Tuesday, September 17, 2002

Slapper Worm -- 9:56 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

There's a worm called "Slapper" going around that is infecting Linux webservers that use OpenSSL versions older than 0.9.6e. ExtremeTech has the news as well as an easy way to remove it if you are infected. The CERT advisory has more details. Let this serve as yet another reminder to keep your system fully patched and up-to-date, no matter what your operating system is.

The interesting thing about this worm is that once it takes over a server, it makes it a part of a giant P2P network of infected boxen. Sadly, this worm seems to prove that Linux server operators are not necessarily any better at keeping their systems patched than their Windows brethren.

NFL Week #2 Final -- 8:24 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, I am now officially out of my misery. I finished this week at 6-10, Eeyore was 9-7. Overall, that makes me a scintillating 15-17 (.469) while Eeyore is 16-16 (.500). Hopefully next week will be better. Of course, I said that last week too . . .

The Master comments: You should see Eeyore glowing in her moment of triumph :-)

Solution to Piracy: Glue! -- 7:53 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Well, the record companies have sunk to a new low. In an effort to deter piracy of as-yet-unreleased albums, Epic Records has given out promotional copies in CD players with the lids glued shut and the headphones glued on. Gee, who could ever penetrate this fortress of security? Thanks HardOCP.

UT2K3 Demo Patch -- 6:31 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

Epic has released a 3M patch for the Unreal Tournament 2003 demo. You can find a list of mirror sites at UnrealTournament2003.com. Here are the list of major fixes:

• Fixed support for Voodoo3 / Matrox G400.
• Fixed initial framerate hitches in network play.
• Fixed the jittery screen updates in the server browser when sorting by ping.
• Fixed a possible DoS attack in the server code.
• Fixed a few other minor potential crashes.

Note: this is just for Windows. A Linux patch should be available soon. Thanks Blue.

UPDATE! Ryan Gordon posted a list of Linux-specific changes in the new patch on the UT2K3 Linux mailing list:

• Fixed initial framerate hitches in network play.
• Fixed the jittery screen updates in the server browser when sorting by ping.
• Fixed a possible DoS attack in the server code.
• Fixed a few other minor potential crashes.
• Benchmarking shell scripts are now supplied.
• Dirs that need to exist in $HOME/.ut2003 are created as needed (fixes benchmarking).
• Fixed window centering to better support Xinerama displays.
• Much enchanged FAQ in the README.linux file.
• Fixed bug with logfile creation (may be win32 specific; not sure).
• If "xterm" is in your $PATH, launching a dedicated server from the client's "host a game" menus will use it. This fixes the problem of originally running the client from an icon and losing the dedicated server's console output to the ether.
• probably other stuff.

UPDATE #2! The Linux patch is now available through the auto-updater.

Monday, September 16, 2002

UT2K3 Tricks -- 8:59 pm CST, Update by A.T. Hun

3DGPU posted a list of tricks and special moves for Unreal Tournament 2003. It includes adrenaline moves, cheat codes, and even how to try out the Redeemer super-weapon. As The Master noted earlier, we played a bit of Bombing Run with me hosting a server, him, and four bots. A good time was had by all.

Bleh -- 11:21 am CST, Update by The Master

Spent some time trying out the UT2003 demo yesterday, both offline and online with A.T. This is an awesome game. I've been very off of FPS games the last 6 months or so, and this one really drew me in. Lots of gratuitous gibbage, flaming heads, etc. Wheee >:-)

On another note: I've been working on building a new Haus box. Our current box is fine, but really limits what I can do with it. So, I've been fiddling with a new machine, and while it's been an interesting experience, I have to criticize Red Hat for removing all the good character-based admin tools in RH7. Now, I know a "real" linux junkie would just edit the config files with vi, but I don't need that kind of pain in my life. Pfft.

On ANOTHER note, I've been trying to get up the courage to remove Linux from my home box, and reinstall Windows ME on my extra HD. I've been running Win2K, and while I like it a lot, my older games DON'T. The most annoying being Deus Ex, which does this really cool psycho-mouse routine, then you end up staring at the ceiling while the game runs at 1 frame per year. Eidos has already said they won't do anything about it, so I guess they've lost one of their most successful games to Microsoft's OS migration strategy. Too bad.

J.t.Qbe comments: Interesting--Deus Ex ran just fine on my Win2K computer from work, far better than on my Win98 machine. I'm really fascinated by the lemminglike rush to move to XP, then the complaints that older games won't work on it. Uh, didn't you check that out before you threw more money down the Microsoft toilet? Seems like upgrading to XP is the "poor man's" way to be geeky--not smart enough to take up Unix, so I'll spend money on a new version of Windows!

This last weekend I picked up a used Celeron 400 system for $15, so I installed Mandrake 9 RC2 on it--it's the fastest Linux machine I've ever had. It's certainly the easiest OS installation I've ever see, ANY OS; the only tough part has been configuring my sound card (an old SB AWE64 PnP), and it's always been a problem anyway. For ease of use, Mandrake 9 is very very nice.

The Master comments: Yup, that's why I stopped at Win2K--I needed an O/S for programming that didn't die every 2 seconds, but that caused some game issues. I wasn't expecting Deus Ex to be an issue, so I didn't worry about it. I won't touch XP since all the reports of compatibility issues, not to mention the fact that they just TRASHED that O/S from an interface perspective. If I wanted that much pretty, I could run Gnome for free.

Past Two Days' News

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