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Creative Zens Ship with Worms
An anonymous reader writes "Engadget reports about 3700 Creative Zen "Neeons" shipped with a virus. The virus in question was the W32.Wullik.B@mm worm. Creative released a statement today to help consumers pinpoint the possibly effected devices."
It's a fair point, but I suppose a key difference is that if the car makers released a defective product, people could die because of it. Having to re-install Windows is a pain, sure, but no-one dies.
Cue posts about hospitals running Windows... ok, in certain circs there is a valid agrument. I don't think you can stretch it to cover the average Joe. A refund might be nice, though.
Is this virus on the software/driver CD or the actual device itself?
If it's on the device, how is it running on the zen, since I'd imagine the zen doesn't run windows, and how does it get from the zen to the operating system? (Wouldn't a zen be just like a bulk transfer device or something, and require the user to download and run the virus from it?)
Should Creative be given a hard enough pranging to get the attention of other software manufacturers?
If we treat MS the same way, they'll have a valid reason to NEVER ship LongHorn. After a decade, they still can't get out code that DOESN'T NEED an anti-virus out of the box. Methinks Creative chose a wrong platform for their device.
If you keep throwing chairs, one day you'll break windows....
Well this doesn't exactly help Creative Zen being marketed as an "iPod Killer". 3,700 of them. Ouch.
IBM is running its new 90-nm microelectronics fab (in Fishkill, NY) entirely on Linux. So if it's feasible for a plant of that complexity, it should be feasible for a small assembly plant such as Zen Creative's.
Feasible, yes, cost effective or prudent... not necessarily. All the IBM example shows is that IBM, a company with a vast wealth of Linux resources, has invested their energies in creating a production process based on Linux for one of their most costly and complex environments. For a simple production process the cost in developing the Linux solution may not outweigh the benefits of alternative solutions. Also, that cost of development of the solution may become prohibitive if a wealth of expert Linux admins and developers is needed to develop and maintain the solution. Then again... maybe not.
The point is without real data behind what was deployed, how it was deployed, the benefits of the deployment, etc... you can't really determine if Linux makes sense for Creative.
I suspect better security management, particularly isolation of their Windows boxes involved in the production process, should substantially reduce the risk of this happening again.
you are clearly the most retarded dumb fuck around
..for a product vying a piece of personal hdd-based players dominated by iPod, this is bad news.
Creative may try to position itself as the player with replaceable battery (hence longer life), has few more quirks (such as allowing you to move files across computers, rather than going the iTunes way), however, iPod still remains the benchmark in usability and style (the USP of iPod).
Till they manage to one-up the market leader with innovative design or something special, such glitches will always render it as also-ran
http://efil.blogspot.com/
Why is this modded Flamebait? Wasn't the command shell withdrawn from LongHorn bcos of the proof-of-concept virus from F-Secure? The beta of LongHornn aka Vista includes an anti-virus built-in. What does this say of the product quality?
Qu'est-ce-que tu fumes? The cost of developing a Linux solution from scratch is the same as the cost of developing a Windows solution from scratch. The cost of developing a Linux solution decreases with every similarity between an existing Linux solution and the one you are developing, whereas the vendors of Windows solutions will charge you the same for changing one line as for developing from scratch.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
Perhaps. But a computer virus can infest many many systems.
A car accident can only propagate so far. Just hope that someday when one of us is in the hospital, a virus doesn't get into their system and scramble our info in the data base or delay a blood transfusion.
Not true at all. There have been cases in history where hardware could fail because of a certain execution in software. So, what if your Operating System causes a hardware fault.. Say a flaw in windows causes a certain part of the motherboard to over heat and it causes a fire which burns a house down and kills two adults and 3 children. Should they be liable then?
The hardware manufacturer. At no point should safety be driven by software. The hardware should be designed so that any exception cases do not produce a safety hazard. If a hardware manufacturer placed a product into the market and one of the machine states would cause a hazard, they would be liable. If the hardware can burn, shock, or do anything hazardous, it is up to the hardware to mitigate that problem.
Remember, You are unique...just like everyone else.
no your looking at it all wrong. When a car is broke, people die. But when a computer is down people lose money. Which one is worse in the corp eye again?
Well this doesn't suprise me as, by the desing of the Zen, Creative have already shown that they don't have a clue.
For fricks sake the Zen is Windows only and requires propietary drivers to talk to it (yes I know there's a Linux project that does this but Creative themselves don't supoprt anything other than Windows) Guess what Creative, THERE ARE OTHER OPERATING SYSTEMS ON THE PLANET.
Come on how hard can it be to make a device that supports direct access to its filesystem in the manner of a USB pen drive coupled with the ability of the device to play any media files found within its file system ? Maybe the designers could also be really clever (tm) and hold your playlists etc. in a small database held within the filesystem ? (wowee they could even use XML text files)
So why the hell is it that these wretched portable hard disk players all seem to feature yet another propietary file system ? Sorry that's just awful, awful, shitty design. Once again manufacturers choose to reinvent the wheel poorly instead of reusing existing, proven technologies to good effect.
Sheesh. Creative Zens suck enough already but now they come with bundled viruses.
Creative are clueless. Utterly clueless.
Sky subscribers are morons. They pay to be advertised at !
Free != Included in the price
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
So they recalled it because they (the hardware manufacturer) could be held accountable. That's exactly the point.
Yeah, that was my thought. As if the laundry wouldn't cool off to a large degree on the way home, anyway. If the laundry's cool enough not to melt/burn through the bags on the way home (the type of bag was not made clear) then it's not going to set your home on fire.
Unless you place it directly on top of your toaster that's broken and stuck in the "down" position.
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