Need To Know 2000-05-19

archive

"Like many things in life, you can do exactly what you were going to do in the first place and change the names." - STEVE JOBS http://www.mercurycenter.com/svtech/news/top/docs/apple051600.htm ...or have them sacked and erased from the record, anyway >> HARD NEWS << hitting the boos If you gaze for long into the abyss, right, then doesn't the abyss gaze also into you, yeah? So spake the critics of the ORBS spam database, who have often suggested that the ORBS's vigilante techniques for tracking down open mail relays (by scanning the smtp ports of remote machines, and putting them on a public blacklist - not only if they do relay, but also if they refuse to be scanned) is as bad an abuse of Net trust as the spammers themselves. That's certainly what the above.net sysadmins felt when they decided to block access to ORBS to and from their network following a rude probing. But now it looks like AboveNet have become more than a little thuggish themselves. In the last few weeks, above.net have been externally advertising their own unique route to the ORBS machines: a route that leads straight into a black hole. That means that not only can above.net customers not see the New Zealand site, but anyone who transits with above.net also loses access. Which, by a quirk of LINX's peering arrangements, includes all of JANET. No, JANET's not happy: and there's even been mutterings of a threatened suit against above.net for computer abuse. Maybe the first person to complain to would be Paul Vixie, Senior VP at AboveNet's parent company, Metromedia. He should be sympathetic: after all, in his copious spare time he runs the other spam blackholing service, RBL: maybe he should look into this abyss, too. http://www.deja.com/threadmsg_ct.xp?AN=623215811&fmt=text - more irony: the Vienna Internet Exchange (VIX) affected too http://www.computerworld.com/home/print.nsf/CWFlash/000427D962 - "unique methods" Thanks to everyone who didn't e-mail us over the last year to falco BOO.COM. Everyone else: no shit, Sherlocks. And we know that we should be revelling in those rumours of corporate excess, the Flash-driven horrors spooned out of Organic's arse into gaping mouths of usability experts the globe over, the vision of Miss Boo being dragged in chains through the streets of London. But sod it, kids: there but for the grace of God go all of us in six months. And maybe it's time you looked your boardroom pals that talk so confidently of their plans at your startup, and wonder whether they'd take as much care of you when the whole thing takes off like a concrete rowing-boat. As it will. Oh yes. For the bell, it tolls for boo. I mean you. http://www.wehaveinformation.com/ - ahh. you weren't expecting that were you? ahhh. http://www.ntk.net/2000/05/19/caboom.gif - others tho http://www.waz.easynet.co.uk/boo/ - are not so http://apache.mirror.boo.com/ - charitable Our exciting dollar dollar dollar loyalty scheme (which involved dumb introductory offers and simple odds at William Hill's site) seems to be paying off. Listen to these unsolicited testimonials: "Cheers! I'm 91UKP up" - James Answer (his satisfying real name); "Ker-ching! 22.50UKP better off! Nice one" - "supernoodle" (probably not his). Writes James Kew: "Similar but more generous offer at www.victorchandler.com: 25UKP of your own money, free 40UKP bet. Same tactics: 25UKP on the outsider, 40UKP on the favourite". And Tim Aidley does your work for you when he reports "William Hill has different cashback values for different currencies - some worth more than the 50UKP you get with sterling. With the help of Yahoo's currency convertot, I worked out that you get a maximum cashback with 150 canadian dollars - about 67UKP. Increase your winnings by 34%". Nice! http://www.willhill.com/ - hurry, while meme is still propagating http://www.victorchandler.com/ - no purchase necessary >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious all of www.nine.com's lives gone ... POSTSCRIPT suicide note posted to alt.gothic, comp.fonts ... "is it because I is black?" http://www.ntk.net/2000/05/19/dohrapist.jpg ... AV's ultra-thin raging.com "does not support text only browsers" ... GUARDIAN (2000-05-15, p5) recommends leaving a list of computer passwords on a Post-It for your temp ... BT not too happy about http://www.dna.uklinux.net/bti/letter/ ... *bad* website: http://www.ntk.net/2000/05/19/dohinetworld.jpg ... and when oh when will the public tire of - oh, go on then: http://www.nerdsrus.com/billboard/ ... Boss! It is working!: http://www.cisco.com/test/mike-april24.html ... more stoic professionalism at: http://www.pricejam.co.uk/java/java.html ... lame Brit comedy site http://www.smeg.co.uk/news5.htm imitates ONION: http://www.theonion.com/onion3604/sucking_my_cock.html ... http://search.bbc.co.uk/search/search.shtml?DB=all&P=jill+dando looks a bit suspicious ... "Attractive IRC-using Quake-playing girl almost completely artificial": http://www.planetquake.com/frags/vore/Kcd1.gif vs http://www.playboy.com/digital/feature/steviecase/ ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful OK, so Oxford University won't let you hyperlink to DeCSS (full story at http://cryptome.org/ox-chill.htm ), but they're happy to welcome the (potential) harbinger of humanity's future extermination, KEVIN "THE CYBERNATOR" WARWICK, who continues touring his "Will it be Super Intelligent Machines or Cyborgs?" show around potential hotbeds of mechanoid uprising. "This time, OU AI society have been subverted," writes OPERATIVE TOM (5.30pm, Mon 2000-05-22), "This may be my last transmission as an organic life-form." http://www.robots.ox.ac.uk/~aisoc/warwick.html - yeah, KevinWarwickWatch needs updating, but whenever we try and automate it, things go mysteriously wrong... http://www.undercurrents.org/piratetv.htm - for those that survive: a resistance movement >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering They're going to get you eventually, UNIX boy. You keep teasing the NT weenies long enough about these ILOVEYOU viruses, and they're going to brew up some mother of a MUA buffer overflow, and then who you gonna blame? Certainly not ANONY MAIL, Bjarni R. Einarsson's script to filter out any dangerous looking HTML or MIME attachments received by your machine. Okay, so it's in Perl, making it unsuitable for heavy mail flow. But that does mean that you can stick in your own quick fixes for any novel weirdnesses, and tweak it to fit your own paranoia. And thanks to its own one-pass MIME parser, it's not too heavy on the cycles. Unlike STRIPMIME, which is a slow, resource heavy monster for people who want any attachments automatically stripped and saved before their email gets to the mailbox. Great for anyone wishing a slim text only mbox to archive, hates having their POP or IMAP session sabotaged by huge attachments, and likes code hacked up in a hurry last week by bored newsletter writers after a string of monster DOH images. Please improve on it, and send your sarky coding critiques to the usual address. And remember: always try beta mail tools out on somebody else's account first. http://mailtools.anomy.net/ - probably best used in conjunction http://www.ntk.net/2000/05/19/stripmime.txt - not that i've tested that (or anything) >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista strong contender for Worst Web Site of the Millennium award: http://www.bridges2000.com ... WINE v1.0? ... voice- activated STAR TREK Game: conSPIRacy.. to.. make.. everyone.. talk.. like.. Kirk ... if ILOVEYOU's spyder had not hate go school: http://lcamtuf.na.export.pl/worm.txt ... saveiridium.com needs website, 10 million dollars ... so it's a pun- shoot us: http://us.imdb.com/Business?0131658 meanwhile, back in the Gernsback continuum: http://pluto.njcc.com/~paulsam/moonship/Welcome.html ... usual suspects rise to the MP3 Rebellion: http://www.theonion.com/onion3618/kid_rock_starves.html vs http://www.brunching.com/features/feature-metallicaletter.html ... launching our new unsubscription drive: http://www.freakfarm.com/retardedadvice.htm ... "It looks like you're trying to 0wn this box. Would you like help?" - http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/news/0,4586,2570727,00.html ... http://www.conservativecafe.com/ vs http://lordco.virtualave.net/ >> GEEK MEDIA << the less rude http://www.tvgohome.com/ TV>> Steven "Cop Show" Bochco's franchise runs out of towns in the debut double-bill of a more lighthearted version of NYPD Blue, BROOKLYN SOUTH (12.05am, Fri, BBC2) - though wait till you see Tom "Homicide: Life On The Street" Fontana's new "The Beat"... in accordance with prophecy, series 1 of BLAKE'S SEVEN (12.20pm, Sat, BBC1) trails off with the retrieval of camp perspex supercomputer Orac... plus a chance to catch Wes "Rushmore" Anderson's typically quirky first feature BOTTLE ROCKET (2.35am, Sat, C4)... some sort of weird mid-range Jackie Chan season skips from pseudo-Indiana Jones OPERATION CONDOR: THE ARMOUR OF GOD II (1am, Sat, BBC2) to RUMBLE IN THE BRONX (9.55pm, Sun, BBC2)... that "dislike of the unfamiliar" riff is taken perhaps too far in two profiles of autistic kids on consecutive days - TITO'S STORY (10.20pm, Sun, BBC1) plus TRUE STORIES: RAISING ALEXANDER (9pm, Mon, C4)... and, in the two years since it was last shown, we've devised the following "just for fun" audio contest to accompany old-fashioned Emilio Estevez/ Rene Russo/ Anthony Hopkins/ Mick Jagger sci-fi FREEJACK (11.35pm, Mon, BBC1) - sample all the lines about evil arch-villain "McCandless", then mix them in with the loops from http://www.wakeywakey.com/wakey/loops.htm (c'mon Pemberton, it could be just the thing to bring you guys back together)... slightly edgy stalker-comedy ADDICTED TO LOVE (9pm, Mon, C5) is, indeed, loosely based around the Robert Palmer song of the same name (though not, disappointingly, the video)... reader Nick Drage leapt to the defence of Michael Moore's THE AWFUL TRUTH (11.35pm, Tue, C4), proclaiming it "more acidic" and "100% stand up free"... MISSILEERS (9.30pm, Thu, BBC2) looks at the real-life ICBM silo crews like at the start of WarGames... and hopefully opening the floodgates for a host of new shows like "Academic Conferences Uncovered" and "World's Most Rigorous Theoreticians" comes promisingly titled DIY castaway lash-up ROUGH SCIENCE (7.30pm, Fri, BBC2)... FILM>> members of the "Dawson's Creek" cast come up against their most terrifying adversary yet - Death itself (and in the form of minor household accidents!), in ex-X-Files staffers' engagingly daft teen checklist-killer FINAL DESTINATION (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ : unnecessary roughness by a lawman; reckless driving and endangerment, including as justification for nihilistic beliefs; loss of wholesome submission of youth to fair and to righteous authority; there sure seems to be a lot of teenagers dying in movies nowadays) - though, by the end, you (and the film-makers) risk major twist-fatigue... basically the same plot, but aimed at the arthouse end of the market, graces Kirsten Dunst's Air-scored dark comedy THE VIRGIN SUICIDES (http://www.bbfc.co.uk : passed '15' for suicide theme and some moments of horror)... though neither as suicide-inducing as death-free teen romance DOWN TO YOU (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ : piercing of male nipples; self touching while dancing; a wreck after drunk driving was funny; an obviously nude late teen boy-girl pair snuggling in bed together are engaged in an activity not appropriate outside a real monogamous heterosexual marriage) - with marketing largely targetted at fans of Freddie Prinze Jr's previous "She's All That", ignoring his excellent work in the straight-to-video movie version of "Wing Commander"... otherwise it's Matthew "Friends" Perry and Bruce "Vest" Willis - together at last! - in execrable assassination comedy THE WHOLE NINE YARDS (imdb: canada / nude-with-a-gun / nudity / mafia / montreal / niagra-falls / police / suburbia / adultery / vomit / dentist / hitman / funny-accent)... or Brit-made suburban dope-com SAVING GRACE (http://www.bbfc.co.uk : passed '15' for drug use and strong language) which, despite an interesting cast - Ken Campbell, Bill Bailey, Tcheky "Wing Commander" Karyo - looks a little bit "Lottery-funded", if you know what we mean... >> 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 "Valkommen till Umea naturvetar- och teknologkar!" http://www.ntk.umu.se/ 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 Press releases from naive PR people to pr@spesh.com Remember: Your work email may be monitored if sending sensitive material. Sending >500KB attachments is forbidden by the Geneva Convention. Your country may be at risk if you fail to comply.