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It looks like he initially lied to the police and said the the reason the IDS detected it as a hack, was because he was using Lynx. That is the first story that went around the net. He was on Solaris, using Lynx, made a credit card payment, and the IDS picked it up as a hack.

Here's the original BoingBoig: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/01/27/jailed_for_us ing_a_n.html
and then: http://www.boingboing.net/2005/02/11/supposed_tsun ami_cha.html

In the end, despite his initial lie, all he did was try a directory traversal 'attack' (the ../ trick to try and break out of the root web directory). Not so much as an attack, as a query.
Basically he was trying to answer: "Is this site vulnerable to this easily exploited flaw, and if so, I better call them or my Credit Card number is going to make it's waya round the russian mafia sites in no time".

I don't doubt he was secretly hoping the flaw existed so he could get some fame saving a disaster relief web site.

I guess then technically, if you click the following link, their IDS should flag it as a 'hack' and if you live in jolly ol'england expect a boot at your door: Don't click me or you go to Jail!

If you try it out, let me know how fast their response time is.

GBP 2 a month line rental? I thought their cheapest was GBP 11. Or were you exaggerating?

Rik

European phone carriers have researched the possibility of a dual mode phone that switch from GSM to DECT (digital cordless) depending on what's available, but they never commercialized it.

Ahem

You think that's bad? BT once ended up terminating my _ADSL_ line because someone had phoned up and supplied my mother's maiden name! The person that had phoned up wasn't the same GENDER as me, damnit! It was an honest mistake (they meant to get a different ADSL line cancelled), but it goes to show how 'secure' their system is.

We sued them and got about £300 i think.

It does, it comes with a wireless router/modem - http://www.btfusion.bt.com/

My major complaint against BT is the one
year rolling contract:

http://www.bt.com/terms/pdfs/bt1050.pdf

I know a couple of people who have been stung
by this.

Given that they have a monopoly on DSL and
cable broadband sucks it would be foolish to
go into dispute with them.

I didn't know BT still did service in Hong Kong, I'd have thought it was provided by the Chinese...

Oh, you mean BitTorrent.

Fuck.

I think it also apllies to British Telecom. We techies have way too many acronyms. I have had some interesting conversations at work when sorting out which one we mean. We also have some that sound similar VOD&VOB and NOC&MOC for starters. Phone conversations are fun too.

Here in the UK the opposite is completely true - I used to have cable from NTL but I gave up in the end because they were so bad:

1. In August 2000 I phoned NTL to arrange an installation of telephone and cable TV. The wiring was already in from the previous owner of my flat but I was told that they couldn't do the installation for 6 weeks (first sign I should have given up right there). I also checked on the availability of a cable modem and was told that the current service was analogue but they were upgrading the whole network in my area to digital in November 2000 so it'd be available then. They also refused to do the installation on a weekend so I had to take half a day off work (I didn't really see this as a huge problem at the time).

2. On the arranged installation date the engineer showed up, plugged the analogue cable decoder into the existing wire (that worked ok), tested the phone line and told me he was just going down the the multiplexer to reconnect it. He never returned (second sign I shoudl have given up). I phoned up their support line, waiting in the queue for 90 minutes before being told that my phone line hadn't been connected because they needed to upgrade the multiplexer first (they had already had 6 weeks notice that they were installing the line!). They said it would be 3 months until they did the upgrade! (third sign)

3. Eventually the phone line was connected (they tried to make me take anouther day off work for that but I managed to convince them that they *would* do a weekend install), but the network upgrade to digital never happened and I eventually decided to save money by switching my Demon dialup internet connection to an NTL one since they did unmetered dialup. I was told that this wasn't available in my area.

4. Whenever you needed to phone them you would end up having to wait in the phone queue for 60 - 90 minutes and 75% of the time they would then just hang up the call (I have since been told by people who work in NTL call centres that the line-managers do that when the calls aren't being answered quickly enough, since if they don't meet their quota of answered calls they lose their bonus pay - picking up and immediately dropping a call counds as an answered call).

5. The cable TV connection would break for several hours at a time not infrequently.

6. The analogue cable TV connection broadcast everything in 4:3 ratio - if it was a 16:9 channel they chopped the sides off the picture. I have a 16:9 TV so I'm left with a choice: chop the top and bottom off to make it 16:9 again (you lose way too much of the picture), squash the picture to make it 16:9 (ugh, distortion) or live with it in 4:3 ratio and big black bars down the side of the screen.

6. Eventually in 2002 (well over a year after the promised digital upgrade) I gave up, dropped the NTL phone line and TV and switched to Sky Digital satellite TV, a BT phone line and a PlusNet DSL internet connection. BT connected the phone line within 12 hours.

7. Sky only very rarely goes out (usually due to bad weather - happens maybe once a year for a few minutes)

8. If I need to phone Sky, BT or PlusNet they pick up the phone almost immediately

9. PlusNet's service is almost flawless (I know many people who use NTL cable modems and they are always having outages). I also get a subnet of real IP addresses and am allowed to run services on my DSL connection with PlusNet's blessing (NTL won't give you a static IP and their AUP explicitly disallows you from running services on it). The DSL connection almost never goes down.

10. In 2004 (i.e. almost 4 years after the promised digital upgrade), NTL came canvassing the area to say they now had digital services. They asked me what kind of internet connection I had and I replied "DSL

As well as the IMO very dubious bit about BT ever being resourceful (which I didn't mention), I did contact the BBC World Service and ask them not to (mis)use `hack' in its journalistic sense.

On second thoughts maybe the word wasn't so inappropriate.

As well as the IMO very dubious bit about BT ever being resourceful (which I didn't mention), I did contact the BBC World Service and ask them not to (mis)use `hack' in its journalistic sense.

On second thoughts maybe the word wasn't so inappropriate.

Now let's wait and see what will happen next...

If lots of people do the same:

• BT will get the message that there are still lots of people who use lynx
• more money for the tsunami victims :-)

antilameness-=-=-=-=-antilameness-=-=-=-=-=-=-=--\ /
http://www.broadcast.bt.com/home/events/resourcefo recaster/Paris_Air_Show_Jun_05.asp

If you are too lazy to fix it yourself, Boeing, Airbus face off at 46th Paris Air Show

From the article: The Airbus-Boeing contest is not new, but it is heightened in 2005 by Boeing's urge to make up for lost ground. Leaving a clearer field for Airbus, Boeing joined the partial boycott of the 2003 Paris Air Show by US aerospace manufacturers and the Pentagon that rose from the Transatlantic dispute over the US-led invasion of Iraq.

It appears Airbus benefited: Virgin Atlantic Airlines, China Eastern Airlines and United Arab Emirates Airlines are among the companies that have placed significant orders with Airbus since the 2003 show.

But whatever. I think you both are stupid ... or smart. :)

It amazes me how stupid people are - rather than type in amazon.com, bestbuy.com, or cnn.com, they actually search for them on Google.

You'd be suprised. Ever since I set the homepage on my mothers browsers she's done the same. Even for sites like (yes it's true) http://www.bt.com/

Who are we to tell them it's not the way it's supposed to be done? It just works!

Call anywhere in the UK for up to an hour for just 5.5p during Evenings and Weekends. You'll also enjoy daytime calls in the UK at just 3p a minute.

BT Options

And, yes, that really is a good deal compared to how much it cost 5 years ago (unless you have a modem and want to stay online for more than an hour); but still more expensive than the US land lines. Wireless service in the UK is better for it.

No they don't.

Yes they do.

There are not very many video systems that handle dark rooms very well - and those that do are not cheap. I would suggest you stick to audio. Just make sure the audio system is dect or similar http://www.bt.com/babymonitor/ . Old analogue baby monitors are completely pointless.

The UK has a body called ICSTIS which deals with premium rate (but not expensive overseas) tarrifs.

Some other links:
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/01/icstis_ann ual_report/
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/06/28/mps_icstis /

Or rather BT have finally caught up.

For domestic customers, BT Together offers free *national* calls for £16.50 (~$29.50) per month (off peak) or £25.50 (~$45.80) per month (any time of day).

I dunno how this compares to the US for pricing (I suspect you're going to tell me we're being ripped off :-) but it's a step in the right direction.

Of course, you're always free to stick with metered calls and cable operators will usually let you call their own phone networks for free (not that I'd ever, ever again let Telewest near my house)

British Telecom are launching a service based on this early next year. Users will have a handset that uses both GSM and Bluetooth. Bluetooth is used when the user is at home, with the handset making VoIP calls.

Most people are interested in moving this video from a remote source (ahem BT)

British Telecom?

But if you use an IP Phone, you probably have to have an account with at firm that provides some kind of phone service

See my other comment about this.

You don't want to go around remembering the ip v6 for all your friends

There's a thing called DNS, it lets you use easy to remember names instead of IP addresses... Or do you email people using their IP addresses? :)

At least that's my unqualified gues since I don't "know" the VoIP systems in the US.

I'm in the UK, but I don't see why this is different anywhere else - I have Asterisk running on my server which handles my IP phones. My server also has an FXO card in it that lets me make and receive calls over my POTS line. The only 3rd-parties involved are:
1. My telco when I make PSTN calls over my POTS line (but that's just like having a plain POTS phone)
2. e164.org - for translating phone numbers into VoIP addresses using DNS (this is _lookups_ only, no actual voice traffic involved here)
3. VoipUser who provide some incoming PSTN DDIs for me over the internet

So the only "tappable" third parties there are only involved when I'm making calls via the PSTN - VoIP calls are always made directly. I honestly can't see a place for any VoIP service providers except VoIP-PSTN gateways and maybe voicemail providers, etc in the event your internet connection breaks or your server goes down.

They are brave enough to switch to IP, hopefully they're also brave enough to switch to IPv6.

BT Exact offers a free IPv6 tunnel-broker service which I've found useful, so yes, I think they probably will use IPv6 internally.

Here you go /. away.

Ph: 0800 917 3993
www.dialbeforeyoudig.com
dbyd@bt.com
Fax: 01332 578 650

I work for a local authority.

1. You must compile IPv6 Support into your kernel
2. You must register with an IPv6 Tunnel Broker. Fortunatly enough there are quite a few free ones, and I list two below:
3. 
   
   
   • Hurricane Electric: http://tunnelbroker.net (Based In California)
   • Bt Exact: https://tb.ipv6.bt.com (Based in the UK)
   Due to the predominate IPv4 nature of the Internet, you must tunnel your IPv6 packets encapsulated into IPv4 packets and send them off to your tunnel broker who will then route them nativly within the sixbone. Therefore you want your tunnel broker as close as possible, so choose accordingly. Unfortunatly HE recently banned IRC traffic due to abuse, so If you want to join an IPv6 enabled IRC server you are forced to use Bt Exact which is what im currently using.
   
   
4. Once you register with the Tunnel Broker they will issue you a /64 subnet. That's right a /64 subnet which allows you to have up to 2^64 (18.4 million-billion) IP's!!
   One of the other cool features of IPv6 is that you are currently allowed to host your own reverse DNS for your IPv6 addresses. Thus if you want to spoof your IP on IRC without having to resort to running your own hosting company or doing illegal activities this is how you would do it. My hostname on IRC currently resolves to 0.0.0.0
5. Download my init script at www.identityflux.com/ipv6 (Slashdot effect here I come!)
6. Once you get all the information from the Tunnel broker, simply edit my init script and start'er up. Here are the 5 variables you must edit:
   
   
   • LOCAL4: This is simply just your IPv4 address
   • LOCAL6: This is the IPv6 /64 subnet address that I was talking about earlier
   • REMOTE6:. This is the IPv6 address of the server on the other end of the tunnel
   • NUM_ALIAS: This is how many aliases you want to bind to your new IPv6 interface. You can assign a differnt host name to each one, www/ns/mail etc etc.
   
   All but LOCAL4 will be given to you by the tunnel broker.

[root@maximus][~]# ping6 www.kame.net
PING www.kame.net(orange.kame.net) 56 data bytes
64 bytes from orange.kame.net: icmp_seq=1 ttl=55 time=31 ms
64 bytes from orange.kame.net: icmp_seq=2 ttl=55 time=14 ms
64 bytes from orange.kame.net: icmp_seq=3 ttl=55 time=15 ms
64 bytes from orange.kame.net: icmp_seq=4 ttl=55 time=51 ms

What's this from an old telecom monopoly! Orgasm via POTS would've made more business sense.

People can *get* broadband in the UK, they are either just choosing not to, don't understand the benefits, or plain do not think they require it. A survey of SMEs on broadband take up gives a few more pointers in this direction too. Those that have broadband, would recommend it and have come to rely on it heavily in 90% of cases. Yet 80% of SMEs have no plans to upgrade from dial-up access in the next 12 months, citing "lack of business case". What? When I worked at an SME (~300 computers) using ISDN access our phone costs were astronomical; we got a 256kb/s leased line for less.

The only way I can think of that explains this discrepency is that it all comes back to marketing. J.Q. Public sees the flashy ads by BT, AoL, NTL and others and thinks "Huh? Why do I want/need that?". The corporate types see these ads and see happy families around the computer and cartoon characters on the street and class it as a consumer product, and therefore irrelevent.

But then again, why complain? It's not like we need *another* huge bunch of noobs jumping on the 'net, is it? (Only half joking)

"The Association said an upgrade to the A5/2 encryption algorithm, available since July 2002, addresses the security weaknesses highlighted by the Israelis."

Crikey, are you sure? Have you checked again recently?

Here in the UK, where we usually complain about the high price of everything compared to the bargains in the USA, you can get all-inclusive 128K ISDN for less than 50 (US$75) per month. 25 quid a month for ISDN line rental (includes regular telephone line rental) and 25-35 quid for a reasonable inclusive-hours ISDN plan (I recommend SurfAnyTime who are a bit pricier than the others but have multiple redundant freephone numbers and the support is second to none).

Townies, governments and companies all seem to have forgotten about ISDN, to the point that it is very difficult to spread the word:

IF YOU LIVE OUTSIDE BROADBAND, ISDN IS PROBABLY AVAILABLE AND WILL DO MOST OF WHAT YOU WANT

Pseudo always-on: less than 2 seconds to connect

Low ping times, in the region of 40-80ms

Decent bandwidth, 128kbps is half the speed of entry-level broadband- more than sufficient for all but the most hardened downloaders.

Usually less than twice the cost of broadband

You can make telephone calls at the same time as connecting to the Internet (although the speed drops to 64k- you can use Windows/Linux or router built-in Bandwidth On Demand feature to control this).

Admittedly what I'm basically saying is that ISDN is half the speed for twice the cost, but- IT IS AVAILABLE VIRTUALLY EVERYWHERE, IT'S ALMOST AS GOOD AS BROADBAND, IT'S WAY BETTER THAN A MODEM AND IT WORKS.

ISDN will even do fancy stuff like remote ringback connections. I've got mine set up so that when I ring my 3rd number from my mobile phone (with ISDN you get 3 telephone numbers), it automatically dials up and updates its dynamic DNS so I can VNC/FTP in to my home machine from anywhere in the world.

err, I think that British Telecom would own the BT trademark.

The US cell phone market is uncompetitive in that it's not possible to take your existing handset and number to another network.

The land line network provides cheap local calls but seems to more than make up for it with high subscription fees and high long-distance charges (depending on provider and package). For comparison, here in the UK I can get phone service for £9.50/month with call charges of 1-3p/min ($15/month, 1.5-5 cents/min) with no local/national distinction. BT has a Light User Scheme with a subscription charge of as little as £11.30/quarter (I think) - this is probably mandated by the regulator, Oftel. I can call the US and much of Europe for 3-5p/min through a separate pre-paid service with no subscription charge. It seems like the US system works nicely for very heavy users but not light users.

And to test your IPv6 connectivity - http://ipv6.umtstrial.co.uk/

Somehow I suspect a LAN shared out this far would severely restrict bandwidth...

But if they could get a really good connection to the Internet like some sort of big leased line, maybe it could be a viable option for those of us who actually have to campaign to try and get stubborn telecom companies to provide the option of broadband Internet access in a town that would probably pay 3x the asking price if we only had the opportunity!

Other than that, town-wide LAN parties organised by some sort of central body would be a good enough reason ;)

The corporate logo of BT used to be a figure playing pan-pipes. "Pan" is (of course) a goat-like pagan deity, identified by Christians as Satan.

In the UK in the eighties, you could get your phone numbers either from BT (the incumbent former monopolist) or from their jumped-up competitor, Mercury. The Roman deity "Mercury" was known in Greek as Hermes the Messenger; who was confused in late antiquity with Hermes Trismegistus (Thrice-Powerful Hermes), the father of magic; who was identified by Christians as Satan.

Numbers, Pan, Hermes, Satan... interesting times?

ADSL where available either direct from BT or several resellers (there are loads more). 512 down / 128 up costs about GBP 30.00 / month give or take.

There are two major cable operators in the uk, ntl: and Telewest. Both offer cable modem in almost all areas of their networks for about GBP 25.00 / month for 512 and 40.00 / month for 1M.

ntl couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery.

ADSL where available either direct from BT or several resellers (there are loads more). 512 down / 128 up costs about GBP 30.00 / month give or take.

There are two major cable operators in the uk, ntl: and Telewest. Both offer cable modem in almost all areas of their networks for about GBP 25.00 / month for 512 and 40.00 / month for 1M.

ntl couldn't organise a piss up in a brewery.

Many pay phones, ... are now used so infrequently that they cost money to operate.

It's true that with the bog standard BT package local calls are metered. This is pretty good for people who barely use the phone and hence make very few local calls.

However there are various packages which will give you unmetered dial-up, local and/or national calls:

From their site:

• BT Together [£11.50] per month
• BT Together with unlimited Local calls [£14.50] per month
• BT Together with unlimited UK calls [£18.50] per month
• BT Together with unlimited surf calls [£15.50] per month plus ISP charges
• BT Together with unlimited Local & surf calls [£20.50] per month plus ISP charges
• BT Together with unlimited UK & surf calls [£24.50] per month plus ISP charges

It's not perfect and probably by no means near what the US has, but it's a start. I live in a shared house and my calls come to about £5 a month which means that it's not worth me paying the flat rate as I'd end up losing money.

Mind you, BT have always been renown for dragging their heels when it comes to giving the consumer a better deal ... just look at our broadband prices and subsequent low adoption :o(

If you cant get anything better than a 28Kbps connection, those popup disabling optiong could end up being more annoying than the popups themselves. So many sites now use popups when they are not needed, and they also have wanky flash animations and big images to load. Disabling popups would mean waiting a few minutes for the entire page to load before you can do what you wanted to do. This page is an example, although this is one of the quickest to load.

Bugger I must be the other one. The Welsh assembly have also introduced a scheme where a selection of coastal towns are getting broadband with the installation subsidised. I have the Unfortunate problem that I live inland. actual coverage in wales looks like this. UK report if you then click on the welsh map a couple of times you'll see what it's really like. Just go ahead and klick on the map of Wales. (fortunately At work I'm sitting on the end of a 34 Mb link but that does make home access really crawl.

I hope you have been here and told them you want broadband (you have to phone an ISP, cant register interest online). If you live anywhere near the EMROTHW exchange then it is really important that you do this becuase I want broadband too ;).
BT seem to not bother adding all the registered people to the count tho, not very quickly anyway.

Broadband/DSL is being actively sabataged by the baby bells in the US and quite possibly by similiar entities elsewhere in the world. These people own the last mile of copper, connecting that mostly unused glass network to your home.

This is exactly the issue. In the UK (which includes Scotland) BT (yes, the same people who thought they had a patent on hyperlinks) own the last mile. They have indeed been doing everything possible to sabotage DSL. Consequently, it's been extremely difficult for competing providers to deliver DSL services; this initiative by Hydro-Electric is essentially seeking to bypass BT.

Interestingly, Hydro Electric mostly services the highlands and islands - which is to say, the most remote rural communities in Europe. If it works here it will work anywhere.

You asked : idiots lose hypertext patent claim
Here are the best links:
Where can I read about BT's Customer Service Guarantee and make a claim for compensation?

which sounds about right...

In the UK, you might want to consider buying a permenant, pure copper connection through the exchange for a flat rate, then put your own 2Mb modems on it.

It's a while since I looked at these services, but I think they are the ones listed here.

Andrew

Hah, DSL? Not in anywhere like that (whine whine, I want DSL here too). The phone number for the Manor seems to be 01476860338, if you go to BT's broadband page you can stick that number in and it tells you that only 4 people have registered interest in having broadband on that exchange - which means it is very unlikely they will have DSL there anytime soon.

Anyone in the UK who can't get ADSL yet, but wants it, should go to that bt broadband site and let them know you want it - phone an ISP and register your interest.

footnote: (*) easier done in the UK where static IPs are fairly easy to come by compared to some countries - though most proper ISPs are sensible and check you need them first, some, for example the main telco in the country, pretty much force a /29 on the less clueful of their business customers. (The web page is only one side of it, the salespeople seem to be quite good at pushing this option too). Of course: they can then sell personal firewall software and get you to install a second line if you have >5 users. And don't even get me started on their wonderful trick of restricting MAIL FROM: domains at their SMTP relays (and making sure their dynamic ADSL netblocks are listed in the DUL.....

Just been there recently whilst on holiday for a few days in Cornwall.

Enjoyed the new visitors centre and a tour of the site, my girlfriend also enjoyed it so it must have been good :-)

There's a number of earth stations in Cornwall, as well as being the area in which most of the UK's international undersea cables terminate. It's steeped in communication history!

More info on Goonhilly here (non-Flash version here).

Just been there recently whilst on holiday for a few days in Cornwall.

Enjoyed the new visitors centre and a tour of the site, my girlfriend also enjoyed it so it must have been good :-)

There's a number of earth stations in Cornwall, as well as being the area in which most of the UK's international undersea cables terminate. It's steeped in communication history!

More info on Goonhilly here (non-Flash version here).

Over on this side of the big pond, the cost of calling mobile telephones is still orders of magnitude higher than making national or local calls, and in some instances comparable (or even more expensive, if you use some of the specialist long-distance carriers) to making international calls. Example: Calls to mobiles are charged at anywhere from 18.90 to 26.05 pence per minute including tax during the daytime. Compare this to international rate calls to the USA at 14.00 and Australia at 22.00 pence per minute. (Source: BT price list). The cost alone is usually sufficient to put people of making calls to mobiles. SMS (text messaging) spam is become more popular though.

The UK Direct Marketing Association, which is the self regulatory body for direct marketeers in the UK run a scheme called the Telephone Preference Service or 'TPS'. From personal experience, I have found this scheme to be particularly effective against junk callers.

The same bunch also run a postal-mail and fax opt-out service, which is apparently also fairly successful, and an Email service, which I'm somewhat sceptical about (not giving my addressesout anyway, I shouldn't be on their lists). (and most of my spam comes from the USA anyhow) Under the Telecommunications (Data Protection and Privacy Regulations) 1999 it is an offence for any company engaged in direct marketing to call numbers listed on the TPS. Those who do can be 'shopped' straight away on the TPS site. One difference I noticed with the USA version of the TPS is that in the USA, you can still be called by local traders, charities and religious groups, AND your number only registers for five years. In the UK, local traders, charities and religious groups are included in the act.

Video phones exist and are actually reasonably common, especially in business circumstances. The reason most home users don't see them though is that for the most part the quality is sorely lacking, and they're often way too expensive...

a quick search on google netted me this:
a home videophone...
another home video phone...
and, for what appears to be the prevailing standard: h.232

molecular manufacturing is a bit of a different story, but:
a group devoted to molecular manufacturing
some interesting stuff on it
and, last but not least:
IBM does some cool stuff sometimes

hope this helps dispel your mistrust of tech previews (Although i'll admit that at least a grain or two of salt is warranted in many occasions)