Here we go again! Let's laugh at people who think "that Bill Gates deserves their money", let's laugh at people who buy anti-viruses, let's laugh at Windows while we're at it, and of course, let's praise our wonderful unbreakable operating system. Ah! This virus fails to infect me, viruses are so uneffective against l33t linux! Nobody can root me, nobody can root me!
Am I the only one not laughing? Am I the only one watching with, not fear, but interest and attention, the great innovations being done in the field of the Linux viruses?
We have a virus that can infect both Linux and Windows binaries. A virus that can try to infect a Linux box from a Windows box. A virus that is extremely hard to detect and destroy on Windows. Sure, it doesn't work well enough, yet. It's, after all, only the third generation virus. But it is nevertheless a great technical achievement, a new milestone release, a step towards havoc.
When these viruses will be able to infect a Linux partition from a Windows partition, or a Windows partition from a Linux partition, each time bypassing the security and anti-virus of the operating system it is infecting - hey, the OS is not even running! - will you laugh that much? Nobody can root you? And what about a virus that has ext2-level access to your root partition? Yes, from Windows? Who is 100% Windows-free? Who never has two OSes on the same machine?
Virus authors are showing are growing interest to Linux, and as more and more viruses are able to spread on Linux, more and more anti-viruses Linux will need. You might not like it, but it seems unavoidable to me. And if you really hate the anti-virus companies, start an open-source project. Now.
Let's come back to this discussion in a couple of years. And we'll see if you were right to laugh. I hope so. I don't believe it.
it seems to me that linux is a very secure OS, at least compared to the alternatives.
You're talking Microsoft Windows, I guess. But what about the others? AFAIK, the BSDs are regarded as more secure, and this might be the case of other unices as well. I have no idea of the security level of the IBM operating systems, nor of those from Unisys. I know OpenVMS is quite secure.
Linux is not the panacea. It's good enough for "cheap" servers, but what about high-end ones? Not only in terms of price, put also in terms of the critical mission they accomplish. Are there so many Linuces there? I don't know, but I doubt it.
If some vendors want to come up with an offering for a more secure Linux, it's OK for me. I hope the community will benefit from their improvement, but even if some parts remain undisclosed (bleh), the public image of Linux seen as a secure OS can only be increased. Good.
Once again, tech-savvy users end up protecting themselves, having probably noticed the sharing and taken steps to prevent it.
Other people get to share their precious private data. They also probably click on binary attachments, and forward mail that ask them to do so. Screwed up. As always. Do they even know? Do they even care?
Can Kazaa be held responsible for that? Well, I don't think they get anything particularly good from that. More likely, the interface wasn't thought out properly when created. Can Kazaa change that? In the next version of their client, perhaps. But do they have any incentive to do so? Unless people on the web unite... I don't think so.
Perhaps what we do need is a law. Argh, a law. Not a law to remove more freedom than what has already been taken, but a law that gives some rights back to the user. A law that puts some liability on the makers of the software. So that badly designed interface can get sued. So that insecure architectures can get sued. To no more than their income, else free software is doomed.
Yeah, I know this sounds a bit idealistic, but well, it's good to hope, sometimes.
Has anyone actually looked at a Mars map? I'm
running the latest version of the
Mars
Simulation Project, looking at the planet
in topography mode.
This planet has altitudes
ranging from approximately -8000 meters to +22000
meters, with two very distinctive zones: around
-100 W, mostly on the southern hemisphere, there
is a huge, +5000 meters continent; the northern
hemisphere is between -5000 and 0 meters; and
there is a very impressive hole centered at 70 E
and 40 S, between -7000 and -5000 meters,
sourrounded by a 0 to 5000 meters zone - what
happened there? A huge spacial hit?
Anyway, saying Mars would be covered by 500
meters of water is completely meaningless.
I guess they took the quantity of water and
divided it by the surface of Mars. They mostly
want to impress people, I guess, but I for one
would be more impressed if someone came with a
new Mars map showing the areas where the "sea"
would be once the ice was melted. There is an
illustration there, but of course
it doesn't take into account the "real" quantity
of ice/water.
...that if my university or my teacher were to imtose the use of this service, I would stand up and say "No". I would also go to the Univeristy Newspaper office and I'm sure, from past articles, that it would make first page the following morning.
I think most teachers would be equally disturbed by the conditions of use of the site. Simply, nobody reads them.
Mr. Scott never says in his interview that he will add new scenes, or "everything that was found on the cutroom's floor" as another Slashdotter thought. He is concerned about image quality and intends to restore the material of the film from the original tapes.
I find this very interesting. When I bought the Director's Cut, a long time ago, it was one of my first DVDs, and still, I was quite disappointed. Not turned off or whatever, disappointed. The image quality wasn't that great, the DVD contained no bonuses except 2341 languages and subtitles, like most European Warner Bros DVDs. These guys just seem to throw all bonuses trough the windows to leave room for subtitles and dubs, I thought at that time. At least I'm happy, the U.S. version seems to be as crappy, from what Slashdotters say.
Blade Runner is one of the few films for which I badly want bonuses. I want a mega making-of. I want all the trivia. I want shots of the stage, I want to see the special effects explained, I want the script, I want everything. The special Abbyss edition has all of this, though I'm not interested that much. The Abbyss is great, but not enough for me to read its script. Blade Runner is so great, that I don't mind paying a lot of money for three or four DVDs.
And come on guys, release the two versions in the same box, so that people can compare.
Pardon me, yes, pardon me, but this is the first thing that came to my mind when I heard of his death in the 11pm news.
I have a lot of fond memories from all the Merry Melodies in my youth. I love animation in all forms, and loved his work, but, somehow, I imagined he disappeared a long time ago.
I am afraid the crazy gags and wild imagination from people such as him and Tex Avery have not waited his death to disappear. Nowadays, in the specific field of crazy cartoons, it seems they just reuse the old tricks over and over. I want new, ten-gags per second, Tex Avery's!
With domestic appliances becoming smarter everyday and now embarking more computing power than NASA had when Armstrong put foot on the Moon, it is no surprise that all the major operating system vendors try to conquer this new market. This trend has been going on for quite some time now.
The real news here are that Microsoft is again trying to conquer that market. This is a big challenge for them, because the OS design there is at the opposite of what they usually manufacture: you can't put a system that crashes randomly, or that eats all the CPU and all the batteries of the device. It seems previous incarnations, that is mostly Windows CE, failed to do that.
They have good designers and the fact that "this is Windows" makes it easy to sell the devices. If they manage to make an OS that stays afloat, they might very well find themselves in a strong position in this market. At least, I think they have much more chances to win here than on the server market.
Recording companies offer the artists a service they often like: "Don't bother with the business, we've got all the skilled marketroids to ensure your genius will reach the masses. Just keep doing you art". This comes for a price, of course. But truth is, managing your own musical business while doing art is a real pain. I hope such incidents will entice more and more artists to try alternative ways of ditribution and earnings.
Giving away the music and being paid through Paypal seems a bit overoptimistic, giving away the music, or making it very cheap, and being paid through concerts is something some bands are actually doing, trusting small companies that essentially work through the web is something I'd like too see develop in the future.
MPAA has a monopoly they don't want to lose. It's not only against MP3-sharing they are fighting, but also against any possible alternative to the way they make business. Because they can't afford to stop to grow.
I think all (if not, most) cards on the market today are VESA 2.0 compliant. More probably VESA 3.0 compliant. It's become so basic that it's not mentionned anymore.
As someone pointed out in response to another of my comments, the issue is also of network congestion. Our company was infested with Code Red past summer, and didn't loose any data, but oh boy, was the network congested!
What? True, it's not simple, but you can generally manage to get the URL to the Flash file (use the source, Luke) and either keep it or save it.
To view them later, either craft a curstom HTML page or use a stand-alone Flash player. On the Windows platform, Irfanview has a plugin to view Flash files.
But then someone could create a RedDrake 7.42 specific version. No need for a real cross platform virus. Just because the other OS is more targeted than yours doesn't mean you don't have to worry.
Of course, we have real user boundaries, so the damage would be limited.
Having mostly played FF5 and FF6, I can't say for myself, but have friends who like FF8 a lot and so far their ranking is as follows:
FF6
FF8
FF5
FF4
FF7
With FF9 somewhere around FF6 and FF8. FF10 not yet played.
Anyway, what I mean here is that anyone can have its likings, and it seems the opinions are very divergent for FF8.
Same goes for FF7: the vast number of those who discovered FF with it still like it much more than FF6/FF8. My friends already knew FF6 and so didn't like FF7 at all (vastly inferior story).
I don't remember reading that they would stop making good-old single player FF games. Probably FF12 will be back to that time-proof formula.
Anyway, they have long said they would venture into MMPORPG. I'll watch and see.
As for the predifined characters and linear story being the essence of the FF series charm, I agree, but would also mention the ability to freely (well, come to think of it, far from freely indeed) explore the world. I've read in another comment that FF10 lacked that ability, only allowing you to "teleport" between locations, and it's a major shame. For that matter, I think that FF11 will still provide some of the fun we had with the earlier installments.
Probably, the crucial point for Square will be to be able to offer us to play characters that have a story. Hey, if they manage to create NPC family members for most of the players, and past relations, friends and foes, that players have to take in account, it can be a great game!
Well, this all comes down to the way the players will play this game, and the way Square will manage it in the long run.
Be careful, you could be very disappointed by the end result. And too much drooling could damage your keyboard.
I waited impatiently for the movie, and was very disappointed. I've decided not to wait impatiently for this one. Besides, I think I've got plenty of time to finish Nethack before this one is out.
Slashdot Mirror
Here we go again! Let's laugh at people who think "that Bill Gates deserves their money", let's laugh at people who buy anti-viruses, let's laugh at Windows while we're at it, and of course, let's praise our wonderful unbreakable operating system. Ah! This virus fails to infect me, viruses are so uneffective against l33t linux! Nobody can root me, nobody can root me!
Am I the only one not laughing? Am I the only one watching with, not fear, but interest and attention, the great innovations being done in the field of the Linux viruses?
We have a virus that can infect both Linux and Windows binaries. A virus that can try to infect a Linux box from a Windows box. A virus that is extremely hard to detect and destroy on Windows. Sure, it doesn't work well enough, yet. It's, after all, only the third generation virus. But it is nevertheless a great technical achievement, a new milestone release, a step towards havoc.
When these viruses will be able to infect a Linux partition from a Windows partition, or a Windows partition from a Linux partition, each time bypassing the security and anti-virus of the operating system it is infecting - hey, the OS is not even running! - will you laugh that much? Nobody can root you? And what about a virus that has ext2-level access to your root partition? Yes, from Windows? Who is 100% Windows-free? Who never has two OSes on the same machine?
Virus authors are showing are growing interest to Linux, and as more and more viruses are able to spread on Linux, more and more anti-viruses Linux will need. You might not like it, but it seems unavoidable to me. And if you really hate the anti-virus companies, start an open-source project. Now.
Let's come back to this discussion in a couple of years. And we'll see if you were right to laugh. I hope so. I don't believe it.
it seems to me that linux is a very secure OS, at least compared to the alternatives.
You're talking Microsoft Windows, I guess. But what about the others? AFAIK, the BSDs are regarded as more secure, and this might be the case of other unices as well. I have no idea of the security level of the IBM operating systems, nor of those from Unisys. I know OpenVMS is quite secure.
Linux is not the panacea. It's good enough for "cheap" servers, but what about high-end ones? Not only in terms of price, put also in terms of the critical mission they accomplish. Are there so many Linuces there? I don't know, but I doubt it.
If some vendors want to come up with an offering for a more secure Linux, it's OK for me. I hope the community will benefit from their improvement, but even if some parts remain undisclosed (bleh), the public image of Linux seen as a secure OS can only be increased. Good.
This will be Unbreakable Linux against United Linux? Match at 11...
Once again, tech-savvy users end up protecting themselves, having probably noticed the sharing and taken steps to prevent it.
Other people get to share their precious private data. They also probably click on binary attachments, and forward mail that ask them to do so. Screwed up. As always. Do they even know? Do they even care?
Can Kazaa be held responsible for that? Well, I don't think they get anything particularly good from that. More likely, the interface wasn't thought out properly when created. Can Kazaa change that? In the next version of their client, perhaps. But do they have any incentive to do so? Unless people on the web unite... I don't think so.
Perhaps what we do need is a law. Argh, a law. Not a law to remove more freedom than what has already been taken, but a law that gives some rights back to the user. A law that puts some liability on the makers of the software. So that badly designed interface can get sued. So that insecure architectures can get sued. To no more than their income, else free software is doomed.
Yeah, I know this sounds a bit idealistic, but well, it's good to hope, sometimes.
Has anyone actually looked at a Mars map? I'm running the latest version of the Mars Simulation Project, looking at the planet in topography mode.
This planet has altitudes ranging from approximately -8000 meters to +22000 meters, with two very distinctive zones: around -100 W, mostly on the southern hemisphere, there is a huge, +5000 meters continent; the northern hemisphere is between -5000 and 0 meters; and there is a very impressive hole centered at 70 E and 40 S, between -7000 and -5000 meters, sourrounded by a 0 to 5000 meters zone - what happened there? A huge spacial hit?
Anyway, saying Mars would be covered by 500 meters of water is completely meaningless. I guess they took the quantity of water and divided it by the surface of Mars. They mostly want to impress people, I guess, but I for one would be more impressed if someone came with a new Mars map showing the areas where the "sea" would be once the ice was melted. There is an illustration there, but of course it doesn't take into account the "real" quantity of ice/water.
...that if my university or my teacher were to imtose the use of this service, I would stand up and say "No". I would also go to the Univeristy Newspaper office and I'm sure, from past articles, that it would make first page the following morning.
I think most teachers would be equally disturbed by the conditions of use of the site. Simply, nobody reads them.
> why doesn't someone start a Linux code review project ???
Then, what is http://kerneljanitors.org, mentionned at the end of the article?
Mr. Scott never says in his interview that he will add new scenes, or "everything that was found on the cutroom's floor" as another Slashdotter thought. He is concerned about image quality and intends to restore the material of the film from the original tapes.
I find this very interesting. When I bought the Director's Cut, a long time ago, it was one of my first DVDs, and still, I was quite disappointed. Not turned off or whatever, disappointed. The image quality wasn't that great, the DVD contained no bonuses except 2341 languages and subtitles, like most European Warner Bros DVDs. These guys just seem to throw all bonuses trough the windows to leave room for subtitles and dubs, I thought at that time. At least I'm happy, the U.S. version seems to be as crappy, from what Slashdotters say.
Blade Runner is one of the few films for which I badly want bonuses. I want a mega making-of. I want all the trivia. I want shots of the stage, I want to see the special effects explained, I want the script, I want everything. The special Abbyss edition has all of this, though I'm not interested that much. The Abbyss is great, but not enough for me to read its script. Blade Runner is so great, that I don't mind paying a lot of money for three or four DVDs.
And come on guys, release the two versions in the same box, so that people can compare.
Pardon me, yes, pardon me, but this is the first thing that came to my mind when I heard of his death in the 11pm news.
I have a lot of fond memories from all the Merry Melodies in my youth. I love animation in all forms, and loved his work, but, somehow, I imagined he disappeared a long time ago.
I am afraid the crazy gags and wild imagination from people such as him and Tex Avery have not waited his death to disappear. Nowadays, in the specific field of crazy cartoons, it seems they just reuse the old tricks over and over. I want new, ten-gags per second, Tex Avery's!
Excellent hardware, excellent operating system, and an incredible talent at making fuss and noise even years after you've lost everything.
With domestic appliances becoming smarter everyday and now embarking more computing power than NASA had when Armstrong put foot on the Moon, it is no surprise that all the major operating system vendors try to conquer this new market. This trend has been going on for quite some time now.
The real news here are that Microsoft is again trying to conquer that market. This is a big challenge for them, because the OS design there is at the opposite of what they usually manufacture: you can't put a system that crashes randomly, or that eats all the CPU and all the batteries of the device. It seems previous incarnations, that is mostly Windows CE, failed to do that.
They have good designers and the fact that "this is Windows" makes it easy to sell the devices. If they manage to make an OS that stays afloat, they might very well find themselves in a strong position in this market. At least, I think they have much more chances to win here than on the server market.
Recording companies offer the artists a service they often like: "Don't bother with the business, we've got all the skilled marketroids to ensure your genius will reach the masses. Just keep doing you art". This comes for a price, of course. But truth is, managing your own musical business while doing art is a real pain. I hope such incidents will entice more and more artists to try alternative ways of ditribution and earnings.
Giving away the music and being paid through Paypal seems a bit overoptimistic, giving away the music, or making it very cheap, and being paid through concerts is something some bands are actually doing, trusting small companies that essentially work through the web is something I'd like too see develop in the future.
MPAA has a monopoly they don't want to lose. It's not only against MP3-sharing they are fighting, but also against any possible alternative to the way they make business. Because they can't afford to stop to grow.
I think all (if not, most) cards on the market today are VESA 2.0 compliant. More probably VESA 3.0 compliant. It's become so basic that it's not mentionned anymore.
You probably can't. What I know is that when I began writing my message there was no other message mentionning The Register.
Theres also a hidden FORM tag that indicates how sexy the submitter is, too.
Darn, they finally got a picture of me.
Read this.
As someone pointed out in response to another of my comments, the issue is also of network congestion. Our company was infested with Code Red past summer, and didn't loose any data, but oh boy, was the network congested!
unbookmarkable
What? True, it's not simple, but you can generally manage to get the URL to the Flash file (use the source, Luke) and either keep it or save it.
To view them later, either craft a curstom HTML page or use a stand-alone Flash player. On the Windows platform, Irfanview has a plugin to view Flash files.
But then someone could create a RedDrake 7.42 specific version. No need for a real cross platform virus. Just because the other OS is more targeted than yours doesn't mean you don't have to worry.
Of course, we have real user boundaries, so the damage would be limited.
Perhaps it could be modified to use Bash and other Unix tools to do the same job? Of course, the infestion would be user-specific.
Someone has found a way to make Flash act outside the boundaries of its sandbox, and this should make everyone worry.
At least a little bit.
Lawrence of Arabia (1964). First cut was 3h42. They quickly reduced that by twenty minutes however. Still a long time to seat.
Having mostly played FF5 and FF6, I can't say for myself, but have friends who like FF8 a lot and so far their ranking is as follows:
FF6
FF8
FF5
FF4
FF7
With FF9 somewhere around FF6 and FF8. FF10 not yet played.
Anyway, what I mean here is that anyone can have its likings, and it seems the opinions are very divergent for FF8.
Same goes for FF7: the vast number of those who discovered FF with it still like it much more than FF6/FF8. My friends already knew FF6 and so didn't like FF7 at all (vastly inferior story).
I don't remember reading that they would stop making good-old single player FF games. Probably FF12 will be back to that time-proof formula.
Anyway, they have long said they would venture into MMPORPG. I'll watch and see.
As for the predifined characters and linear story being the essence of the FF series charm, I agree, but would also mention the ability to freely (well, come to think of it, far from freely indeed) explore the world. I've read in another comment that FF10 lacked that ability, only allowing you to "teleport" between locations, and it's a major shame. For that matter, I think that FF11 will still provide some of the fun we had with the earlier installments.
Probably, the crucial point for Square will be to be able to offer us to play characters that have a story. Hey, if they manage to create NPC family members for most of the players, and past relations, friends and foes, that players have to take in account, it can be a great game!
Well, this all comes down to the way the players will play this game, and the way Square will manage it in the long run.
Be careful, you could be very disappointed by the end result. And too much drooling could damage your keyboard.
I waited impatiently for the movie, and was very disappointed. I've decided not to wait impatiently for this one. Besides, I think I've got plenty of time to finish Nethack before this one is out.
What will warm my room then?
Nothing like four CRTs to light and warm your room on a long and cold winter night...