"In our opinion, every week should be year 2000 week."
KARL FEILDER, MD of Greenwich Mean Time (a Y2K consultancy)
- isn't that what we're trying to avoid?
>> HARD NEWS <<
soft wariness
A couple of hacker gangs got Warhol-portions of fame after
YAHOO's front page was uhh... redesigned for 15 minutes on
Monday. The world's favourite bulleted list got replaced
with a manifesto that mixed fanciful threats (worldwide
virus infections set to go off on Christmas Day) with a
sadly accurate protest regarding Kevin Mitnick's
mistreatment as he ends his third year in jail without
trial. Unfortunately, the only Yahoo server to be broken
was one feeding Lynx users - and while it's refreshing to
find something that's *only* viewable on that text-only
browser, if that's not preaching to the converted, we don't
know what is. Meanwhile, Brit journalists missed two
potentially juicier Webhacks - the fall of the equally
technically adroit (no, really) Demon, whose nameserver was
hacked on Sunday, [1] and the just as politically-charged
sabbing of the The British Field Sports Society's site.
Meanwhile, the spate continued with the zapping last night
of Murdoch's www.fox.com. What is this, Christmas holiday
homework from the Bugtraq boys?
[1] Actually, it was a Demon customer. Update in next NTK - Ed.
http://www.hacked.net/ - catch 'em while they're hot
http://www.kevinmitnick.com/ - hold 'em 'till they're cold
http://www.bfss.org/
- is this still hacked or was it always this bad?
http://www.geek-girl.com/bugtraq/1997_4/0451.html
- Aleph One's mailing list. But you can call him Al.
Oh, the hubris! On the eve of Quake II's appearance in the
shops, Id's JOHN CARMACK achieved the other qualification
for Code God. He fragged Microsoft. In a joint press
release with SGI, Microsoft agreed to officially
endorse SGI's 3D API OpenGL on its platforms. While the
statement doesn't actually say that Id was right all along
and Microsoft's competitor Direct3D sucks giblets, everyone
knows that's what it *means*. The pointed omission of
Carmack from the industry figures quoted just goes to show
how hard his nailgun rants about OpenGL superiority hit
home. But just as deification looked a sure thing - what's
this? A bug report from Id? Some debug code accidentally
left in the CD of Quake II that sends a heartbeat packet
from any Quake 2 server on the Net to Id's own internal
servers? Debug code which itself is buggy, causing the
packet to be sent not every 300 seconds as planned, but
every 300 *milliseconds*, thus effectively wiping out Id's
own Net connection? Carmack - fallible? The horror!
http://www5.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/zdnn/1211/262353.html
- It's almost Shakespearian
http://www.sgi.com/Headlines/1997/December/ddk_release.html
- Also, the deal obliges manufacturers to do a D3D driver too
so Bill's *still* Satan
The US DEPARTMENT OF JUSTICE on Thursday declared that
while Microsoft weren't necessarily guilty of breaking their
anti-trust agreement, they did look pretty shifty.
Accordingly, the judge ordered them to stop obliging
manufacturers to bundle IE with Windows 95, and appointed a
"Special Master" to investigate further. The "Special
Master", Lawrence Lessig lives alone in a swamp at Harvard
Law School, Dagobah system, and is an expert, disturbingly,
on "cyberlaw". He has until May 31st to give his opinion -
which is close enough to the release date of Windows 98 to
give Microsoft the willies. On the other hand, if you were
a hardware manufacturer whose existence depended on keeping
in with Gates, would *you* suddenly switch sides, just
because you can?
www.law.harvard.edu/Academic_Affairs/Faculty_Directory/l.html
- monopolistic you are!
>> ANTI-NEWS <<
berating the obvious
STEVE BALLMER says IE4 had quality-for-deadline tradeoff...
72% of hacking attempts originate from outside US... "Web
Based Journalism Often Includes Rumours", opines the
rigorous FORBES MAGAZINE... 54% of Webmasters hate
"Webmaster" title - but they still can't come up with a
better one... Wired Ventures' NEWSBOT "down for repairs"
... Christmas cards "really do make people happy",
scientists report... BMG claim GRAND THEFT AUTO stock
nicked by "ram raiders"... APPLE's Website makes $12
million a month; Dell makes $6 million a *day*... MS's
Nathan Myhrvold investigating how dinosaurs moved so fast.
Wonder why? ... MICROSOFT advises Govt. on online self-
employed registration project: forms turn out to be
Explorer only... 66% of IT Managers have experienced
"complete project failure", survey says... NEIL TENNANT to
produce NOEL COWARD covers album...
>> EVENT QUEUE <<
stacking the "odds"
We've had a few, shall we say, disbelieving e-mails about
the .NOT Awards, and we're not afraid to say that we find
your lack of faith... disturbing. Okay, so we've moved them
to January. So what? The 1997 Oscars are in *March* for
God's sake. But we are nothing if not bounteous in our
generosity. Take this e-mail as your official invite to THE
NEED TO KNOW CHRISTMAS PARTY, which takes place on SATURDAY
20th DECEMBER at 8pm onwards at BACKSPACE, a funny little
cyberplace with comfy seats in CLINK ST, LONDON, ENGLAND.
Space is a bit limited so please RSVP tips@spesh.com to let
us know if you're turning up. The enforced fun will include
MIDI Karaoke, videogame charades, a Gates/Jobs shooting
gallery, the rapier wit of your fellow subscriber
contributors, and some free drink. Please bring a floppy.
http://www.backspace.org/clink
- the phrase you're looking for is "Yes. Am impressed."
Fancy yourself as a bit of a retro coder? Then perhaps you
could win the UNIVERSITY OF MANCHESTER's competition to
write a new program for the first ever stored code
computer, Baby. There are a few restrictions: firstly, the
program has to fit in 1024 bits of memory (yes, bits), and
there's no output apart from one blinking light and a
binary dump of the core on a primitive cathode ray tube
(maybe mini-Tetris?). Winners will get a chance to see
their code entered into the replica of Baby being built for
its 50th anniversary next year. To help you, there's a
smart emulator to download, which runs only in DOS and
isn't guaranteed to run under Windows. Wow - these guys
take their O/S preservation *seriously*.
http://www.cs.man.ac.uk/prog98/
- "as powerful as a child's calculator"? What, the TI-58?
>> ANTI-TRACKING <<
stuff you thought you needed. but don't
JAVASOFT have, with much pomp and circumstance, released
the Activator, a plug-in that allows you to run JDK 1.1
Java apps on any browser, even the non-compliant Netscap-
er, Microsoft Explorer. A clever and sneaky hack? Well, we
could think of cleverer: the plugin first demands your
viewers download the full 3MB Java 1.1 virtual machine and
class library (why didn't they just release patches to the
present Netscape/IE4.0 libraries? Or is that *too*
sneaky?). Secondly, you have to rewrite all your HTML to
embed the Java app within a plug-in tag, so that it's
invisible unless you download the plug-in. And at the risk
of repeating ourselves, isn't that what all this was trying
to avoid?
http://www5.zdnet.com/zdnn/content/zdnn/1211/262353.html
- write once, run anywhere (if you've got all the
stuff pre-downloaded anyway)
DAVE WINER (what ever happened to that Winder chap,
anyway?) has released the first version of his Frontier
scripting language for the PC. First reactions (from
accredited Frontier fans): Middling to "oh dear". He's done
that stupid stick-all-the-floating-windows-in-the-Mac-app-
in-one-big-unmanageable-Win95-window mistake, and the
interface is too Macish by half. Worth a look if you're
part of the Apple diaspora, but otherwise, "uncoooooooool".
http://www.scripting.com/
- and Aretha Franklin sucks. Nyah, nyah, nyah.
Death to record companies! Empower the artist! And charge
them for the privilege! That's the plan for Manchester-
based MUSIC NETWORK INTERNATIONAL (nb: not the Music
Network formerly known as part of Webmedia), who'll be
showcasing the music of unsigned bands via "secure" Liquid
Audio from next Jan. They think listeners'll pay a quid to
download individual MPEG3-quality tracks (after enjoying a
RA-quality preview), of which 40 or 50p goes straight to
the band - and they think musicians'll pay UKP100 a time to
join the scheme. Well, maybe it really is digital
distribution sidestepping the middleman (ie the one that
normally pays big advances), rather than just an online
variant on those music mag small ads that go "will put your
lyrics/poems to music for small fee"...
http://www.music-www.com/
- link to Liquid Audio, but no more info
http://www.mp3.com/ too legit to quit
>> MEMEPOOL <<
hasta la altavista
selling ad-space on "404"s ... no UK release for JACKIE
BROWN till at least May?... Netnames, witness for Virgin in
ONE IN A MILLION court case has "telecom.bt" ... Pursuits++
- http://www.trivial.net ... ICQ say "eh-oh"... Brit
Newshub: www.newsnow.co.uk ... Ross' guide to hacking GSM :
http://catless.ncl.ac.uk/Risks/19.48.html#subj5 ... company
that pitches an "accelerated device for routing packets"
for $3 at Internet Expo is - the US POST OFFICE... No
Sisters of No Mercy: http://members.xoom.com/ssv/ ...
www.ronthemusicmaker.org/p_jpg/listen.htm ...selling link
placements... new PRODIGY video available as "Duke Nukem"
mission pack... PAUL LEYLAND, other Cambridge cypherpunk
make the move to Microsoft... STARSHIP TROOPERS *is* just
as violent, ridiculous, and crypto-fascist as everyone
says... http://av.yahoo.com/bin/query then hit reload...
>> MO' MEDIA <<
why don't you turn in and do something less interesting?
TV>> extreme violence ought to spice up tonight's FRIENDS
(9pm, Fri, C4) in the form of an "Ultimate Fighting"
contest, though sadly it only involves Monica's
CEO/Swingers boyfriend, and not useless guest stars Billy
Crystal and Robin Williams... yes, it was us who sent them
the net tips on cool stuff to put in microwaves in the last
ADAM AND JOE SHOW (11pm, Sat, C4) until New Year's Eve...
maybe the Star Trek movies would have got more "hits" if
they'd used AltaVista to carry out THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK
(3.35pm, Sun, BBC1)... MOVERS AND SHAKERS (8pm, Mon, C4)
rolls the d20 on table-top battlers like Warhammer...
compared to Jeremy Hardy & Jack Dee's lame efforts, Paul
Merton ought to do a better paranormal spoof with DOES
CHINA EXIST? (10pm, Mon, BBC2)... HG Wells pursues Jack The
Ripper through modern-day San Francisco in intelligent Time
Machine rip-off TIME AFTER TIME (9pm, Tue, C4), up against
Shane-Black-scripted action classic LETHAL WEAPON (9pm,
Tue, ITV)... it's rare that a remake is this much better
than the original, but of course that's kind of the point
of 1978's appallingly scary version of INVASION OF THE BODY
SNATCHERS (11pm, Wed, BBC1)... oh, and the cute wobbly
robots in eco-space fave SILENT RUNNING (6pm, Thu, BBC2)? -
apparently they're midget amputees *walking on their
hands*...
MOVIES >> they say TOMORROW NEVER DIES (imdb: action /
james-bond / spy) but someone really should put the James
Bond franchise out of its misery: Brosnan, Jonathan Pryce
and Michelle Yeoh gurn through a catalogue of tedious
stunts, technical inconsistencies and appalling dialogue,
and Teri Hatcher's hardly in it at all, after negative
reactions from test screenings... the not-very-ironic teen
serial-murders of I KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER (imdb:
horror / thriller / mystery / hit-and-run / slasher /
revenge) shows why Miramax wanted to make Sony take "From
the creator of Scream" off their poster - probably one for
only the most deeply psychotic stalker-fans of Sarah
Michelle Gellar (aka TV's Buffy The Vampire Slayer)... and
strangely, Stephen Rea's IRA philanthropist in A FURTHER
GESTURE (imdb: unclassified) isn't supposed to be a sequel
to his role in The Crying Game, though you could pretend it
was if you liked...
SHINY TEXT>> disappointingly, MINISTRY (UKP 2.40) isn't a
glossy fanzine devoted to "Weird" Al Jourgensen's
industrial goth-metal outfit, and turns out to be a sort of
Bizarre/Stuff-style badly designed consumer guide to
clubbing, sex, toilets, sex in toilets, and drug
paraphernalia. The free CD isn't bad though... so, in a
month when Q (UKP 2.70) runs Noel Gallagher's Antinews
revelation that he "nicked" some of David Bowie's tunes,
instead we're going to review the free Xmas music mag CDs
that sometimes become mysteriously detached from the covers
and that you can then presumably take home for nothing. The
Q one, needless to say, is terrible (Chemical Brothers,
Primal Scream, Texas - and Bush!)... MUZIK (UKP 2.40)
reckon that theirs covers "1997: the tunes", and they may
well be right, if you spent the last year listening to
nondescript jungle, speed garage and the world's worst ever
remixes of Underworld and The Prodigy... our surprise
recommendation is therefore the "House Puts The Breaks On"
compilation stuck to MIXMAG (UKP 2.30) - just a weird out-
there obscure retro-techno fest, plus an interesting
reminder that if music publications can put a decent CD on
the front without doubling their cover price, then *why
can't computer mags*?... and as NTK went to press, news
reached us of the UK's first monthly Tamagotchi mag
(1.35UKP) , with free stickers classifying their
developmental stages. Still think they should have called
it "Tamagazine-otchi", though...
>> COMPO <<
void where not prohibited by law
Congratulations this week to Keith Lawler, who asks "Well,
I found it. Now what do I do?". You celebrate, Mr Lawler,
the imminent arrival of the almost self-defeatingly titled
The Best Rock Ballads In The World Ever! (Volume 2) and the
nonsensical graphic novel Tarzan vs Predator At The Earth's
Core ("Guards! Seize him! SEIZE HIM!").
Almost time to wrap up the competition for this year. But
you still have one more chance to write in with the
now.html you have secreted as an internal security test on
a Website you administer. Remember - external hacks are
heavily frowned upon (though we'd probably have bent that
if those guys had sent us www.yahoo.com/now.html - Fools.)
Full details, as ever on http://www.ntk.net/compo/
This week's clue for an URL of the form http://www.******.***:
"Spot the extra dot."
>> 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 "never using My Briefcase again".
NEED TO KNOW
THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK.
Archive - http://www.ntk.net/
Excuses - http://www.spesh.com/ntk/
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NTK now is helped by VIRGIN.NET, VENUS INTERNET and UNFORTU.NET.
They worry about us, but we don't worry about them.
(K) 1997 Special Projects. Non-business copying is fine,
but retain SMALL PRINT. Contact
terry@spesh.com for commercial license details.
Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com.