unable to telnet to any servers

[prejudged_fire]

hello everyone. I've been poking around at hacking wargames sites and some of them allow you to telnet to their servers. But for some reason, I cant telnet to anything. I tried connecting to localhost and it says connection refused. I've tried connecting to hackerslab (drill.hackerslab.org, port 23.. it says name or service unknown) and pulltheplug.org (vortex.labs.pulltheplug.org, port 5842.. i get the message "trying 69.55.233.82" and never moves any further). At first I thought about contacting the wargames administrators but since I cant even connect to localhost (127.0.0.1) and also my own ip (65.6.28.103) I figure its me. I'm not that experienced with telnet so sorry if I'm acting "noobish" (God I hate that word).

[eshcol]

You know for one who is using telnet id suggest that you dont pull off any hacking pranks using port 23 coz theyll trace you back. Again you should know that port 23 for telnet is just a backdoor that admins wont jus leave open for any reason.
In your case i think you need to enable the use of telnet on your machine go to applications/systems settings/then services. Check on the telnet check box.
see the man pages for more