Aryeh 的个人资料Goretsky照片日志列表更多  |  工具 帮助 |
Goretsky11月9日 How to simulate a "Classic" Windows XP/Windows 2000 style Start Menu under Windows 7[The following is a copy of a message I originally wrote in the Windows 7 Tips & Tricks, Put your great tips here! message thread on Scot's Newsletter Forums on November 9, 2009. AG]
Hello, Here's how to simulate a Windows XP "Classic"/Windows 2000 style Start Menu on a computer running Microsoft Windows 7:
Regards, Aryeh Goretsky 11月5日 Initial thoughts on Malwarebytes versus IObitHello, Malwarebytes accusation that IObit has infringed on their intellectual property has received a bit of attention in news and and blogs, and a good deal more discussion about what happened—or did not happen, or may have happened—is occurring in various web forums and mailing lists. Having worked in the anti-malware industry for a number of years (even so far back as *gasp* when it was called the anti-virus industry) I had some small interest in the matter, however, I have more interest, frankly, in clearing up what I see as a lot of confusion. So, just to be clear, the opinions expressed are my own, and not those of my current or any past employer. If I got something right, or there's a part you agree with, that's probably because of something I learned from one of my smart co-workers. If, on the other hand, I got something wrong, or you disagree with it, violently or otherwise, well, that's probably my fault.
The anti-malware industry shares samples, meta-data about samples and for high-profile threats may share information such as reverse-engineering and detection techniques. Anti-malware companies even swap product licenses with each other: It can be helpful to prioritize the incoming firehose of samples not just with your own internally-developed tools, but with a competitor's products as well. These relationships often extend back for years and decades, and they continue to go on, unabated. There is, however, a difference between copying a competitor's naming conventions in toto, which indicates many things about the copier, such as laziness and not having enough resources to properly conduct threat identification, and reverse-engineering a competitor's product to decrypt their signature database and import it into yours, which may be a civil law or a criminal law (or both) matter. There's nothing particular novel or new about what Malwarebytes has done with salting their threat signature database. When I was at my previous employer in the anti-virus field, we regularly added fake entries to our virus signatures, and when those signatures appeared in competitor's products, we had discussions with them. Generally, all it took was a phone call (or a fax) to stop that behavior. Those were done privately, though, and never reached a point where lawyers (or the public) had to get involved. One thing I hope everyone keeps in mind is that this is a very complex issue, not just from a technical and legal perspectives, but from cultural and perhaps even geopolitical ones as well. I believe Malwarebytes is an American company and IObit is a Chinese one. As such, it very possible that IObit's employees do not communicate as effectively as people who are native English speakers. If you are a native English speaker and reading this, think about how difficult it might be for you to respond to message in Cantonese or Mandarin. I suspect this is ultimately going to be settled in a court of law, or at least by lawyers, rather than in the court of public opinion, and would caution people to try and take a cautious and balanced view of the issue until then. Regards, Aryeh Goretsky Sources: 8月26日 Back from Gnomedex 2008; or, there's no place like gnomeOddly enough, I shall start my report of Gnomedex 2008 not with how it began, not with how it ended but with what happened after I returned home to California.
I missed my flight back at 7:00AM, but was able to get on a later one at 9:30AM without a problem.
My baggage did not arrive on the flight.
Nor did it arrive on the 2PM flight.
Or on the 4PM one.
A little after 4PM I received a call on my business cellular phone from a number with a 512 area code.
For those unfamiliar with that area code, it is for Austin, Texas. Presumably, it is for the surrounding metro area as well, but in this case, the caller was from Austin.
It turns out, though, that she was in California, too. Except 120 miles away from me.
She had mistakenly grabbed my bag and driven away without checking the luggage tag. Or the claim ticket put on my bag by Alaska Airlines. She flew Southwest, by the way. The claim ticket is the thing which airports tell you to check with signs that say "bags look alike, check the tag before leaving" on signs above the baggage claim carousels.
Anyways, she asked me if I would drive back to the airport, pick up her bag and drive out to meet her boyfriend half-wayish. I had gone back to the office to await calls from and to place calls to the baggage claim office at the airport, which is near the office.
Wanting my luggage as quickly as possible, I went to the airport, collect her luggage and began the drive east.
A funny thing now: The luggage I had purchased was a Tumi Ducati Expandable Wheeled Packing Case Suiter. It was actually not my first choice for a bag, because it is black (which I like) with red panels and silver trims (which I didn't particular care for) but after a while, I had grown fond of it precisely because it did not look like other people's luggage; I could rest assured that when my bag came off the conveyer belt to the carousel that the one that looked like that was mine, all mine. I still always look at my luggage tag, though. It's a reassurance thing. If I turn it over and can see my business card, I know it is mine.
It turns out the woman who took my luggage probably felt the same way. Her bag was smaller than mine, though. A lot smaller. And it didn't have a luggage tag on it; or at least it did not have a luggage tag on it like mine where I had placed mine (they anchor to a grommet on the side, not on the top).
I met her boyfriend about 30 miles out of town—he said he was enjoying driving their rented car—and performed the exchange of prisoners on the side of a highway on the border of the Sonoran Desert. He was very apologetic and even gave me some gas money, which was very kind.
On the way home, and through today (this happened yesterday) I reflected on the maxim of the "many backs look alike" signs one sees at airport carousels. Many bags do look alike, but perhaps the most deceptive ones are those that appear not to at all. Luggage is a commodity item, and unless you've handcrafted or customized your own luggage, it is likely there is another piece out there that the looks the same somewhere.
Yesterday, I learned that appearances are pretty superficial, especially for luggage.
The larger lesson in life is to not be too trusting of the familiar; that was a lesson I observed was again, this time today at work but in a much different context. But that's another story for another day. 3月18日 Before you install Vista SP1...An acquaintance of mine who is a prolific vlogger collects user-submitted tips and records them.
Normally, I do not do those kinds of things—I am more of a web-based forum-kind-of-guy—but I thought it might be fun to share (and perhaps expand a little) on the email I sent him.
Remember, it may take some time for the service pack to finish installing, especially if you have an older computer or many files on yours. Be patient as it may take several hours to complete. This list is just something I put together and is far from complete. What tips do you have for preparing a system for service pack installation? 7月11日 It is not every day that you have an epiphany...It is not every day that you have an epiphany... even if it is kind of just a small one, the type you can have every day and carry around in your pocket.
There was a phone book sitting on my doorstep this morning as I left my apartment.
At least, I assume it was a phone book. It was a plastic bag with the familiar AT&T logo on it, and it was definitely filled with something about the size of a phone book. When I moved it little bit more out of the way with my toe as I exited my dwelling, it felt like a phone book, weighed as much as one. It even moved like one—slowly, they way you would expect a dense, weighty book crammed into a plastic bag. When it settled after I had moved it out of the way so I could leave, it even sounded like what I thought one would sound like: A thump of a noise, felt as much as heard as it shifted off my doorstep and onto my doormat.
It wasn't that I was so much late for work—it was only 10:45AM or so (I do odd things, so must work odder hours in order to Get Things Done)—but it was in the way, and I needed to get to work then (or now, as I thought it was when this occurred).
Anyhow, I got home around 11:00PM or so after an interesting and exciting but yet otherwise unremarkable day, and on my way into the apartment, lifted the phone book off the doormat and placed it down as quickly as I could inside, which, in this case, meant next to a floor lamp next to the door.
Almost on top of another bag: One of the same size, with the same (or at least, very similar) AT&T phone company logo on it. The colors were right on, but I didn't check to see if the typfaces or messages on either bags were different from each other. And didn't really stare at the logo at all.
I ended up angling the bags so the first one lay half-atop the other, like big, phone book-in-a-bag-shaped dominoes. That was because that suited my particular need for symmetry. I wanted them to look like that, otherwise it would just look like a stack of probably-phone books (in bags).
It wasn't until I walked into my kitchen area (it is only a few steps away) that I realized what I had done—not just what I had done, but, how, at the moment, everything had changed, and it just kind of clicked at that moment.
Growing up, through my life, the Phone Book was a wonderful thing. Not just a wonderful thing, but a marvelous thing. Through the Phone Book, you could access any sort of information at all. You could call Toys"Я"Us and find out what time they were open 'til. Or a hobby shop. That is a very important thing to know when you have a birthday. Or it is the holiday season (which some people vulgarly refer to by holiday name). Not only could you call any store and find out their hours, you could get driving directions, too. It was not just limited to calling stores: Through the Phone Book, you could call libraries and find out what hours they are open if they had certain books in stock, even ask the Librarian a Reference Question. Or Reference Questions. There were also state and national maps, information on what to do in case of an emergency (earthquake, fire, invasion) and the phone numbers for all of the important government agencies, like City Hall, the Fire Department and the Secret Service, plus all the unimporant ones, as well.
As I grew up, the Phone Book remained a valuable tool: Through it, I could obtain everything I needed, be it hardware, software or office supplies. Even though I got business cards from the companies I dealt with (which I kept in little boxes like little miniature filing cabinet drawers, organized by people's names, companies and phone numbers), there was always the Phone Book to fall back upon. Oh, the business cards were useful, too, since we didn't have every phone book, especially out-of-state ones.
The Phone Book was just a way to get access to any sort of information, anytime, and then get more information if it was during business hours.
At some point, this must have changed. I don't remember when. The mid-to-late 1990s, perhaps?
I remember, back at home—my home, not the place I happen to live right now—I have my telephone with integral answering machine sitting on top of a phone book to make it easier to reach. That particular phone book is probably approaching ten years old, now.
But, flash back to my apartment, the current place that I live, with its floor lamp by the door and its Phone Books sitting like knocked-over dominoes. At least I assume they are Phone Books. I didn't really look inside the bag at this new one, and if I did for the last year's, than I have long forgotten what was inside of it.
I guess that kind of makes them Schrödinger's Phone Books, doesn't it? I won't really know whether or not they are phone books (let alone Phone Books) unless I look inside, but, frankly, I can't see any reason to.
With the Internet, with search engines like Google and Yahoo! and even Microsoft Live, not to mention things like the Verizon Super Pages and AT&T AnyWho, which really are Internet-enabled Phone Books (or Phone Book-enabled inter-networks, I forget which), there does not seem to be that same pressing need to have a Phone Book, anymore. To see what's new and what's gone, who's moved and who has new hours and new phone numbers. Or to pore over this year's (or next year's) new area code charts.
I mean, I supopse they are useful if the power is out or you need to look up some emergency information in case of an earthquake, fire or an invasion, but, well, you don't necessarily do those things that often. And in the case of a power outage, well, these days I have VoIP service from my cable provider as part of their "triple play" package, and I'm not sure how long their CO (or its equivalent) will stay up. My cable modem has its ATA built-in, and both it and my residential gateway are on their own, dedicated UPS (~600W/1000VA) so I'm not too worried about them, but cable is a good eight or nine decades younger than telco, so I don't have high hopes for its reliability. Then again, you never know. Anyways, I digress... the point of this is not to talk about my phone sevice.
So, now I have two Schrödinger's Phone Books, not just one, and the point of that is that what once had a great deal of relevancy and importancy in my life no longer does, and that has so many applications on so many different levels it is just frightening: I can't imagine I'm the only person who felt that way about the Phone Book, although I don't know if there others who saw it the way I did. What happens to the phone book industry and the people in it, and does anyone care? On a more macro scale, this is just one of a nearly infinite numbers of skirmishes between the old new-old Bell System and the new Internet companies, as exemplified by Google. Fundamentally, circuit-switched network economies don't scale to packet-switched ones [network economies], and while, right now, it seems the telcos have the upper hand, I do not expect it to stay that way forever.
12月13日 One of the Randy's has a blog.I know several people named Randy. One of them is my friend and co-worker Randy Abrams.
I just found out today that he has his own personal blog called In The Unlikely Event... . Unsurprisingly, much of the recent content is devoted to travelling. Randy spends far too much time on planes. He also puns too much (yes, pun can be a verb, and the verb can be abused), but that is a separate issue. Randy has had—and continues to have—a very interesting experiences, and I am sure some of that will come through as he writes more entries. Recommended reading, especially since he's been keeping the puns at a minimum, so far. *grin*
Now I guess it is up to some of the other Randy's to start blogging.
Tags: Randy Abrams Back from Virus Bulletin 2006I spent last week in Montreal, Quebec Canada at Virus Bulletin 2006, which, as the name implies, is run by Virus Bulletin magazine, the anti-virus industry's trade journal. Despite having worked in the anti-virus industry from 1989-1995 and now from 2005 onwards, this is the first time I had ever attended this event, which made it, well, special, to me. Interestingly enough, what we define as a "classical" computer virus, a parasitic, replicating computer program, account for well under 10% of the threats we see and protect against these days, but there is little agreement within the industry about the definitions for Trojan horses, spyware, adware, dual-use tools which can be used for criminal purposes and so forth, that it is easier to say "virus." Besides, malicious software just doesn't sound as sexy.
This was also the first time I had travelled outside the United States since 9-11, and while I had visions of things like endless lines, overzealous customs officials going through my luggage and ripping it to pieces and being interrogated by border guards under bright lights, I have to say it was totally uneventful and didn't take long at all to go through customs in either direction. All the agents were nice and professional and I think the most I waited in a line was about five or ten minutes.
While I had been to British Columbia and the Yukon when growing up and have fond memories of Vancouver and Victoria, this was the first time I had visited a province that wasn't on the west coast and I wasn't sure what to expect. I have heard many horror stories about tourists and non-French speakers getting ignored by locals in Quebec and especially in Montreal, and was expecting I might even have some trouble getting around town, but everyone I spoke to was fluent in English and very helpful to boot. Also, while I had most of my meals in the hotel, the food we had about town was excellent. One night we went for dinner at Cafe Alexandre, and while I am not very familiar with French cuisine, it was excellent. There was also a restaurant we went to that served Czechoslovakian (or perhaps it was Czech and Slovak) food one night that was wonderful as well.
But, if you are reading this, it is not because you are interested in my travelogue of Montreal (which, alas, I did not see much of anyway), but because you are interested in the happenings at VB2006. As much as I do not want to keep you in suspense, though, that will need to wait until a future blog entry.
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