Cleaning up Malware

If you can’t get them to switch to a system that doesn’t catch malware (e.g. Linux), at least you can use Linux to clean up a hosed Windows system.

I recently had to deal with an infected system and tried everything in my power to clean it up without the dreaded rebuild. I must admit I was a complete failure. After running a different anti-virus on it (F-Prot), and blasting it with Spybot, I thought I had it licked. Then I rebooted and discovered that I couldn’t. The system simply wouldn’t come up any longer.

So what is the first thing I think to do? Whip out my trusty Ubuntu disk and boot into a sane OS. I then mounted the Windows drive and proceeded to back it up onto my main desktop system using a command something like:

tar cvf – ‘/mnt/tracey/Documents and Settings’ | ssh bjg@192.168.0.100 ‘cat – > traceyBackup.tar

Now I had her system backed up and I simply got out the system recovery disk and restored it to factory conditions.

It turns out that Windows has some type of 2GB file size limit, which makes things difficult when trying to restore a 10GB tar archive. It took me several tries to figure out how to get around this (another reason to use a sane OS). What I ended up doing is untaring the archive onto my personal machine and sharing the drive to the Windows box. Then I simply did a drag-and-drop copy of the folder onto the repaired system.

Moral 1: Don’t try to clean up malware. You save time by assuming a Windows system is hosed beyond repair (which it is out of the box), doing a backup, and restoring to factory conditions.

Moral 2: Friends don’t let friends do Windows.

3 Seconds of Fame

A while back I did a simple animation of blonde hair with Blender and posted it to YouTube. Recently I was contacted by Sciencentral asking if my footage could be used in a news story they were doing for ABC television.

You can now watch Better Blondes on the Sciencentral website. My 3 seconds of fame is during the last 3 seconds of the video. I’m also credited at the bottom of the video player popup. This story may be playing on an ABC station near you sometime in the next couple days.

The Merit of Math Reviews

I just learned that Merit, our ISP, is using a photo of the back door of Math Reviews as the backdrop for its non-profit page. So now you can see the door I go through at least 10 times per week. Isn’t that special?

Incidently, I just noticed that it is a random picture of 3 different buildings. Reload till you see the one that says Mathematical Reviews in the upper right corner.

The Modern Public Library

It’s been a while since I’ve been in a public library. It’ll probably be a while before I go back. That’s because I now have it at my fingertips.

I was looking for a book, the Handbook of Indigenous Fermented Foods, and discovered that it cost about $250 on Amazon. Yikes! So I made a trip to my local public library to see if they could get it on inter-library loan. They said they would have to do a search and that it would take a while, but that it was available as an ebook.

It turns out that I could sign up for the ebooks program for free right from a web browser there at the library. Once you have an account you can access it from anywhere. I am able to read my book from the comfort of Firefox on my very own Ubuntu Linux box.

To top it off there are a number of very nice volumes on Perl programming, several by my favorite Chinese Medicine author Bob Flaws, and a ton of other stuff. There are also downloadable audio books (which I have not tried yet). Presumably there is some type of DRM involved, but it may be worth checking into. It would be much cheaper (i.e. free) than Audio-to-go.
So take a trip to your public library and see if you can get hooked up with this very nice program.

Last Political Post for a While

I love Orson Scott Card’s books. Of his books, most geeks have read Ender’s Game at least. He’s a superb scifi writer and thinker and also a Democrat. Here’s what he has to say about this election.

The Only Issue This Election Day

Ascent or Descent pt. 7

Start with part 1.

So based on this entire discussion, what action steps can we take?

Well, obviously we all need to go and vote. While the downward path has been greased by liberalism to make it easier to continue our downward trek, we need to work to change the situation so that the downward path isn’t so attractive. Pray about the choices you have to make, listen to your conscience, and vote.

Second, we cannot throw stones. As Jason eloquently explains, we need to bleed for people who are hurting. We must get out and get our hands dirty and help those who are sliding down the slope and whose lives are falling apart. We cannot be angry at them and criticize them. We must help them.

Third, don’t instantly assume that if someone is a member of the Democratic party that they are not Christian. It is, contrary to popular belief, quite possible to be both. We need to distinguish liberalism (in the sense that I have described) from the Democratic party. They are not one and the same.

Fourth, trust that God has the situation under control.

Microsoft and Novell Friends? Or Novell Sells Out

So Microsoft and Novell are now friends. It sounds to me like Novell has sold out.

Ascent or Descent pt. 6

Start with part 1.

Liberalism is infiltrating America.

It is the prideful and adolescent mentality I talked about before. It is engineered by the forces of darkness and has already taken much ground in Europe. It has established a beachhead in America, but we are still fighting.

For some reason it has chosen the media, our schools, and the Democratic party as its most vulnerable targets and has infiltrated deeply. (Though the Republican party has not remained untouched either.)

There is still hope. The Democratic party has not been completely overrun. While I may disagree with many of its original tenets, they are not Christian or anti-Christian. They are simply alternative, but valid, views on how to run a government. There can be balance between Democratic and Republican principles. Look, for example, at the Blue Dog Democrats. They are a coalition of conservative Democrats who hold traditional democratic values but refuse to cave in to the forces of liberalism.

The forces of liberalism sometimes appear to support conservative issues (e.g. stewardship of the environment). At the same time its motives are directly opposed to conservatism and Christianity. It chose the Democratic party because Democrats advocate a larger role for government in our lives.

Liberalism seeks to replace Christianity and Judeo-Christian values and traditions with its own “religion.” It wants to become a complete replacement for religion, government, and education. It seeks to usurp the Christian duties of charity with the welfare state. It replaces traditional and Christian teachings on the origin of man. It replaces God with humanism. It tells us its OK to kill babies and have homosexual relationships. It indoctrinates children through public schools and adults in colleges. The list goes on.

The question in my mind is, is the Democratic party infiltrated beyond hope, or can it still be reconquered and salvaged? Can our schools and media be saved? Can we take back our country?