Need To Know 2001-06-08

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"I would be surprised if Virgin is not the biggest provider of Net services in Britain within a couple of years. We've got the brand name to do it, the will to do it, the resources to do it and we're determined to do it..." - self-confessed net novice, RICHARD BRANSON, 2 years ago news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/business/the_company_file/newsid_280000/280576.stm ...also, having our own ISP sounds *incredibly* cool! http://www.mediaguardian.co.uk/newmedia/story/0,7496,502500,00.html >> HARD NEWS << friends of yoors? Just what is the connection between the Guardian/Observer and dotcom no-hoper MOONFRUIT? The relationship dates back to 2000-01-20, when the Guardian ran a gushy day-in-the-life piece on the company. Entirely coincidentally, the piece was written by a Moonfruit employee, Justin "others have questioned my independence" Hunt. Justin's cut-and-paste from Moonfruit's pitch revealed that they would be "using the latest Flash-based technology": sufficient in itself to invoke the Tuneless Clank of Death in readers' ears. In April, a happy-clappy lifestyle piece in the same paper quoted heavily from the fruit's employees: "If commitment alone were enough Moonfruit - which has just secured its first revenue deal - would be massive". Sadly, though, being committed only helps in breaking into the psychiatric market, and by April 2001, the Guardian was writing more muted pieces, speaking only of the "arguable success" of Moonfruit.com, and mentioning that its "hyped" CEO Wendy Tan was trying to sell the thing off. If Wendy Tan was hyped, it was surely due to the Guardian and Observer: according to the FT's Global Archive, over half of the articles mentioning were from these two papers. This week, though, was the final straw: a piece which, once again, interviewed practically the entire Moonfruit founding team, this time asking them about their nice new jobs, given that MF has now sacked all but seven of its employees. But even *now*, the Observer is still including heavy-handed plugs for the company: "we were offering something they didn't know they wanted... whoever buys Moonfruit will be able to tap into that". Which leaves the question: who at the Grauniad management bought so heavily into this one-trick pony that they're *still* trying to flog it? http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,3952468,00.html - "optimistic" http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4013322,00.html - "holistic" http://www.guardian.co.uk/Archive/Article/0,4273,4197128,00.html - In the words of Austin Powers: WHY WON'T YOU DIE? And so farewell, ORBS, the New Zealand anti-spam blackhole list, whose utter paranoia proved both a selling point and a (literal) liability. It's still not entirely clear why maintainer Alan Brown decided to kill it - although the civil suit against him in NZ by companies included on the list, and his decision this month to sell his ISP and quit the whole Net biz altogether might have *something* to do with it. Of course, ORBS has died before, to be reborn - Alan B. only picked up managing the service when previous operator, Alan Hodgson at Dorkslayers, threw in the towel. Now it looks like the former Alan has been playing around with restarting the service (although only for non-USA servers). And what's this? Mirrors of the complete ORBS blacklist, ready for someone else to take up the baton? http://www.dorkslayers.com/ - anti-spam people: cranky to the point of incoherence http://data1.orbs.org/ - ...like we can complain. Full dumps here. Follow-up to last week's KEITH HENSON news: there's to be a protest outside the Canadian High Commission in Grosvenor Square tomorrow (or the day before yesterday, if you're reading this on Monday) at 1300BST. A prior meet will commence, in true British demo fashion, at the Marlborough Head pub, 24 North Audley Street, London, at noon. Of course, many anti-scientologists can be as, uh, enthusiastic as the most proselytising hubbardista, but we're sure there'll be plenty of room for everyone. If it gets too weird, or they start teargassing everyone, say you're nothing to do with the "manimals" and act like you're shopping. http://groups.google.com/groups?num=1&ic=1&selm=m1vgm94ytr.fsf%40krusty.ath.cx - this relies on you reading mail on late Fri/early Sat. Ah, you do. http://freehenson.da.ru/ - story so far *** STOP PRESS *** Keith Henson released: s/demo/thank-you celebration/, we guess: http://www.operatingthetan.com/freedom-release.txt *** STOP PRESS *** >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious net recession explained at last: "industry's driving force" http://www.idfl.co.uk/ has ceased trading; job demand greater than supply: http://www.ntk.net/2001/06/08/dohjobs.gif ... in accordance with MOORE'S LAW, 1982's BBC Micro was "twice as good" as 1977's Apple II, recalls HERMANN "BILL GATES" HAUSER: http://www.independent.co.uk/story.jsp?story=76427 ... after http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?back=2000/now1013.txt&line=50#l vendetta - http://www.swapitshop.co.uk/ FALCO!... putting the "dead" back into dead tree publishing, SKY bows out with yet another "Sex issue"; BUSINESS AND TECHNOLOGY MAGAZINE goes under after being dragged round Cromwell Media, Reed and Dennis like a ginger stepchild... "Teenage Dirtbag"-style, JANE WAKEFIELD admits proliferating Iron Maiden, BO cliches: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/comment/0,5859,2769008,00.html ... LINUX INSIDER's news aggregator not as "infallible" as its subject: http://www.ntk.net/2001/06/08/dohpope.gif ... "net proficiency" thinktank advocates "hypocratic oath" [sic] for politicians: http://www.idea.gov.uk/news/press/270401.htm ... must be a slightly racier version of MINESWEEPER than what we're used to: http://www.minesweeper.8k.com/ ... only one thing as bad as child porn, experts decree - HACKING TOOLS: http://www.securityfocus.com/templates/article.html?id=213 ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Somewhere between "scrotnig" and "zarjaz" is our verdict on ART DROIDS 2000AD, a small but perfectly formed display of original artwork from the anachronistically named Brit sci-fi comic of the same name (level 2, Henry Cole Wing, Victoria and Albert Museum, London SW7, UKP5 to get into museum, free after 4.30pm). Curator Rufus Dayglo is obviously a fan of scratchy old Mike McMahon (or friends with him or something), but the distinctive penmanship of Carlos "Strontium Dog" Ezquerra and Dave "Rogue Trooper" Gibbons also gets a look in, and there's an early full-colour Dredd story in which the "space vampire" is clearly painted on using Tippex. Almost unforgiveably, there's no Kevin O'Neill, though it is just next door to the Frank Lloyd Wright exhibit, where you can recite your favourite lines from "Blade Runner" against an authentic interior design setting. http://66.34.80.28/index.php3?page=news&story=VA - mag now features "full Werewolf/Vampire sex", apparently http://www.coolbeansworld.com/preview/marshal/index.php - more fun than Joss Whedon's future-Buffy "Fray" comic, anyway >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering If "Oooo-ICK! Ooo-ITCRITICKITRITRICKICRIT (etc)" are sounds that, nearly 20 years later, still set your heart a-racing, then prepare to take a stripey-blue-and-yellow trip back in time with Windows' premier Spectrum Tape Loading Simulation Screensaver, SCREEN$. Directly addressing the common emulator failing that a) they don't usually do the exciting line-by- line rasterisation of the loading screen, topped off with the clumsy "reveal" of the attributes file; and b) the games then turn out to be rubbish, SCREEN$ focuses exclusively on the loading screen element, painstakingly constructing one of 200 popular ZX title images, accompanied by authentic real-time sound effects, then giving up and loading another one. What's more, it even crashes with convincingly depressing regularity, presumably part of a "forgetting to blu-tak your Kempston joystick interface edge connector" emulation feature. http://homepage.ntlworld.com/paul.dunn4/screen$.htm - "People reported being able to 'hear' the sound of the Spectrum loading in their heads whilst watching the first, silent version." SO WHAT'S SO FREAKY ABOUT THAT? >> MEMEPOOL << oogle the google OK, so who comes bottom when you search Google for "SEARCH ENGINE SUBMISSION SERVICES"?... One Onion Ring To Rule Them All: http://www.icv2.com/articles/home/429.html ... fuckin' STUDENTS: http://romance.al.cl.cam.ac.uk/ ... killer WAP ap: http://www.cocklefighting.co.uk/ ... UK government to process last 6 years of net traffic with SETI-style distributed screensaver... http://www.dj-i-robot.com/ ... maybe not the underpant-friction awareness campaign you were hoping for: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010530/od/greenpeace_dc.html ... EA CORPORATE ANTHEM is epic, overproduced rework of what they did last year: http://www.geocities.com/ea_anthem/ ... at last - a BANNER AD that's inappropriate wherever it's used: http://media.interadnet.com/earthquake_images/00047033-991240086237.gif ... ANN WIDDECOMBE CAPTION COMPETITION - we have a winner!: http://www.neilhunt.org.uk/ ... this week's crank EBAY AUCTION: http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1434765906 ... filling in online registration forms using email addresses "borrowed" from (say) http://www.e-envoy.gov.uk/whoswho.htm , http://www.dma.org.uk ... best argument against e-democracy so far: http://www.sclub7net.co.uk/best.htm ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> underrated cult-classic movie night tonight, with Billy Zane as Time Crisis' Richard Miller in Silent Scope: The Movie adaptation SNIPER (11.05pm, Fri, BBC1), plus African-American "Twilight Zone"-style anthology COSMIC SLOP (12.25am, Fri, C5) ... WW2 rages on with the dog-no-longer-called-"Nigger" edit of warcrime celebration THE DAM BUSTERS (2.35pm, Sat, BBC1), plus a refreshingly non-PC account of Japanese atrocities in HELL IN THE PACIFIC (9pm, Thu, C4)... and BBC1's embarrassing attempt to cash in on young people's text-messaging craze THE JOY OF TEXT NIGHT (from 7.25pm, Sat, BBC1) handily includes Sylvester Stallone as the mercilessly futuristic - yet cryptically monosyllabic JUDGE DREDD (10pm, Sat, BBC1)... William "Manhunter" Petersen props up flashy CBS-saving Vegas- set import CSI: CRIME SCENE INVESTIGATION (9pm, Sat, C5)... allegedly supplying the inspiration for the terrible "Strange Days" http://binky.paragon.co.uk/it/issue17/sd/sd.html is the most shocking thing about 1960's supposedly meta-voyeuristic PEEPING TOM (3.40am, Sat, C4)... STEVE LEONARD'S ULTIMATE KILLERS (8.30pm, Sun, BBC1) travels the world in search of its most lethal animals and pits them against each other, to see which would win in a fight... while Bill Oddie and Adam "Local Heroes" Hart-Davis excavate LIVE FROM DINOSAUR ISLAND (7pm, Sun; 8pm, Mon & Wed, BBC2) - not to be confused with Martin Bashir's outrage over xenotransplant technologies that don't even exist yet, in ORGAN FARM (11pm, Sun; 11.30pm, Wed, ITV) ... Donal "Undercover" MacIntyre infiltrates the execution of Timothy McVeigh aka THE OKLAHOMA BOMBER (9pm, Mon, BBC1), previously postponed due to football... self-consciously offbeat Coen comedy THE BIG LEBOWSKI (11.05pm, Mon, C4) gets its terrestrial premier... teens talk dirty masquerading as social commentary in C4's TEENAGE KICKS strand (10.30pm, Tue- Thu, C4)... and using "genius sperm" can produce autistic offspring, reveals HOW TO MAKE A GENIUS (7.30pm, Wed, BBC1), as if the two were mutually exclusive... FILM>> "Shakespeare In Love" meets "Bring It On" in Kirsten Dunst's intertextual amateur dramatics highschooler GET OVER IT (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/getoverit.htm : vulgar dance moves with sensuous dress; encouragement of masturbation and sexual freedom by parents; gaping face kissing; vulgar mimicking of male intercourse with another male's ear; teen pair in her bedroom sitting on her bed giggling with no supervision; "Thank Buddha"; flatulence in an audience)... Warren Beatty's reincarnation comedy "Heaven Can Wait" comes back again - as a black guy! - with Chris "Lethal Weapon 4" Rock, Eugene "Best In Show" Levy and the directors of "American Pie" notably failing to enlighten DOWN TO EARTH (http://www.family.org/pplace/pi/films/A0014824.html : huge theological liberties; reincarnation is central to the story line; Jennifer "American Pie" Coolidge's immodest wardrobe is disgusting)... while Mathieu "La Haine" Kassovitz directs Jean "Leon" Reno as a mismatched cop partner in hotly unawaited clueless French "Se7en" remake THE CRIMSON RIVERS (MPAA: Rated R for violence/grisly images and language)... THE VICTORIAN AFFECTATION>> and well done to THE KIDS FROM FAME, who've fended off strong competition from both THE ADVENTURES OF ROBINSON CRUSOE and THE A-TEAM, to maintain their inexplicable pre-eminence at the top of our audio-visual UK bestsellers, now updated at http://www.ntk.net/books/ . The US chart has meanwhile been dominated by an individual (or individuals) intent on purchasing the entire back catalogue of both THE KINKS and ORSON WELLES - right up to his largely unheralded vocal performance in TRANSFORMERS: THE MOVIE. Bookwise, a recent surge by Thomas Pynchon and various guides to Dinky toys have failed to unseat the ever-popular NEAL STEPHENSON, though reader LLOYD WOOD was quick to point out that "sample chapters" of his recently re-released THE BIG U (well, the whole thing in fact) are still unofficially available online: http://www.csr.uvic.ca/~evemden/books/ ... in other news, watch for the literary debuts of geek heroes LINUS TORVALDS ("Just For Fun: The Story of an Accidental Revolutionary") and STEWART LEE (from out of "Lee And Herring"), whose "The Perfect Fool" appears to be a semi- autobiographical account of his personal quest for truth in Las Vegas, Arizona and Balham. Hardest man in SF GREG EGAN has updated his site http://www.netspace.net.au/~gregegan/ with full text of his Alan Turing vs CS Lewis short story, plus info on his next book, SCHILD'S LADDER, a promising-looking return to his previous "When Physics Attacks" form. Less prestigiously, DOUG RUSHKOFF is back with an "Open Source" novel, helpfully entitled BULL - and, even more worryingly, http://www.rushkoff.com/tour.html he's *right here in the country with us!*... thanks to everyone who wrote pointing out that the HOW TO GOOD-BYE DEPRESSION: IF YOU CONSTRICT ANUS 100 TIMES EVERYDAY guy is at last available in textbook form: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/0595094724/ [NTK 2000-10-27]... to A CHEFFIE, who theorised NTK 2001-04-27's link to "Ladies' Fashion/ Heavy Duty Equipments" merchant site http://www.symmic.com/ might be "an American Psycho startup kit"... and to HENRY RADDICK and "ANDREW LLOYD-WEBBER", who both objected to being described as "fake book reviewers", Raddick by highlighting his considerable critical oeuvre: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/AA9IP6AYACFK5/ - while "Every word is hammered on the anvil of truth", asserts Lloyd-Webber. "Ditto my good friend LLOYD GROSSMAN": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/member-reviews/-/A26B16032PETMN/ ... >> 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 "the post-modern end of lefty British activism" http://www.inet-one.com/cypherpunks/current/msg00269.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.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. 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