Web Walk: Week's events on Web drag us into future

It's been a week of Web wonders, of hacks and scandals which have made the headlines - and, in some cases, altered them.

When a gang of teenage cyberhooligans is able to rewrite the New York Times, you know the future's nearly here.

The Internet has been at the global centre of all this millennial turbulence, both newsmaking and newsgathering.

After months of stalking, Kenneth Starr finally pounced and presented us with his trophy, like a rat on the doormat [the complete video screens at cnn.com/icreport, if you missed it].

But don't feel you have to rush on over. For my money, "Monicagate: the movie" was one of those events which exceed your expectations: you knew it was going to be bad, but not that bad - a grubby alloy of sex and boredom, "Debbie Does Washington" scripted by Joe Orton, as embarrassing to watch as it must have been to star in.

At home, lawyer Chris Harder looked to the Web for help in the case of Baby L [www.search.net.nz/baby], spotlighting the both the immediacy of the Net and its power to bypass the experts [Harder could easily check with them at www.ciaccess.com/moebius, the Moebius Syndrome Foundation] in order to appeal directly to those with anecdotal evidence a lawyer might draw on to build his case.

On the political front, a hackers' group called X-Pilot last week rewrote the Mexican Government's site to protest corruption and censorship, while on the other side of the global village, in Sweden, a posse of Alliance types were defacing the homepage of that peaceable nation's Moderates party, which occupies more or less the same ground as National.

Chaining yourself to some railings is hopelessly passé these days. "The future of activism is on the Internet" says Standon McCandlish of the Electronic Frontier Foundation [www.eff.org].

I just hope Sue Bradford's keyboard skills are up to it.

Still, she can always retrain on the Net. Oxblood Ruffian, the former UN consultant who speaks for the Cult of the Dead Cow [www.cultdeadcow.com] - they're the people, you'll recall, who designed Back Orifice to turn your Win95 machine into their electronic zombie - has announced that the group is setting up a school for activists.

www.hacktivism.org will host online workshops and offer digital tools with which the polarised can pursue their agendas.

As an exercise in learning by doing, they plan to target the websites of US companies in business with China - they've formed an association with the legendary Hong Kong Blondes, a group of Chinese dissidents infiltrating security networks in mainland China to warn those in danger of political arrest.

By contrast, the New York Times hack seemed a classic of teenage pointlessness, an act of ennui rather than conviction, carried out by some self-styled Robin Hoods known as Hacking for Girlies.

HFG's rationale [www.antionline.com/archives/pages/www.nytimes.com], such as it was, involved protesting the imprisonment of super-hacker Kevin Mitnick [www.kevinmitnick.com/home.html], which had finally been accomplished by security wizard Tsutomu Shimomura as recounted by NYT writer John Markoff in Takedown.

It may have been just the callow insolence of a new generation of point'n'click hackers, but it destroyed a whole edition of the respected newspaper. They also took a moment to badmouth a rival cybergang called the Ashtray Lumberjacks who then, in an electronic turf-war, struck back wildly by hacking some 300 sites at random.

To quote Carolyn Meinel, author of The Happy Hacker: "These are the kids who used to make stink-bombs. Now they do the Internet."

Less successful was the hack of Salon [www.salon1999.com], apparently a right-wing reprisal for the magazine's relatively sympathetic inspection of the engorged presidential libido, and it's outing of House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde's thirty-year-old fling with someone else's wife.

Last week's digital sturm und drang testifies to the growing centrality of the Net. But my favourite quote occurred towards the end of it.

"Oh, I don't write with a pen any more, I only write on computers, you can rub things out!": the Royal Surfer, to 7-year-old Prince Abdul Mateen of Brunei.

It's official - the future has arrived.

BOOKMARKS

WILDEST: Adopt A Horse Online

The US Bureau of Land Management offers an Internet solution to the problem of Mother Nature's over-production of broncos and burros. All you need is a credit card and a corral connected to a box-stall or barn - you can hire the horse-float.

Advisory: why didn't we think of it during that furore over the Kaimanawa horses?
www.adoptahorse.blm.gov

WEIGHTIEST: Your Weight On Other Worlds

Overweight? No problem - move to the moon, or Mars is nice at this time of year. With the temperature at a bracing -70°F at the equator, though, you're going to need your woollies [daily Martian weather forecasts resume shortly at nova.stanford.edu/projects/mgs/dmwr.html, courtesy of the Mars Global Surveyor]. I weigh in at a trim 150 lbs here in Herne Bay, but on Mars I instantly become a sylph-like 55.5, ready to blow away in the first dust-storm. Steer clear of Jupiter - there, I balloon to a grotesque 396.

Advisory: no-one counts calories on Mercury…
www.exploratorium.edu/ronh/weight

Email: pete@ihug.co.nz