antonywilliams.com

I'm a little tired of hearing completely uninformed people talk about Vista.
Whether they praise, or criticise, they're usually not even remotely clued in properly.
They merely repeat what they heard, or read somewhere.
It's true, Vista is more secure than XP was when it was released, but then again, Microsoft seem to always just compare themselves to their own last product. Why should they get bragging rights by comparing their latest and greatest to an OS that was released in 2001. Isn't it ridiculous?

There's been a lot of news lately about how easy it is to hack a computer (any computer).
I'm talking specifically about the 2008 CanSecWest security conference 'PWN to OWN.'
It's a yearly conference where cash rewards are given to people who can successfully hack a machine. This year, the fastest hacker wins $10,000.
The catch?
In the first round, the hack must work on a stock machine, without any 3rd party apps.
The Operating Systems?

Windows Vista SP1
Mac OS X 10.5.2
Ubuntu 7.10

So, which was the first machine to be hacked?
I was a little surprised by this, but it was a brand new Mac Book Air running Leopard.
It took Charlie Miller and his team just 2 minutes to gain complete control of the system.
The catch? It was an exploit in Safari (the mac web browser).
Many might say that this is the fault of the browser, and not the OS.
While they'd sort of be right, the OS really should have a policy kit to stop wayward apps from causing havoc.

What was the 2nd machine to by compromised?
Unsurprisingly, it was Vista. While it took more effort than Apple's machine, it wasn't overly complicated. It was also done through the web browser, with a plugin (Adobe Flash) vulnerability.

that leaves just one unscathed machine.
Yup, it was the GNU/Linux machine running Ubuntu 7.10.


So, why is it that Linux didn't get hacked ?
I'll tell you. It's really quite simple.

Lets say you spend 5 years creating something.
You release it. It does well. You spend the next 5 years supporting, fixing, improving it.
Surely, it's now a much better product than it was upon release, right?

There's something wise about this logic. Unfortunately, microsoft don't seem to get it.
They proudly 'rewrite from scratch' at almost every release.
But why? If Windows XP is now really stable, reliable and secure, why on earth throw it away?

I'm not really sure.
I know there are sometimes fundamental differences that need to be changed, and require major rewriting, but the problem is that there are many bugs in Vista that are there because the OS is new. According to history, by the time Vista is a little more stable and reliable, they'll chuck that out, and start again anyway. The cycle will just continue.

This is where Linux (and Apple) are different.
With a linux OS release, they take the exact code from the previous release, improve it, and re-release it. It means you have a constantly evolving OS that rarely suffers from those n00b bugs that microsoft seem to keep recreating every few years.

Not only does this (generally) minimize bugs, improve stability, and speed up development, but it also means that old apps will continue to work on it.

Accordingly, when asked to recommend a computer to friends, I always recommend Linux to the tech savvy, and Apple to the less savvy. I never recommend Windows.
I still hold to the opinion that the only good thing Microsoft has ever created is Microsoft Office.

To paraphrase Linux Torvalds: Of the two, Apple is the least terrible.
I'll leave more ramblings about Apple and Steve Jobs for another time.

After more than 2 years of no releases, Abiword 2.6.0 has finally been released.
I have sort of a love-hate relationship with it.
On the one hand, it's a fantasticly fast, stable word program. It also integrates perfectly into the gnome environment. It has all the features that most of us need (lets face it, Office 2007 and OpenOffice have billions of features we never use).

The problem?
It doesn't have native support for ODF, the Open Document Format, for OSS is a bit of a disgrace. You are able to get ODF support through plugin filters, but it isn't perfect


it's a pain to compile, but i eventually figured it all out
download it here
http://www.abisource.com/downloads/abiword/2.6.0/source/

if you want the plugins, download that first, and compile it with the command
./configure --with-abiword=/(location of abiword source code)
make
sudo make install

then do the following:
sudo apt-get build-dep abiword
sudo apt-get install libwxgtk2.6-dev wx-common libboost-{graph,thread}-dev libgtk2.0-dev g++

then download wv from packages.ubuntu.com and install that (./configure && make && sudo make install)

extract the abiword tar, browse to it, and do the following
./configure --prefix=/usr/local/abiword/ --enable-gnome
make
sudo make install

That wasn't too bad, was it?

It's unfortunate that the timing is too late for inclusion in Ubuntu 8.04, but it should be in 8.10 if you want to just wait till then.



All in all, I can say providing you don't care about native ODF support, this is a great program for people who don't need all the features of OpenOffice, or have a slower machine (the performance of it is really great)

It's available for MAC, Windows, Linux and BSD. so try it out

Next up will be a look at OpenOffice 3.0 which is scheduled to be released in September of this year.
I wouldn't be too surprised if it got delayed though.
I installed build M3 yesterday, and most of the improvements don't seem like they'll be too noticeable to most of us (unless you use a MAC, where they finally have a native AQUA interface).
It's supposed to start up quicker, have a nicer interface (which i doubt will end up making the cut) and support the revised ODF 1.2

I got a call yesterday from the Intel guy I interviewed with a few weeks ago.
They'd taken so long that I'd just assumed they'd forgotten about me.
He apologized for taking so long to get back to me and offered me an internship.
It would have been nice if he'd called a few weeks earlier, as it would have given me more options before deciding which one to accept.
I thanked him, and told him I'd already taken another offer.

It's a shame, as they pay pretty well, and have great benefits. They pay around $20/h, with an additional $2000 for relocating to WA for the 3 months.

Being that this will be my last summer before I graduate, I figured right now would probably be a pretty good time to get an internship. I applied to a couple of different places, but figured that working for a smaller company, where I'd get hands on training from engineers would be best. The other advantage being that it was a local company, so I wouldn't have to move somewhere, and struggle to rent an apt. for 10 weeks (honestly, who's going to want to rent you an apt. for just 10 weeks??). The surprise however, was that not only did they want me to start right away, but they wanted me to stay on past the summer, and work until graduation.
I've had my current job as a computer tech for the College of Humanities for almost 3 years. It's a great job that has flexible hours and a yearly raise of at least a dollar. They also let me work full time over both Christmas and summer holidays. Not only that, but my boss there is great. I couldn't just screw him over and quit, so I'll maintain both jobs for the next little while, until school finishes

Accordingly, this semester is likely to be my most busy one yet.
In hindsight, I shouldn't have taken so many credits, but how could I have known I would be working 2 jobs.
I'm taking 17 credits, (all of which are Electrical Engineering classes) and now 2 jobs. I just need to make it till the summer, where it'll just be the 1 job full time. I'm looking forward to the time where nights belong to me.

The company, Novadrill, has a bunch of electrical and mechanical engineers who are building a huge oil drill. I don't know much more than that, other than the drill will be a couple of miles long, and will be worth $750,000 each. Once complete, the company plans to sell around 100 a year.



p.s. they even pay my phone bill :)