I’m a geek, but I don’t play games on my computer. Well, I haven’t for at least 15 years. <\/p>\n
My first PC was an IBM PC “5150” model (I think) with an 8088 processor, 16K of memory (yep, KB, not MB), no disk drives (hard or floppy) and a CGA monitor (think of the resolution of a really cheap cell phone). The operating system was loaded from a cassette player. It took a couple of minutes to boot to a command prompt. And all it would do was the Basic language. <\/p>\n
I soon upgraded it with an additional 384K of memory, a 5 1\/2″ floppy drive, and later a 10MB hard drive. Along with some simple Basic programs, I got a copy of the game called “Zork”.<\/p>\n
It was a text-based adventure game, and fun to play (although I never did get very far). Infocom was the publisher of Zork — I don’t think the company is still around. Although you can find an HTML-based Zork game here http:\/\/thcnet.net\/zork\/index.php <\/a>, along with various Wikipedia entries for the game (for a sample, try this one about a “Grue” http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Grue_(monster)<\/a>. (You young kids might find Zork interesting, and I can see you old-timers nodding your heads as you remember your late nights with Zork.)<\/p>\n All of this is to bring up the threat to Second Life users. Malware in a Apple Quicktime video file in a Second Life game object could result in the evil hacker draining your Linden Dollar bank account. <\/p>\n How? Well, in a thinly-disguised attempt to drive my three regular readers to my “Security Dawg” site, wander over here: http:\/\/www.securitydawg.com\/2007\/12\/second-life-attack-on-linden-dollars.html<\/a> .<\/p>\n As for me, perhaps a bit of nostalgic time over on the Zork site. <\/p>\n And be careful out there. The evil hackers are lurking. Or …<\/p>\n It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue..<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" I’m a geek, but I don’t play games on my computer. Well, I haven’t for at least 15 years. <\/p>\n My first PC was an IBM PC “5150” model (I think) with an 8088 processor, 16K of memory (yep, KB, not MB), no disk drives (hard or floppy) and a CGA monitor (think of the resolution of a really cheap cell phone). The operating system was loaded from a cassette player. It took a couple of minutes to boot to a command prompt.<\/p>\n