Need To Know 2001-07-13

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"My theory is that the (Internet) industry was started in large part by technologists rather than media people..." - Robin Webster, President, Interactive Advertising Bureau http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1005-200-6523029.html ...of course, if we "media people" were smart enough to use search engines, or books, we'd be able to check... >> HARD NEWS << you lose Good to see MICROSOFT offering to "disappear" IE5.0 from OEM's desktops should they want to (but not Media Player, which actually still has a modicum of competition). Of course, nobody has any choice now, so the offer is moot: an official announcement of the end of the Browser War if ever we saw one. Of course, there are still a few backwoodsmen fighting the good fight. Perfectly timed, the Microsoft Free Friday campaign was announced last week (as so many major projects are these days, by Dave Winer randomly talking in his sleep). It includes a module for Apache that bounces IE users off your Website, encouraging them to never return again^W^W^W try alternate browsers like Opera or, maybe telnetting to port 80. But while these squabbles go on and on, by the end of tonight, it'll be clear who won the real Browser War. It's Jamie Zawinski, who - although it was a close race - managed to ship his nightclub before Mozilla 1.0. http://unlikely.org/mike/hacks/mod_msff.c - we just use courier to achieve the same effect http://www.dnalounge.com/ - needed an extra couple of months to design easter eggs Apologies to the DIRECT MARKETING ASSOCIATION for drawing attention to the member's contact details database on their Website last week. The security lapse is now fixed, which should mark the end of the story. Unless someone plans to anonymously place the list online elsewhere and then mail us the URL, that is. Still, perhaps the DMA can comfort itself that they're not the only ones to leak valuable strategic data out to the wider world. Thanks to the classic "I said *Bcc:* the membership list!" error, exclusive subscription service NETIMPERATIVE.COM inadvertently published what we assume to be its the entire list of 50UKp a year paying member. And what a star-studded list it is! Martha Lane-Fox, Jon Thingie at Lateral, Steve Bowbrick, Leslie Bunder - the list goes on and - then stops, abruptly, after 184 subs. Is Netimperative really running on 9 grand a year, excluding banner ad revenue? And is its often press release-led content at all swayed by the high number of PR flacks among its paying audience? And not to imply that the Netimperative 184 are a soft touch, but maybe the DMA would like to buy this list off them too? http://www.netimperative.com/ - of course, it's nine grand more than most of us OK, not exactly up to the minute news, but it took us a while to realise what's actually going on here: HARVEY BALL, widely believed to have invented the "smiley face" logo in 1963, died earlier this year (that's the circular yellow countercultural icon, not the :-) emoticon whose variants once padded out the pages of oh so many internet magazines). Ball, to his credit, never applied for a trademark or copyright on the design; the small print for the movie "Evolution", on the other hand, believes it to be "a registered trademark of Franklin Loufrani and Smiley Licensing Corporation" - a French guy who says he devised the design in 1968 and "has made millions" since internationally registering it in 1971. Just a couple of questions: Wasn't anyone aware of any "prior art" on this one (we always thought it came from the simplest graphics that newborn infants would recognise as a face)? Is Loufrani now planning to sue, say, anyone manufacturing or using a device which utilises the IBM PC character set, in which this symbol occupies positions 1 and 2? And, entirely hypothetically, what if some highly distributed open source Gnutella or Freenet- style project appropriated it as its "official" logo? Would it be possible for the public domain to actively steal it back? http://www.s-t.com/daily/04-01/04-14-01/a04wn028.htm - vs http://www.cnn.com/US/9807/07/fringe.smiley.face.off/ http://www.evolution-themovie.co.uk/index0.html - and don't get us started on "Transmetropolitan" and "Watchmen" >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious "end of video censorship" celebration in August issue of LOADED abruptly truncated by page 75/76 being torn out of every issue... top product placement: http://www.pgsql.com/ , http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/13/dohexpo.gif ... BBC refuse to give up hope: http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/13/dohhen.gif ... BT research centre finally hits on guaranteed money-spinner: http://www.adastralpark.com/ ... mythical test data spotted: http://www.s1play.com/query/s1play/htdocs/stn_id_7/index.jsp ... this week's "case of the missing millions" (stop, please): http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/13/doh100.gif ... "and they're not the only ones": http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/13/dohskills.gif ... with a reassuring "420" visitors (as of Friday lunchtime): http://www.legaldirectuk.com/home.asp ... this week's "truth in search engines": http://www.google.com/search?q=bt+cellnet ... brands not queueing up to sponsor high-profile G8 summit: http://www.genoa-g8.it/eng/summit/sponsor.html ... defunct dotcom selling shirts, skirts, socks off employee's backs?: http://www.frankgbowen.co.uk/back5.htm ... "senior" salaries hit: http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/13/dohpound.gif ; minimum weekly wage: http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/13/dohcheapo.gif ; ESTATE AGENTS meanwhile now officially "taking the piss": http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/13/dohwee.gif ... International Space Station to receive thorough "dicking" via "front door": http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/13/dohdick.gif ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful In general, we don't like art - but we know what we like, and it's pictures of spacecraft and exotic women-creatures on the front of sci-fi novels, the implied subject-matter of THE SF AND FANTASY ART EXHIBITION (from Sat 2001-07-14 to 2001-08-11, Foyles Bookshop, 113-119 Charing Cross Road, London, free). Admittedly, the only exhibitors we've heard of are airbrush maestro Jim "Traveller" Burns, and SMS - whose idiosyncratic pencilling style on 2000AD's "ABC Warriors" made such a break from Simon Bisley's florid interpretations. Oh, and Alligator Descartes, author of the O'Reilly classic "Programming the Perl DBI". http://www.sflink.net/events/artgallery/ - but where are the biro drawings of Psi Judge Anderson? http://meets.gblogs.org.uk/partyinthepark.htm - next week: non-dead non-fictitious bloggers' get-together >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Can we make the funny joke about hash becoming legal? For - do you see? - it is because digital *hashes* of binary files are being used by *legal* companies to automatically identify copyright-infringing MP3s on file-sharing services. No, we cannot? Very well: a rather better use of hashes is being pursued by BITZI.COM. They've opened up what is, effectively, an Open Directory of bits. You run the open source BITCOLLIDER program on your local files. It generates a hash value for each one, and, for MP3 and Ogg Vorbis files, sends that to the Bitzi server with all the metainformation it can deduce (artist, track, album, yada yada yada). Now anyone with that file can grab all the juicy meta-info, without having to mess around listening to the song. There's precious little infrastructure for Bitzi right now, but it's likeable because the license is currently fairly sensible (Dmoz.org-esque, rather than scary cddb-ish), and because - hey, with excessive automated information gathering on arbitrary binary data, what's not to like? http://www.bitzi.com/ - can't believe some people think NTK is incomprehensible http://www.openp2p.com/p2p/conference/graphics/friday/zeros_and_ones.jpg - can't believe this employee thought this was a good idea >> MEMEPOOL << oogle that google ON DIGITAL unveil low-cost upgrade path - that really works!: http://www.broadbandbananas.com/stickers.jpg ... REEFER MADNESS at http://www.filmspeed.com/reefer/ - part of evil plan to get kids hooked on WINDOWS MEDIA PLAYER 7... kicking STAR DUDES' ass: http://download.theforce.net/theater/gangsta/starwarz.html ... like running a weblog wasn't enough of a "cry for help": http://www.daign.com/girls/stacy/bio.html ... when superhero parodies go bad: http://www.proudrobot.com/hembeck/robin.html ... or, when TVGOHOME fans go spectacularly off the rails: http://tv.cream.org/buchan/ ... "Private, what is your MAJOR MALFUNCTION?" http://www.explosiontoys.com/store/ult081.html ... when oh when will the public tire of TV catchphrase double-entendres over piss-poor home-made techno tracks? http://www.cubanboys.co.uk/ ... "Customers who bought music by Ultimate Sound Effects Library also bought music by DAVID GRAY": http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00000AG79/ ... disappointingly, doesn't monitor its own popularity (yet): http://www.google.com/press/zeitgeist.html ... life imitates SNOW CRASH: http://uk.news.yahoo.com/010710/80/bxtb6.html (c'mon, how long before refugees attach rafts to it and turn it into a huge floating city?)... and DOGBERT is Leon Trotsky: http://www.andrew.cmu.edu/~dmb/dilbert.html ... this week, we have been mainly choosing the (easier?) right-hand paths on: http://www.konami.co.uk/latest/soon/may01/sscopex/ ... hasn't quite got the hang of that whole "thou shalt not kill" thing: http://www.christiangallery.com/hill3.html ... Claudia "Babylon 5" Christian to sing in AREA 51: THE MUSICAL: http://www.area51show.co.uk/Synopsis/Act_1.htm (NB: different Dan O'Brien)... the *cheapest* tickets to low-earth orbit: http://www.cheapflights.com/cgi-bin/reload/misc/space.html ... new EMINEM song describes indigestion brought on by over-eager mountaineering: http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/13/purple.txt ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> possibly hoping to snag some more of that lucrative lager advertising, Mark Little presents an otherwise inexplicably Australian-themed British Grand Prix NO WORRIES WEEKEND (from 11pm-ish, Fri-Sun, ITV), featuring Nathan-Barley-style porn trawl 24 HOURS IN SOHO (11.35pm, Fri, ITV), CGI-free James Garner race movie GRAND PRIX (around 3am, Fri-Sun, ITV), cult car crash musical THE BLUES BROTHERS (11.10pm, Sat, ITV), and culminating - on an entirely different channel - with Matt Jones lookalike classic YOUNG EINSTEIN (4.20pm, Sun, C5): http://www.channel5.co.uk/movies/blockbusters/young_einstein.php vs http://matthau.yoz.com/cam/20010705/images/29_mattj_jason_dave.jpg ... other movie highlights include the Woody Allen bit of NEW YORK STORIES (12.45am, Fri, C5), the recently postponed-for- some-reason SUTURE (12.50am, Sat, BBC2), Christopher Walken gangster arthouser THINGS TO DO IN DENVER WHEN YOU'RE DEAD (10pm, Sun, C4) plus Jack Lemmon back-catalogue like THE ODD COUPLE (2.10pm, Sat, BBC2) and the slightly more expletive- packed actor-fest GLENGARRY GLEN ROSS (11.40pm, Sun, BBC2) - but not sodden Morgan Freeman/ Minnie Driver heist yawn HARD RAIN (9pm, Sat, BBC1), or frantically unhilarious John Cleese farce CLOCKWISE (4.45pm, Sun, C4)... John Diamond cancer drama A LUMP IN MY THROAT (9pm, Sun, BBC2) hopefully won't put you off his wife's delicious-looking recipes in the concluding edition of NIGELLA BITES (8.30pm, Wed, C4)... like we always say, DEAD CALM (9pm, Tue, C5) is "Alien" on a boat... and, apparently, during the era portrayed in the notoriously anachronistic BRAVEHEART (9pm, Tue, BBC1), they didn't even have film or movie cameras!... John Sayle's Tex-Mex epic LONE STAR (12.35am, Tue, C4) and Joe Queenan's THE MAFIA'S TEN COMMANDMENTS (1.10am, Thu, C4) are both ignominiously shunted off to post-midnight slots... "Danger is my middle name" is not the explanation for low-budget Kathy Ireland schlocker DANGER ISLAND (9pm, Wed, C5)... John Pilger traces the web of power concealing THE NEW RULERS OF THE WORLD (10.40pm, Wed, ITV) to discover, controlling everything from his secret underground base - Jon Ronson!... hopefully, every time they show that TROUBLE AT THE TOP (11.20pm, Wed, BBC2), it knocks 5-10 million quid off the value of Benjamin Cohen's dot-com... while "comin' at cha" on Fri is the terrestrial debut of all- girl sci-fi CLEOPATRA 2525 (7pm, Fri, C5) - or "Porno-looking whores on a violent rampage in futuristic nonsense plots" as http://libercratic.government.directnic.com/Journal/culture/TV.htm enticingly describes it... FILM>> an unusually undistinguished line-up clogging the multiplexes this week, with Keanu Reeves providing his traditional "woah, dude" moment in unintentionally hilarious Charlize Theron terminal illness romance remake SWEET NOVEMBER (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/sweetnovember.htm: "More cleavage" command; suggestion that kinky is acceptable; cohabitation, repeated; face on clothed breasts; transvestism and additional homosexual presences; two men undressing woman; book on understanding transvestism)... following the long- running "James Bond" template, Ash et al pursue yet another previously undiscovered species of supervillain in POKEMON 3 (http://www.screenit.com/movies/2001/pokemon_3_the_movie.html : in the 22-minute short that precedes the main film, a Pokemon character swats his own rear end and sticks out his tongue, both directed at another Pokemon character in something of a taunting fashion)... and the "feature-length Saturday Night Live character spin-off" concept once again fails to translate into box-office gold in afro-powered womanising comedy THE LADIES MAN (http://www.cndb.com/ : you can see [Sofia Milos'] bare breasts. The only problem is she's wearing obvious white pasties over her nipples which completely ruins the scene)... sex-farce fans are equally ill-served by limited-release fare including Amanda "Jack And Jill" Peet in WHIPPED (imdb: independent-film/ bar/ basketball/ brooklyn-bridge/ condom/ dating/ diner/ flashback-sequence/ guitar/ homosexual-slur/ manhattan/ menage-a-trois/ new-york-city/ nightclub/ one- night-stand/ sex/ statue-of-liberty/ subway/ threesome/ times- square/ twist-in-the-end/ urination-scene/ vibrator/ vulgarity/ womanizer/ yanked-off-bikini-top/ remake)... or for that matter Canadian Tilda Swinton alternate-reality play- adaptation POSSIBLE WORLDS (imdb: mystery/ sci-fi)... CONFECTIONERY THEORY>> no sooner had we issued our APB over CADBURY CRUNCHIE NUGGETS [NTK 2001-06-15] than reader "ADAM" was offered some, by a Cadbury-Trebor-Bassett representative, in a pub. The nuggets are much as you'd expect, he reports (a little *too* chewily crunchy, if you ask us); more exciting, he contends, are the equally new MAYNARDS WINE PASTILLES (also UKP1.25 for 225g bag): "Wine Gums meet Fruit Pastilles in port flavoured jelly and sugar dust-up. Bloody lovely". Slightly odd flavours, too - "and there's still no wine in them!", the packet endearingly proclaims... PHILIP ROWLANDS spotted would- be "Jelly Belly" rival ROWNTREE'S MEGABEANS in Terminal 4 of Heathrow Airport, describing the experience as "mostly pleasing; a standard fruity jelly bean, coated with that acidic 'tangy' sugar. Chewier than most, could be mistaken for microwaved fruit pastilles gone wrong". He felt unable to confirm their advertised "thirst quenching" or "Oingy Boingy!" properties, as JOSH ROULSTON pondered their transformation from "fruity gum-beans with bite!" (on the front of the packet), to the more prosaic "fruit flavoured chewy beans in a tangy shell" (on the back)... in other product-testing news, MARS have been trial marketing "M&Ms CRISPS" in Australia, "halfway in size between regular and peanut (approx size of the US peanut butter versions)", according to NTK reader "MIKE", with "a malted biscuit, almost Malteser-like in taste, but more dense" in the centre. ADAM ATKINSON thought we'd like to know that "M&M colour compositions change with consumer tastes", the current mix being "30% brown, 20% red, yellow, 10% orange, blue, green", while KEVAN DAVIS, in the light of the recent new, "crunchier" TWIXES (and CADBURY'S FINGERS) wondered "Why do they make the automatic assumption that increasing some arbitrary trait of a given confection makes it better? Wrigley's Extra, which is now quite proudly 'Even Mintier', borders on the burningly uneatable. What next - 'Now With Extra-Laxative Sorbitol'?"... also this month look out for SKITTLES SOURS (29p/bag), CADBURY'S STRAWBERRY BUTTONS ("WITH REAL FRUIT"), STARBURST's MYSTERY "NAME THAT CHEW", MATLOWS SPACE PEBBLES (described by ANONYMOUS TIPSTER as "the first truly innovative sugar rich sweet for years" - and not, of course, to be confused with the "Brilliant Pebbles" concept of Ronald Reagan's original Star Wars plan) - plus the perhaps all-too-identifiable "Extreme" range from NTK e-commerce partners http://www.cybercandy.co.uk/ , boiled-sweet-style lollies (from UKP2.60) with delicacies like bits of gold leaf, rose petals, tequila worms and scorpions embedded in them. Apparently if they're popular they'll look into getting the chocolate-dipped cricket and chocolate ant nugget too... >> 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 "aiming for 'funny XOR sarcastic', actually" http://www.theinquirer.net/12070101.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.