Archives: February 1999

Virus Alert:

If you haven't been following the virus insanity which has been building up since Friday, pay attention:
• Melissa is a new virus spreading like wildfire. It apparently appeared Friday in one of those pr0n Usenet Newsgroups. Quoting CNN:

  Melissa is a Microsoft Word macro virus that infects your PC as soon as you open its e-mail attachment. Because it grabs names from Microsoft Outlook address books and resends itself, it has the potential of causing a domino effort of cascading e-mail messages that can bring even the largest mail servers to their knees.

  Melissa messages come with a subject header that starts "Important Message From," followed by a name. The name may be a familiar one to you, especially if it pulled your address from a computer of a friend or business associate.

  The message text says, "Here is the document you asked for ... don't show anyone else ;-)."

  If you open the attachment, your PC will be infected.

  I'm going to stop short of saying that it's the nastiest thing since the Michaelangelo virus or the Internet Worm, but its something to be taken seriously. You can read how to protect yourself from the Melissa virus in this CNN story.
• Hot on the heels of Melissa is a "copycat" virus that does pretty much the same thing....this one's called Papa. Again, I'll quote CNN:

  ... the new virus is an Excel virus that sends itself in the same manner as Melissa, but sends itself to the first 60 people in a user's address book compared to 50 with Melissa. In addition, Papa sends an e-mail out every time the virus is activated. Melissa only sends the message the first time it is opened.

  This time the subject line claims the message is from "all.net and Fred Cohen." The body of the e-mail, which contains an attached document titled "path.xls," then instructs the user not to disable the macros, which is how the virus is activated.

  More on this little beauty is available in this CNN Story.
Unless you're running a Linux box, go read those two articles and make sure you're not at risk. Think this isn't a big deal? Well Tidalwave.net even bothered to warn all of its users, and frequent visitors (especially the ones who attempt to visit when the website's down) realize what a bunch of reactive monkeys work there.

I'm going to mention this and the following item merely because they occur often enough and we'll probably see them occur in the wake of Melissa and Papa due to the hype and paranoia.

• The "Good Times" E-Mail Virus Hoax. This damn chain letter refuses to die. Started years ago when the Net was a fraction of the size it is now, a typical "Good Times"-type mailing has a subject line of something like "VIRUS WARNING! PLEASE READ!!!". The content of the message always contains a variant on this type of message:

  If you receive an e-mail entitled "Good Times", DO NOT OPEN IT! It contains a virus which, if opened, COULD ERASE YOUR ENTIRE HARD DRIVE!

  If you receive such an e-mail, simply DELETE IT. DO NOT READ IT!!

  Please pass this notice on to everybody you know!

  Quite simply, unless you're a total moron and have purposely set your e-mail program to execute any attachments (if you don't know if you did such a thing, you probably didn't), you cannot get a virus by just READING an e-mail message. The warning itself is a type of virus (an annoying one) because it keeps replicating itself -- not due to code but due to ignorance and paranoia.

  These type of messages are easy to spot. Don't be fooled if "Good Times" has been changed to "Party Bus" or something else; don't be fooled if there's an official-sounding press release or "virus expert" quoted.

• Receiving DCCed Files on IRC. This has been a problem as of late; there is apparently an mIRC virus of sorts floating around the IRC networks. It first appears when somebody on the channel you've joined attempts to DCC (send) you a file.

  Do not hit "Yes" or otherwise accept this file. For that matter, never accept a file via DCC or any other method from somebody you don't know. It's kind of like taking candy from strangers, got it?

  If you accept the file, your copy of mIRC becomes infected and will then -- without you knowing it -- attempt to DCC the virus to other users. The only work-around I've seen is to uninstall mIRC and re-install it again. If one of you IRC gurus has a better explanation or solution, let me know and I'll post it here.

2LT Kreth Update: Bravo's commander was quick to offer a solution to the mIRC trojan. Here's his e-mail to me:

Silly Rabbit, of course I have a fix for DMSETUP (the mIRC trojan) . This fix is courtesy of UP'z Toyz IRC Help Page (http://www.netmagic.net/~upztoyz/).

1. Unload mircrem.ini [Note from Kreth - this is accomplished by hitting Alt-R to get into the Remotes configuration dialogue, then click on File, Unload.]
2. Open c:\autoexec.bat with notepad and remove the dmsetup line - save and exit
3. Delete the following:
   c:\dmsetup.exe
   c:\configg.sys
   c:\mirc\dmsetup.exe
   c:\mirc\mircrem.ini
   c:\mirc\backup0412.ini
   c:\windows\dmsetup.exe
   c:\progra~1\dmsetup.exe
   


Posted 20:52 EST by CPT Rantage

A Piece Of My Mind:

After being out of the area for most of the weekend, it didn't take me long to catch up on the gaming news and get riled up about a few things. Color me Larry King, but here we go:
• Q3Test Previews - Why the hell are numbnuts like Redwood being allowed by id to review something that is only the first of a series of tests that aren't to be considered a "demo" release? This is as pointless as reviewing the box art!
• TeamFortress Classic / TF2 Media Blitz - Anybody else getting really fucking tired of the endless parade of "new screenshots" that seem to appear on the Net every other day? And WTF is up with a TFC "LAN Release"? Jesus Christ, people! Shit or get off of the pot -- RELEASE THE DAMN THING ALREADY!
• ION Storm - 'Nuff said.
• ISPs That Suck
• The Glacial Speed of InterNIC

Posted 21:51 EST by CPT Rantage

WTF is this...Clan Catch-22?

I was surfing about the other day and came across the Independent Mercenaries page. The concept? Take a bunch of clanless players and allow them to play in teams. Not a bad idea in of itself, but check out this confused manifesto on their homepage:

The Mercenaries are freelance professionals that "adopt" a Tribe for tournaments and other events. Each Mercenary is proved by tried and true combat. The Independant Mercenaries was started for those who do not wish to lose their name (and their soul) to a Tribe, but still want to be part of a greater whole that does not enforce ridiculous rules of conduct. That is why the title (MrC) is at the end of the name. (eg. ElcMan@MrC) As we are "adopted" by a Tribe we place their ahead of ours as a temporary allegience. (eg. {BoD}ElcMan@MrC) Even with this we still stand for the freedom of Independance from rules, religion or tribe mandates. As long as we wear the title of the Tribe we will remain faithful to that Tribe till our contract is up. It's asked that every Mercenary be professional with no grudges, as we are warriors driven by the action and fame, not by animosity or geneocidal motives.

Ok...so let me get this straight:
• The MrC is for people who don't want to be in a clan with "rediculous rules of conduct"
• If you're a mercenary you're expected to be professional, acting without grudges
• The MrC is for players who don't want to "lose their name" to a clan
• MrC "members" are expected to not only have (MrC) in their nickname but also that of the clan they're supporting
Jesus Christ. I thought the Clinton Health Care plan of 1993 was confused. I guess if you're the anti-establishment individualist type you can become another labeled member of this establishment and...um....play with a clan for a temporary basis.

Well, I can tell you right now SMS won't "hire" any of these guys. Not only is the concept extremely flaky, but why the hell would we share our tactics with a temp? This ain't McDonald's, this is Steel Maelstrom for Pete's sake!

I give this little experiment three months, tops.
Posted 23:19 EST by CPT Rantage

The "Twas But a Flesh Wound" Department:

Never fear, I'm still alive and so is SMS. This recent inconvenience thanks to this ISP will soon be remedied by the soon-to-be-revealed Project X.
Posted 21:29 EST by CPT Rantage

Luck of the Irish?

Happy St. Patrick's Day to all of you out there. Despite our website woes, I still wanted to post a quasi-holiday message.

I may have some very exciting news within the next few days. Aren't cryptic postings annoying?
Posted 23:24 EST by CPT Rantage

Llama Alert (aka Tidalwave.net Sucks Ass Again):

Today's Llama Award goes to Tidalwave.net, the ISP which hosts the SMS webpages. Time and again they have provided unremarkable and spotty support to myself and other web page authors who subscribe to their service: their latest "upgrade" rendered homepages -- like this one -- unavailable for two days.

Now we're back up, and some of the dynamic features like this News page, the Roster and the SMS Login sections no longer function. Gee, thanks guys.

So here's my testimonial:

If you live in Northern Virginia and are seeking a reliable ISP with fast Internet access and helpful technical support personnel, please look further. Tidalwave.net is a sad sack ISP which has failed to go three months without a severe homepage, FTP or mail service interruption; one such interruption last year kept me from downloading my mail for about a week. I'm not a satisfied customer, so I doubt you will be either.

The search for a better ISP continues. There may be some light at the end of the tunnel. Stay tuned.
Posted 22:16 EST by CPT Rantage

Demo Time:

I tried the Daikatana demo last night. Let me try to sum up the experience. First off, the skins and textures were fabulous. The weapon effects and behavior were absolutely stunning and the levels were larger than the average Q2 level. And the network code was quite refined; congrats, ION Storm.

Unfortunately, that's where my praise ends. I found the game to be fast and furious to the point of rediculousness. I was the top scorer out of most of the games I played in multi-player on Mplayer.com and I still only had an average lifespan of about 15 seconds. Personally, that's just too damn fast. Speaking of fast, the player movement speed was a little too much for me as well. I found myself simply running into people, and no I wasn't lagging. And running into people wasn't a good thing since they could kill you with one or two punches from about 3 or 4 arm lengths away. This, by the way, seemed to be the only distance at which you could clearly identify an opponent (if they weren't moving) because the levels were so very dark. This will probably add to the mood in single play, which I'm dying to try, but in multi it's not the greatest "feature".

There. Those are my thoughts on Daikatana. With its slick interface, wicked visuals and effects it's sure to be a game that will draw a large following. A Half-Life? Not even close, but Sin has nothing on this baby.
Posted 15:02 EST by 2LT Ping Ping

Roster Changes:

Effective immediately, Reaperman has been promoted to 1LT and has been placed in charge of Alpha Company as a whole. Platoon leaders 2LT Ballistix and 2LT Ping Ping are still in charge of their respective platoons; Reaperman is now filling the empty Company Commander slot -- a position formed when SMS restructured but has not been implemented in any of the companies yet to date.
Posted 13:03 EST by CPT Rantage

Demo Time:

Well Das Smurf is reporting -- along with the rest of the free world, I'm finding out -- that ION Storm's new game Daikatana now has a demo out. You can find a list of mirrors to download it from here.

I'm kind of curious to see how John Romero's latest effort since he left id fares. Evil Avatar didn't have too many kind things to say about it other than that some of the skinning work was excellent. From the screenshots I've seen, the models look very Quake I-ish (blocky, few polygons) and I wonder what this game can offer that SiN, Shogo, TRIBES and Half-Life can't....or what Quake3 won't in a few short months.

Any feedback or reviews are welcome.
Posted 12:59 EST by CPT Rantage

B Company, 1st Platoon News:

Congrats to former Trainees Hellfire and Miracle, who have both successfully passed their cadre tests and completed probation.
Posted 1:19 EST by 2LT Kreth

TRIBES News:

The TRIBES front hasn't received much press from us, so I thought I'd pass on some related links that I found:
• Datumplane::Starsiege
• l o n e g u n m e n
• Shotgun_Avenger's Avenger.net
I'm rapidly becoming addicted to the game, which may surprise a lot of you. TRIBES isn't as pretty as Half-Life or the Q3 screenshots, nor is it as bloody (the RSAC rating is for "Teens" *snort* -- obviously nobody is paying attention to what teens think, say or do these days) but the team-play options are excellent. In a way, it reminds me of the early days of CTF when the whole online teamplay experience was just starting.

If you've only played the Deathmatch mode of TRIBES, you owe it to yourself to try the CTF or D&D (Defend and Destroy) mods. Once you start working like/with a team and communicating, you'll pay less attention to the lack of blood and shadows and more to the tactical aspects of the game. Trust me.
Posted 19:44 EST by CPT Rantage

New Patch:

There's a new Shogo patch available, version 2.2. I just thought I'd mention it because there's been a little buzz about Shogo in the member forums recently.
Posted 19:31 EST by CPT Rantage

A Piece Of My Mind:

Holy shit! I happened to catch the new Star Wars trailer while watching CNN Headline News tonight. Very cool; it definitely appealed to the geek in me. Lots of computer-generated stuff, lots of droids with guns, lots of lightsabers, and lots and lots of spaceships shooting at each other. On May 19th, it'll be 1977 again. :)
Posted 19:23 EST by CPT Rantage

Kreth's Korner:

A heads-up to my fellow geeks out there with a Palm-connected Organizer (the PDA for those of you who aren't lucky enough to have one). An FPS is in alpha for the Palm platform. It's called RayGin, and you can grab a copy here. The homepage claims 20FPS, which is better than the framerate I got playing Quakeworld. <g> I sent a note to Das Smurf about the alpha, let's see if I get some props...
Posted 18:28 EST by 2LT Kreth

Reading Material:

I've finally thrown some stuff into the SMS FAQ section, hopefully will answer some questions before they're asked. The FAQ basically covers stuff in the Rules and Regulations, but in a more user-friendly format.
Posted 23:08 EST by CPT Rantage

A Company, 1st Platoon News:

Effective 3 days ago, A Company, First Platoon ceased to exist due to lack of interest. Attendance had hit an all-time low, I have not had a reliable trainee apply in a month or so, and the general tone of practices had stagnated.
Posted 22:15 EST by 2LT Reaperman

Miscellaneous Rumblings:

A couple things to mention today...
• Effective immediately, the following attendance policy (which I mentioned a few days ago) goes into effect. This policy has come about as a result of the Platoon Leaders being unable to schedule for effective practices. It doesn't mean that anybody has to attend any more practices, it just means you have to show some common courtesy and let SMS know when you can't make it. It seems simple enough, but I'm sure we'll lose a few members off of the Roster because of it. Here are the details:
  1. All members and trainees must inform their Platoon Leaders or Squad Leaders via e-mail or ICQ when they cannot attend practice.
  2. Members who have failed to send such a message three times in a three-month period are immediately discharged from SMS. For these members, readmittance will be determined on a case-by-case basis, individuals allowed back into SMS will start off as Trainees with a 2-week probationary period. All rank attained up to that point will be lost.
  3. Trainees who fail to inform their Platoon Leader three times during their probationary period will be rejected from membership, without exception. Trainees rejected for this purpose forfeit all chances for membership in SMS in the future.
  4. The individual who will be absent bears the responsibility of the message being delivered. Mail router problems or other excuses will not be accepted.
  5. Absence messages must arrive at the Platoon/Squad Leader's ISP prior to the practice date in question to be accepted. Late or missing messages will be discarded. No exceptions.
• I finally moved February's News into the Archives.
• I purchased TRIBES over the weekend. Maps which are roughtly 4 square miles in size are cool. :)

C Company, 1st Platoon News:

Last night trainee's Gus, Crispy, and Sadism all passed their cadre test. It was down to the wire but they managed to sqeak by me. Congrats to all of them!
Posted 13:6 EST by 2LT Sniper

New Software:

QSB 1.9 has been released, now with Half-Life model support so you can put Gordon Freeman in any kind of crazy pose you'd like.
Posted 17:33 EST by CPT Rantage

B Company, 1st Platoon News:

Congrats to RocK and Morson who both completed their probation today. RocK passed his cadre test the day he joined the clan, and Morson passed last night in a close battle with SGT Dragon.
Posted 10:18 EST by 2LT Kreth

Miscellaneous Rumblings:

Let me piggyback upon what 2LT Sniper says below by saying this: unexcused absences will be your Kryptonite if you join SMS.

The clanwide attendance policy will be revised soon.

The minimum number of practices that all members must attend per month will NOT change (it will remain at 2/month; 4/month for Trainees). What will change is how we will deal with unexcused absences.

If you can't show your Platoon Leader the common courtesy of informing him/her of the times you cannot make it to practice, you will pay the price. It's all about keeping your teammates informed.

Stay tuned, I'll be elaborating on this in the near future. For now, for those of you who haven't been showing up: sharpen your e-mail skills.
Posted 19:47 EST by CPT Rantage

1st Platoon, C Company News:

I made a new policy about our TRIBES practices. Here it is. From now on if you miss practice and don't bother to tell me why, it'll be counted as a absence. 5 unexcused absences will result in you getting kicked out. For every absence you get (unexcused), it will take some strong attendance to get rid of ONE. Like for every unexcused absence it'll take a month for you to get rid of one. I understand you have a real life but how long does it take to tell me "Hey I had the flu" or some excuse and I'll say, "cool see ya soon (hope you feel better)." If SMS isn't that important to you, tell me and I'll take you off the roster.
Posted 18:55 EST by 2LT Sniper

B Company, 1st Platoon News:

Last night Bravo Company had a match with Clan Paranoia. Let's just say that they were... impressive. Scores in the best 2-3 of battle were (SMS/Paranoia): 36/97, and 82/167. My thanks to team members Ice, TBIRDX, Dragon, Buck, and Phineas, who gave it their best under difficult circumstances. Props to Clan Paranoia for a match well played.
Posted 9:22 EST by 2LT Kreth

C Company, 1st Platoon News:

Welcome yet another member to the Tribes platoon. Give a warm welcome to trainee Crispy. Crispy and I played together twice before he joined.Both times we were defensive snipers and together we totaled 26 frags. He is yet another great team player to the C company.
Posted 18:24 EST by 2LT Sniper

C Company, 1st Platoon News:

All Tribes members need to get the OFF TRIBES IRC AS SOON AS YOU CAN!!!You can get it here http://www.mirc.co.uk You need this as soon as posible.We will meet at #sms on Thursdays and Sundays at 9:00 EST.Also give a warm welcome to trainee ( - )Ions. I will also be posting some cadre news soon on exactly how it will be done.
Posted 23:19 EST by 2LT Sniper

A Piece Of My Mind:

I'm not happy to admit it, but I have decided to end my boycott of the GameSpy Network. Details are on the page, but suffice it to say that sometimes Goliath wins.

Besides, it's time better spent on SMS.
Posted 19:23 EST by CPT Rantage