Need To Know 2001-01-05

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"A few years ago, we realised that we weren't far away from having a global telephone network with as many connections as the human brain. We've passed that now. BT tried to explore whether there was any danger of consciousness occurring, but had to give up, because we don't know what makes a thing conscious." http://www.observer.co.uk/life/story/0,6903,416413,00.html - IAN PEARSON, BT's head futurololologist ..."A BT Engineer called to verify the existence of a self-aware artificial intelligence in the phone network, but you were out." >> HARD NEWS << Arthur, are these worlds yours? We all love Christmas and New Year - because everyone takes a week off work to spend time with their friends and families, and all the hacked and broken websites get to stay up just that little bit longer. GRANADA-TV.CO.UK's Apache server was radically misconfigured for at least 4 days (until yesterday), generously serving password files to casual Crack users hoping to obtain logins for "This Morning" and "Emmerdale" ("woolsack" and "tmo", you slack Granada sysadmins, you). REGISTER readers were assured that the defacing of BA's GO-FLY.COM did not put customer data at risk; shadowy security vigilantes THE DATA NETWORK SECURITY COUNCIL begged to differ, pointing out that go-fly's webserver still appeared to be exploitable via script kiddy favourite Remote Data Services - "with full read/write privileges". And finally, another seasonal shopper claimed that placing an order at SERVICESALES.SEL.SONY.COM "lists the encryption key and output file name (placed under /usr/local/etc/httpd/htdocs.service/service/temp/temp[order#]. txt.asc)" - though, to throw those wily haxxors off the scent, "that line is generated using a white font so it can't be seen. It shows up if you highlight it, though." Start as you mean to go on, folks. Start as you mean to go on. http://book.fly-go.com/msadc/samples/adctest.asp - requires MSIE 4+ web browser, Asynch Connections off http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/6/15756.html - vs http://www.iamcal.com/ami/ : "Am I The Register Or Not?" Still, even after a rest, we're left with nothing much this week but predictable profit warnings, Mac panic price-cuts and almost-in-accordance-with-prophecy kernel releases. And so we return to the perennial mysteries, such as: what is it *really* like at Menwith Hill? Thanks to the ongoing research at now wildly off-topic Mark-Thomas mailing list for sending us http://dingo.getbent.net/~petdragon/ - a Wiccan-oriented guide to relocating there for the American military. Common prejudice regarding pagans (to wit: lovely gentle folk who you still never ever want to see skyclad, ta) are somewhat undone here by the whole "running the bizarre protestor lady over" thought-experiment in this guide. That lady is, of course, Lindis Percy, winner of the 1998 "Winston" Big Brother Award for her monitoring of the monitoring station, and one of the few people to commit a successful private prosecution against a military police officer. And we're still not sure where the "do no harm" bit lies here: but, hell, if you had the chance to conduct a rite in those golfballs, wouldn't you transfer? http://www.gn.apc.org/cndyorks/caab/newsletters/caab7inf.htm#mhpros - that "wise woman" mythos not ringing any bells? http://www.sunspot.net/content/cover/story?storyid=+1150520223288 - just don't ask about the chocolate pudding http://www.officialsecretsact.org/ - what JA ([NTK 2000-03-10]) did next And some heroes and villains remain, whatever the millennium. Although this year's ISPA awards' have a particularly tough choice, as their "Internet Villain" category is sponsored by BRITISH TELECOM. Guess it's no surprise, then, that the first nomination goes to... David Edmonds, DG of Oftel. Ah, yes. That universally reviled figure. http://www.ispaawards.org.uk/html/vi_internet_villain.asp - Jack Straw's your safest bet in these situations, BT >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious COMPUSERVE users "not as tech savvy" as AOLers, shudders: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2670460,00.html ... SOPHOS unveil 2001's major virus threats a month early: http://www.sophos.com/virusinfo/analyses/w32hybrisc.html ... "Browse the best NEW YEAR'S EVE PARTIES events by month", suggests http://www.whatsonwhen.com/themes/newyearparties.jml ... could this be the MOST BROKEN WEB PAGE of all time?: http://www.ratedepot.com/Lenders/LVendors/LVMain.shtml ... TIME OUT asks "Britain's Net Gurus" about "The Year Ahead" (p21): "High Streets will start to look archaic, expensive and boring", says UK MD of LETSBUYIT.COM (who should know); they then speak to fictional ATTACHMENTS character "Mike Fisher", and spell his URL wrong... "Where is MOBY today?" enquires http://www.moby-online.com/ - when he should be at home fixing his .asp's?... "lesser-used languages" at European Bureau for promoting same http://www.eblul.org/javapb-gb.htm include Cornish, Aragonese, GERMAN... your LICENSE FEES at work #n+1: http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio1/images/artists/ - providing free gold-CD inlay thumbnails... nice warm FALCO! for OVEN UK ... ARTHUR ANDERSEN CONSULTING change name to toothpaste... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Even THE REGISTER, who are paid to do this sort of thing, have had problems cataloguing the massive publicity onslaught mounted by KEVIN WARWICK over the holidays. Capitalising on the apparent kudos of his Royal Institution lectures, Kev went on to appear in yesterday's Sun, explaining how his "robot that runs away when anybody in the laboratory tries to switch it off" is merely the vanguard of "more powerful machines" which we "will have no option but to obey". His mission to warn and inform continues next Wednesday 2001-01-10 at IT-in- education trade show BETT 2001, with his touring crowd-pleaser "Will it be Super Intelligent Machines or Cyborgs?". Spotter OPERATIVE IAN seemed oddly reassured that "under 18's will not be admitted" to the show, and that cybersex pioneer Kevin will not be involved in teaching "the facts of life". http://www.bettshow.com/bett/seminars.asp?SectionName=bett_Seminar - vs http://www.lifeskills4kids.com/assembly.html http://www.thesun.co.uk/life/archive/13278561 - the URL that http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/28/15806.html might have been looking for http://www.singinst.org/ - named after Omega's power source in the "The Three Doctors"? http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.ananova.com/area404/diarywk1.html - day 6: "I think I'm in love. WITH A MACHINE!" >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Seems like only yesterday that we clustered around the office SGI, revelling in CHRIS PIRAZZI's amazing 1995 live video->ascii art convertor. Well, now you too can pray that such fripperies don't lead your company to inevitable stagnation and collapse, when you too compile your own copy of HASCIICAM for Video4Linux. Features include dumping in VT100 friendly spools (for live telecasts via telnet) or automatic HTML generation for counterintuitively large Webcam uploads. Now it's just a matter of selling banner-ad space on your "Am I Naked In This Text Dump Or Not" Website, and you'll have it all. http://ascii.dyne.org/ - needs aa-lib, as all the best programs do http://reality.sgi.com/cpirazzi/ttyvideo.html - "the future was here yesterday", indeed >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista The worse you dress, the more important they'll think you are: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2670475,00.html ... what's more likely - STALLONE as DR WHO, or KEVIN ELDON as "gay cyberman"? http://www.gallifreyone.com/news.htm ... idea for Palm app: http://www.angio.net/personal/climb/speed ... BILLIE does her bit for http://62.189.42.122/common/comp.htm by sleeping with orange-haired twat... s/Weird Al/LARRY WALL/g: http://history.perl.org/misc/al_wall/ ... INFINITE amusement: http://LHP2.com/leeches/ ... http://www.micromusic.net/ vs http://www.hybrisnemesis.com/ppot/ ...life imitates SIMPSONS: http://www.guardian.co.uk/breakingnews/International/0,3561,647346,00.html ... http://www.hymen.co.uk/ vs http://www.technicalvirgin.com ... "No-one knows who installed the [monolith]" - NATCH: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/p/ap/20010102/us/monolith_mystery.html ... http://members.spree.com/education/stophairloss/index.html - ALIEN ABDUCTEES go bald, too... mmm, tastes like CHERRY: http://dailynews.yahoo.com/h/nm/20010104/od/blood_dc_1.html ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> one good thing about the New Year: some decent TV for a change, with debut runs of FRASIER (10pm, Fri, C4) - plus, on digital/cable, BUFFY THE VAMPIRE SLAYER (8pm, Fri, Sky1), ANGEL (9pm, Fri, Sky1) and, later in the week, a double-bill of high-finance glamour-porn in Yasmine "Baywatch" Bleeth's TITANS (9pm, Sun, Sky1) plus THE $TREET (9pm, Tue, Sky1), featuring Jennifer "Labyrinth, Dark City" Connelly... C4 continues its not-at-all stereotypical "Secret Life Of Japan" with AH-SO GRAHAM NORTON (10.30pm, Fri, C4), plus what's bee billed as the 1954 "Gojira" but actually appears to be the 1956 US remake GODZILLA, KING OF THE MONSTERS (1.40am, Fri, C4)... just after the maddest "mad bomber" movie ever, the "Mousetrap"-based BLOWN AWAY (11.30pm, Fri, ITV)... filling up 4 hours of Saturday prime-time comes THE 100 GREATEST NUMBER ONE SINGLES (8pm, Sat, C4) - some people are never satisfied: http://mudhole.spodnet.uk.com/~frogger/corpses/update2/hell.htm ... Michael "Heat" Mann continues his "dangerous obsession" movies in period shoot-'em-up THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS (9pm, Sat, BBC2)... and Bridget Fonda remakes Luc Besson's "Nikita" as THE ASSASSIN (11.10pm, Sat, ITV) - not to be confused with the subsequent TV spin-off show and "homopervert's fantasy": http://libercratic.government.directnic.com/Journal/culture/TV.htm - god knows what they'd make of Jennifer Lopez battling that giant computer-generated ANACONDA (9pm, Sun, C4)... militia apologist Joel Schumacher shows reassuring restraint in FALLING DOWN (10.15pm, Sun, BBC1)... the eponymous prankster attempts to wring laughs from the Data Protection Act in THE MARK THOMAS PRODUCT (11.10pm, Mon & Wed, C4)... self-help is on the agenda with the BBC's mental "On The Edge" season (from 10.35pm, Tue, BBC1), coincidentally coinciding with BBC2's assertiveness-training CONFIDENCE LAB (9.50pm, Wed), and C4's entirely non-prurient PERFECT BREASTS (10pm, Tue)... while Thu sees the return of Richard http://www.disinfo.com/ Metzger's DISINFO NATION (12.45am, Thu, C4); the legally postponed garbology nerd doc SCANDAL IN THE BINS (10pm, Thu, C4); and, almost inevitably, HORIZON promising "new evidence" of "Life on Mars" (9pm, Thu, BBC2)... FILM>> it seems only Ang "Sense and Sensibility, Ride With The Devil" Lee could achieve the near-miraculous feat of making a kung-fu movie that chicks can enjoy as well, in the form of extensive wirework Chinese Charlie's Angels-alike CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON (http://www.cndb.com/ : [Ziyi Zhang] asks Li if it's her or the Green Destiny sword that he wants and then pulls open her top and we briefly see her nipples through her wet shirt)... otherwise it's the oddly untantalising prospect of another tedious Bruce Willis/ M Night Shyamalan ding-dong - this time something to do with superheroes - in UNBREAKABLE (http://www.hollywoodjesus.com/unbreakable.htm : Every day hundreds of millions of people worldwide read and understand the visual-story medium which is known as "comics") ... Kim Basinger, Christina Ricci fritter away their hard-won credibility in autistic second-coming CGI-fest BLESS THE CHILD (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/blessthechild.htm : murder by knitting needles to the eyes; mockery of the reality of Satan using kids to attack Jesus; animal brutality; child banging head against wall)... or Patrick "Lawnmower Man 2" Bergin, Tia "Wayne's World" Carrere, Rik "Young Ones" Mayall - together at last! - in time-travel tosh MERLIN: THE RETURN ( www.bbc.co.uk/films/2000/12/18/merlin_the_return_2000_review.shtml : "It's almost as if director Paul Matthews had accepted a bet to make the worst possible film. Well, he's succeeded")... BUMPER BONER BONANZA>> OK, so we never got round to doing an end-of-year quiz this time, but we thought we'd make up for it by littering our past year's output with minor (and not so minor) technical inaccuracies that you could write in about - to win nothing but the approval of your peers and, of course, NTK's everlasting gratitude... when we described the movie "Aces High" as a "WW2-er" [NTK 2000-11-17], DISCO DAVE hit back with "Strange old bi-planes they had in WW2, eh?"... when we hypothesised that Dudley Moore's last ever TV appearance [NTK 2000-12-01] might be an "unusually cruel Peter Cook prank", MICHAEL WALSH felt duty-bound to point out that it would be "unusually weird, too, as Peter Cook himself has been dead for some time"... *and* we almost entirely misunderstood the mechanics of LASTMINUTE's share dilution [NTK 2000-11-24], the real details of which are too staggeringly dull for even us to go into here... DAVID MADISON semi-defended The Onion's http://www.theonion.com/onion3644/black_guy_photoshopped_in.html story, which we alleged might have been "imitated" from Wired http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,39233,00.html [NTK 2000-12-15], when in fact "the same thing actually happened a few weeks before at the University of Wisconsin at Madison": http://www.ccchronicle.com/back/2000-10-02/campus5.html - where The Onion started off in the first place... ADRIAN MOULDER berated us severely for overlooking the "Replicant- like plight" of limited-edition RoboNagis [NTK 2000-11-24]: http://www.robonagi.com/Robonagi/html/collectibillity.htm , 5 of which were "scheduled to be 'retired'" by the end of last year... and finally, DOUGLAS HOLLANDS gave the most plausible explanation for Stephen Hawking's mysterious injuries [NTK 2000-11-17], citing http://www.mchawking.com to posit "Perhaps his injuries were sustained at the recent Source Hip-Hop Music Awards?" http://www.livedaily.com/news/1698.html . NTK regrets that this correspondence is now closed... >> 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 "mentioned in job specs" NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. 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