Need To Know 2000-01-14

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"I might be threatening to write code." - BILL GATES, ex-CEO of Microsoft ...or I might not. Get my drift, DOJ? >> HARD NEWS << fernando poos Plenty of corporomancy in the air this week, as pundits attempted to guess the future by observing movements in the heavens. AOL entered into conjunction with the Time Warner constellation, prompting the prophet of slashdoterati, Jon Katz, to doomsay the end of the world. Microsoft was occluded by Caldera in a $150 million plus settlement in the DR-DOS case, followed by the declension of now ex-CEO Bill Gates, to be replaced by a Steve Ballmer ascendant in the astro-organisational charts. But do stellar movements like this have any bearing on life in the real world? After all, there's not much evil AOL Time Warner can wield that they couldn't have managed in their slightly less fat bastard previous incarnations. And the Gates/Ballmer shuffle was just the final precession of Bill's longterm move from daylight operations at MSFT, all the better to skulk in preparation for the DOJ split. http://www.earthchangestv.com/breaking/January2000/0110dawn.htm - so moved with what I experienced today, I will set up a new page A Damnable Subscriber Loophole: BT Internet's engineers discovered they weren't the only people fiddling with the settings of their ADSL set-up this week. In December, the telco had tweaked the routers to prevent their customers from opening static incoming ports (and thus preventing such obscure Network services as passive ftp, online gaming, ICQ etc). Sadly for BT, the customers tweaked back: prising open the DSL adaptors and re-configuring them to not only re-instate the services, but also to change the security passwords so that BT couldn't change them back. In a heart-warming New Years Message, BT threatened its own users with breach of contract, and re-asserted its powers to mess about until it gets a service that keeps pesky consumers where they belong - forking out extra for anything but the more asymmetric of Internet services. Expect locked cages for the DSL roll-out next year, kids http://www.flowpoint.com/support/dsl/dsl_faq.htm - get it while you can, triallists Just when you thought the continuiiiiing story of "Mir in Space" couldn't get any weirder, another Western business partner has emerged to save Mir and convert it into that anti-news stalwart "an orbiting space hotel for billionaires". This time, who should it be but Gold & Appel Transfers, of the Cayman Islands. Yup, "Gold & Appel Transfers": last observed in Shea and Wilson's ILLUMINATUS! trilogy as the front organisation for neophile outlaw Hagbard Celine and his Legion of Dynamic Discord. Terrifyingly for the few who still believe that book to be fiction, G&A is a real company with funds of over $300 million. President Walt Anderson made his money as co-founder of Esprit Telecom, and is now a major investor in the Space Frontier Foundation and the Roton, the orbital transfer system that looks like a beanie. G&A have already offered $21 million to the Russian government to maintain Mir in a serviceable orbit, with more, they say, to come. It's unclear whether the group of investors can really rustle up the huge amounts needed to maintain Mir; but wouldn't it be nice if, when the ISS finally boots in the 22nd century, NASA found that a bunch of Discordians had beaten them to it? http://www.mercurycenter.com/premium/front/docs/mir13.htm - financier "reclusive"; Cayman Islands last outcropping of Atlantis http://www.reston.com/nasa/watch.html - fnord >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious CEO of Apple now officially Steve ... VIRGIN NET mess up e-mail passwords: but it could be worse - http://www.virgin-atlantic.com/emergency/ ... CEO of AOL Time Warner as of now, a Steve ... from the Millennium Doh!me: http://www.ntk.net/2000/01/14/doh/dohme1.jpg , http://www.ntk.net/2000/01/14/doh/dohme2.jpg ... METACREATIONS seamlessly erase 100 from staff photo ... CEO of Microsoft - from this week, a Steve ... "Internet may be crowded". Sure it is, http://www.ntk.net/2000/01/14/doh/go.jpg ... http://www.cesg.gov.uk/news/ mildly alarming ... http://www.aol-girls.com/ now hosting "Street Walking The World Online Escort Magazine" ... explaining Y2K to any kids you didn't smother in their beds to save them the horror: http://www.fema.gov/kids/wytookie1.htm ... so bad it broke the wankometer: http://www.get-time.org/thinking_article_2.htm ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful First the mild ripples of netfreedom's Internet Article Of Shame [see NTK 1999-12-24], and now some shadowy security dudes propose the "E-nsecure Awards" - this could be the year to redress the balance of all those backslapping "best of" giveaways. The "E-nsecures" are aimed at naming and shaming award-winning, beautifully designed sites that, nonetheless, ignore basic security precautions, thus exposing their owners to the "e- gnominy" of receiving an "e-gnoble" E-nsecure Award. We have little to add to this clearly worthwhile goal, other than maybe they should shorten the name (in the style of the Oscars, Tonys etc) to "the Ians" - partly in tribute to BT's Iain Vallance, partly because trying to read their manifesto is, perhaps intentionally, like that old "Ian (and Iain) News" sketch by Lee and Herring. http://www.netfreedom.org/ - No list of nominees? Did they only get 3 or something? http://www.e-nsecure.net/ - yes, it *does* look a bit like that London 2600 party page... >> TRACKING << making good use of the things that we find On the happy assumption that everybody else shares the same obsessions as we do (hey, it's worked so far), here's another solution to that perennial "trying to log into our shell account from a cybercafe because we've locked ourselves out of the flat" issue. MINDTERM is a Java implementation of an ssh client. Actually, it has been for ages, but it's recently got much much better (no flickering, signed applets so you can log into arbitrary machines, very cool scp file-transfer utility). Do remember: you should assume somebody's sniffing all your keystrokes anyway and do all your private correspondence by Post Office mail. http://www.mindbright.se/mindterm/ - from sshweden http://www.bootlace.co.uk/space/ - Elite: *that's* the Java killer app If you haven't heard already: MP3.COM, in a Napsterish fit of legal hubris has created MY.MP3.COM. It's an elegant scam, uh, customer service, whereby you download an app that checks for the presence of an audio CD in your drive, cross-references the ID with MP3.COM's own monster track cache, then creates a streamable MP3 copy of the album tracks in a mp3.com hosted directory (without that tedious uploading of the ripped files). Obvious applications: instantly ripping all your album collection, sneakily ripping other people's album collections when you go around their house, publicly putting out your id and password so that everyone can auto-rip their collections for you, and generally undermining intellectual property rights in the music industry. Again. Catch it while it's uninjuncted. http://my.mp3.com/ - worth checking out, no matter how badly we explained it. >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista SHATNER PRICELINE ads: we want MP3s ... media-map that's out of date already: http://www.cjr.org/owners/index.asp ... BSD vs BDSM: http://www.digitaldiscipline.com/products.html ... SANDRA in EASTENDERS another Demon exile ... Beano hits prog 3000 - http://www.beano.co.uk/ ... the future of heavy metal karaoke: http://antonmaiden.eu.org/am.html ... spot the pot with http://www.geekhaus.co.uk/teapot/ ... 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY, compressed to 1 pixel: http://www.isness.org/2001*1/ (no, really) ... "not that I'm bitter or anything": http://www.hackernews.com/bufferoverflow/00/scenewh.html ... SAGAN on drugs! http://ftrain.com/index.php3?fileid=2000-01-11 ... http://www.bbc.co.uk/tw/stories/technology/0001wheeldrive.html vs http://www.4wdonline.com/LandRover/Series/Cuthbertson.html ... interesting take on "public relations": http://www.lewispr.com/uk/competitor/subpage.html ... >> GEEK MEDIA << the less rude http://www.tvgohome.com/ TV>> good to see Andrew Chitty - MD of digital TV company Illumina - helping Shirley Manson collect her award at the (repeated) VH1 FASHION AWARDS (6pm, Fri, C4)... "*Do* give up your day job", we advise "New Adventures Of Dr Who" author Mark Gatiss, who returns in a new series of ubercamp "broken" comedy THE LEAGUE OF GENTLEMEN (10pm, Fri, BBC2)... and, yes, new post-Beadle prank slot TRIGGER HAPPY TV (9.30pm, Fri, C4) looks all very amusing, but it's no http://www.tomgreen.com/ ... after boring us all to death with The Exorcist, Mark Kermode lauds *another* dated 'n' overrated '70s genre movie THE FRENCH CONNECTION (8.55pm, Sat, BBC2)... similarly, Channel 4, inexplicably, devotes an evening to a show it doesn't seem to own the rights to, in CHARLIE'S ANGELS NIGHT (from 8pm, Sat, C4) - unless it's still part of their "cocaine" season... and "watch the skies" for Howard Hawks '50s scifi THE THING FROM ANOTHER WORLD (1.20am, Sat, BBC2), though John Carpenter's shape-shifting remake is actually closer to the short story original... enthusiastically casting doubt on parents who make tearful televised pleas to "help catch our daughter's killer", CROCODILE TEARS (10pm, Mon, ITV) focuses on 15 recent cases where it was *actually them who did it*... should anyone still care, THE X FILES (10.20pm, Wed, BBC1) is the "long take" time-travel Bermuda Triangle one... and notorious spoilsports HORIZON (9.30pm, Thu, BBC2) reveal that that Peru's "Nasca Lines" *aren't* alien runway markings after all, but the work of some fucked-up ancient religious cult or something... FILM>> a triple treat this week for fans of serial killers and/or human remains as, for starters, Spike Lee churns out his grittily overwrought Italian-American remake of "Do The Right Thing" (with sex scenes instead of Public Enemy) in '70s disco heatwave soap SUMMER OF SAM (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ : The listing is not fit for display due to the vulgarity of the movie). It's a bit like "This Life" set in the "Boogie Nights" era with someone picking off characters with a .44 handgun, though not as much of a recommendation as that sounds... despite the presence of Married With Children's Ed O'Neill, Angelina "Hackers" Jolie's ongoing audition for Jodie Foster's "Hannibal" role is by far the best thing about graphic sub-Silence Of The Lambs knock-off THE BONE COLLECTOR (imdb: new-york / brooklyn-bridge / police / destiny / quadriplegic / helicopter / serial-killer) - although action hack Philip "The Saint" Noyce keeps sticking her in contrived "Crystal Maze" set-ups where bedridden Denzel Washington, against the clock, yells murder-solving instructions at her... and salt-of- the-earth Oirish folk may be poor - *but they've got each other* - reveals ponderous vomit-packed poverty porn ANGELA'S ASHES (imdb: drama) - the ashes are a cremated serial-killer-style "trophy" taken from one character, possibly "Mrs Doyle" from Father Ted... THE BONER COLLECTOR>> full report on our apocalyptic server- busting Y2K Kwiz next week (so still time to mail in *your* DIY compositions) - though, it's official, you *can* stop sending us "19100" pages now (especially http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~lenzo/yapc/ which, believe us, has been "wrong" for some time)... NICK DRAGE leapt to attention over last week's assertion regarding "season 3 of Buffy The Vampire Slayer", enquiring "Tut, tut, what kind of nerds are you? It's season FOUR", though then spoiled the effect by failing to get NTK 1999-12-24's reference to the "Argos dog penis" nicked off us by The Graham Norton Show. No, Nick, we meant *this* Argos dog penis: http://www.ntk.net/doh/991210dog.jpg ...subsequent to which, MARK WHITAKER mailed us his "treasured" (yet popular) piece of phallic clip art, an ad for the Northumberland Lawn Tennis & Squash Rackets Club in the Newcastle Yellow Pages: http://www.ntk.net/2000/01/14/doh/tennis.gif . Please stop sending us these, you're ruining the "boner" section's sophisticated tone... similar concerns were raised by the Mimesweeper program at FLEMINGS.COM, which rejected NTK 1899-12-31 "because it contains unacceptable words or phrases, e.g. jokes or profanities". The handy output log enclosed ("Found phrase Value 20, Text 'sex ', Found phrase Value 100, Text 'COCAINE '") gave some indication of how amusing or profane it thought we were being, while (at last!) establishing than cocaine is, officially, 5 times more profane (or amusing) than sex... clearly not a problem for ANDY ISAACSON, who mailed to confirm unsubstantiated reports of Richard Stallman singing the "Free Software" song at an NTK "event" in London, then being rushed by geeks who wanted him to sign their copies of the sheet music, and "at least one girl who got him to sign her collar bone". Well, we've checked, and we're sorry to say these rumours are false: the girl concerned insists it was her breast that RMS signed. Yup, we don't get out often, but when we do: "hoo, boy"... >> 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 "Web Activists" 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.ntk.net/books/ (K) 2000 Special Projects. Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/ Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com - remember your work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material. 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