amiga-news.de - Archive

Archiv 'Miscellaneous'

`18.Aug.2001` Mariusz Wloczysiak (email)	Elbox explains their price policy for driver software As already reported, Elbox has announced on the 16.08.2001 a CD with driver software you have to pay for. This has led to big and extensive discussions. In the following email Elbox explains their price policy: ELBOX Computer explains its policy about driver pricing 1. The purpose of MEDIATOR To ENABLE the POSSIBILITY of using a wide range of standard PCI cards. 'The MEDIATOR PCI busboard line is designed to enable expanding the Amiga with a wide range of standard PCI cards like Graphic cards, Ethernet and Fast Ethernet network cards, Modem cards, ISDN cards, USB and SCSI cards, Sound cards and Multimedia cards: TV tuner and MPEG-2 hardware decoders. Expanding the Amiga with the MEDIATOR PCI busboard opens the way to employing the power of the latest PowerPC G3/G4 processors in Amiga, around which SharkPPC and SharkPPC+ cards are based.' However, it does not mean that we will prepare ALL the possible drivers for ALL the possible devices and their different versions. We want to enhance Amiga's effectiveness and give Amiga community access to low-cost, good and widely-available PCI cards. As a starter, we have included some drivers in the initial pack of the Mediator busboard: PCI Graphic cards: Voodoo5 5500 64MB, Voodoo4 4500 32MB, Voodoo3 3000 16MB, Voodoo3 2000 16MB, Voodoo Banshee 16 MB, S3 ViRGE 86C325 2MB, S3 ViRGE 86C325 4MB, S3 ViRGE/DX 86C375 2MB, S3 ViRGE/DX 86C375 4MB PCI Ethernet cards: Winbond 89C940F, RealTek RTL-8029, NetVin NV5000S.C., Holtek HT80232, Holtek HT80229, Compex RL2000, SureCom NE34, KTI ET32P2, Via 86C926. These drivers have never been free. Their price was included in the original design costs. New drivers have to be calculated separately because... 2. No commercial software is free Writing good and versatile software (e.g. Mediator drivers) requires time and effort, which ultimately means programmers have to receive good salaries. If users want to be supported in the long run by any company, they have to pay for its products. Money collected allows generating new ideas, new designs and new products. 3. Free alternative approach (which we do NOT follow) Yes, we could offer software for free. We could have bought hundreds of old-fashioned PCI sound cards just a few Mark per piece (like e.g. SB Pro). Then we could write drivers to this specific batch of cards. Easy way, supporting one chipset, one specific card, branded with our name and marketed as unique. As these cards would be unique, they would have to priced high enough, say at DM 100. With "free" drivers, of course. What's the result? You would buy an OUTDATED low-featured no-longer-supported card, paying mega-bucks not for the card but for quick software and huge extra profits for the "manufacturer." 4. Instead we give... RESPECT. The basic rule with Elbox is that we FIRST develop, design and test and only when everything is ready and in the final stage do we announce new products. In other words, we take the risk and full cost of the designing stage. We do not demand from users making pre-payments, placing pre-orders, etc. In other words, we respect the users as full-scale Customers, who deserve to be offered a final-stage product to choose whether to take it or not, depending on their needs. Another basic rule for us is that we prepare universal drivers, i.e. drivers supporting various chipsets. This ensures faulty-free support for many different versions of the same card. Writing software with this prerequisite in mind takes much more time and tests than writing drivers for one specific chipset/card. But what we offer is UNIVERSALITY and PERFORMANCE. Mariusz Wloczysiak ELBOX COMPUTER, Press Department (ps) (Translation: wk) [News message: 18. Aug. 2001, 19:08] [Comments: 1 - 21. Aug. 2001, 00:05] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`18.Aug.2001` Jan Andersen (email)	Virus Help Denmark: virus warning! We have found another the installer of the new 'Hitch-Hiker 5.00' linkvirus. Again there is "NO" cure for this virus right now. You can find infected files, you will have to replace the infected files with new clean files. The 'Hitch-Hiker v5.00' virus will add 3732 bytes to every infected file, and place it self in memory, so you will have to watch out for that as well. This virus will infect anything that it can get into. Again I ran a test on my A1200 and it infected will over 400 files, in under 3 minutes. There is a way to see if the archive you download is an installer of this virus, all you have to do is to unpack the archive, read the file in an texteditor (eg. CygnusEd), and search for this text string in the code (THIS IS ONLY FOR THE INSTALLER): -=COVAH=- If you find -=COVAH=- in the code, that is an installer of this virus then please send the archive to us. The virus size has change this time, now it is 3720 bytes. That tells us that the virus uses polymorph routine, that means that the virus can change in size. This virus comes from Poland again, just like the other viruses that we have found in the last 6 month. But why don't you guy's program something usefull, that everyone can enjoy? In the code (decoded), you can read: Hitch-Hiker Millenium (5.00) Featuring the 1's Advanced V8sA Op'miz Code A welcom user of VRU! -= 1995-2 =- -= HAVOC =- The archive was uploaded to AmiNet, but it has been removed now. (Thanks Urban). This is what we know of the virus: Virus Type.... : Linkvirus Virus name.... : Hitch-Hiker 5.00 (Millenium) Virus size.... : 3720 bytes Archive name.. : LibBase310.lha Archive size.. : 47.711 bytes (lha packed) Installer name : LibBase3.10 Installer size : 42.304 bytes Archive info.. : Scans Memory for Libs/Tasks etc There might just be more installers of the 'Hitch-Hiker 5.00' virus out there, today we found 2 archives. If you find anything please send it to us. The 'xvs.library' (external Virus Scanner library) will be updated as soon as possible. In the mean time, take care... Thanks to Petra Struck & Alfred, for sending the archive to us. Editorial: As the system of Alfred Sturm, who's responsible for the Aminet uploads here at amiga-news.de, has been infected yesterday with this aggressive virus through installing LibBase310.lha and trying it there'll be no updates of the Aminet uploads in the near future. The virus has unfortunately not only infected his main partition but also the partition with his backup. Some infected files are even not deleteable. He's now forced to install his system from scratch. This may take a while as laboriously self written scripts have passed away and everything has to be collected together again. (ps) (Translation: wk) [News message: 18. Aug. 2001, 11:50] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`17.Aug.2001` Jan Andersen (e-mail)	Virus Help Denmark: Hitch-Hiker v5.00 linkvirus found We have found the installer of the new 'Hitch-Hiker 5.00' linkvirus. There is "NO" cure for this virus right now. You can find infected files, but you will have to replace the infected files with new clean files. The 'Hitch-Hiker v5.00' virus will add 3732 bytes to every infected file, and place itself in memory, so you will have to watch out for that as well. This virus will infect anything that it can get into. And on my test A1200 over 400 files were infected in under 3 minutes. This virus comes from Poland again, just like the other viruses that we have found in the last 6 month. But why don't you guys program something useful that everyone can enjoy? In the code (decoded), you can read: Hitch-Hiker Millenium (5.00) Featuring the 1's Advanced V8sA Op'miz Code A welcom user of VRU! -= 1995-2 =- -= HAVOC =- The archive was uploaded to AmiNet, but we stopped the archive before it got online for reel. (Thanks Urban). This is what we know of the virus: Virus type.... : Linkvirus Virus name.... : Hitch-Hiker 5.00 (Millenium) Virus size.... : 3732 bytes Archive name.. : WBCycle21.lha Archive size.. : 25.818 bytes (lha packed) Installer name : WBCycle Installer size : 22.756 bytes Archive info.. : Cycles a single WB colour to pretty up Windows. This is a fake archive. The programmer of 'WBCycle', Steve Hargreaves has not released an update of WBCycle since v1.0. There might just be more installers of the 'Hitch-Hiker 5.00' virus out there. If you find anything please send it to us. The 'xvs.library' (external Virus Scanner library) will be updated as soon as possible. In the meantime, take care ... Thanks to Thomas Klein for sending the archive to us. (ps) (Translation: rh) [News message: 17. Aug. 2001, 19:49] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`17.Aug.2001` Lars "Ghandy" Sobiraj (ANF)	Mailbox: Uphold The Law BBS online again! The pure demoscene BBS "Uphold The Law" is after two days delay and the restoration of the destroyed user data online again. Especially a lot of German callers who had seen the IP in the Amiga News asked for access to the illegal areas of the mailbox. Those don't exist here, and they will never exist! Those looking for pirated software or not willing to leave their phone number can save the effort asking. With the private phone number, the sysop tries to protect himself from anonymous crackers. (ps) (Translation: rh) [News message: 17. Aug. 2001, 15:56] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`17.Aug.2001` Richard Kapp (e-mail)	GFX-BASE: Review of the ArtEffect Plug-In CD-ROM and more At the GFX-BASE you can read a review of the newly released plug-in CD-ROM for ArtEffect. We have taken a look at the new possibilities, describe the installation and the use of the plug-ins in practice (including a hint for WinUAE users). There have been other changes to the GFX-BASE as well: it's now possible to search through our news archive and all tutorials published so far were translated into French by our new member, Alexandre Balaban. (ps) (Translation: rh) [News message: 17. Aug. 2001, 15:50] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`17.Aug.2001` Darkage Software	Darkage Software website with new layout The Italian software developers Darkage, known for games such as 'Tales from Heaven' and the 'Amiga Classix' CDs have entirely redesigned their website and updated the product pages at the same time. There are some first screenshots of 'Supreme', the new Amiga video titling program which is scheduled for release in September. (ps) (Translation: rh) [News message: 17. Aug. 2001, 01:12] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`16.Aug.2001` Telemar (ANF)	Tip for Monzoom users and raytracers To all who use the raytracing software Monzoom. The site '3dlinks.com' is for rendering people what amiga-news for Amiga information is. Free objects, textures, etc., etc..., drop by. (ps) (Translation: mj) [News message: 16. Aug. 2001, 20:18] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`16.Aug.2001` Jan Andersen (E-Mail)	Virus: New Trojan virus found A new trojan has been found today. This trojan says that it will make a key-file that will work with over 250 programs. Well, I guess that there are someone that will fall for this kind of program. The trojan will delete every file that has the "key" in the name of the file, in your S:, Libs:, Devs: and L:. This is what we know of the trojan: Virus Type.... : Trojan Trojan name... : MZ-MAKEY trojan Trojan size... : 34.548 bytes (packed with StoneCracker) Trojan size... : ? (we have not been able to unpack the file) Archive name.. : MZ-MAKEY.lha Archive size.. : 34.734 bytes (lha packed) Archive info.. : ØØØØØøøøøøøøøØØØØØØØØ Master Key Generator! ===================== make keys for all programs you want 100% tested with more of 250 programs! xxxxx ØØØØØøøøøøøøøØØØØØØØØ (VHT-DK has removed the name and replaced it with 'xxxxxxxxx') Don't trust programs like this, use your common sense before you try stupid programs like this....... The xvs.library package will be released very soon..... Thanks to 'Golds' for sending the archive, and to JEO for the test of the archive. (ps) (Translation: dr) [News message: 16. Aug. 2001, 20:12] [Comments: 0] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]
`16.Aug.2001` Colin Hirsch (ANF)	Individual Computers "Offline" Jens Schönfeld, known to many Amiga freaks by his "Individual Computers" company, was involved to a serious road accident, this morning. It is to expect that support questions, etc. will not be replied for some days or weeks. After convalesce he will report his return himself, which hopefully will be soon. (ps) (Translation: mj) [News message: 16. Aug. 2001, 17:46] [Comments: 1 - 17. Aug. 2001, 02:55] [Send via e-mail] [Print version] [ASCII version]

1 300 595 ... <- 600 601 602 603 604 605 606 607 608 609 610 -> ... 615 621 633