The death of the popularity myth

Con Zymaris points to this ComputerWorld article from the OSIA discussion list, with the comment “With only 10,000 Vista users worldwide, their platform already has viruses” —

An Austrian hacker earned the dubious distinction of writing what are thought to be the first known viruses for Microsoft's Windows Vista operating system. [...] The viruses were published last month in a virus-writing tutorial written for an underground hacker group calling itself the Ready Ranger Liberation Front, and take advantage of security vulnerabilities in the new command shell.

So much for Microsoft’s repeated assertion that Linux has no viruses only because it’s not popular... here’s a second opinion/damage-control post:

Although MSH was originally scheduled to ship as part Windows Vista, Microsoft has since decided to have its release coincide with the launch of Exchange 12. It won't ship as part of Vista, although both applications have a projected release date in the second half of 2006. And MSH isn't limited to Vista, but supports Windows XP and Windows Server 2003 too.

My first thought was “oh, good, just what we need: more viruses for XP and 2K3” but then it struck me: who’s going to notice one more virus amongst the Xty thousand already present?

Comments

new life for an old (FTX) PSU, improved life for one human

the LEDs on this 5m strip happen to emit light centred on a red that does unexpectedly helpful things to (and surprisingly deeply within) a human routinely exposed to it. it has been soldered to a Molex connector, plugged into a TFX power supply from a (retired: the MoBo is cactus) Small Form Factor PC, the assorted PSU connectors (and loose end from the strip) have been taped over. the LED strip cost $10.24 including postage, the rest cost $0, the PSU is running at 12½% of capacity, consumes less power than a laptop plug-pack despite running a fan. trial runs begin today.

every-application-is-part-of-a-toolkit at work

I have a LibreOffice Impress slideshow that I wish to turn into a narrated video. 1. export the slideshow as PNG images (if that is partially broken — as at now — at higher resolutions, Export Directly as PDF then use ‘pdftoppm’ (from the poppler-utils package) to do the same). 2. write a small C program (63 lines including comments) to display those images one at a time, writing a config file entry for Imagination (default transition: ‘cross fade’) based on when the image-viewer application (‘display,’ from the GraphicsMagick suite) is closed on each one; run that, read each image aloud, then close each image in turn. 3. run ‘Imagination’ over the config file to produce a silent MP4 video with the correct timings. 4. run ‘Audacity’ to record speech while using ‘SMPlayer’ to display the silent video, then export that recording as a WAV file. 4a. optionally, use ‘TiMIDIty’ to convert a non-copyright-encumbered MIDI tune to WAV, then import that and blend it with the speech (as a quiet b...

boundaries

pushing the actual boundaries of the physical (not extremes, the boundaries themselves) can often remove barriers not otherwise perceived. one can then often resolve an issue itself, rather than merely stonewalling at the physical consequences of the issue.

Plantagenet Penguinista

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