Messages posted by: greg11

I have been cleaning this type of virus for a couple of companies and individuals. I have seen it take various forms, but it's effective with company computers since employees think they are doing the right thing by activating the so called virus scanner.
I have had 3 calls today about it. The virus is likely coming from flash advertisments. There was a flash update 3 days ago. Go here to check your flash version: http://www.adobe.com/software/flash/about/

The virus/trojan opens the door for more infections and many computers that I have worked on contained rootkits, but I am unsure of which came first. The rootkits are effective at not being detected by virus scanners...I have been removing the drive and scanning them with another computer to detect them. Some of them replaced system files such as atapi.sys. The system files can be recovered by copying them from /windows/system32/dllcache (for winxp)

In many cases the virus prevented booting into safe mode, and crippled some of the tools used to repair the system such as taskmgr and regedit. A recovery console can be used to fix this.

Some users have been able to perform a system restore, but it tends to only be effective if they go back a month or two...The virus and rootkit could have been dormant for many weeks.

The virus is self updating, so if you do plan to try to manually remove it, it helps to disconnect the machine from the web. It seems that the virus can become aware that you are trying to remove it, and will try and lock down the machine.

The best advice is to wipe your machine and start fresh. Windows sucks up your drive after many updates anyway, you may find you can recover about 8g just from a fresh install. I have not seen this type of malware infect personal documents or media, so you should be able to backup your stuff.

After you get everything fixed, install microsoft security essentials if you don't have a current antivirus: http://www.microsoft.com/Security_Essentials/ It is free for legitimate windows users. It seems to use less resources than some of the big AV scanners out there (one of the reasons some users don't have AV)

edit:
I forgot to mention sysinternals: http://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/sysinternals/default.aspx specifically procmon, procexp, and autoruns.
autoruns can verify code signatures on all programs and drivers that are loaded at boot. go to options and enable verify code signatures then hide microsoft entries. Hit refresh, and anything that is left should be questioned. autoruns works like msconfig, but with more detail. If your computer takes a long time to startup, you can use it to disable some of the programs that load...just make sure you know what it is before you disable something important.

Happy Birthday!

Happy bday DOM

Since the lava skaarj can take out a titan in 2 hits, I think we need a lava titan added.

dom60 wrote:

wife read that NORMALLY Hawaii normally gets snow!

You can snow ski and surf in the same day on the big island.

I think the +1 ability could replace the max ability and max+1 ability.

There are so many ways implement it. Such as:
The highest modifier a player can max a weapon to would be determined by the class and level of the player.
Lower the dren requirement to something like 50 dren per level. Or make it non linear like:
Code:

 dren_req = max(20 + 5 * current_modifier , 10)
 modifier : dren req
 -5 : 10
 -4 : 10
 -3 : 10
 -2 : 10
 -1 : 15
 0 : 20
 1 : 25
 2 : 30
 3 : 35
 4 : 40
 5 : 45
 6 : 50
 7 : 55
 8 : 60
 9 : 65
 10 : 70

Thè-Hättêr wrote:

this can qualify as a bug.. waves are ending before monsters are death

Szlat I think this is related to the vamp gnats. It tends to happen when someone feeds the gnats. The spawns don't get killed by the end of the wave, and the monster count goes off.

Elite wrote:

Or possibly a bunny that can only be used once a wave just like the redeemer or ion, after all the Monster master is a fighting class now.

The bunny would be like the engineer barrel.

Szlat wrote:

I vaguely remember Druid didn't like the lag that Queens put on the system, so he may not be keen on using Princesses as pets.

If I remember correctly, I think it is the null web. I recall getting some serious lag on a local server when many queens spawn their web at the same time.

Clone-Engineer wrote:

Hopefully my cpu works with me.

Ive been looking over the levels and most of my friends have been over me . Well thats what i get for procrastinating

I do worry about something.

If I use the Cd code that i used for the other cpu will i get my stats back? or willi have to start all over?

You should be able to keep your stats if you use the same cd-key.

dom60 wrote:

if memory serves correct it has been suggested before to incress the number of mines but their set to the map and that controls the number of mines

I plan to have this finished soon. Been pretty busy. I don't get a lot of UT time to mess with it. Don't think I will this valentines day either.

[RMD wrote:

RAPIER]
My concern is if the sub classes are going to cut my score 50% Which I feel I'm a pretty good player, whats it going to do to the guys that are below level 70 and how is it going to effect them leveling up.

It used to be: "There goes my score. Elite just joined."
Now it is: "...The subclasses are playing."

Szlat wrote:

The modifier is just used for the damage bonus. I just wanted to get it working with the triple. Never mind.

Some thoughts about modifiers:
The wider range of modifiers reduces the probability that a player will roll a maxed wep. But AMs can easily max a wep in one go. Back when I ran a server, new players thought the max artifact was for weapon masters. It does seem odd that an AM can make their weapons more powerful instead of the weapon masters.

The weapon proficiency ability makes sense with WMs. A trained weapon handler should be able to do more damage. WMs shouldn't be able to increase the magical ability of a weapon.

Comparing an AM to a mage: it would make more sense that an AM cannot become proficient in a weapon but improve the magical abilities.

The damagebonus per modifier level was not part of the original rpg code.
Would removing it, or reducing its effect on all weapons make more sense. It seems that players only want the weapons that are powerful, and don't care about the other magical abilities such as protection or quickfoot.

Basically what I am suggesting is this:
Zero out the damagebonuses for all weps (or reduce to under 1%.) Make all damagebonuses equal.
Give all modifiers an equal larger range (something like -2 to 10). Vanilla weps don't need modifiers if the damagebonuses are removed.
Replace the maxmodifier, max +1 and remote max with just a +1 artifact and remote +1.
the +1 artifact can be used by all classes up to +3, AMs can go to the Max.

Maybe we could come up with new magical modifiers that don't focus so much on damage. One that comes to mind is a confusion modifier that when a monster is damaged, it temporary attacks the nearest monster it finds. (would be funny to see in deathmatch)

With the recent nerfing of the engineer link gun a similar thing can be applied. Nerf the link gun some more and give the engineers an ability to up the power of the engineer link gun (link length, db, and speed) It could be three separate abilities.

Szlat wrote:

However, it does make a difference what order you buy the abilities in. Choose things (like weapon proficiency, LW6) that up the damage before any abilities that use it (like vampire). And likewise things like Energy Leech before LA5.

Wow, that looks like a bug.
So, one player can be more powerful than another with the same abilities just because they picked them in the right order.

How difficult would it be to have the abilitymenu sort a players abilities in a standard order once purchased?

For rod:
slow down the fire rate for non AMs (AMs should be more proficient with it than others)

For piercing:
I can't disagree with piercing being too powerful, going from +30% maxed to +6% maxed seems like a hefty nerf.
Why not half it, or reduce the max modifier to +3. What benefit does the modifier add to piercing other than damagebonus.

Or if you do make the +1 artifact, nerf the damagebonus for all weps, and increase the maxmodifiers.