Two of those I'll be able to play right away, one is gonna take some cash on a new system.
Some of you were complaining that it is going to be a year of sequels. Well guess what, it's all been done before and it's no different from any of the other entertainment mediums: tv, movies, books. Get used to the feeling, it's called getting older.:) Call me a fanboy, but I for one don't mind playing sequels of my favorite titles, as long as they keep getting better.
Anyone who's played LDoN for Everquest should see that expansion really gets to the core of playing cooperatively. It reminds me so much of the old days of D&D, since you are stuck together in ye' old dungeon crawl with your group of three to six players a mission that is timed (90 minutes). You really need to act as a team or you'll be wiped out quick. The cool thing about LDoN is that it rewards each team member with points for successful missions, and later those points can be used to buy some sweet gear. So it's a win-win situation for being a team player.
We've heard your side of the story, and it certainly sounds like a bad deal. It is possible the 3rd party was acting unprofessionally and convinced the management to fire you and sell them their security services. However, it also sounds they might have used it as an excuse to lay you off.
As much as a network security position is critical, I would venture to say it is a position that isn't what a financial company would call core to their business. With the hard economy these last few years, I've seen a lot of businesses that yap about "focusing on our core" as they announce layoffs. I also suspect the management may have been intimidated by such a technical person as yourself, and decided to duck and cover to get the dirty work done, rather than confront you directly to inform you that they were laying you off.
In any case, real security auditing should be done by companies with nothing to gain from the results your audit. It's sort of like this flyer I got from Microsoft that entitles me to a complimentary assessment of my infrastructure to see if Windows 2003 is right for me (wonder how that'll turn out).
Systems often shipping with 120GB of space will never notice the space needed for System Restore.
I've used System Restore on at least 3 times on 3 different home PC that were royally fudged and it worked like a charm.
I've used the system restore from the Windows backup tool to restore a Windows 2000 server, had no problems there either.
I don't have the experience of seeing 1000's of PC's like you say you have, but I'm guessing you need to cut the tool a little slack as it does seem to work for some people.
Too bad there wasn't more synergy with E.T. the Extra-Terrestial game for the Atari 2600.
Now if you want to talk about movie/game synergy, check out all the bonus stuff on the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers game. Major involvment from the studio and actors throughout the development process. Lo and behold, the game was actually fun!
Now if we could just find something to kill Lotus Notes! Something lightweight, with a well designed GUI that is intuitive. We need a replacement that doesn't require a special certification to develope for, it needs to be open.
but instead of your typical hack & slash of EverQuest
Yes, but I think the people who enjoy games like EQ are not necessarily all climbing aboard Puzzle Pirates for a change of pace. This game looks to be an evolution of Yahoo! Games, and not quite in the same category of MMORPGs. Rather, if there's a game to rock the MMORPG world, it's going to be World of Warcraft.
Looking at it in an negative light however, it might mean that your required to have anti-virus software installed in order to use the internet.
What part of blocking at the router implies that you need AV software on your pc/mac? Besides, it's becoming typical to have this sort of stuff on proxies, mail gateways, etc. Considering the liability of thousands of unpatched home systems, this sounds like a good thing if it is done well.
Well, there are such things as SQL injection attacks you'll want to avoid. I'd rather play on the safe side and clean any input as soon as I can before it gets stored. Also, you never know if the the next developer after you is going to have enough sense to escape on output. Besides, most search engines index on words, not special characters. In the case of gathering input for things like name and address, you'll want to take the filtering a step futher and completely remove html elements. I'd hate to have a potential javascript exploit stored in a database waiting to get called up.
Another thing to do when gathering user input, you'll want to truncate the data at logical limits before you attempt to put it into your database. I.e. truncate the subject in a message to 80 characters. Start thinking in fixed length strings instead of letting the scripting engine get smacked with buffer overflows.
Take note of escapeHTML() in the CGI module. Use that on the form input that you save into a database, and that should cut down on most of the XSS problem. It's quite humiliating for a webmaster to have a guestbook get trashed by a load of img tags and evil links to offending sites (although I see a lot of Slashdotters abusing the the URL feature this way).
Yeah, right along side with a jedi named Jack who kept ranting about some guy named Haku.
I'm a little disappointed that bulk of the Clone Wars isn't going to be in the films, but if they had to pick an animator, Tartakovsky is the man. He brings a lot of soul to the art of animation, and I have a feeling his Star Wars series will be just as memorable as the original trilogy.
It's so frustrating to watch Greedo shoot first in the special edition. For what, 20 years, Han has been the character that in Episode IV went from scoundrel to hero.
I didn't mind all the CG fluff like the droids in Mos Eisley, or the dewbacks. But having Greedo shoot, then Han retaliate changes Han's character considerably. When the audience is first introduced to Han, they were just as uneasy about him as Luke was. Seeing him bust a cap in Greedo's smarmy ass doubled that feeling. Watching him turn into the unlikely hero was just as important as Luke's development. Why change that after 20 years?
So please Mr. Lucas, use the DVD technology to allow play of the original release. You know, the one that millions saw a long time ago...
It's a tradeoff. You need to weigh the cost of your time to find patches and manually apply them vs. the maintanence cost from RedHat.
I'm thinking they realized the money was in providing that service and that enough RedHat has made its way into the data centers of larger companies. However it's a tough hit to the one-man constulting shops who know and swear by RedHat.
-- hecubas
Re:Seem to recall some earilier Win2K hype
on
Microsoft's new CLI
·
· Score: 1
Although nobody is forced to use Microsoft products, sometimes there is no alertnative when dealing with third party vendors. Say for instance you have a specialized business and a small number of employees (100). Now add the need for some heavy duty computing and database requirements. You can a) hire a programming staff b) purchase a packaged system and hire fewer staff to maintain it. Add to the problem that your geographical location makes hiring IT people difficult. You pick option b and find that the package only runs on Windows. Sound like any business you know?
Yes you can choose to use one platform or another or you can choose to pick the better solution for the problem. Somedays you can have it your way, somedays you have to be flexible. The reality is that the world isn't black and white as success/fail, smart peon/dumb leader, windows/linux as you would make it to be. It would be grand if IT departments could just mandate to the rest of their company that they will be moving to platform X and make it so. However, since we're limited by real constraints, such as time, money and people, such possibilities are extremely rare.
Back to the original topic: Micrsoft must be feeling the pressure of Linux movement. As much as Bill would have us do things his way, he's making a concession that there is a market for a good CLI by creating MSH. Could it be all those sysadmins from the trenches convincing their bosses that Linux makes sense? That's the real clincher, all those lowly peon sysadmins are making a difference.
The Linux revolution is a prime example of shaking up the hierarchy by people doing what they love, being in the guts of the code and sharing it with friends. It sure as hell didn't start at the top with an executive decision. I'm just happy to be a part of it by endorsing it when I can and spreading the knowledge.
There's always Diablo II, seriously. There's really no commitment (money or timewise) and you can always save and exit in a pinch. It was a great game when I had only have 15-20 minutes to play at a time, and levels and loot came quickly. That was pre 1.10 patch, so "quickly" in hell mode might be incorrect.
-- hecubas
Re:Seem to recall some earilier Win2K hype
on
Microsoft's new CLI
·
· Score: 1
Troll. Name one business with number of employees >1 that doesn't compromise one issues or make do with what the market gives you. I think I speak for a lot of sysadmins who are out there, day in and day out, making the case for using the best tool for the job but struggle with the momentum that is the Microsoft monopoly.
Also troll, what makes you certain I haven't been successful in my career? After all, I'm posting this on company time.:P
When one of their marketing drones was trying to tell everyone that DOS is dead and you don't really need the CLI anymore, even though Win2K could boot into a CLI recovery mode.
I suppose they've made a concession to all the command line commandos with MSH. Good news for all of us sysadmins running Microsoft not by choice. Then again, there's been decent alternatives since NT (thank you ActivePerl!).
I don't recall a time when more and more people were into games, and gaming has become so mainstream you see the gaming culture intermingled in everything else. In the old days, there were fewer gamers and fewer genres of games. When Wing Commander came out it rocked our world, there was nothing like it. When Wolfenstein 3d and Doom hit the scene, we all fell out of our chairs. The old school gamers remember those moments watching in awe at a buddy's house as they loaded those ground breaking games for the first time.
Now 10, 20 years later, we're on the Nth iteration of everything. Inovations are measured in minor graphical updates and "physics models". Even online gaming is quickly becoming saturated with titles that are just knockoffs of a handful of pioneers (how many Counter Strike clones can you name?).
So it basically comes down to this to get old school gamers attention: re-release a classic title on a new platform (i.e. the upcoming Zelda classics on the GameCube), release a sequel of a known classic (i.e. Metroid Prime), release a really inovative game (i.e. Wind Waker).
Well if this story is any indicator of the situation of gaming in the Middle East, it doesn't look good. I'm suprised we haven't heard any more updates from Junis. Wonder if he's anxious to play Halflife 2?
You must realize PS/2 != PS2. The PS/2 connector for keyboards and mice is about as old as MCA cards and if I'm not mistaken, first appeared on IBM's PS/2 system.
Actually, my good troll, I considered using the Playstation 2's keyboard as a replacement to the standard PS/2 one. It's compact and cheap.
The first thing I noticed on the alternate story link is the two PS/2 cables sticking out the front. Can anyone explain to me why there are still boxes shipping with the old PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports? Doesn't every OS worth installing on x86 hardware support USB now? Futhermore, why can't I find a decent keyboard with extra USB slots in it and with out all the redundant "multimedia" buttons (ala iMac) so I can hide the box under the table?
Heh, I've tried playing Armageddon MUD many a time. Frankly, getting killed by half-giant assasins who suddenly sneak up on you was not my bag. It's really sad because they took my favorite DnD theme world, made a kick ass skill system, and then forced the players into pure elitist roleplaying. WTF is the point of having a skill based game that forces you to sit around in the town square all day engaging in mindless banter with the other schumcks while looking out for elven pick-pockets?
I'm thinking that people looking for permanent death are in the extreme minority. I recall the annoying process of character approval in Armageddon as one of the factors that finally drove me away (besides all the dumbass PK's). Permanent death also makes you avoid risks and seriously slows done the game play, and most people don't have that sort of time to invest. I grew extremely tired of getting quite far in Armageddon, only to be PK'd by some random half giant power gamer (ok, I'm a little bitter). There seemed to be a dual standard in that game.
However, I don't think MMORPG's are far off from catering to all types of players as you suggest. For example, EverQuest has a couple servers dedicated to player vs. player and one for roleplaying. One of their later expansions caters to the casual games who only have a couple hours to play at a time. I don't think it would be too difficult for them to dedicate another server for "hardcore" play, if that sort of thing is your bag.
Slashdot Mirror
Personally, I'm looking forward to:
:) Call me a fanboy, but I for one don't mind playing sequels of my favorite titles, as long as they keep getting better.
Starcraft Ghost
Metroid Prime 2
Everquest 2
Two of those I'll be able to play right away, one is gonna take some cash on a new system.
Some of you were complaining that it is going to be a year of sequels. Well guess what, it's all been done before and it's no different from any of the other entertainment mediums: tv, movies, books. Get used to the feeling, it's called getting older.
Anyone who's played LDoN for Everquest should see that expansion really gets to the core of playing cooperatively. It reminds me so much of the old days of D&D, since you are stuck together in ye' old dungeon crawl with your group of three to six players a mission that is timed (90 minutes). You really need to act as a team or you'll be wiped out quick. The cool thing about LDoN is that it rewards each team member with points for successful missions, and later those points can be used to buy some sweet gear. So it's a win-win situation for being a team player.
We've heard your side of the story, and it certainly sounds like a bad deal. It is possible the 3rd party was acting unprofessionally and convinced the management to fire you and sell them their security services. However, it also sounds they might have used it as an excuse to lay you off.
As much as a network security position is critical, I would venture to say it is a position that isn't what a financial company would call core to their business. With the hard economy these last few years, I've seen a lot of businesses that yap about "focusing on our core" as they announce layoffs. I also suspect the management may have been intimidated by such a technical person as yourself, and decided to duck and cover to get the dirty work done, rather than confront you directly to inform you that they were laying you off.
In any case, real security auditing should be done by companies with nothing to gain from the results your audit. It's sort of like this flyer I got from Microsoft that entitles me to a complimentary assessment of my infrastructure to see if Windows 2003 is right for me (wonder how that'll turn out).
I don't have the experience of seeing 1000's of PC's like you say you have, but I'm guessing you need to cut the tool a little slack as it does seem to work for some people.
Too bad there wasn't more synergy with E.T. the Extra-Terrestial game for the Atari 2600.
Now if you want to talk about movie/game synergy, check out all the bonus stuff on the Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers game. Major involvment from the studio and actors throughout the development process. Lo and behold, the game was actually fun!
Now if we could just find something to kill Lotus Notes! Something lightweight, with a well designed GUI that is intuitive. We need a replacement that doesn't require a special certification to develope for, it needs to be open.
Where are my mod points! Somebody mod it up!
but instead of your typical hack & slash of EverQuest
Yes, but I think the people who enjoy games like EQ are not necessarily all climbing aboard Puzzle Pirates for a change of pace. This game looks to be an evolution of Yahoo! Games, and not quite in the same category of MMORPGs. Rather, if there's a game to rock the MMORPG world, it's going to be World of Warcraft.
Insert foot in mouth.
:)
The article does mention checking the client systems for security measures.
I'll just shut up now
Looking at it in an negative light however, it might mean that your required to have anti-virus software installed in order to use the internet.
What part of blocking at the router implies that you need AV software on your pc/mac? Besides, it's becoming typical to have this sort of stuff on proxies, mail gateways, etc. Considering the liability of thousands of unpatched home systems, this sounds like a good thing if it is done well.
Well, there are such things as SQL injection attacks you'll want to avoid. I'd rather play on the safe side and clean any input as soon as I can before it gets stored. Also, you never know if the the next developer after you is going to have enough sense to escape on output. Besides, most search engines index on words, not special characters. In the case of gathering input for things like name and address, you'll want to take the filtering a step futher and completely remove html elements. I'd hate to have a potential javascript exploit stored in a database waiting to get called up.
Another thing to do when gathering user input, you'll want to truncate the data at logical limits before you attempt to put it into your database. I.e. truncate the subject in a message to 80 characters. Start thinking in fixed length strings instead of letting the scripting engine get smacked with buffer overflows.
Take note of escapeHTML() in the CGI module. Use that on the form input that you save into a database, and that should cut down on most of the XSS problem. It's quite humiliating for a webmaster to have a guestbook get trashed by a load of img tags and evil links to offending sites (although I see a lot of Slashdotters abusing the the URL feature this way).
--
hecubas
You fought in the clone wars?
Yeah, right along side with a jedi named Jack who kept ranting about some guy named Haku.
I'm a little disappointed that bulk of the Clone Wars isn't going to be in the films, but if they had to pick an animator, Tartakovsky is the man. He brings a lot of soul to the art of animation, and I have a feeling his Star Wars series will be just as memorable as the original trilogy.
--
hecubas
Thank you for bringing up such painful memories, the Ewok Adventures!
While we're at it, let's all go rent these tonight: The Ewok Adventure and Ewoks: The Battle for Endor.
--
hecubas
It's so frustrating to watch Greedo shoot first in the special edition. For what, 20 years, Han has been the character that in Episode IV went from scoundrel to hero.
I didn't mind all the CG fluff like the droids in Mos Eisley, or the dewbacks. But having Greedo shoot, then Han retaliate changes Han's character considerably. When the audience is first introduced to Han, they were just as uneasy about him as Luke was. Seeing him bust a cap in Greedo's smarmy ass doubled that feeling. Watching him turn into the unlikely hero was just as important as Luke's development. Why change that after 20 years?
So please Mr. Lucas, use the DVD technology to allow play of the original release. You know, the one that millions saw a long time ago...
--
hecubas
It's a tradeoff. You need to weigh the cost of your time to find patches and manually apply them vs. the maintanence cost from RedHat.
I'm thinking they realized the money was in providing that service and that enough RedHat has made its way into the data centers of larger companies. However it's a tough hit to the one-man constulting shops who know and swear by RedHat.
--
hecubas
Although nobody is forced to use Microsoft products, sometimes there is no alertnative when dealing with third party vendors. Say for instance you have a specialized business and a small number of employees (100). Now add the need for some heavy duty computing and database requirements. You can a) hire a programming staff b) purchase a packaged system and hire fewer staff to maintain it. Add to the problem that your geographical location makes hiring IT people difficult. You pick option b and find that the package only runs on Windows. Sound like any business you know?
Yes you can choose to use one platform or another or you can choose to pick the better solution for the problem. Somedays you can have it your way, somedays you have to be flexible. The reality is that the world isn't black and white as success/fail, smart peon/dumb leader, windows/linux as you would make it to be. It would be grand if IT departments could just mandate to the rest of their company that they will be moving to platform X and make it so. However, since we're limited by real constraints, such as time, money and people, such possibilities are extremely rare.
Back to the original topic: Micrsoft must be feeling the pressure of Linux movement. As much as Bill would have us do things his way, he's making a concession that there is a market for a good CLI by creating MSH. Could it be all those sysadmins from the trenches convincing their bosses that Linux makes sense? That's the real clincher, all those lowly peon sysadmins are making a difference.
The Linux revolution is a prime example of shaking up the hierarchy by people doing what they love, being in the guts of the code and sharing it with friends. It sure as hell didn't start at the top with an executive decision. I'm just happy to be a part of it by endorsing it when I can and spreading the knowledge.
--
hecubas
There's always Diablo II, seriously. There's really no commitment (money or timewise) and you can always save and exit in a pinch. It was a great game when I had only have 15-20 minutes to play at a time, and levels and loot came quickly. That was pre 1.10 patch, so "quickly" in hell mode might be incorrect.
--
hecubas
Troll. Name one business with number of employees >1 that doesn't compromise one issues or make do with what the market gives you. I think I speak for a lot of sysadmins who are out there, day in and day out, making the case for using the best tool for the job but struggle with the momentum that is the Microsoft monopoly.
:P
Also troll, what makes you certain I haven't been successful in my career? After all, I'm posting this on company time.
--
hecubas
When one of their marketing drones was trying to tell everyone that DOS is dead and you don't really need the CLI anymore, even though Win2K could boot into a CLI recovery mode.
I suppose they've made a concession to all the command line commandos with MSH. Good news for all of us sysadmins running Microsoft not by choice. Then again, there's been decent alternatives since NT (thank you ActivePerl!).
--
hecubas
Market Saturation.
I don't recall a time when more and more people were into games, and gaming has become so mainstream you see the gaming culture intermingled in everything else. In the old days, there were fewer gamers and fewer genres of games. When Wing Commander came out it rocked our world, there was nothing like it. When Wolfenstein 3d and Doom hit the scene, we all fell out of our chairs. The old school gamers remember those moments watching in awe at a buddy's house as they loaded those ground breaking games for the first time.
Now 10, 20 years later, we're on the Nth iteration of everything. Inovations are measured in minor graphical updates and "physics models". Even online gaming is quickly becoming saturated with titles that are just knockoffs of a handful of pioneers (how many Counter Strike clones can you name?).
So it basically comes down to this to get old school gamers attention: re-release a classic title on a new platform (i.e. the upcoming Zelda classics on the GameCube), release a sequel of a known classic (i.e. Metroid Prime), release a really inovative game (i.e. Wind Waker).
--
hecubas
Well if this story is any indicator of the situation of gaming in the Middle East, it doesn't look good. I'm suprised we haven't heard any more updates from Junis. Wonder if he's anxious to play Halflife 2?
--
hecubas
You must realize PS/2 != PS2. The PS/2 connector for keyboards and mice is about as old as MCA cards and if I'm not mistaken, first appeared on IBM's PS/2 system.
Actually, my good troll, I considered using the Playstation 2's keyboard as a replacement to the standard PS/2 one. It's compact and cheap.
The first thing I noticed on the alternate story link is the two PS/2 cables sticking out the front.
Can anyone explain to me why there are still boxes shipping with the old PS/2 keyboard and mouse ports? Doesn't every OS worth installing on x86 hardware support USB now? Futhermore, why can't I find a decent keyboard with extra USB slots in it and with out all the redundant "multimedia" buttons (ala iMac) so I can hide the box under the table?
--
hecubas
Heh, I've tried playing Armageddon MUD many a time. Frankly, getting killed by half-giant assasins who suddenly sneak up on you was not my bag. It's really sad because they took my favorite DnD theme world, made a kick ass skill system, and then forced the players into pure elitist roleplaying. WTF is the point of having a skill based game that forces you to sit around in the town square all day engaging in mindless banter with the other schumcks while looking out for elven pick-pockets?
I'm thinking that people looking for permanent death are in the extreme minority. I recall the annoying process of character approval in Armageddon as one of the factors that finally drove me away (besides all the dumbass PK's). Permanent death also makes you avoid risks and seriously slows done the game play, and most people don't have that sort of time to invest. I grew extremely tired of getting quite far in Armageddon, only to be PK'd by some random half giant power gamer (ok, I'm a little bitter). There seemed to be a dual standard in that game.
However, I don't think MMORPG's are far off from catering to all types of players as you suggest. For example, EverQuest has a couple servers dedicated to player vs. player and one for roleplaying. One of their later expansions caters to the casual games who only have a couple hours to play at a time. I don't think it would be too difficult for them to dedicate another server for "hardcore" play, if that sort of thing is your bag.
--
hecubas