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

Re:Gopher support shouldn't be in IE

[Anonnymous Coward]

Because the RIAA isn't looking for MP3 sites, the BSA isn't looking for warez sites, and the IDSA isn't looking for ROM sites on the gopher:// protocol. Oh well, the clued already aren't using IE anyway, so no loss.

Protocol manager

[hackwrench]

What Microsoft should add is a protocol manager that shows all the protocols your system can access, whether it be through Microsoft or other 3rd party vendors like Real's prn protocol

Re:Gopher probably is poorly implemented..

[SirSlud]

And that's why IE 5.x was slimmed down and much faster than the old IE4

See, if you really think customer demand and usefulness doth an MS product make, you're just as bad as our conspiracy theorist. Of course it enters the equation. But if you think its the only factor, keep dreaming.

Customers dont know what to demand. Go ask your mother what the next feature of Windows should be. Most people dont know. I dont believe that MS and Intel have an agreement to push hardware requirements, however, the possibility that execs and project managers 'suggest' things to eath other (hey, keep that feature in there, whats the damage, or hey, we're thinking of do this and that, what do you think) doesn't require a conspiracy to influence the design decisions. And if you think glib, ignorant purely business strategy speak doesnt influence decision decisions suggests that your no less niave than he is conspiracy theorist.

Re:Backwards?

[hta]

are you sure that's the name spelled backwards? spelling it 'djupedal' looks more backwards to me ... :)

Americans......
"djupedal" means "deep valley" in Norwegian, and is a reasonably common surname.
American cultural imperialism is already imperiling the Norwegian heritage with given names like "Roger" and "Angela", but the surnames are still holding on against the flood.
Where is Ivar Aasen when you need him.....?

Re:No more gopher? What a cop out

[slide-rule]

... but lets be honest here; people are stupid, so there will be millions left vulnerable no matter what MS does because those millions are too ignorant to protect themselves.

Interesting (and depressing) thing occured last week here at work. Couple of us "linux" nuts were talking to a "windows" nut about the need to at least keep up on system patches, etc. Now, he's a very brilliant engineer and can get around in a computer system more so than you'd otherwise think when you heard his reply: "I don't care. I really don't." This even after we explained it wasn't about someone taking stuff from his system as much as it was about someone using his system to attack others. He is smart enough to do it, understands the repurcussions of not doing it, and still doesn't care. It was at this point that the couple pro-linux nuts in the discussion realized that there was honestly nothing we could say to move his opinion.

In other words, you have to figure that, as many clueless people are not patching their systems, our co-worker represents a large number of quite saavy people that are completely apathetic to wanting to be bothered. They don't have the interest to want to take the time; we can't reach these people using fear or logic. How, then, do we protect ourselves?