Slashdot Mirror
Sim Plague
Brian Kingsbury writes: "The New York Times has an
article on a new twist in the world of the Sims --- a "virus" that
can kill off a player's characters. In a particularly sadistic twist,
the virus is carried by a guinea pig that players download from the
Sims Web site. I wonder what's next, maybe the Black Death?
" That's all Nate would have needed to complete his House of Fear - locked doors, no food, two ghosts, and the kitchen on fire. Will Wright, you're a genius.
You're correct. More properly, this is a trojan horse. But in the "common usage" that equates hacker & cracker, this would be a virus.
Christopher A. Bohn
cb
Oooh! What does this button do!?
Wait 'til the multi-player version comes out, when people can exchange characters. I build up a great family, looking to sell it on eBay. Mr. Wright gets cute and throws in another virus. My family's wiped out, and I've got nobody left to sell on eBay. Time for my lawyers to have a little talk with Mr. Wright. You just wait. :)
Personally, I think the guinea pig thing is a great idea, and should just be seen as part of the game. Who's to say that there isn't someone going around to animal shelters injecting guinea pigs with nasty viruses? Sure it's far-fetched, but so is life -- how many people expected their Tylenol to be laced with cyanide back in the '80s?
Cheers,
ZicoKnows@hotmail.com
Unless they offer a toll-free number as an option to register, this would not be great. We have to remember that not EVERYONE has Internet access, even though it's considerably more common nowadays. And if this is a requirement to get anywhere in the game, it needs to be stated on the box.
I think we need Resident Sims. Rats can carry the T and G virus, and your sims can hunger for blood and flesh and may evolve into Tyrants if you keep them well fed.
And they could still have babies, and baby zombies like Dead Alive. Ah, Peter Jackson...
when Push Comes to Shove
On a more serious note, I don't think it's "damage " when your game character dies. You might as well sue him for not making the Sim guy live forever.
Go get your free Palm V (25 referrals needed only!)
One of the (many) things that I loathe about the media is how they have this uncontrollable desire to make issues appear as nasty and brutish as possible.
:-P
You did see who wrote the article, right? That bufoon Markoff has made his living pulling crap like this. Besides, it's easier than doing any kind of research or something.
----
Dave
Purity Of Essence
- Dave
http://www.geocities.com/elian_true/
simcastro! simcastro! simcastro!
Chso the Clockwork Maus
Offtopic rant: I am sick and tired of all this "Hey moderators" bull. Let whoever has mod points moderate already. It seems in every article these days there are a few posts saying "I can't believe this got a 2" or "Mod this up" etc....leave it alone.
It's a bit hypocritical to bitch about something you yourself are guilty of, my homey.
http://slashdot.org/co mments.pl?sid=00/04/13/1939221&cid=152
The Divine Creatrix in a Mortal Shell that stays Crunchy in Milk
The House Between - Original Sci-Fi Series
It may be a bit off-topic, but I figure an "ask slashdot" wouldn't be quite appropriate, so I just threw the question into a comment:
Does anyone else have problems running this game?
There's a page on the EA support website for my problem. "Sims crashed with a page fault in module " meaning, basically, I can run it for about five minutes, and then it crashes.
Their solutions are to kill all the other programs, and to make sure your drivers are up-to-date.
I've contacted EA support, and while they've suggested numerous solutions to the problem, none have worked.
Is anyone else getting this? I see good reviews and (mostly) positive comments on this game everywhere, but almost no mention of my problem.
If anyone had this problem, and has fixed it, I'd really appreciate hearing how!
-Denor
What's to prevent people from creating or hacking the guinea pig virus and create different strains? What's to prevent the exchange of such hacks? Is this a possibility?
This sounds a little like the Intel PIII CPU ID, doesn't it?
I think that this is the kind of stuff that makes these games cool. I'd love to see more "realisms" in the game. I don't know about you, but I think this game can be used (maybe after modification) as a tool for creating an environment for people to deal with "real-life", maybe good therapy, even.
I guess I don't blame them for making the game for linux from the get go ... that would have taken production costs higher, but now that the game is going no where but up I don't thi8nk it would be so unlikely to make it for linux. I like Loki, but just because they make games for linux doesn't mean they're cheap ...
Ignore the "p2p is theft" trolls, they're just uninformed
However I have to admit that it is an ingenious "easter egg" for the game.
But truly, you would have to trust Maxis 100% with any bonus material they give you for the game... the next thing you know is that your nieghbours in the game open a crack house...
BlackNova Traders
Are you suggesting that the guinea pig is not a trojan houre? A TH is an innocuous looking program that actually calies nefarious code. The code that this TH carried was a game virus that infected characters and could be passed from character to character. How is this not a TH?
Anomalous: inconsistent with or deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Anomalous: deviating from what is usual, normal, or expected
Canard: a false or unfounded repor
Go here for the story with no annoying registration.
"Research is what I am doing when I don't know what I am doing." -- Wernher von Braun
It says they are going to come out (in version 2) with a thing that allows you to program your own extras. My brother has the game and I think I am going to turn one into a SimStripClub. Topless dancers and the like, that way I could bring it up to the standards with EA games. Or maybe... I could make a whore house. By the way does anyone know if you can make lesbian Sims? It could be like free porn.
I never d/l extra stuff for sims, I just make the lady take a bath over and over with no censoring =)
no censor "hack":
create a file
"\Sims\GameData\Skins\adult-censor.cmx"
in it put:
version 300
0
1
adult-censor
1
0
0
if you want the children naked (sicko!), its:
"\Sims\GameData\Skins\child-censor.cmx"
version 300
0
1
child-censor
1
0
0
...but am I the only one on this planet who hates The Sims?
The (alleged) AI in this game seems no more advanced than some expert system based Starcraft clone. Was this just a testing ground for Maxis to play around with neural networks, and happened to become stable enough to release as a game? This game needs to go through a little more improvements to the neural network before it even comes close to what a real human would do.
That, plus the fact that the premise is so *dull*. Oh, joy. I get to simulate a person who gets a job as a medical test subject or a race track announcer. Yeehaw. Woohoo.
Oh, please. I'd much rather spend time blowing away enemy starfighters in X-Wing Alliance or giant robots in Mechwarrior 3 than guide a person around a house, doing chores in The Sims.
Just ranting. Flames are welcome.
Dude, time to take a deep breath, chill, and look at the story again.
They're not implying that this well affect the entire Internet. What they're saying is that, were Sims a multiplayer game, the potential would exist for the virus (that kills characters in the game) to spread from character to character.
--
Ian Peters
> Virus in a computer game? We must surreptitiously imply that it might affect the entire Internet!
Clearly you know nothing about computers! Everyone knows this happened on X-files with that hot S&M digital chick with the sword.
Depending on how pissed off a user could get from seeing his beloved sims characters die, he could try to press charges under Federal statute 1030 subsection (a) (5)(A):
Whoever knowingly causes the transmission of a program, information, code, or command, and as a result of such conduct, intentionally causes damage without authorization, to a protected computer;....incurs a penalty of: (c) (3)(A) a
fine under this title or imprisonment for not more than five years, or both, in the case of an offense...of this section which does not occur after a conviction for another offense under this section...and no more than ten years imprisonment if previously convicted,...or an attempt to commit an offense punishable under this subparagraph.
Intentionally causing damage without authorization sounds about right....
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
Someone with far too much time on his hands decided to see how badly he could break the game on ISCA BBS -- here's the results:
http://us4n6.dnaco.net/simz/I particularly like the fireman watching people keel over dead in the street....
--
But then MSNBC would have to do a story with the headline
LINUX IS VULNERABLE TO VIRUS
only to explain later in the body of the article that it was a virus that only characters in the SIM game were vulnerable to, and then only if you download the Guinea Pig patch.
Work for Change & GET PAID!
That the 'ginea pig' virus made news is odd; they tell you point-blank that characters handling it might get sick. Maybe I came in late and they had added that after several complaints -- but I've been playing several weeks and always knew.
"The Sims" is incredibly addictive -- the ONLY reason I still have MicroDos on my system. The various add-ons they offer on their site, coupled with pre-made characters & houses from fan sites (one UK site features dead-on renditions of various celebrities) have cost me more sleep-time than I care to admit.
Think about this for a second. Outside of the very recent past, people with diseases were locked away. Personal "rights" were stripped for the good of the whole. What will happen in the game when someone gets a character that is running around trying to kill everyone with disease.
It will be interesting to see if people are as forgiving in a game atmosphere (where it costs even less) to someone that has a disease. Will names of the diseased be posted. Flags put outside their houses? Neighbors take up collections to pay for the cure?
I look forward to the answer to these questions and more when people can behave however they want.
t
It's already happened.
Back in 1991 or 1992, text-based MUCKs already had programming languages. One enterprising programmer wrote a virus that attached itself to a person's description.
Whenever someone would look at an infected person, they would also be infected.
I forget what the 'payoff' of the virus was, but the 'antivirus' command even now exists in places like Furrymuck.
Never play leapfrog with a unicorn. Or a juggernaut.
you know, given that my sim just tends to pass out on the floor when he gets tired, i doubt he could be trusted to take care of another living creature. no wonder the hamster bites them and gives them diseases.
---
/bin/fortune | slashdotsig.sh
I'm sure people won't like that and a patch would certainly be created in no time, and it could be a PR problem, but it's an idea.
Will Wright obviously sees himself as the Creator the God or the Devil, and he is right. What is the ultimate goal of all programmers - control. You control something - your PC you GNU/Linux your application your network etc. This guy controls his creation - a little world, in fact many little worlds.
In some aspect he also controls the people who play his game. He has the power to teach them, to change them, to manipulate them.
for this ultimate goal all means are justified.
hale
You can't handle the truth.
By then, however, gamers may have been forced to confront the same challenges that face e-mail users whose computers are frequently attacked by hostile programs.
"Right now it would be hard to convince a prosecutor to attempt to convict someone for such a program, but that may change," said Mark Rasch, a former assistant United States attorney who successfully prosecuted a Cornell graduate student for releasing the first Internet worm in 1989. "These things become more important as online gaming proliferates. With online gambling it will become even more problematic."
WTF??? I read about this Guinea Pig mod to this game two months ago in Computer Gaming World, and I thought, "No way! That is so cool!" All it did was prove to me that this thing really simulated real life, and was versitile enough that they could release such a hugely new feature into the game months after its release. It almost made me go out and buy it then and there.
It's a fscking game! The point of a game is for it to be difficult! If Sims players are so upset that they would, as this litigous Mark Rasch put it, attempt to CONVICT the programmer, then perhaps they should move to more easy to play games, like Reader Rabbit. That way, they'd always win.
To me, this is adding value to the product. For the same low price of $50 (or whatever it is), you get a game that is always changing, always becoming more challenging. Sounds to me like you're not likely to get bored of The Sims within the first two weeks of game play, like so many other games I've played. Again, if people want an easy game where they always win, then leave the computer alone and watch sitcoms.
I don't see where they get off saying "gamers may have been forced to confront the same challenges that face e-mail users whose computers are frequently attacked by hostile programs." What??? I don't see where anyone's hard drives have been deleted. I don't see where anyone's been forced. Sim players choose to download mods. Worm recipients don't choose to receive worms. And even then he's sensational about it. I'm an e-mail user, and I'm not frequently attacked by hostile programs. I've gotten maybe 3 infected emails in my entire life, and even then, was not stupid enough to open "prettypark.exe".
To me, this article didn't get bad in the middle, like a lot of you said. This article was doomsday from the very beginning. There was a lot of negative and dark language from the headline to the last sentance with only a few minor positive highlights.
Incidentally, the virus he refers to in Snowcrash only worked on hackers, so you'd think the media would like that... Get rid of the hackers, and all your problems will be solved.
Well, if you look at the author of the article, it's none other than John Markoff! If the name doesn't ring a bell, he's the same guy who wrote sensational articles about Kevin Mitnick many years ago which ultimately resulted in Kevin getting treated so badly by "the system". You can read more at http://www.freekevin.com/.
Markoff wouldn't know good journalism if it bit him on the ass. Why the New York Times continues to employ someone as irresponsible as him is beyond me.
From the article:
Although there is no easy possibility that the guinea pig virus will escape from Sims and cause havoc in the Internet world, the specter of software viruses in the future of computer gaming is real, Mr. Smith said. "When they introduce a future multiplayer version of Sims, it will create an interesting social dynamic," he said.
Why can't they just tell the story, and not try to inflame the public with these false potentialities? JESUS. The article was great right up until this point. One of the (many) things that I loathe about the media is how they have this uncontrollable desire to make issues appear as nasty and brutish as possible. This is a perfect example. Virus in a computer game? We must surreptitiously imply that it might affect the entire Internet! That's MUCH more interesting!
FUCK THAT. Just tell the story! Grrrr....
-Rev.I thought everyone forgot all about that. It was new years eve 1993 on Furry, actually. And it did more than just attach itself to a person's description. It infect the room they were in if possible, so anyone walking into the room got infected. It infected the links between rooms, objects, and even actions on objects. (So if you create an object with a link to a program and run that command to run your program, the virus infected that command as well. Every time you ran it, you would be re-infected.) There were also plans to abuse something called _listen, which executes a program whenever a person _receives_ a message. So a person could get infected just by _hearing_ something. But the programmer didn't have enough permissions, which is probably a good thing.
Another thing the virus did was overlay each person's ability to communicate. The virus had its own special versions of the basic "say", "pose", "spoof", "write", and "whisper". (It could only create these through a big in the MUCK code on Furry, I'll note.) The payoff of the command was that after midnight (ie. one New Years), all infected users would have their communications silenced and rerouted to a special log file. Actually, the messages got printed out to the user's screen so that it _looked_ like everyone could hear them, but in fact they couldn't.
This "fun" went on for a good half hour until one of the administrators figured out what was going on because of a bug in the modified page program. (Note to coders: *always* test your code before you install it in public.) Eventually they just reinstalled an older DB to clean out the virus.
Incidently, they people perpetrating this took the log file, flamed it, and then posted it to usenet. In retrospect, that was a bad idea, but you do stupid stuff when you're 15...
If you're curious about the aftermath, a lot of clueless users on Furry complained to the programmer's sysadmin. Of course, the clueless users blew everything out of proportion, not understanding what really went on. When word finally got back to the programmer, apparently he had written an "internet worm, capable of copying itself between different servers on the internet." I only wish I was that good of a coder! Apparently the FBI got involved for a short time, until they realized that the Furry server was located in Canada, so any felonous charges would have to be tried in an international court. Once the feds finally realized it was just some stupid prank with no lasting harm, the programmer never heard a thing from them again.
Anyway, the guy lost his internet access, which was through a university. He spent the 9 months of downtime (before getting another account) working on a program to let people play several variants of Poker on MUCKs. Ironally, this program is still popular on Furry to this day. Consider it one last bit of both apology and spite.
But that was a long time ago, and I was a different person then.
-Ted
~=Keelor