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Mon, Oct 26 2009 21:15

White House moves to Open Source

Subtitle: Media posts uninformed rubbish as commentary From the MSNBC story “ White House opens Web site coding to public ”: "Security is fundamentally built into the development process because the community is made up of people from all across...
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Tue, Oct 20 2009 20:44

SAL-like code annotations for Java

http://types.cs.washington.edu/jsr308/ seems to be talking about a set of type annotations for Java that are similar to those provided in Microsoft Visual C++ by SAL, the Standard Annotation Language . One thing that the Java annotations have going for...
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Sat, Sep 26 2009 20:22

Sometimes It Seems Like Unix(*) Needs to Learn from Windows

(*) By “Unix”, I mean Linux, Unix, AIX, OS/X, and similar flavours. Way back when, about twenty or so years ago, I was a Unix admin, and a Unix developer. I had to be both, because I was the only person in the company who could spell Unix...
Posted by Alun Jones | 17 comment(s)
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Thu, Jan 22 2009 4:39

The CWE Top 25 Programming Mistakes

I’ve read some debate about the top 25 programming mistakes as documented by the CWE (Common Weakness Enumeration) project, in collaboration with the SANS Institute and the MITRE . That the list isn’t complete, that there are some items that aren’t in...
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Tue, Jan 20 2009 16:50

“Fully Stealthed” means fully spoofable

Every so often, someone on one of the security mailing lists to which I subscribe will post a frothing rant from someone who has discovered their own personal “magic bullet” which solves all their security woes. This time, it’s a guy who was convinced...
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Thu, Dec 25 2008 13:52

Running out of disk space? How’s your logs?

I ran out of disk space today. This is not entirely a new issue for me, because I like to listen to BBC Radio from back home, and my only way to do that is to download the shows overnight so I can listen to them the next day. [I’m not allowed that sort...
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Sun, Oct 12 2008 21:36

HTML Help in MFC

I recently got around to converting an old MFC project from WinHelp format to HTML Help. Mostly this was to satisfy customers who are using Windows Vista or Windows Server 2008, but who don’t want to install WinHlp32 from Microsoft. (If you do want to...
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Mon, Aug 25 2008 23:22

My MP3 player demands to administer my system

Thanks to the excellent http://www.woot.com , I upgraded to a new MP3 player - this one, the Sansa e250 from SanDisk , has a little screen and shows video at an almost completely unacceptably small resolution. But I don't mind that, I didn't really...
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Thu, May 22 2008 20:02

Searching for Weak Debian / Ubuntu SSL Certificates

I've seen a number of people promote packages that have shipped for Debian and Ubuntu, which allow users to scan their collected keys - OpenSSH or OpenSSL or OpenVPN, to discover whether they're too weak to be of any functional use. [See my earlier...
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Thu, May 15 2008 17:55

Debian and the OpenSSL PRNG

[PRNG is an abbreviation for "Pseudo-Random Number Generator", a key core component of the key-generation in any cryptographic library.] A few people have already commented on the issue itself - Debian issued, in 2006, a version of their Linux...
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Fri, May 9 2008 21:32

Apple Changes Update Policies - Still No Biscuit

As I have mentioned in other posts ( Retro-bundling - another suck of the Apple , MacBook Air debuts; iTunes Pesters Me Again , Removing Apple Mobile Device Support , I didn't want iTunes - now I've got iPod, too? , etc, etc), this has long since...
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Tue, May 6 2008 17:33

Think like a bad guy? It's a start.

Cool new site (and blog ) from Microsoft - http://securedeveloper.com - and it has a tag line I've heard many times before: Like that old maxim that "you need to stop fighting fires long enough to tell the architects to stop building things out...
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Sat, May 3 2008 16:57

Can You Write Good Code for an OS you Despise?

No, this isn't another of my anti-Mac frothing rants. This is one of my "here's what I hate about many of the open-source projects I deal with" rants. I'm trying to find an SFTP client for Windows that works the way I want it to...
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Fri, Mar 21 2008 21:15

Retro-bundling - another suck of the Apple

I thought I was done blogging about Apple Software Update, having removed QuickTime from my system completely, and sworn never to install it again or watch another QT or MOV file. But nooo, someone had to spoil it by telling me what Apple Software Update...
Posted by Alun Jones | 9 comment(s)
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Tue, Feb 26 2008 11:55

CS-RCS Pro on Vista

I've been trying back and forth to get CS-RCS Pro , a version control suite, to work on Windows Vista. I like CS-RCS Pro for a number of reasons: Files stored in CS-RCS Pro are kept in a simple format, open and well-documented. As a result, if I ever...
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Sat, Jan 19 2008 18:09

MacBook Air debuts; iTunes Pesters Me Again

The big news from Apple this week was that they have a flatter laptop than anyone else (except Intel, who have a "Lorado" concept model that is much cooler, is demonstrated with Vista, and comes with an optional sleeve that has a Sideshow display...
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Mon, Dec 17 2007 17:38

Removing Apple Mobile Device Support

As mentioned before, I'm not a fan of Appple 's, particularly because they tend to impose crap on me that I'm not interested in having. I've been trying to figure out how to remove iTunes , iPod and Aple Mobile Device Support on and off...
Posted by Alun Jones | 83 comment(s)
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Sat, Dec 15 2007 12:25

Microsoft Support Switches to Live Search

In the spirit of the famous review of Spinal Tap's album "Shark Sandwich", I was tempted to post a two-word review,the first word of which is "Advanced". My three-word review, then - "Worst. Search. Ever". But, just in...
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Tue, Nov 27 2007 18:41

I didn't want iTunes - now I've got iPod, too?

So, in my last post " Can the EU get me QuickTime N? ", I noted that my installation of QuickTime (because I had a .MOV file I want to see) led to Apple Software Update offering me "iTunes + QuickTime 7.5", despite my removing iTunes...
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Tue, Nov 27 2007 17:52

Can the EU get me QuickTime N?

So, a long time ago, in a continent not so far away, the European Union required Microsoft to ship a version of Windows without Media Player , called Windows XP N. Now, here's a follow-up to my previous articles: Programmer Hubris Part 1 - He's...
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