My ppm doesn't connect to any external site. :'-(

I am behind a proxy which is configured in a very funny way by our administrator. All my efforts to make a perl program talk to internet via that f&^%$(*& proxy have failed. I have raised this question in another thread.

Even after settings the 3 required environment variables which the faq suggests ... my PPM goes no where.
HTTP_PROXY=http://proxy.mycompany.intranet:8080/
HTTP_proxy_pass=user
HTTP_proxy_user=password

regards,
Abhishek.