Fun_People Archive
6 Nov
NTK bits, 06/11/98

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From: Peter Langston <psl>
Date: Fri,  6 Nov 98 14:14:31 -0800
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Subject: NTK bits, 06/11/98

X-Lib-of-Cong-ISSN: 1098-7649
Excerpted-from: NTK now, 06/11/98

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     "I'm not prepared to talk about specifics but we have
       seen organized criminal groups using the proceeds from software
          counterfeiting to pay for terrorist operations overseas."
                              - BRAD SMITH, Microsoft general counsel
                       air strikes on Norwegian warez sites to follow
      http://www.pcworld.com/pcwtoday/article/0,1510,8566+1+6,00.html


                                >> HARD NEWS <<
                              scary "woooooooo"s

	 Remember, remember the fifth of - I'm sorry, it's gone again,
	 pleaded BILL GATES this week, as his taped testimony to the DOJ
	 Truth Commission revealed an inability to recall the details of
	 his own e-mail outbox. We guess then he won't remember the words
	 of the NYT column where he noted "I can remember all the moves of
	 many chess games that I've played. I can still remember all my
	 lines in a high school play, 'Black Comedy... I remember financial
	 data very well, too. I can visualize the source code to the version
	 of BASIC that I wrote for the first microcomputer, back in 1975."
	 But I can't *quite* remember sending a three-line e-mail which
	 included the phrase "Do we have a clear plan on what we want Apple
	 to do to undermine Sun?"
         http://www.microsoft.com/billgates/columns/1996q&a/qa960604.htm
                        - fifth of... fifth of... fifth of amendment?
         http://www.cspan.org/watch/exclusive1.htm
         - I deny having developer relations with that ... platform
http://www.techserver.com/newsroom/ntn/info/110398/info8_4154_noframes.html
         - there can be no red faces at the Redmond

	 Another [piece of] e-mail that Gates failed to recall was, of
	 course, the Halloween Document, a sharp memo shoved into Eric
	 Raymond by a masked "brother" on the run from Redmond Asylum. But
	 was it meant as a trick or treat? While the gathered Free
	 Softwarelings scared themselves into even more recursive states
	 ("We shouldn't read it! That's exactly what he'd *expect* us to
	 do!"), author Vinod Valloppillillilloopp returned in - Halloween
	 Document II. In this sequel, he tries Linux, and likes it. "The
	 feeling was exhilarating and addictive", he writes, "as it was when
	 first I heard the screams of the OS/2 evangelists in Sub-Level
	 Five".
         http://www.opensource.org/halloween.html
                - well, the mark-up's a little hard to read sometimes
         http://www.tuxedo.org/~esr/html-hell.html
             - we refer the honourable gentleman to his previous page
         http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19981105.html
                                - Gaddafi-lover Cringely speaks sense
http://www.scripting.com/davenet/98/11/howWindowsDeveloperThinks.html
              - Winer writes "I am not a gorilla". Nobody tell Glenn!
         http://www.sjmercury.com/columnists/gillmor/docs/dg110398.htm
                   - still no-one knows what "de-commoditizing" means

                                >> ANTI-NEWS <<
                             berating the obvious

	 Finally, someone paid http://www.hotwired.com to lose the
	 colours... COMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOMCOM.COM currently "on hold"...  LLOYDS
	 BANK Website closes between 0400-1000AM (server needs a nap)...
	 DANNY KELLY gets big plug for www.m365.com in Guardian, despite
	 its current non-existence... Brain Structure May Play Role in
	 Children's Ability To Learn To Read, reveals study... DIGICASH runs
	 out of money... N2K "forget" to pay Ticketmaster $3 million...
	 Human Error Responsible for Most Data Loss, uncovers survey...
	 IE5.0 to feature "Go" button, for users who don't know you have to
	 press return after an URL... APPLE claim to have "patented" the
	 colour Bondi Blue... PC DIRECT illustrates computer security
	 article exclusively with stills from WarGames movie - mentions
	 WarGames in first sentence... Falco! SYQUEST crashes - but they
	 took backups, right? ... Microsoft buy LINKEXCHANGE for $250
	 million - but how are we going to break it to
	 http://www.stopgates.com/ ?... BBC.CO.UK now "Millennium Product"
	 (ie will be usable sometime in next)
	 ... who will find a future for http://www.streetmap.co.uk?


                               >> EVENT QUEUE <<
                              stop! scanner time!

	 Pity the traditional craftsfolk, outmoded by rapid technological
	 change - craftsfolk like DJ SCANNER, whose live mixes and
	 recordings of mobile phone calls were the talk of the town back in
	 the heady days of the early '90s.  Obviously this hasn't been quite
	 such a poignant artform since digital mobiles hit the scene, and
	 he's now reduced to hanging around near London tourist attractions,
	 recording and photographing the ambience - and, we believe, somehow
	 "converting the digital images into sounds". Scanner will be
	 performing the resultant "Surface Noise" on a travelling double
	 decker bus between St Paul's Cathedral and Big Ben from 6pm on
	 12/11/98-14/11/98 (UKP12.50, advance booking essential), and
	 hopefully providing some sort of tour commentary, since his voice
	 - oddly - sounds exactly like the lead singer out of Jamiroquai.
         http://www.innercity.demon.co.uk/scanner.htm
         - is it just us, or does the B*Witched Rollercoaster single
         http://home1.gte.net/davidra/tv/double.htm
         - ...sound just like "Get on board, get on board"?


                                >> TRACKING <<
                  making good use of the things that we find

	 You know how everything in UNIX is supposed to be a file? You know
	 Perl lets you do everything you'd ever want to do? You know that
	 means, logically, you can return UNIX to its pure, pre-Fall state,
	 where everything *is* a file - anything you want? So you could,
	 say, chdir to "http://www.yahoo.com/", then chdir to all the links
	 on that page? And you know that there's only one person insane
	 enough to thus let you write your own filing system - in Perl? Yes,
	 from the people who brought you the Turing Machine using only dd
	 and sh, we roundly announce:
         http://dd.sh/perlfs/
         - next: X-Windows servers using trained cellular automata


                               >> 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 "penny for the guy?"
              http://www.marxists.org/admin/guidelin/balance.htm
           (K) 1998 Special Projects. Non-business copying is fine,
                        but retain SMALL PRINT. Contact
                terry@spesh.com for commercial license details.
prev [=] prev © 1998 Peter Langston []