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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?)
..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/
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?