Fun_People Archive
15 May
NTK bits, 15/05/98

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Fri, 15 May 98 12:43:14 -0700
To: Fun_People
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Subject: NTK bits, 15/05/98

X-Lib-of-Cong-ISSN: 1098-7649
Excerpted-from: NTK now, 15/05/98


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           "Erotic fiction on the Web merits all the usual criticism
            of writing on the Web -- there are tons of typos, and no
                                         editorial hand whatsoever."
                - JACK MURNIGHAN, editor of tasteful porn site NERVE
           <http://www.wired.com/news/news/culture/story/12240.html>
                               pls ekuse speling - editril hand bizy


                               >> HARD NEWS <<
                               turning to booze

	 Bill Gates may be able to turn his company around on a dime, but
	 only STEVE JOBS keeps his organisation swivelling like a top. At
	 the Apple Developer Conference this week, he announced yet another
	 graceful arc in corporate direction.  Gone is the "I had to run
	 NeXT: now you will too" mantra he'd been pitching to scared Mac
	 developers for the last year: Rhapsody is no longer a separate
	 product, and the previously fuddy-duddy MacOS is back, back, BACK!
	 There are some changes: Jobs, inimitably, has taken his frustration
	 out on low-level MacOS functionaries: around 2000 of the Mac's 8000
	 API calls have been slaughtered. That's okay, apparently, because
	 no-one used them. And anyway, they disagreed with him. Rumours that
	 calls to the old addresses will be secretly intercepted by NeXT
	 managers hiding underneath the hardware abstraction layer, are, we
	 assured, to be disbelieved.
         http://www.apple.com/pr/library/1998/may/11strategy.html
               - Well, doh! We were holding the roadmap upside-down!

	 "Sorry we're late: the government made us do it" is an original
	 excuse for MICROSOFT blowing shipping dates, but in this case, it's
	 the truth. In a last minute face-off, Gates agreed to delay
	 delivering Windows 98 to manufacturers until the DOJ could decide
	 whether they want to sue his ass or not. Bill's generosity knows
	 no bounds - the new shipping date is Monday, giving the DOJ less
	 than 72 hours to pull him in. Expect top government counsel to hand
	 in their badges and go undercover to nab the international
	 fugitive, who, as we speak, is planning to blow up Seattle's Space
	 Needle using an embedded-NT timebomb and the wiles of his beautiful
	 - yet deadly - assistant, Myhrvold.
         http://www.microsoft.com/
         - putting the nervous back into "digital nervous system"

	 Remember when NORTEL announced the IP-down-the-power-lines hack,
	 and everyone racked their brains to work out the killer flaw? Was
	 it, perhaps, the isolation equipment you'd have to install into
	 every house that used it? Or the fibre lines Nortel would have to
	 spool out from each substation? Well, here's a likely contender:
	 Nick Long from the Low Power Radio Association reports that
	 streetlamps in the Nortel trial region have been acting as highly
	 efficient antennae, merrily broadcasting packets across much of
	 the shortwave radio bands. Bad for radio hams, not brilliant for
	 personal privacy - but what a great solution for multicasting Web
	 events!
         http://www.gcd.co.uk/comment.htm
                          - see, we told you it was the new CB radio
         http://www.lpra.org/
                    - get IE4.0 to play "Daisy, Daisy" on your radio


                               >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

	 LINEONE Beginner's Guide To Net links to wrong AltaVista...  Apple
	 press ads offer Macs with 384MB RAM; boast it's "enough to keep
	 several applications open at the same time"
	 ... INTERNET WORLD UK Exhibitors' Page links to - wrong
	 AltaVista... alt.ph.uk-ers plan to call James Whale's Talk Radio
	 show all at the same time - don't bored BT employees^H^H^H
	 Britain's top hackers have better things to do?...
	 "cyber-conversation", "cyber-confessions", and "cyber-sighs" all
	 used in same dreadful cyber-WEEKEND GUARDIAN cyber-article... NEW
	 REPUBLIC publish *entirely* fictional hacking story - editor fails
	 to notice... DAVE WINER wants Microsoft to "take it up the butt"...
	 MSN FRANCE vanishes - who next?... BRITISH COMPUTER SOCIETY'S
	 "Computer Driving Licence" displays date of issue- using just two
	 digits... ACTIVISION license "Soldier of Fortune" mag for games
	 titles... Times' INTERFACE section dispenses with services of
	 editor Kathryn Bailey; new guy Alan Copps kicks off with
	 up-to-the-minute review of Quake 2...


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

	 Thanks to everyone who's joined the slagging of Lynda LaPlante's
	 KILLER NET drama series (10pm, Tues, C4), including many of those
	 involved as "technical consultants" on the show. We'll add them to
	 the site soon - *and* feature them in next week's NTK first
	 anniversary "Right To Reply" special, where we'll give people who
	 feel they've been "wronged" by us a chance to air their grievances,
	 by printing their objections and reactions in full, then taking
	 the piss out of them some more. Yes, this means you, "Dr Keyboard".
         http://www.ntk.net/killer/
         - laplante.demon.co.uk is, sadly, just the production company


                              >> 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.
      It is registered at the Post Office as "the Treat of Versailles".

© 1998 Peter Langston