Slashback: Gopherectomy, Portacinema, Disunity

Slashback tonight with a quartet of updates. So, read on for more information on portable video viewing (and instant recording!), United Linux and one analysts view of What it All Means, Microsoft's answer to a Gopher hole, and why easily guessed passwords sometimes save the day.

Throwing the gopher out with the bathwater. An Anonymous Coward writes: "As reported on News.com and discussed on Slashdot, MSIE's gopher support had a serious security vulnerability that allowed your machine to get ROOT'ed.

Well, it seems that Microsoft is unwilling or unable to make the fix, so it is removing support for the gopher protocol from IE. Not that MSIE's gopher support isn't very poorly implemented anyways."

Kept out of the U.S. by the secret conspiracy, no doubt. Buggalo writes "When I saw the article about the Pogo Flipster I thought I'd mention this too. Of course, it's not available in the US (not yet at least), but it sounds cool anyway. It plays MP4 video as well as MP3 audio. One thing that differentiates it from the Flipster is that this one includes video inputs so you don't even need a computer to get anything onto it. It also seems to have a larger screen. From what I can tell it has 64 megs of flash memory built in, and has an SD memory card slot as well. Sorry the website is in Japanese, but you can use Babelfish to translate it."

Not betting on a United front. dgb2n writes "Smart Money Magazine published an excellent article covering the business implications of the United Linux consortium. It provides some good insight into Red Hat's business model, stock price, and future prospects and names a potential winner in the Linux market."

At least this one aspect is happy. Hellkitten writes "The password for the database has been found, it was as simple as 'ladepujd', the name of the database's creator spelt backwards This previous Slashdot article explains the problem they had.

Aasentunet posted this notice, telling the password and thanking everyone that helped"

ZDNet has the story here as well."

Comments

The confusion

[King of the World]

Not that MSIE's gopher support isn't very poorly implemented anyways.

Er, wot?

M$FT never ceases to underwhelm me

[jazzbotley]

Now if only my employer would agree to let me fix all the security holes in W2K by UNINSTALLING. I can dream, can't I?

No more gopher? What a cop out

[Anonymous Coward]

Next thing you know, they'll drop support for 75 baud cradle modems. Damn Microsoft! Damn them all to hell!!!!

bad password

[GoatPigSheep]

The password for the database has been found, it was as simple as 'ladepujd', the name of the database's creator spelt backwards

thats not a very smart choice of password, using your name.

at least it wasn't 'god' or 'sex'

Sighting today in Redmond, WA, US...

[Anonymous Coward]

Bill Gates wearing full Viking armor and singing "Kill the GO-PHER, Kill the GO-PHER, Kill the GO-PHER!!!" to the tune of "Ride of the Valkyries." ;-)

Re:Gopher probably is poorly implemented..

[Osty]

(complete reposting, for the parent is an AC)

Supporting many obscure protocols is one of the best way to justify bloat. Since Microsoft has arrangements with Intel (basically their software requirements must follow Moore's Law), I predict that the gopher code will return, or more simply that it will be turned off but remain in IE.

Right, so there's a big conspiracy for Microsoft to create bloated software to force hardware upgrades. Right. And that's why IE 5.x was slimmed down and much faster than the old IE4? Hrm, looks like that right there breaks your argument. But go ahead and continue believing in the conspiracy theory, because it's apparently a lot more interesting than believing that Microsoft will add and remove features based on real criteria, like customer demand and usefulness.

Re:Bad passwords and old software...

[Dr. Nonsense]

"The institute now keeps copies of all its passwords locked in a safe."

And where do they keep the code or key to the safe?

Re:Gopher support shouldn't be in IE

[MavEtJu]

Why should IE continue to support Gopher?

"Welcome to Internet Explorer. With this you can easily go everywhere on the Internet. Except for sites which have protocols that we have problems with implementing(*). Have a nice day.

(*) This is everything except FTP and HTTP. Even if there are problems with the implementation of FTP and/or HTTP, we will not remove them(**).

(**) This will happen after we've implemented the MS-PPTP(***) into our IIS servers and have replaced TCP/IP with the MS-PITY(****).

(***) Microsoft Private Propriatary[sp] Transfer Protocol is a trademark of ...

(****) Microsft Protocol for Internet TechnologY is a trademark of ...."

fool.

[jcsehak]

it was as simple as 'ladepujd', the name of the database's creator spelt backwards

What an idiot. I, an 31337 hax0r, am much smarter. My password, "78sne4ml;w" is composed of random characters, which nobody would ever guess. Lam3r.

Back what?

[TheFlu]

Good thing my name's not Bob.

You're wrong.Bill Gates is nothing like a valkyrie

[Ilan Volow]

Bill Gates in no way resembles a loud, fat, big breasted nordic messenger of doom.

It had to be Balmer.

Re:No more gopher? What a cop out

[ncc74656]

I think most of us know that Gopher is not used very much anymore, so MS supporters are definitely downplaying this hole. However, by not releasing a patch and instead just removing Gopher support, MS is leaving millions of people still open to vulnerabilities!

They ought to just hire Bill Murray and be done with the problem. (Hey, it wouldn't be any worse than anything else they've done...)