Messages

9076

Living Room / Re: Freebie quality GIF animations

« on: November 15, 2005, 11:17 PM »

"Handcrafted" meaning that the image/animation has been painstakingly drawn rather than rendered in a 3D app. Not necessarily pixel-by-pixel as in the really old days, but that the artist has given thought to the pixel level of things.

The smilies on most forums and instant messaging programs, for instance, have had this "attention to detail" in their design. Same thing with most icons for toolbars etc. The various "emoticon packs" for MSN by Blue Mountain and other people is an exception though - many of them have pretty tacky graphics.

I'm probably a bit conservative, though - for this kind of thing I prefer simplicity and clean graphics; something like http://www.sherv.net/images/sc8.gif is too "messy", although they're not the worst I've seen.

(gosh, I feel like a grumpy old man now )

9077

Living Room / Re: Freebie quality GIF animations

« on: November 15, 2005, 10:39 PM »

Humm, not my kind of thing; I've always found most of those 3D gifs to look a bit cheap, and the low amount of frames in them makes the animation jerky.

I'm more into handcrafted pixel stuff anyway

9078

Living Room / Re: Van Zant CD taking a beating for containing this Sony Rootkit thing.

« on: November 15, 2005, 07:52 PM »

First, turn off "autplay" and "cd change insert notification" (or what it's exactly called) - that'll keep you from getting your PC dirty without knowing. If you want to exercise your rights in copying these protected CDs, the best solution is probably a plextor drive and plextools professional - that combination is capable of some tricks.

Next, when shopping for CDs, make sure they have the Philips CD logo - if a CD doesn't have the logo, it's a pretty good indication it's using one of those lame protections.

Cross-forum information thread: http://win.asmcommun...ex.php?topic=22275.0

9079

General Software Discussion / Re: Free download - Rootkit analyzer

« on: November 15, 2005, 11:51 AM »

Hm, unless there's some other hiding thingamajig going on, I'll just attribute this weirdness to buggy software doing it's registry writes in a silly way . Pretty weird that all the keys are empty though. You could try posting about this at the sysinternals RKR forum, see if anybody there has a clue.

9080

General Software Discussion / Re: Free download - Rootkit analyzer

« on: November 14, 2005, 09:16 PM »

Hm, is it just the "end" part (ie, the bold part of HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{E20DD46F-0CC4-5960-1B1F69E13D145F9C}\{B130274E-D0E8-282B-E7F07B1EE1210709}\{71D795F0-66AF-00D6-EF71DCAC5CDD95C3}*) that doesn't show up, or is it the whole "folder"?

If it's just the end part, you could try using regedit to export, for example, HKLM\SOFTWARE\Classes\CLSID\{E20DD46F-0CC4-5960-1B1F69E13D145F9C} + subkeys to a .reg file and put it here, perhaps key/value data in there has something to tell (especially keys like InProcServer32, since they point to executable code).

9081

General Software Discussion / Re: Free download - Rootkit analyzer

« on: November 14, 2005, 08:06 PM »

Seems like you either have an old version of RKR, or have "hide standard NTFS metadata files" unchecked (that's why it shows files like $Volume etc - these are part of how NTFS manages the disk and can be safely ignored). The "Key name contains embedded nulls" seems a bit weird, but since those nulls are only located at the end of the names, this seems like a typical off-by-one error in somebody's registry handling code rather than malicious purpose.

The line related to Prefetcher\TracesProcessed doesn't seem dangerous either, the prefetcher runs all the time (unless you have disabled it ), and has probably done some work between the time where RKR uses the windows API to get the reg value, and the time where it manually parses the registry hive file.

Dunno about the UDC\* lines, but they seem harmless enough considering their location.

I'm a bit curious which components or whatever those null-char-embdeed CLSIDs are referring to, even if they probably aren't malicious or anything

9082

Mini-Reviews by Members / Blackbox for windows - shell replacement

« on: November 14, 2005, 07:53 PM »

Tired of the way the default windows shell looks?

Then try heading over to http://www.bb4win.org/ - a port of blackbox for windows. It's a sort of minimalistic window manager, with pretty modest resource consumption (~10meg working set size, ~6meg private bytes on my machine). It's got skinning support, and is pretty snappy.

It's highly configurable if you don't mind getting your hands a bit dirty, supports multiple virtual desktops, has various plugins for various tasks, support overriding default windows keybindings (like Win+R -> FARR), and should generally just be tried.

You can simply download the zip (I got the bbLean release which is pretty barebone, Xoblite is supposedly more pre-configured), unpack, and run the blackbox exe - no need to replace your default shell right away. You can exit blackbox at any time, and get back to the regular explorer interface.

http://www.xoblite.net has a whole bunch of addtional plugins...

Here's a screenshot of my left monitor (I've got two TFTs) running blackbox with a few apps open. The black bar to the bottom left is "uberbox", a fancier version of the windows "Run" box with aliases and history completion - I'll replace this with FARR soon.

9083

General Software Discussion / Re: Free download - Rootkit analyzer

« on: November 14, 2005, 04:49 PM »

Quite correct ... the trouble I have with the sysinternals program is that the output seems almost inpenertable if you aren't an expert in the registry.

On my system it reports a couple of files are different, but I have no way of knowing what made them different or if they actually need to be different versions. They could for example have been updated by Microsoft Update since the last SysInternals update.

-CarolHaynes (November 14, 2005, 04:42 PM)

Hm, could you post an example of your output? I know a few apps like Daemon-Tools try to hide some of it's registry entries so it won't get detected by games etc., but generally if there's discrepancies it might mean trouble. You could also PM me a RKR log if you don't feel like putting it on the forum...

9084

General Software Discussion / Re: Free download - Rootkit analyzer

« on: November 14, 2005, 04:04 PM »

Well, they're two different tools; one checks for registry and file mismatches (sysinternals), the other for kernel hooks. You really should use both to check for errors, although I'd say kernel hooks are more serious than some of the other discrepancies.

None of the tools are foolproof, though - there are more stealthy methods available than "direct" hooking

9085

General Software Discussion / Re: Free download - Rootkit analyzer

« on: November 14, 2005, 03:35 PM »

Looks pretty interesting - another tool of the trade would be http://www.sysintern...RootkitRevealer.html . Sysinternals tools are simply invaluable, and I have a load of them installed by default with my unattended CD.

9086

Mouser's Zone / Re: Ideas i want to bounce off you guys

« on: November 14, 2005, 02:29 PM »

This could be an interesting idea... instead of locking them out of the application, though, what about just starting to show nag screens on startup after the 30 days?

Basically, if run without a valid keyfile (which includes expired keyfiles), show a nagscreen on program startup. I don't like the idea of locking people out / removing features for apps that are free/donationware, but showing a not-too-intrusive nag screen (ie, don't let it last 10sec before timeout ) isn't too bad.

I can help with a pretty decent & flexible keyfile scheme btw.

9087

Living Room / Re: Why we must take great care when designing software

« on: November 14, 2005, 05:23 AM »

Didn't think about checking the related stories, doh - that iTunes bug is frightening. There must be some really bad code floating around if the lack of a couple of quotes can cause such datanuke.

On the topic of bad software, there's a thread on the winasm forum about Sony's DRM rootkit - you might find this interesting too.

9088

Living Room / Re: Close the Blog Section?

« on: November 14, 2005, 03:12 AM »

i agree with your thoughts on reviews (by the way we already do exactly what you suggest with review discussion threads).

Shows that I haven't been paying enough attention lately - I blame the flu 

as for a special section of forum for blog entries, that was kind of my idea with "Noteworthy Posts" section idea, or maybe we can think of a new name for it.  I was just thinking of using it not just for blogs but for other similar rants and stuff.  Idea would be that we could maybe move a post there (or link from there to it) if we thought it was of special attention.

-mouser (November 14, 2005, 02:47 AM)

That sounds like a good idea - a section where people can't create new threads, but where nice threads can be moved (and still replied on). Perhaps previous blog authors (and other people with time&dedication) could be allowed to post new threads directly, so there's still some of the feel of doing a "blog post"?

-mouser (November 14, 2005, 02:47 AM)

9089

Living Room / Why we must take great care when designing software

« on: November 14, 2005, 03:04 AM »

A friend directed me to History's Worst Software Bugs, a rather short but interesting summary of a few really bad bugs, whereof some have caused people to lose their lives.

The interesting thing is that a lot of really severe bugs can be caused by very small oversights. So, remember to check your buffer sizes, avoid off-by-one errors, be paranoid about user input and data files, and trust no-one - not even yourself

9090

Living Room / Re: Close the Blog Section?

« on: November 14, 2005, 02:44 AM »

It probably makes sense to move the blog section to the forum - I'm a bit worried about blog quality, though. It "feels different" to write for a blog than "just doing a forum post". But making a blog subforum might help a bit? Would be nice to still have a centralized place to go, like "blog subforum -> jibz subsubforum"...

I don't think reviews should be moved to the forum. It could probably work okay technically speaking, but it would feel wrong, and might end up with half-baked reviews that are "patched" as time goes. Better to keep them as a "special feature", this looks more professional anyway. But for discussion of a review, make a "Reviews" subforum, and create a thread there for each review, and link to it from the review page. This keeps the distinction between mini-reviews, and larger reviews that require more time and effort.

Just a few stray thoughts

9091

General Software Discussion / Re: HELP ... Any ideas - Bad Partition table (sometimes) ????

« on: November 12, 2005, 04:59 PM »

It's really a shame how Symantec has ruined PartitionMagic and and Ghost

Anyway Carol, I remember using a linux fdisk tool once to set up my partitions... it all worked and stuff, but the structures it generated were a bit "interesting", and caused trouble later on with PartitionMagic. Acronis TrueImage seems to be based on linux code (the boottime manager certainly is)... in general, avoid partition sizers. Most of the time they work fine, which causes many people to start trusting them and not do backups before an operation - and then lightning strikes.

Btw, for situations where things really mess up, try GetDataBack for NTFS - worked like a charm for me.

9092

Official Announcements / Re: ANNOUNCING - DonationCoder.com Logo Contest

« on: November 12, 2005, 03:49 PM »

I like the last one - just a bit afraid, as mentioned earlier, the lines are a bit too thin...

Btw, for the banner on the site, I think it would be a lovely idea to use the "code morphin into cash" sketch for something - it has a real nice look to it, as well as being a pretty decent idea.

9093

General Software Discussion / Re: Storage on the go

« on: November 02, 2005, 04:37 PM »

(sorry if I didn't read all of the thread correctly).

If you can plug the device into win2k or XP without a driver CD, it might be a nice "generic USB disk" device type - then it'll likely work with "some other hardware" . (just be sure that it isn't because of built-in support for the device).

Doesn't sound like a really fun task though. Most of the USB devices I've come across supporting usb<->usb connectivity has been for printing photos from digicams.

9094

Skrommel's Software / Re: Problems with Ghoster

« on: October 04, 2005, 09:10 PM »

Thank you, Skrommel

I've only just started using AutoIt myself,  it's nice to see that you can do all kinds of stuff with it

9095

Skrommel's Software / Re: Problems with Ghoster

« on: October 03, 2005, 09:23 PM »

I'm not using any kind of X-Window mouse stuff, so it's not that.

Can't remember if I clicked the tabs or used <ctrl>+<tab> to switch between them, in case that makes any difference.

EDIT:
Okay, a couple more things:

1) - doesn't work in multi-monitor configurations, apps running on second monitor are fullbright (and apps running half one one monitor, half on the other, are half dimmed... might be a windows, nvidia, or driver limit?)

2 - it would be nice if you supply the .au3 with the .exe (if the .au3 can be extracted directly, nevermind this request)

3 - it would be nice if the taskbar and tray weren't shaded.

9096

Skrommel's Software / Problems with Ghoster

« on: October 02, 2005, 10:22 PM »

Hey Skrommel, just played around with Ghoster a bit.

While it migth be classified as a "toy", I find it very appealing - it could be pretty useful when one needs to code for a while, keeping you from being distracted too much by things in the background.

However, there's a little bug - after I exited Ghoster, at least two of my windows still had "always on top" enabled - one was mIRC which was easy to fix, the other was firefox which I'll probably have to close down and re-start after posting this message.

Also, when selecting tabs (probably also MDI windows), the active window flashes as if it was being ghosted and then re-enabled. I think the on-top stickyness might be related to this, since both mIRC and FireFox are tabbed, and I switched tabs in both apps while running Ghoster.