior Jester representative about the matter, allegedly received the succinct reply: "Fuck off dickhead". http://groups.google.com/groups?th=c723bde804b0cc8e&rnum=9&seld=917992161&ic=1 - the rights owner vs the only people guaranteed to buy the product if it's ever released. Let battle commence! To the GOVERNMENT GATEWAY Website: and straight out again, with a flea in our ear. It seems we need Windows or a Mac (and no Mozilla). Paranoid minds might suggest that this is an evil side-effect of the government handing the site contract to Microsoft. But we're not like that. No, we're *really* paranoid. If you do use an MS browser (just like the UK's Unix-driven crypto mavens don't), you'll find that Government Gateway is the first step to introducing a state public-key infrastructure. The "blessed" system (which, in the spirit of joined-up government, looks like it'll apply to all your state transactions) is CHAMBERSIGN. This is a system run by Viacode, with "key recovery" built in. You get to generate your signature key. Your encryption key, though, is created by Viacode - and they keep backups. So if you use it for communicating securely, someone, somewhere, could silently obtain your key from Viacode and monitor you. To be honest, it's not as bad as it might have been: ChamberSign does use a bunch of open standards, and staring with our childish eyes at it, it looks like you could sign your self-generated PGP key with a mogrified official ChamberSignature, and therefore make the kosher PGP key as legally binding as the original. Except: the ChamberSign FAQ: "while ...a ChamberSign digital signature will stand up in a court of law, the PGP digital signature is unlikely to". PGP: perfectly legal, just not supported under this government. Just like you weirdo Unix voters. http://www.gateway.gov.uk/ - warning: it also tends to crash a lot. surprise http://www.chambersign.co.uk/faqs.htm - crazy thing is, the CoC were dead against the RIP bill http://www.chambersign.co.uk/downloads/cps.pdf - search for "shall not undertake key escrow" [sic] for escrow details Oh, sod it, we're all terrorists anyway. As ROSS ANDERSON, aforementioned crypto maven and public enemy number one, noted this week, his involvement in trying to stop the gov having unlimited access to all health info in the UK would make him a terrorist under the new Terrorism Act 2000. We put that down to his own overactive imagination - until the usually conservative ROLAND PERRY, acting CEO of LINX, said that he was genuinely concerned that anti-spamming actions (such as blackholing) could count as terrorism, too, under the Act. Apparently, the "cybercrime" provisions are so broad that looking at a phonebox while wearing a 2600 badge could land you in H-Block. And then there's Jack Straw's *new* plans to make e-mail and SMS "hate messages" (what, like M GNA KL U U BSTRD?) a criminal offence. This is, he says, to protect scientists from animal rights protestors. Protect them from what? Unnecessarily distracting electromagnetic interference? Really annoying operator logos? What? WHAT? http://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/pipermail/ukcrypto/2001-February/014950.html - just call him Braveheart http://www.gorjuss.com/medicalprivacy/ - we like the Henry Root-style "here's a tenner" bit http://counter.li.org/cgi-bin/runscript/display-person.cgi?user=95778 - okay, so some of us *are* FBI double-agents. THAT'S NOT THE SAME THING >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious sure, it won't stop you sending us it, but we'll try anything: http://www.microsoft.com&item=q209354@www.hwnd.net/pub/mskb/Q209354.asp - read the fucking URL, you lamers... http://www.vnunet.com/ FALCO!... POPBITCH alerts readers to "new album" from Weird Al Jankovic ("Running With Scissors", released June 1999), also recommends cult flash anim "All Your Base Are Destroy By [sic] Us"... tough times at ZAPITOVER.COM, flogging any old love, prosperity, iced gem biscuits they still have hanging around: http://www.ntk.net/2001/02/23/zapitdohver.gif ... "Declining Mental Skills Can Catch You Unaware", reveals PENN STATE U: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2001/02/010215075223.htm ... smug BARCLAYCARD wankers allege purchase is "on it's way": http://ad.uk.doubleclick.net/543147/uk-lost-free-468x60-12k.gif ... why no "How to access old pages from a search engine, even though they've closed the index due to prank contributions like:" http://www.autistics.org/skills/pages/leavelover.html ... you know, we think they meant to spell it "KUNSThalle": http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/world/europe/newsid_1174000/1174876.stm ... Entranet FALCO - do we get a UKP3,000 bonus for naming everyone you sack?... IBM sponsoring engineers to "focus on girls": http://www.ntk.net/2001/02/23/dohibm.jpg ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Whenever we hear the phrase "rooftop party", we think of either The Beatles' open-air performance at Apple Studios , or the ex-CIA sniper team in KW Jeter's "Dr Adder" - neither of which are presumably the intended connotations of the INDUSTRY STANDARD EUROPE's "Rooftop London" event, which (we believe) may be taking place on Wed 2001-02-28 (there's a page where you register and they invite you if you're cool enough, or something). Of course, that's also the same night as the racily titled ETHICAL MEDIA NETWORK EVENT (from 6.30pm, 2001- 02-28, a pub in Covent Garden, London), which'll no doubt be full of well-meaning do-gooders who've turned up for Thu's DIGITAL FUTURES CONFERENCE on e-sustainability (from 9am, 2001-03-01, The British Library, London) - a question which has, in many cases, satisfactorily answered itself in the year since these reports were commissioned. Afterwards, if you can tear yourself away from the prospect of William Rowe (of the apparently now defunct-again Ninfomania) at Richard Barbrook's CYBERSALON (7pm, Thu, the ICA), PROF KEVIN WARWICK will be wowing the locals with his usual routine at CAFE SCIENTIFIQUE (7pm, Blackwells Bookshop, Oxford). "Come along and join us?" comments Kevin Warwick Watch Operative Tom. "More like 'Come along and be assimilated at Warwick Mobile Command Centre, foolish humans!'" http://europe.thestandard.com/events/rooftop/invite - or Christopher Fowler's "Roofworld", perhaps http://www.ethicalmedia.com/ - scheduling vs the Industry Standard: how ethical is that? http://www.digitalfutures.org.uk/ - Eno! Porritt! Lane-Fox! Together at last! http://www.cybersalon.org/cybersalon/resources/itv_flyer.html - "interactive TV night" promoted by high-tech leaflet scan http://www.cafescientifique.org/warwick-0301.html - Not "If", but "*When* will cyborgs rule the world?" >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Given that it's been theoretically proven not to work, how *is* GNUTELLA doing these days? Quite well, ta. Following the spectacular collapse of the initial network around August, hordes of Developer-Philosopher-Kings have been picking through the wreckage, bolting together more reasonable clients, and starting all over again. With some payback, too: BEARSHARE (for Windows) and LIMEWIRE (for Java-ish platforms) have both combined tough rules against freeloaders, a *cough*centralised*cough* set of initial gateways into Gnutterspace, a smatter o' routing heuristics, decent user interfaces, and a stupid portmanteau name, to create an irrestible download for Gnutella fans. The Gnutosphere is better for it. Of course, it still doesn't work very well, but that's not the point. The point is that Napster's going down - eventually, the RIAA's twitching ratter-lawyers are after OpenNap, and the popular port of last resort remains port 6346 - Gnapster. Although if you're installing JRE for LIMEWIRE, you might as well look at Freenet. http://www.openp2p.com/pub/a/p2p/2001/01/25/truelove0101.html - clip2.com working to create the Second Republic https://www.reg2.meetingsplus.com/oreillyp2p/main.taf - see you in 2201 http://espra.net/ - soon, my pretty This is so cheap. WEBJUMP-PLUS is the extended version of Webjump, the handy utility hidden away in the lower alphabet of the emacs lisp mountain. M-X webjump is built into GNU Emacs and XEmacs: it lets you pull up search-engine queries and dictionaries with a minimum number of keystrokes; Webjump-Plus isn't pre-packaged, but is more regularly updated, and with a much wider variety of destinations. It's got one word links to Google Groups or Java Docs or Cryptome, or, ah, NTK, listed in the code with the comment ";; Tempting to troll for a plug here, but we refrain virtuously.". Such virtue is rewarded; we'll get our punishment in Hell for crumbling under the pressure. http://www.neilvandyke.org/webjump/webjump-plus.el.html - although why a bad URL for BOTH beat us to the official Emacs version... http://www.neilvandyke.org/webjump/ - oh, we're just ungrateful wretches >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/newsid_1170000/1170301.stm vs http://www.chez.com/viviane/thailande/ ... MORMONS imitate ONION: http://www.sltrib.com/02202001/utah/73061.htm ... this week's COMPANY ANTHEM: http://www.wirelessgroup.com/jingle.swf - somebody sign up BARCELONA's "I Have the Password to Your Shell Account": http://www.barcelonadc.com/frame.asp?p=sounds ... IRAQ used PS2s to build "integrated air defence system": http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4138127,00.html - vs http://www.nulldevice.net/images/saddam.gif - *literally* vs http://www.nmd.org.uk/ ... DR DOBBS brings back VERITY STOB: http://www.ddj.com/columns/stob/2001/0102vs001.htm ... wow, this one-floppy AMIGA demo expands to more than 40MB of video! http://www.byterapers.com/~sivu/amiga/ ... REBOOT V4.0: http://www.inwap.com/mf/reboot/images/index.cgi?rb4kids.jpg ... if you're sending us funny 404s, please make them at least as complicated as this: http://www.scintilla.utwente.nl/404nf ... http://www.potnoodle.com vs http://www.subgenius.com ... http://www.plugboy.com/news/plumber.htm "shares inspiration" with http://www.theonion.com/onion3601/plumbing_industry.html ... for all your mistranslated Japanese retro videogaming needs: http://zanyvg.overclocked.org/ ... "Tonight I'm gonna party like it's (time_t) 1E9"... >> GEEK MEDIA << the less rude www.tvgohome.com TV>> a new run of over-self-conscious fanboy sitcom SPACED (9.30pm, Fri, C4) displaces the last episode of THE ARMSTRONG AND MILLER SHOW to the popular 11.25pm slot... intriguingly scheduled against young people's pop show CD:UK, new "Vision: On" VEE-TV (11.25am, Sat, C4) exposes how text messaging makes it easier for the deaf to buy drugs... and LIVING DANGEROUSLY: HACKERS IN WONDERLAND (11.45pm, Sat, C4) features obligatory Defcon footage, drum and bass, Cyberjunky, those Zapatista clowns, some oddly defensive goth girls, and Coldfire - in a laundrette!... followed on Sun by "Office Space"-inspiring hacker yawn SUPERMAN III (3pm, Sun, BBC1)... the usual WW2 coverage - TORA! TORA! TORA! (7.30pm, Sat, C4) - merges into an unofficial Eastwood weekend, starting with THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY (11.15pm, Sat, ITV), and ending in '70s Clint taking on WW2 Clint in the form of MAGNUM FORCE (9pm, Sun, C5) vs WHERE EAGLES DARE (10.55pm, Sun, BBC1)... you wait all week for a reluctant, misunderstood messiah, then three turn up all at once, in the original pilot of THE INCREDIBLE HULK (5.15pm, Sun, C5), MONTY PYTHON'S LIFE OF BRIAN (9pm, Sun, C4), and Stew Lee/ Simon Munnery/ Kevin Eldon/ Johnny Vegas's League Against Tedium roadshow ATTENTION SCUM (11.50pm, Sun, BBC2)... Nick Berry and Stephen Tompkinson play undercover paedophiles who are "IN DEEP" (9.05pm, Mon, BBC1), while online chat moderation is also an issue in Tompkinson's former stomping ground of BALLYKISSANGEL (8.20pm, Thu, BBC1)... featuring both Will "Jambo" Mellor and Natalie "Carol" Casey, TWO PINTS OF LAGER AND A PACKET OF CRISPS (9.30pm, Mon, BBC2) appears to be the hotly unawaited Hollyoaks: The Sitcom... and the MIDDLE CLASSES: THEIR RISE AND SPRAWL (9pm, Fri, BBC2) acts like most TV isn't all about being middle-class anyway, as demonstrated this week by IKEA MANIA (12pm, Sun, C5), INSIDE MARKS AND SPENCERS (8pm, Sun, C4), and TROUBLE AT THE TOP's look at Pringles (9.50pm, Thu, BBC2) - not the crisps, the sweaters... FILM>> not content with his shot-for-shot copy of "Psycho", Gus Van Sant starts remaking his own movies in Sean Connery/ Busta Rhymes "Good Will Hunting" retread FINDING FORRESTER (http://www.screenit.com/movies/2000/finding_forrester.html : [Connery] pours himself a drink; [he] has another drink; in a later scene, he pours himself another drink; [he] has another drink, and then several more). "Features The Music Of MILES DAVIS" proclaims the poster, revealing perhaps too much about the target audience... GWH's Matt Damon goes on to play a tormented golfing genius in Will Smith/ Charlize Theron's below-par hybrid of "The Natural", "Tin Cup" and the "Bhagavad Gita" (the Hindu "Song of God"), in THE LEGEND OF BAGGER VANCE (http://www.saunalahti.fi/~mitt/movierat/z_baggervance.htm : upper [female] body without clothing from the level of breasts and upwards; great economic inequality; using a holy name connected with a well-known religion for swearing; about 9 swear-words, whose meaning is excrement or eternal kingdom of destruction; uncommonly beautiful camerawork; classical orchestra, oldish light instrumental music, bagpipes, choir) ... or you're stuck with Stephen "High Fidelity" Frears and Jimmy "Cracker" McGovern - together at last! - in "Angela's Ashes"-style Catholic Scouser political poverty-porn LIAM (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : Contains infrequent strong language and horror)... BONERS, OMISSIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS>> "Pancake Day is just around the corner", raged ADRIAN MOULDER, "but you have yet to mention FINDUS SWEET PANCAKES (UKP1.49 for 6) - available in both jammy 'Raspberry Ripple' and school-custard-style 'Milky Chocolate' varieties!" Well, that's because they weren't out last time we did food, Adrian, though we are pleased to report that they largely live up to their microwaveable crepe promise (though are strangely unpalatable direct from the freezer)... resident Industry Standard sophisticate GEORGIA CAMERON-CLARKE highlighted an omission in last week's "Victorian Affectation" print media round-up, noting that boy-composer prodigy DANIEL PEMBERTON appears twice in this month's VOGUE, once "at a book launch where he is referred to as man-about-Hoxton - I kid you not. And the second is at some spaz party where people become DJs for a few minutes". We've been unable to verify these sightings in person - or check if he's wearing his stylish "Ghostbusters" boilersuit [NTK 2000-10-13] - as Vogue has expanded to an ad-packed heftiness previously only seen in the heyday of "Computer Shopper" or "Personal Computer World" (though of course there are usually more scantily clad women - in Personal Computer World!)... but the busiest mailbox, as ever, was provoked by LLOYD WOOD's off-the-cuff observation that bus-poster advertising for Disney's "The Emperor's New Groove" movie makes intermittent use of the word "Minging". Or, "Mingin'", to be absolutely accurate, as numerous readers helpfully pointed out, variously describing this as "better" (ADAM HUFFMAN), "worse" (ANON), "the horror" (A CHEFFIE), and "[giving me] a new mental interpretation of the title 'The Emperor's New Groove'" (TIM BROWSE)... on a related note, thanks to all of you who responded to the great "Nudity In Movie Reviews" debate [NTK 2001-02-02], including ADAM RICE's "Please continue the quotes from cndb.com. I feel they treat Hollywood movies with exactly the level of respect they deserve. However, I would be grateful if you would discontinue the quotes from the Christian websites as I find them highly offensive", plus IAIN BOYD's succinct comeback to our explanation of why we were doing it: "Never apologise. Never explain." Sorry Iain, won't happen again!... thanks also to those who took the trouble to suggest alternative quantitative review sites: LIZ NICKELS for the bizarre "Finnish Capalert" at http://www.saunalahti.fi/~mitt/ (see this week's "Legend Of Bagger Vance"), and tireless LLOYD WOOD, for "Boner's Movie Review Page" at http://woods.bianca.com/shacklet/CYBERCOP , where each film receives a mark out of 10 on the "BonerMeter", presumably based on how many - literal or metaphorical - erections the reviewer experienced during the film... once again, this is all "just for fun", so please don't start sending us your own sexual responses to recent movie releases, especially the guy who felt the need to clarify that the "good bits" in "The Little Mermaid" DVD start "at Chapter 16". NTK regrets that this correspondence *remains* closed... >> 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 "stylish... warped... faintly ironic" p13, Internet Magazine, 2001-03 NEED TO KNOW THEY SET US UP THE BOMB. NOW WE SET THEM UP IT... CHRIST MAKE IT STOP 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.ntkmart.com/ (K) 2001 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.