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After reading this, I'm not sure I want to implement SPF on my domain. I use some features like pre-forwarding with qmail-ldap that will break because of SPF. And not to mention alot of the RFCs that it seems to break

there is also another bug in XP with a shell script that prints 5 tab spaces that will crash XP every time. maybe another slashdotter can point me in the right direction to a link that explains this/has the code because I'm having trouble locating it on google, but I did run it once and crash my XP Pro box, so its out there somewhere.

SPF is not an anti-spam system. SPF is an anti-joe-job system. It happens that the most frequent joe jobs tend to come from spammers, however:

1. Not all joe jobs are spam.
2. Most spam (looking at my bulk mail folder on Yahoo) doesn't involve joe jobs.

A number of people are equating this with anti-spam systems, and that's just wrong. I thought one of the most revealing answers in the interview above was:

CircleID: Who is using SPF today and what level of success has it achieved in the fight against spam?

Meng Wong: In the six months since we declared a spec freeze, 20,000 domains have self-reported at the online registry; that's probably a fraction of the true total. Lots of domains have published records, including AOL, Amazon, Google, O'Reilly, SAP, TicketMaster, Mail.com, w3.org, Earthlink and Verizon. And the ones who haven't published are working on it.

We expect adoption to pick up exponentially; according to some estimates, the number of sites checking SPF doubles every three weeks. SPF plugins are available for all the major Mail Transfer Agents (MTAs).

Proper anti-spam systems are based upon dealing with unwanted email, not dealing with non-relevent characteristics. If you create a system that makes it easier to control who gets your email address (such as my solution, Yahoo!'s AddressGuard(tm), and TMDA), then you're implementing a relevent solution, because dealing with spam is about controlling who sends you email. Likewise, if you operate Bayesian, CRM114, Mail.app, etc, AI filters based upon spam, then you're coming up with a relevent (if imperfect) solution, and the solution can work if combined with a whitelist, especially if you can automate the generation of the whitelist through systems like Camram.

SPF isn't such a system, it's designed to deal with a totally different issue. Arguably, given that it breaks mailing lists and forwarding and has many other documentable faults, it really ought to be being used as a measure of last resort, though it's a good idea for mail receipients to implement the logic so that domains that are having these issues can make the choice when they find themselves being targetted.

It'd be nice if every solution to every problem on the net wasn't always promoted as an anti-spam solution...

In any case, if you don't like how djbdns behaves by default, you can always go to http://tinydns.org/ and see what's available.

SPF is the answer. Unfortunately, nobody's discovered what the question is to go with that answer

I'll take Spam Solutions for one hundred, please. Question : what FUSSP is an anti-forgery technique that doesn't address the underlying problem, breaks forwarding and is simply defeated anyway by using the null envelope sender?

Ironically, these and other reasons may be an argument that SPF should be adopted

2001? Uh that's like ages ago. The bug doesn't work on my W2K system.

It might be related to that csrss bug. Which was fixed (surreptitiously?) as of W2K Sp3.

Either that or your video card drivers have a problem.

Does this CSRSS Bug still take down Windows XP boxes?

Baz

The answers it generates are often excessively verbose (e.g. redundant NS records).

This only occurs if you specify redundant name servers in the database. tinydns serves exactly what you tell it to serve.

Third-party documentation suggests a configuration that violates recommendations of TLD operators and most ISPs, which means that you have to redo parts of it once you receive your first delegation.

That is because you should avoid RFC 2317 style delegation. RFC 2317 was written by the authors of BIND:

"If you were running BIND, you'd find it only a little bit painful to receive a classless reverse delegation (setting up one zone file), while you'd find it much more painful to receive separate reverse delegations (setting up many zone files)." (source)

You might find this program interesting, it collates map data from the Ordnance Survey website in the UK and allows you to manipulate it:

http://homepages.tesco.net/~Keith.Sheppard/MapMan. htm

You can also import any other sort of image file for use as a map though.

The plural of "virus" isn't "virii." There is no such word. The plural of "virus" is "viruses."

Here's a good explanation from cdknow.com, quoted here in its entirety because the people who most need to read this won't click on a link.

The correct English plural of virus is viruses. Please consult any good dictionary before making up words.

For the purists, in Latin, there is a rarely-used plural form:

virus, viri (neuter)

(Forms: almost always restricted to nominative and accusative singular; generally singular in Lucretius, ablative singular in Lucretius)

The point of this is that even in Latin the form "viri" is rarely used. The singular form is used in most every instance. (This is from the Oxford Latin Dictionary.)

So, when considering the Latin: "virii" is incorrect and "viri" was almost never used.

Despite the fact there was little use for the plural form, there is another reason why "viri" was rarely used. The most common Latin word for "man" is "vir" with "viri" being its plural in the form used as the subject of a sentence. Thus, since "men" as the subject of a sentence would be used far more often than "venoms" (virus means venom) the "viri" word was most commonly seen as the plural of "man."

Bottom line: Don't try to make up words using a false Latin plural form. Since the word virus in its English form is now used then the English plural (viruses) should be used.

More plural-of-virus resources:

perl.com, the canonical and exhaustive source
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard's Frequently Given Answer
Merriam-Webster's "Word for the Wise," January 20, 2000.

The plural of "virus" isn't "virii." There is no such word. The plural of "virus" is "viruses."

Here's a good explanation from cdknow.com, quoted here in its entirety because the people who most need to read this won't click on a link.

The correct English plural of virus is viruses. Please consult any good dictionary before making up words.

For the purists, in Latin, there is a rarely-used plural form:

virus, viri (neuter)

(Forms: almost always restricted to nominative and accusative singular; generally singular in Lucretius, ablative singular in Lucretius)

The point of this is that even in Latin the form "viri" is rarely used. The singular form is used in most every instance. (This is from the Oxford Latin Dictionary.)

So, when considering the Latin: "virii" is incorrect and "viri" was almost never used.

Despite the fact there was little use for the plural form, there is another reason why "viri" was rarely used. The most common Latin word for "man" is "vir" with "viri" being its plural in the form used as the subject of a sentence. Thus, since "men" as the subject of a sentence would be used far more often than "venoms" (virus means venom) the "viri" word was most commonly seen as the plural of "man."

Bottom line: Don't try to make up words using a false Latin plural form. Since the word virus in its English form is now used then the English plural (viruses) should be used.

More plural-of-virus resources:

perl.com, the canonical and exhaustive source
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard's Frequently Given Answer
Merriam-Webster's "Word for the Wise," January 20, 2000.

The plural of "virus" isn't "virii." There is no such word. The plural of "virus" is "viruses."

Here's a good explanation from cdknow.com [cknow.com], quoted here in its entirety because the people who most need to read this won't click on a link.

The correct English plural of virus is viruses. Please consult any good dictionary before making up words.

For the purists, in Latin, there is a rarely-used plural form:

virus, viri (neuter)

(Forms: almost always restricted to nominative and accusative singular; generally singular in Lucretius, ablative singular in Lucretius)

The point of this is that even in Latin the form "viri" is rarely used. The singular form is used in most every instance. (This is from the Oxford Latin Dictionary.)

So, when considering the Latin: "virii" is incorrect and "viri" was almost never used.

Despite the fact there was little use for the plural form, there is another reason why "viri" was rarely used. The most common Latin word for "man" is "vir" with "viri" being its plural in the form used as the subject of a sentence. Thus, since "men" as the subject of a sentence would be used far more often than "venoms" (virus means venom) the "viri" word was most commonly seen as the plural of "man."

Bottom line: Don't try to make up words using a false Latin plural form. Since the word virus in its English form is now used then the English plural (viruses) should be used.

More plural-of-virus resources:

perl.com [perl.com], the canonical and exhaustive source
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard's Frequently Given Answer [tesco.net]
Merriam-Webster's "Word for the Wise [m-w.com]," January 20, 2000.

The plural of "virus" isn't "virii." There is no such word. The plural of "virus" is "viruses."

Here's a good explanation from cdknow.com, quoted here in its entirety because the people who most need to read this won't click on a link.

The correct English plural of virus is viruses. Please consult any good dictionary before making up words.

For the purists, in Latin, there is a rarely-used plural form:

virus, viri (neuter)

(Forms: almost always restricted to nominative and accusative singular; generally singular in Lucretius, ablative singular in Lucretius)

The point of this is that even in Latin the form "viri" is rarely used. The singular form is used in most every instance. (This is from the Oxford Latin Dictionary.)

So, when considering the Latin: "virii" is incorrect and "viri" was almost never used.

Despite the fact there was little use for the plural form, there is another reason why "viri" was rarely used. The most common Latin word for "man" is "vir" with "viri" being its plural in the form used as the subject of a sentence. Thus, since "men" as the subject of a sentence would be used far more often than "venoms" (virus means venom) the "viri" word was most commonly seen as the plural of "man."

Bottom line: Don't try to make up words using a false Latin plural form. Since the word virus in its English form is now used then the English plural (viruses) should be used.

More plural-of-virus resources:

perl.com, the canonical and exhaustive source
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard's Frequently Given Answer
Merriam-Webster's "Word for the Wise," January 20, 2000.

Check this article for an interesting commentary on SPF.

While you are correct, SPF is the wrong solution. Like AOL's "we only accept mail from corporate entities" policy, SPF's solution throws out a good chunk of the baby along with 80% of the bath-water.

The road toward reliable, authentication of mail is long, and we've only just started... hopefully our few first missteps will be corrected as we go.

The first link seems to have been dropped. Probably a typo on my part.

It is:

http://homepages.tesco.net/~J.deBoynePollard/FGA/s mtp-spf-is-harmful.html

I disagree with the conclusions, but the basic refutation of SPF and SRS seems to be quite sound.

HELO/EHLO wants a hostname, and usually one that can be resolved to the address that the connection is from

What about this ?

From (in SMTP), From, To, CC, etc in RFC822 expect either UUCP routes

What about this ?

Of course those links may be wrong. I'm no big expert. Surely they seem convincing.

Cisco not supporting something (relevent to their product line) means it wont become wildly used

This is sadly true. And that's probably a sign CISCO should either make an extremely strong public commitment into early availability (even before the standard is actually a standard) of new protocols or be ready to face antitrust the way MS is doing. Or both. And wether the aforementioned commitment is done making the platforms totally open or investing in-house for development that may never turn out to be required is not my problem (but I have an opinion).

New things happen on the edges.

Amen!

Five years is a very short period of time

True. I did not make that number. Just refused to comment. But since we are at it: I think that 10 to 15 years for the new generation mail infrastructure is more likely. And that's exactly one of the problems as many will not be willing to spend 4 or 5 years just for preliminary talks. They want spam killed now. And will, sadly, be happy with half baked (non)solutions.

HELO/EHLO wants a hostname, and usually one that can be resolved to the address that the connection is from

What about this ?

From (in SMTP), From, To, CC, etc in RFC822 expect either UUCP routes

What about this ?

Of course those links may be wrong. I'm no big expert. Surely they seem convincing.

Cisco not supporting something (relevent to their product line) means it wont become wildly used

This is sadly true. And that's probably a sign CISCO should either make an extremely strong public commitment into early availability (even before the standard is actually a standard) of new protocols or be ready to face antitrust the way MS is doing. Or both. And wether the aforementioned commitment is done making the platforms totally open or investing in-house for development that may never turn out to be required is not my problem (but I have an opinion).

New things happen on the edges.

Amen!

Five years is a very short period of time

True. I did not make that number. Just refused to comment. But since we are at it: I think that 10 to 15 years for the new generation mail infrastructure is more likely. And that's exactly one of the problems as many will not be willing to spend 4 or 5 years just for preliminary talks. They want spam killed now. And will, sadly, be happy with half baked (non)solutions.

What the heck are virii? The plural of virus is viruses.

---.

The plural of "virus" isn't "virii." There is no such word. The plural of "virus" is "viruses."

Here's a good explanation from cdknow.com, quoted here in its entirety because the people who most need to read this won't click on a link.

The correct English plural of virus is viruses. Please consult any good dictionary before making up words.

For the purists, in Latin, there is a rarely-used plural form:

virus, viri (neuter)

(Forms: almost always restricted to nominative and accusative singular; generally singular in Lucretius, ablative singular in Lucretius)

The point of this is that even in Latin the form "viri" is rarely used. The singular form is used in most every instance. (This is from the Oxford Latin Dictionary.)

So, when considering the Latin: "virii" is incorrect and "viri" was almost never used.

Despite the fact there was little use for the plural form, there is another reason why "viri" was rarely used. The most common Latin word for "man" is "vir" with "viri" being its plural in the form used as the subject of a sentence. Thus, since "men" as the subject of a sentence would be used far more often than "venoms" (virus means venom) the "viri" word was most commonly seen as the plural of "man."

Bottom line: Don't try to make up words using a false Latin plural form. Since the word virus in its English form is now used then the English plural (viruses) should be used.

More plural-of-virus resources:

perl.com, the canonical and exhaustive source
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard's Frequently Given Answer

http://www.perl.com/language/misc/virus.html
http://homepages.tesco.net/~J.deBoynePollard/FGA/p lural-of-virus.html

The plural of "virus" isn't "virii." There is no such word. The plural of "virus" is "viruses."

Here's a good explanation from cdknow.com, quoted here in its entirety because the people who most need to read this won't click on a link.

The correct English plural of virus is viruses. Please consult any good dictionary before making up words.

For the purists, in Latin, there is a rarely-used plural form:

virus, viri (neuter)

(Forms: almost always restricted to nominative and accusative singular; generally singular in Lucretius, ablative singular in Lucretius)

The point of this is that even in Latin the form "viri" is rarely used. The singular form is used in most every instance. (This is from the Oxford Latin Dictionary.)

So, when considering the Latin: "virii" is incorrect and "viri" was almost never used.

Despite the fact there was little use for the plural form, there is another reason why "viri" was rarely used. The most common Latin word for "man" is "vir" with "viri" being its plural in the form used as the subject of a sentence. Thus, since "men" as the subject of a sentence would be used far more often than "venoms" (virus means venom) the "viri" word was most commonly seen as the plural of "man."

Bottom line: Don't try to make up words using a false Latin plural form. Since the word virus in its English form is now used then the English plural (viruses) should be used.

More plural-of-virus resources:

perl.com, the canonical and exhaustive source
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard's Frequently Given Answer

It shows I must be from a different, older generation - it got me thinking about "Monty Mole" and "Monty On The Run" from my good old ZX Spectrum days.

Yeah, just like the Space Invaders cart for the 2600 was supposed to contain 112 video games (if I recall correctly).

The plural of "virus" isn't "virii." There is no such word. The plural of "virus" is "viruses."

Here's a good explanation from cdknow.com, quoted here in its entirety because the people who most need to read this won't click on a link.

The correct English plural of virus is viruses. Please consult any good dictionary before making up words.

For the purists, in Latin, there is a rarely-used plural form:

virus, viri (neuter)

(Forms: almost always restricted to nominative and accusative singular; generally singular in Lucretius, ablative singular in Lucretius)

The point of this is that even in Latin the form "viri" is rarely used. The singular form is used in most every instance. (This is from the Oxford Latin Dictionary.)

So, when considering the Latin: "virii" is incorrect and "viri" was almost never used.

Despite the fact there was little use for the plural form, there is another reason why "viri" was rarely used. The most common Latin word for "man" is "vir" with "viri" being its plural in the form used as the subject of a sentence. Thus, since "men" as the subject of a sentence would be used far more often than "venoms" (virus means venom) the "viri" word was most commonly seen as the plural of "man."

Bottom line: Don't try to make up words using a false Latin plural form. Since the word virus in its English form is now used then the English plural (viruses) should be used.

More plural-of-virus resources:

perl.com, the canonical and exhaustive source
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard's Frequently Given Answer
Merriam-Webster's "Word for the Wise," January 20, 2000.

The plural of "virus" isn't "virii." There is no such word. The plural of "virus" is "viruses."

Here's a good explanation from cdknow.com, quoted here in its entirety because the people who most need to read this won't click on a link.

The correct English plural of virus is viruses. Please consult any good dictionary before making up words.

For the purists, in Latin, there is a rarely-used plural form:

virus, viri (neuter)

(Forms: almost always restricted to nominative and accusative singular; generally singular in Lucretius, ablative singular in Lucretius)

The point of this is that even in Latin the form "viri" is rarely used. The singular form is used in most every instance. (This is from the Oxford Latin Dictionary.)

So, when considering the Latin: "virii" is incorrect and "viri" was almost never used.

Despite the fact there was little use for the plural form, there is another reason why "viri" was rarely used. The most common Latin word for "man" is "vir" with "viri" being its plural in the form used as the subject of a sentence. Thus, since "men" as the subject of a sentence would be used far more often than "venoms" (virus means venom) the "viri" word was most commonly seen as the plural of "man."

Bottom line: Don't try to make up words using a false Latin plural form. Since the word virus in its English form is now used then the English plural (viruses) should be used.

More plural-of-virus resources:

perl.com, the canonical and exhaustive source
The alt.comp.virus FAQ
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard's Frequently Given Answer
Merriam-Webster's "Word for the Wise," January 20, 2000.

The plural of "virus" isn't "virii." There is no such word. The plural of "virus" is "viruses."

Here's a good explanation from cdknow.com, quoted here in its entirety because the people who most need to read this won't click on a link.

The correct English plural of virus is viruses. Please consult any good dictionary before making up words.

For the purists, in Latin, there is a rarely-used plural form:

virus, viri (neuter)

(Forms: almost always restricted to nominative and accusative singular; generally singular in Lucretius, ablative singular in Lucretius)

The point of this is that even in Latin the form "viri" is rarely used. The singular form is used in most every instance. (This is from the Oxford Latin Dictionary.)

So, when considering the Latin: "virii" is incorrect and "viri" was almost never used.

Despite the fact there was little use for the plural form, there is another reason why "viri" was rarely used. The most common Latin word for "man" is "vir" with "viri" being its plural in the form used as the subject of a sentence. Thus, since "men" as the subject of a sentence would be used far more often than "venoms" (virus means venom) the "viri" word was most commonly seen as the plural of "man."

Bottom line: Don't try to make up words using a false Latin plural form. Since the word virus in its English form is now used then the English plural (viruses) should be used.

More plural-of-virus resources:

perl.com, the canonical and exhaustive source
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard's Frequently Given Answer
Merriam-Webster's "Word for the Wise," January 20, 2000.

What an odd thing to say.
The RPC bug directly disproves your theory. Simply connecting to the box and exploiting the bug gives the exploiter SYSTEM access. With this access one is capable of trashing memory and entering kernel mode unconditionally. The popular worm did not BSOD boxes because that probably would have limited its effectiveness, but any process running with its priveleges could have. Even worse, is that you don't even need to be a user on the system to exploit this one.

Something more directly related to your claim:
Here is an example that disproves your claim.
This particular bug was fixed. I am not a Windows basher, but I am not about to bet the farm that similar bugs do not exist in Windows (or any OS for that matter).

Linux is not immune from this problem: witness the ptrace bug from a few months ago.

All programs have the possibility of bugs, including kernels. Given this universal possibility, there will always be a possibility that an unpriveleged process could use the kernel to gain priveleges that would allow it full access to the system which can be used to corrupt memory and "panic" the kernel. I won't disagree with you that this is always a bug and should be fixed, but you're an idiot to think that it will NOT happen "Period.".

Somewhat related, sometimes the operating system does not have a choice, sometimes it is the CPU itself that has bugs and allows a user process to crash the system. The F00F bug on the Pentium was a good example of this. The AMD K6 had a couple as well.

So apparently you consider a batch file and a console window with cmd.exe running
hardware.

Ironically enough, this is one of those bugs that was caused by moving portions of CSRSS into the kernel.

Anyway, there is a much simpler way to BSOD without "doing it through hardware". Any service with sufficient memory can get access to physical memory and force a BSOD simply by trashing memory. This is not really a limitation of NT per se, the same can be said for setuid applications on UNIX. It still dispels your idiotic notion that NT is impervious to crashing except through faulty hardware.

You fucking fool.

The CSRSS bug of about a year ago totally disproves your theory. In that bug, any user could BSOD the system by sending a few backspaces followed by a ton of TAB characters in a console window. Apparently this caused some buffer pointer to go off in the weeds and since CSRSS is a critical system process when it dies the whole system dies. This bug could be triggered from batch file let alone a DLL you fuckwit.

Impossible? That is a very strong word and one you can't backup.

An adminstrator can install a service with SYSTEM priveleges. Now, with these priveleges one can basically do whatever they want. One can enter kernel mode, they can trash memory and DoS the system. Depending on how you do it you can simply lock the system up, or actually get a coveted BSOD.

This is no different than saying that with a setuid program in Linux one can get an oops, by walking over kernel memory (/dev/kmem).

Somebody set up us the BIND

Sounds to me like the whole moon is infested with Paradroids.

(For the youngin's, here, here, and here.)

Did they fix the bug in NT-based systems that makes them crash when printing tabs followed by backspaces?

As someone who has tried his hand at a bit of charcoal , graphite , pencil, and the odd digital effort, allow me share the two top tutorials (IMHO) for learning to draw. The first one: buy Drawing on the Right Side of The Brain by Betty Edwards. It can take you from "can't draw to save your life" to "I can draw realistic portraits from life" in a couple of weeks. I'm serious. It's that good.
The second is here. It's Paul Wilkinson's tutorial on lifelike portraits - with an especially good section on proper shading and how to do it. I've been saying drawing is very like coding for years - it's nice to see someone else quantify that.

I've written an article about that -- it needs updating as it's a year or two old (prior to the Enron crash).

Basically, rather than preventing anti-competitive behaviour, the regulators were actually enforcing anti-competitive behaviour on the generating companies, while in most cases still applying price caps to the retail providers (driving them all insolvent).

The crisis was produced by a booming population combined with environmentally-driven bans on adding new generation capacity. The inability of the system to deal with the crisis was reinforced by the insane structure that was set up.

For a good discussion of the various deficiencies of Linux's threading implementation, even with the introduction of NTPL, see here.

The plural of "virus" isn't "virii." There is no such word. The plural of "virus" is "viruses."

Here's a good explanation from cdknow.com, quoted here in its entirety because the people who most need to read this won't click on a link.

The correct English plural of virus is viruses. Please consult any good dictionary before making up words.

For the purists, in Latin, there is a rarely-used plural form:

virus, viri (neuter)

(Forms: almost always restricted to nominative and accusative singular; generally singular in Lucretius, ablative singular in Lucretius)

The point of this is that even in Latin the form "viri" is rarely used. The singular form is used in most every instance. (This is from the Oxford Latin Dictionary.)

So, when considering the Latin: "virii" is incorrect and "viri" was almost never used.

Despite the fact there was little use for the plural form, there is another reason why "viri" was rarely used. The most common Latin word for "man" is "vir" with "viri" being its plural in the form used as the subject of a sentence. Thus, since "men" as the subject of a sentence would be used far more often than "venoms" (virus means venom) the "viri" word was most commonly seen as the plural of "man."

Bottom line: Don't try to make up words using a false Latin plural form. Since the word virus in its English form is now used then the English plural (viruses) should be used.

More plural-of-virus resources:

perl.com, the canonical and exhaustive source
The alt.comp.virus FAQ
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard's Frequently Given Answer
Merriam-Webster's "Word for the Wise," January 20, 2000.

The London Underground are pretty safety-conscious, frequently closing tube-stations due to platform overcrowding and evacuating stations whenever someone leaves an unattended package (I experience about one of these incidents a week).

I doubt they'd hold parties in abandoned parts of the network, due to fire risk (everyone still remembers the Kings Cross fire 15 years ago) and the difficulty of evacuating everyone quickly.

Now, why do you need any of the four words you quote to explain/demonstrate the concept?

I'm sick of this Gates Borg mind-control. I'm uninstalling Windows Media Player and shifting to Opera.

If you've got Windows ME, like I have, there are some instructions on to uninstall WMP: here.

One of my all time favorites. Just print too many backspaces and cause the window's machine to croak. Always a crowd pleaser. And the funny thing is it still works today in NT/XP ... Good details here

The plural of "virus" isn't "virii." There is no such word. The plural of "virus" is "viruses."

Here's a good explanation from cdknow.com, quoted here in its entirety because the people who most need to read this won't click on a link.

The correct English plural of virus is viruses. Please consult any good dictionary before making up words.

For the purists, in Latin, there is a rarely-used plural form:

virus, viri (neuter)

(Forms: almost always restricted to nominative and accusative singular; generally singular in Lucretius, ablative singular in Lucretius)

The point of this is that even in Latin the form "viri" is rarely used. The singular form is used in most every instance. (This is from the Oxford Latin Dictionary.)

So, when considering the Latin: "virii" is incorrect and "viri" was almost never used.

Despite the fact there was little use for the plural form, there is another reason why "viri" was rarely used. The most common Latin word for "man" is "vir" with "viri" being its plural in the form used as the subject of a sentence. Thus, since "men" as the subject of a sentence would be used far more often than "venoms" (virus means venom) the "viri" word was most commonly seen as the plural of "man."

Bottom line: Don't try to make up words using a false Latin plural form. Since the word virus in its English form is now used then the English plural (viruses) should be used.

More plural-of-virus resources:

perl.com, the canonical and exhaustive source
The alt.comp.virus FAQ
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard's Frequently Given Answer
Merriam-Webster's "Word for the Wise," January 20, 2000.

The plural of "virus" isn't "virii." There is no such word. The plural of "virus" is "viruses."

Here's a good explanation from cdknow.com, quoted here in its entirety because the people who most need to read this won't click on a link.

The correct English plural of virus is viruses. Please consult any good dictionary before making up words.

For the purists, in Latin, there is a rarely-used plural form:

virus, viri (neuter)

(Forms: almost always restricted to nominative and accusative singular; generally singular in Lucretius, ablative singular in Lucretius)

The point of this is that even in Latin the form "viri" is rarely used. The singular form is used in most every instance. (This is from the Oxford Latin Dictionary.)

So, when considering the Latin: "virii" is incorrect and "viri" was almost never used.

Despite the fact there was little use for the plural form, there is another reason why "viri" was rarely used. The most common Latin word for "man" is "vir" with "viri" being its plural in the form used as the subject of a sentence. Thus, since "men" as the subject of a sentence would be used far more often than "venoms" (virus means venom) the "viri" word was most commonly seen as the plural of "man."

Bottom line: Don't try to make up words using a false Latin plural form. Since the word virus in its English form is now used then the English plural (viruses) should be used.

More plural-of-virus resources:

perl.com, the canonical and exhaustive source
The alt.comp.virus FAQ
Jonathan de Boyne Pollard's Frequently Given Answer
Merriam-Webster's "Word for the Wise," January 20, 2000.

I didn't come to Open Source to be told what I can and can't do with my system(s).

April Fools has come and gone / You're the Fool and I am none.

Just write a simple console app that dumps a bunch of backspaces. MS's pointer backs up until it no longer points to memory it has allocated. BSoD!

Link here.

Bring this little program to the meeting and ask the MS sales rep why this problem has not been fixed since it was discovered.

Nitpick further: Reliable for what definition of "reliable"? When Program A crashes through no fault of its own, but that Program B scrambled the process information in the kernel, in a strict sense, that renders Program A unreliable: You can't know it won't crash.

It's not widgets that are the problem, it's everything. For all you know, your console library will crash the system on some input. Follow the link, that's not idle speculation.

The fundamental problem with software is that like other mathematical entities, it only potentially takes one hole (and subsequent exploitation, accidental or otherwise) to bring the whole structure crashing down, from app to OS. (Or further; I've had Windows 3.1 programs that "reliably" (*grin*) managed to scramble the CMOS on their way down.) No physical structure and no physical metaphor (and by extension no thought processes that operate primarily by metaphor to the physical world) can fully capture this aspect of software.

Reliable, in the strict sense, means %100. My system has only rebooted spontaneously twice in the last month, but that's not %100.

For every active open-source project, there is a maintainer. It is the job of this maintainer to ensure that released software is bug-free.

I think that, if we're going to have penalties for insecure open-source software, we should:

hold the maintainer liable

Only have penalties for release-level software. No alphas, betas, or cvs nightly builds. I also believe that a vendor or maintainer should be given a reasonable amount of time to fix a bug. There shouldn't be a penalty for a security hole that exhibits itself at one second after midnight on a full moon if the year is divisible by 7 when an attacker uses the root password as a user name. However, if this combination is discovered, and isn't fixed, then hold the maintainer/vendor liable.

OTOH, a crash that's caused by pressing the backspace key too many times should be fixable immediately or subject to penalties.

IMHO, of course.

Hey if Windows can claim to be enterprise ready with the csrss.exe backspace bug present I think Linux can claim to be enterprise ready.