The Null Device
2000/5/12
Something seen making the rounds:
Subject: Unix variant of "love bug"
This virus works on the honor system:
If you're running a variant of unix or linux, please forward this message to everyone you know and delete a bunch of your files at random.
(Thanks, Toby!)
Salon gives Battlefield Earth a thorough bagging:
The more I think about it, the more I suspect that "Battlefield Earth" was directed by a software program that absorbed and reprocessed the standard sci-fi elements of the past 30 years: grimy spaceships, alien overlords, the human race reverting to barbarism, someone reading the Declaration of Independence and making sense of it. Sure, Christian has that luxuriant coif and an illustrious résumé (he was art director on "Alien"), but how can we be sure he's not a hologram or a CIA personality graft?
Sleazy porn site operators are hijacking corporate marketing sites to host their content. (The Register)
It works like this: hackers exploiting lax FTP security, insert porn material onto a site with a view to stealing bandwidth from their victims. The material is linked to an "adult" site and served up whenever porno punters hit on the graphics. Corporate brochure sites are popular - overspecced and underused, the pornjacker's material can sit happily for months without the host noticing anything amiss.
A poll reveals that the British public regards the BBC to be Britain's leading export, followed by the Beatles and Royal Family (tied), and then Shakespeare and the Spice Girls. (BBC News)
Insert witty comment here: Microsoft threatens Slashdot with legal action over user comments, under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.