Monday, June 9, 2003

Bleh -- 3:04 pm CST, Update by The Master

I had an interesting experience last week Thursday that I think I should relate: when checking my personal email my K9 spam checker classified a very strange email as spam. After looking at it in a text editor, I decided to quarantine it and sent it to Symantec. They got back to me today indicating it was an unknown download.trojan. It was an Outlook/OE-specific HTML embedded trojan that was programmed to install an .exe attachment.

For what it's worth: I am a very careful e-mail user. I don't use the common e-mail clients, and I run everything through the K9 spam filter before it even hits my mailbox. I also run a current version of Symantec AV, and I keep it up-to-date nightly. This still slipped right past the AV software. Keep those AV definitions up to date, and don't depend on your AV solution to keep you safe from viruses. Or, just switch to Linux! (that's for you A.T. :-)

A.T. Hun comments: All hail the power of root! That concept saves Linux users from a multitude of problems. Having said that, if people routinely run programs as root or fail to patch their systems, they can make themselves vulnerable. Viruses, especially the Outlook ones, are just as much of a study in social engineering as they are a study in software engineering.

Sunday, June 8, 2003

Grip 3.1.0 Released -- 9:55 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

One thing that I've missed since I upgraded to Slackware 9.0 is Grip, my favorite CD-ripper/MP3-compressor frontend. Previous versions required the Gnome 1.4 libraries. Slackware 9.0 only comes with Gnome 2.0. Grip 3.1.0 adds preliminary Gnome 2.0 support. You have to snag it from their Sourceforge page. Joy!

UPDATE! My initial euphoria was short-lived. 3.1.0 is quite buggy and crash-prone. I'd wait for the next release.

Half-Life 2 Interview -- 7:17 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

HomeLan Fed caught up with Valve's Gabe Newell to talk about Half-Life 2. I particularly liked his thoughts on the wealth of shooters that will be coming out at the end of the year.

I think it's great. I can't wait to buy all of these games and play them. It's not a zero sum game. If someone buys a good game, they want more good games to play. If they buy a bad game, then they are less likely to buy games in the future. We all benefit when gamers are excited and passionate about their hobby.

I think Half-Life 2 and DOOM 3 will be about as different as the originals were from each other. I'll like both games, but for different reasons. I'll particularly like DOOM 3 and UT2K4 because they are coming out for Linux. Thanks Blue's News.

No Old News

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