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Stop the “Anti-Spyware” nonsense!
Some time ago the term “spyware” was invented, and promptly “anti-spyware” products appeared. Their “myth” still persists, many people (who should know better!) recommending that you have an “anti-virus and a anti-spyware product” (I’ve even seen “anti-malware” added to this list which is an even bigger nonsense, since the term malware includes both viruses and…
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Controlling people or giving them what they want?
It is incredible. Despite the efforts of the RIAA (EMI, Sony, Universal and Warner) or the MPAA (Sony, Walt Disney, Paramount, 20th Century Fox, Universal and Warner) their content can be found fairly easily on the “intertubes”. And you don’t even have to download torrents or ther such “advanced” things. There are a plethora of…
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Everything is grey
Nothing is black or white these days. Everything is grey (or gray for my US readers). Take for instance this year’s (2008) Virus Bulleting conference. The second larges sponsor (gold sponsor) is a company called ParetoLogic. Now if you look at their products page, you will see something called XoftSpySE Anti-Spyware. If you do a…
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Should we use English?
A friend of mine sent a link to a piece he’s written titled English as a global language, wherein he advocates that we should all learn one global language (probably English, given the current situation). While I don’t have such strong feelings about the matter, here are some of my thoughts: I produce content in…
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What you are willing to pay for
Disclaimer: as always, these are my own opinions, and don’t necessarily reflect the opinions of my past or current employers. To be read with Eminem – Loose Yourself in the background I’ve just finished an intervention at a large company. They had a major virus problem and we were brought in to offer expert advice.…
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The windows kernel, software licenses and other ramblings
Somehow I ended up at and article on CodeProject titled How can I get address of KeServiceDescriptorTableShadow. The first thing that caught my eye is the fact that the contributor claims to be from China and a web developer. This seems to be a common attitude in China (and also in Russia) if you are…
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Why security is in such a sad state?
Disclaimer: as always, unless expressly stated, the views expressed here are my own and do not necessarrily reflect those of my current or former employers. Because people hide behind titles! Some examples: Gary Warner Director of Research in Computer Forensics lists on his blog IP addresses associated with the latest run of Storm. I thought…
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The problem with amateur crimefighters
I wish to preface this with the fact that I am a deep believer in cooperation and data sharing. Also, I really appreciate the work that volunteers put into maintaining different resources (like the excellent CastleCops forums). But you have to remember that these people are not professionals and sometimes don’t have a complete understanding…
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An argument (against) PHP
Via Perlbuzz I landed at the blog posting An Argument for PHP, which I disagree with. First a little about my background: I’ve been programming in PHP almost twice as long (6+ years) as in Perl, so (hopefully) it isn’t the case that I don’t know what I’m talking about. PHP seemed nice and shiny…
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On IP, the Universe and everything
I’m getting old or something, because I seem to rant more an more. Much of this text is contained in an e-mai sent to the .NET Rocks podcast regarding their OOXML show, but I thought it might be interesting to publish it here to clarify my views on IP, OSS, the universe and everything 🙂…