__  __ _2002-03-29   _ _____ _  __
|  \/  (_)_ __ (_) \ | |_   _| |/ /    o Join! mail an empty message to
| |\/| | | '_ \| |  \| | | | | ' /     o ntknow-subscribe@lists.ntk.net
| |  | | | | | | | |\  | | | | . \     o Website (+ archive) lives at:
|_|  |_|_|_| |_|_|_| \_| |_| |_|\_\    o      http://www.ntk.net/


         "Developing sites that adhere to standards, as opposed to
         Internet Explorer, would be a boon for smaller browser
         makers, but it could create enormous complications for Web
         developers."
                                 http://www.msnbc.com/news/729918.asp
       - standards: making life so *much* harder for Web designers, and
                          a living doddle for that local browser maker


                                >> HARD NEWS <<
                       i was sure that cave was cloosed

         Good Friday: the only festival to satisfy MiniNTK's
         elaborate requirements: a national holiday, a pagan
         celebration, a pseudo-random placement, and a mystic five in
         the fifth column of crontab(5). So while we drum ourselves
         into a frenzy and gorge on the giant Wicker Creme Egg we
         made (from the yummy wood of the Edward Woodward, no less),
         we'll leave you, as tradition demands, with just the broken
         crumbs of a newsletter, and one topical death/rebirth
         analogy. In reverse order: the rebirth. Just who is seeking
         to be reborn with her name changed to "Fuck" in order to
         challenge the ownership of fuck.me.uk and therefore the
         namespace pollution of the whole (fucking) .me.uk
         hierarchy? Well, it's "Ms Fuck", obviously - but hats off to
         that lady on the Nominet mailing lists if she follows through
         with the plan. Somebody's got to protest against these
         already-doomed PLDs!
         http://www.abuse-of.me.uk/
                                   - nothing there yet, but we'll see

         And death? Well, it's probably wishful thinking, but you
         know, there *are* times when we regret asking for those
         unusually literal BBC illustrations. Still, rather than die
         off, the torrent of submissions reached a new high when the
         story "Net filters fail the children" was accompanied by
         photos of a close-up cheese grater and a chicken. But just
         to prove we're not on some sort of vendetta, we'd also like
         to highlight a few other equally pioneering publications for
         your puzzled appreciation. DAVID BURROWS nominated the harrowing
         "What the?" surrealism of "How about now?" in The Economist:
         http://economist.com/surveys/displaystory.cfm?story_id=949071 ,
         numerous readers pointed to Salon's mock-amateur collages,
         such as "Airline steward visits minature egg yolk refinery":
       http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/10/29/central_asian_oil/ ,
         but this month's winner, nominated by SEB BACON, has to be
         Hans Reiser's introduction to ReiserFS v.4, which looks pretty
         much like any overview of a Linux high performance journaling
         filesystem - if it had been designed by "The Lawnmower Man":
         http://www.namesys.com/v4/v4.html .
       http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_1894000/1894561.stm
         - so they didn't have any real breasts on file?


                               >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                         goto's considered non-harmful

         Ah, we remember the fanzine HOAX, packed with stories like
         pranksters printing up official-looking leaflets that appeared
         to come from the local supermarket, saying "Fill Up A Trolley
         And Get All Your Groceries Free!", and then posting them
         through thousands of people's doors. There's another chance to
         relive the heyday of public gullibility at STRANGE ATTRACTOR:
         HOAX (7.30pm, Tue 2002-04-02, The Horse Hospital, London WC1,
         UKP6), who'll be showing famed 1970s mockumentary "Alternative
         3" - a conspiracy to transport the rich and powerful to secret
         slave-built colonies on the moon. Of course, with its clumsy
         jargon of "hot jobs" and "batch consignments", the film was
         swiftly discredited: the population being systematically
         exploited by a tiny elite of industrialists and politicians,
         troublemakers being mysteriously "disappeared", a world on the
         brink of environmental collapse - what kind of crank is going
         to believe that?
         http://www.strangeattractor.co.uk/talks.html
                 - vs http://www.debunker.com/texts/alternative3.html
         http://www.cric.ac.uk/cric/gamerz/
                 - for real, apparently (ditto latest issue of Edge?)


                                >> TRACKING <<
               sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering

         Like Charlie Brown and Lucy, we meet up with MOZILLA every
         year around now, and attempt to test its character by
         kicking its balls. Last year, we admitted that while time
         had not mellowed it, it *had* made it appreciably less
         sucky. This year - well, the tree (and the barn door) is
         bolted shut for 1.0, and soon the great unwashed will see
         what four years in the open source wilderness can do to a
         codebase. If you haven't downloaded Mozilla in a while, do
         so now before Netscape 6.X ruins the cool-facto. If you
         don't care about Mozilla, download Galeon (for GTK et Unix)
         or K-Meleon (for Windows), which now match other browsers
         for features and speed, we think. Our only fear now is that
         as soon as v1.0 gets out, AOL will thoughtlessly decimate
         the Netscape-funded Moz staff, in the mistaken belief that
         they'll go on to implement the cool 1.1 stuff - PGP, dynamic
         fonts, calendar, and main branch support for the Pornzilla
         "enhancements" - on welfare. Only if you give them a better
         launch party this time, you Virginian dweebs!
         http://galeon.sourceforge.net/
                                                 - still looking good
         http://kmeleon.sourceforge.net/
                                        - even if we still like dillo
         http://mywebpage.netscape.com/aufbau01/features.html
- pornzilla: lot of promises, but looks much older than it made out


                                >> GEEK MEDIA <<
                                  get out less

         TV>> "Lord Of The Rings" forms another easy target for the
         dressing-up box "parodies" of FRENCH AND SAUNDERS EASTER
         SPECIAL (9.30pm, Fri, BBC1)... a great weekend for fans of
         mediocre movies kicks off when swearing Woody Allen fest
         MIGHTY APHRODITE (12.10am, Fri, BBC2) is inexplicably
         scheduled after Demi Moore dud THE SCARLET LETTER (10pm, Fri,
         BBC2)... then Sat sees a 3-way non-collision between made-for-
         TV Tony Parsons adaptation MAN AND BOY (9pm, Sat, BBC1),
         Robbie-Williams-approved pseudo-self-loathing biopic NOBODY
         SOMEDAY (9pm, Sat, C4), and BBC2 still flogging its latest
         critically acclaimed ratings disappointment with three back-
         to-back episodes of 24 (9pm, Sat, BBC2)... things improve
         slightly on Sun - and we don't mean the Shatner-directed STAR
         TREK V: THE FINAL FRONTIER (4.05pm, Sun, BBC2) - with DARIA
         THE MOVIE: IS IT FALL YET? (12.45pm, Sun, C5), Patrick Stewart
         Holodeck malfunction MOBY DICK (4.50pm, Sun, C5), and a
         documentary face-off between the self-explanatory BLAST OFF:
         DANGER IN SPACE (8pm, Sun, C5) and THE CENTURY OF THE SELF's
         psycho-historical look at Wilhelm Reich, a major influence on
         the work of Kate Bush and Hawkwind (8pm, Sun, BBC2)... Richard
         Blackwood makes another bid for the "Worst Presenter Of All
         Time" crown in BUFFY MEETS BLACKWOOD (9pm, Sun, Sky1),
         followed by an "uncut" season 6 opener of BUFFY THE VAMPIRE
         SLAYER (10pm, Sun, Sky1) - though it's hardly the unshown
         pilot with the different Willow, is it?... the self-
         referential teen-horror genre's a bit tired now, but the
         Carpenter original's still a bit of a SCREAM (10pm, Sun,
         C4)... and THE BIG BREAKFAST is replaced by early morning
         showings of POPWORLD (7.15am, Mon-Fri, C4), FUTURAMA (8.30am,
         Mon-Fri, C4) and ANGELA ANACONDA (7.05am, Mon-Fri, C4) - if
         that doesn't bring in the viewers, what will?... the Zeta-
         Jones nudity is merely implied in preposterous caper-romance
         ENTRAPMENT (8.30pm, Mon, BBC1)... sadly, Peter "Darth Maul"
         Serafinowicz doesn't play the alien who has sex with Dawn
         French in appalling "Mork And Mindy" knockoff TED AND ALICE
         (9pm, Thu, BBC1)... and there's another chance to see a couple
         of films postponed in the wake of that terrible motorcycling
         monkeys accident of a few weeks ago: CONGO (10.35pm, Thu,
         BBC1) and the original ROLLERBALL (11.35pm, Wed, BBC1) - which
         we still think the continuity announcer should introduce with
         the catchphrase "They think it's all over - it is now!"...

         FILM>> you know, there's something about Easter that just says
         "vampire", isn't there, with Wesley Snipes, Luke "Bros" Goss,
         Danny "Red Dwarf" John-Jules and Guillermo del "Mimic" Toro -
         together at last! - in ultraviolent martial-arts sequel BLADE
         II ( http://www.screenit.com/movies/2002/blade_2.html : TENSE
         FAMILY SCENES: Nyssa becomes disappointed in her father, the
         vampire overlord, particularly when he indicates he's not
         above sacrificing her for the long term good of all vampires)
         ... unless she's being unusually metaphorical, Britney Spears
         does not appear to have remade either the 1986 Steve Vai
         Devil-Went-Down-To-Georgia road movie or the Birmingham-set
         ITV soap opera of the same name in feelgood girl-teen frolic
         CROSSROADS ( http://uk.imdb.com/Goofs?0275022 : When [Spears]
         exits the shower with a towel wrapped around her, her bra
         strap is showing above the towel)... and Spielberg may have
         digitally erased the guns, but he's left in all the friendly-
         grey propaganda for the rerelease of ET THE EXTRA TERRESTRIAL
         ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/et-20thanniv.htm : five
         uses of middle school locker room language; adolescents
         yelling at their mother, ignoring her, lying to her, sneaking
         out, etc. and another trying to touch her posterior; E.T.
         shares a variety of new things with the kids, including his
         power to levitate. I am not going to get into a debate about
         the evilness of levitation)...

         BONERS: CORRECTIONS, CLARIFICATIONS, AND "INCORRECTLY REGARDED
         AS GOOFS">> thanks to everyone who mailed in translations of
         that goofy socialist realist Panasonic ad [NTK 2002-03-01]:
    http://newtown.hi-ho.ne.jp/raibo/raidersei/image/agency/cm/mail.swf .
         "It's for an ISP", confirmed DOMINIC AL-BADRI, editor of
         Kansai Time Out, while ELLIOTT NOEL provided a blow-by-blow
         account in authentic fractured English: "Hi Ho, Hi Ho [you've]
         recieved mail! Hmph - that great/famous... [as the purple bear
         walks by] Suddenly [be] connected... Situation support... The
         old woman next door has even made a debut... made a debut!"
         What's more, "Go up a level", advised PADDY ROBINSON-GRIFFIN
         http://newtown.hi-ho.ne.jp/raibo/raidersei/image/agency/cm/ -
         where there's a entire directory of the cheeky little
         bastards... almost as alarmingly, our next most popular
         correspondence was the firefight over CAM WINSTANLEY's
         confident assertion that Ali G's poster weapons were
         "definitely not the Heckler and Koch MP5" [NTK 2002-03-22], as
         L MAGUIRE, ARTHUR WYATT and JOHN PATE all weighed in with the
         conflicting opinion that they almost certainly *are* H&K MP5K
         PDWs: http://www.remtek.com/arms/hk/mil/pdw/pdw.htm . In his
         defence, Winstanley claims that the jpg we sent him wasn't
         very clear, and that "the modular nature of 9mm sub machine
         guns means that it could easily be a modified version". He now
         admits the error - he "could have sworn that they weren't MP5s
         since the distance from the mag to the end of the barrel is
         way too small, but the icons on the fire selector switch tell
         a very different tale"... once again, it was our international
         readers who leapt to the defence of Norick Abe's charity
         auction: http://www.ntk.net/2002/03/08/dohmoto.gif - PAUL DEUS
         from Belgium revealing that "It is very common in the long-
         suffering countries that can be cut off from the UK by fog in
         the English Channel to use commas and decimal stops the 'wrong
         way round': 4.794 = 4 thousand and 794 Euros, 4,79 = 4 Euros
         79 cents. Mind you, since the Euro is so weak against
         sterling, neither of the above is worth thruppence-ha'penny in
         real money anyway". MARTIN WARD spoiled another of our
         favourite jokes by noting that "Msn.co.uk thinks that the
         first sentence ends at the first full stop (or decimal point).
         So any story about ?x.xx million will have 'missing millions'"
         - http://www.ntk.net/2002/02/15/dohpound.png , for instance.
         And SIMON BLAKE asked us to stop using PNGs and go back to
         GIFs, so we have - patents be damned... and finally, JOF
         spotted that Microsoft have recently renamed their "Critical
         Update Notification Tool" [NTK 2002-02-22] to the somewhat
         more acronym-friendly "Critical Update Notification Utility":
    http://support.microsoft.com/directory/article.asp?ID=KB;EN-US;Q224420
         - while, in keeping with this week's international theme,
         "I'm in Iran and blogging as I go - woohooo", chortled BEN
         HAMMERSLEY via our "email a meme" submissions form, also
         noting that "it also seems you're not censored by the Iranian
         web filters. Must try harder!" Oh we will, Ben. Oh, we will...


                               >> 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
               "'could impose a fee', yet stubbornly refuse to"
                   http://writetheweb.com/read.php?item=125


                                 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.geekstyle.co.uk/

                          (K) 2002 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.