Need To Know 1999-09-03

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"By the time we are done reading 2000 AD, we will have a confident understanding of how today's world will not only accept, but embrace the coming anti-christ." - featured review of 2000 A.D. : ARE YOU READY? : How New Technologies and Lightning-Fast Changes Are Opening the Door for Satan and His Plan for the End of the World http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0785271880/ ...people taking that "Judge Child" saga a bit too literally >> HARD NEWS << mail abuse Ubiquitous publicity for Microsoft's new "blackmail.com" feature for HOTMAIL, wherein the peace-loving Swedes uncover that the password question hint for all accounts was effectively "Password, what password?". A simple CGI exploit blew Hotmail wide open - yet tragically, it still wasn't simple enough the UK media to comprehend. Poor Vic Keegan at the Guardian became an instant net.celebrity for his assertion that "e-mail sent throught Hotmail differs from most other e-mails because it is routed through the internet" (big Fidonet fan, our Vic). Channel Five Teletext simplified that whole confusing "e-mail" jargon by referring to problems with "cyber posts". Online, Slashdot descended into a strange loop of "HAHAHA! MICROSO~1 WINDOZE LAME!"/ "Actually, Hotmail uses Solaris"/ "HAHAHA! MICROSO~1 USE SOLARIS!" posts. Oldbies declaimed smugly that they'd never trusted Hotmail for vital mail anyway - then remembered that it had all their shell passwords in its pop3 download utility (View Source on the config form, suckers). Ziff Net, among others, did an excellent follow-up on a new batch of Hotmail hacks that had sprung up. These new exploits were even simpler: for full Hotmail admin privileges, you just e-mail your username and password to trick_lamers_into_giving_you_their_ids@hotmail.com for admin privileges and - DOH! In all the confusion, the real culprits - Microsoft, remember? - managed to exit unharmed through their own publicity backdoor. In the words of the Guardian again: "If Microsoft - probably the company with the greatest intellectual firepower in the world - cannot achieve [security], then what can mere mortals do?". Not be so fucking stupid as to engineer out the password checks in their scripts, maybe? Just a thought. http://www.cryptonym.com/hottopics/msft-nsa.html - you want a real Microsoft security backdoor? Ask the NSA. Look forward to an interesting month for press coverage of the always nutty free ISP market. Let's get this straight: EMAP's mags are heavily involved in the well dodgy FREENETNAMES ISP (which offers you domain names for a fiver with your login, on the understanding that they'll charge you a fortune for moving it). They'll be far too busy slagging off the online competitor BBC's utterly impartial sponsorship of FREEBEEB to cover that story. And the always-objective FUTURE PUBLISHING won't have space to cover either - not without plugging *their* exclusive deal with AOL'S NETSCAPE ONLINE service. Brings a whole new (and opposite) meaning to the phrase "free press", doesn't it? http://www.futurenet.co.uk/futureonline/press/futurenetscape.asp - that's free as in "free publicity", not as in "free beer" http://www.freenetname.co.uk/admin/terms.asp - 94UKP to send an e-mail to Nominet? Banner ads? "Free money", too! Was he in the bathroom? The master bedroom? The toilet? No, but, after over two years of wandering the levels [NTK 1997-10-10], the current location of Matthew Smith, reclusive genius behind Manic Miner and Jet Set Willy has finally been determined. In a tell-all interview with comp.sys.sinclair regular Peter Mella (and a drink-all pub night with ex-Software Projects/Bug-Byte Chris Cannon), Matthew exposes the truth and lies behind his decade-long disappearence. FACT: He did move to a commune in Amsterdam. FICTION: He never phoned up Caesar the Geezer to bemoan his diminished status. FACT: He hasn't got a job right now, and can't work on games because his PC isn't up to it. FICTION: He doesn't want you to send him money, or offer him a job in your multi-million business you'd never started, if it wasn't for the addictive nature of POKE-ing his games. Get to it, manic moguls. http://www.jonlan.demon.co.uk/spectrum/matsmith/ - if they think he's the real thing, we're convinced http://www.pmella.freeserve.co.uk/copy-of-the-spectrum-site/ - "Not deed poll. I am Matt from Earth though." >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious EMMA NICHOLSON announces that government "moving from 16-bit encryption to 32-bits" ... "Finland is home to Europe's most virile men," according to study cited by LINUS ... CHINA.COM nicks taiwan.com domain ... NETSCAPE, as ever, gives answer to the wrong question: http://www.ntk.net/doh/990903yes.gif ... WWW.ALLTHEWEB.COM say it took them ten years to develop their Web search engine (you can see how they'd get bogged down pre-1993) ... MILITARY still struggling with CAPS LOCK in disclaimers: http://144.170.127.189/ ... BBC WALES Online Editor job "not for a techie", says ad (the BBC is an equal opportunies employer) ... MICROSOFT lets their Commerce Server speak for itself: http://www.ntk.net/doh/990903server.gif >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Most fun you can have at next week's ECTS: asking awkward Dreamcast questions at the SEGA stand. Suggestions so far include: Why was the launch delayed to sort out the online services, when there aren't any online-play UK games due until April? (No, split-screen Sega Rally 2 doesn't count.) Since the ad campaign trumpets a possible "six billion players" worldwide, doesn't the incompatibility between Euro and US/ Japanese machines make that an overestimate of, hmm, about five billion? Is the DC browser really a) developed by the Japanese and b) therefore "rubbish" (ie no RealAudio, its own proprietary MP3 audio format, and a grasp of cascading style sheets akin to NTK office fave, Netscape 3)? And finally, have the Japanese in fact given up on DC already, abandoned the much-touted WinCE SDK, and now desperately hope the spurned Microsoft will buy up the tech/ company for their own CE network games machine when they finally go under next year? http://www.ects.com/ - still, JC "Mega" Herz should be there http://www.next-generation.com/jsmid/news/7540.html - and will need 3D/CPU upgrades every 6 months http://www.mentealth.com/ - Playstation marketing still contemptuously poor >> TRACKING << making good use of the things that we find Not quite the free local weekend calls everyone's hanging on for (see NTKs passim), but sinister sounding price plan BT TOGETHER will reputedly offer half-price national calls (and 1p/min local evening rate) from 1st October for a monthly charge of UKP12. In an act of noble, self-sacrificing generosity, it also triples the laughable new "allowance" of one free hour of local weekend calls (per *month*) - obviously less of a big deal if you're currently logging in through on of those "shared" BT Internet accounts. Still, it's fractionally more palatable than their other free calls deal, currently trialling in Bristol and Newcastle: BT FREETIME tempts users with up to 10 mins of free calls (per *day*!), assuming you (and the person you're calling) can tolerate amateurish local radio-style adverts every couple of minutes. Data, faxes and calls to the operator are understandably forbidden, but maybe there are still ways of ringing up BT and making them listen to their own commercials... http://www.yahoo.co.uk/headlines/19990902/news/news_story_89718s_9.html - "easy to remember", says BT (ie more competitive with cable) http://www.freetime.bt.com/ - hope the ads aren't all 3 minutes long... >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista more signs of the apocalypse: FUTURE to launch Linux mag ... Attention. CARMACK has learnt Perl. This is not a drill ... DAVID FURNISS quits DEMON ... YODA and BEEKER, DAVROS and THE NUN: http://dspace.dial.pipex.com/log/sitcom.htm ... so why is the MoD buying 100 copies of FONTOGRAPHER a week? ... for all you Trekkie, Web-surfing, e-commerce crazy technophobes: http://www.ludditereader.com/ ... protect us from the AMISH threat: http://home.earthlink.net/~demainz/ ... incoming PHRACK set for the End of File bug day, 9/9/99... hope the THE BLAIR WITCH COMIC is written on bits of leaves and bark: http://www.onipress.com/blair.html ... FAQ jeopardy : http://www.hmprisonservice.gov.uk/faq.asp ... honesty in brochureware: http://www.fbn.bc.ca/index.html ... DUKE NUKEM doing Monster Cable endorsements ... UINs have *credibility*? http://cgi.ebay.com/aw-cgi/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=152398300 >> GEEK MEDIA << the less rude http://www.ntk.net/tvgohome/ TV>> something of a special week for fans of overblown two-hour-plus movies, kicking off with Terry Gilliam's hideously ham-fisted Terminator remake TWELVE MONKEYS (9.30pm, Sat, BBC1)... THE SHINING (10.30pm, Sat, C4) launches a Kubrick season that continues with an arty "making of" promo for EYES WIDE SHUT (9pm, Sun, C4) and FULL METAL JACKET (10pm, Sun, C4)... while THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI (8.10pm, Sat, BBC2) lays down supporting fire for *yet another* WORLD WAR TWO NIGHT (from 6.05pm, Sat, BBC2)... Keith "Cheggers" Chegwin presides over an ancient, nobler way of settling European disputes in C5's revived IT'S A KNOCKOUT (8pm, Fri, C5)... the BBC continues its decline into prurient porn nonsense with daily strand ADULT LIVES (from 9.40pm, Sun, BBC2)... season 7 of SEINFELD (12am-ish, Mon-Thu, BBC2) returns in a near-daily slot - Soup Nazi next week!... and Monday's pretentious epic is Ollie Stone's NATURAL BORN KILLERS (11.10pm, Mon, C5); Tuesday's INDEPENDENCE DAY (9pm, Tue, C5)... atrocities of 60 years ago at last get the ratings they deserve, as ITV presents - we kid you not - THE SECOND WORLD WAR IN COLOUR (10pm, Thu, ITV)... while this week's discouragingly cable-friendly themes - Nazis and sex - come to a spectacular climax in another of those worthily dull editions of SECRET HISTORY (9pm, Tue, C4) entitled "Sex And The Swastika"... FILM>> the long-awaited alliance of Katie Holmes (House Dawson's Creek), Scott Wolf (House Party Of Five) and Jay Mohr (House Jerry Maguire) comes to impressive fruition in pacey Swingers / Pulp Fiction / "Driver" on the Playstation hybrid GO (imdb: black-comedy / grocery-store / independant / multiple-time-frames / revenge / scam / comedy / drama / drugs / gay) - which turns out to have a plot at almost exactly the same point that "Human Traffic" turned out not to. Oh, and it's not particularly based around the current Simon Lewis novel, Moby's 1991 techno hit,or the Japanese board game of the same name... anyway, it's more fun than John "Die Hard / Thomas Crown Affair" McTiernan's ultra-violent Viking fest THE 13TH WARRIOR (capreports: walls, piles, and pillars of bloody human skulls; rabblery; child nudity; praying to many gods; implied intercourse by cohabitation)... ageing hippy stand-in odyssey YELLOW SUBMARINE (imdb: beatles / surreal)... or Tim Roth's predictably hard-hitting child abuse whistle-blower THE WAR ZONE (bbfc.co.uk: Passed '18' for adult theme, language and nudity).. PRO-CELEBRITY FEEBDACK>> ROB ROSENBERGER, maintainer of "Computer Virus Myths", is so impressed with the far-seeing predictions of not-at-all panic-mongering tech consultancy MI2G [NTK 1999-08-27], he's devoted an entire page to them: http://kumite.com/myths/opinion/thoughts/1999/mi2g.htm . "We'll win the battle eventually," he confides in a covering email - and we don't think he means the one against Serb viruses, "e-bombs" and "cyber warfare attacks"... both REBECCA EISENBERG and DAVE WINER seem oddly pleased with their recent mentions [1999-08-06 and 08-27]; perhaps they have different inflections to "career capping" and "manifestly full of shit" over there... and, not waiting for us to insult him before getting in touch this time, "Your zine is fuckin' great. This Ungoed-Thomas thing kills me. I even read the lame British sci-fi TV listings sometimes," enthuses BRUCE STERLING, who (apparently) knows a thing or two about lame sci-fi... most exciting of all for us fame-hounds at NTK was a missive from SOMEONE AT NESTLE: "Much as we'd like to take the credit for Mars's confectionery products," he confessed, "Twix isn't one of ours" [see NTK 1999-08-20]. Nonetheless, he did offer to look into a "Chunky Unix - then perhaps offer it as a trademark to Sun, Hewlett-Packard et al"... and finally, no sooner had STUART CAMPBELL contacted us to promote his comprehensively career-spanning archive http://come.to/worldofstuart/ than we stumbled across his ideal headgear - at last, you, Stu, can "be" SPIDER JERUSALEM: http://www.transmetropolitan.com/newsfeed.htm ... >> 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 "related to Street of Shame?" http://www.ntk.net/private_eye/ NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Excuses - http://www.spesh.com/ntk/ Unsubscribe? Mail majordomo@lists.ntk.net with 'unsubscribe ntknow'. Subscribe? Mail majordomo@lists.ntk.net with 'subscribe ntknow'. NTK now is supported by UNFORTU.NET, and by you: http://www.ntk.net/books (K) 1999 Special Projects. Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/ Yes - that includes you, Gnome. Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com - remember your work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material. Remember: Sending >500KB attachments is forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Your country may be at risk if you fail to comply.