Crash Dump Analysis

In 2008 when writing the first version of this review I admitted that Semiotics was a big gap in my education which mostly lied in natural and computer sciences. I knew less about social sciences and tried to fill various gaps. The reason why I came upon this discipline is that I’m interested in signs and their interpretations, especially their relation to various structures. I started reading this book in September, 2008.

Semiotics: The Basics

As a by-product of reading I was able to provide the kind of a theoretical explanation for the phenomenon of bugtations:

Bugtations: a semiotic approach

Now after more than 3 years of intermittent reading I finally finished this book. In the mean time I was able to apply Semiotics to memory dump and software trace analysis (Memiotics) and now I also use it in connection with Software Narratology (an application of literary narratology to software narratives such as traces and event logs). What is also good about this book in addition to clearly explained concepts is a very good closing chapter summarising the whole book and the field, extensive reading guide, summary of leading schools, and a very good glossary. There is also an online book with extra materials:

http://users.aber.ac.uk/dgc/Documents/S4B/

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

Philosophy is about memories, people’s memories.

Dmitry Vostokov, The Last Presocratic, Founder of Memodealism

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

Whereas Marx considered commodities as having surplus values and Baudrillard considered them as semiotic signs, philosophy of Memoidealism considers them as containing memories and linked by memories. People use commodities to evoke memories (either personal or collective) and use them for further communication. You can find such examples everywhere and the use of memories (including superstructure and means of production memories used to store the personal ones) has increased dramatically. We call this analysis XRAM to distinguish from original Marx analysis and its derivatives and extensions. In the future memories will also have exchange value and replace money.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

This book I bought in a local Costa bookshop and found it was written by an Irish sociologist Kieran Allen. Shortly before my interest in Marxism was inspired by seeing a link to Irish communist party website and socialist bookshop in a booklet for Dublin Culture nights festival. It was a bit funny to see communists as part of Irish culture festival especially for me from former Soviet Union. Anyway, later I saw on streets that Marxist festivals are popular in Ireland nowadays. So let’s go back to the book. I found it very good and even lucid in explaining various Marxist ideas and vocabulary. A good start for more advance reading such as “Capital” (I have all 3 hardcover volumes from an Indian publisher and plan to have leather bound edition from Russia if I have enough surplus and MEW German edition) or specialized books such as “A Dictionary of Marxist Thought”. What I also tend to agree with the author is that Stalinism is a mirror of Capitalism (there is also a book “Magnetic Mountain: Stalinism as a Civilization” that I’m reading). I leave an application of a dialectical method of double negation to a reader here. Now the weak points of the book: 1) it doesn’t cover post-Stalinist era; 2) subsequent analysis of alternatives sounds a bit naive for me who really lived in socialism and can compare it to capitalism both in post-socialist country and now living in real capitalist country. The book also has a good reading suggestion list and I even thinking now on reading Voloshinov book “Marxism and the Philosophy of Language” (in Russian, although there is an English edition). Anyway, I would recommend Kieran’s book with reservations (about alternatives) as a first introduction to Marxist thought.

Marx and the Alternative to Capitalism

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

Word of Memory.

Dmitry Vostokov, Memoriarch

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

If memory is the foundation of everything and the first principle then what about matter? We view matter as curvature of memory (currently metaphorically) and also as a constraining “filter” device that limits (and processes) memories. The latter view of limits is similar to some theories viewing brain (body) as a constraining device for mental reality (consciousness)^*.

(*) Irreducible Mind (Kelly & Kelly et al.), pp. 28-29

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

The new 6th volume contains revised, edited, cross-referenced, and thematically organized selected DumpAnalysis.org blog posts about memory dump and software trace analysis, software troubleshooting and debugging written in November 2010 - October 2011 for software engineers developing and maintaining products on Windows platforms, quality assurance engineers testing software on Windows platforms, technical support and escalation engineers dealing with complex software issues, and security researchers, malware analysts and reverse engineers. The sixth volume features:

• 56 new crash dump analysis patterns including 14 new .NET memory dump analysis patterns
• 4 new pattern interaction case studies
• 11 new trace analysis patterns
• New Debugware pattern
• Introduction to UI problem analysis patterns
• Introduction to intelligence analysis patterns
• Introduction to unified debugging pattern language
• Introduction to generative debugging, metadefect template library and DNA of software behaviour
• The new school of debugging and trends
• .NET memory dump analysis checklist
• Software trace analysis checklist
• Introduction to close and deconstructive readings of a software trace
• Memory dump analysis compass
• Computical and Stack Trace Art
• The abductive reasoning of Philip Marlowe
• Orbifold memory space and cloud computing
• Memory worldview
• Interpretation of cyberspace
• Relationship of memory dumps to religion
• Fully cross-referenced with Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4, and Volume 5

Product information:

• Title: Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 6
• Author: Dmitry Vostokov
• Language: English
• Product Dimensions: 22.86 x 15.24

• Paperback: 300 pages
• Publisher: Opentask (December 2011)
• ISBN-13: 978-1-908043-19-1

• Hardcover: 300 pages
• Publisher: Opentask (January 2012)
• ISBN-13: 978-1-908043-20-7

Back cover features 3d memory space visualization image created with ParaView.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

This is a little book that I bought in local bookshop adjacent to Costa and quickly read from cover to cover while commuting. I was interested in this title because my relative studies kindness (and benevolence) as a topic in Russian literature so I thought by reading that book I could better discuss it. Approx. one third of the book narrates the evolution of the meaning of kindness from Classical Greece and Rome to earlier Christianity, Augustine, then to Hobbes (Leviathan), Enlightenment, and finally, Rousseau (Émile).  The second third is a lengthy treatise on the interpretation of kindness from psychoanalytical perspective (Freud, Winnicott). The final third is about the role of kindness in the modern Western society. Interesting read (although a bit repetitive sometimes) that prompted me to buy Leviathan: With Selected Variants from the Latin Edition of 1668 and to reconsider the role kindness in a modern corporation workplace.

On Kindness

This is a cover of the book that I bought (published by Penguin):

- Dmitry Vostokov @ LiterateScientist.com -

The Memory Worldview consists of 3 parts:

1. The Science of Memoretics

2. The Philosophy of Memoidealism (including Memory as the first principle)

3. The Memory Religion (Memorianity)

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

In 3×3 format:

Q. What philosophical school do I belong to?

A. I consider myself the last Presocratic philosopher.

Q. What is my difference from the first Presocratics?

A. The philosophy of Memoidealism that I founded postulates that Memory is the essence of things, the first principle, like fire.

Q. Can I name 3 great philosophers?

A. 3 V’s: Giambattista Vico, Circle Vienna, Dmitry Vostokov (*). The circle is not one philosopher though but a cloud memory aggregate. If you insist on a person I would then replace it with Voltaire.

(*) The idea came to me after reading that Ayn Rand could only recommend 3 A’s - Aristotle, Aquinas, and Ayn Rand.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

After reading many history books I found that the real historical, sociological and psychological force (often seen unconscious from outside) is the will to be memorized (saved in memories, in memory dumps, also called as the will to be remembered) and not the will to power (Nietzsche). As often with the will it is also linked with vices and virtues. For the vice side we site Michael Burleigh: “Concern with posterity was apparent among the Nazi leadership, […]” and what we see now “… B-movie villains were self-consciously assigning themselves parts within an A-movie which runs and runs” today (documentaries, books, magazines, TV and the so called ‘Hitler industry’ “by the way of continuity”). As a more recent example, the recent tragedy in Norway clearly shows the desire of the protagonist to be memorized (masqueraded as a political agenda).

This is not to say that the will to power is not important, it is important by the way that by being memorized you actually exert more power in the future. Memorianity (memory religion) and its philosophical foundation (memoidealism) promote the will to be memorized as a virtue if all your deeds are seen as a virtue (see Memorianity and Morality).

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

I came to the idea of Memory-Time when reading about Samuel Alexander’s Space-Time (see also Memory Creates God). Here Memory plays the same foundational part as Space with memory-instants paralleling point-instants. I recently found the notion of memory-time (small capitals) appearing in Wittgenstein lectures as cited in Jaakko Hintikka’s paper “Wittgenstein on being and time”. However, it is considered there from the phenomenological subject-based perspective with a role of memory in the creation of time and external world and was only present in the earlier Tractatus-based Wittgenstein’s worldview.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

Having written on how Memoidealism explains miracles I now move into explaining the whole discipline of natural theology. I use one of the current definitions of it as “the idea that there exists some link between the world we observe and another transcendent realm” (Alister McGrath, Darwinism and The Divine). One such link is a memory dump from an inaccessible memory region.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

I’m pleased to announce that MDAA, Volume 5 is available in PDF format:

www.dumpanalysis.org/Memory+Dump+Analysis+Anthology+Volume+5

It features:

- 25 new crash dump analysis patterns
- 11 new pattern interaction case studies (including software tracing)
- 16 new trace analysis patterns
- 7 structural memory patterns
- 4 modeling case studies for memory dump analysis patterns
- Discussion of 3 common analysis mistakes
- Malware analysis case study
- Computer independent architecture of crash analysis report service
- Expanded coverage of software narratology
- Metaphysical and theological implications of memory dump worldview
- More pictures of memory space and physicalist art
- Classification of memory visualization tools
- Memory visualization case studies
- Close reading of the stories of Sherlock Holmes: Dr. Watson’s observational patterns
- Fully cross-referenced with Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, and Volume 4

Its table of contents is available here:

www.dumpanalysis.org/MDAA/MDA-Anthology-V5-TOC.pdf

Paperback and hardcover versions should be available in a week or two. I also started working on Volume 6 that should be available in November-December.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

Similar to Buddhism view of a person as a transient assemblage of physical and psychical elements Memorianity considers a person as an assemblage of memories always in flux. To be saved correctly also means working with memories to overcome their original defects and reorder chains of memory perspectives. This is similar to karmic laws and past actions that determine the nature of rebirth. See also on Morality and Memorianity.

Why it is so difficult to restore everything that was saved? Here André-Marie Ampère’s notion of dynamic resistance when we try to penetrate matter is similar to memuonic resistance when we try to penetrate Memory.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

This is another name for Memorianity (Memory Religion) that incorporates M->analysis techniques. I’m working now on the full statement of creed to be published soon. May you be memorized.

Dmitry Vostokov
Memoriarch

- Dmitry Vostokov @ Memory Religion Portal -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

Alexander of Aphrodisias considers soul as a composition of bodily elements and immortal active intellect (god) comprehensible by our own intellects. This view excludes individual immortality but allows the temporary one by actively contemplating god. In memoidalism we can also consider soul as a composition of memory elements and Memory (as whole totality of memories) as immortal supra-intellect and through its contemplation (including other memories) we attain immortality.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org - 

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

I’m pleased to announce that my book Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 4 is available for Safari Books Online subscribers:

http://my.safaribooksonline.com/9781906717865

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

A variation of the answer to the perennial question:

The Past is a Memory Dump.

Dmitry Vostokov, Founder of Memory Dump Worldview, the philosophy of Memoidealism, and the religion of Memorianity (Memory Religion)

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.

Five volumes of cross-disciplinary Anthology (dubbed by the author “The Summa Memorianica”) lay the foundation of the scientific discipline of Memoretics (study of computer memory snapshots and their evolution in time) that is also called Memory Dump and Software Trace Analysis.ca

The 5th volume contains revised, edited, cross-referenced, and thematically organized selected DumpAnalysis.org blog posts about crash dump, software trace analysis and debugging written in February 2010 - October 2010 for software engineers developing and maintaining products on Windows platforms, quality assurance engineers testing software on Windows platforms, technical support and escalation engineers dealing with complex software issues, and security researchers, malware analysts and reverse engineers. The fifth volume features:

- 25 new crash dump analysis patterns
- 11 new pattern interaction case studies (including software tracing)
- 16 new trace analysis patterns
- 7 structural memory patterns
- 4 modeling case studies for memory dump analysis patterns
- Discussion of 3 common analysis mistakes
- Malware analysis case study
- Computer independent architecture of crash analysis report service
- Expanded coverage of software narratology
- Metaphysical and theological implications of memory dump worldview
- More pictures of memory space and physicalist art
- Classification of memory visualization tools
- Memory visualization case studies
- Close reading of the stories of Sherlock Holmes: Dr. Watson’s observational patterns
- Fully cross-referenced with Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, and Volume 4

Product information:

• Title: Memory Dump Analysis Anthology, Volume 5
• Author: Dmitry Vostokov
• Language: English
• Product Dimensions: 22.86 x 15.24

• Paperback: 400 pages
• Publisher: Opentask (10 December 2010)
• ISBN-13: 978-1-906717-96-4

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Opentask (10 December 2010)
• ISBN-13: 978-1-906717-97-1

Back cover features memory space art image Hot Computation: Memory on Fire.

- Dmitry Vostokov @ DumpAnalysis.org + TraceAnalysis.org -

Sponsored link: Professional Software Debugging Services

/* Malware and Software Defects -> Victimware.org */

Copyright © 2006 - 2012. This is a non-profit research and scientific project.