Category: technology and virtual life

Updated : It is confirmed that Yongyut Aunkaen is a virus. This virus will replicate itself in removable drives which in turn will effect other computers. You will also have problems double clicking on your computer drives.

The easiest way to see if you have the virus is if you will see this message in your internet explorer title bar :

If you click on view > Show hidden files and folders, you will find MS32DLL.dll.vbs and autorun.inf. This is the virus. You must delete this immediately in removable drives.

The steps to remediate this in your computer is as follows.

Method 1 : Download this script. Close all windows and run script.

Method 2 : Credits to Anand and to this forum.

1. Open windows task manager (Ctrl+Alt+Del) and select the “Processes” tab. Find “Wscript.exe” and click on “End process. Repeat if there is more than one process and then close the task manager.

2. Go to the C drive and select “Folder Options” -> “View” and choose “show hidden files and folders” and uncheck “hide protected operating system file.

3. In the C drive, search for “autorun.inf” and delete this file.

4. Delete MS32DLL.dll.vbs (this is the virus) also delete the virus from the path C:WINDOWS MS32DLL.dll.vbs

Be careful with the next step, any mistake may crash your computer

5. Start -> Run and type in “Regedit” and press enter. Select HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE -> Software ->Microsoft ->Windows -> Current Version -> Run. Find MS32DLL and delete that entry.

6. Then select HKEY_CURRENT_USER -> Software -> Microsoft -> Internet Explorer -> Main. There you will find Window Title Yongyut Aunkaen and delete that entry. You can close the registry now.

7. Next click on Start -> Run and type in gpedit.msc and press Enter. Then you will open Group Policy.

8. Select User Configuration -> Administrative Templates -> System -> double click on Turn Off Autoplay and in the window there, select Enabled and select All drives. Now you can close the Group Policy.

9. Next click on Start -> Run and type msconfig and press Enter. You will open System Configuration Utility.

10. Click on Startup tab and find the file MS32DLL take it out and then exit the System Configuration Utility and select Exit Without Restart when prompted.

11. Empty Recycle bin and Restart your computer.

You should not have the message anymore.

This was one of the first time that I’ve been with so many Singaporean Secondlife residents in the flesh. It was interesting to see all those avatars and personalities coming to life.

I received an email from Eng Kiat from Ideafactory about a week ago, inviting me to participate in a real life meeet. Initially I was sceptical about the entire agenda, but I was keen to meet up and see other Secondlifers in real person.

One of the first few persons whom I met was Preetam and Jacky. Both of whom I’ve met previously in Ngee An Polytechnic during an interview, courtesy of Jason, a NUS student whom was doing a thesis.

I also met Alvin, the leader of Secondlife Singapore group. Coincidentally he’s a Jurong person too! We could even meet up in a blink of an eye to eat at the famous Nasi Lemak stall nearby.

Later on, the rest of the attendees came in one by one.

Nicholas explained that the reason for the meet was that Cory Ondrejka, the Chief Technology Officer for Linden Labs will be coming over to Singapore in March. He was interested in setting up an office here in Singapore because of the locale and the diversity of people here – thus the sourcing of talents for developers. Chosen ones will spend about 6 months in San Francisco to learn the ropes.

We spent the evening discussing about the ideas for the next gathering. Preetam suggested a barcamp where we could lead an open discussion, while Ivan suggested having a Singapore Island in Secondlife. Andy cautioned however that should an island be made, it should not just be a 3D interpretation of an environment, but as an outlet for creative flow.

Ideas flowed. Admittedly, I was a little uncomfortable about the angle the discussion was going. Ideas like pushing Secondlife to schools, getting certification, and the entire focus on commercialism just wasn’t appetizing to me. To me, the social and human element is the most important part in a community. However, it was understandable that to actually start gaining interest, there must be some sort of push factor.

I’m interested in the barcamp. It would be good to hear what people thought about Secondlife. I think Maybe I could even host one 🙂

Coincidentally, SMU is organizing an event – I saw that there is a talk on Virtual Worlds and the Metaverse. Sounds promising.

More on the event narrated by Vanessa and Ivan

With all the different expensive software out there, it’s still nice to know that there are alternatives, where most of them are free.

These are called open source – whereby software is made public to the general and allows users to create and improve on it. So far I’ve used quite a few of these software.

One of them is Openoffice, by Sun Microsystem . This is a free alternative to a popular office software. Like its peer, it includes the tools which were are familliar with.

Although there are some miniscule kinks around, it was still very good, user friendly and gets the job done. This is something hard to beat for gratis.

I’ve been using Audacity for my podcasts. This software is a competent editor for voice recording, editing, and effects and it doesn’t have such a steep learning curve as compared to many other voice editors.

To my amazement, there is even a free software to capture clips from 3D applications. As my secondlife video record function went bonkers, I needed to find alternative ways.

I stumbled upon the software Taksi quite by chance from the Secondlife forums, tried it and I find it a rather competent software. It isn’t as well developed as fraps, which I find is a very good 3D capture software. But I think Taksi be better in time. This is a short clip I recorded in Secondlife using Taksi

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

And as you read this post, this blog is using the wordpress platform and written in blogdesk. And the gallery where I place my photos and digital art, uses coppermine.

In time perhaps, I might be brave enough to change my operating system altogether. From what I’ve seen in Ubuntu, Linux is very user friendly and is bundled with many useful and free software inside. I really didn’t have much problems in manoeuvring.

Open source really isn’t that difficult to use. Why not give it a try and see what treasures that you could find from out there. 🙂

Does anyone know how to import blogger beta posts and comments into wordpress? Importing RSS works great, but it doesnt import comments.

I’ve been trying out one method, but now I’m stuck at the step ‘Export the 2nd database (‘old’) using PHPMyAdmin’. And I have no idea what to do.

Update : I used this wonderful script by adywarna – it worked wonderfully for me 🙂

Who ever knew that transferring of domains would be so cumbersome.

Several years ago, I used to subscribe to ewebcity as I was learning ASP. At the time, I had not much problems with it. In fact, I even enjoyed their simple interface and the live chat support that came along with it so much that I paid for their .personal hosting plan and bought a domain.

Ewebcity recently changed their name to brinkster. And about year ago, brinkster auto-renewed my subscription without prior notification. But at the moment, since I did not have any problems with them. In fact, I was ready to upgrade to their .professional package as I wanted to try out WordPress.

However, a quick check shows that it was actually quite difficult to set up WordPress as brinkster wasn’t capable of supporting .htaccess and neither do they have apache or litespeed server then.

But since brinkster already credited my money, I’d just stay on with it for another year.

And now that its been a year, I notified brinkster about my cancellation request on the 26th November. I also asked for a domain transfer to my new host. After several email transaction to date, my account was still active and I was charged money for it!

US$71! That’s about $110 in Singapore dollars. That was a lot of money to me! I could do a lot with that sum.

I thought that I could be clever and edit my personal details before the renewal date so that no money will be credited to my debit card. Interestingly, the programming there would not allow me to change my card details. Somehow, they still kept my personal details. This is so dangerous and intrusive to my privacy.

How can a company that won so many awards can be so bad at support? To date, I have spoken to two different billing consultants and at least three support consultants and yet nothing has been done about my account.

Update: After persevering for some days, the account has finally been closed on the 4th December.

<rant>

At the risk of sounding juvenile, I’m quite affected with this week’s edition of digital life.

I’ve been involved with secondlife, an online 3D community, for since october 2004 and was extremely puzzled to see that there were no features about it.

Thus, I offered to write an article about Secondlife to the editors at digital life, a weekly newspaper edition featuring technology in Singapore. I was very polite and enthusiastic. I gave a quick introduction from here and here (in fact, I’ve done two quick videos here and here) and asked for guidelines for the submission of articles. This was in early may.

It would be fine if they said no but I never did got a reply back.

Recently, a reporter, Chua Hian Hao wrote an article about Secondlife not being popular in Singapore. But with all due respect, how long has he been in Secondlife anyway to give a review about it?

He interviewed a university professor whom did a survey with 700 gamers. But that survey by itself was already biased. Its comparing apples and oranges. Because Secondlife isnt a game, its a community. The professor herself has confessed that she is a veteran on Worldcraft online. We cannot categorize secondlife as a game. These gamers that were interviewed would not be familliar with secondlife.

And can the people being interviewed be of a wider range? Surely there are more people than just university students and professors to represent gaming and the internet world.

This professor continues saying that, “If you played Secondlife and told an interesting Secondlife an occurrence who didn’t played it, it would be just a story about a game he doesn’t play. But if you shared a Maplestory with a fellow Maplestory player, he would get it, making your experience richer”

I don’t dispute that.

I don’t play maplestory. I did try it once but I didn’t feel compelled to play it long term. I understand that a particular gamer would understand that gamer better. But that doesn’t mean that people wouldn’t try to understand each other. Just like the real world, its a matter of understanding diversity.

These people interviewed insisted that Secondlife isnt popular.

Mr Simonsen, a gaming programmer, stated in the article, that Secondlife demand more out of the players and will not consider the steep learning curve to get the fun.

There is an undergraduate, Sim Yuze who says that he doesn’t have time to play Secondlife and thinks that its not profitable. He illustrates this by saying that “if he quits worldcraft, and diablo, he will be able to sell his character off. You cant do that if the game isnt popular and there are no buyers for your character”

Secondlife is a community that thrives on currency exchange. You could easily design clothes, or build items which can be sold to be made into real money. Even me, I whom is motivationally challenged is able to sell some apparels for some sum of money.

Mr Simonsen and Sim Yuze would have to realise that should they both be businessmen, they both are losing business if they choose not to see the potential economic viables that secondlife bring.

In fact, there are many companies whom invested in secondlife – IBM, invested 10 million in Secondlife, Reuters has opened an agency in Secondlife, just to name a few companies.

Besides, Secondlife has been gaining popularity. With personal experience, in 2004, I only met one Singaporean online, the number has now increased dramatically with an active Singaporean group in Secondlife.

I wish the reporter interviewed any Singaporean Secondlife players to counter what has been written for a more balanced side of the story. For example,Kevin, a vocal and active player or Preetamrai whom has been enlightened by the advantages of learning via 3D community. Both of whom have a large following on the internet. I dont believe its that hard to find Singaporeans who play secondlife. It could have advertised on the newspapers or he could even advertise on Tomorrow.sg. Most youths don’t regularly read newspapers any more anyway since internet is their main medium now.

I hope for more neutrality in the article.

</rant>

Edited for tone, clarity and to add : Whoops! Sorry! There *was* an article whom interviewed a secondlife player. But it was nondescript that I completely missed it out.