You want to spend $2000 on a Dell? For those two thousand you can have an Apple PowerBook, and Apple deliver in one week. Call ahead and order it from a mom and pop reseller, then pick it up when you arrive.
Yes, that and the way they despise MS and people who use MS products. Up until now, that is. It's been possible for the longest time to completely ruin a Windows box in this fashion, and I think the reason it hasn't happened is that the writers have not been really evil.
But that's changing - and rapidly. MS is so ridiculously pitiful software - quoting Bill Joy again:
They took systems designed for isolated desktop systems and put them on the net without thinking about evildoers...
And now the 'evildoers' are here. In the four years the world has had to wise up and get their act together, nothing, absolutely nothing, has changed - and so organised crime moves in.
To anyone victimised today by these gangs, I say openly: you deserve it. You've had every chance. You've had people warning you for years. You won't listen, and you don't want to listen. You are now up to your neck in the swamp, and the alligators are approaching. It's called 'karma'.
However, this does mean that similar HTML, from a web browser, might also be dangerous. Anyone have info on that idea? (Malicious websites giving you the virus by visiting the site?)
Makes sense to me. After all, it's the 'IE' in Outlook that makes it bad - all the rest is just icing on the cake.
New Outlook Hole Found http://radsoft.net/news/roundups/luv May 8, 2000 0:00 AM UTC This is getting ridiculous. An email appears in Outlook's inbox, and even before the user does anything, a message pops up on the screen. 'Had this been a real virus, you would not be happy', it reads. The relieved user clicks 'OK' and another box pops up.
'Deleting hard drive now... Just kidding!'
It was written by Leigh Stivers of DP Technology, who is trying to draw attention to a hole in Outlook that is far more dangerous than the ones ILOVEYOU found - this hole allows any email to be loaded invisibly with a destructive program that could go as far as deleting an entire hard drive.
Unlike viruses like ILOVEYOU or Melissa, these programs have no attachment and give no indication that they are anything other than ordinary email.
And with Outlook's factory defaults, this program - which might have been set to wipe your entire hard drive clean - can start running without you having to click a thing, before Outlook even tells you mail is there.
'The script can do almost anything', said Stivers. ''We were amazed to see how open everything was in house here, and we take security pretty seriously.'
You shouldn't have been amazed, Mr. Stivers. But thanks for the tip. We shall now visit the C|net link and read the article and within 30 minutes be running a better email client - for this writing on the wall is surely enough for even the lamest Outlook user?
Given that you have to select an E-mail to delete it, how are users supposed to protect themselves from this one?
This is nothing new. Leigh Stivers of DP Technology, researching in the wake of ILOVEYOU from May 2000, demonstrated in the fall of that same year that anything goes with poor products like Microsoft Outlook.
This revelation, like ILOVEYOU and all that followed, did nothing to move the masses away from their bad habits. AnnaK followed, and after that things only got worse, and still we find people trying to batten down the hatches and still use Outlook and Swiss cheese Microsoft technology.
So how do you avoid threats like these new Bagles? Easy. You stop using Windows because you're supposed to be smarter than that at this point in time - after getting the shit kicked out of you for four years straight.
Second, if you're simply too lame to abandon your beloved Windows, then you at least abandon Outlook and all IE-related email technologies such as Eudora. Any email client relying on Internet Explorer is a sitting duck, and you know it.
I am not telling anyone anything they do not already know; even posing such a question - 'how in heavens will we protect ourselves now?' - is so lame it's beyond description.
The Bagles are hardly the worst threat right now anyway. Phatbot is out there, harvesting machines like they're going out of style, and coming ever closer to the first million mark. This is outright organised crime. The machines are left as backdoored P2P bots and can harvest bank account details, credit card details, passwords all over the place, and the corrupted machines can be used in further spam attacks - where the unwitting, claiming ignorance and helplessness, go ahead and click on things and use Windows and Outlook and then ask 'how can we protect ourselves?'
It's not interesting anymore. There's no point in trying to help those who categorically refuse to help themselves and take the necessary steps to be safe. The only concern, voiced for years now, is that these ignoramuses are ruining the Internet for the rest of us - and that is a very real and very justified concern.
22 January 2004: We are in the process of driving the Camino 0.8 buglist to zarro boogs. We will be branching off Mozilla 1.7 (now scheduled for April) and will release shortly after. We expect Camino 0.8 to be faster and even more solid than 0.7...
Hey maybe the Microsofties will by now have figured out that terrible inexplicable bug in the code for their previous version so people only thought there were 14 links to 'Linux' all over the net!
I'd suppose so at any rate - for if there are two things we can count on with Redmond, it's #1) always telling the truth and #2) always working hard.
Don't want to tout someone's product, but seriously: if you're a pro here, you can't make it fast or far without Andy Lee's AppKiDo. It's easy to Google to, and it's free.
What Andy does is parse the actual documentation you already have on disk, but he does a much better job of it than Apple. Searches are better, faster, more flexible, and so are the renderings.
It's one of the truly indispensable programs out there.
It's cleaner to provide well-defined applications to do certain functions, and integrate them through communications interfaces than it is to just stick functions X, Y and Z into one ball.
Cleanier and less buggy too, it might be worthwhile to point out.
Otherwise I'm in complete agreement with almost all of the early posters here: 288 points Lucide Grande 'BFD'.
There are mitigating factors, and ironically most of it is tied to the baby Bells and their competitors.
Every communication line is multiplexed. In other words, a telephone trunk line open to the public at large may actually only be able to handle 1/10 of the total possible traffic.
But broadband lines have been multiplexed much worse.
So that as long as everyone does not use broadband, the speeds are high; but as soon as everyone goes over to it, guess what will happen?
And then those who want the speed they had in the beginning will get a new offer: pay twice as much again and you can have it back. And so forth.
So things are faster now, but it's not a constant upward curve.
That's cool, and it's easy, but it's not quite correct. You do have to be somewhat technical to pass a drivers licence test, and you have to get your vehicle inspected too.
None of that currently applies to the Internet - and look where it got us.
Steve Jobs has been asked many times if Apple will get into the downloadable movie market. Never, he answers over and over again, this is all about instant gratification.
Even with an OC12 you won't get the movie before dinner.
Slashdot Mirror
You want to spend $2000 on a Dell? For those two thousand you can have an Apple PowerBook, and Apple deliver in one week. Call ahead and order it from a mom and pop reseller, then pick it up when you arrive.
Most virus writers target MS due to simplicity.
Yes, that and the way they despise MS and people who use MS products. Up until now, that is. It's been possible for the longest time to completely ruin a Windows box in this fashion, and I think the reason it hasn't happened is that the writers have not been really evil.
But that's changing - and rapidly. MS is so ridiculously pitiful software - quoting Bill Joy again:
They took systems designed for isolated desktop systems and put them on the net without thinking about evildoers...
And now the 'evildoers' are here. In the four years the world has had to wise up and get their act together, nothing, absolutely nothing, has changed - and so organised crime moves in.
To anyone victimised today by these gangs, I say openly: you deserve it. You've had every chance. You've had people warning you for years. You won't listen, and you don't want to listen. You are now up to your neck in the swamp, and the alligators are approaching. It's called 'karma'.
people who use Outlook Express aren't rocket scientists
The International Caretakers of the Understatement Proudly Present
The Understatement of the Year Award
to
'taustin (171655)'
Two slight mistakes here:
However, this does mean that similar HTML, from a web browser, might also be dangerous. Anyone have info on that idea? (Malicious websites giving you the virus by visiting the site?)
Makes sense to me. After all, it's the 'IE' in Outlook that makes it bad - all the rest is just icing on the cake.
but maybe NOT running javascript, html, etc is actually GOOD when it comes to emails.
I hope you're being sarcastic here!
New Outlook Hole Found
http://radsoft.net/news/roundups/luv
May 8, 2000 0:00 AM UTC
This is getting ridiculous. An email appears in Outlook's inbox, and even before the user does anything, a message pops up on the screen. 'Had this been a real virus, you would not be happy', it reads. The relieved user clicks 'OK' and another box pops up.
'Deleting hard drive now... Just kidding!'
It was written by Leigh Stivers of DP Technology, who is trying to draw attention to a hole in Outlook that is far more dangerous than the ones ILOVEYOU found - this hole allows any email to be loaded invisibly with a destructive program that could go as far as deleting an entire hard drive.
Unlike viruses like ILOVEYOU or Melissa, these programs have no attachment and give no indication that they are anything other than ordinary email.
And with Outlook's factory defaults, this program - which might have been set to wipe your entire hard drive clean - can start running without you having to click a thing, before Outlook even tells you mail is there.
'The script can do almost anything', said Stivers. ''We were amazed to see how open everything was in house here, and we take security pretty seriously.'
You shouldn't have been amazed, Mr. Stivers. But thanks for the tip. We shall now visit the C|net link and read the article and within 30 minutes be running a better email client - for this writing on the wall is surely enough for even the lamest Outlook user?
http://news.com.com/2100-1001-240189.html
Given that you have to select an E-mail to delete it, how are users supposed to protect themselves from this one?
This is nothing new. Leigh Stivers of DP Technology, researching in the wake of ILOVEYOU from May 2000, demonstrated in the fall of that same year that anything goes with poor products like Microsoft Outlook.
This revelation, like ILOVEYOU and all that followed, did nothing to move the masses away from their bad habits. AnnaK followed, and after that things only got worse, and still we find people trying to batten down the hatches and still use Outlook and Swiss cheese Microsoft technology.
So how do you avoid threats like these new Bagles? Easy. You stop using Windows because you're supposed to be smarter than that at this point in time - after getting the shit kicked out of you for four years straight.
Second, if you're simply too lame to abandon your beloved Windows, then you at least abandon Outlook and all IE-related email technologies such as Eudora. Any email client relying on Internet Explorer is a sitting duck, and you know it.
I am not telling anyone anything they do not already know; even posing such a question - 'how in heavens will we protect ourselves now?' - is so lame it's beyond description.
The Bagles are hardly the worst threat right now anyway. Phatbot is out there, harvesting machines like they're going out of style, and coming ever closer to the first million mark. This is outright organised crime. The machines are left as backdoored P2P bots and can harvest bank account details, credit card details, passwords all over the place, and the corrupted machines can be used in further spam attacks - where the unwitting, claiming ignorance and helplessness, go ahead and click on things and use Windows and Outlook and then ask 'how can we protect ourselves?'
It's not interesting anymore. There's no point in trying to help those who categorically refuse to help themselves and take the necessary steps to be safe. The only concern, voiced for years now, is that these ignoramuses are ruining the Internet for the rest of us - and that is a very real and very justified concern.
Camino 0.8 is on the way too.
22 January 2004: We are in the process of driving the Camino 0.8 buglist to zarro boogs. We will be branching off Mozilla 1.7 (now scheduled for April) and will release shortly after. We expect Camino 0.8 to be faster and even more solid than 0.7...
Hey maybe the Microsofties will by now have figured out that terrible inexplicable bug in the code for their previous version so people only thought there were 14 links to 'Linux' all over the net!
I'd suppose so at any rate - for if there are two things we can count on with Redmond, it's #1) always telling the truth and #2) always working hard.
Don't want to tout someone's product, but seriously: if you're a pro here, you can't make it fast or far without Andy Lee's AppKiDo. It's easy to Google to, and it's free.
What Andy does is parse the actual documentation you already have on disk, but he does a much better job of it than Apple. Searches are better, faster, more flexible, and so are the renderings.
It's one of the truly indispensable programs out there.
mamasam.com
Mamasan is good, but it's not formalised. And a lot of time is wasted by newbies who are too lazy to RTFM.
Vervante has a nice selection of books. They're pricey (~$300 for the lot) but they're good.
every user a developer
Oh please. Who exactly will benefit, and how?
It is sad that programming is becoming yet another wannabe art and is rather ceasing to be an art altogether.
- MN Karthik
The day this began was the first day of the end of the world.
It's great because it looks like the Microsoft Developer Network?
Someone toss me a flight bag quick.
It's cleaner to provide well-defined applications to do certain functions, and integrate them through communications interfaces than it is to just stick functions X, Y and Z into one ball.
Cleanier and less buggy too, it might be worthwhile to point out.
Otherwise I'm in complete agreement with almost all of the early posters here: 288 points Lucide Grande 'BFD'.
There are mitigating factors, and ironically most of it is tied to the baby Bells and their competitors.
Every communication line is multiplexed. In other words, a telephone trunk line open to the public at large may actually only be able to handle 1/10 of the total possible traffic.
But broadband lines have been multiplexed much worse.
So that as long as everyone does not use broadband, the speeds are high; but as soon as everyone goes over to it, guess what will happen?
And then those who want the speed they had in the beginning will get a new offer: pay twice as much again and you can have it back. And so forth.
So things are faster now, but it's not a constant upward curve.
Yeah, and in thirty years we've come from MITS Altairs to home computers with keyboards - but they work about as well.
she has never been online. Her access is just to get e-mail
Uh - hello? Flawed: what's the all-time killer app?
Otherwise I agree. 'There's lies, goddamned lies, and statistics', said your author Mr Clemens I believe.
narly manditory (if not already so) for secondary schools to teach internet skills
Yeah, I hear they're cracking down on casual dyslexia too.
It astonishes me that people don't care to learn about something they use every day, for perhaps hours on end.
Be astonished - and fear meeting them on a real highway.
That's cool, and it's easy, but it's not quite correct. You do have to be somewhat technical to pass a drivers licence test, and you have to get your vehicle inspected too.
None of that currently applies to the Internet - and look where it got us.
We buy more than half of all electronic devices
Uh, I'm not so sure. You buy way more than half the battery operated devices though.
internet access is highest among females 35-54
That's cos females 35-54 have finally figured out you can have a 'verbal chat electronically' without getting pregnant.
Steve Jobs has been asked many times if Apple will get into the downloadable movie market. Never, he answers over and over again, this is all about instant gratification.
Even with an OC12 you won't get the movie before dinner.
Another klutzy move by Redmond.
Anyone else have logarithm tricks to share?
No but thanks for the tip on attention-getting fonts with '<tt>'.