Need To Know 2000-07-21

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"Muslim insurgents battling Philippine troops in the south have a new weapon. When the shelling and gunfire let up, they send a barrage of scathing insults to Manila's forces by cell phone." http://www.nytimes.com/library/tech/00/07/biztech/articles/05talk.html ...W SHL FGT U N V BCHS! W SHL NVR SRNDR! >> HARD NEWS << the P. of A.U.'s As the anti-spamming civil war enters another round of mud-slinging, allow us to slide into the only language the computer press understands: a straight fight between good and evil. Mainly, GOOD PAUL VIXIE vs EVIL PAUL VIXIE. If Vixie is bad, he (and his boss at ABOVE.NET, Dave Rand) have been route-blackholing the anti-spam database ORBS just because they're on the board of fellow anti-spam list MAPS. And MAPS is going to start charging for some of its services, and they want stop ORBS from queering their pitch. That's what Alan Brown, ORBS' one-man anti-spamming army, rather enthusiastically intimated when he shut down his service in protest this week. And Alan Cox concurs. So it must be true. And if Vixie's *that* evil, then YESMAIL's law suit against MAPS is right too: the intimation there being that Vixie is putting Yesmail into MAPS' known spammers blackhole list, because he's on the board of WHITEHAT, Yesmail's main competitor in the lovely opt-in commercial e-mail world. But hold on: isn't Vixie a net.god? Didn't Vixie maintain BIND? Isn't Vixie running MAPS as a non-profit corp? And if Vixie is a *honourable* man, then Above.net is dumping ORBS connections internally because ORBS is breaching Above.net's Acceptable Use Policy by proactively scanning remote machines. And since ORBS's upstream provider is an Above.net customer and has chosen to *tell* people to route ORBS connections through Above.net (rather than more viable alternatives), that means Above.net's re-routing only *accidentally* routes non-Above.net connections into /dev/null . It's mainly ORBS' upstream provider that's caused the problem. And - wait a minute - if Vixie is *good*, then Yesmail is being blackholed because loads of people have complained to MAPS about Yesmail signing them up without their permission. Which they have. Good? Bad? Strap him into the IETF-approved witch-dunking apparatus immediately! http://tbtf.com/archive/2000-07-20.html#s03 - if that wasn't clear enough... http://www.vix.com/ - and Vixie is an honourable man http://www.above.net/company/management.html - money: the evil of all roots The UK government's new TrustUK scheme was unveiled this week, designed, no doubt, to stop PowerGen from storing 7,000 credit card numbers on its Website ever, ever, again. Compliant Websites will be able to wear the little Java logo - a guarantee of security, and good old British corporate responsibility in e-commerce - with pride. Typically, on their first day, their validation program didn't work, and the e-mail and complaints form bounced with a mail loop. Also - MAPS take note - their code of practice explicitly permits unsolicited commercial e-mail. No, we're not making that up. Why doesn't the rest of the world just quarantine us now, and get it over with? http://www.trustuk.org.uk/ - oh, and the Java logo was written in Canada. Sigh. http://www.trustuk.org.uk/download/ApprovalsCriteria.pdf - Section 6.10. By all means read it twice to be sure. >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious "serious trouble" is JOHN YOUNG's middle two names: http://cryptome.org/fbi-psia.htm ... one of those "beyond satire" weeks at: http://mosr.net/macosrumorz/ ... FAST COMPANY oddly excited about "Ideavirus" meme^H^H^H^H ideavirus http://www.fastcompany.com/online/37//ideavirus.html ... JIMMY SMITS still battling "fiery Hispanic" typecasting: http://www.starwars.com/episode-ii/characters/bail_organa.html ... http://www.musiciansfriend.com/ does cover version of http://www.amazon.com ... SCOOT search for "B&Q" in Hull: http://www.scoot.co.uk/company/company.asp?comp=B+%26+Q&town=Hull prefers category "Xxchristmas Novelties in Gipsyville"... "A revolution is happening - it's called e-business, and it is based on the largest communications network in the world, the internet", confides http://www.oracle.co.uk/crm11ipartners/ ... asked to help find a new name for freebie HomeSite clone 1STPAGE, 14% of users vote for - a dummy list box item!: http://polls.vantagenet.com/zpolls/count.asp?rlt=112654653&id=112654653 ... software store at http://www.amazon.co.uk recommends running FREEBSD 3.3 on "Platform: Linux"... Ninfo-FALCO-mania! ... "PhD programmer" required to make sense of latest MARK WARD scare: http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/sci/tech/newsid_842000/842624.stm "IT'S TOTAL DEVASTATION" boasts http://www.thorpepark.co.uk/ : http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/uk/newsid%5F845000/845267.stm >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful "How about giving those of us way up North a bit more notice [of upcoming events]?" inquires reader TONY BLEWS. Well, admitedly, we've left it a bit late to plug non-profit get- together WEBZINE 2000 (Sat 2000-07-22, San Francisco), where the theme is: how the tide is turning against professional, well-funded content operations, with the long-term goal of *running those varmints out of town*. But, if you're in the area (that left-hand half of the USA, we mean), why not make a week of it, dropping by SIGGRAPH (from 2000-07-23, New Orleans) en route to DEFCON 8.0 (from 2000-07-28, Las Vegas) - what better way to celebrate http://www.sysadminday.com/ ? http://www.webzine2000.com/ - also, out of this lot, the highest female:male speaker ratio http://www.siggraph.org/s2000/ - Siggraph 27? That '73 show must have been a real stormer... http://www.defcon.org/ - some streams more popular than others: http://www.h2korgy.net/ Back in the UK, we're stuck with the multi-layered ironies of eco-unfriendly direct action BOYCOTT THE PUMPS WEEK (ah, but what if they were going to spend that petrol tax on funding RIP measures, eh?) - potentially bad news for the presumably petrol-powered ROBOT MAYHEM, the live "Robot Wars" event (from Mon 2000-07-24 to 2000-08-03, St Albans). Unless, that is, they've taken advantage of recent "gastrobot" developments, and modified Sir Killalot, Matilda, Sgt Bash et al to feed on animal and/or human flesh... http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2000/28/ns-16749.html - taking that FBI "Carnivore" concept a little too literally http://www.robotwars.co.uk/ - "Mayhem" does have those mass [human] slaughter connotations http://www.enoughisenough.org.uk/ - text is all one huge GIF; meta tags include "tax, car, sex" >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Thanks to the usual sources for pointing us to the APACHE JAVA project, which, like you, we'd heard of but not yet investigated to point of gibbering system shock. They're doing *far* too much here: as well as now being the home reference implementation for Java Servlet spec, they're branching out into terrain reserved for world-domination-level open source projects. To wit: a bunch of groupware frameworks, including JAMES, the inevitable JSP for sending and receiving e-mail. Gulping back our natural scepticism regarding Big Projects, java.apache.org does seem to be where all server-based Java action is occurring these days, and if your knowledge of that language extends only as far as that test Pong game you wrote in 1997, this might be the place to have another look. Wish them luck: apart from anything else, this looks to be where the last stand against Microsoft's .NET and C# is going to happen. http://java.apache.org/ - bugger all docs. a *good* sign http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/1999/11/16/microsoft_servers/print.html - how Apache pulled our arses out of the fire last time >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista sod the BIG BROTHER residents - snoop on the dev team via directory browsing: http://www.bigbrother.terra.com/live/ ... next APPLE wireless mouse not optical - but GPS... HARRY POTTER turns to dark side: http://www.nationallampoon.com/potter.html http://www.fflibraries.org/Book_Reports/HarryPotter/HarryPotterTakesDrugs.htm PIGDOG *almost* got RMS to call it "Linux", rather than "GNU/ Linux": http://www.pigdog.org/interview_with_stallman.html ... http://www.scripting.com/images/microsoftExecsListeningToGates.gif - "Five criminals. One line up. No coincidence"... NEIGHBOURS' Harold Bishop "forgot" experiments with body-melting drugs: http://www.thateden.demon.co.uk/prisoner/showb.htm#bodmel ... keep http://www.weblife.org/humanure/chapter8.html away from http://biz.yahoo.com/bw/000705/ca_shaman_.html ... speaking of POOH: http://www.compsoc.man.ac.uk/~assassin/poohbear.mov ... over-literal interpretation of the phrase "drinking game": http://www.theparkbench.co.uk/superlager/toptrumps.htm ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> over on On Digital, BBC Knowledge is having some sort of "Sci-Fi Night", profiling Aldous "Brave New World" Huxley in BOOKMARK (8pm, Fri) and - hopefully more insightful than last week's Blade Runner "Future Noir" knock-off - Dick, Dick and yet more [Philip K] Dick in ARENA (9pm, Fri)... back on earth, there's David Cronenberg's atypically entertaining body-horror midlife-crisis metaphor THE FLY (12midnight, Fri, BBC1)... and, in the ongoing absence of "Starship Troopers: The Series", viewers seeking an early-morning animated rush are advised to wake up to Hanna-Barbera manga-alikes THE POWERPUFF GIRLS (8.30am, Sat, C5)... BBC2 chases those early-Saturday morning ratings with HARD QUESTIONS, SOFT ANSWERS's look at object-oriented programming (9.35am, Sat, BBC2)... I LOVE THE SEVENTIES, declares BBC2 (from 8.55pm, Sat), largely because they're such easy source material for 10 themed nights of cheap archive clip-shows... while Emmerich, Van Damme and Lundgren - together at last! - pay tribute to "The Terminator" in bus-powered shoot-'em-up UNIVERSAL SOLDIER (11.20pm, Sat, ITV)... Garry "Larry Sanders" Shandling and Tea Leoni guest in another self-referential X FILES (9pm, Sun, Sky1)... bad-taste Zucker-style spoof HIGH SCHOOL HIGH (9pm, Tue, C5) starts well, until it actually turns into "Dangerous Minds"... NTK staffer Danny O'Brien claims to be "spoofing" futurism in repeated PREDICTIONS (10.20pm, Tue, BBC2)... and the spectre of Meridian's "Cyber Cafe" haunts the late-night schedules once again - as THE WEB REVIEW (12.30am, Tue, ITV), with Richard Topping, fresh from that noted hotbed of new talent, ".tv" http://www.tvchannel.co.uk/tv_shows/presenters/ , and Kath Harvey - former pundit on Carlton World's Net.Comedy http://www.jgpm.co.uk/kath_harvey.htm ... *someone* sure likes Bruce Willis caper-flop HUDSON HAWK (9pm, Wed, C5) - last shown about 8 months ago on ITV... and LAMARR'S ATTACKS (9.30pm, Thu, BBC2) begin with his lambasting of "morality" - not specifying whether he's objecting to "conventional" morality, "Judeo-Christian" morality, or just "the overall concept of having some sort of moral framework" in general... FILM>> following "Fever Pitch", Nick Hornby continues his "blokes, relationships and their obsessions" theme, though instead of picking one of the more interesting fixations - World War Two, or retro video games - he gives John Cusack the relatively socially acceptable pastime of listening to old records, in HIGH FIDELITY (http://www.screenit.com : "Iben Hjejle plays [Cusack's] most recent live-in girlfriend who's recently cheated on and broken up with him and has sex with him in both the past and present [as well as with another man and reportedly had an abortion in the past]") - which, for a film supposedly obsessed with pop music, hardly seems to be based around the "Kids From Fame" song at all, to the extent of not even including it on the soundtrack!... Hugh Laurie, Geena Davis, that speccy kid from "Jerry Maguire", and a CGI mouse - together at last! - in kids' cross-species adoption comedy STUART LITTLE (imdb: cat-versus-mouse / part-animated / central-park / part-computer-animation / fake-parent / adoption / mafia / anthropomorphic / based-on-novel / cat / family-gathering / family-life / boat-race / family- relationship / kids-and-family / cat-actor / family / mouse) ... so, our - reluctant - recommendation of the week goes to Christopher Lambert's patently ridiculous space-prison sequel FORTRESS 2: RE-ENTRY (http://www.cndb.com : "Liz May Brice [10th Kingdom, A Touch Of Frost]... reveals her taut, olive- complected body a couple of times in some juicy albeit somewhat discreet co-ed shower scenes. Fans of Pam Grier will enjoy her over-dressed, scenery-chewing role in this cheeky sci-fi number") - if only for retaining the "Men-Tel" Corporation, which everyone immediately assumes is pronounced "Mental" instead... MAGS AND BAGS>> "You thought the sealed PVC wrapper that EDGE came in was stupid?" chuckles too-much-time-on-his-hands NTK correspondent BEN MOOR. "Wait till you see the cut-throat competition in the Free-Bags-With-Women's-Mags arena!" He goes on to list no less than *four* current examples, ranging from MARIE CLAIRE's "Only Bag To Be Seen With" (UKP2.70) down to MORE's "Free Bag... For Lazy Beach Days And Sexy Club Nights" (UKP1.45). Most distinctive at this stage is SHINE's "Funky Summer Bag In A Choice Of Three Colours" (UKP2.50) - a lurid, i-Mac-like selection of "zingy yellow", "tangerine orange" or "hot pink", while comparatively best value for money is the "Worth UKP20" "Overnight Bag" that doesn't necessarily lead you to any particular conclusion about the readers of WOMAN'S JOURNAL (UKP2.70)... bags of comments too (and none of them good) about new Future Publishing "for the online creative" effort CRE@TE ONLINE - presumably pronounced "Cre-at-te", or maybe just "Crete". Following the throwing-himself-at-our- mercy approach pioneered by Times Interface's Dr Keyboard [NTK 2000-05-12], they actually sent us the first issue, goading us to spot the "obvious errors". Tragically, by that point, MATT JONES had already bought a copy, and was already frothing over the contents - by issue 2, SIMON BATISTONI had joined the fray, citing "horrendous cover-price, over-designed layout, exclusive focus on people who think a 'useful website' is one with a 5mb flash intro and no 'skip intro'" (as opposed to, say, http://www.createonline.co.uk/ ), and, on the strength of ads like http://www.ntk.net/2000/07/21/dohnathan.gif , nominating it "Nathan Barley's all-time favourite magazine", triumping over even the similarly punctuation-mark afflicted "Wallpaper*"... which brings us to recent revelations that the anonymous "boss" of TVGOHOME was - as even the most cursory of whois lookups revealed - former PC ZONE misanthrope CHARLIE BROOKER all along (did you guess, readers?) who, perhaps more surprisingly, has part-sold his scathing critiques of soul- destroying, unimaginative TV to none other than GMG Endemol, makers of - well, Big Brother, Ground Force, The Pepsi Chart, Ready Steady Cook and Changing Rooms. The full story appears at http://www.zeppotron.com/press_release.html - in a personal communication, echoing nothing so much as Robert Oppenheimer's famous "Shiva" quotation, "I *am* Nathan Barley," Brooker admits. "Woo hoo." Hey Charlie, don't feel bad about it: all NTK's "proteges" are destined to turn against us in the end - a process we secretly foster and look forward to - and we won't stop linking to it in Geek Media. Or *should we?*... >> 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 "completing the series: God, Satan, Nietzsche ..." http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/07/18/advogato/index1.html NEED TO KNOW THEY STOLE OUR REVOLUTION. NOW WE'RE STEALING IT BACK. Archive - http://www.ntk.net/ Unsubscribe? 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