Spyware Sucks : Off topic

And the winner is…

sandi — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 06:11:52 GMT

Better… much better…

Poll results

Would you like to help choose the new Vegemite name?

sandi — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 13:13:17 GMT

Kraft have bowed to public pressure, and have scrapped the (dare I say loathed) Vegemite name “iSnack 2.0”.

And, they have decided that the public will choose the new name, by voting on it.

Here is the URL if you’re so inclined:
http://www.ys2.net.au/surveys/9/y90926.asp

There are six names to choose from, and sadly you will have to rate them from your first choice, to your last choice. The choices are:

Vegemite Cheesybite, Vegemite Vegemate, Vegemite Snackmate, Vegemite Smooth, Vegemite Vegemild and Vegemite Creamymate

Polling starts at 5pm (AEST) on Friday 2 October 2009 and ends at 12 noon (AEDST) on Monday 5 October 2009.

Waiting for an Apple lawsuit….

sandi — Sun, 27 Sep 2009 05:19:11 GMT

… or maybe a lawsuit by the makers of “iSnack Cyber Chips” or the “iSnack Energy Bar”.

Yes, Kraft really did choose to name their new Vegemite “iSnack 2.0”. The name was “invented” (and I use that term very loosely) by Dean Robbins, a 27 year old West Australian and graphic and web designer.

What were Kraft thinking…

So far, the responses I am seeing are overwhelmingly negative, and you can add me to the list of critics.

Added to the “the Victorian Police are looking for WHAT???” file

sandi — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 09:57:45 GMT

“SOS issued for original ABBA jumpsuit

VICTORIA Police have issued an SOS to help find a white jumpsuit originally worn by ABBA songstress Agnetha Faltskog.

The jumpsuit, which Agnetha is pictured wearing on the cover of the Swedish pop group's fourth album, Arrival, is believed to have been taken from a Melbourne house and sold at a garage sale.

The jumpsuit's owner had leased out the Healesville home with the 1970s jumpsuit still stored in the shed.

Police believe the figure-hugging suit may have been sold by the tenants in a garage sale.

The tenants will be interviewed by police, a Victoria Police spokeswoman said.

Police would like to speak to anyone who may have attended a garage sale at the Don Road property in May this year.”

Source: http://www.news.com.au/story/0,27574,26087496-29277,00.html

(Yes, I know, the graphic I have used is not from the actual “Arrival” album’s front cover, but it does show the jumpsuit properly) ;o)

Heh

sandi — Fri, 17 Apr 2009 07:58:12 GMT

Credit: http://xkcd.com/570/

When voice recognition goes bad…

sandi — Mon, 02 Mar 2009 14:25:07 GMT

One day the voice recognition software, feeling unloved and unappreciated, decided to show the world just how much power it had…

Quote of the day

sandi — Thu, 19 Feb 2009 02:46:44 GMT

“It's a business continuity measure - this way, if a meteor takes out our data centre, we can all run around like chickens with our heads cut off, rather than lie around dead.” – name withheld to protect the not so innocent :)

I received the BEST birthday card today!

sandi — Wed, 04 Feb 2009 04:20:47 GMT

Smiley face!!

sandi — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 04:22:26 GMT

What you are looking at is a crescent moon, with Venus and Jupiter nearby, positioned just right.

Taken in Kathmandu:

Picture: Reuters
Source: http://www.news.com.au/gallery/0,23607,5036115-5007150-4,00.html

And Hong Kong:

Picture: Chris Lee
Source: http://www.news.com.au/gallery/0,23607,5036115-5007150-10,00.html

And Port Hedland, Western Australia:

Picture: Sticks
Source: http://www.news.com.au/gallery/0,23607,5036115-5007150-17,00.html

Sorry America, you missed out, which is kind of ironic considering it has been announced that the USA has been in recession for a year (according to a panel of economists who use their own criteria).

Picture: Matt Hecht
Source: http://www.news.com.au/gallery/0,23607,5036115-5007150-8,00.html

Oh well, at least they're not in Latvia, where it is illegal to "distribute untrue data or news about the conditions of the finance system of the Republic of Latvia". It seems the definition of "untrue" is proving to be a bit problematic...

Would you class this as a threat?

sandi — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 09:30:00 GMT

I received an interesting email via the contact facility for this blog. You can see a screenshot of the email to the left of screen.

A Russian-speaking associate tells me that the email text translates as:

"You, dummy, aren't you worried about your skin? F u c k you."

Nice. It seems that I may have upset somebody.

What is ironic is that the email was filtered to my junk mail folder. The only reason I saw it is because the amount of spam that I receive is so low at the moment, thanks to the shutdown of McColo, and Atrivo/Intercage before them, that I have time to take a quick look at what is in the junk mail folder before emptying it. Normally stuff in that folder is deleted sight unseen.

Heh.

sandi — Mon, 10 Nov 2008 06:13:09 GMT

Source: http://ars.userfriendly.org/cartoons/?id=20081109

Ferrari fender benders

sandi — Sun, 02 Nov 2008 11:03:00 GMT

This happened in Perth a year or so ago.... the gentleman in question was showing off for the crowds in the hotel located at the intersection in question - the driver, who was certainly old enough to know better, faced insurance questions after it was alleged that he had been drinking alcohol before the accident:

Perth residents, comedians that they are, immortalized the site of the accident:

Anyway, not to be outdone, an Adelaide resident has gone one better... believe it or not, the (young) driver and his passenger survived... I'm betting the driver is going to be grounded, like, forever... (Photo credit: Brenton Edwards)

Announcement: Sandi is awarded Microsoft MVP status for the 10th year in a row...

sandi — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 16:55:59 GMT

Yes, it feels a bit weird writing in the third person for this post's title, but writing "I" in the title feels even weirder.

I have received an email advising that I have been awarded Microsoft MVP status for the 10th year in a row ... wow, its amazing how much time has passed. I hope you don't mind if I take the time to reminisce for a little while and do some shameless name dropping.

I've been here as IE5 was replaced by IE6, then IE7 and now we are working on IE8. I've been here during the betas for Windows 2000, WindowsME, XP and Vista and now Windows 7 is in the works. I spent a few years as a member of the Microsoft Games Core Group, beta testing various Microsoft Games (my son *loved* the fact that I was in that group because I often received a "gold" copy of the finalized game). I was a member of the Windows XP Expert Zone, my web sites are/have been "Featured Community" web sites. And my "little black book of addresses" contains some pretty amazing names (before you ask, that "little black book of addresses" is an old fashioned hardcover, paper, addressbook - there are some things that I do not trust to bits and bytes...)

I received my first award email on 1 October 1999, back when Internet Explorer 5 was the new kid on the block, and the vast majority of my time was spent helping diagnose and resolve errors involving kernel32.dll (which were invariably caused by video drivers, or a corrupt temporary internet file cache) and myriad other issues. It is a credit to the IE team that Internet Explorer is so much more stable than it was back then.

It wasn't long after my first award that malware (then called adware or spyware) starting to appear on our ("our" being technical support) radar. Back then, the junk was so much easier to get rid of - the most common unwanted software was search toolbars, your home page would be changed and locked (invariably the new home page was a search portal) and IE's search engine settings would be changed. Often the fix was easy - delete a couple of files, perhaps a few registry keys and you were good. Back in those days the names of the files that needed to be deleted rarely changed, the files were easy to remove and did not reappear, and rootkits were around, but rare in the malware world. Now you need a high level of skill, and specialized tools, to get rid of the worst of the malware, and my honest opinion is that you may be better off reformatting - we cannot be sure we have got everything off a machine, and in the current threat environment which is created and orchestrated by professionally run, highly skilled criminal groups I would hate it if a state of the art keylogger remained on a victim's computer, and that victim suffered a financial penalty. Sometimes I pine for the days when the purveyors and pushers of adware/spyware/malware were nothing more than pimply script kiddies wanting to earn a few more bucks via their search engine affiliate program memberships.

I can remember attending a training/information session while in Singapore quite a few years ago. The presenter was Mike Danseglio, and the presentation was about rootkits, and I remember watching the shock on the faces of people around me as rootkits were demonstrated (I had already seen them in action) - and I can remember one MVP walking out of that session muttering "we're screwed".

I also remember bumping into Bill Gates. I was at my first MVP Summit, back in the day when Bill's car was parked in front of the building, he walked in, and there was little security (how things have changed now). I remember I was unwell on the day, but resolved to attend Bill Gates's speech and then return to my hotel room to recover. I came out of one entry, Bill came around the corner and we almost collided. I had a camera with me and everything, but all I wanted to do was get to a taxi, and get to the hotel. I don't think Bill had ever encountered an Aussie lass for whom he was an impediment to her progress towards the exit :o) Yes, I later regretted not asking to have a photo taken of us together, but I made up for it when I had my photo taken with Jim Allchin in Las Vegas a few years ago during a private lunch that I was invited to attend. The lunch was only weeks before Jim retired.

And I remember when Vista was in early beta, and called Longhorn. And I remember Robert Scoble wearing Longhorn horns and 'moo'ing'. This was back in the days when he worked for NEC - heck, maybe it was even earlier. And I remember Robert offering me a lift back to my hotel, and my naive (Aussie) surprise when I discovered that the seats in his (new?) car were heated. That was SO cool - we don't have that sort of thing in Australia.

And I remember visiting Seattle's Curiosity Shop for the first time... it was years before I visited again, and in the interim the place had hardly changed.

And I remember trying real clam chowder for the first time in Seattle.

And I remember the beloved Alex Nichols, MVP now deceased. I miss him still.

And I remember the MVP Program being canceled within days of my receiving my first MVP Award, and I remember Dave Liske, the HTML Help MVP, getting in touch by email and taking me under his wing when he saw my disappointment at receiving the MVP Award, only to receive an email telling me the program had been canceled only 3 weeks later - he remains a good friend to this day, although I suspect he feels a tad neglected now that I am so very busy all the time.

And, of course, I remember Black Friday, when the MVP Program was canceled without warning, only to be reinstated days later - you can read about that incident at the MVPS.ORG URL below (you may want to turn the sound off on your computer - there's a X-Files theme midi that plays in the background). I have never seen such a grass-root level groundswell of support for a group of online personalities, and I doubt I will see one again:

http://www.mvps.org/about/kissoff.html

"So, how did you get involved with the MVP Program in the first place?" I hear you ask ... well, that's a bit of a story in itself.

Back in 1998 Microsoft offered Microsoft Outlook as a free download for a short while, and I was silly enough to install it and, most importantly, **I forgot to turn off my antivirus software**. Predictably, the install screwed up my system quite nicely, but the worst damage was done to Internet Explorer. Javascript caused me grief, java applets refused to run and animated gifs refused to animate.

Well, as my regular readers know, I'm a stubborn lass and I wasn't in the mood to reformat my system - so, I got in touch with Microsoft support. We got most things sorted, but I remember that animated gifs still refused to animate. The PSS technician ended up suggesting that I visit a Microsoft newsgroup dedicated to Internet Explorer. He specifically told me I should get the attention of an MVP by the name of Jon Kennedy who, apparently, knew all there was to know about IE. So, I think it may have been on New Years Day in 1999 I found Jon Kennedy and sure enough, he knew the fix immediately. As they say, the rest is history. I hung around, realized I actually knew the answers to a lot of questions, answered a lot of questions over the course of the year and was offered MVP status that October.

It saddens me to see that Jon's name has disappeared from the list of MVPs specializing in Internet Explorer - in fact, his name does not appear at all. I am saddened that the guy who got me started in this gig is no longer there. He did send me an email warning me that this may happen, but still, it's sad. He made it obvious in his emails to me that he was proud as he watched me develop and grow.

"So, what does the future hold?"... I hear you ask. Well, I'm working with TRUSTe nowadays as an Online Compliance Researcher, as my regular readers know, and I'm loving it - and I get the sense that the criminals behind malvertizements are finding it harder to get their wares online which is good. And the events surrounding Intercage/Atrivo show that, if pushed hard enough, the Internet community will push back. Knocking Atrivo/Intercage offline was a great achievement, but it comes at a cost. If anything, it will force the criminals to go underground - to stop "putting all their eggs in one basket". You see, the crooks behind malvertizements have, traditionally, been lazy - now, they will be forced to diversify, to spread their infrastructure far and wide so that they are not vulnerable to the massive shutdown effect that the isolation of Intercage/Atrivo caused. They will get smarter, and harder to track, but we will also get smarter.

Who knows what we will be dealing with in a year's time :o)

Totally off topic!!

sandi — Sat, 23 Aug 2008 12:48:02 GMT

How cute is my little nephew? He is reading THE most important section of the newspaper - Cars for Sale - he's going to be a car fan, just like his daddy (no, that's not his daddy in the picture, that's one of his uncles). He's the only almost-3-year-old I know who, when asked what a car sounds like, says "brrrmmm... hiiissssss" (yep, his daddy owns a turbo).

He adores his daddy, and is his uncle's little shadow when daddy (who is in the navy) is away on a tour of duty.

For those of you who weren't around back then, here is how that young man was introduced to the world on this blog, 6 weeks premature and putting up one heck of a fight...

Heh.

sandi — Fri, 22 Aug 2008 05:28:00 GMT

Source: http://xkcd.com/466/

Dell oops...

sandi — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 09:05:32 GMT

"Buying 1 M6300 Laptop, with 3 year dedicated SDM on-site support will only set you back $1.17Mill. Yeps, that’s right, medium business owner here really needs to love that on-site support for his M6300 laptop."

You'll find the full story here:
http://msmvps.com/blogs/brianmadsen/archive/2008/08/13/w00t-you-just-got-to-love-that-on-site-support-for-this-price-tag.aspx

Google is acting a bit weird today...

sandi — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 03:59:55 GMT

Is anybody else seeing this?

Google in Firefox seems ok.

Google in Internet Explorer is showing a strange overlay...

Demoted...

sandi — Tue, 12 Aug 2008 06:14:00 GMT

People! I was being facetious. I have not been demoted in real life. I was indulging in what I thought was a funny dig-in-the-ribs at the reporter who erroneously stated that I was 'the head of security for Microsoft' in an online article, only to have to edit the article to remove his error 24 hours or so later.

I know the head of Security at Mozilla is a female by the name of Window Snyder but, to be honest, I do not know who the 'head of security' at Microsoft, or whoever it is that can claim to be closest to that title, is or even if that person is female.

Just to be clear, I do not, and never have, worked for Microsoft.

Before:

After:

For pity's sake ... can't they get things right????

sandi — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 23:07:00 GMT

I saw this, just a few minutes ago:

""At a talk that was given by Sandi Hardmeier — who was the head of security for Microsoft — she said there is no system in the world that has been built that can't be hacked into. It may be a one off situation that doesn't indicate the organisation is treating information willy-nilly," he said.'

First of all, I am not, and have never been "head of security for Microsoft"... nor am I a "he"....

Source: http://www.builderau.com.au/news/soa/Data-breach-laws-years-away/0,339028227,339291200,00.htm

Toby Richards talks about the MVP Program

sandi — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 07:39:00 GMT

Toby Richards: Community and MVP Program Roadmap

"Toby Richards, General Manager for Community Support Services and the MVP Program at Microsoft, is interviewed by Ken Levy discussing the current state of the Microsoft MVP (Most Valuable Professionals) community and the roadmap for the MVP program and MVP summit.

Toby took over this role in early 2008, and is responsible for programs that identify, award and enable community influencers around the world, creating deeper relationships and richer feedback opportunities that improve Microsoft products and services. Also discussed in the interview is online support strategies and how MVPs help users and developers who are not MVPs."