Need To Know 2001-04-13

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"You shouldn't be worried just about numbers for these kinds of programmes. They bring in very upmarket, male audiences that are very desirable to advertisers. The Hitler fixation will serve television channels very well in the future." - Nazi shows may lose ratings battle, explains Adam Smith, Zenith Media... [ http://www.thetimes.co.uk/article/0,,66-112635,00.html ] ...but zey vill vin - ZE WAR! >> HARD NEWS << 3 cock-a-doodle-doos The Easter story: it begins with death, despair, betrayal and ends with - well, we never could fathom that last bit, so let's stick with those well-worn topics for this week's grep of regret. Noted financier Death made THE INDUSTRY STANDARD EUROPE a market proposition it couldn't refuse, in accordance with NTK - and, we admit, anyone with an ounce of sense's - prophecy. Factoring in his previous WIRED UK success, we extrapolate JOHN "tops out at 30,000" BATTELLE's next foray into the British market may last as long as three weeks. Or seven issues, whichever comes first. http://www.subbie.freeisp.co.uk/strategicpartner.html - internal gossip sheet incisively parodies those long, unreadable articles http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,7496,471727,00.html - it's always the Guardian that puts the boot in. And us. DESPAIR for remaining BIGFOOT users, whose "free e-mail forwarding for life" looks to have an expectancy of somewhat less than five years. "Times have gotten tough for Internet companies such as ours", the company weasels, and goes on to say they're spreading that "tough" sensation by limiting mail forwarding to 25 messages a day. And even then, subscribers have to provide "demographic information" before the forwarding restarts. Given that most people receive about that much mail in "GREAT INKJET DEALS" alone, you can understand that the company would introduce this change gently. But, so far, as far as we can tell, they haven't mailed users, or put the policy change on its Website - they just stuck it in the autoresponder FAQ at help@bigfoot.com. How stealthily desperate can you get? http://www.bigfoot.com/ - Website oddly stuck in 1996 too Better postpone answering that until after the BETRAYAL section. Not one, but two previous NTK picks - stealth Napster-beater AUDIOGALAXY and Gnapster-sorter BEARSHARE - have bartered away some of their coolness for a mess of piggybacked spyware. Bearshare, which always carried OnFlow, a doomed banner-ad plugin, now offers SaveNow!, a useless online shopping helper app in its installation options. Audiogalaxy more silently installs WEBHANCER, some satanic instrument for measuring end-users' network speed. The Audiogalaxy Linux client is unaffected, thank the good Lord. We don't have massively strong opinions about these scummy little apps, but we do feel a little implicated if you found them on your machine. So if you haven't spotted them already, it's probably time you had an easter-egg hunt. We'd recommend Lavasoft's ADAWARE as a good way of deleting them, but now we're stricken with doubt. What's *it* installing behind our backs? http://www.spychecker.com/ - nothing, according to Spychecker. But who's paying *them* off? http://lavasoft.de/aaw/ - ok, ok, lavasoft's legit >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious must be getting too old for this groovy EXTREME SPORTS lingo: http://www.mountainbike.co.uk/reviews.html (features and news equally informative)... "Welcome to **SITENAME**t" greets http://dvddirect.safeserver.com/mainpage.php ... whois fuckedcompany.co.uk - could it be CEO of GAMEPLAY?... HIGGS "BOSUN" ahoy: http://www.ntk.net/2001/04/13/dohhiggs.jpg ... BUSH petition breaks server: http://www.magnetbox.com/sorry/ ... "Calm yourself", indeed - RADIO TIMES offers 28-foot TV: http://www.radiotimes.com/film/win_win_win/quizzes/entertainment_system/ ... worst ever HELENA CHRISTIANSEN pics - with her plumber!: http://www.hm.com/design/habib/showpic.asp ... 1000g of "HOT PEANUS": http://www.foxitalia.com/arachidi_eng.html ... one conversion where the C64's lack of greyscales won't be a problem: http://www.ntk.net/2001/04/13/doh64.gif ... what does HENSON want 'em for? http://www.jenerator.org/jimhenson.htm ... http://PopMusicWorld.com launching "biggest and best Pop Music Web Site in the World" around May/June 2000... a *lot* of BT ADSL modems: http://www.cert.org/advisories/CA-2001-08.html ... http://www.thebrainstrust.co.uk/babytrade/ imitates http://www.martian.fm/ebaby.htm , a good 3 months later... despite appearances, not the output of a dialectizer CGI: www.nicensus2001.gov.uk/censuslanguages/pdf/Census%202001%20UlsterScots.pdf >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful "This week, we reflect upon the Crucifixion. How uncivilised 1st Century Palestine seems compared to our own society, with its religious tolerance and No More Nails adhesive", writes the current MARTIAN.FM newsletter (though no doubt they'll go rubbish like all the others now that we've linked to them). Anyway, we'd hoped to re-emphasise the "countryside open for business" message this Easter weekend, though irritatingly major anti-GM protest the HARBURY PICNIC has been cancelled due to Foot and Mouth. Still, presumably there's less chance of contamination at the LANGUAGE OF WATER CONFERENCE (from Tue 2001-04-17, in Bath, appropriately enough), which makes such appealingly psychotic sounding claims as "At a time when we are celebrating our discovery of the language of genes, we need to appreciate that that language can only make sense in the context of the Language of Water". For those of our readers over on the North American subcontinent, that's the same day as DIY geek movie night 20 SIDED DICE (8pm, Tue, 2001-04-17, "Art System", Toronto), featuring a screening of Jim Munroe's "Interactive", a 7-minute meditation asking which is better: text adventure gaming, or real life? http://nomediakings.org/20.gif - INSTALL QUICKTIME; EXAMINE http://nomediakings.org/interactive.htm http://www.languageofwater.com/ - no joke here; just like saying "water: nature's polar solvent" http://freespace.virgin.net/harbury.picnic - GM trials being cancelled too; karmic balance maintained http://www.bfss.org/fmd/010401urgent.htm - Captive bolt humane killers! Your country needs you! >> MEMEPOOL << oogle that google MODERN HUMORIST sells soul to MS, takes aim at obvious target: http://www.officeclippy.com/ ... FOOT-N-MOUTH-scale viral PR campaign: http://www.aint-it-cool-news.com/display.cgi?id=8659 ...twentythree.co.uk / Mark Thomas List ask: so no-one's offered POPBITCH any free server space?... VIDEO TOASTER not far away: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1264000/1264205.stm ... everyone chortling over JEDI CENSUS email, fails to notice that UK data processing is being carried out by Dark Knights Of The US Military Industrial Complex, LOCKHEED MARTIN... fun bank holiday things to do: convert SGI from webserver to beer server: http://home.planet.nl/~mourits/koelkast/ ... build SOUTH AMERICAN ZX81: http://zx81.grok.co.uk/kitinfo.html - arriba!... (experts only) construct MECHANICAL HIT COUNTER: http://www.embeddedether.net/mhc.html ... enter CAPTION COMPO: http://www.political.co.uk/annwiddecombe/gal.asp?ref=gal006.jpg&caption=oink! (mail your entries to us, not Anne Widdecombe)... find porn "APRICOT": http://www.jump.org.uk/milky/apricot.jpg ... oh, and have a good EASTER: http://www.a-h.net/~jon/Ei.jpg ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> Good Friday marks the demise of quality cinema in the form of: SHORT CIRCUIT 2 (7pm, Fri, C5); an inexplicably late showing for THE ADDAMS FAMILY (11pm, Fri, BBC1) - a film largely intolerable to anyone over the age of 6; and Renee Zellweger, Debi "Space Truckers" Mazar, and Liv "Armageddon" Tyler in funnier-than-High-Fidelity-though-what-isn't? music store riot EMPIRE RECORDS (1.15am, Fri, BBC2)... handily, this segues seamlessly into a cross-channel Julia Roberts telethon, featuring deranged Woody Allen musical EVERYONE SAYS I LOVE YOU (10.50pm, Sat, BBC2), cod Oirish IRA period piece MICHAEL COLLINS (10.55pm, Sat, ITV), giant eyebrow nightmare MYSTIC PIZZA (10.50pm, Mon, C4) and Cameron Diaz abomination MY BEST FRIEND'S WEDDING (8.40pm, Sun, C4)... the psychedelia episode of SF:UK (12.35am, Sat, C4) is the first of two featuring Alan Moore, and may (or may not) include the phrase "Bonnie fucking Langford"... while Easter Sunday rounds off with some kick-ass alternatives to Christianity with Hilary "Boys Don't Cry" Swank in THE NEXT KARATE KID (5pm, Sun, C5), Jean-Claude Van Damme's KICKBOXER (10pm, Sun, C5), and Clint Eastwood's entertainingly hellish HIGH PLAINS DRIFTER (10.20pm, Sun, BBC1)... things pick up on Mon with FLASH GORDON (12.10pm, Mon, C4) and THE GREAT ESCAPE (1.55pm, Mon, ITV), then get tangled in the barbed wire at the border with the Broderick GODZILLA (8.45pm, Mon, BBC1) and Michael Lehmann's Janeane Garofalo misfire THE TRUTH ABOUT CATS AND DOGS (9.30pm, Mon, BBC2)... C4 perversely celebrates the fact that women in the workplace are still underpaid and under-represented at board level with BALL BREAKERS ON THE BOX (8.45pm, Mon, C4)... modern DJing is so easy, argues FAKING IT (10pm, Tue, C4), that even posh classical musicians can do it... expect the usual Pagan complaints after resolutely one-sided wiccan dismissal MAGIC - ART OF DARKNESS (9pm, Thu, BBC2)... while the week's earlier themes - Roland "Godzilla" Emmerich, Jean- Claude "Kickboxer" Van Damme - arise once more in bus-plunge "Terminator" knock-off UNIVERSAL SOLDIER (9pm, Thu, C5)... FILM>> the poster looks like Renee Zellweger's holding her nose to avoid a nasty smell, but fortunately the film ditches lots of the book's whinier elements for a rollicking US- market-aren't-British-people-quirky?-repackaged-Notting-Hill version of BRIDGET JONES'S DIARY (http://www.cndb.com: "Renee shows a lot of cleavage, but that's it [...] she beefed up for the role [...] her breasts look a lot bigger, like she was a B cup instead of an A cup"). Oh, and Sally Phillips is in it: http://www.bbc.co.uk/grandtours/popup.shtml?sallyphillips ... intermittent stunt casting - George Clooney, Teri Hatcher, Mike "Beavis and Butthead" Judge, Richard "Slacker" Linklater - enlivens Robert "The Faculty" Rodriguez's gadget spectacular SPY KIDS (http://www.screenit.com/movies/2001/spy_kids.html : phrases: "Freak," "You little brat," "Meat head," "Booger breath," "Diaper baby," "Oh shiitake mushrooms")... or there's rubbish-by-even-teen-slasher-standards - but it has Denise "Starship Troopers" and David "Angel" Boreanaz in it - horror VALENTINE (http://screenit.com/movies/2001/valentine.html : DANIEL COSGROVE plays [Jessica Capshaw's] friend/lover who apparently fails at trying to have sex with her. He moves into her home after sinking all his money into an Internet startup; several [women] - most notably [Denise Richards] - wear tight- fitting tank tops that accentuate their large breasts)... >> 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 "bringing Freenet to Theodore Hong's attention" (O'Reilly's Peer-to-Peer: Harnessing Disruptive Technologies, p241) 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 is supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.ntkmart.com/ (K) 2001 Special Projects. 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