Need To Know 2000-05-05

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"Despite the worm attacking Microsoft's Outlook, the software had no comment after several telephone calls." http://www.zdnet.co.uk/news/2000/17/ns-15172.html - ZDNET's RICHARD BARRY gets desperate for a lead ...but it said that it *loved* me! >> HARD NEWS << we love you too And who do we love? We love the journalists who, despite having the source of the ILOVEYOU virus repeatedly delivered to them as an attachment, said that it "could steal your bank details" (Channel 5) and that it affected Macintoshes (BBC News Online), but not users of the "Lycos operating system" (The Times). We loved NETWORK ASSOCIATES boast that they "believed [it] to have originated in Manila" and "We have the name of who we think it is, but we're not saying" (amazing detective work, given that the handle and location of the author is in the first line of the script). We loved that one of the first propagators in the UK was McAfee's PR company. We loved watching MoneyFacts send it to their entire mailing list, then apologise using a cc: list of their subscribers. We loved it when mail gateways led to it being sent by fax and SMS. And we loved it when Microsoft pretended that it had nothing to do with their lousy security provision in Outlook and Windows Scripting . But most of all, we love Mutt and Elm and even, sometimes, when we are generous, we love Pine. http://www.thepope.org/index.pl?node_id=140 - until the next buffer-overflow exploit comes along, that is http://www.wired.com/news/technology/0,1282,36139,00.html - "Spyder"? Could it be... Time Out's old Net correspondent? Oh, and we also love Nick Palmer MP, who claimed on Channel Four news that plans were already far advanced for a law that would stop ILOVEYOU ever happening again. Yes, it's that darn RIP bill, still struggling to find supporters in the real world. Fun stuff crawling out of the woodwork this week: the Sunday Times re-reported the news that, yes, law enforcement were planning on sticking physical taps into individual ISPs. On the North American Network Operators Group list, the security admins of major ISPs continued the slack-jawed amazement at the UK government's plans. "This seems to be a good way to put all of the UK owned ASP/ISP/NSPs out of business. Then again, that may be what the government wants", commented one dangerous subversive. "Perhaps steganography tools will become more popular in the UK", predicted another. "Hopefully everywhere!", added a final net guy, "More bandwidth to sell!". You see? There's always a silver lining. http://www.sunday-times.co.uk/news/pages/sti/2000/04/30/stinwenws01034.html - all wires lead to GTAC http://www.publications.parliament.uk/pa/cm199900/cmbills/106/amend/00504a01.htm - those amendments in full. and no, they don't fix it http://www.ntk.net/2000/05/05/dohusgov.jpg - of course in the States, they encrypt *everything* Paul Farrington, co-founder of the CEX, the Computer Exchange in Tottenham Court Road, disappeared while exploring an underwater wreck off the coast of Cornwall last Tuesday. Anyone who has spent any time at CEX (and especially those who spent the bulk of their teenage years hanging out there) might have guessed that its inspiration came from more than the usual flogging of dodgy second-hand kit. The compulsory smoking rules, the bizarrely knowledgeable staff, the eclectic (and tympanum-crunchingly loud) musical choices: Judging from the messages of shock and love we've heard, Paul was a great and unique part of the CEX ambience. "He was a surrogate father to a generation of geeks", said one correspondent. Charlie Brooker writes: One of my enduring memories of Paul is the day I first met him; I'd turned up for my first day at work in the computer department of Music and Video Exchange in Notting Hill, and walked in to find nobody there. I sat behind the counter for about half an hour, not really knowing what to do, and was about to leave when a tall, gangly man wearing pink tights and a fucking *fez* stalked in, looked confused for a while, and then asked me who I was and what I was doing there. I really wasn't sure whether to run away or not. I'm glad I didn't. Once you got used to the fact he dressed like a maniac (and I particularly remember an incredible haircut he once had which made him look like a cross between Coolio and an exploding picnic basket), he became an incredibly likeable, inventive, anarchic, and weirdly trustworthy companion. I always looked up to him, even when he convinced me to shave all my hair off apart from one off-centre tuft, and I spent an entire month watching strangers cross the street when they saw me coming. Probably the simplest thing I could say about him is this: that he was easily the coolest person I've ever met, and my head refuses to believe he's gone. http://www2.cex.co.uk/gaming/cex_feature.asp?ct=1&id=1789 - not fair >> ANTI-NEWS << berating the obvious THE TIMES repeats decade-old rumour that Sony Playstation can run Nintendo cartridges... METALLICA reveal "any part of a computer can be used for good or bad" (except for 3D accelerator cards, which are chaotic neutral)... New Vice-Chancellor at Reading is BRIAN ALDISS: Kevin Warwick to be replaced with more introspective, less robot-based fiction ... http://www.freeforlife.co.uk/ not quite for life, free: FALCO! ... MIRANDA SAWYER more exclusive than we thought: http://www.ntk.net/2000/05/05/dohbol.jpg ... CONNECTED - FALCO! ... E-BAY snags bargain Apache server: http://www.ntk.net/2000/05/05/ebaydoh.jpg ... GUARDIAN ONLINE inquires: "will Pokemon catch on?" ... NETSCAPE Instant Messenger lets you talk to monkeys just like you: http://www.hot-schmitt.co.uk/doh/chimpchat.jpg ... the self-aware IRIDIUM network senses a problem: http://tbtf.com/blog/doh/doh-iridium.gif ... SUN's people try to get the hang of Linux, their own StarOffice software: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/cm/browse-communities/-/210337/ >> EVENT QUEUE << goto's considered non-harmful Hopefully the last time-limited imminent apocalypse for a while, the CATASTROPHIC PLANETARY ALIGNMENT happening "on or around" May 5, 2000 promises the usual earthquakes, floods, climate change, tidal waves and, of course, demoralised survivalists desperately trying to flog their left-over Y2K stockpiles. Hey, even tinned foods have a longer "best before" date than most prognostications of doom nowadays. http://www.survivalcenter.com/echange.html - come back in a week for the real bargains http://www.scala-london.co.uk/future/future_events.html - oh, and Sigue Sigue Sputnik stalk the earth once more >> TRACKING << sufficiently advanced technology : the gathering Metallica fans will be pleased by Scour's shamelessly bandwagonning app, SCOUR EXCHANGE - a feature-for-feature clone of Napster, only without all that tedious RIAA-led stalking. Other minor positive deltas to Napster include an open protocol, a basic Perl version for unixen, and the capability to share images and movies. To be honest, it's got that Excite/Lycossy feel of being just-lower-than-the-bee's-knees. But we know it'd be popular amongst our student readers, if only because it uses an unbanned port. For now, anyway. http://www.scour.com/Software/Scour_Exchange/ - hi, Lars! http://sixpak.cs.ucla.edu/psx/ - grumble grumble needs ioctrl.ph grumble >> MEMEPOOL << hasta la altavista NATHAN MYHRVOLD leaves Microsoft, in accordance with prophecy: http://www.ntk.net/index.cgi?b=a99/now0604.txt&l=15#l ... http://www.handanova.com/ vs http://www.lostminute.com/ ... ... "will Jeeves suck my cock" (you know, we're beginning to think Jeeves *is* gay - or at least very canny at getting these extra hits) ... SCOUR EXCHANGE is to Napster what www.raging.com is to GOOGLE ... "shoepath" ... apres http:///www.hungersite.com/ comes http://www.therainforestsite.com/ ... The First $20 Million: the movie... Simulate the Iridium burn-ups! http://timeline.aps.org/multimedia/satellites.html ... prospective purchasers of boo.com give up after spending 45 minutes trying to find "buy" button... cracking sites with style: http://dataloss.net/papers/how.defaced.apache.org.txt bacteriophage-dance! http://www.phage.org/beg_phage_images.htm ... >> GEEK MEDIA << the less rude http://www.tvgohome.com/ TV>> "Stubborn Mayor Ignores Warnings, Refuses To Cancel Festivities" should be the Onion headline for Peter "End Of Days" Hyams' daft but entertaining DNA-monster thrash THE RELIC (9.30pm, Fri, BBC1)... Bill "Ghostbusters" Murray seems condemned to play the same wisecracking cynic, a la GROUNDHOG DAY (9pm, Fri, ITV), *over and over again* - but who's complaining... and is David "Invisible Man" McCallum's MOSQUITO SQUADRON (2.20pm, Sat, BBC2) yet another 1960s WW2 bombing movie ripped off by the Star Wars trench scene?... Derek Jacobi stutters through rather over-worthy Alan Turing bio BREAKING THE CODE (8.05pm, Sat, BBC2)... black-and-white book-burning sci-fi FAHRENHEIT 451 (12.45am, Sat, BBC2) features someone who's memorised a novel by original author Ray Bradbury... and Wesley Snipes' straight-to-video FUTURESPORT (9pm, Sun, C5) appears to be a evolved hybrid of hockey, skateboarding, and Rollerball... RORY BREMNER does his annual "look back on Labour's (n+1) years in government" (9pm, Sun, C4)... "Don't confuse [Season 2's] X Chromosome Earth with the Women's Earth seen in the [Season 1] episode The Weaker Sex" warns an episode guide for SLIDERS (6pm, Thu, BBC2) http://www.brillig.com/sliders/episodes/12.html ... while Douglas Rushkoff and his New York/media buddies get oddly excited over night-vision's green tinge in DIY surveillance show SPY TV (11.50pm, Thu, C4)... FILM>> we've waited a long time to say this, but Jim Carrey's who-cares? guy-off-Taxi tortured-comedian biopic MAN ON THE MOON (http://www.capalert.com/capreports/ : ethnic insults; gender slander; trickery; excessive posterior exposure; touching and talking about male privates by another male; vulgar motions with a female; zen meditation and holistic medicine for protection and healing) is, indeed, based on the REM song of the same name. Plus, now she's played the same sort of role in this *and* The People Vs Larry Flynt, count yourself lucky that Milos Forman didn't have Courtney Love marrying Mozart in "Amadeus"... "buy" recommendation of the week goes to mildly depressing Glengarry Glenross day-traders update BOILER ROOM (imdb: stocks)... particularly when it's up against the worst crop of lame Brit movies for some time, including Patsy Kensit temping atrocity JANICE BEARD: 45 WORDS PER MINUTE (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/: Passed '15' for strong language)... Chegwin & Forsyth kitsch-fest HOUSE (imdb: independent-film / bingo / magic / rivalry / wales)... and/or John Hannah, Brian Conley and Eddie Izzard, together *at last* in CIRCUS (http://www.bbfc.co.uk/: Passed '18' for strong violence with strong language and sex) - which could just be this year's "The James Gang"... DEAD TREE FEEBDACK>> following on from last month's magazine roundup [NTK 2000-04-14], "Why no mention of the return of CRAZYNET?", inquires DANIEL THORNTON, "I just picked up the second issue, and it's rather spiffing." We passed this compliment to gentleman ex-editor James Wallis, who modestly observed: "You may notice my distinctive writing style attached to several of the articles, not to mention several screenshots of my distinctive desktop. This is because large parts of the new Crazynet #2 are parts of the old Crazynet #2, assembled by me in October last year, only even more appallingly laid-out and with even more typos and strange hyphenation added by the French." Phew, James, as long as you're not bitter then, eh? http://www.erstwhile.demon.co.uk/crazynetisdead.htm ... CONNOR MCLAUGHLIN questioned NTK 2000-04-21's assertion that there has never been "a UK internet magazine targetted at anorak- wearing speccy geeks", citing Paragon's "crappy" INTERNET AND COMMS TODAY from "about 4 years ago". "It was staffed by that guy John Kennedy and his mate - Darren something," Connor reminisces, with "articles by all of JK's local mates, like Colin Turner who still unbelievably runs a BBS in Bangor, NI"... but perhaps picking up that baton is another of the clan, ANGUS "ROUGH GUIDE TO RECYCLING A BESTSELLER" KENNEDY, who claims that his new MEN'S QUEST mag [again, NTK 2000-04- 21] is "basically the 'Time Out' of alt.binaries.*, with jocular features from lovable award-winning internet luminary, Dave Winer. This month Dave reveals cosplay, mail-order husbands who can code all night and how Gnutella can get you laid." Sadly, we assume (because still no sign of the mag in any shops near us), he's kidding. You're kidding, Angus - aren't you?... and finally, extending this section's brief to include magazine *programmes*, DREW FROM PRINCESS PRODUCTIONS (makers of 'dotcomedy') unfortunately mistook NTK for a publication that gives a shit when he mailed to tell us off for running last week's "How do I clear the theme from Roobarb?" email from dotcomedy to http://tv.cream.org - now in full at http://www.the-bullet.com/tv/content/rumours.html - URL typo and all. "[This email is] not particularly for publication," he begins, (well, nor, we imagine, was last week's one - we would have replied personally, Drew, but we figured any show that relies so heavily on mailed-in attachments is probably a bit busy with its anti-virus software around now). Drew says he's "a bit disappointed" over the publication of the original email (clearly a world away from, say, humiliating audience members by going through their bookmark files on national television), because it's "made someone feel really bad about doing their job". Oh, boo hoo Drew - we didn't identify the sender, and frankly they got off lightly. Just ask Kelly Brook... >> 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 "basically same as model TK but with a new die-cast casing and better sound insulation" http://www.dotpoint.com/xnumber/facit_ntk_nlx.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? 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