Securitron Doom/Linux Blog.

 

New Virus.

There is another computer virus targeting Windows machines. This is not a surprise, I mean that Windows has always been a target and always will be as long as people always run Windows as Administrator instead of an unprivileged account. Apparently it is a e-mail virus requiring a less than intelligent person to click on a link in the e-mail and activate the virus. Although with Internet Explorer you can just visit a web page and you are infected. That is why a browser like Opera is a better choice. Or Firefox 1.7. Some websites have mp3's for download and require you to download some software first before you can download their files. But of course it contains a Trojan Horse and you are infected. Infecting Windows has never taken much effort on the part of the spy-ware authors. Especially those types who still run Windows '98. That OS is really insecure. But then again, so is Windows XP SP1. That is very insecure. People assume the Windows XP service pack 2 firewall is secure, but I am sure it is not. Not as secure as a dedicated Smoothwall box. Windows needs to run with more strict permissions and have greater control over which files are writable by the normal user. But that would be too much hassle for the usual Windows users who prefer to run as administrator, since they think they are gods to Computing. Slashdot fan-boys I am looking at you. And yes I am a Slashdot person but I do not run Windows, and I do not run my computer that way. I run Linux with strict file permissions and a password on sudo. Some people just have it setup to run any command without a password but that is silly indeed. An American man is suing Apple because their Ipod music player can cause cause deafness... Turn down the volume you loser! Americans crack me up when they behave like that.

The Karma Sutra worm is an e-mail worm that corrupts documents when it is opened. You have to click the link in the attachment and it will activate when it is clicked. Only Windows users are affected not MAC or FreeBSD or OpenBSD or Debian or Suse or Amiga... Only Windows... And Hotmail could filter it out surely, they do scan files for viruses before letting you activate it. But people have Outlook setup to execute files when they are clicked and that is brain dead.

I have downloaded the Zdoom .98 version and I am endeavoring to compile the game binary and build a binary package that I could make available to everyone. Then I will have a good game to play. I want also to make my community level project for Zdoom and have some more cool features in the map. I have put in more areas for the player to hide and shoot the monsters from safety. Now I just need more advanced features to make the level more attractive. I have installed –LFLAC and –LSDL now I just need to get the darn thing built. I can get the size of the binary down using –g1 and static linking to the libraries and I just need to get it to run at an acceptable speed.

I have written more code for my System Information program. I added another source file to the source tree which is linked into the executable at runtime. I am writing a less pager for the program so the user can read text files supplied with the program. I already have some parts of this working as well, I just need to feed the text into a buffer and put that out one page at a time. Should be easy.

And my community map has been updated. Get it here;

Hell Gate..

Zdoom-2.0.96+ required to play. This map requires my tex.wad from my hellpack project.
Hellpak.
This map is now much easier to play and worth the download. I will be putting in more advanced Boom and Doom2 vanilla tricks and making a level that will be a feast for the eyes.
Some people like advanced tricks and so do I, I know how to do some cool tricks with sectors that do not reference the sector containing them and I have made one that continually makes a sector lowering sound without stopping which adds some atmosphere to the level which if you have the music turned off would otherwise be quite soundless without cool ambient sounds. Although the monsters will provide some cool ambiance themselves. I have got the Zdoom binary running on my system and my level will run perfectly. Awesome. I just installed Suse Linux 10.0 with Gnome 2.12 and OpenOffice.org 2.0, making quite a nice desktop indeed. Microsoft can go to hell. Microsoft does not have Cairo...

And I have also upgraded the browser on my USB drive to Portable Firefox 1.7. Which is a little faster than the version 1.0 and simpler to get running. And it still renders websites just as well as before. Even Hotmail works with it. OpenOffice.org 2.0 has the same looking interface as MS Word now, you can drag the toolbars around and generally upset the balance of the interface by changing the layout of the toolbars and buttons to your liking, although they can be locked in place. I am generally very happy with the new Suse though, it is way ahead of Debian `Sarge', which would require re-compiling the whole OS just to get it up to the level of the latest Ubuntu. Better to use Suse 10.0, which includes Kernel Release 2.6.13-15-default and Gnome 2.12. I have the tarballs of the latest KDE release as well, I am happy enough with Gnome right now, and the Clearlooks GTK theme.

Which looks better than the blue Fisher Price shit looking Windows XP theme that people always show on television. Or the Windows Media Center interface always shown on Australia's Funniest Home Videos. I have a Debian Based MythTV live CD and I prefer that over Windows any day. I have proper Anti Aliased fonts and they look much better than the shit looking font rendering in Windows XP. And it has the Sax2 tool to setup the display properties outside X. But x.org is really easy to configure and better than having to enter the graphical mode in Windows before configuring the display. But when you are fixing Windows XP it is cool to use the safe mode with just a graphical window and a MS Dos window floating over it where you can run CHKDSK and SCANDISK and other applications to fix the system. The sight of the MS Dos prompt scares the newbies away :).

OpenOffice.org 2.0 has a new feature where you edit the contents of one footer on one page and it is mirrored automatically across all the pages. Much better than the p.o.s Microsoft Office. That is a nightmare. And using the normal view, I can edit the footers whenever I am editing the page, I do not need to go to format->header and footer. And I insert page numbers and they actually work! This is sometimes a struggle with Microsoft Office. But with OpenOffice.org everything just works. And the auto-complete feature that was in the version 1.1.3 is still here. I just wonder what the features of Microsoft Windows Vista will be compared to Linux when it is released. I know that is has the Translucent windows and other crap but I have seen shots of Linux where that has been the case. E.g showing the sun Linux desktop. This is awesome, and an image of the future when we will not be bound by the limitations of flatland. Arise 3D desktop.! The Zdoom 2.0.98 binary is now running on my system, it just took a heap of fiddling with the ln -s command to get the right symlinks to enable it to find the right libraries to run. Now I am very happy indeed. And I should be, my map works perfectly well in Zdoom and the MAPINFO lump allows me to show the right level name in the automap. I have got DVD playback working in Suse Linux 10.0. I just rebuilt xine-lib from a source tarball from sourceforge and it works very well now. Not being able to play movies really sucked. I played Lord of the Rings the two towers and had no problems.

I have included decorate monsters in my latest map. Use zdoom 2.0.93 or better to play with the new improved demons. I have a new Cacodemon and an improved Spectre monster. They are stronger and the Cacodemon can move faster and fires blue ball lightning just like in the Doom novel.
¶ 2/03/2006 10:09:00 AM 0 Comments Links to this post