"So, Outlook is this huge pipe for virii, worms and spam leading me to wonder.....why is anyone still using Outlook?"
1.) They don't necessarily need to use Outlook to be exploited. If a file has the extesion.EML, it opens Outlook Express. If you have Outlook 2000 (harder to exploit btw, I've had it since it came out and nobody in my company has been hit by a worm through it) and somebody sends you a message with a.EML attachment, opening the attachment fires up the much more vulnerable Outlook Express.
2.) People can be using any email app and still get tricked into opening a trojan. Since Outlook Express is on everybody's Windows machines, then it can still be used as a conduit to send stuff back out. Most of the attempts I've seen involved opening stuff that has nothing to do with what e-mail app you're running. Remember "pretty park.exe"?
I'm not defending MS here, Outlook Express has created a nasty situation for Windows users. You don't even have to use OE to have it bite you in the ass. Uninstalling it's not painless either. I tried to do that once, and it killed Outlook 2k by wiping out a common DLL that they use. Doh. (Note: I haven't tried uninstalling OE and installing O2k.)
Here are a few things you can do to solidify yourself:
- Remap the.EML extension to open Notepad instead of Outlook express.
- If you're using Outlook 2000, set its 'attachment security' to high. While you're at it, go through it's zone security and turn off everything. You don't need 'ActiveX Controls marked as Safe' to be enabled, for example.
I acted as my company's sysadmin for a couple of years. Back then, we were all running Windows 2000 and Outlook 2000. As mentioned before, I never had to deal with the cleanup of a virus. All I really had to do was go through that little checklist. If I hadn't done that.. well who knows? I probably wouldn't have so many posts on Slashdot. I'd be busy working or something. Heh.
Not entirely on topic, but I don't have anything really to add to this subject. Back in my Kazaa days, I was a little concerned about viruses etc getting me. So I set up a VM in VM-Ware and ran Kazaa on that. It did lag my computer considerably, but if Kazaa were to infect my machine, it would (in theory) be contained. Sadly, I didn't get infect with anything so I couldn't tell you how effective that was. I was kinda hoping it would be infected so I could analyze what happened. The funny result of this setup was that if you scanned my hard drive, you couldn't find any of the stuff I downloaded unless you fired up VM-Ware.
"The article mentions a mother fearing that her sons will become socially isolated if they play video games, I think this is totally wrong."
Nearly everybody I went to school with had a system as well. For all those people I knew, there was one kid who was a little too fascinated with video games. He gave us all a good spook. My guess is that parents who are concerned about that knew a guy who ended up being a little too anti-social. It didn't help when that dude got too involved in Everquest and killed himself.
My guess is that most parents (particularly the uninformed ones) are overly concerned with the one rotten apple in the bunch. Wish I could say that I could sympathize, but I don't. Child behaviour may be a mystery (didn't Bill Cosby refer to it as 'brain damage'?) but how well developed could a child be if too much is kept from his or her realm of experience?
"Well, considering that in all of the GTA titles, all the racing missions were painfully unbearable..."
Can you qualify that a little better? I used to think they sucked too until I started driving the cars like I'd drive a real car. (I.e. slowing down for a turn.) At that point, what became diifcult was the randomness thrown in by being a world simulator. Stupid pedestrians would get in my way, get run over, and then get the cops after my butt. The type of car you had really affected how you drive as well. Are you going to take sharp turn in an Expedition? Not without rolling it! You had realistic options for picking your car as well. Now that I think about it, GTA's racing missions were far deeper than any racing game I've played.
I'm not trying to just blindly defend GTA here, I just came to this realization about a week or two ago. Racing in GTA's not like racing in the arcade, you can't get by while you're holding the gas down the entire time.
"It's chamges are subtle but of great value to the user?"
Cute.
No, I mean the changes aren't extreme enough. It strikes me that Linux is playing a perpetual game of catch-up to Microsoft. It'd be nice of Linux, for a change, started to define the rules that MS would have to follow. I'm talking about the desktop here, not the servers.
Linux feels like a cheap imitation when migrating from Windows.
"Microsoft controls the desktop of 95% of computer users in the entire world. They have managed to be convicted of anti-trust behaviour and to get away with it scott-free."
They 'got away' with it because they achieved their monopoly because the market wanted it. They didn't acquire it illegally so the punishment (though a weak punishment) was to prevent them from leveraging it more.
... if IE didn't become a decidedly better browser than Netscape. Illegal monopolistic practices aside, it'd be hard to imagine that Netscape would have eventually won the war.
It's the gland in your nose that makes snot. I'd go into detail about how one generates electricity from that, but it's kinda icky. I'll give you a hint, though, it sounds a little like this: fprpbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbppb.
"Funny how essential things like "routing information" can be turned into a scary thing to uninformed users. Funny meaning "sad"."
Heh. I ran across a site once that said "Thank you for transmitting your hard drive information to me. It then opened a small frame to c:\. I wonder how many people that spooked.
"Seems to me, with the completely different architectures and different scope of capabilities the lessons learned on a dreamcast would be largely useless to a PS2 developper"
The big problem is that they're completely useless if nobody plays the game. It's not very possible an indie to publish a game on the PS2. As a matter of fact, Sony'd likely fight it. Ever notice that 'unofficial' games are not on the market for game consoles? You can thank Nintendo for that one. A company called Tengen tried to make a game (Tetris I believe) using a cloned unlicensed cartridge. The result? Nintendo sued, and won. As a matter of fact, the Tengen Tetris is a collector's item. Sega won't pursue that with the DC.
In any case, assuming there's a way to publish on the PS2, then yes you have a point. Except that gaming isn't all about the programming. There's content creation, for example. In an oversimplified sense, porting from DC to the PS2 is probably pretty easy. The big problem is will the code run really fast or slow as a result of it? Is the texture buffer bigger than the PS2 has physical RAM for? If so, is that a problem for the programmers or the artists or both?
So yeah, you've got a point provided a few things ahead of it happen first. As I mentioned earlier, though, it's all for naught if people have to muck with their hardware to make it work.
"Dreamcast is a dead console, if I'm going to put work into developing for a console at all would I be better served to work on one that has a future?"
No, there are priorities ahead of it:
- Dreamcasts are cheap, like in the $50 range - DC's don't require modding to play CDrs. Just download the ISO image, burn, and go. - DC has a good simple architecture, plus BSD to develop on.
To put it another way, the DC has a much better audience than any of the other consoles out there for a game like this. People aren't going to flock to the game if you have to have + mod an XBOX or PS2.
Slashdot Mirror
"So, Outlook is this huge pipe for virii, worms and spam leading me to wonder.....why is anyone still using Outlook?"
.EML, it opens Outlook Express. If you have Outlook 2000 (harder to exploit btw, I've had it since it came out and nobody in my company has been hit by a worm through it) and somebody sends you a message with a .EML attachment, opening the attachment fires up the much more vulnerable Outlook Express.
.EML extension to open Notepad instead of Outlook express.
1.) They don't necessarily need to use Outlook to be exploited. If a file has the extesion
2.) People can be using any email app and still get tricked into opening a trojan. Since Outlook Express is on everybody's Windows machines, then it can still be used as a conduit to send stuff back out. Most of the attempts I've seen involved opening stuff that has nothing to do with what e-mail app you're running. Remember "pretty park.exe"?
I'm not defending MS here, Outlook Express has created a nasty situation for Windows users. You don't even have to use OE to have it bite you in the ass. Uninstalling it's not painless either. I tried to do that once, and it killed Outlook 2k by wiping out a common DLL that they use. Doh. (Note: I haven't tried uninstalling OE and installing O2k.)
Here are a few things you can do to solidify yourself:
- Remap the
- If you're using Outlook 2000, set its 'attachment security' to high. While you're at it, go through it's zone security and turn off everything. You don't need 'ActiveX Controls marked as Safe' to be enabled, for example.
I acted as my company's sysadmin for a couple of years. Back then, we were all running Windows 2000 and Outlook 2000. As mentioned before, I never had to deal with the cleanup of a virus. All I really had to do was go through that little checklist. If I hadn't done that.. well who knows? I probably wouldn't have so many posts on Slashdot. I'd be busy working or something. Heh.
"Worst.... Pun.... EVER!"
It wasn't a complete pun. It's two thirds of one. P.U..
Not entirely on topic, but I don't have anything really to add to this subject. Back in my Kazaa days, I was a little concerned about viruses etc getting me. So I set up a VM in VM-Ware and ran Kazaa on that. It did lag my computer considerably, but if Kazaa were to infect my machine, it would (in theory) be contained. Sadly, I didn't get infect with anything so I couldn't tell you how effective that was. I was kinda hoping it would be infected so I could analyze what happened. The funny result of this setup was that if you scanned my hard drive, you couldn't find any of the stuff I downloaded unless you fired up VM-Ware.
"reminds me of that old qbasic game where gorillas calculated tragectories and tried to blow each other up with bananas."
My school was addicted to scorched earth. As a result, anybody caught with a straw outside of the cafeteria was suspended.
"The article mentions a mother fearing that her sons will become socially isolated if they play video games, I think this is totally wrong."
Nearly everybody I went to school with had a system as well. For all those people I knew, there was one kid who was a little too fascinated with video games. He gave us all a good spook. My guess is that parents who are concerned about that knew a guy who ended up being a little too anti-social. It didn't help when that dude got too involved in Everquest and killed himself.
My guess is that most parents (particularly the uninformed ones) are overly concerned with the one rotten apple in the bunch. Wish I could say that I could sympathize, but I don't. Child behaviour may be a mystery (didn't Bill Cosby refer to it as 'brain damage'?) but how well developed could a child be if too much is kept from his or her realm of experience?
"Did you pay for that?"
"No, I run Linux."
"Of course, if it doesn't run on Linux, I won't play it anyway --hehe"
Ever wonder if Batman refused to shop at Fry's because he couldn't buy stuff with his bat-logo on them?
"Well, considering that in all of the GTA titles, all the racing missions were painfully unbearable..."
Can you qualify that a little better? I used to think they sucked too until I started driving the cars like I'd drive a real car. (I.e. slowing down for a turn.) At that point, what became diifcult was the randomness thrown in by being a world simulator. Stupid pedestrians would get in my way, get run over, and then get the cops after my butt. The type of car you had really affected how you drive as well. Are you going to take sharp turn in an Expedition? Not without rolling it! You had realistic options for picking your car as well. Now that I think about it, GTA's racing missions were far deeper than any racing game I've played.
I'm not trying to just blindly defend GTA here, I just came to this realization about a week or two ago. Racing in GTA's not like racing in the arcade, you can't get by while you're holding the gas down the entire time.
"It's chamges are subtle but of great value to the user?"
Cute.
No, I mean the changes aren't extreme enough. It strikes me that Linux is playing a perpetual game of catch-up to Microsoft. It'd be nice of Linux, for a change, started to define the rules that MS would have to follow. I'm talking about the desktop here, not the servers.
Linux feels like a cheap imitation when migrating from Windows.
"you have to wonder whether he thinks some of the changes are too extreme and possibly of little value to the user."
Linux, it seems, has the opposite problem. Come to think of it, why aren't I a Mac user?
"Why would they want to? Prinze played young Blair, Blair in Prophecy was Mark Hamill."
Factoid: Mark Hamill was the voice of "merlin" the computer on one of the ships. In the credits, Merlin was listed as '?'. Heh.
"Microsoft controls the desktop of 95% of computer users in the entire world. They have managed to be convicted of anti-trust behaviour and to get away with it scott-free."
They 'got away' with it because they achieved their monopoly because the market wanted it. They didn't acquire it illegally so the punishment (though a weak punishment) was to prevent them from leveraging it more.
... if IE didn't become a decidedly better browser than Netscape. Illegal monopolistic practices aside, it'd be hard to imagine that Netscape would have eventually won the war.
"So would these lifeforms be called Fartians???"
You're a gas.
"britney spears, gta3, matrix 2, and mtv are examples of this. all of them would not have existed if quality were the standard."
Uh, GTA3? Hardly. That game's reputation is well earned. Even Mr. Miyamoto appreciated what they did with that game.
Hahah! That was funny!
"i have never heard of this... nucular?"
It's the gland in your nose that makes snot. I'd go into detail about how one generates electricity from that, but it's kinda icky. I'll give you a hint, though, it sounds a little like this: fprpbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbpbppb .
"And the methane is cheap and easy to get as well... 99 cent menu at lunch means that you can drive home in the evening..."
Every time my friend says "I'm going to get gas", I say "Bring me back a Chalupa?"
It was funny 300 times, but not 301 times.
"Gimme a 'P'!"
Anybody taking nominations for the 'Out of Context' Awards?
"If there was any justice, it would be the developers who got neutered..."
Yeah, removing the urges they couldn't satisfy anyway would be real justice.
"Funny how essential things like "routing information" can be turned into a scary thing to uninformed users. Funny meaning "sad"."
Heh. I ran across a site once that said "Thank you for transmitting your hard drive information to me. It then opened a small frame to c:\. I wonder how many people that spooked.
"Who wants to volunteer to write one of those FUI ads to install Linux on all those poor fools' Windoze machines?"
Ah yes, that way millions of people could say "WTF? Why don't any of my games work?!"
"The Tengen Tetris case you're referring to was not about Tengen publishing unlicensed titles..."
:)
Doh! I apologize, he's right. I haven't thought about this since 1996 when I worked at FuncoLand. Hehehe
"Seems to me, with the completely different architectures and different scope of capabilities the lessons learned on a dreamcast would be largely useless to a PS2 developper"
The big problem is that they're completely useless if nobody plays the game. It's not very possible an indie to publish a game on the PS2. As a matter of fact, Sony'd likely fight it. Ever notice that 'unofficial' games are not on the market for game consoles? You can thank Nintendo for that one. A company called Tengen tried to make a game (Tetris I believe) using a cloned unlicensed cartridge. The result? Nintendo sued, and won. As a matter of fact, the Tengen Tetris is a collector's item. Sega won't pursue that with the DC.
In any case, assuming there's a way to publish on the PS2, then yes you have a point. Except that gaming isn't all about the programming. There's content creation, for example. In an oversimplified sense, porting from DC to the PS2 is probably pretty easy. The big problem is will the code run really fast or slow as a result of it? Is the texture buffer bigger than the PS2 has physical RAM for? If so, is that a problem for the programmers or the artists or both?
So yeah, you've got a point provided a few things ahead of it happen first. As I mentioned earlier, though, it's all for naught if people have to muck with their hardware to make it work.
"Dreamcast is a dead console, if I'm going to put work into developing for a console at all would I be better served to work on one that has a future?"
No, there are priorities ahead of it:
- Dreamcasts are cheap, like in the $50 range
- DC's don't require modding to play CDrs. Just download the ISO image, burn, and go.
- DC has a good simple architecture, plus BSD to develop on.
To put it another way, the DC has a much better audience than any of the other consoles out there for a game like this. People aren't going to flock to the game if you have to have + mod an XBOX or PS2.