Need To Know 2001-07-20

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"This is primarily an investigative unit and I don't think we should get sidetracked into the finer details of technology" - CHIEF SUPERINTENDENT LEN HYNDS, new head of the National Hi-Tech Crime Unit http://www.telegraph.co.uk/connected?pg=/et/01/7/19/ecfcrim19.html ...I won't have to use a computer or anything in this job, will I? >> HARD NEWS << qba'g qrpbqr gurfr "You'll ROT-13 in jail for this!" Some assorted facts that you may not have heard (yet) regarding the arrest by the FBI of DMITRY SKLYAROV, for daring to break Adobe's eBook copy protection. Fact Bar: According to spirits channelled by Mystic Mike Magee at the INQUIRER, one of biggest buyers of Sklyarov employers Elcomsoft's cracking software is, weirdly, the FBI. But that's okay, because the Digital Millennium Copyright Act *does* allow US government agents use of decryption programs like Dmitry's (DMCA 1201(e)), just as it bans any other American from using them (DMCA 1201(a)). Cool. Fact Gjb: lead on the case is director of US Attorney's Office of Northern California, Robert S. Mueller. Fact Guerr: He's President Bush's nomination to be the new head of the FBI. Fact Sbhe: Mueller is meeting the US Attorney General (the modern-day equivalent of Chief Judge Fargo) today at NSI/Verisign, just a few miles from where Dmitry will shortly be incarcerated. There, we fondly imagine, both politicians will cavort naked in piles of Verisign monopoly money and bathe in the blood of innocent reverse-engineers, before scaring up more tax money for a fake "war on cybercrime". Fact Svir: protests are planned, kids. If you're in the general area of the USA or Moscow on Monday, see the EFF's alert page. If not, why not plan your own, or phone Adobe on 020 8 606 4000 to register your thinly-disguised nasal disdain. http://www.boycottadobe.com/pages/rallies.html - it's like the old days http://www.theinquirer.net/19070104.htm - Magee provides sober analysis http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/cpquery/z?cp105:hr796: - URL for the DMCA surprisingly not ROT-13ed at all "Winning at all costs is not the most important thing. I think you need to win in the context of the society of which you are a part." - John Warnock, founder, Adobe. http://www.bsa.org/usa/policy/events_awards/warnock_c.phtml - ahaha! off the *BSA* site! ahahah! extra irony points! We're in the spam-relay blacklist ORBS! And look - so's everyone else! The message for those still checking orbs.org on the off-chance it'll magically reappear: "Quit living in the past, man. Uninstall that copy of Napster and get on with your lives". And under a hail of new DNS traffic, one of the orbs.org nameserver operators provided additional encouragement by configuring his server to always return a positive result - thus bouncing mails at random while postmasters remained oblivious. This wasn't completely out of the blue: Ron Guilmette did post a warning to NANAE... where it was promptly buried in the usual storm of HipCrime's ascii aphasia, hidden to all but those with the most fascistic filtering. In other RBL^W DNSBL news (not to be confused with RBL[sm], natch) MAPS[sm] announced its new pricing structure, prompting many a sysadmin to ask: wouldn't it be cheaper just to pay a large man to visit Michigan with a very large hammer? http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=tks98qske8acbd%40corp.supernews.com - by the time you read this, your mailspool will be dead http://www.mail-abuse.org/feestructure.html - make $$$, etc http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=3B50CE49.1645AE6A%40osirusoft.com - TLA (TM) PERSONAL MESSAGES: PHILIP BUXTON of NETIMPERATIVE. No, you were absolutely right to correct our figure of 9 grand a year total subscriber income for NETIMPERATIVE. Your company, of course, receives 9 grand every *six months*, a very different matter. And we really don't mind that the first e-mail you sent was titled "FW: YOU ARSE". Please stop apologising. MICHAEL "COLIN FROM EASTENDERS" CASHMAN, MEP: The Register says that you killed the EU anti-spam bill because "Email is the easiest form of communication from which to opt out. Recipients need only press reply and type 'unsubscribe'." Does this mean we can subscribe joek@michael-cashman-mep.new.labour.org.uk to all the "opt-out" mailing lists we can find now? Ta! And, on a closely -related topic, ANONYMOUS: No, of course we can't say that http://storm.prohosting.com/~dmachaps/dmaindex.html now contains the complete DIRECT MARKETING ASSOCIATION email membership list. We still have *no* idea why anyone would want a complete list of these junk-mailers' e-mail addresses. Other than to offer them further fantastic marketing opportunites - and they can always "unsubscribe" if those get too annoying, so no harm done, eh Michael? >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious Congressman GARY CONDIT seeks fresh interns, provides handy link to "National Center for Missing and Exploited Children": http://www.house.gov/gcondit/intern_opportunities.htm ... departing FUTURENET employees spell out "Arse Biscuits" in news links: http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/20/dohfewtch.gif (the rudest word they know?)... life also imitates headlines for POPCORN staff: http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/20/dohpop.jpg ... PRAVDA blows the whistle on mind-reading laser satellites: http://english.pravda.ru/main/2001/07/11/9825.html ... fierce London property market encourages "out of the box" solutions: http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/20/dohloot.gif ... "Should we consider revising the archaeology curriculum?" ponders http://www.archaeology.org/ in TOMB RAIDER review... ARNIE's "renegade vision" achieves long-overdue arthouse recognition: http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/tg/feature/-/96105/ ... http://test.drkeyboard.com/ubb/Forum2/HTML/000165.html vs http://www.datadocktorn.nu/kortbyte.php ... another broken BT status page: http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/20/dohstatus.gif ... http://www.scifi.com/scifiwire/art-main.html?2001-07/17/13.00.tv imitates Onion's "Star Trek Introduces Alien Character With Totally Different Forehead Wrinkles"... truth in search engines #3: http://search.yahoo.com/bin/search?p=scout+master ... "Other hits" presumably include "War Pigs" and "Paranoid": http://www.ntk.net/2001/07/20/dohsister.gif ... ROMERO leaves ION STORM, his mission complete... 100 DoS threads? that CODE RED VIRUS has launched about a thousand in my bloody inbox... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Typically, we don't approve of any kind of user registration - which is presumably why we never make it to groovy events like YET ANOTHER PERL CONFERENCE::EUROPE (from Thu 2001-08-02, Amsterdam, some tickets still available, 99 Euros each), or the 51ST MEETING OF THE INTERNET ENGINEERING TASK FORCE (from Sun 2001-08-05, Hilton Metropole, London W2, USD$450.00 before next Fri 2001-07-27 - handily the same date as International Sysadmin Day). Also next Fri, those painfully mysterious "Twentythree" dudes - who we still don't think are anything to do with the real KLF - imagine initiates can be bothered to send their postal addresses to scribe@twentythree.co.uk with the words "23 Live Event" in the subject line to receive tickets to a "multi-media hybrid of cutting-edge visual art and electronica". But the good news is you can "just drop by" at subterranean LAN party CAMDEMNATION 2001 (from noon Sat 2001-07-21, Stables Market Catacombs, Camden, London) - which, considering recent events and their contest to "Win a BB Version of Your Favourite Counterstrike Weapon", might even culminate in genuine shoot-outs with trained police marksmen. http://sparcy.atariuniverse.com/~bredroll/ds/ - we're joking of course. That would be awful. http://www.sysadminday.com/ - gives irritatingly precise list of eligible professions http://www.ietf.org/meetings/IETF-51.html - does the social event include "RFC Bingo"? http://www.yapc.org/Europe/ - OK, so HAL is nowhere near here (though how big is Holland anyway?) http://www.spesh.com/ben/super2001page.html - back by popular demand: Ben Moor's super string show >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering MINDTERM, the Java ssh client you can stick somewhere for when you need ssh in a cybercafe, reached 2.0 last month. It's taken us this long to work out why: the code's changed a lot, and there's plenty of bug fixes and rewriting, but nowhere does this version wave a fistful of extra features at us and dare us not to update our old "This applet is 576 days old" version. For the record: it's ssh2; there's a ftp->sftp proxy that's a bit useful; you can run it as a standalone application; it doesn't say "This applet is 576 days old" anymore; there's a global password keyring; there's a funny "babblebabble" translation of the host fingerprint. But mainly, it's 2.0 because Mindterm was bought up by a new company, and I think they wanted something impressive on the press release. Oh, and it's no longer GPLed. Time for a fork. http://www.isnetworks.net/ssh/ - and as if by magic, a forked GPL version appears http://www.appgate.com/products/mindterm/ - Mindterm Public Source License, wahay http://www.appgate.com/products/mindterm/demo/ - still a very cool applet demo, though >> MEMEPOOL << oogle la google BLOGS, without all that tedious "personal commentary" stuff http://blogdex.media.mit.edu (which includes ourselves, of course)... another EBAY business model escapes into the wild: http://www.monkeyphonecall.com/ ...NAPSTER song topical again: http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=96cb0p$rc7$1%40news.creativelabs.com ... at last, a TVGH ripoff that might run the lame ones *you* send in: http://www.geocities.com/theexpressway/tvgth.html ... obviously the subtext of all "choose your own adventure" experiences: http://www.jerking.com/ ... LEGO PALM casing: http://www.beanos.com/~tsoutij/legopalm.php vs DIY HELLO KITTY laptop: http://spdcc.com/~fj/phkl/ ... CHRISTIANS devise complex rationale for dealing with poor deluded cult-members: http://www.theway.co.uk/cults/part1/botherwithcults_page1.htm ... time to roll out the "Tolkien Ring Network" gags already: http://www.zdnet.com/zdnn/stories/newsbursts/0,7407,2787361,00.html ... maybe not enough broken GIFs to pass for the real thing: http://www.new-tube.co.uk ... generic "MR T" construction kit: http://members.aol.com/Sucka000/T1.html - and its nightmarish consequences: http://www.autofish.net/clysm/mrtvs/v/ ... reasonably well-adjusted, by the standards of BIG BROTHER viewers: http://www.geocities.com/paullovesjo/ ... we're really hoping this was some sort of misguided foot and mouth spoof: http://web.ukonline.co.uk/gypsy-ham/welcome.htm - and if it wasn't, then what the hell...? >> GEEK MEDIA << the less rude www.tvgohome.com TV>> after battling Homo Superior in the sci-fi series "Prey", Debra Messing takes on a homo flatmate in James "Cheers" Burrows' gay sitcom WILL AND GRACE (9pm, Fri, C4)... Mimi "X Files" Rogers squints through the dry ice and searchlights of 1980s Ridley Scott romance SOMEONE TO WATCH OVER ME (9pm, Fri, C5)... and it's a 3-way pile up later between Luc Besson car- crash carnage TAXI (12.35am, Fri, C4), Terminator knock-off ASSASSIN (1.25am, Fri, C5), and Chesney Hawkes' "One and Only" starring film role BUDDY'S SONG (1.25am, Fri, BBC1)... all together now: "It's a UNIX system! I know this!" - though why are there progress bars at the bottom of the surveillance footage in CGI kiddy-ride JURASSIC PARK (8.15pm, Sat, BBC1)? ... other web user portrayals this week include the astral- projecting designer in I BELIEVE I CAN FLY (7.55pm, Tue, C4), ebay-baby-buyers MEET THE KILSHAWS (9pm, Wed, C4) and the will-they-won't-they-show-it BRASS EYE vapourware special (10.35pm, Thu, C4) - "If you think kiddie porn is funny, you should have a good laugh" advises Richard Blackwood, comedian: http://media.guardian.co.uk/broadcast/story/0,7493,524045,00.html ... Channel 5's straight-to-video season continues with late '90s botched heister TRUTH OR CONSEQUENCES, NM (10pm, Sat, C5), Jon Lovitz "Dangerous Minds" parody HIGH SCHOOL HIGH (9pm, Sun, C5), and Chris Farley's dumb-but-funny BEVERLY HILLS NINJA (8pm, Wed, C5)... BBC1 desperately tries to keep up with future-prison tosh NEW EDEN (12.35am, Sat, BBC1), plus a double bill of genre-defining Arnie death-quip actioner COMMANDO (9.10pm, Tue, BBC1) and Dave "Kids In The Hall" Foley "The Fugitive" spoof THE WRONG GUY (11.40pm, Tue, BBC1)... SPACE (8.30pm, Sun, BBC1), BEAGLE 2 - A MISSION TO MARS (11.20pm), and ANCIENT APOCALYPSE (9pm, Thu, BBC2) set an exciting precedent for remaking all genres of documentary programmes with loads of computer graphics in, including the WW2 and serial killer ones... while C4 appears to eschew the more conventional "Bluff" spelling in favour of something with a hint of nudity in Gail Porter sightless gameshow CELEBRITY BLIND MAN'S BUFF (9pm, Thu, C4)... FILM>> arguably the best "Jurassic Park" movie so far - for what that's worth - as the usual indie actors run around Tron- style soundstages and CGI backgrounds in JURASSIC PARK III (http://www.screenit.com/movies/2001/jurassic_park_III.html : we briefly see part of [Tea Leoni] in her bra - and a full view of her back)... the TV ad has, for weeks, featured a bloke remarking the cinema was "full of women" which, since it's only just been released, was presumably a pre-selected test audience for Brit crime caper HIGH HEELS AND LOWLIFES (imdb: Mary "Murder One, Deep Impact" McCormack, Kevin "Simon Quinlank" Eldon, Minnie Driver, plus the writer of "Spice World" and "LA7" - together at last!)... based on the chick- novel "Animal Husbandry", it was renamed "Someone Like You" for the US, but this "Bridget Jones" rom-com is now called ANIMAL ATTRACTION again (http://www.cndb.com/ : Ashley [Judd] is clearly naked for her love scene with Greg Kinnear but she generally hugs him close to her not allowing for much breast exposure [...] the side of her breasts come briefly into view but it's very quick and there probably isn't even any nipple. Later, she does a cheerleading routine for Hugh Jackman in just a tight tank top and very skimpy panties) - great news for anyone who wants to see Hugh "X Men" Jackman in just a tight tank top and very skimpy panties... DO NOT IRON DECORATION>> OK, so we rarely meet our optimistic "new T-shirt design every month" quota - but we've spent the intervening period redesigning our e-commerce site, giving it a new name that no-one's quite sure about, and (apparently) making it less compatible with Opera. Oh, and there's some new t-shirts over at http://www.geekstyle.co.uk/ as well, most notably a tribute to retro Spectrum classic 3D ANT ATTACK, designed by MODESTY B CATT (of http://www.phink.net/elite/ fame) and approved by "Ant Attack" author Sandy White (UKP2 from each sale goes to a charity of his choosing). This month also marks the launch of our "Premium Classics" range: shirts which cost UKP12.50 (instead of UKP10) because they have more than one ink colour, or a back print, or slightly thicker cotton (or all three): designs here include the notorious ADMINSPOTTING (from http://www.adminspotting.org/ ), a couple of apparently unofficial "They Live" tie-ins - "STAY ASLEEP" and "OBEY" - which http://www.toxico.co.uk don't seem to sell direct any more, and the original MEMES DON'T EXIST - TELL YOUR FRIENDS... but no, we haven't "sold out", we are still enthusiastically accepting designs from talented NTK readers (especially if they happen to be in touch with the author of a well-known retro video game) - despite, or perhaps because of, their increasing trends towards the upsetting and bizarre. JOSH ROULSTON continued the musical parody theme with his http://paradroid.com/junk/ntk-nin-shirt.gif logo, which we thought might look good on a hat (how about "ATDT", but in the style of the band "AC/DC"?), HENRY BLOOMFIELD plumped for http://www.bloomfieldpottery.com/bloomfield/ntk/ntk.gif , and TARAS YOUNG astonished us all with this elaborate Absolute/ XHTML parody http://www.snowblind.net/taras/ntk3.jpg which, even now, we're not sure if we fully understand... of course, you don't have to use NTK as part of the design, as shown by CHRIS BARNES' subtle "Unicode" translation of the word "FUCK" http://ntk.doonkay.net/ , the eternal truths of VICKY CLARKE's poignant http://www.tartarus.org/~vicky/stuff/lart.png , the unarguably direct http://www.gotmatches.com/tshirt.html from MICHAEL HALMINEN, and the startlingly Scandinavian portfolio http://www.artistic.no/plan1/portfolio/tshirt.html submitted by MORTEN TORNES. "PETE's" http://www.nepalesetemple.com/ntk/ sadly fell victim to recent cabinet reshuffles, though IAN "ELITE" BELL maintains "A plain tombstone marked: Privacy RIP seems more powerful to me. One could bastardise the classic Meatloaf 'Bat out of Hell' album cover putting Privacy RIP on the tombstone and Steganography (or similar countermeasure) as the motorbike logo". We have so far failed to come up with an artist's impression that satisfactorily reflects this brief, so if anyone out there reckons they're up to it... typically, we've been too slack to implement any proper online voting (somehow http://www.iamcal.com/ami/ isn't quite what we're looking for), so mail NTK if you absolutely *must* have one of the above designs for your wardrobe - or indeed, if you'd like one of our current designs, but in a different size or colour configuration. We're currently considering doing some special requests for the upcoming reprint run of "I Got UKP80 Million For My Dot-Com Idea" (possibly even including "Skinni Fit" for women), as suggested by MATT RUTHERFORD ("XL? Give me a break - no self respecting geek can get into an XL. How about XX or even XXXL for the king geeks out there?") and CLIVE JONES (orange is, apparently, *so* "not [his] colour")... >> 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 "intrigued and bemused" http://www.opendemocracy.net/forum/document_details.asp?CatID=87&DocID=490 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.geekstyle.co.uk/ (K) 2001 Special Projects. Copying is fine, but include URL: http://www.ntk.net/ Tips, news and gossip to tips@spesh.com All communication is for publication, unless you beg. 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.