The ultimate command-line ZIP utility

Dave Farquhar Software, Windows ,

I accidentally find Ken Silverman’s utility page from time to time and can never find it again when I want it, so if you need the ultimate command-line ZIP utility (KZIP), or the ultimate PNG optimizer (PNGOUT), to squeeze just as many bytes as possible out of your recompressed archives or your images while maintaining 100% compatibility, save this link. You’ll thank me later when you need it badly, like when you’re e-mailing an archive and it’s a few dozen bytes larger than your e-mail system allows.

Also check out his clever ZIPMIX utility.

What makes his approach to ZIP archiving special is that he emphasizes file size over speed. His software is built to take a few extra seconds to save a few bytes, if it’s possible to do so. Mainstream Zip/Unzip programs will still decompress his archives just fine; they just won’t match it for compression ratio most of the time. And in the rare event that they do, his ZIPMIX utility will take advantage of that. Just zip up the same files with both programs, then run ZIPMIX on the two archives. So Ken Silverman’s utilities win even when he loses.

I first noticed this phenomenon when using Info-Zip, when I found its -9 option produced smaller archives than PKzip’s -max option. The first thing I did was make sure PKzip could uncompress the Info-Zip archive I’d created. It did, so I never used PKzip to create an archive again. And every once in a while I find another tool that does better than the last best one I found. Right now Ken Silverman’s utilities are it.

I have an unusual appreciation of smaller archives. That’s because I’m old enough to have downloaded files over a 300-baud modem (but also young enough to remember having done so). Ken Silverman practices a lost art, and maybe there aren’t a lot of people left who appreciate that, but I still do.

The publicity around security is a good thing

Dave Farquhar security , , , , , , ,

On one of the podcasts I listen to, two of the hosts questioned whether the publicity around recent security vulnerabilities are a good thing.

As a security professional who once studied journalism, I think it’s a very good thing, and it’s going to get better. I liken it to the rise of computer virus awareness. Read more

Windows XP gets its first forever-day

Dave Farquhar security, Windows ,

This week Microsoft disclosed a critical 0-day flaw in Internet Explorer. Microsoft is considering an out-of-band patch, but regardless of when the patch gets released, no Windows XP patch will be coming, except for the companies and governments who are paying a large fee for end-of-life support.

This was about 20 days later than some people estimated, but now it’s happened. The mitigation is to run EMET. But in the long term, getting to a new version of Windows is the only viable option. You can do this on the cheap if you need to.

While we’re talking about browsers, Chrome has the most CVEs associated with it, making it numerically the least secure of the browsers, but they have the fastest time to patch, by far, so the numbers are very deceiving. So using Chrome isn’t a bad choice, especially on XP where Internet Explorer is out of date and forever EOL.

The Warhol Amiga discovery in context

Dave Farquhar Retro Computing , , , ,
The Warhol Amiga discovery in context

A team of digital archaeologists recovered a series of images off floppy disks from Andy Warhol’s estate, including a number of experimental images created by Warhol himself. Judging from the comments in the various places that covered the discovery, the Internet is unimpressed.

Yes, these images appear to be the result of Warhol messing around. In many ways, they’re not all that different from what anyone might produce today messing around with a digital camera and a simple paint program with a fill pattern.

I’m not sure how many of the critics realize Warhol created this stuff in 1985 or perhaps even late 1984, using preproduction, prerelease hardware and software. All of it was likely buggy. And, as much as I like the Amiga, none of it was anywhere near today’s standards at that point. The stuff he had to work with was nowhere near 1989 standards–the Amiga in its early days was notoriously finicky.

Read more

IT security vs. the construction industry

Dave Farquhar security , , ,

On the Risky Business podcast last week, Andrew Wilson, the CEO of Australian cryptography gear maker Senetas, stated that many businesses see the bad things that happen from poor IT security as just a cost of doing business.

Nothing revolutionary there. We’ve all seen it. Target is paying a steep price right now, but what about Michaels and Nieman Marcus? They got breached at the same time as Target, and nobody’s talking about them. Maybe Target thinks the cost of doing business got too high, and they’ve hired a CISO and I hear they’re hiring lots of new security personnel–I have coworkers and former coworkers in the Minneapolis area who tell me as much–but for Michaels and Nieman Marcus, the cost, at least so far, appears to have been manageable.

But Wilson added something that I hadn’t heard anywhere else before. Fifty years ago, he said, construction workers dying while building a large building was considered a cost of doing business. Fifty years ago that was normal. Today it’s unacceptable.

Read more

Training future cassanovas

Dave Farquhar Uncategorized

Last week, a coworker and I had dinner with three representatives from a potential vendor. One said he was planning to celebrate his one-year anniversary with his girlfriend in Paris and Italy. It was going to be a really good time, he promised, and he was excited about it.

My coworker and I, both married, looked at each other. We were about to deflate the air from his balloon, but we had to do it.

“Are you planning to propose to her there?” my coworker asked. Read more

Bethlehem Lutheran Church sacrificed its sanctuary for a greater good

Dave Farquhar Christianity, St. Louis

If all (or even a slim majority of) Lutheran churches were like Bethlehem Lutheran Church, I would still be Lutheran. Since they aren’t, I’m not.

But I’ve gotten ahead of myself, and made this way too much about me.

Late last week, there was a big boom at the corner of Salisbury and North Florissant in the north St. Louis neighborhood of Hyde Park. It sounded like a truck wreck, but it turned out to be the wall and roof of a 120-year-old sanctuary crashing to the ground. Read more