Socrates Third Law

Socrates third law of ethics:  you must not be surprised if you hear someone say "there was a problem with OpenSSL."

Another Google Fail

I am no longer able to post images.  The image upload tool have been broken for some time.  For a short time, I was able to use the old interface to upload images successfully.  After they retired the old interface completely, I was able to post images indirectly through Picasaweb.  Not the Google Plus Photos tool, which seems inferior in every way to Picasa.  (You can use the 'noredirect=1' flag when accessing Picasaweb to not get redirected to Google Plus.)  Even though it was a bit cumbersome if I had to post several images, I could make it work.  They must have changed something in the Blogger API, though, and failed to update Picasa, because I can no longer post images that way.  I'm not sure what else to do and may have to switch blogger platform.

Doing the Office Space Routine on my DVD Player

In Office Space, there is a famous scene, where they violently take apart a printer that entirely deserved it.

 

I did the same to my JVC DVD/BD player.  (An XV BP1, if you must know).  I did it for much the same reason.  This junk failed to play about half of the Blue Ray discs I popped into it.  Yet, I can get over that.  What really irked was that the player quite often would refuse to open the drawer and let the disc out.  It would just stay hermitically sealed.  That experience was reminiscent of the scenes in Office Space where they are pulling on the paper in order to get their printed page.

I finally had enough.  I took the player outside and used a sledgehammer on it.  I freely admit, compared to Peter, Michael, and Samir, I am a rank amateur.  Still, the experience was oddly deliberating.

Scientific American Fail

Happy New Year, dear readers.

Early in 2012, I bought a copy of Scientific American.  I must have been a little desperate for reading material, because it is down quite a bit on my list of magazines I pick up.  This particular copy was a good case in point why.

They had an article, "Stars to the Rescue," about celebrities doing various projects to promote science. Never mind that the brand of science promoted is the same pop-version of it that Scientific American itself promulgates. 

What struck me was the next article in the printed magazine, on the very same page.  Picture below.  That article was about online tracking.  Was it a cogent piece about the pros (personalization) and cons (loss of privacy) of online tracking?  Did it contain any information to readers about the underlying technologies and the various reasons organizations might want this data?  No and no.  Instead, it was a narrow-minded piece of hysteria fanning the flames of paranoid privacy hawks.

I found this accidental juxtaposition ironic and wanted to share it.

Year of the Google Dragon

Happy Chinese New Year!  I believe today is the official new years day and according to the Chinese zodiac, 2012 will be the year of the dragon.  For me, 2011 was the year of the Google dragon, so it is a bit serendipitous.  It was not only the year Android and Chrome ascended to market prominence, it was also the year I got disenchanted.  (I may conflate a bit of history.  Do not take me too literally here).

Microsoft is the software company whose products I use the most.  Comparing Google to them, over any given period of sufficient length, say, 6 months, I run into about as many Google bugs as Microsoft bugs.  At the conscious level, I feel this is being kind to Google, but I also realize that I have used some Microsoft products for many years and they probably have some quirks I work around without thinking about it.  The complexity of the Microsoft functionality I use is several orders of magnitude more than the Google functionality I use.  By the time I booted my system and started my browser, I have already run millions of lines of code.  During most weeks I will use a whole slew of Microsoft products, such as most of the Office suite, Visual Studio, Visio, SQL Server and other back-office products, not to mention several versions of Windows.  (I understand that Google does have an impressive infrastructure, in both the logical and the physical sense, to serve up web pages, fast, to gazillions of users.)

I love my Microsoft products and could write other blog posts about why, but today I have been thinking more about Google.  I keep running into annoying bugs.  The worst is when they lose my blog post, and that only happens when I have been working for hours on one.  I cannot remember the last time a Microsoft product lost my data. 

It gets worse.  I develop browser extensions for a living (OK, that is an exaggeration, but it is part of my job).  In order to test these, I load various browser configurations and then hammer on it with automated tests until it crashes, or several days pass, whichever occurs first.  I can tell you that with IE8 at least, the naked browser does not crash.  (Earlier versions were also pretty solid, but they did have some CPU issues.)  Once I start loading other browser extensions, such as the Google toolbar, the Yahoo toolbar, the Flash plugin, etc, that is when the browser starts to crash.  Of these, the Google toolbar is by far the worst.  The time to live goes from open-ended to hours, singlehanded courtesy of the Google extension. 

Add to this that you have to be on your toes something fierce if you do not want the Google toolbar.  That thing spreads like a virus.  I have on a couple of occasions gotten it installed with some other software, probably overlooking some crucial checkbox, and have had to uninstall it. 

I am a firm believer in Heinlein's Razor: Cock-up before conspiracy. I am fairly certain no sinister plan was in play here.  It would have been a pretty neat trick, though: develop an unstable extension to your competitor's product, propagate it aggressively using any means available, then ship your own product and laud its stability. 

I could say more, but I am going to publish my post before Blogger loses it.

Computer Issues

I have written about malware issues before. This time it is worse. Some virus killed my main PC, and I spent over two months trying to restore and clean it. Four security packages failed to do it automatically.

It was tedious work. I reinstalled the OS and available upgrades many times, too many to count. I scoured through registry settings, looking for suspicious entries. One evening, I manually copied 176 system DLLs from the XP installation DVD, one by one. I installed security packages and ran updates and scans, little of which proved productive.

Though I harbor little respect, and much disdain, for the malware authors, I have to admit the viruses are getting sophisticated. They morph themselves so that they are difficult to recognize, by programs or humans. They use counter measures, so that if you partially disable one, it will reconstitute itself. (This happened to me many times). They use indirection and one-way references, so that finding the root of each takes effort. They try to limit their system impact so that you might not notice them. Like biological viruses, they try not to kill their hosts, though in both cases, a lossage in the 10-20% range is perfectly acceptable.

I managed to get my system working and clean, and even got ESET Smart Security installed and operating. It is my favorite security program so far, because of its speed and relatively simple design (though the UI could use some work). Even it was not the silver bullet for me, though.

In the end, was it all worth it? I could have scratched the system and started over. (All my data is backed up regularly). That would have taken almost as long, though, and I would have lost a few assets -- some programs I would not have been able to reinstall and relicense. I would also not have learnt as much.

I have concluded that a few system settings and a security software package is not enough to protect you. You need more layers of security. I have become a fan of the limited user account. I have also looked for malware lists, such as the one found on malwaredomains.com. It is a non-profit, which I promptly donated to, because I like his work. Through it, I also found the Unmask Parasites blog, which reveals how some viruses work, security holes, and perhaps most importantly, includes tips and tidbits for end-users and webmasters alike.

I have also concluded that many viruses, especially the commercial ones, are so discreet that many computers and websites are infected, without the owners' awareness.

Browse safely.

Digital Vandalism

I have in the past resisted security software (read: anti-virus packages), and relied instead on caution and manual system monitoring to ward against malware. Within the last couple of years, either Windows got too complicated, the malware got too sophisticated, or I became too rusty. I got infected by several viruses.

One of the reasons I am reluctant to use security software is that they typically install several services, an email plugin, browser plugins, and some of them even mini-port drivers. It would take a pretty nasty virus to have worse impact on your system! (Of course, security software do not propagate aggressively). I wish there was a passive security package I could run only whenever I choose.

I installed Free avg, then deactivated the extraneous services, drivers and plugins, thereby getting almost what I wanted. Yet, after several scans, deletions, and reboots, I still had a problem that the viruses had introduced, which was that I could not start certain programs or processes, such as procexp.exe, regedit.exe or even the anti-virus scanner and update programs.

At first, I thought that avg had missed a virus. I tried to deactivate or kill different processes that might host a virus, but still I had the problem. I could run the programs after I renamed them -- for instance, I could not run "procexp.exe," but I could run the same program renamed to "sysinternals_procx.exe." Thinking that there must be a malware system-hook running in one of the Windows processes, I checked each one and searched its image for 'procexp.exe,' still without finding it.

Searching the registry instead, I found that the virus had added the programs I could not start to this key:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion\Image File Execution Options

Each program had a "Debugger" subkey, with the "ntsd -d" options. 'ntsd' is the debugger (NT Symbolic Debugger), and -d tells it to attach to the kernel debugger -- which typically will not be present, thus failing the launch altogether.

I wrote this up in case you have, or get, the same problem. If so, just delete the 'Debugger' subkey under each program found at the registry key indicated above.

Since I am on the subject: Reading about convictions against black hats in the news, I have several times been disappointed at their light sentences. I looked it up for this post, and according to the Cybercrime watch list, it seems as if courts are issuing punishments more in line with the severity of the crimes now. The author of "Melissa" was caught and convicted, the damage was estimated to US$80M, and the perpetrator got 20 months in jail and a $5,000 fine.

I think the damage is underestimated, though. They have to account for all the money and time we spent in prevention. Symantec makes $6 billion a year (mostly) selling anti-virus software. A big portion of that is a dead-weight loss we spend in protection against the digital vandals.

Plant Resurrections

I have two examples of resurrecting plants. One is a gift, the other represents a moral dillema.

The gift is a Rose of Jericho, which I got at Christmas, from my step-brother and his wife as my almondgift (transliterated from the Danish). Though I knew that it was going to unfold, I was impressed with the dramatic transition. The two pictures below are taken just a couple of hours apart.


For the record, I believe a fascination with plant life and organic wonders is perfectly compatible with technophilia. I'm a geek, through and through.

My Moral Dillema comes from a vow to never kill a tree, which I made when I was 18. Though I'm still an environmentalist, I am much more sanguine now than I was then. Still, a vow is a vow.

Last year, PG&E came to take down a dying oak that were threatening some power lines. I was notified, but not asked, so I did not feel conflicted about this part. Hower, the stump is sprouting.



I would really prefer to see the tree die, and make room new shrubs and trees, such as the new maple I planted nearby. I wonder if killing off the sprouts is a violation of my vow. If I weed the sprouts, am I killing the tree, or am I killing weeds?

Chinese College Quiz

Every year, about ten million Chinese students compete for about five million college placements. A critical factor is the Chinese SAT, the main difference being that it lasts for two days.

The Chinese students call it Gaokao. Take a look at some of the open-ended essay questions. How would you do? Bear in mind that these questions are always tailored to the education the students go through in their schools, but it is still interesting to ponder.

Pictured is Tree, a Chinese student I met and became friends with on the way back from Japan to Shanghai. I hope he did well in his tests this year.

That Other Chinese Wall

I have escaped momentarily from the Chinese firewall. In addition to blocking content, and some sites outright, it slows things down more than I had realized. My impression is that sites fall into a green-amber-red spectrum, where greens are passed through, reds are fully blocked, and ambers go through a filter that slows down access, sometimes to a crawl.

I will try to get some posting in while my access is unadulterated.