Need To Know 2001-06-29

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>> SPECIAL EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful After our ongoing campaign against the profiteering price tags required to enter (or even attend) most of the new media awards, we're pleased to announce that we've wangled free entry, including food and booze, for anybody who wants to come and see us fail to win "Internet Journalist Of The Year" for the second time running at the NETMEDIA EUROPEAN ONLINE JOURNALISM AWARDS 2001 (7pm, Thu 2001-07-05, Mermaid Theatre, Puddle Dock, London SE1, rsvp info@net-media.co.uk so they'll have some idea of numbers). Admittedly, given the number of categories this year - Best News Story Broken on the Net: Utrygge Polseskinn (Unsafe Sausage Skins) - we're not sure how much of a Eurovision-style long-haul it might be but, hey, you can always while away the longer speeches trying to spot your fellow NTK reader-contributors and wondering what else you might have in common with them. Or you might feel we at least owe you a drink for all those funny URLs you sent in that we never credited you for. Or you might require a face-to-face apology for that time we linked to your poorly-publicised personal site, which indirectly led to a number of unfortunate comments being posted in the guestbook about your wife. Either way, hope to see you there! http://www.net-media.co.uk/awards/venue.asp - also, maybe there'll be some sort of post-party punch-up... http://www.streetmap.co.uk/streetmap.dll?G2M?X=531784&Y=180841&A=Y&Z=1 - ...between Guardian Unlimited and BBC News Online http://www.statewatch.org/conf.htm - plus, the morning after Simon Davies' big privacy houseparty http://www.ukuug.org/events/linux2001/ - first stored-program computer, banquet of Chinese food >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious Why not try another postcode? How about "BECAUSE I DON'T LIVE ANYWHERE ELSE": http://www.ntk.net/2001/06/29/dohntl.gif ... CARDIFF CITY FOOTBALL CLUB confront Welsh stereotypes head-on: http://www.cardiffcityfc.co.uk/content2/news/news.asp?articleid=763 ... "help, I'm typing this while trapped underneath a girder": www.merlin-recruitment.com/jobseekers/results.asp?jobvariable=Construction ... BBC Online unveils ultimate generic kids' meteorology lab: http://www.bbc.co.uk/weather/weatherwise/diy/projects.shtml ... http://defaced.alldas.de/mirror/2001/06/23/www.wimbledon.org.uk/ - but do they realise that the glory of winning the Wimbledon tennis championship is *nothing* compared to the glory of the kingdom of heaven? http://www.wimbledon.org.uk/bible.htm ... irritating ad campaign phase 2 - DHTML popups for "Artificial Intellingence": http://www.ntk.net/2001/06/29/dohai.png ... beats "Sorry, you must have a frames-enabled browser to view this page": http://www.google.com/search?q=mtv+live ... Jennifer Capriati's less successful brother, career prize money $466: http://www.wimbledon.com/bios/profile/ms/atpc552.html ... UK deathwatch: http://www.whytheyfailed.com/ ... BLUETOOTH gravestone already up: http://www.techreview.com/web/brown/brown061901.asp ... http://www.theschmews.com/ taking extended "summer break", curse of Dave Green strikes again... >> SLOW NEWS << contributor FAQ Q. What is "NTK"? A. NTK began life as a subscription-only newsletter showcasing the very best in highbrow erotic fiction for women. But, as is often the case with those shifting new-economy business models, readers actually found the fictitious "web diary" section (penned by "Susannah", an ambitious country girl yearning to make it in the glamorous world of new media) far more convincing than the various odysseys of personal self-exploration among the Parisian demi-monde. One swift relaunch later, NTK as we know it was born. Keen-eyed readers may still spot traces of our shady origins from time to time: sudden lapses into strong language at moments of heightened emotion, for instance, or those uncomfortably detailed accounts of male nudity in current feature films. Q. What should I send in? A. Basically, anything you find interesting or amusing, and think others might too, especially if it falls under: * Weird stuff brewing in UK newsgroups or discussion boards. * Self-indulgent sniping at The Guardian or The Register (or any other publications of note - but, for some reason, mainly The Guardian or The Register). * Bizarre religious sites (particularly new ones). * Bizarre Lego sites (ditto). * Bizarre retro tech/video games sites. * Any combination of the above. That said (and without wanting to sound ungrateful), we reserve the right to send back a sarcastic reply to any of the following: * Things we've run before (or, especially annoyingly, things we've run in the last couple of weeks). To check, type a distinctive part of the URL into the search form at the top right of http://www.ntk.net , and see if anything comes up. We'll be so glad you did. * Screengrabs of sites which have been broken for weeks (use "View Page Info" in Netscape) - mail us the URL instead. * Obscure e-commerce sites showing obscure products with prices of $0.00 or $99999.99 (though our general disclaimer "unless the circumstances are exceptionally ironic" applies to this and all subsequent categories). * E-commerce sites where the release date of a book or CD is listed as 1900, or similar hilarity. * Pics of Microsoft servers falling over (these now have to be almost *life-threateningly* ironic to get in...) * Photos of Windows crashing on big TV screens in public places, especially ones you found on someone else's website. Ones you took yourself may, however, still be acceptable... * Minor spelling errors halfway down a really long FAQ page. * BBC news pages where they've garbled the pound sign in front of a figure, making it seem several times larger. * BBC news pages where they've forgotten to put "million" after an ostensibly enormous figure, making it seem much smaller - eg "M Night Shyamalan [was] paid $10m (UKP6.25) upfront for his last film, the 2000 hit Unbreakable": http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/entertainment/newsid_1294000/1294956.stm (Unexpected "millions" inserted elsewhere remain of interest: http://www.ntk.net/2001/06/29/dohmillions.gif , however.) * BBC news pages featuring the mysterious "puffbox". * "Hacked" sites which judicious use of "whois" reveals are registered to someone else entirely (bonus points if they include an "@" in the URL!) * News stories from the New York Times (or anywhere else that requires users to register - please try and find the story somewhere else. In general, we vastly prefer covering things that have a proper URL, just so people don't think we make it all up...) * Stuff that's been done to death on Slashdot (or The Reg), unless you've got something genuinely new to say about it. * And finally, you know how GIFs are optimised for compressing bitmaps, as opposed to JPGs, which are better for photographs? Why not try sending in your screengrabs as GIFs instead? Q. If I send you something, will you print my name? A. Usually we won't, whether you want us to or not - as part of a general measure to preserve contributor anonymity (where appropriate) and to increase our own apparent omniscience. The main exception are what we (arbitrarily) decide are followups to previous items, which we put in the letters section, and which we will perform selective anonymising on if we feel the author has revealed too much. If it's vitally important that your name does not appear, then tell us and we'll definitely leave it out. Of course, if you really need to be untraceable, you should *never* contact us from your work address - even if you're using Hotmail or PGP, as they could be monitoring your keystrokes via software or hardware. Q. So what have Popbitch done to piss you off then? A. Nothing really. It's just they go after easy targets sometimes and, as we believe Friedrich Nietzsche says in his introduction to "Watchmen", "When you go after easy targets, sometimes you become an easy target yourself..." >> MEMEPOOL << oogle that google typing "George Bush" at http://www.chriswetherell.com/hobbit/ ... OK, so would MAME on Gameboy Advance now be too much to ask?: http://www.otakunozoku.com/xbox/ - though good arguments against porting FLASH: http://www.khrona.f2s.com/mario.swf ... laugh your "cocks" off: http://www.merriol.freeserve.co.uk ... even adults can't tell if kids are adults or not any more: http://sns.chicagotribune.com/technology/sns-onlinesolicitations.story vs http://www.satirewire.com/news/0008/satire-fbiteens.shtml ... not the "postcards from NATHAN BARLEY" parody you'd hoped: http://www.joystickjunkies.com/pages/editorial_scruffy.html , http://www.joystickjunkies.com/pages/editorial_steve.html ... http://www.electromagnetic.net/press-releases/trousers.php vs http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=1605361776 ... hang on - so how much of SO GRAHAM NORTON is actually for real?: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/010628/4/bwopn.html ... yup, that'll do it: http://www.magdaleneboatclub.com/disc/words.htm ... ONION http://www.theonion.com/onion3723/west_bank.html semi-imitates "War-weary Jews establish homeland between Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Egypt" from "Our Dumb Century" book... and they say there are no real challenges left in life any more: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010622/re/britain_startrek_dc_1.html , http://fredericknewspost.com/display.cfm?storyid=13874 ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> Sontaran Mark Kermode reviews "Shrek" in NEWSNIGHT REVIEW (11pm, Fri, BBC2) then nips off to introduce Anne-Heche-nudity curio THE WILD SIDE (12.40am, Fri, C4) before he can be asked to account for BBC2's showing of notorious Eric Idle "Alan Smithee" bomb BURN HOLLYWOOD BURN (12.15am, Fri, BBC2) - going from the casting of Chuck D, apparently based on the Public Enemy track of the same name... inducing audience boredom via mundane repetition of dialogue and actions, Samuel Beckett's famously existentialist WAITING FOR GODOT (7pm, Sat, C4) provides a welcome break for all those sick of "Big Brother" ... while the dodgy movies continue into the weekend with pseudo-Lovecraftian Carpenter clunker IN THE MOUTH OF MADNESS (11.15pm, Fri, BBC1); Richard Gere's daft Muller yoghurt product placement RED CORNER (9pm, Sat, BBC1); soporific Travolta gangster "comedy" GET SHORTY (9.05pm, Sat, ITV); plus an extra-special bafflement triple-bill featuring WILD AT HEART (11.40pm, Sat, C4), GODZILLA VS MECHAGODZILLA (1.55am, Sat, C4) and GODZILLA VS MOTHRA (3.25am, Sat, C4)... after "JFK", Oliver Stone continues his fragmented biopics of every other US president with Anthony Hopkins as NIXON (11.20pm, Sat, BBC2)... E4 shows all 6 episodes of BRASS EYE back-to- back (from 9pm, Sat, E4) as teasers for a one-off terrestrial BRASS EYE SPECIAL (10.35pm, Thu, C4), although - get this! - apparently some of these episodes *had bits cut out of them!*: http://mudhole.spodnet.uk.com/~frogger/corpses/site/editnews/brasseye.html - DivX'ed at http://web.ukonline.co.uk/chilled/brasseye.html ... and impersonator Jimmy Fallon gets his SNL pals to help Kirsten Dunst host THE MTV MOVIE AWARDS (1pm, Sun, C4), though the spoofs aren't quite up to Ben Stiller's "The Matrix" from last year... BBC2 pits Falklands-war docu EXOCET (9pm, Sun, BBC2) against EQUINOX's "Don't be *too* proud of this gamma- ray planet-sterilising terror you've discovered" game of "Hunt For The Death Star" (9pm, Sun, C4)... C5 demonstrates it doesn't just show straight-to-video rubbish from 3 years ago, with theatrically-released rubbish from 3 years ago THE AVENGERS (9pm, Tue, C5) ... and best-show-on-BBC-Choice, for what that's worth, LIQUID NEWS (12.05am, Thu, BBC1) gets its analogue debut, soon to be reformatted as "Liquid Sport" and "Liquid Business" too... FILM>> not as anti-Disney as it could be, but fortunately there's not too much plot to distract from all the 3-years-on- from-"Antz" CGI, as Eddie Murphy's "Donkey" steals the show in SHREK (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/shrek.htm : urinating on a campfire; flatulence; gratuitous display of cartoon nudity; inflation of a snake by mouth to make an animal shaped balloon. NB: inexplicably overlooks the gag that "Lord Farquad" is supposed to sound like "Fuckwad")... this week's two other modern takes on popular myth and fairy-tale include Canadian Mimi "X Files" Rogers feminist horror low- budgeter GINGER SNAPS (imdb: independent-film / werewolf / drug-dealer / fake-suicide / gore / goth-girl / high-school / menarche / menstruation / morbid / puberty), whose director seems to think no-one else has ever drawn parallels between that "walking along the beach in soft focus" time of the month and phase-of-the-moon lycanthropy... while Tom "Run Lola Run" Tykwer reteams with Franka Potente for epic Eurotrance pop video THE PRINCESS AND THE WARRIOR (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : rated 15 for strong language, moderate violence and medical horror)... international action fans have a choice of Besson- scripted pile-up TAXI 2 (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : rated 12 for strong language and moderate violence)... or Korean "live action Manga" NOWHERE TO HIDE (imdb - original title: Injong Sajong Polkot Opta)... plus a muted release for Warren Beatty, Garry Shandling, Diane Keaton, Andie MacDowell, Goldie Hawn, Jenna Elfman, Charlton Heston and Nastassja Kinski - together at last! - in troubled '70s-style ensemble TOWN AND COUNTRY (imdb: fishing / hunter / husband-and-wife / kids-and-family / log-cabin / masquerade / new-york / polar-bear / sex / ski- trip / skiing / small-town / traffic-jam) - not, from the looks of things, based around the popular North London music venue of the same name... PRO-CELEBRITY BONERS - THE MOST GENITALLY-FIXATED "CORRECTIONS AND CLARIFICATIONS" COLUMN IN THE UK>> apparently we confused "cryogenics" with "cryonics" in our 2001-06-01 profile of H Keith Henson; an individual claiming to be Jon Ronson mailed, apropos of nothing we can remember, to say "Leave me alone you bastards"; but far more distressing to us was RICHARD MURKIN's (entirely correct) allegation that, during the course of last week's largely unprovoked "Prob-Bitch" parody newsletter, we made the unsupported assumption that penis size follows a normal distribution within the specified population, in which case the median would be exactly the same as the mean. "If you're looking to establish the first British statistics and celebrity gossip website, you should explain this kind of thing better," chided Richard, "or at least point readers in the direction of a few good papers on the topic" - little realising that other readers were already mailing us research from the field: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1472-6874/1/1 - peer-reviewed studies, too, no less... CRAIG LEFF, who must live in America or something, astutely hypothesised that NTK 2001-06-08's "Living Splendor Embalming Fluid" banner ad http://media.interadnet.com/earthquake_images/00047033-991240086237.gif was probably for the TV drama "Six Feet Under" - "a less surreal Twin Peaks-style show about morticians which just started on HBO", from the makers of "American Beauty". Either that or "It's *really* subtle meme advertising for AI"... but, as ever, our heftiest mailbag followed NTK 2001-06-01's challenge to find the earliest recorded instance of a computer or video game "entirely set in a vagina". After discarding ALEX ROBINSON's nomination of oddly '80s-themed Flash app http://www.limmy.com/projects/comeagain/comeagain_popup.htm (too recent) as well as http://in-cubus.narod.ru/projects.html (submitted by BEN STRAGNELL, in circumstances probably unrelated to this contest, for its "Detailed models of Cocks, Balloons, Planes and Cartriges"), we were left with GUY DAVIDSON's suggestion of "Deus Ex Machina" on the Spectrum, "which was at least partially set in [one]". "By the way, where are you now Mr Croucher?", Guy ponders, claiming, "You owe me UKP800 and 17 years' interest..." So, in the end, we felt it should go to the furtive teenage fumblings of BUSTA JAMES, who recalls visiting an American friend in 1988, and being introduced to the Sega Genesis, the internet, and a game where you controlled a sperm-shooting penis. "The only setting I can imagine that to have any relevance in is a lady's delicates," he persuasively argues. "And that is where, I'm almost certain, it was set". No further questions, your honour - NTK regrets that this correspondence is now 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 "last of the stuff Dan wouldn't let us run before he gets back from holiday" http://www.pandroid.zetnet.co.uk/features/lowline3.htm 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. 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.