Re: Need reviews of HLA Adventure



Betov wrote:
> > This, from the guy who claims he doesn't use IDAPro. :-)
>
> I do not have to:
>
> 1) I do not use Commercial Products.

So you really don't know what IDAPro does, yet you make claims about
how much better your disassembler is than IDAPro.

>
> 2) I base my words on the ones the main Author of IDA
> wrote, right here.

So you take a few statements (out of context, on doubt) and start
making all these claims about how great your product is, without
actually checking to see if those claims are correct? Why am I not
surprised? It's just like your claims that "RosAsm is the fastest of
all actual assemblers." You make this statements without any proof
whatsoever at all.

>
> 3) After _you_ had claimed, in the past, that IDA was
> better than RosAsm Disassembler, I have challenged you
> to disassemble a small app with IDA and to recompile
> it. I even gave you an example that i knew to be easily
> Disassembled and re-Assembled, by RosAsm, and that was
> choosen small enough to not give you too much work to
> do... Still waiting for any answer...

I'm not the one trying to write a disassembler. I'm not going to do
your homework for you. FWIW, I *have* used IDAPro to disassemble a
couple of 40K binary files. Believe me, there's no way an automatic
disassembler could have handled that code. It was literally a couple of
month's work to trace through the code and figure out what was going on
(the print outs, btw, were on the order of 140-160 pages each, this was
*not* a trivial piece of code to disassemble). Let's just say that I
have some recent experience using a disassembler and I can tell you
without hesitation that your "two clicks disassembly/reassembly"
feature would have been absolute useless.

> >
> > Actually, you are quite correct. IDAPro isn't intended for source code
> > [...] people don't use disassemblers for that purpose. The vast
> > majority of people using disassemblers use them for reverse engineering
> > (in which case the *last* thing you want to do is to use the code that
> > the disassembler produces, that's a clear copyright violation) or
> > researching subversive programs (i.e., viruses).
>
> Aaahhhh!!! here we are.

RosAsm's disassembler is a useless tool for 99% of the cases where a
disassembler is needed.
>
> :))
>
> For sure, if IDA cannot do the job, whereas RosAsm
> _can_ do the job, the conclusion is quite trivial:
>
> "RosAsm is a pirate Tool".

That was certainly the way you positioned it when you first announced
it. Indeed, I seem to recall you making statements along the lines that
people could use the RosAsm disassembler to lift code from commercial
apps and how copyrights are inethical, anyway. Your words, not mine.
It's nice to see that you've changed along the way (to a more ethical
position with regard to intellectual property laws), but you'll have to
forgive those of us who've read your earlier posts for suspecting that
the original intent of the product as a bit more sinister.

If RosAsm's disassembler is only going to be used for disassembling
free software, what's the point? It's far easier to manual translate
that other code to RosAsm syntax than it is to clean up the mess that a
disassembler produces. Using a disassembler as a "source code
generator" is a losing proposition all the way around. That's why Data
Rescue doesn't push IDAPro for that purpose. Disassemblers do have a
real-world purpose. Source code reconstitution is that that purpose.
But feel free to prove the world wrong. You seem to be attempting that
with every other RosAsm component (e.g., claiming that static linking
of library code is unnecessary). I'm sure your disassembler will have
about the same impact on the world that your assembler has. Just more
proof that you just "don't get it."
Cheers,
Randy Hyde

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