OwlManAtt’s Blog

Greetings once again, loyal readers. I know you have all been checking for updates every day, and you’ve been becoming increasingly worried about me dropping dead.

Well, you have nothing to fear, I’m still breathing. I haven’t been too busy these past few weeks, but since I haven’t updated in awhile, I’ll tell you all about it.

One of the few things that I’ve been doing is related to World of Warcraft. Owl playing that stupid shit game? No no, not exactly. You see, there is another game called Anarchy Online. It’s an older MMORPG, and at one time, it was fairly popular.

Then WoW came along, and half of the AO userbase defected. In responce, Funcom’s marketing department crapped out a year-long trial period in an attempt to find some new users.

And that is what I’ve been up to. I’ll be doing a review sooner or later (not now, it’s one in the morning). So yea. Level 61 soldier. Woo.

I’ve also been listening to some podcasts on my brand-new SanDisk Digital Audio Player. So far, I’ve listened to the LQ podcast, Kevin Devin’s In The Trenches, and the Linux Link Tech Show.

The LQ podcast isn’t all that spectacular. All you really get out of it is the opensource news, which I get on Slashdot anyway. There were a series of interviews that were pretty good, but that’s about it.

ITT was pretty good. It’s mainly a sysadmin thing, some I’ve gotten some good tips, and heard a few good stories.

The Linux Link Tech Show has so far been the best. These ‘casts are *long*. 80-130 minutes each. It’s four people who run Linux screaming and bitching about whatever (usually related to Windows or how they fucked the webcast up). It’s pretty much the conversations that we have after the presentation at SCOSUG, except more drawn-out. It’s pretty amusing.

Yea. Expect more from me soon (read as: I’ll post again in a month or so. Go to hell.).

The worst decision of this decade has just been made by the marketoids at Microsoft HQ.

Microsoft to Offer Patches to U.S. Govt. First.

That’s right kids, read it and weep. Microsoft is either putting our national security (think nuclear missile systems, communications, etc) at risk by giving the Air Force UNTESTED, ROUGH BETA PATCHES, or they’re giving them final patches and then delaying them FOR ONE MONTH (30 days!) before giving them to the rest of the world.

You know, the rest of the world. The bot-netted zombie boxen. The spyware-riddled Aunt Elane’s box. The boxen of forigen governments. The majority of the world.

Yes, folks, that very same majority that needs the patches a HELL of a lot more than government security specialists who harden their systems and prevent them from sending spam to everyone and their dog.

And if they’re giving the government patches a month before other governments get them, they’re giving the US plenty of time to develop exploits to take advantage of the patched holes. This decision THREATENS THE SOVEREIGNTY OF OTHER NATIONS.

I ph33r.

Just an interesting note: NewsForge ripped off my idea and ran a story on Windows viruses under Linux.

Whee, I’ve been ripped off by a major news orginization. I feel special.

As of late I have been playing Zangband, a rouge-like game in tty1. In between monster killing sessions, I switch back to tty7 to check slashdot/gAIM/eC/etc.

During one of these short breaks, I noticed that I had an e-mail. It could have been anything, from a scosug message to spam. I check, and find another one of these classics:
=========================================
Dear user of OwlManAtt.com gateway e-mail server,

Your e-mail account will be disabled because of improper using in next
three days, if you are still wishing to use it, please, resign your
account information.

For more information see the attached file.

For security purposes the attached file is password protected. Password is “81736″.

The Management,
The OwlManAtt.com team http://www.owlManAtt.com
=========================================

And attached to it is some zip file which can only contain a virus. (Come on, spoofed message, password protected zip file that prevents antivirus scanners from looking at the file, AND bad grammar? It can only be a virus!).

Being bored out of my mind and lacking anything to do at all, I unzip the file, knowing that it can only be a windows virus, and that I am in no danger at all. It has some stupid cryptic file name, and opening it in nano or a hex editor reveals nothing of interest.

So, I say to myself, what the hell? I’ve always wanted to see what would happen if a virus was run under WINE, and I didn’t have anything better to do.

$ su
Password:
# useradd -h /home/crapaccount crapaccount;mkdir /home/crapaccount
# cp /home/owlmanatt/.wine /home/crapaccount/;chmod;chown;bla bla bla

The only reason I created a seperate account to run the virus under was JUST IN CASE something went horribly wrong with WINE. The chance of the virus actually doing any damage under Linux is something like 1 to eighty-billion-googolplex, but I’m a tad paranoid.

So with the wine configs in place, I prepare for the moment of truth. What WOULD happen? Would it go after the fake_windows partition? Would it print a message? Would it just silently die?

No, of course not. I’d forgotten the CARDINAL RULE of using WINE: It does not work when you want it to.

crapaccount@bell:~/.wine/fake_windows$ wine ojvyteie.exe
err:module:MODULE_LoadLibraryExA Loading of native DLL C:WindowsSystemiphlpapi.dll failed, check this file ! (GetLastError 193)
err:module:PE_fixup_imports Module (file) iphlpapi.dll (which is needed by C:ojvyteie.exe) not found

Blarg. Useless crap. WINE can’t even run a virus properly.

I have just finished reinstalling yet another luser’s windows machine after they demolished it surfing porn with IE or opening e-mail attachments from stan_the_hackerman@l337d00dz.org, and I have come to a decision.

Windows is not more usable than Linux is, and if you disagree with that statement, you are a fucking idiot. Why?

It’s quite simple, really. After you have finished installing Windows, you need to install drivers for your hardware so you can have basic functionality such as a decent resolution, sound, or network access. After that, you need to install the applications that you will be using. The major ones that people use (Office, Photoshop, Macromedia Studio MX) all come on CDs, so you are required to play disc jockey between reboots.

When you finish installing a modern distro (such as Fedora, SuSE, Mandrake, Debian, Slackware, etc), you probably won’t need to go and install any additional drivers. You may wish to install nVidia’s proprietary drivers, but it isn’t required to get a decent screen resolution. If you have some obscure bit of hardware, you may need to compile a module, sure. But for the most part, once Linux is installed, you don’t need to even think about drivers.

And during the installation of any modern distro, tons and tons of applications will be installed for you. Image editing programs, office suites, media centers, messanger clients. You name it and it’s probably already there. And if it ISN’T there, you can probably download a package and have it installed with one quick command. No CD changing, no rebooting. Just click-click-click boom. You now have AbiWord. You now have gAIM. No fuss.

Linux’s two major DEs also have a good deal more features in them than explorer.exe does. Glancing at my screen tells me this. I’ve got something that checks my e-mail for me, a dictonary applet to look words up really quickly, a weather applet giving me the current condition and temperature, a clock, six virtual desktops, and a system monitor.

I didn’t need to get any of those things from some shoddy web company, they came with GNOME. There is not an ounce of spyware on my computer (nor has there ever been, nor will there ever be), yet I have all of that.

I don’t get why people tell me Windows is just easier to use because it isn’t. It’s a pain in the ass.

Yea. Just had to get that off my chest.