Need To Know 2001-09-14

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"The software suggests a safe flight path. But the tempting possibility of veering off towards the skyscrapers is obvious." - DAILY MAIL exposes the "extremely helpful to terrorists" MS FLIGHT SIMULATOR http://www.femail.co.uk/pages/standard/article.html?in_article_id=72138 ... weak-willed Mail hacks new chief suspects in ongoing investigation >> HARD NEWS << endless re-views In these terrible times, it's good to watch the tech community put its problems aside, and supply what we were all so desperately short of: plenty of wild unsolicited opinions. After those first few hours of awful shocked silence - what a relief to be interrupted by the CEO of CoffeeCup Software, producers of an innocuous Windows HTML editor, e-mailing his 1.2 million customer base to "call for [the responsible] country's complete destruction and annihilation". And at the end of that fateful day, noted hacker Eric S. Raymond rained his thoughts like fresh water, revealing that those who "disarmed all the non-terrorists on those airplanes ... bear some moral responsibility". Thanks too to BYTE's Jerry Pournelle, who slowly toughened his demands from an early request that /usr/bin/laden be handed over "bound and chained", to Thursday's demand that Nablus, Gaza, Baghdad *and* Damascus be razed to the ground; to the Evening Standard infowar expert who warned that "inflamed young men" could escalate the conflict by releasing "cyber viruses, crashing our computers ... from council houses in Bradford"; and kindly John Keegan in the Telegraph, who wrote that ISPs should ban encryption among their users, and those who refused must be "destroyed with cruise missiles". And on through the lonely nights, as net.folk on chat traded credulous rumours and confused geopolitics, and Nostradamus buffs mulled seriously over a quatrain that, sadly, was probably invented by a skeptic to show how *any* random phrase could end up a doomladen prophecy. But be assured that the crisis is not yet over. Please help: opinions are still desperately needed - and bloggers, columnists and sleep-deprived newsreaders are running short of ideas. So: do you have some minority you'd like to haphazardly blame? Some half-arsed genocidal theory you'd like to insist become global policy? Some simplistic demonisation of a country's recent history that needs to be waved in the faces of everyone you know? Mail it to our hotline on devnull@spesh.com, and we'll pass it on to those who must fill the useless silence which would otherwise be wasted on slow, methodical grief. http://www.coffeecup.com/attack/ - "many e-mails thanking me for removing the word 'annihilation'" http://www.adequacy.org/?op=displaystory;sid=2001/9/12/102423/271 - Why the Bombings Mean That We Must Support My Politics http://www.jerrypournelle.com/war/whattodo.html - "There may be other places." http://www.dailytelegraph.co.uk/dt?pg=/01/9/14/do01.html - also, if their contention ratio goes above twenty, nuke 'em http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/dynamic/news/top_story.html?in_review_id=456910 - no hidden meaning in using Bradford as an example http://www.google.com/search?q=cache:www.ed.brocku.ca/~nmarshal/nostradamus.htm - search for "abstract" Meanwhile what of America's fight against the true enemy within: copyright scofflaws? The newly introduced, Disney-sponsored SECURITY SYSTEMS STANDARDS AND CERTIFICATION ACT has been praised - admittedly by Disney - as "an exceedingly moderate and reasonable approach". Assuming that's not some kind of Swiftian in-joke by their counsel, that's better than it's been received by almost everybody else. The SSSCA's Tomorrowland vision is this: any "machine, device, product, software, or technology... that is designed, marketed or used for the primary purpose of, and that is capable of, storing, retrieving, processing, performing, transmitting, receiving, or copying information in digital form.", has to have copyright protection systems built in. As Ron Rivest (the "R" in RSA encryption) points out, this would include digital watches, bar-code scanners, and digital rectal thermometers. We'd always assumed that the companies that have done so well out of an open PC - like Intel and Microsoft - would put a firm kibosh on initiatives like this. But then we got to the bit about an antitrust exemption, and started comparing the requirements of the government-mandated protection system, and the "Trusted PC" design Microsoft, Intel, IBM and Compaq/HP just happen to have been working on for the last few years. Now, all they need is some sort of national security excuse to push this through... http://cryptome.org/sssca.htm - and in XYWrite too - the infamy! http://www.trustedpc.org/home/home.htm - trust us, we're monopolistic http://research.microsoft.com/crypto/openbox.asp - "Lock it down!" http://uazu.net/cd/ - and then they came for my MP3s And finally, as befits the mood, a reminder that loose lips sink ships: a lesson Suckster JOEY ANUFF of the increasingly AUTOMATIC MEDIA might heed. When somebody posted to the security list BUGTRAQ pointing out that anyone could read the private messages of PLASTIC.COM (AUTOMATIC's last remaining updated site, and the metafilter it's okay to sneer at), Joey was right on the case. There's nothing we can do, he said, because we have no money - "Plastic is currently without either an engineer ... or even access to our servers". Should he run it as a plastic.com story, he wonders - but decides against it. "My fear is that publicizing it without being able to fix it would just heighten abuse", he writes. Thus counselling secrecy, he then unfortunately cc:'s the reply to BugTraq itself. BugTraq, of course, is the most haunt of hundreds if not thousands of zero-day script kiddies. Is it reassuring or upsetting that not one of them seemed that interested in exploiting plastic.com? Or even in owning the box, fixing the problem themselves, and maybe putting up some decent content while they're there? http://groups.google.com/groups?th=793181e4c1a9e087 - I dunno, maybe some more reposts from memepool.com or something >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious RADIO 1 emergency "banned" list includes Geri Halliwell's "It's Raining Men", and (one would hope) Outkast's "Bombs Over Baghdad"... "Take your own bite out of the Big Apple" says Tue's LASTMINUTE newsletter... unfortunate TITLE tag: http://www.wtc.org/ ... yup, those look like more "ideal conditions" to us: http://www.hazecam.net/newark.html ... the clampdown begins: http://www.usembassy.gr/error.htm ... well, it's all very radical until someone actually does it: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A19159-2001Sep12.html - presumably the "5 Million Ways To Kill a CEO" track was a misprint for "Kiss" or something?... epic, "world-changing" event commemorated, as is now traditional, with spoof auction on EBAY: http://www.ntk.net/2001/09/14/dohebay.gif ... NEW ZEALAND stunned: http://www.ntk.net/2001/09/14/dohnz.gif ... you know, it's times like this we kind of regret starting the whole craze for "inappropriate banner ad and/or news story juxtapositions": http://www.ntk.net/2001/09/14/dohwash.gif , http://www.ntk.net/2001/09/14/dohsky.jpg ... meanwhile, in other news - if she comes near Basildon again, she's DEAD: http://www.basildon.net/ ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Stuck in the US with a few days to kill before they introduce martial law? Then why not pop along to the biggest weekend of the year for retro arcade fans, CALIFORNIA EXTREME, which is still going ahead from 11.30am tomorrow (2001-09-15) at the San Jose Convention Center ($15/25 per day, $35 whole weekend, free if you bring your own coin-ops). As well as the usual "Defender" tournament and rooms full of pinball, they're promising a demo of the famed MAME laser projector, which enables you to play Atari classics on the side of your house (as God intended) - and, by increasing the laser wattage, will presumably form the basis of the planned US National Missile Defense shield. http://www.caextreme.com/2001-show/2001show.htm - OK, so "Missile Command" wasn't a vector game. Fair point. http://www.cthulhusex.com/info/party.html - fun event for your spouse while you're setting up on Fri http://www.xenoclast.org/free-sklyarov-uk-announce/2001-August/000003.html - FIPR still looking for tech-skilled volunteers. Send CVs! >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Elwood Downey's XEPHEM is a heavily-featured planetarium program for UNIX designed, writes our correspondent, to "save you countless hours searching the skies for something interesting, letting you more effectively use that time cursing the alignment of your secondary reflecting mirror". But (ZDNet stock review phrase incoming) it is in its tight integration with the amazing "Inter-Net" that this program truly shines. Xephem happily plunders dozens of astronomical online databases for its info: you can grab tailored photographic images for the night sky and map them onto your current area of obsession, or meddle with the scripts to pull in more specialised db's, like Asteroid collections or the Tycho star catalogue. You can download the latest positions of near-sky low-orbit objects - including the ISS, Hubble, Shuttle flights, and, it says on this dialogue box, MIR (although in that case "near-sky" and "low-orbit" must be somewhat euphemistic). Intriguing planets can be examined using archive images distorted to fit the current view of that object, so you can correlate what you see with what God hath wrought. It lets you point the skymap at the part of the sky your SETI@Home client is currently scanning. You can even (presumably by swivelling your telescope around 180 degrees) see views of the Earth, with the projected position of celestial objects mapped onto the surface, or with the latest global weather images. It's free to download (although expect some heavy Imake and Motif library-wrangling), or $70 for a CD with a bunch of databases thrown in. In short: it makes you feel like a proper astronomer, without the obligation to buy a woolly jumper and hip-flask. http://www.clearskyinstitute.com/xephem/ - "scientific-grade"! http://loke.as.arizona.edu/%7Eckulesa/xephem/ - RPMs : there are also fools slaving on MacOS X and OS/2 versions >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista "BIN LADEN agrees to come to New York - if 'fair trial' can be guaranteed": http://www.chaser.com.au/default.asp ... life imitates THE LONE GUNMEN: http://msnbc.com/news/628116.asp ... god-fearin' Philadelphians imitate ASIMOV nuke story: http://dailynews.philly.com/content/daily_news/2001/09/13/local/DEVI13C.htm vs http://homepage.mac.com/jenkins/Asimov/Stories/Story109.html ... http://www.landoverbaptist.org/ redirect their spoof http://www.whitehouse.org/ site to real thing, just in case... "100 titles AMAZON.com customers couldn't live without": http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/subst/lists/best/amazon-bestsellers.html vs current UK no 4: Posh Spice's guide to "Learning to Fly": http://www.amazon.co.uk/exec/obidos/subst/lists/best/amazon-bestsellers.html ... MS denies Flight Simulator is actually *that* realistic: http://www.ananova.com/news/story/sm_397549.html - Pro version is merely "a PC-based flight training and proficiency aid": http://www.microsoft.com/games/fs2000/features.asp ... digging out the *really* bad news: http://www.rotten.com/news/ ... while, in other stories: http://www.bnp.org.uk/tories.html imitates http://www.thebrainstrust.co.uk/article.16.1993.html ... High Priest of the Church of Satan reveals he likes voluptuous women, the original "Planet Of The Apes", "Willy Wonka And The Chocolate Factory", and has no "favourite Beatle": http://www.satanosphere.com/story/2001/9/7/121041/3661 ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> http://www.radiotimes.beeb.com/content/schedule_updates/ makes interesting reading nowadays, with "not the scheduled episodes" of NY-set sitcoms like WILL AND GRACE (9.30pm, Fri, C4) and the complete disappearance this week of SEINFELD (BBC2), SEX AND THE CITY (E4), and THE LATE SHOW WITH DAVID LETTERMAN (ITV2)... we wouldn't hold out much hope for Sylvester Stallone's messianic buried-alive Hudson Tunnel thriller DAYLIGHT (9.15pm, Sat, ITV)... while the "20 seconds to comply" scene might similarly endanger the excellent ROBOCOP (10.15pm, Sat, C5) and superior Jennifer Connelly "The Matrix" inspiration DARK CITY (12.20am, Sat, C5), in which a load of buildings fall over... both were part of C5's "Sci Five" weekend, which reverts to less controversial fare on Sun, with PROJECT ALF (5.20pm, Sun, C5), first-contact mockumentary WHAT IF ET? (8pm, Sun, C5) and a Mark "The Crow" Dacascos straight-to-videoer, DNA (9pm, Sun, C5), that doesn't even have Carrie-Anne Moss in it!... but by then BBC2 have got the useless - and Times Square-featuring? - STRANGE DAYS (10.10pm, Sat, BBC2) out of the way in time for STAR TREK NIGHT (7.30pm, Sun, BBC2), which sees two huge whales being transported forward in time from the 20th century - but that's enough about Kirk and Scotty's weight problems in STAR TREK IV: THE VOYAGE HOME (10.40pm, Sun, BBC2)... C4 pursues its paedophile-pleasing reputation with two different movie versions of LOLITA (1.25am, Sat, C4; 10pm, Sun, C4) - the Kubrick one at 1.25 in the morning... "TOTP 2" meets the Fast Show's "Jazz Club" sketch in THE OLD GREY WHISTLE TEST AT 30 (11.20pm, Mon, BBC2) ... Michael Crichton directs archetypical medical thriller COMA (9pm, Thu, C5) - thankfully not based on one of his terrible novels... assuming they even show it, C5 presumably thought the interminable extended TERMINATOR 2: JUDGMENT DAY (9pm, Tue, C5) shouldn't go with the rest of their Sci-Fi weekend - because, hey, it's already almost "science fact"... speaking of which, HORIZON (9pm, Thu, BBC2) dodges dumbing-down accusations with a new series featuring notably unhackneyed topics such as "The Missing Link", "The Real Atlantis", "Great Big Exploding Supernovas", "Cloning: The Terrifying Truth" and, this week, the ground-breaking "Mystery Of The Persian Mummy"... FILM>> even before all this, we weren't really expecting a nationwide release for Beat Takeshi crazy Japanese schoolkids- killing-each-other actioner BATTLE ROYALE (imdb: adolescent / body-count / castration / crossbow / decapitation / desolate- island / despair / fascism / game / knife-through-the-neck / knife / maniac / murder / perky-announcer / revenge / school- uniform / scythe / teenager / unemployment / young-love)... also commemorating "back to school" week is Rob "Daylight" Cohen's "Point Break" tearaway car-chase remake THE FAST AND THE FURIOUS (http://www.cndb.com/ : Just to repeat that I also saw no [Jordana Brewster] left nipple flash as earlier reported. No nudity in this film! [...] I have no doubt her nudity in "Invisible Circus" is better). Also features the lead doing a "woah, dude" Keanu Reeves impersonation and a terrible wannabe-big-beat BT soundtrack... otherwise there's homegrown comedy incompetence THE MARTINS (imdb: Lee Evans, Ray Winstone, Kathy Burke, the writer of "The Ghostbusters of East Finchley" - together at last!)... or Michael Caine beat- em-up "Die Hard 2: Die Harder"-style unofficial "Shine" sequel SHINER (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/ : contains coarse language and strong bloody violence) - a film which has 2 separate entries in the BBFC database, one 4 minutes shorter than the other... "WHAT THE?" FEEBDACK>> a mixture of shock, bewilderment and rage has come across in a lot of your recent mails to us - so no change there: alluding to NTK 2001-08-03's advocacy of Vim 6, GRIFF PHILLIPS thanked us for the upgrade suggestion "which passed the time splendidly on Monday morning" and confessed "for once there was something in your 'Tracking' section that I understood, which made me feel good about myself". We've always suspected that NTK is primarily read by people who enjoy operating at the very limits of their comprehension - a sentiment we can heartily empathise with, considering some of the stuff you send in... apparently confusing "Need To Know" with some sort of general "Notes and Queries"-style historical research facility, SHAUN MONTGOMERY asked "Does anyone know who lived at 160 Fleet Street, London in 1872 and who or what occupies those premises today?", and seemed genuinely pleased with our reply that it was inhabited by the woollen-drapers Scaife & Willis in 1794, as could easily be established by any idiot with a search engine... reader JOHN KING thought we'd be somehow reassured to know that he "always types in 'horse's arse' whenever someone trumpets a new image search engine: http://images.google.com/images?q=horse%27s+arse - Google wins again!"... while MARC INGRAM intriguingly confused our tips@spesh.com email address with the "Top Tips" page in Viz, handily suggesting "If when walking down the street you are embarrassed by tripping over a large curb stone, then take a few moments to compose yourself before doing it again to show that is wasn't an accident"... A CHEFFIE, to his credit, helped articulate some of our own bafflement at the screenplay section of http://www.anti-gay.com/scene16.htm [NTK 2001-08- 10], a page which the site illuminatingly describes as "Here's a scene that disproves the notion that nothing is wrong with homosexuality"... "What is 'slag off'?", asked ED SENGSTACKEN, explaining, "It isn't in the California lexicon yet". Well Ed, take a wild guess from the context: NTK 2001-03-30... while "I was just wondering who 'they' were in the small print bit - ie 'They stole our revolution'" inquired MAX O'SHEA, entirely reasonably, from a Hotmail account. No further questions, your honour... finally, apologies to everyone whose spam (or "sensitive content") filters were triggered by the proximity of "porn", "hardcore" and "AOL" in NTK 2001-08-31 ("'Porn' found! Mail has not been delivered! Mail has been archived!" barked one particularly eager implementation of Chinese Wall), but our favourite non-deliverable of the year so far remains TOM AUSTIN of New Zealand, who tried to subscribe in the normal way but whose workplace politely declines every issue, revealing [our emphasis]: "Your attempt to contact a staff member via email was unsuccessful *because this person does not have Internet email facilities*". So, if anyone out there knows Tom (or runs into him), could you let him know?... >> 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 "I said NTK *above* puppet show" http://www.rathergood.com/ma/web_files/site_contents/essays/popbitch.htm 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.