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Creative MP3 Players Ship With Virus

TheChillPill wrote to mention a Register article which reports that Creative has instituted a recall for some 5GB Zen Neeons. The reason? About 3,700 were shipped with the Wullik-B email worm. From the article: "Creative is reporting that the virus affects players with serial numbers between 1230528000001 and 1230533001680 that have shipped in Japan in late July. According to a translation of Creative's statement (in Japanese) on the security flap the firm has temporarily stopped shipping Zen Neeons players while its partners assist in the recall of the infected batch. The firm said it has identified the source of the outbreak and fixed the problem. Creative said the virus contamination issue was confined to Zen Neeons players and didn't affect any of its other products."

18 of 237 comments (clear)

  1. How many more times, Zonk??? by TripMaster+Monkey · · Score: 5, Insightful


    Article is yet another dupe....original article can be found here.

    Seriously, Zonk...this shit just isn't funny anymore. Perhaps you view your endless dupe posts as some sort of clever social commentary...or perhaps you've just taken a few too many sniffs of the huffing rag. Either way, we're getting pretty damned sick of it.

    Do us all a favor and resign. While you're at it, wipe your hard drive and smash your modem.

    --
    ____

    ~ |rip/\/\aster /\/\onkey

    1. Re:How many more times, Zonk??? by garcia · · Score: 5, Insightful

      It's not as if Zonk isn't being notified.

      Think I'll get modded redundant this time?

    2. Re:How many more times, Zonk??? by Zab+UvWxy · · Score: 1, Insightful

      And, sadly, the first poster - with a VALID comment - gets modded Redundant.

      *sigh*

      --
      "I don't get it." -- ObviousGuy
    3. Re:How many more times, Zonk??? by defkkon · · Score: 3, Insightful
      Article is yet another dupe....original article can be found here.

      Normally, I can't stand when people bitch and moan about duped stories. Sometimes they're duped from months ago, and even I forgot they were ever posted.

      Normally, I would moderate such bitchings as "Offtopic" or "Redundent".

      This time, I'm very disappointed. This was:
      a) Very, very, very recently posted already
      b) Was a very distinct headline to begin with, about a major corporate SNAFU and not relating to Google, Xbox 360 vs. PS3, Microsoft is teh evil!, etc.
      c) Generated a lot of healthy discussion - this wasn't a topic that got ignored the first time.

      Oh well, I guess its technically not hurting anyone. Its just annoying as hell.

      Ok, I'm done ranting. Go ahead and moderate me Offtopic or Redundent.

    4. Re:How many more times, Zonk??? by robslimo · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Has /. has ever pulled a story for being a dupe, hoax or otherwise bogus? ...thinkin' they ought to.

      OTOH, these blatent dupes seem to be one of the things that comprises slashdot's character. We certainly wouldn't want it to become a Fark clone or anything else as insipid.

    5. Re:How many more times, Zonk??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

      No, they just generally have one of the "editors" (Editors? Like they ever do anything even remotely worthy of that description. Approve-button-clicking monkeys could do the same job.) add a note to the story saying it's a dupe/hoax/etc, but usually it takes many hours. Often the story won't even be on the front page anymore when they do add the note.

    6. Re:How many more times, Zonk??? by d_54321 · · Score: 2, Insightful

      OK, yeah, it's a dupe, but

      a- the original article summary didn't mention an mp3 player. ("Creative Zens"? WTF's a Creative Zens? Who cares?!) I didn't give it a second glance and didn't know it was a dupe till just now

      b- the original article summary didn't mention serial numbers- NOR did the articles pointed to- this is very useful and important info. But yeah, that info should have been put in as a reply to the original post, just as the orinal post should have been clearer.

      ScuttleMonkey- you're not as bad as Zonk, but you're still a bad monkey.

    7. Re: How many more times, Zonk??? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Ah yes, forget about making Slashdot a better site. Why get involved? Why speak up? Something you don't like? Something could be improved? Well, don't actually DO anything about it, and don't even SAY anything. That'd be, like, judgmental and stuff. Just uncheck the unhappy option, and viola, problem "gone". This can be applied to problems at any level, personal to global! And always remember, communication is BAD because you'll probably offend some incompetent boob like Zonk.

      At least the OP hasn't sunk to your level of apathy.

  2. Dupe... once again by andersbergh · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Stop the dupes!

  3. No subscription for me by the_rev_matt · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It's been said a million times, but this is precisely why I won't pay for a slashdot subscription. Nor will I click on any ads. Even if I see an ad that looks interesting (which is fairly often, I'll open a new tab and browse there manually rather than give slashdot the traffic revenue. An occasional dupe is one thing, but when 25% of the stories on the front page are dupes from YESTERDAY, it's clear that OSDN doesn't give a shit about quality.

    --
    this is getting old and so are you

    blog

    1. Re:No subscription for me by tdsanchez · · Score: 2, Insightful

      Slashdot used to not suck. It seems when you add money and greed to -anything- it becomes a polished TURD.

    2. Re:No subscription for me by ediron2 · · Score: 4, Insightful
      I'm not responsible for the GP, but I'll play Devil's Advocate:

      Last time I checked, I don't get reimbursed for slashdot comments I make. Slashdot gets a few thousand comments per day, so that's several hundred man-hours of donated content they get per day.

      Meanwhile, half a dozen so-called editors have done very little to improve the site lately and only marginally more to improve editorial quality. There's the disconnect: They cover servers and bandwidth, we provide 99% of the content.

      Barrier to entry: being the behemoth it is, slashdot (like Microsoft) is partly to blame for the lack of competition. A lot of competitors have tried, few can get critical mass because everyone still uses slashdot.

      I paid (once!) for a subscription, but have watched slashdot editorial quality actually go down. Heck, even their new countermeasures suck: when I go out of my way to notify the editors of dupes or egregious factual errors, they make tabloid-caliber alterations ("WidgetCo is dead!" becomes "Is WidgetCo Dead?") rather than fix or cancel the news story outright.

      To carry the Microsoft analogy a step further, being forced by circumstances into depending on Slashdot, I'll find ways to rebel. I go out of my way to avoid enriching Microsoft, whenever some small step is possible. This ranges from avoiding MSN and other Microsoft products, to advocating alternatives whenever company needs are flexible enough. Dialing down my subscription settings and bypassing Slashdot's ad revenue would be an equivalent protest against Slashdot editorial laziness.

      Given the above, boycotting Slashdot stands a better chance of helping *my* situation than the alternatives.

      Now, how am I'm selfish when I donate my writing without compensation? How am I being selfish when I punish a vendor that refuses to improve after an implicit contract for improvements was made with my donation? How exactly am I being selfish to deny that same vendor any additional income from advertising to me? I AM being selfish to want slashdot to either fix itself or die, but it is a selfishness that is the utter essence of capitalism or evolution: things should have more than marketing or inertia as their means of existing.

      If none of that sways you, it'll probably not matter if you reread your rant, changing context to Microsoft (or the RIAA) and adjust the circumstances:

      " Are you seriously that self centered that you can't even leave your browser homepage on MSN, after all Microsoft and IE do for you? Nobody is asking you to use Microsoft by any means. I've never heard anyone bitch so much about something that is completely free to them."
      or
      "... but to be such an asshole as to listen to the radio and yet go out of your way to not support the RIAA labels, that's just bulls**t."
      (disclosure: the above opinions weren't mine until 5 minutes ago, probably won't be 10 minutes from now. Why? See Devil's Advocate. I own 10 shares of Microsoft. I donated to Slashdot. Neither gives me any satisfaction.)
  4. Dear Slashdot, by sootman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You know, with just the tiniest bit of effort, it would be SO easy for you not to suck out loud.
    - take two seconds to see if a story has been posted before. sounds hard, but I hear computers can do amazing things these days.
    - proofread submissions. you're allowed to change them. you know, like an editor.
    - don't put an obnoxious slant on every little thing. more reporting, less commentary. if you have something to say, I hear slashdot allows comments nowadays. (comments, commentary... hmm. note to self, investigate possible connection.)
    - cache. for fuck's sake, it's not funny anymore. if you don't want to put yourselves at risk, use coral or a similar service. They exist for a reason.
    - contact small sites. which would you rather do: "scoop" other sites by an hour and reduce the server to molten rubble after 15 minutes, or contact the admin ahead of time and post the story two hours later? this is what separates responsible adults from behaviorally-challenged fuckwads.
    - and once you've earned some credibility back,
    - ???
    - Profit! Until then, I refuse to pay to subscribe until you behave like a responsible outfit. one you quit behaving like retarded woms, I'll happily subscribe, knowing that you're a great source of links to interesting stories that I *didn't* see two days ago on the same site.

    --
    Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
  5. Dupe Checker? by ackthpt · · Score: 2, Insightful
    Article is yet another dupe

    I'm disgustipated.

    I can't post from home because some crud-bucket on my ISP has misbehaved and slashdot is blocking me from posting there. Such creativity and innovation! Examples:

    • Bar posting due to a spate of negative mods (never mind net total is positive.)
    • Time delay for initial post
    • Time delay between posts, longer for AC
    • Content check for CAPS, too few letters per line, oddball characters appear too often, etc.
    YET(!) no dupe checking code to help the editors avoid this common pitfall. You can see where the priorities lay.
    --

    A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
  6. "dupe"? by abiessu · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Normally I'd side with all those screaming "DUPE!", but this is a new article on theregister about this issue (1200 GMT 2005-09-01), so it's not like the links or even the summary are duped. Especially since this time they're talking about the recall rather than the discovery of the virus.

    As an aside, what was up with the first article? A link to a babelfish translation... was no english version available? If that's all we had two or three days ago, it seems to me that this new article reference is a good thing.

    --
    Let S_n = {nst+us+vt : s,t in Z \ {0}, u,v in {-1,1}}. For all n in Z where |n| > 2, Z \ S_n is infinite... right?
  7. When "News for Netrds" Mattered by amichalo · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I have resisted bandwagoning the dupe article issue but my spin is a little different...

    How do the dupe articles make it through when I submit articles that get rejected - like news on non-volitile MRAM replacing volitile DRAM and how Freescale is getting closer and closer to this being reality.

    That's something nerds can sink their teath into, but the editors reject it for "more of the same".

    --
    I only came here to do two things; kick some ass, and drink some beer...looks like we're almost out of beer.
  8. We wouldn't all be saying dupe if... by David+Rolfe · · Score: 2, Insightful

    We wouldn't all be saying dupe if the title wasn't:

    Creative MP3 Players Ship With Virus
    Zonk in Slashdot

    The last one was titled:

    Creative Zens Ship with Worms
    ScuttleMonkey in Slashdot

    Now, what would maybe make this not a dupe, or would irritate me less, is if the new title was "Creative Announces Recall for Infected Players" (including text like "Tuesday we reported that Creative sucked, but today ...". At that point it would seem like this is a followup and not just another indication that the editors don't even read their own site.

    --
    Read Heinlein's 1953 Revolt in 2100, now more than ever.