Executables are frequently distributed inside compressed archives (eg, ZIP files) in order to prevent email filters from automatically removing them as "dangerous file types." There are ZIP extensions and TAR natively includes UNIX privileges, so there'd be no need to chmod +x malware, as the decompression utility would do it automatically.
To the best of my knowledge, none of these formats will set the setuid bit, though, so from there you'd either need to get the user to run it as root (sudo malware) or, much more likely, use a local root exploit.
I don't know how the GNOME/KDE "sudo" interactive applications are used, but it's probably possible malware could simply use that to ask for root privileges. Home users would almost certainly have sudo access if only to be able to run software updates as well as install new software.
In short, Linux won't make users any smarter. They could still be tricked into running malicious software - although it would likely involve more steps, which may help prevent problems.
Oh please, that is a grossly unfair criticism. What exactly are we supposed to do? Declare war on China if they don't legislate improved working conditions?
I dunno, maybe something slightly less severe, like not making them our "preferred trading partner?" Something along the lines of refusing to trade with countries that don't have some minimum standard of working conditions?
And, yes, I know that means we'd have to pay more for consumer goods. It's still a much less costly option than trying to invade China.
First off, while I loved the original Armored Core, the series has kind of lost its way since then, and AC4 has gotten some really mediocre reviews.
Secondly, you can also get it for the Xbox 360 so that's hardly a compelling reason to get a PS3. Especially since AC4 for the Xbox 360 makes use of Live, which is missing on the PS3 side.
This is basically IBM showing off the Cell. The fact that it's using PS3s is basically incidental. I expect the choice to use the PS3 is really only because the PS3 is an existing hardware platform that runs Linux on the Cell.
This really says nothing about the PS3 as a game console and really only suggests that the Cell might some day make a good CPU to base a render-farm after. But that's about it.
So, somewhat interesting from a tech standpoint, but it says nothing about the PS3 as a game console.
You don't get Comcast for $30/month either. I'm currently paying something like $110/month for Comcast, although that includes cable. According to my bill it's something like $50/month for just the cable internet portion, and $60/month for the TV.
Given the quality of service (ha!) that you get from Comcast, I'm beginning to think I might want to find a different ISP. Too bad my only other choice is Verizon, who have yet to provide me with working phone service.
I actually looked this up a while ago. The short answer is yes, Windows will indeed auto-run a USB flash drive. The longer answer is that making it auto-run a flash drive involves some special setup of the USB drive, so if you just dump an autorun.inf file onto a USB flash drive nothing will happen.
Windows will only auto-run media that marks itself as "fixed" when it's queried. You can find details in this FAQ from Microsoft. (Note: there's no direct anchor to the question, so you'll need to scroll up two questions from the anchor I linked to.)
I'm not sure if it's possible to make any flash drive into a "fixed" device, but there have to be "special" drives designed to allow autorun, so plugging in random USB flash drives is definitely a bad idea - at least under Windows.
I expect the price is more or less to decrease demand. There's only so much space available and they can only allow in so many people, so they want to price it to the point where the demand matches the supply.
Or, in other words, it's to keep people like you out.:P
Well, I've had the chance to test it now. Internet Explorer (well, version 6, at least) in fact does download the ANI file anyway even when it's been overridden. I'm guessing it in fact downloads all related CSS resources even if they're never used.
Unfortunately I can't test if IE is actually vulnerable with the stylesheet in place because I'm behind a firewall that prevents me from getting any of the proof-of-concept files. So if someone else wants to test it, let me know.
Yes, but not quite the way you say - you'd want to override the cursor on all elements.
The CSS override would be fairly simple:
* { cursor: text !important; } /* The next rule returns links to being the little hand cursor: */ a { cursor: pointer !important; }
That overrides the cursor on all elements. The !important is important - the user-specified stylesheet is by default overridden by local pages. However, pages can't override !important rules in the user stylesheet.
However, I have not checked to make sure that using that stylesheet will actually prevent IE from downloading the cursor. For all I know it will still attempt to download the cursor anyway and still be vulnerable.
There's also this complaint about the bug which has several responses on whether or not it was really Firefox's fault that users installed to "C:\" or "C:\Program Files".
The current installer behavior was in response to these reports.
That's a very dangerous option to offer. There were stories about how Mozilla's uninstaller would delete your entire harddrive based due to exactly that option.
What would happen is that people would install Mozilla to "C:\" and later uninstall Mozilla. The uninstaller would give them the option to delete the original install directory, and then: presto, massive file delete. (Of course, you have to wonder why anyone would install to "C:\" but apparently enough people did.)
In short, it's always best to check each and every file you installed to make sure it hasn't been modified since install prior to deleting it. Otherwise you risk accidentally deleting files the user doesn't want deleted.
What are you talking about? Windows COMES with Paint, with Linux, you're stuck with this thing called GIMP.
Wait, what are we talking about? I'm confused now.
(Seriously, when I first read the article headline, I thought they did mean MS Paint and couldn't figure out why that would help with network protection. Then I read the summary and figured it out.)
We may not have a TV show, but we have something better: online petitions.
That was hilarious. The rest? Not as much. I think their humor was a little too subtle and poorly executed - the people making the jokes weren't comedians (Al Franken's a politician, right?).
So, not the funniest thing ever, but still mildly amusing. They were obviously trying to be funny, but didn't quite succeed, and so they sounded more like people who simply didn't get the joke than people who were really just advertising for the Colbert Report.
Which is obviously why Viacom had to try and take it down. No one but Viacom is allowed to advertise their shows. If you so much as mention their show... oh crap. Gotta go.
That, and Sony kinda sorta killed support for FFXI on current PS2 models. I'm not sure Square Enix ever really forgave them for that.
Plus FFXI is already cross-platform for the PS2 (with hard drive), Xbox 360 (with hard drive), and PC (with Windows). So they've had some experience going cross platform before. (Although given how crappy the FFXI port on the PC remains, I hope they've learned some lessons...)
In any case, I think there's a very real chance that FFXIII could be released for the Xbox 360. It wouldn't be the first time a Final Fantasy was released on the Xbox 360.
Actual wireless makes sense if you are in an apartment or a place that you do not own. But if you own it and your house is less than 50 years old and you run wireless, then the person is either lazy or a total idiot.
Or if you use a laptop and don't feel like being tethered to your desk.
I have an apartment, and my desktop, TiVo, and PS2 are all hooked up by wires (that run along one wall), but I still have wireless enabled: it's for laptop/Nintendo DS use.
I can, of course, also plug the laptop in directly via a wired connection, but then it'd be tethered to my desk. So instead I use wireless, and can use the laptop all over my apartment. Wireless is more for mobile device use than for simply avoiding having to run wires.
You speak of $500 like it was nothing. But it's not - at this point, I could either buy an HDTV or a PS3, but not both.
The simple reality is that while I could probably find a way to buy an HDTV, I don't think it's worth the cost. I can come up with a nice long list of things I'd rather spend money on than an HDTV. It's just not that important to me for me to be willing to spend money on it.
Maybe in a year when prices have come down and I have more money available to spend. But right now, there are quite a few things I'd rather spend money on than an HDTV. If I ever really want HD video, I have a computer monitor that's more than capable of displaying high-def video. Now if only the content producers would let me...
Wow. The webpage they released the list on - wow. Just - wow. So bad.
Each of the letters executes a POST request, so you can't simply go Back after going Next, since it's a POST request. Next up, the "previous" and "next" links turn out to go to the current page, but read "?page=previous" and "?page=back". So they store the actual page in the session.
Ultimately: you can't use the back and forward button in your browser to go to the previous page.
But this has another side effect, which I can't help but expect that Sony intended: it's impossible to link to a given page or game. So while I can say that Final Fantasy X is marked as having "noticeable issues," I can't actually link to it. You'd have to navigate to it manually, through each page.
When it was originally bought, it was kept off to the side of my desk, so it was being used almost like a traditional computer CRT, and considering that TV resolution is fairly comparable with 640x480, it was fine for that.
It's a little worse now that I've got it set up in a more traditional "entertainment style" setting, but I wind up playing games closer to it than I watch TV, so it works for me.
First off, that's $400, thanks to the mail-in rebate, and secondly, I never said I couldn't (I certainly could), I just don't plan to.
I expect that at some point I'll get a new TV and it'll be an HDTV model. But up until this point, I've never had a good reason to upgrade, and the PS3 isn't enough to make me want to upgrade.
Especially because that would turn a $600 purchase into a $1000 purchase, something I'm not willing to do.
I was going to go with something snarky about the price of the PS3, but I've decided to instead make a more direct point.
I don't have an HDTV. As I understand it, the major selling point of the PS3 is its new HD graphics. I currently have no plans on getting an HDTV. So, sell me on why I should get a PS3 given that I have a 13" CRT TV. Would it still be worth it? Will I still be able to play all the same games that HDTV players can? Or will I have to suffer unreadable text or HUD elements that are too small to understand?
Or, can I hook up the PS3 output to my computer monitor using DVI? Right now I'm more willing to upgrade my computer monitor than my TV, so that might work for me, especially given that my TV is smaller than my computer monitor.
Honestly, the lack of an HDTV is the largest reason I'm uninterested in the PS3 right now. There are other reasons, of course, but I'm sure that they'll be brought up plenty of times by other trolls. Uh, I mean, other posters.:)
You do realize that the videos you linked to are for LittleBigPlanet, which is most certainly not free (but definitely is optional, as it's a game), and not for PlayStation Second Live, right?
Sorry, "PlayStation Home" - it's just so similar to both Second Life and Xbox Live, I get it confused...
It appears to be basically a Second Life ripoff, except they've taken out most of the customization ability and replaced it with the ability to purchase someone else's customizations (unless you have a developers license).
You've missed one part, the reason I've taken to calling it "PlayStation Second Live": it also adds in the Xbox Live matchmaking features into a Second Life-like environment.
Now either this is the world's worst idea (ever tried to form a group in an MMORPG using only local chat?), or the entire Second Life ripoff part is pointless, because all you'll ever do is launch the matchmaking tool and ignore the 3D stuff happening behind it.
The OP may be been a bit unclear, but his subject line is right: if Sony doesn't drop the price, the PS3 will die. PlayStation Second Live won't be able to save it. (And sounds like the world's dumbest idea if you ask me: it's like Xbox Live, but harder and slower to use! Yay!)
I currently don't own any next-gen console. My current-gen console is a PS2. I'm probably going to pick up a Wii at some point and borrow some GameCube games. But when it comes to the Xbox 360 and the PS3, it comes down to two things: games, and price.
Currently, the Xbox 360 doesn't have any games that really interest me enough for me to be interested in buying the console. The PS3 is even worse. However, the Xbox 360 does have some interesting games on the horizon, and while the PS3 does too, I'm more willing to spend $400 + games than $600 + games. If the PS3 doesn't drop in price soon (like, this summer), it will die. The people sitting on the fence will find that eventually the Xbox 360 games become worth the price. If the Xbox 360 drops in price to $200/$300 and the PS3 remains $500/$600, then forget it - it becomes a no-brainer, the Xbox 360 wins. And if that happens, then the PS3-exclusive games I'm interested in will almost certainly move to the Xbox 360, because that's where all the gamers are.
Sony has to drop the price, and drop it soon, or their market will just dry up. A crappy Second Life knock-off (even with Fast Weapon Swap and the ability to exploit other avatar's weak points for massive damage) isn't enough to make me spend $600 on a console. It's the games that count, and right now, the PS3 just doesn't have them. There's a kind of game/cost ratio that they have to meet in order to sell, and if the Xbox 360 finds the winning ratio first, the PS3 will lose.
And I'll point out that Miyamoto didn't spend his talk taking credit for other people's inventions, like the Sony keynote did.
Plus there's little doubt that the Wii has some great titles coming up, but the only title I can think of for the PS3 that isn't a sequel to a PS2 title is LittleBigPlanet, and that's only because it was mentioned in yesterday's story. Other than that (and the mass of PS2 sequels that are all still vapor) I can't think of any PS3 games coming out soon.
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Executables are frequently distributed inside compressed archives (eg, ZIP files) in order to prevent email filters from automatically removing them as "dangerous file types." There are ZIP extensions and TAR natively includes UNIX privileges, so there'd be no need to chmod +x malware, as the decompression utility would do it automatically.
To the best of my knowledge, none of these formats will set the setuid bit, though, so from there you'd either need to get the user to run it as root (sudo malware) or, much more likely, use a local root exploit.
I don't know how the GNOME/KDE "sudo" interactive applications are used, but it's probably possible malware could simply use that to ask for root privileges. Home users would almost certainly have sudo access if only to be able to run software updates as well as install new software.
In short, Linux won't make users any smarter. They could still be tricked into running malicious software - although it would likely involve more steps, which may help prevent problems.
I dunno, maybe something slightly less severe, like not making them our "preferred trading partner?" Something along the lines of refusing to trade with countries that don't have some minimum standard of working conditions?
And, yes, I know that means we'd have to pay more for consumer goods. It's still a much less costly option than trying to invade China.
First off, while I loved the original Armored Core, the series has kind of lost its way since then, and AC4 has gotten some really mediocre reviews.
Secondly, you can also get it for the Xbox 360 so that's hardly a compelling reason to get a PS3. Especially since AC4 for the Xbox 360 makes use of Live, which is missing on the PS3 side.
This is basically IBM showing off the Cell. The fact that it's using PS3s is basically incidental. I expect the choice to use the PS3 is really only because the PS3 is an existing hardware platform that runs Linux on the Cell.
This really says nothing about the PS3 as a game console and really only suggests that the Cell might some day make a good CPU to base a render-farm after. But that's about it.
So, somewhat interesting from a tech standpoint, but it says nothing about the PS3 as a game console.
You don't get Comcast for $30/month either. I'm currently paying something like $110/month for Comcast, although that includes cable. According to my bill it's something like $50/month for just the cable internet portion, and $60/month for the TV.
Given the quality of service (ha!) that you get from Comcast, I'm beginning to think I might want to find a different ISP. Too bad my only other choice is Verizon, who have yet to provide me with working phone service.
I actually looked this up a while ago. The short answer is yes, Windows will indeed auto-run a USB flash drive. The longer answer is that making it auto-run a flash drive involves some special setup of the USB drive, so if you just dump an autorun.inf file onto a USB flash drive nothing will happen.
Windows will only auto-run media that marks itself as "fixed" when it's queried. You can find details in this FAQ from Microsoft. (Note: there's no direct anchor to the question, so you'll need to scroll up two questions from the anchor I linked to.)
I'm not sure if it's possible to make any flash drive into a "fixed" device, but there have to be "special" drives designed to allow autorun, so plugging in random USB flash drives is definitely a bad idea - at least under Windows.
I expect the price is more or less to decrease demand. There's only so much space available and they can only allow in so many people, so they want to price it to the point where the demand matches the supply.
Or, in other words, it's to keep people like you out. :P
Well, I've had the chance to test it now. Internet Explorer (well, version 6, at least) in fact does download the ANI file anyway even when it's been overridden. I'm guessing it in fact downloads all related CSS resources even if they're never used.
Unfortunately I can't test if IE is actually vulnerable with the stylesheet in place because I'm behind a firewall that prevents me from getting any of the proof-of-concept files. So if someone else wants to test it, let me know.
Yes, but not quite the way you say - you'd want to override the cursor on all elements.
The CSS override would be fairly simple:
That overrides the cursor on all elements. The !important is important - the user-specified stylesheet is by default overridden by local pages. However, pages can't override !important rules in the user stylesheet.
However, I have not checked to make sure that using that stylesheet will actually prevent IE from downloading the cursor. For all I know it will still attempt to download the cursor anyway and still be vulnerable.
Well, specifically, on Slashdot...
It was with versions prior to 1.0.1, according to this comment on the "bug" - it also provides several useful links.
There's also this complaint about the bug which has several responses on whether or not it was really Firefox's fault that users installed to "C:\" or "C:\Program Files".
The current installer behavior was in response to these reports.
That's a very dangerous option to offer. There were stories about how Mozilla's uninstaller would delete your entire harddrive based due to exactly that option.
What would happen is that people would install Mozilla to "C:\" and later uninstall Mozilla. The uninstaller would give them the option to delete the original install directory, and then: presto, massive file delete. (Of course, you have to wonder why anyone would install to "C:\" but apparently enough people did.)
In short, it's always best to check each and every file you installed to make sure it hasn't been modified since install prior to deleting it. Otherwise you risk accidentally deleting files the user doesn't want deleted.
What are you talking about? Windows COMES with Paint, with Linux, you're stuck with this thing called GIMP.
Wait, what are we talking about? I'm confused now.
(Seriously, when I first read the article headline, I thought they did mean MS Paint and couldn't figure out why that would help with network protection. Then I read the summary and figured it out.)
I dunno, some of it was hilarious:
That was hilarious. The rest? Not as much. I think their humor was a little too subtle and poorly executed - the people making the jokes weren't comedians (Al Franken's a politician, right?).
So, not the funniest thing ever, but still mildly amusing. They were obviously trying to be funny, but didn't quite succeed, and so they sounded more like people who simply didn't get the joke than people who were really just advertising for the Colbert Report.
Which is obviously why Viacom had to try and take it down. No one but Viacom is allowed to advertise their shows. If you so much as mention their show ... oh crap. Gotta go.
That, and Sony kinda sorta killed support for FFXI on current PS2 models. I'm not sure Square Enix ever really forgave them for that.
Plus FFXI is already cross-platform for the PS2 (with hard drive), Xbox 360 (with hard drive), and PC (with Windows). So they've had some experience going cross platform before. (Although given how crappy the FFXI port on the PC remains, I hope they've learned some lessons...)
In any case, I think there's a very real chance that FFXIII could be released for the Xbox 360. It wouldn't be the first time a Final Fantasy was released on the Xbox 360.
(Although, again, the FFXI port kinda sucked.)
Or if you use a laptop and don't feel like being tethered to your desk.
I have an apartment, and my desktop, TiVo, and PS2 are all hooked up by wires (that run along one wall), but I still have wireless enabled: it's for laptop/Nintendo DS use.
I can, of course, also plug the laptop in directly via a wired connection, but then it'd be tethered to my desk. So instead I use wireless, and can use the laptop all over my apartment. Wireless is more for mobile device use than for simply avoiding having to run wires.
You speak of $500 like it was nothing. But it's not - at this point, I could either buy an HDTV or a PS3, but not both.
The simple reality is that while I could probably find a way to buy an HDTV, I don't think it's worth the cost. I can come up with a nice long list of things I'd rather spend money on than an HDTV. It's just not that important to me for me to be willing to spend money on it.
Maybe in a year when prices have come down and I have more money available to spend. But right now, there are quite a few things I'd rather spend money on than an HDTV. If I ever really want HD video, I have a computer monitor that's more than capable of displaying high-def video. Now if only the content producers would let me...
Wow. The webpage they released the list on - wow. Just - wow. So bad.
Each of the letters executes a POST request, so you can't simply go Back after going Next, since it's a POST request. Next up, the "previous" and "next" links turn out to go to the current page, but read "?page=previous" and "?page=back". So they store the actual page in the session.
Ultimately: you can't use the back and forward button in your browser to go to the previous page.
But this has another side effect, which I can't help but expect that Sony intended: it's impossible to link to a given page or game. So while I can say that Final Fantasy X is marked as having "noticeable issues," I can't actually link to it. You'd have to navigate to it manually, through each page.
When it was originally bought, it was kept off to the side of my desk, so it was being used almost like a traditional computer CRT, and considering that TV resolution is fairly comparable with 640x480, it was fine for that.
It's a little worse now that I've got it set up in a more traditional "entertainment style" setting, but I wind up playing games closer to it than I watch TV, so it works for me.
First off, that's $400, thanks to the mail-in rebate, and secondly, I never said I couldn't (I certainly could), I just don't plan to.
I expect that at some point I'll get a new TV and it'll be an HDTV model. But up until this point, I've never had a good reason to upgrade, and the PS3 isn't enough to make me want to upgrade.
Especially because that would turn a $600 purchase into a $1000 purchase, something I'm not willing to do.
I was going to go with something snarky about the price of the PS3, but I've decided to instead make a more direct point.
I don't have an HDTV. As I understand it, the major selling point of the PS3 is its new HD graphics. I currently have no plans on getting an HDTV. So, sell me on why I should get a PS3 given that I have a 13" CRT TV. Would it still be worth it? Will I still be able to play all the same games that HDTV players can? Or will I have to suffer unreadable text or HUD elements that are too small to understand?
Or, can I hook up the PS3 output to my computer monitor using DVI? Right now I'm more willing to upgrade my computer monitor than my TV, so that might work for me, especially given that my TV is smaller than my computer monitor.
Honestly, the lack of an HDTV is the largest reason I'm uninterested in the PS3 right now. There are other reasons, of course, but I'm sure that they'll be brought up plenty of times by other trolls. Uh, I mean, other posters. :)
Hmm... Sony pretending that something that's been around forever is something new and exciting because it involves the PS3? Surely you jest!
(Sorry, sorry, I know, cheap shot. I just couldn't resist.)
You do realize that the videos you linked to are for LittleBigPlanet, which is most certainly not free (but definitely is optional, as it's a game), and not for PlayStation Second Live, right?
Sorry, "PlayStation Home" - it's just so similar to both Second Life and Xbox Live, I get it confused...
You've missed one part, the reason I've taken to calling it "PlayStation Second Live": it also adds in the Xbox Live matchmaking features into a Second Life-like environment.
Now either this is the world's worst idea (ever tried to form a group in an MMORPG using only local chat?), or the entire Second Life ripoff part is pointless, because all you'll ever do is launch the matchmaking tool and ignore the 3D stuff happening behind it.
In any case: "PlayStation Second Live".
The OP may be been a bit unclear, but his subject line is right: if Sony doesn't drop the price, the PS3 will die. PlayStation Second Live won't be able to save it. (And sounds like the world's dumbest idea if you ask me: it's like Xbox Live, but harder and slower to use! Yay!)
I currently don't own any next-gen console. My current-gen console is a PS2. I'm probably going to pick up a Wii at some point and borrow some GameCube games. But when it comes to the Xbox 360 and the PS3, it comes down to two things: games, and price.
Currently, the Xbox 360 doesn't have any games that really interest me enough for me to be interested in buying the console. The PS3 is even worse. However, the Xbox 360 does have some interesting games on the horizon, and while the PS3 does too, I'm more willing to spend $400 + games than $600 + games. If the PS3 doesn't drop in price soon (like, this summer), it will die. The people sitting on the fence will find that eventually the Xbox 360 games become worth the price. If the Xbox 360 drops in price to $200/$300 and the PS3 remains $500/$600, then forget it - it becomes a no-brainer, the Xbox 360 wins. And if that happens, then the PS3-exclusive games I'm interested in will almost certainly move to the Xbox 360, because that's where all the gamers are.
Sony has to drop the price, and drop it soon, or their market will just dry up. A crappy Second Life knock-off (even with Fast Weapon Swap and the ability to exploit other avatar's weak points for massive damage) isn't enough to make me spend $600 on a console. It's the games that count, and right now, the PS3 just doesn't have them. There's a kind of game/cost ratio that they have to meet in order to sell, and if the Xbox 360 finds the winning ratio first, the PS3 will lose.
And I'll point out that Miyamoto didn't spend his talk taking credit for other people's inventions, like the Sony keynote did.
Plus there's little doubt that the Wii has some great titles coming up, but the only title I can think of for the PS3 that isn't a sequel to a PS2 title is LittleBigPlanet, and that's only because it was mentioned in yesterday's story. Other than that (and the mass of PS2 sequels that are all still vapor) I can't think of any PS3 games coming out soon.