From what I can tell, that does look like a good solution. Particularly if you are going for a thin client setup (eg a PC with just a CD-ROM, a USB flashdrive, or even just PXELinux or something like that.) Part of what I like about my current setup though is that I can leave the same session open and connect to it from a remote system. The other day this was a bit of a lifesaver because I needed to get to a site that used a port that was blocked on the school computers. By connecting to the server on my own system (which I had carefully picked a port I knew wasn't blocked for) I was able to use a graphical client (the page was very heavy in images and using lynx/links got quite unpleasant at best.) I had also hoped to set up port forwarding to even connect through my ssh session to my main PC which runs Windows where I could then do things like image editing, but, I never quite got that working for some reason (don't know if I need that anymore anyway.)
Thanks for the info though. Every now and then I actually wonder if some people I know might be better served with really cheap thin clients. It's more of a what-if mental excercise than an actual plan, but, who knows, maybe someday I'll be digging frantically for this post in the archives. ^_^
It arriving sooner just means the initial bit of information gets there sooner. Great for quick burst style things, but, then you find that any benefits are gone very quickly as the data travels at a fixed rate. So, we're basically talking low latency here.
Not that it matters. To do this requires some rather serious hardware. You know, the kind of thing you generally only see in a big educational facility where someone managed to get a big grant or some government thing or whatever. It's not such a simple thing that it could ever enter consumer electronics unless they find new ways of doing it. The fact is, even if they decided to make some sort of machine using this anyway, in the end the things converting and/or processing the data are going to not be able to move fast enough to really make the difference noticable.
Sorry, not to rain on your parade or anything. It still has potential uses. For example, one thought I had when I first heard about someone doing this was that if they could figure out a way to move it far enough back, information could be sent into the past. Kind of like some of the ideas of quantum computing, perhaps such a method could allow one to obtain a result basically instantly when the question is asked (though I don't know how this would affect the paradoxical nature of the fact that if you have the answer you don't run the problem, or, even if you did run it, then you still have the processing going on and can't do anything else during that time with those cycles.) Actually, it strikes me that if you could move it far enough back in time, you could pass important information. Such as "they are going to bomb at so-and-so tomorrow." Or even "the dog named lady luck will win the race tomorrow at 10:1 odds against."
Don't forget. VNC is OS independant. I can fire up a VNC session on my linux box and use a VNC client on the box itself then leave the session open and connect to it from a windows box. Ok, via Cygwin you can pull off X, but, it is definitely not worth all that extra clutter when a simple VNC client can achieve the same purpose and is designed to do it better (remote X is really intended for a lan dumb client type setup whereas VNC can be used to add JPEG compression, decrease color depth, etc so works about as well as you can hope over the internet.)
PS. I found a nice little client called DirectVNC which uses the DirectFB (framebuffer) to give you VNC in a console. Since this is for a server type setup, I find it handy since I can have just one X setup running essentially this way. Eg, I don't have to start X to get to the VNC session even. It strikes me that this could also be handy on some minimalistic setups such as some live discs perhaps.
I agree. The Porsche is made for some amazing stuff. I'm just saying that you can still get quite possibly all you want with a much cheaper car and maybe a mod or two. You'd be surprised how well the Corolla handles btw. I'm driving a 2002 Prizm, which is the older eighth generation model before the newer larger ones, so the newer ones may be worse, but, I was rather surprised. Mainly the suspension is just a little softer than feels quite right and you need to find the right tires (I'm using cheap Toyo Spectrums, which are actually quite good as long as it's not raining.) That's the car with no options. The higher end Corolla S comes stock much better and with a mod or two may never compare directly to a Porsche, but, it may still do all you want while getting you insane gas milage and giving your wallet a break (opening them too often wears them out a lot faster. Wallet fatigue is a serious condition.) d-:
I'm sorry, but, I have to say it. Close to 130? What's that? Geez, I drove a 4 cylinder 95 accord lx AUTOMATIC at 130 mph on a highway before... Not close to, but, at. (Ok, I recommend against doing that, I chipped a couple of teeth off the gear that way after driving it at that speed for a while, though at that point I was actually starting to go up a bit more towards 135 or so when it happened. But, I think a good manual transmission version of the same car could hold its own at that speed without modification.) What was it's MPG again? 32? Somewhere in that ballpark. What's even the point in having a car like that practically just pouring your money down the drain if you aren't even going to use it properly? I just don't understand why people do it. You're like those people that tick me off so much who have this Mustang covered in flames, a custom spoiler, etc who let the trailer truck in the right line out accelerate them from the red lights. (For Christ's sake, why do they have to sit in the left lane KNOWING they will go slower than the traffic in the right and cause a jam?)
Go try a Corolla sometime. Insane MPGs and an acceleration that maybe isn't even on the same scale as those uber sports cars, but, is still enough to pull you back (got a crick in my neck the other day when I surprised myself at a red light by accidentally giving it a bit more gas than I intended.) Your wallet will thank you. What are they up to now? 41MPG? Mod the living daylights out of it and it will still do better than 10 while giving you all you could ever really want and still for cheaper. I know it's not a Porsche, but, come on, do you really need a Porche?
You know, I just realized something. You can actually change the data for the races in the construction set. If you knew the exact filename (can probably be found with a hex edit,) you could place a dummy file in the location it expects, then switch the model in the construction set and delete the dummy file so it will once again use the internal copy inside the archive. I've done this for switching a model for a chair (the portable chair mod uses a model of a plate for the drop item, which just seems silly,) but, I'm willing to bet that someone with the patience could do the same thing there.
So, now that I think about it more, ESRB's case has a little more strength behind it than I thought. You can do it with all first party stuff. The game itself and the construction set that you can get for free for it on their site are probably all you need. In theory, it should be possible to do it without any third party modifications whatsoever.
Someone with more patience for such things can feel free to test. Perhaps I'm wrong, but, it looks like it can be done to me.
First, somehow people are still getting this wrong. This was NOT created by a third party in any manner. The content exists already inside the data archives for the game. They created it, then later renamed it so it wouldn't be used, but, they still packed it in with the rest of the data. They left in a bunch of other junk that isn't supposed to be used as well, but, most of it is just testing stuff. Since they created the actual data, according to the article, ESRB's recent policy is that if it's inside the game itself and simply unlockable (whether by third party mod or not) then the game should be rated based on the fact that it IS in the game in an easily accessable manner. I think the theory here is that it might be easier for a parent or blocking utility (like CyberNanny or whatever the heck it's called) to stop a child from getting a mod that adds in content from scratch, most probably by catching the sort of site such a thing would be on. A simple thing like this where all one has to do is extract and rename a single file is almost impossible to stop. Therefore, it's so easily accessable it may just as well be in there. The theory may not be 100% sound, but, it does have a reasonable basis.
That said, I have had this game a while and I have the definite impression that Bethesda started out creating a realistic enough violent game to deserve the M rating for blood/etc. I kind of wonder if you could even hack off limbs or something in an alpha version since it seems like the system could allow it. What I think is that Bethesda realized that since they had decided to target XBox360 users first and foremost, they'd be missing out on the large younger audience that gravitates more towards consoles (yes, adults do use consoles a LOT, but, you get more younger people using consoles than you get of the younger people on PC. Previously Bethesda only cared about PC, so no big deal, but, this time they decided to make a console game -- which, incidentally, us PC users got lucky enough to get a crappy port of.) ESRB's changed rating doesn't just mean they have to pull them off the shelves and all, more importantly it means they loose a huge chunk of the crowds they wanted to target. The fact is, I think that they did the absolute MINIMUM required to get the game down to meeting ESRB's requirements for a T rating toning down the blood and violence just enough to meet those needs, and possibly they intended to leave the mesh labeled female_nude in there at first, but, when they switched to a T audience they had to remove it (so did so in the cheapest manner possible, a simple rename and replace with a copy where they tossed in an underwear texture.) I personally think ESRB might be pushing this so hard mainly just due to the fact that the game really honestly does deserve a M rating with all the violence and freedom to, for example, walk up and randomly kill someone then drag their body down the street. If it weren't for all this, I'd bet ESRB wouldn't be pushing so hard over something that still does have to be unlocked via a third party tool or mod.
I had actually already read the article. It doesn't actually discuss the FCC's specific powers. This isn't a coincidence, the article is about the CALEA, not the FCC.
I must say though, this is just another of the multitudes of things that scare me about my home country. I am thinking more and more often lately that this country is turning into such a big-brother is always watching you to make sure you always stick to the letter of the book in everything you do that I just don't know if I really want to spend my whole life here. The purpose of such laws was supposed to be to protect our rights, but, between things like DMCA and CALEA they just keep taking away more and more rights one by one. Taken seperately, each of these little laws don't do much, but, all together they are starting to limit what we can do to the point that a future in which the government controls your every move is starting to look frighteningly closer to possible than it should.
First of all, it seems I misread the article somehow. I thought for some reason it said that the FCC made encryption of VoIP illegal. Sorry about that. Needless to say, I was upset and reacted hastily. I like the idea of VoIP and planned to go that route in the future, but, first it needs encryption. Analog may not be great, but, it's a lot harder to illegally tap an analog phoneline than it is to snoop some packets.
Anyway, that article doesn't really help me very much. I understand that the FCC was appointed to regulate communications (that's the thing, it applies to all communications, which is why everything from phones to tv to satellites get thrown in the equation.) But, they must have reasonable limitations on that regulation. Otherwise, what stops them from basically taking over the US communication entirely?
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Very iffy here. I can be said that they are indeed prohibiting free speech because they have basically made it so that there is no such thing as privacy. Anything you say today can and will be held against you any time before the statute of limitations runs out because anything you say is public domain and not private. Honestly, I don't even use phones much, and certainly not for any kind of illegal activities, but, just the thought that someone could easily just set up a little receiver and listen in on my conversations makes me very unconfortable. I don't mind as much the thought that the government could do it since at least they won't do things like steal personal information for identity theft, but, it does make me a little uncomfortable knowing that they have declared the right to listen to anything I say any time they darned well feel like it on any such service.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Fourth is hard to argue for, but, it is very clear that by REQUIRING such a thing they are making it extremely clear that they intend to violate the fourth amendment. The only reason to require that encryption not be used is if you plan to look at the actual data yourself. Otherwise they wouldn't care whether there is encryption or not.
Here's a question. What is the OFFICIAL domain of the FCC? It sounds to me rather as if they have stepped outside of their legal domain and overstepping their actual rights of power by mandating that encryption not be used for VoIP. Does anyone know their official powers?
Well, my only point is they are really stretching things here and the particular wording actually is a lie. The meaning was not, but, the wording was very poorly chosen. There IS nudity in the game they created. They hid it, but, it's still in the game they created.
Don't get me wrong, their real point is true. It is something not normally accessable, and not something you can get to by just typing some console command (well, unless there's a command that can change mesh references or something.) So it will require a third party mod to get to it, though from what I understand of how unlocking it works, probably a child could do it, which might be a part of why ESRB feels it deserves a higher rating. Then again, a child could install nudity mods for most of the games out there anyway. Many games make installing a mod easy and don't really differentiate between the content of those mods (and if they did people would be VERY upset because it's quite easy for any algorithm designed to determine what is appropriate or not to incorrectly detect inappropriate content -- for example, I can't say "cars" in the Need for Speed online chat. That's right. Cars. The subject of the game... Maybe they've finally fixed this since I last tried?)
It is unfair for ESRB to rate them on what can be done via modifications. I still think it's unfair for ESRB to rate them a T to begin with though, and I have a suspicion that ESRB is just using it as an excuse because they know Bethesda explicitely did the absolute minimum required to ensure they got such a rating knowing that their game really does belong in the M category with all that violence and such.
No, they simply made two versions, one with nudity, one without. Then replaced the nudity one with the welded underwear one before hitting the shelves. Probably someone there thought it was funny tossing in a nude mesh. Nonetheless, the actual content is in the final version, it just requires a mod to unlock. In fact, if someone figures out how to trick the XBox360 version into working with user mods or some smart company licenses out or something so they can sell mods too (currently only Bethesda can sell mods for the XBox360 version) then someone might add such a mod. I doubt Bethesda would ever officially do this. All it has to do is point to the other file inside the data archive though.
That said, the ESRB is kind of being unfair about it. The fact is, they did disable it, and it does require just as much work to unlock it as with any other game. However, I do feel that the ESRB rating of M would be more befitting considering the realistic depiction of violence complete with blood and etc. God, you can drag dead bodies around and toss them off of cliffs to watch them bounce (hey, I was REALLY ticked off at an ambush, give me a break.) They do deserve an M rating. They are just upset because they had worked very hard to meet the absolute minimum requirements to get a T rating so they could get a larger audience. In particular, with the XBox360 crowd, they are aware they'll have to target a lot of younger people since PC gamers tend to be older overall. If ESRB said they'd change on the PC version, Bethesda probably wouldn't get very upset.
Actually, now that I reread the original article, it does look like Bethesda is actually lying a little. They say they didn't create a game with nudity, but, they put it in there. They disabled it, but, it's in there. Therefore, they created a game with nudity disabled.
Just so we're clear, the only "modification" necessary by these third parties is to rename a couple of files. Rename the old mesh to something else, then rename the nude mesh to the name that the old one was. Quite frankly, I consider this a lie as well since renaming a file isn't actually modifying the actual content of the file.
Bethesda CREATED the material. The nude textures and the nude meshes using said textures. It takes a third party mod to unlock them. The third parties did not create the material and, as far as I know, it's impossible for them to do so considering that a mesh exporter has yet to be released (nor any news pertaining to actual work being done on one last time I looked.) And for those of you thinking bad thoughts, a NIF exporter would allow us to do a lot of legitimate things such as new weapons, new armors, even better looking creatures or performance enhancing things such as the removal of the mind numbingly massive number of polygons dedicated to creatures that don't need them like the bear.
So, for the record, a third party mod is required to unlock the material, but, Bethesda created the material and then later renamed the model file so they could put in a different version with underwear welded to the people's skin without overwriting the original. They then placed this in the final game rather than removing it (along with a lot of other crap that doesn't belong, but, this is the only thing that's doing more than taking up extra space.) Third parties did not create the material. Please stop saying over and over that they did.
Actually, please reread what people have said. Or buy/borrow the game, get a BSA extractor and extract the data from the game files. In the archive, inside the meshes is one LABELED female_nude or something along those lines (I don't remember exactly what it was called off the top of my head since I just passed by it and laughed at the thought that they actually put that in there and clearly must have changed it after when someone decided to switch from M rating to T as their target.) The fact is, Bethesda did indeed create this original mesh and textures to go along with it and did pack it into the final game along with a lot of other stuff they should have removed (they left a few test files and such in there, taking up extra space that will never be used in the final game.) They are just upset because this means they loose some of their target crowd. For some reason, with Oblivion, Bethesda decided "screw the PC audience, XBox is where we'll get all the dough" and decided to really do a poor job on the PC port (yes, I call it a PC port because it was obviously created for XBox360 and then we get the benefit of it being PC too just because they are so nice.) Don't take my word for it, just look through their own forums. You'll see a number of fans finding out the hard way that they didn't put the proper effort into the PC version at all. Actually, it's a little dissapointing that they still let a few bugs slip into the XBox360 version, but, there's just no excuse for things such as the performance and stability problems that flood the PC version.
Anyway, they'll get over it. Everyone knows kids still get the M rated games through their parents if nothing else. Darn, when I was a kid I asked for a copy of Doom for my birthday and my parents didn't even LOOK at the rating. They've gotten a little more concious about it in the modern day, but, they still have a tendency to not really care much so long as it doesn't feature nudity or something (and, ah, this is where Bethesda gets upset since that's the one thing parents WILL go into a panic about their children seeing.)
Wow. Uhm, I haven't had any caffeine yet. OS/2 a fair fight? Lol, they were both gouging and making low blows, but, it was never a fair fight. OS/2 never really stood a chance with IBM's tactics. Besides, what in the name of whatever deities they may believe in were they thinking when they put MS in charge of OS/2... Expecting Bill to just hand them something to defeat his plans for Windows with and it just work wonders and take over the world for IBM was just stupid. No, Microshaft hasn't competed fairly ever since before it was even Microshaft Incorporated.
Alternately, and this is what I'm crossing my fingers and praying on, it may mean bargaining has broken down and they have already given up on trying to team up with Yahoo against Google.
I'm just so excited at the prospect of a new slightly less crappy big thing coming in and challenging Microsoft. Right now the problem is they haven't had to compete in a fair fight since OS/2. Microsoft needs to be knocked down a few pegs already.
All I can say is that I love opensource and the only reason I don't use OOo for most of my work is the fact that I know most of the systems I'll take that work to will have MS Office, but, unfortunately, most won't have OOo. I tell as many people as I can about the advantages, but, in the end, I can't control people and make them install something they don't want to install. Of course, I've always felt that if they'd just add an official standalone viewer I could at least do things that don't need editing on those systems in ODF (in particular presentations, but, obviously a standalone viewer would be useful for documents as well.) Heck, I REALLY want to switch to ODF 100% right now -- especially after finding out the hard way that Office 2003 won't let you edit files that have embedded fonts (even when you embed the full font) if it detects that you do not have the font installed (and in my case, I did.) I was nearly screwed when I found out that my presentation due in just a short time was completely uneditable via PowerPoint even though the font it said wasn't installed was installed.) Who knows what kind of stupid crap they'll put in Office 2007.
An ODF import filter could also solve this issue. Actually, MS is probably going to have to add one anyway. With ODF growing in popularity rapidly lately and even looking at being an ISO standard, MS is going to have to support it or they risk becoming what OpenOffice is to people like me now (eg the one no one uses because even though it may be good, you can't count on it being installed on the target machine.) Ok, atm, that would hurt them since it would make it easier for people like me to switch away, but, if they aren't careful it will hurt them worse if they make it hard for people to switch TO them.
Whilst I agree that the others in the process do deserve every penny they have worked to earn, I still disagree that they need to line their pockets with silver and even gold every time Britney Spears releases a new even worse album. Or do you really believe it costs them with all their quality equipment and experience so incredibly much to make those things? The equipment is a fixed cost and it actually decreases many of the other costs so that it actually doesn't cost them very much in the long run to produce some new crappy album for a crappy artist that has the public spotlight for a day or two.
Actually, the concept of supporting the bands themselves is a bit more complex than you think. Right now, what is there to convince Britney Spears that she should spend more time working on music quality than she spends with the scissors on her clothes? She's going to be paid more for the scissors in the end, so who cares about quality? On the other hand, when the creators of the music itself get paid directly, they have a LOT more incentive to actually produce quality (namely the fact that they'll go out of business if they just keep releasing crap.) It's the way capitalism is supposed to actually work in fact. In such a system, the good bands who produce quality music would, in theory, come out on top while people like Britney Spears will be back on the streets (and wishing she'd never seen those scissors when winter comes.) Ok, truth is capitalism mainly because of the government doesn't really work out as well as that, but, it definitely works out better when the market is done correctly versus when all the money and control goes to a few big groups.
Well, besides the whole capitalism aspect in the long run, in the short run, the sort of bands who actually do the direct to consumer methods today tend to be the sort who actually try to provide people with what they want (sometimes even *shivers* TALKING to their fans) and they actually try to produce quality music because they want to, not because they want to be rich. I'm sure there are exceptions, but, today that's where it stands just because that's the kind of mentality that gravitates towards this system at the moment.
Re:I think I speak for most of us when I say...
on
Can You Spoof IP Packets?
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· Score: 3, Insightful
It is a hole that needs to be plugged. Any trick you can do with spoofing, you can do without. Yes, it's more work. You could argue that it's easier to run your P2P applications without a firewall since you don't have to go to all that extra trouble to set up the firewall. It's more work, but, you can bet that I'm darned well going to go to the trouble to configure my firewall instead of shutting it off. IP spoofing isn't as dangerous, but, it definitely has its security problems. Overall people are better off without spoofing even for things that can legitimately benefit. It is more work since you'll have to set up real routing or something to compensate, but, it also means some lucky hacker doesn't get to come in and fool your services into thinking he's sitting at a terminal on the LAN. Yeah, great for you if your LAN is so secure that you could trust a hacker on it as much as you could on the Internet, but, most of us are not so convinced that we have THAT much security in place. Plus you have to give up the advantage of being able to trust the LAN anyway.
WOW this is old news. Everyone has known this for over a year now at least, probably even longer still. Typosquatting isn't all though, let's not forget all those annoying sites that have half a million keywords at the bottom of a page or the people who cheat using blogging to increase the pagerank of a site.
I think some of you may be interested to check out Google Watch.
Well, I do disagree with the claim that it locks you into windows. The fact is, the number of games for linux IS pitiful. I'm sorry, but, I'm afraid this is fact. This statement is coming from someone who has used both ATI and nVidia video cards. There's a lot more to benefit from than terminals though. Proper video acceleration actually helps a lot for many 2D effects expected in a modern GUI such as transparencies and, more importantly, video. Unfortunately, linux still completely lacks truly GPU accelerated video processing of the more important effects like deinterlacing. As far as I know, you still can't do any more than a quick and dirty bilinear resize via video hardware, but, you really don't need much CPU power to do a much higher quality resize anyway.
Personally, I've had both nVidia and ATI hardware over the years, and I'm still more than a little dissapointed at the uphill battle one has to fight to get an ATI card to perform better than an old PCI video card at simple tasks in linux (and I'm not making that claim up either considering that when my primary AGP card failed I was forced to result to an ancient Rage Pro based PCI card which only pretended at 3D acceleration when it was new and even then couldn't really compete that well.) I don't even bother to play games in linux, I just want video processing and the desktop to get what they can out of my video card in Windows. And I'm very dissapointed that even after all these years ATI still refuses to give us something as easy to install and use as what nVidia gives us, but, don't get me wrong, nVidia still also refuses to give more than a basic support. I still can't understand what trade secrets both companies are afraid of giving away by just giving third parties the information they need to develop the drivers that neither company can put any serious development into. All they have to do is release the right info and ATI cards could perform only slightly worse than nVidia cards in linux (nVidia is better at OpenGL, and, surprisingly enough, linux tends to focus more on OpenGL than Direct3D for some reason. ATI is still decent at OpenGL, though you'd never be able to tell with the way they perform in linux.)
Locked in though? Well, there's always the framebuffer method, vidix, and so on. You get poor performance out of a number of things, but, its enough to get by. Definitely you aren't locked into windows with ATI. Unfortunately, games do lock you into windows whether you are using ATI or nVidia. The fact is, only one line of truly popular games has consistantly offered linux support, and for the greater majority of the rest, you will either only see linux support considerably later or you'll get inconsistant results at best from either what usually is a poor linux port, or if you don't even get that, MAYBE you'll get acceptable results out of Cedega, though for most of us this has been even less consistant. Again, this is coming from someone who has used windows and linux both over the years as well as ati and nvidia. I can still remember how even an OpenGL based game like Neverwinter Nights ran worse in linux versus windows even on my old unlocked and overclocked (via BIOS, so both the unlocking and overclocking applied to linux as well as windows) 6800... I never got Doom 3 up and running, so maybe someone can tell me if it did worse or not, but, I'd really suspect that it actually would be just a little bit worse in linux like NWN was.
"No way!!! BUY BUY BUY!!!/me happy with my 6600:-) [it's the cheapest non-crippled PCIe card I could find at the time]"
I'm sorry, but, I have to inform you that your 6600 is VERY crippled. Especially if you mean the non-GT version. The 6600 series started its life as a crippled card. The GPU, the NV43, is a weaker crippled version of the NV40, and, probably more importantly, while it boasts really fast sounding gDDR3 memory, its 128-bit memory bus actually makes it unable to compete even with the slower gDDR memory of the 256-bit 6800LE (that's right, even the elusive LE is a little better -- excluding the possibility that the LE can be unlocked and overclocked to become a lot better. The nu comes out even further ahead, again excluding unlocking and overclocking on the AGP models.) Mind you, if it had gDDR it would hurt even more since with such a low bus it needs all the speed it can get to compensate.
Actually, I have a point beyond just pointing out that little mistake. When the 6600GT was first released, it was called the Doom 3 card, and rightly so because it could get some very nice quality settings out of a game with such high requirements. Comparable probably to a Radeon 9800 even, but, at a lower price. And that price was no $500. Only today is the 6600 series finally beginning to truly show its weakness in games like Oblivion (which can bring even a X850 to its knees with the right settings.) The mid-range cards actually end up being the best investment for a person because by the time they loose their competitive advantage (cost vs performance) even the high end video cards are starting to struggle. In other words, by the time a mid-range card is no longer able to get you acceptable quality settings out of a game, chances are a high-end card is no longer going to be good enough either. In either case you must upgrade within the same sort of time range. If you spend $500 every time, it hurts a lot worse than if you just keep upgrading to the mid-range cards. Even if the $500 will buy you a little more time, it's not enough extra time to be worth that extra $200 or so.
The size of a virus matters because the bigger they get, the more obvious they become when trying to sneak around in memory and such. Every extra resource that mysteriously dissapears increases the liklihood that the user or admin will wonder why some particular thing isn't doing as well and thus the av/malware scans begin. Any virus designer who is more than a script kiddie will probably want to do everything within their power to ensure a minimum of suspicion on the part of anyone who could end up running an av scan.
Also, a really huge virus would be kind of hard to distribute since it would take so long and end up getting interrupted after all. Come to think of it, limited resources come into play again since the user may begin to wonder why their up/downstream is mysteriously saturated.
Don't know if they can write at all, but, I'm sure if you googled around a little more you'd find one that did. The point is, it's definitely out there and the code is even available for a lot if not all of them.
That said, the real idea is generally to infect via things like Samba shares. I don't think the virus relies on the user to be dual booting since probably in the majority of the setups you'll be running one or the other all the time not rebooting frequently. A lot of times, such as mine, you'll have windows systems behind linux systems acting as firewalls/routers and servers, and I'm thinking that's more the kind of thing they're really interested in.
Oh, and offtopic just a smidge, but, on a directly related note, there is a swap partition driver for Windows, which you can find info on here: http://www.acc.umu.se/~bosse/ It's offtopic in that it's useless to write to a linux swap partition to infect linux since linux treats it as garbage on every bootup unless I'm mistaken. However, one security vulnerability in windows supposedly has to do with the swap file, hence an option to wipe the swap on reboot. Unfortunately, the wipe takes a very long time. Since swap is considered garbage on every boot (including by this driver) it will be seen as a blank filesystem each time. In other words, it can be handy to set this driver up correctly (be careful to get it right though so you don't damage anything else) and then move the Windows swap file onto it. This way you have a partition dedicated to the swap file (which also means you no longer have all that harddrive space just wasted for nothing) and it starts over from scratch on every reboot too.
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From what I can tell, that does look like a good solution. Particularly if you are going for a thin client setup (eg a PC with just a CD-ROM, a USB flashdrive, or even just PXELinux or something like that.) Part of what I like about my current setup though is that I can leave the same session open and connect to it from a remote system. The other day this was a bit of a lifesaver because I needed to get to a site that used a port that was blocked on the school computers. By connecting to the server on my own system (which I had carefully picked a port I knew wasn't blocked for) I was able to use a graphical client (the page was very heavy in images and using lynx/links got quite unpleasant at best.) I had also hoped to set up port forwarding to even connect through my ssh session to my main PC which runs Windows where I could then do things like image editing, but, I never quite got that working for some reason (don't know if I need that anymore anyway.)
Thanks for the info though. Every now and then I actually wonder if some people I know might be better served with really cheap thin clients. It's more of a what-if mental excercise than an actual plan, but, who knows, maybe someday I'll be digging frantically for this post in the archives. ^_^
It arriving sooner just means the initial bit of information gets there sooner. Great for quick burst style things, but, then you find that any benefits are gone very quickly as the data travels at a fixed rate. So, we're basically talking low latency here.
Not that it matters. To do this requires some rather serious hardware. You know, the kind of thing you generally only see in a big educational facility where someone managed to get a big grant or some government thing or whatever. It's not such a simple thing that it could ever enter consumer electronics unless they find new ways of doing it. The fact is, even if they decided to make some sort of machine using this anyway, in the end the things converting and/or processing the data are going to not be able to move fast enough to really make the difference noticable.
Sorry, not to rain on your parade or anything. It still has potential uses. For example, one thought I had when I first heard about someone doing this was that if they could figure out a way to move it far enough back, information could be sent into the past. Kind of like some of the ideas of quantum computing, perhaps such a method could allow one to obtain a result basically instantly when the question is asked (though I don't know how this would affect the paradoxical nature of the fact that if you have the answer you don't run the problem, or, even if you did run it, then you still have the processing going on and can't do anything else during that time with those cycles.) Actually, it strikes me that if you could move it far enough back in time, you could pass important information. Such as "they are going to bomb at so-and-so tomorrow." Or even "the dog named lady luck will win the race tomorrow at 10:1 odds against."
Don't forget. VNC is OS independant. I can fire up a VNC session on my linux box and use a VNC client on the box itself then leave the session open and connect to it from a windows box. Ok, via Cygwin you can pull off X, but, it is definitely not worth all that extra clutter when a simple VNC client can achieve the same purpose and is designed to do it better (remote X is really intended for a lan dumb client type setup whereas VNC can be used to add JPEG compression, decrease color depth, etc so works about as well as you can hope over the internet.)
PS. I found a nice little client called DirectVNC which uses the DirectFB (framebuffer) to give you VNC in a console. Since this is for a server type setup, I find it handy since I can have just one X setup running essentially this way. Eg, I don't have to start X to get to the VNC session even. It strikes me that this could also be handy on some minimalistic setups such as some live discs perhaps.
I agree. The Porsche is made for some amazing stuff. I'm just saying that you can still get quite possibly all you want with a much cheaper car and maybe a mod or two. You'd be surprised how well the Corolla handles btw. I'm driving a 2002 Prizm, which is the older eighth generation model before the newer larger ones, so the newer ones may be worse, but, I was rather surprised. Mainly the suspension is just a little softer than feels quite right and you need to find the right tires (I'm using cheap Toyo Spectrums, which are actually quite good as long as it's not raining.) That's the car with no options. The higher end Corolla S comes stock much better and with a mod or two may never compare directly to a Porsche, but, it may still do all you want while getting you insane gas milage and giving your wallet a break (opening them too often wears them out a lot faster. Wallet fatigue is a serious condition.) d-:
I'm sorry, but, I have to say it. Close to 130? What's that? Geez, I drove a 4 cylinder 95 accord lx AUTOMATIC at 130 mph on a highway before... Not close to, but, at. (Ok, I recommend against doing that, I chipped a couple of teeth off the gear that way after driving it at that speed for a while, though at that point I was actually starting to go up a bit more towards 135 or so when it happened. But, I think a good manual transmission version of the same car could hold its own at that speed without modification.) What was it's MPG again? 32? Somewhere in that ballpark. What's even the point in having a car like that practically just pouring your money down the drain if you aren't even going to use it properly? I just don't understand why people do it. You're like those people that tick me off so much who have this Mustang covered in flames, a custom spoiler, etc who let the trailer truck in the right line out accelerate them from the red lights. (For Christ's sake, why do they have to sit in the left lane KNOWING they will go slower than the traffic in the right and cause a jam?)
Go try a Corolla sometime. Insane MPGs and an acceleration that maybe isn't even on the same scale as those uber sports cars, but, is still enough to pull you back (got a crick in my neck the other day when I surprised myself at a red light by accidentally giving it a bit more gas than I intended.) Your wallet will thank you. What are they up to now? 41MPG? Mod the living daylights out of it and it will still do better than 10 while giving you all you could ever really want and still for cheaper. I know it's not a Porsche, but, come on, do you really need a Porche?
You know, I just realized something. You can actually change the data for the races in the construction set. If you knew the exact filename (can probably be found with a hex edit,) you could place a dummy file in the location it expects, then switch the model in the construction set and delete the dummy file so it will once again use the internal copy inside the archive. I've done this for switching a model for a chair (the portable chair mod uses a model of a plate for the drop item, which just seems silly,) but, I'm willing to bet that someone with the patience could do the same thing there.
So, now that I think about it more, ESRB's case has a little more strength behind it than I thought. You can do it with all first party stuff. The game itself and the construction set that you can get for free for it on their site are probably all you need. In theory, it should be possible to do it without any third party modifications whatsoever.
Someone with more patience for such things can feel free to test. Perhaps I'm wrong, but, it looks like it can be done to me.
First, somehow people are still getting this wrong. This was NOT created by a third party in any manner. The content exists already inside the data archives for the game. They created it, then later renamed it so it wouldn't be used, but, they still packed it in with the rest of the data. They left in a bunch of other junk that isn't supposed to be used as well, but, most of it is just testing stuff. Since they created the actual data, according to the article, ESRB's recent policy is that if it's inside the game itself and simply unlockable (whether by third party mod or not) then the game should be rated based on the fact that it IS in the game in an easily accessable manner. I think the theory here is that it might be easier for a parent or blocking utility (like CyberNanny or whatever the heck it's called) to stop a child from getting a mod that adds in content from scratch, most probably by catching the sort of site such a thing would be on. A simple thing like this where all one has to do is extract and rename a single file is almost impossible to stop. Therefore, it's so easily accessable it may just as well be in there. The theory may not be 100% sound, but, it does have a reasonable basis.
That said, I have had this game a while and I have the definite impression that Bethesda started out creating a realistic enough violent game to deserve the M rating for blood/etc. I kind of wonder if you could even hack off limbs or something in an alpha version since it seems like the system could allow it. What I think is that Bethesda realized that since they had decided to target XBox360 users first and foremost, they'd be missing out on the large younger audience that gravitates more towards consoles (yes, adults do use consoles a LOT, but, you get more younger people using consoles than you get of the younger people on PC. Previously Bethesda only cared about PC, so no big deal, but, this time they decided to make a console game -- which, incidentally, us PC users got lucky enough to get a crappy port of.) ESRB's changed rating doesn't just mean they have to pull them off the shelves and all, more importantly it means they loose a huge chunk of the crowds they wanted to target. The fact is, I think that they did the absolute MINIMUM required to get the game down to meeting ESRB's requirements for a T rating toning down the blood and violence just enough to meet those needs, and possibly they intended to leave the mesh labeled female_nude in there at first, but, when they switched to a T audience they had to remove it (so did so in the cheapest manner possible, a simple rename and replace with a copy where they tossed in an underwear texture.) I personally think ESRB might be pushing this so hard mainly just due to the fact that the game really honestly does deserve a M rating with all the violence and freedom to, for example, walk up and randomly kill someone then drag their body down the street. If it weren't for all this, I'd bet ESRB wouldn't be pushing so hard over something that still does have to be unlocked via a third party tool or mod.
I had actually already read the article. It doesn't actually discuss the FCC's specific powers. This isn't a coincidence, the article is about the CALEA, not the FCC.
I must say though, this is just another of the multitudes of things that scare me about my home country. I am thinking more and more often lately that this country is turning into such a big-brother is always watching you to make sure you always stick to the letter of the book in everything you do that I just don't know if I really want to spend my whole life here. The purpose of such laws was supposed to be to protect our rights, but, between things like DMCA and CALEA they just keep taking away more and more rights one by one. Taken seperately, each of these little laws don't do much, but, all together they are starting to limit what we can do to the point that a future in which the government controls your every move is starting to look frighteningly closer to possible than it should.
First of all, it seems I misread the article somehow. I thought for some reason it said that the FCC made encryption of VoIP illegal. Sorry about that. Needless to say, I was upset and reacted hastily. I like the idea of VoIP and planned to go that route in the future, but, first it needs encryption. Analog may not be great, but, it's a lot harder to illegally tap an analog phoneline than it is to snoop some packets.
Anyway, that article doesn't really help me very much. I understand that the FCC was appointed to regulate communications (that's the thing, it applies to all communications, which is why everything from phones to tv to satellites get thrown in the equation.) But, they must have reasonable limitations on that regulation. Otherwise, what stops them from basically taking over the US communication entirely?
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
Very iffy here. I can be said that they are indeed prohibiting free speech because they have basically made it so that there is no such thing as privacy. Anything you say today can and will be held against you any time before the statute of limitations runs out because anything you say is public domain and not private. Honestly, I don't even use phones much, and certainly not for any kind of illegal activities, but, just the thought that someone could easily just set up a little receiver and listen in on my conversations makes me very unconfortable. I don't mind as much the thought that the government could do it since at least they won't do things like steal personal information for identity theft, but, it does make me a little uncomfortable knowing that they have declared the right to listen to anything I say any time they darned well feel like it on any such service.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.
Fourth is hard to argue for, but, it is very clear that by REQUIRING such a thing they are making it extremely clear that they intend to violate the fourth amendment. The only reason to require that encryption not be used is if you plan to look at the actual data yourself. Otherwise they wouldn't care whether there is encryption or not.
Here's a question. What is the OFFICIAL domain of the FCC? It sounds to me rather as if they have stepped outside of their legal domain and overstepping their actual rights of power by mandating that encryption not be used for VoIP. Does anyone know their official powers?
Well, my only point is they are really stretching things here and the particular wording actually is a lie. The meaning was not, but, the wording was very poorly chosen. There IS nudity in the game they created. They hid it, but, it's still in the game they created.
Don't get me wrong, their real point is true. It is something not normally accessable, and not something you can get to by just typing some console command (well, unless there's a command that can change mesh references or something.) So it will require a third party mod to get to it, though from what I understand of how unlocking it works, probably a child could do it, which might be a part of why ESRB feels it deserves a higher rating. Then again, a child could install nudity mods for most of the games out there anyway. Many games make installing a mod easy and don't really differentiate between the content of those mods (and if they did people would be VERY upset because it's quite easy for any algorithm designed to determine what is appropriate or not to incorrectly detect inappropriate content -- for example, I can't say "cars" in the Need for Speed online chat. That's right. Cars. The subject of the game... Maybe they've finally fixed this since I last tried?)
It is unfair for ESRB to rate them on what can be done via modifications. I still think it's unfair for ESRB to rate them a T to begin with though, and I have a suspicion that ESRB is just using it as an excuse because they know Bethesda explicitely did the absolute minimum required to ensure they got such a rating knowing that their game really does belong in the M category with all that violence and such.
No, they simply made two versions, one with nudity, one without. Then replaced the nudity one with the welded underwear one before hitting the shelves. Probably someone there thought it was funny tossing in a nude mesh. Nonetheless, the actual content is in the final version, it just requires a mod to unlock. In fact, if someone figures out how to trick the XBox360 version into working with user mods or some smart company licenses out or something so they can sell mods too (currently only Bethesda can sell mods for the XBox360 version) then someone might add such a mod. I doubt Bethesda would ever officially do this. All it has to do is point to the other file inside the data archive though.
That said, the ESRB is kind of being unfair about it. The fact is, they did disable it, and it does require just as much work to unlock it as with any other game. However, I do feel that the ESRB rating of M would be more befitting considering the realistic depiction of violence complete with blood and etc. God, you can drag dead bodies around and toss them off of cliffs to watch them bounce (hey, I was REALLY ticked off at an ambush, give me a break.) They do deserve an M rating. They are just upset because they had worked very hard to meet the absolute minimum requirements to get a T rating so they could get a larger audience. In particular, with the XBox360 crowd, they are aware they'll have to target a lot of younger people since PC gamers tend to be older overall. If ESRB said they'd change on the PC version, Bethesda probably wouldn't get very upset.
Actually, now that I reread the original article, it does look like Bethesda is actually lying a little. They say they didn't create a game with nudity, but, they put it in there. They disabled it, but, it's in there. Therefore, they created a game with nudity disabled.
Just so we're clear, the only "modification" necessary by these third parties is to rename a couple of files. Rename the old mesh to something else, then rename the nude mesh to the name that the old one was. Quite frankly, I consider this a lie as well since renaming a file isn't actually modifying the actual content of the file.
Bethesda CREATED the material. The nude textures and the nude meshes using said textures. It takes a third party mod to unlock them. The third parties did not create the material and, as far as I know, it's impossible for them to do so considering that a mesh exporter has yet to be released (nor any news pertaining to actual work being done on one last time I looked.) And for those of you thinking bad thoughts, a NIF exporter would allow us to do a lot of legitimate things such as new weapons, new armors, even better looking creatures or performance enhancing things such as the removal of the mind numbingly massive number of polygons dedicated to creatures that don't need them like the bear.
So, for the record, a third party mod is required to unlock the material, but, Bethesda created the material and then later renamed the model file so they could put in a different version with underwear welded to the people's skin without overwriting the original. They then placed this in the final game rather than removing it (along with a lot of other crap that doesn't belong, but, this is the only thing that's doing more than taking up extra space.) Third parties did not create the material. Please stop saying over and over that they did.
Actually, please reread what people have said. Or buy/borrow the game, get a BSA extractor and extract the data from the game files. In the archive, inside the meshes is one LABELED female_nude or something along those lines (I don't remember exactly what it was called off the top of my head since I just passed by it and laughed at the thought that they actually put that in there and clearly must have changed it after when someone decided to switch from M rating to T as their target.) The fact is, Bethesda did indeed create this original mesh and textures to go along with it and did pack it into the final game along with a lot of other stuff they should have removed (they left a few test files and such in there, taking up extra space that will never be used in the final game.) They are just upset because this means they loose some of their target crowd. For some reason, with Oblivion, Bethesda decided "screw the PC audience, XBox is where we'll get all the dough" and decided to really do a poor job on the PC port (yes, I call it a PC port because it was obviously created for XBox360 and then we get the benefit of it being PC too just because they are so nice.) Don't take my word for it, just look through their own forums. You'll see a number of fans finding out the hard way that they didn't put the proper effort into the PC version at all. Actually, it's a little dissapointing that they still let a few bugs slip into the XBox360 version, but, there's just no excuse for things such as the performance and stability problems that flood the PC version.
Anyway, they'll get over it. Everyone knows kids still get the M rated games through their parents if nothing else. Darn, when I was a kid I asked for a copy of Doom for my birthday and my parents didn't even LOOK at the rating. They've gotten a little more concious about it in the modern day, but, they still have a tendency to not really care much so long as it doesn't feature nudity or something (and, ah, this is where Bethesda gets upset since that's the one thing parents WILL go into a panic about their children seeing.)
Wow. Uhm, I haven't had any caffeine yet. OS/2 a fair fight? Lol, they were both gouging and making low blows, but, it was never a fair fight. OS/2 never really stood a chance with IBM's tactics. Besides, what in the name of whatever deities they may believe in were they thinking when they put MS in charge of OS/2... Expecting Bill to just hand them something to defeat his plans for Windows with and it just work wonders and take over the world for IBM was just stupid. No, Microshaft hasn't competed fairly ever since before it was even Microshaft Incorporated.
Alternately, and this is what I'm crossing my fingers and praying on, it may mean bargaining has broken down and they have already given up on trying to team up with Yahoo against Google.
I'm just so excited at the prospect of a new slightly less crappy big thing coming in and challenging Microsoft. Right now the problem is they haven't had to compete in a fair fight since OS/2. Microsoft needs to be knocked down a few pegs already.
All I can say is that I love opensource and the only reason I don't use OOo for most of my work is the fact that I know most of the systems I'll take that work to will have MS Office, but, unfortunately, most won't have OOo. I tell as many people as I can about the advantages, but, in the end, I can't control people and make them install something they don't want to install. Of course, I've always felt that if they'd just add an official standalone viewer I could at least do things that don't need editing on those systems in ODF (in particular presentations, but, obviously a standalone viewer would be useful for documents as well.) Heck, I REALLY want to switch to ODF 100% right now -- especially after finding out the hard way that Office 2003 won't let you edit files that have embedded fonts (even when you embed the full font) if it detects that you do not have the font installed (and in my case, I did.) I was nearly screwed when I found out that my presentation due in just a short time was completely uneditable via PowerPoint even though the font it said wasn't installed was installed.) Who knows what kind of stupid crap they'll put in Office 2007.
An ODF import filter could also solve this issue. Actually, MS is probably going to have to add one anyway. With ODF growing in popularity rapidly lately and even looking at being an ISO standard, MS is going to have to support it or they risk becoming what OpenOffice is to people like me now (eg the one no one uses because even though it may be good, you can't count on it being installed on the target machine.) Ok, atm, that would hurt them since it would make it easier for people like me to switch away, but, if they aren't careful it will hurt them worse if they make it hard for people to switch TO them.
Whilst I agree that the others in the process do deserve every penny they have worked to earn, I still disagree that they need to line their pockets with silver and even gold every time Britney Spears releases a new even worse album. Or do you really believe it costs them with all their quality equipment and experience so incredibly much to make those things? The equipment is a fixed cost and it actually decreases many of the other costs so that it actually doesn't cost them very much in the long run to produce some new crappy album for a crappy artist that has the public spotlight for a day or two.
Actually, the concept of supporting the bands themselves is a bit more complex than you think. Right now, what is there to convince Britney Spears that she should spend more time working on music quality than she spends with the scissors on her clothes? She's going to be paid more for the scissors in the end, so who cares about quality? On the other hand, when the creators of the music itself get paid directly, they have a LOT more incentive to actually produce quality (namely the fact that they'll go out of business if they just keep releasing crap.) It's the way capitalism is supposed to actually work in fact. In such a system, the good bands who produce quality music would, in theory, come out on top while people like Britney Spears will be back on the streets (and wishing she'd never seen those scissors when winter comes.) Ok, truth is capitalism mainly because of the government doesn't really work out as well as that, but, it definitely works out better when the market is done correctly versus when all the money and control goes to a few big groups.
Well, besides the whole capitalism aspect in the long run, in the short run, the sort of bands who actually do the direct to consumer methods today tend to be the sort who actually try to provide people with what they want (sometimes even *shivers* TALKING to their fans) and they actually try to produce quality music because they want to, not because they want to be rich. I'm sure there are exceptions, but, today that's where it stands just because that's the kind of mentality that gravitates towards this system at the moment.
It is a hole that needs to be plugged. Any trick you can do with spoofing, you can do without. Yes, it's more work. You could argue that it's easier to run your P2P applications without a firewall since you don't have to go to all that extra trouble to set up the firewall. It's more work, but, you can bet that I'm darned well going to go to the trouble to configure my firewall instead of shutting it off. IP spoofing isn't as dangerous, but, it definitely has its security problems. Overall people are better off without spoofing even for things that can legitimately benefit. It is more work since you'll have to set up real routing or something to compensate, but, it also means some lucky hacker doesn't get to come in and fool your services into thinking he's sitting at a terminal on the LAN. Yeah, great for you if your LAN is so secure that you could trust a hacker on it as much as you could on the Internet, but, most of us are not so convinced that we have THAT much security in place. Plus you have to give up the advantage of being able to trust the LAN anyway.
Personally, I'll do without the spoofing, thanks.
WOW this is old news. Everyone has known this for over a year now at least, probably even longer still. Typosquatting isn't all though, let's not forget all those annoying sites that have half a million keywords at the bottom of a page or the people who cheat using blogging to increase the pagerank of a site.
I think some of you may be interested to check out Google Watch.
Well, I do disagree with the claim that it locks you into windows. The fact is, the number of games for linux IS pitiful. I'm sorry, but, I'm afraid this is fact. This statement is coming from someone who has used both ATI and nVidia video cards. There's a lot more to benefit from than terminals though. Proper video acceleration actually helps a lot for many 2D effects expected in a modern GUI such as transparencies and, more importantly, video. Unfortunately, linux still completely lacks truly GPU accelerated video processing of the more important effects like deinterlacing. As far as I know, you still can't do any more than a quick and dirty bilinear resize via video hardware, but, you really don't need much CPU power to do a much higher quality resize anyway.
Personally, I've had both nVidia and ATI hardware over the years, and I'm still more than a little dissapointed at the uphill battle one has to fight to get an ATI card to perform better than an old PCI video card at simple tasks in linux (and I'm not making that claim up either considering that when my primary AGP card failed I was forced to result to an ancient Rage Pro based PCI card which only pretended at 3D acceleration when it was new and even then couldn't really compete that well.) I don't even bother to play games in linux, I just want video processing and the desktop to get what they can out of my video card in Windows. And I'm very dissapointed that even after all these years ATI still refuses to give us something as easy to install and use as what nVidia gives us, but, don't get me wrong, nVidia still also refuses to give more than a basic support. I still can't understand what trade secrets both companies are afraid of giving away by just giving third parties the information they need to develop the drivers that neither company can put any serious development into. All they have to do is release the right info and ATI cards could perform only slightly worse than nVidia cards in linux (nVidia is better at OpenGL, and, surprisingly enough, linux tends to focus more on OpenGL than Direct3D for some reason. ATI is still decent at OpenGL, though you'd never be able to tell with the way they perform in linux.)
Locked in though? Well, there's always the framebuffer method, vidix, and so on. You get poor performance out of a number of things, but, its enough to get by. Definitely you aren't locked into windows with ATI. Unfortunately, games do lock you into windows whether you are using ATI or nVidia. The fact is, only one line of truly popular games has consistantly offered linux support, and for the greater majority of the rest, you will either only see linux support considerably later or you'll get inconsistant results at best from either what usually is a poor linux port, or if you don't even get that, MAYBE you'll get acceptable results out of Cedega, though for most of us this has been even less consistant. Again, this is coming from someone who has used windows and linux both over the years as well as ati and nvidia. I can still remember how even an OpenGL based game like Neverwinter Nights ran worse in linux versus windows even on my old unlocked and overclocked (via BIOS, so both the unlocking and overclocking applied to linux as well as windows) 6800... I never got Doom 3 up and running, so maybe someone can tell me if it did worse or not, but, I'd really suspect that it actually would be just a little bit worse in linux like NWN was.
There's still always dual booting I guess.
"No way!!! BUY BUY BUY!!! /me happy with my 6600 :-) [it's the cheapest non-crippled PCIe card I could find at the time]"
I'm sorry, but, I have to inform you that your 6600 is VERY crippled. Especially if you mean the non-GT version. The 6600 series started its life as a crippled card. The GPU, the NV43, is a weaker crippled version of the NV40, and, probably more importantly, while it boasts really fast sounding gDDR3 memory, its 128-bit memory bus actually makes it unable to compete even with the slower gDDR memory of the 256-bit 6800LE (that's right, even the elusive LE is a little better -- excluding the possibility that the LE can be unlocked and overclocked to become a lot better. The nu comes out even further ahead, again excluding unlocking and overclocking on the AGP models.) Mind you, if it had gDDR it would hurt even more since with such a low bus it needs all the speed it can get to compensate.
Actually, I have a point beyond just pointing out that little mistake. When the 6600GT was first released, it was called the Doom 3 card, and rightly so because it could get some very nice quality settings out of a game with such high requirements. Comparable probably to a Radeon 9800 even, but, at a lower price. And that price was no $500. Only today is the 6600 series finally beginning to truly show its weakness in games like Oblivion (which can bring even a X850 to its knees with the right settings.) The mid-range cards actually end up being the best investment for a person because by the time they loose their competitive advantage (cost vs performance) even the high end video cards are starting to struggle. In other words, by the time a mid-range card is no longer able to get you acceptable quality settings out of a game, chances are a high-end card is no longer going to be good enough either. In either case you must upgrade within the same sort of time range. If you spend $500 every time, it hurts a lot worse than if you just keep upgrading to the mid-range cards. Even if the $500 will buy you a little more time, it's not enough extra time to be worth that extra $200 or so.
The size of a virus matters because the bigger they get, the more obvious they become when trying to sneak around in memory and such. Every extra resource that mysteriously dissapears increases the liklihood that the user or admin will wonder why some particular thing isn't doing as well and thus the av/malware scans begin. Any virus designer who is more than a script kiddie will probably want to do everything within their power to ensure a minimum of suspicion on the part of anyone who could end up running an av scan.
Also, a really huge virus would be kind of hard to distribute since it would take so long and end up getting interrupted after all. Come to think of it, limited resources come into play again since the user may begin to wonder why their up/downstream is mysteriously saturated.
Sample of an opensource ext2fs reader for Windows: http://uranus.it.swin.edu.au/~jn/linux/explore2fs. htm
Sample of an opensource reiserfs reader for Windows: http://yareg.akucom.de/index.html
Don't know if they can write at all, but, I'm sure if you googled around a little more you'd find one that did. The point is, it's definitely out there and the code is even available for a lot if not all of them.
That said, the real idea is generally to infect via things like Samba shares. I don't think the virus relies on the user to be dual booting since probably in the majority of the setups you'll be running one or the other all the time not rebooting frequently. A lot of times, such as mine, you'll have windows systems behind linux systems acting as firewalls/routers and servers, and I'm thinking that's more the kind of thing they're really interested in.
Oh, and offtopic just a smidge, but, on a directly related note, there is a swap partition driver for Windows, which you can find info on here: http://www.acc.umu.se/~bosse/ It's offtopic in that it's useless to write to a linux swap partition to infect linux since linux treats it as garbage on every bootup unless I'm mistaken. However, one security vulnerability in windows supposedly has to do with the swap file, hence an option to wipe the swap on reboot. Unfortunately, the wipe takes a very long time. Since swap is considered garbage on every boot (including by this driver) it will be seen as a blank filesystem each time. In other words, it can be handy to set this driver up correctly (be careful to get it right though so you don't damage anything else) and then move the Windows swap file onto it. This way you have a partition dedicated to the swap file (which also means you no longer have all that harddrive space just wasted for nothing) and it starts over from scratch on every reboot too.