Blaster virus

... and then go to the MS update web site and download the patch that would have stopped you getting it in the first place :-))

Regards Steve G

remove the nospam to email me

Erm, no. The patch wouldn't, but having up-to-date antivirus software would have. Also, given the nature of this worm, getting into the M$ "Autoupdate" (hohoho) site has been somewhat harder during the last week...

What's the problem?

My Red Hat must be showing... ;-)

It's sad when someone tries to be helpful and gets smugness and gloating in response. Such a pity.

It's sad that people use computers and haven't got the education, awareness or support to help them understand that 'Microsoft products' are a recipe for disaster whenever it comes to the 'tinternet'...

Others simply don't care.

I reckon it's a bit like giving your five year old a new Freelander, and not only expecting them to maintain, tax and insure it, but also drive it safely to skool each day...

I find it quite funny actually, that apart from two BIND experiences, I've never had any issues with running linux in the last 10 odd years.

UUCP was/is, (albeit redundant in comms terms), still far superior to anything from the M$ treadmill of technology.

That's a gloat, BTW.

snip

If Blaster was designed to exploit the PRC vulnerability and the MS patch closed that vulnerability why wouldnt it stop your pc being exploited?

Why do people with minority OS's always think they're so clever? Is it to overcome some inadequacy or another?

Regards Steve G

remove the nospam to email me

Hi Henry, was that aimed at me? I wasn't being smug or gloating just using my weird sense of humour to point out to people that there is a remedy.

Regards Steve G

remove the nospam to email me

get a Macintosh;-)

Changing the subject slightly, I see that many correspondents have "nospam" in the their address lines. Presumably to stop automatic spam responses. How do I set that up on my own address. I don't have time to learn the ins and outs of computing, I just need to use it as a tool to earn my living. A means to an end as it were, not the end itself. Thanks, Peter

Assuming Outlook express

Tools> Accounts> News Account> Email address/Reply address. Change the v alues here

HTH

Geoff

My friends PC contracted the Blaster virus within 2 minutes of installing XP and he has severely kicked himself for not disconnecting his LAN first. It's a lesson learned and one that will be remembered, albeit the hard way.

It's easy for us non Windows users to gloat and even feel somewhat superior because our machines do not get infected. However with regard to the relative merits of one OS versus another, I think we can get bogged down in our own preferencesand prejudices. I have run Macs for

10 years or more and have never contracted a virus. The logical conclusion is that the Mac OS is harder to hack, and although in the past this was to an extent, quite true. The real reason for the Macs' invulnerability is due mainly to its' market share, or rather the lack thereof.

With Apple having only roughly 5% of the PC market, nobody bothers to write virusses for them. After all, why write a virus that knocks out a few thousand Macs when it probably won't even get you a half inch column in the press. Likewise Linux/Unix etc.

So, which OS is superior to the others is relatively unimportant as it is only the market share that determines the number of virus attacks. My worry is, that now the Mac is Unix based our market share just got much bigger.

Cos the tinetrnet wot yor yoosin is eld toogever wiv linux

Wivutit, yud nut bi abil ta bi askin... :-)

I forgot the REALLY IMPORTANT BIT

It's free...

Yes Martyn you are absolutely right and spot on with your statement. I meant to state these facts myself but thought I better let someone else do it. BTW I run XP, continuously updated Norton AV and a firewall and don't have the worm. Frank ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,, ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,

many cuts

: I have run Macs for : 10 years or more and have never contracted a virus. The logical : conclusion is that the Mac OS is harder to hack, and although in the : past this was to an extent, quite true. The real reason for the Macs' : invulnerability is due mainly to its' market share, or rather the lack : thereof. : : With Apple having only roughly 5% of the PC market, nobody bothers to : write virusses for them. After all, why write a virus that knocks out : a few thousand Macs when it probably won't even get you a half inch : column in the press. Likewise Linux/Unix etc. : : So, which OS is superior to the others is relatively unimportant as it : is only the market share that determines the number of virus attacks. : My worry is, that now the Mac is Unix based our market share just got : much bigger. : : In other words... Will you Linux people STOP pinching the Windows : market share!! :o) :

In this day and age many people have more than one PC that they want to use on the net. I have 8 windows machines and 1 linux box connected to the net.

They are all linked into a router. They don't cost that much these days and give you access for all of your machines as well as a proper network running between the machines.

They also have an NAT firewall built in so none of the machines ever respond to a probe.

Not one of my PCs has even had a sniff of MSBlast.

Ed

PS Go to

and have a read if you're concerned.

To reply, remove my appendix

In article , Martyn Cottrell writes

They certainly used to write viruses for them. I think it had to do with the Apples being better integrated HW-SW-wise and the whole lot better documented by Apple (at the time, although M$ weren't bad then).

If you've run Macs for ten years, surely you remember the fun of System

6 & 7? It's only recently that they've lost the focus of attention.

But OS-X is based on BSD. The advantage of open source is that the code, like Linux's, is dissected and pored over by many people and weaknesses are found and publicised. The risk I see with OS-X in the future is the tendency for Apple to be too insular - add too many Mac bits (proprietary ones) and you gain little. It just becomes another flavour of UNIX with small market share.

Irix, AIX, HP-UX, etc. are all out there still, but getting increasingly expensive to run and harder to support. Linux & BSD will be the survivors in the long run, because of the open source. It's also true that UNIX security has a record of being far superior to Wintel - IMHO it's still a simpler and more easily understood model than Micro$oft's.

The Mac is now far closer to Linux than you think! I love them too though, and OS-X really is a great step forward. We have both Macs and PCs at home (mercifully XP-free though!), and they integrate really well.

Personally, my favourite OS is HP-UX, but running it domestically is like owning a racehorse, without the potential for winnings!

Regards,

Simonm.

Yup, the purpose is to stop automatic spider agents from harvesting our email addresses and adding them to unsolicited mailing lists. It's a preventative action but not a cure if you're already on such lists.

The agents are getting smarter and do a good job of removing the 'nospam' string so ideally you need to outwit them by doing something innovative that only a human would understand.

I use the 'lessspam-' string (with a dash) because I believe it is easily readable and unlikely that a robot will be aware of it. Don't try putting any special characters in the address (!, #, etc) incase your message fails to propagate through the usenet network properly. It's always best to put the misleading string in the domain name to stop your isp getting lots of mail for false users.

After you've decided upon a new address simply change the standard email address setting in your chosen news client. You might also want to include a free-text comment in your signature explaining how to reform the correct address.

I was made redundant in 92 at which point I was using an Atari for DTP work. After about 18 months I changed to Apple as I realised I would always have trouble with the repro houses and printers unless I used the same equipment as they did. So I came into Apple at OS8.1 and was reasonably impressed, although I still think the Atari was better (the OS not the computer). Therefore, my line should have read "have been working with Macs for nearly 10 years". As for Apple losing their focus, I'm really not sure they ever had one. Personally I really like OSX and think it's streets ahead of anything else I've tried. It's extremely stable, I haven't had a system crash for ...... actually I can't remember anything serious since I replaced a faulty HD some 6 months ago. I also like the GUI, it's really nice to use (except when you have to use the command line interface).

Yep - BSD or Unix(ish), like I said.;o)

I admit Apple have tended to dig their own hole, but I don't think they will do too much to the Unix underpinnings. Having said that, tomorow they'll probably change it all again. I'm not sure how they go about upgrading the OS to handle the new 64bit processors. Presumably the core system will have to be modified and whether that follows the correct conventions or is an Apple only modification I couldn't guess.

You're not the only one that doesn't trust Apple to stick to BSD, the US Nuclear Submarine fleet has just taken delivery of some 260 Apple servers, but they're not running OSX, they're running Linux instead.

Why wouldn't I think OSX was close to Linux? Surely the real difference is the GUI and having seen my friends Linux box, I'm sticking to OSX. I like the computer to work for me and all that command line stuff just gets in the way.

I also run a Win2000 machine and quite frankly, I hate it. It's just my background I know, I've been working with similar GUIs for a long time and finding my way around Windows will take some learning. The new OSX clone - XP looks quite good, if you can get it to work and stop it reporting back to M$ every time you break wind.

The trouble is there just isn't any reasonably priced DVD creation software for the Mac, although DVD Studio Pro's price has come down quite a bit, it's still out of my price range. I suppose if I flogged the PC I might be able to afford DVDSP, hmmmm...now there's a thought.

Personally, and don't tell anyone else this, but I quite like DOS :o} There was another flavour of DOS at one time but I can't remember what it was called. We had a couple of diagnostic computers that used it and you always had to remember that with one, you had to tell it where the file was going before you told it where the file was and vice-versa for the other. Boy did that cause some headaches.

Regards Martyn

On Sun, 17 Aug 2003 20:27:59 GMT, Martyn Cottrell made me spill my meths by writing:

DR-DOS?

There was also PD-DOS, iirc an IBM variant.

Twas about the time someone slipped me some Slackware floppies and my life changed a little...