Need To Know 2002-03-22

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"I have nothing but Bill's assurances so far..." www.anchordesk.co.uk/anchordesk/commentary/columns/0,2415,7111963,00.html - about how trustworthy he's going to be *in the future*. Anyone else spot the logical flaw here? >> HARD NEWS << while (true); do So, you're a small company: you've got a private dial-in for the office network and it's ex-directory (natch). With war-dialling a little trickier in the UK than the States, it should be pretty well hidden from crackers, right? Not if one of your employees switches his tariff to BT Together, it isn't. It appears that BT's so paranoid about subscribers using its unlimited call service for Net connections, that it's been automatically flagging any line that gets a lot of incoming BT Together data calls as an "ISP". Result: your employee gets a huge phone bill (ISPs are excluded from the flat-rate deal). And you get your private dial-in number listed on the public "ISP exclusion" Webpage. Together, we note, with around 5000 other juicy data lines, just ready for a cracker to step dandily through. Thanks BT! Putting people first: right after "profits", about five pages before "privacy", and a whole private phone directory or two ahead of "security". http://www.bt.com/together/isp_exclusion.jsp - they'll blame the messenger, we can tell No need to worry about the London Underground getting hacked [see last week's NTK] if their smartcard tickets are as security conscious as the official THETUBE.COM site, where "no" responses to their "Do you want a Public Private Partnership?" poll have inexplicably continued to "soar" all week. Disregarding the possibility that the public might actually agree with area mayor Ken Livingstone on this controversial matter, TheTube.Com seems more inspired by the Robert Mugabe school of democracy and has already declared one set of results "flawed", resetting them to earlier values "to restore the integrity" of the poll. "It seems some people will do anything to win - fair or foul", the site complains, presumably not referring to its own scrupulously impartial voting options: "YES: London Underground says: no more delay - let's get on with fixing the Tube" or "NO: Transport Commissioner Bob Kiley says that he wants to go back to court to block PPP". "This is a subject that needs proper debate, not vote-rigging by lobbyists", they conclude - so we do hope it hasn't occurred to any of those lobbyists to circulate the voting URL with arguments like, say, "quickpoll.asp?vt=no". http://www.thetube.com/default.asp?qp=tq - also, ConfigPPP won't work unless you set up MacTCP first It's reassuring to see a publicly-funded body like the BBC not being swayed by last week's X-Box launch hype - well, it would be, if they didn't seem to be completely obsessed with Metal Gear Solid 2 on the PS2 instead. "Games designer pushes boundaries" they revealed on March 4, swiftly followed by "Movie soundtracks come to gaming" (March 5), "Blockbuster game set to break records", (March 8), and indeed "Solid sales for Metal Gear" (March 11). And that's despite the somewhat disappointing comments of "Metal Gear 2 lacks solidity" (March 8) and "Metal Gear Solid 2: Your views" (also March 8). The stealthy PR infiltration goes deeper than you'd think: apparently they've been looking forward to the release ever since the "Zone Of The Enders" demo moved their reviewer "to tears" around this time last year... http://newssearch.bbc.co.uk/cgi-bin/results.pl?scope=news&q=gear+solid - What's that noise? Who's there? Review code? AAAAAAARGH! >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious VODAFONE "delighted" to be opening store in "(Town/Region)": www.vodafone.co.uk/vodafone.co.uk/pressreleases/20010925/020New%20Store.pdf ... YAHOO admits politicians are largely grey-haired, "batty": http://www.ntk.net/2002/03/22/dohbat.jpg ... secret life of JEEVES revealed: http://www.ntk.net/2002/03/22/dohporn.gif , http://www.ask.co.uk/main/askjeeves.asp?ask=thermal%20cracking%20propane ... http://www.google.com/search?q=+%22do+not+disclose+this+URL%22 ... XML, Linux, the Macintosh dismissed as "recent fads": http://it.mycareer.com.au/opinion/webmechanic/2002/03/19/FFXX4Y8VSYC.html ... former E-commerce minister "temporarily offline" since April 2001: http://www.patricia-hewitt-mp.co.uk/ ... kind of explains why those coding salaries were down to UKP1 a year: http://www.goldjobs.com/search/search_position.asp?v=4007 ... THE REGISTER warns of "worrying" password-guessing attack: http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/24447.html (could it affect ssh as well?)... "Add to Wedding Registry", plan ahead: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1892148005/ ... BOL discovers the one question "only you can answer" - "What is your name?": http://www.ntk.net/2002/03/22/dohbol.gif ... after http://www.ntk.net/2002/03/15/dohtony.gif , MUGABE strikes again: http://www.ntk.net/2002/03/22/dohmug.gif ... >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Easter is a time for families, and the FAQ for Multiplay's I10 LAN PARTY (from 9am, Fri 2002-03-29, Newbury racecourse, UKP70 per participating PC) certainly paints an idyllic picture of an event attended by "girls and women", "whole families" and "lots of father/son combinations". They're hoping this broad appeal may make them the UK's "first ever" 1000-player event - that and <1ms ping-times for Counterstrike, Q3 Arena, Star Trek Voyager: Elite Force, Unreal Tournament, Return To Castle Wolfenstein and many other popular family pastimes. After all, the Christian feast of the resurrection co-opts older pagan traditions of renewal and rebirth, and what better way to celebrate that than with a frenzy of deathmatch respawning? http://www.multiplay.co.uk/events.asp?id=7 - AUP forbids warez, porn, kettles http://www.fipr.org/stallman.html - don't forget: Stallman FIPR fundraiser on Monday http://www.onlinecontentuk.org/Mar02event.html - creating travel content on Wed (behind "blue door") http://www.theinquirer.net/17030202.htm - anyone coming to the pub? >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering THE PERL REVIEW is certainly *not* the open source replacement for the excellent Perl Journal, currently embedded as a trophy supplement in SysAdmin magazine. Oh no. But what it currently *is* is the St. Andrews of PERL GOLF. Perl Golf is the ancient recreation of Perl Monks and Fun-With-Perl subscribers, whereby competitors seek to whittle down an executable solution to a challenge to the minimum number of (key)strokes. It's not quite obfuscation, and it's not quite RSA-in-1-line-of-perl, but it is fun. The next round of official Perl Golf at The Perl Review course starts on April 1st, but with their handy utilities, you can play your own round whenever you want. PGAS is an XMLRPC-driven Perl Golf Administration System, and Games::Golf is the Perl golf test suite: with both, even the humblest Perl Monastery can devise and manage a few rounds. Add in the cultural traditions and rules that the Review did finally settle upon (like 'BoB', the pacesetting imaginary ubergolfer, who is played by the Judges using the best ideas from all current contributions), and you've got the most fun you can have while still giving Bertrand Meyer a coronary. Fore! http://perlgolf.sourceforge.net/ - Conway gets a -20 handicap http://archive.develooper.com/fwp@perl.org/msg01949.html - tradition! http://perlmonks.thepen.com/82470.html - tips for course designers >> MEMEPOOL << ceci n'est pas une http://www.gagpipe.com/ http://cdprot.cjb.net/ - beats colouring in the edge with a magic marker ... CORPORATE ANTHEMS goes corporate: http://www.zdnet.co.uk/specials/2002/it-anthems/ ... yEnc considered harmful: http://www.exit109.com/~jeremy/news/yenc.html ... what's cleverer? sneaking Buffy show titles into headlines? http://www.bathcityfc.com/news.htm or sneaking in Buffy *slash* titles? http://www.yorkshirewater.co.uk/news/nr086_02.htm ... DARPA, ARPA, DARPA, ARPA - let's call the whole thing off: http://www.darpa.mil/body/arpa_darpa.html ... in a way it's encouraging them: http://www.spamradio.com/ ... at last: PANTY CAT for Windows http://www.geocities.com/m0f73/maci.htm ... we pause for a a somehow terrifyingly generic Webpage: http://bongr.tripod.com/welcometobonnspersonalwebsite/ ... but no human being would ever photoshop a fake like that!: http://crazy.codetroop.com/randimg/?stone.jpg ... token Flash fodder: http://www.esu.lt/andrius/10/go.htm ... http://elfwood.lysator.liu.se/zone/k/o/kortkramer/commright.jpg.html - where maplin catalogue covers go to die ... and finally: it's THE CHRISTIAN FOLK ART IRONIC-OR-NOT FACE OFF! http://homokaasu.org/diy-pope/ vs http://members.aol.com/JesusImages/ vs http://store.yahoo.com/jsbstash/budchrisdass1.html ... >> GEEK MEDIA << get out less TV>> SOCIETY (1.15am, Fri, BBC2) is like "They Live" directed by the young Peter Jackson - and not in a good way... the KLF explain some of the finer points of "The Manual" to Vic Reeves and Iron Maiden in HOW TO HAVE A NUMBER ONE (10pm, Sat, C4)... and it's a hacker movie weekend spectacular, with gimmicky John Badham parachute heist DROP ZONE (11.20pm, Sat, BBC1), black-and-white bafflefest PI (11.40pm, Sat, C4) and, er, Sandra Bullock discovering a Photoshop-plugin virus in THE NET (10pm, Sun, C4)... you know, you can get very drunk if you combine all the drinking games for TITANIC (5.55pm, Sun, BBC1) http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=%22titanic+drinking+game%22 ... the CIA get hold of Freud's theories in THE CENTURY OF THE SELF (8pm, Sun, BBC2) ...and PANORAMA (10.15pm, Sun, BBC1) blames the US government for not heeding the terrorist warnings contained in action movies like "Die Hard" and "The Siege", and presumably demands to know what they're going to do about the imminent threat depicted in "Planet Of The Apes" ... there are new series for two underperforming US imports, THE WEST WING (9pm, Sun, C4) and MALCOLM IN THE MIDDLE (8.35pm, Mon, BBC2)... C4 seem to be betting on another Oscar for Marisa Tomei with her Best Supporting Actress-winning MY COUSIN VINNY (10pm, Mon, C4), followed by the mysteriously un- nominated sci-fi ENEMY MINE (12.10am, Mon, C4) plus Terminator knock-off APEX (2.10am, Mon, C4)... and "Theroux himself becomes the subject of press attention" in WHEN LOUIS MET MAX CLIFFORD (9pm, Tue, BBC2)... ITV names and shames unwitting celebrity lookalikes in STARS AND THEIR DOUBLES (8.30pm, Wed, ITV)... what is presumably another of those ITN "behind the news" documentaries ALI G: BEFORE HE WAS MASSIV (9.35pm, Wed, C5) provides an unsettling contrast with harrowing Jodie Foster rape trial THE ACCUSED (10.05pm, Wed, C5)... and still "mad as hell, and not going to take it any more", THE MARK THOMAS PRODUCT (11pm, Wed, C4) segues eventually into partial Max Headroom-inspiration movie NETWORK (1.05am, Wed, C4)... FILM>> going from the double pistol grip and distinctive folding stock, reader Cam Winstanley reckons it's either the FAMAE SAF submachine gun, or possibly the Beretta Model 12S - but definitely not the Heckler and Koch MP5 that "many lightweights may think" - being brandished by the star on the poster for mildly predictable gangsta-politics TV spinoff ALI G IN DA HOUSE (imdb keywords: blackmail/ homosexuality/ independent-film/ kidnapping/ kiss/ mild-violence/ murder/ profanity/ slapstick).. the juvenile cartoony half-term hilarity continues with CGI slippery-ice-world-level ICE AGE ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/iceage.htm : promotion of the theory of evolution; fecal matter being flipped in someone's face)... but looks like there was a bit less render- time for kid-inventor alien-abductee JIMMY NEUTRON: BOY GENIUS ( http://www.capalert.com/capreports/jimmyneutron.htm : making human sacrifices to appease false "deity"; defecation by an "animal"; flame retardant [foam] from the anus of a robot dog; peeing in the shower, twice)... while life - in the form of http://media.guardian.co.uk/bbc/story/0,7521,638266,00.html - imitates German social psychology dramatisation DAS EXPERIMENT ( http://www.cndb.com/movie.html?title=Experiment%2C+Das+%282001%29 : [Maren Eggert's] perfect breasts are visible for a second; Andrea [Sawatzki] plays a scientist who wants to end the experiment. Two guys who play the guards arrest her and she strips to her black lingerie. She is told to remove her bra and panties)... >> 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 "whiskey-weird" http://zgp.org/linux-elitists/20000222164552.A4441@humulus.zgp.org.html 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) 2002 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. 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