VLC is unbloated... unless you try to run it on a G3. On a 500MHz Pismo, it would almost completely lock up until the most recent versions, which merely pop up the "duhhh, I missed a lot of frames" message a lot. I understand that it has a lot of Altivec-optimized routines. Which is great if you have a G4 or G5.
I hate VLC on my laptop. I love VLC on my dual 1GHz MDD.
Not only that, but the patch requires a reboot to take effect. Not everybody can afford to reboot a server at just any old time. The above method prevents the worm from copying itself onto your machine without needing a reboot. Something like that isn't without precedent. The old internet worm of ages back could be prevented from spreading by simply adding a symbol to a library file.
However, it won't stop the worm from affecting your system. This morning I found copy & paste not working right in Mozilla, and Start->Settings->Network and Dial-up Connections just brought up an empty window. But there was no msblast.exe. Apparently I had been hit by the worm, but it wasn't able to use TFTP to copy over and run the code. (FWIW, I had installed the patch but not yet restarted the machine.)
So while that cheesy mkdir will probably prevent the worm from spreading (not a bad goal in itself), it apparently won't prevent the exploit from making your system flaky.
And Zed2K really needs to calm down and stop acting like such a know-it-all.
The original site is slashdotted, so here's an alternate picture of the technology in action. It's on geocities, so you'll have to enter the URL manually:
In this gun, the projectile is accelerated electromagnetically, by energy supplied from a rechargeable battery.
By that logic, a BB gun is accelerated by a mechanical spring, which is charged by energy supplied by a human arm... and guess what the human arm is powered by? Chemical reactions!
Now if someone could come up with a "nuclear battery" to put in this thing, then it would be totally legal. Woo hoo!
The article mentions that the original "just lasted one season in the late 1970s". While I admit that they might very badly want to forget about Galactica '80, the fact is that this turd, which had a plot that first appeared as a parody six months earlier in Cracked magazine (!), in fact was broadcast by ABC. NBC's short-lived and low-rated Quark was a much better show.
I'm sure I'm not the only kid who was scarred for life back in 1980 by this travesty inflicted upon humanity.
So now DDoS also means Distributed Distribution of Spam?
In one of the first of these that I saw back in May, the spammer apparently hadn't yet learned the art of using the Bcc: header, and all the addresses it was being sent to were clearly harvested from one newsgroup that I regularly read (and post in). That's how I knew it was spammed, and not just an "address book dipper" virus. And for some time, people have been spamming binaries pictures newsgroups with.exe attachments.
I'm glad to do my part in creating a diverse computing environment by running OS X instead of the leading virus-ridden OS. Is there any truth to the rumor that Microsoft is going to rename Outlook Express as ActiveVirus[tm]?:-)
I can see it for Servers and video editing/ graphics workstations.. but that's about it.
What do you think the purpose of the PowerMac line is? Just because XServe exists doesn't mean that suddenly you can't use a "regular" tower model as a server.
Also, 16-port switches may not be cheap, but an 8-port switch can be had for under $300.
You need to live close enough to a CO or in an area upgraded with a "remote terminal". If SBC only gives you 768K down, then your line probably isn't good enough for a full 1.5M down. 6M/384K is nice...if you're lucky to be close enough to the DSLAM.
Meanwhile, those of us not even using CPUs with the x86 instruction set laugh in your general direction. Thank you Steve Jobs.
You know, whenever I see an old Linux CD-ROM in a used book store or thrift store, it disturbs me when I think how many vulnerabilities are permanently etched as pits in the polycarbonate plastic.
I got a bunch of these today too. Looks like it goes through the victim's stored e-mail, picks a message at random, using the headers and a couple hundred bytes of the body, then spits it out with a copy of the worm attached. One of them that I got used the "Welcome to Outlook Express" message that appears in a fresh install of Outhouse.
This is a great way for the worm to get likely seeming messages to fool move victims.
The main thing to keep in mind is that all Powerbook trackpads, presumably even the current AlBook models, are... ADB! Yes, the venerable Apple Desktop Bus is still not quite dead yet. ADB never had a standard way to support a right mouse button, and always required driver software.
Wiring up a gutted USB mouse chip to a spare internal USB header is a pretty clever idea, if you (like me) don't give a rats ass about Bluetooth.
I'm a leftie and I have no problem with control being in the lower left corner of the keyboard. What I do have a big problem with is that stupid "Fn" key being there instead! And then having to go back to my desktop keyboard without a Fn key. I hardly ever use the stupid Fn key, but it's in a prominent place.
Yep, "zero-touch" and "membrane" keyboards may look real cool, but unless you like looking at your fingers while you type, it is absolutely horrible in practice. Without those nice bumps and valleys all over the place, it's practically impossible to type reliably.
For the young-uns out there, let me explain it in terms they can understand better. You know those cheap plastic DDR pads? And how sometimes your position drifts and you step on the "X" instead of the right arrow? This is the same thing, only with fingers. That's the problem with having no sense of feel to tell you where you are.
And how exactly can people buy more DVD-R media when it isn't there to be bought? Perhaps someone in the purchasing departments of those stores thinks it's less popular and is stocking less, but if it really was, they'd have a ton of unsold product. Unpopular products don't sell out almost instantly.
As for the shelf placement, you put the stuff that you want to sell on the "better" shelves. If people are going to bend over and strip the shelves bare of a product anyhow, why bother to put it in a prime location? Stores regularly sell endcap placement to vendors, and I'm starting to wonder whether Best Buy's placement of DVD+R/+RW on the top shelf (for the non-Americans out there, that top shelf is at about 3 feet height) hasn't been subsidized by someone.
To expand on my point, I had no trouble finding those 15-disc spindles of 2X Verbatim DVD-R when they were $3/disc. Then they lowered the price to $2/disc, and they literally vanished. Sometimes I can find them at the tiny Best Buy in San Marcos (halfway between Austin and San Antonio), which doesn't have big city customers to drain the stock as badly. I recently found there the only 50-spindle of 1X Memorex DVD-R that I have ever seen in stock at Best Buy, with zero Verbatim spindles nearby. Clearly people are buying them up wholesale as soon as they get a new supply in.
If you still aren't convinced, then you never will be.
Another thing that I noticed was that they local BestBuy and Compusa seem to be stocking more DVD+R than DVD-R. This was both writers and media. This as lead me to think that DVD+R is what people are buying.
If nobody is buying DVD-R, then why are Best Buy and CompUSA always out of stock? Gee, I always thought that lack of stock indicated more demand than supply. Either there is a lot of demand, or a severe shortage of supply.
It has the most hardware available for recording, and it is supported in more DVD drives and DVD players than DVD+R. DVD+R will soon fade from existance.
And whenever I got to a consumer electronics store, it's easy to find DVD+R discs, but any DVD-R discs at $2 or less are eternally out of stock. That suggests to me one of two things: either DVD-R is more popular and discs are being bought faster, or there's a Conspiracy[tm] from the DVD+R manufacturers to keep the Best Buys of the world from buying enough stock in the first place.
You know, it sort of looks like someone put a towel over his shoulders in preparation to give him a haircut. Okay, so I guess that's the kind of cape guys wore back then, but in this particular rendering it really looks like he's about to get a haircut.
By the way, one thing I didn't realize was already in the current money design is the face watermark. I just looked at a current design $50 and realized that I could see Grant's face on the right side of the bill as a watermark. (looks in wallet) Yep, Andy's face is a watermark on the $20 too.
You aren't old enough to remember the so-called "energy crisis" and lines at the gas pumps. His reptuation was bad enough that he didn't get re-elected. Except at least his bad rep was specifically due to performance, and not due to covering up a scandal.
For a president from that era, Ford is as good as any to choose from.
Back in the '80s they used to be printed on Hollerith cards, then they eventually changed to something resembling the current twenty, probably with at least one other variation in between. For a while after that, informational inserts with government checks were still printed on unpunched Hollerith card stock.
Slashdot Mirror
When I was a kid, all you had to do was tune in Mr. Rogers to see crayons being made.
I hate VLC on my laptop. I love VLC on my dual 1GHz MDD.
However, it won't stop the worm from affecting your system. This morning I found copy & paste not working right in Mozilla, and Start->Settings->Network and Dial-up Connections just brought up an empty window. But there was no msblast.exe. Apparently I had been hit by the worm, but it wasn't able to use TFTP to copy over and run the code. (FWIW, I had installed the patch but not yet restarted the machine.)
So while that cheesy mkdir will probably prevent the worm from spreading (not a bad goal in itself), it apparently won't prevent the exploit from making your system flaky.
And Zed2K really needs to calm down and stop acting like such a know-it-all.
http://geocities.yahoo.com.br/tmhp0/grupo/grupo114 .jpg
By that logic, a BB gun is accelerated by a mechanical spring, which is charged by energy supplied by a human arm... and guess what the human arm is powered by? Chemical reactions!
Now if someone could come up with a "nuclear battery" to put in this thing, then it would be totally legal. Woo hoo!
I'm sure I'm not the only kid who was scarred for life back in 1980 by this travesty inflicted upon humanity.
Iie, oshiri boushi to iimasu ne.
In one of the first of these that I saw back in May, the spammer apparently hadn't yet learned the art of using the Bcc: header, and all the addresses it was being sent to were clearly harvested from one newsgroup that I regularly read (and post in). That's how I knew it was spammed, and not just an "address book dipper" virus. And for some time, people have been spamming binaries pictures newsgroups with .exe attachments.
I'm glad to do my part in creating a diverse computing environment by running OS X instead of the leading virus-ridden OS. Is there any truth to the rumor that Microsoft is going to rename Outlook Express as ActiveVirus[tm]? :-)
What do you think the purpose of the PowerMac line is? Just because XServe exists doesn't mean that suddenly you can't use a "regular" tower model as a server.
Also, 16-port switches may not be cheap, but an 8-port switch can be had for under $300.
You need to live close enough to a CO or in an area upgraded with a "remote terminal". If SBC only gives you 768K down, then your line probably isn't good enough for a full 1.5M down. 6M/384K is nice...if you're lucky to be close enough to the DSLAM.
You know, whenever I see an old Linux CD-ROM in a used book store or thrift store, it disturbs me when I think how many vulnerabilities are permanently etched as pits in the polycarbonate plastic.
This is a great way for the worm to get likely seeming messages to fool move victims.
Oops. Except when I'm doing the PgUp/PgDn/Home/End stuff.
Wiring up a gutted USB mouse chip to a spare internal USB header is a pretty clever idea, if you (like me) don't give a rats ass about Bluetooth.
I'm a leftie and I have no problem with control being in the lower left corner of the keyboard. What I do have a big problem with is that stupid "Fn" key being there instead! And then having to go back to my desktop keyboard without a Fn key. I hardly ever use the stupid Fn key, but it's in a prominent place.
For the young-uns out there, let me explain it in terms they can understand better. You know those cheap plastic DDR pads? And how sometimes your position drifts and you step on the "X" instead of the right arrow? This is the same thing, only with fingers. That's the problem with having no sense of feel to tell you where you are.
As for the shelf placement, you put the stuff that you want to sell on the "better" shelves. If people are going to bend over and strip the shelves bare of a product anyhow, why bother to put it in a prime location? Stores regularly sell endcap placement to vendors, and I'm starting to wonder whether Best Buy's placement of DVD+R/+RW on the top shelf (for the non-Americans out there, that top shelf is at about 3 feet height) hasn't been subsidized by someone.
To expand on my point, I had no trouble finding those 15-disc spindles of 2X Verbatim DVD-R when they were $3/disc. Then they lowered the price to $2/disc, and they literally vanished. Sometimes I can find them at the tiny Best Buy in San Marcos (halfway between Austin and San Antonio), which doesn't have big city customers to drain the stock as badly. I recently found there the only 50-spindle of 1X Memorex DVD-R that I have ever seen in stock at Best Buy, with zero Verbatim spindles nearby. Clearly people are buying them up wholesale as soon as they get a new supply in.
If you still aren't convinced, then you never will be.
If nobody is buying DVD-R, then why are Best Buy and CompUSA always out of stock? Gee, I always thought that lack of stock indicated more demand than supply. Either there is a lot of demand, or a severe shortage of supply.
And whenever I got to a consumer electronics store, it's easy to find DVD+R discs, but any DVD-R discs at $2 or less are eternally out of stock. That suggests to me one of two things: either DVD-R is more popular and discs are being bought faster, or there's a Conspiracy[tm] from the DVD+R manufacturers to keep the Best Buys of the world from buying enough stock in the first place.
By the way, one thing I didn't realize was already in the current money design is the face watermark. I just looked at a current design $50 and realized that I could see Grant's face on the right side of the bill as a watermark. (looks in wallet) Yep, Andy's face is a watermark on the $20 too.
For a president from that era, Ford is as good as any to choose from.
Back in the '80s they used to be printed on Hollerith cards, then they eventually changed to something resembling the current twenty, probably with at least one other variation in between. For a while after that, informational inserts with government checks were still printed on unpunched Hollerith card stock.
I believe it dates all the way back to 1.0 in 1984. Now the big question: Did the Lisa do things this way?
They sure do, buried on the third floor of the arts building.
Mmmmm.... Bevo Burgers...