errare humanum est
Sorry fellows, please bear with me. The last version of the DDKBUILD.CMD script misbehaves if you set a variable inside the pre/post-build scripts and expect that variable to propagate beyond the script’s execution. Thanks to my colleague Kristmundur here at FRISK the bug has been found and is now fixed in the beta 6a!
Please fetch a fresh copy here.
Note: This update is only critical to those who use the pre/post-build scripts and set variables using them.
// Oliver
Last night I commented on the chauffeur of LS and still he didn’t make it into the “hall of fame” of LS’ management as logistics manager. I am one of the lucky ones to know his name and how he looks, so I can tell. But despite that, here is another fun fact: I know from a very reliable source outside of LS’ realm [1] that the “logistics manager” called himself the “private chauffeur” of the CEO last year. How rapidly things change … 
Although I added it as a comment already, I want to point to it more publicly here. There is another article on the website of Göteborgs Posten: “Det luktar fortfarande illa” (English: “This smells still/continuously bad”).
// Oliver
[1] This person never worked for LS at any time, so don’t be afraid LS, no leak of information from former employees, the “logistics manager” stated it himself … and still works at LS so it can’t be that sensitive … if only Skatteverket knew 
Where else in the world are all Police motorbikes from Harley Davidson? … must be Iceland again!
But for something more serious which fits well under the same heading. A blogger in Egypt has received a prison sentence for:
“inciting hatred of Islam” and insulting President Hosni Mubarak in his blog, for which he used the pseudonym of “Kareem Amer.”
Please visit freekareem.org, read the story, think about it and share your thoughts (either here or better on the website or in their forum). And please spread the word!
// Oliver
Thanks to feedback from some users, several bugs could be fixed. The two worst were:
Also I took the chance to implement some minor changes in how some variables are treated. The following list contains some of the changes I consider noteworthy:
Continue reading ‘DDKBUILD.CMD updated (v7.0 Beta 6)’
In their press announcement Lavasoft writes:
The person that is referred to as the company’s chauffeur is the logistics manager of Lavasoft.
… now all dictionaries I checked draw a direct connection between the terms “management” and “manager”. Am I the only one missing a manager here? Can you “spot” the missing one? …
// Oliver
Yesterday I posted a script in the F-Prot support forum. Many people think that .cmd files (such as DDKBUILD.CMD) are no more than renamed batch files. The trick employed in the posted script would not be possible using normal batch scripts. Only the advanced functionality of the NT command interpreter allows this script to perform its work. The problem was to extract the last part of a file/directory path, i.e. everything after the last backslash. Here is how it works.
Continue reading ‘NT Shell Scripts vs. Batch Scripts’
Finally IDA 5.1 and Virtual PC 2007 have been released. I wrote about IDA during the beta-phase and I promise to write some more stuff (probably) the next weekend.
Virtual PC 2007, just like its predecessor Virtual PC 2004, is freely downloadable and comes free of charge. Although it is inferior to VMWare in several aspects, it seems there is one point where Virtual PC 2007 is better than VMWare … the support of VMX on 32bit hosts. However, I’ll have to verify that and will turn back to you with more information about it once I have it.
// Oliver
Wie einige vielleicht schon wissen, stamme ich aus der Gegend der deutsch-polnischen Grenze. Ich höre jetzt schon einige sagen: “Na hoffentlich ist das nicht ansteckend!”. Ich kann euch beruhigen, bisher habe ich noch niemanden mit diesem Problem angesteckt. Als Nachbar, lernt man natürlich auch einige Ticks – und eben die Sprache des anderen, wenn auch vergleichsweise oberflächlich – kennen. Einige aus der Gruppe der “einigen” von oben wissen ja vielleicht auch, daß ich inzwischen in Island lebe. Man muß nicht viel dazu sagen wo, denn in Island gibt es praktisch nur rund 300000 Hanseln und das schließt uns Ausländer schon ein. Davon leben etwa zwei Drittel in der Gegend um die Hauptstadt (Quizfrage: die heißt wie? ).
Continue reading ‘Die sind schon da … wann dürfen wir endlich auch?’
Since Corrine put it up so nicely I am not going to add anything for now. Maybe later. LS has finally trouble with the tax authorities. My Swedish is not good enough to translate it ad-hoc and I also lack the time. Therefore thanks to Corrine for the nice write-up.
The gist of the text was quite well matched. Here are the links to the original (Swedish) articles from Göteborgs Posten:
1. It-bolag har stora skatteskulder (IT-company has tax debts)
2. Det luktar skunk på Lavasoft (This smells “fishy” with Lavasoft)
Yes, it smells indeed,
// Oliver
In this article back in November 2006 I complained about the way the security flaw was reported. This was apparently fixed. So in I think it is only fair to publish that fact here as well.
My apologies for the delay, some friends made me aware of the changes only recently.
// Oliver
Only some cosmetic changes and one real bugfix, of a bug that would cause confusion for users, were made. The bugfix concerns the Win32DLL project type. The 1.1.1 release did not have the line
DLLENTRY=DllMain
which was supposed to be in the SOURCES file. Please add it yourself of simply update your version using this bugfix release. The effect without this fix is, that your DllMain will be ignored and the linker will use some default one.
Fetch the new release here.
Next planned features are compatibility with Mark Roddy’s DDKBUILD and some enhancements of the DDKWizard setup. I’ll probably include a page where the user can set the (DDKBUILD) variables for the installed DDKs and the installation directory will not be variable upon update/upgrade of an existing installation (probably that step will be skipped completely). Also on the page with the variables there will possibly be a download link for the currently supported DDKBUILD flavors.
// Oliver
Today I noticed something very unpleasant when I tried to build a project that was initially created with DDKWizard with the WDK instead of the WNET DDK.
Only one .rc file is allowed per directory. You may however include one .rc file in another.
Eeek, that is nasty. Guess what, the WNET DDK builds it without any complaints. Not well thought, MS … 
// Oliver
The F-Prot 3.x uninstaller of the Windows version has apparently a glitch. Due to how Windows works, this may lead to a blue screen if the driver entry in the registry was not removed during an upgrade to version 6.x! To mitigate this issue until the next version is released, use the fix described here before you reboot the system after upgrading from F-Prot 3.x to 6.x!
// Oliver
PS: The next release of the 6.x installer will be aware of the issue and incorporate the fix.
Today I released DDKWizard 1.1.1 – fetch it here.
This version brings “only” some improvements and corrections over 1.1.0 and nothing sensational
Win32DLL, the purpose should be clear from the name.Enjoy,
// Oliver