Mile High Pixel

According to an article at ComputerWorld.com Microsoft is planning on giving away free copies of the first release candidate for Windows 7, the latest generation of operating systems to make its way out of Redmond.

While the general public has to wait a few days (May 5th) to snag this download, it’s already been made available to subscribers of Microsofts IT services such as MSDN and Tech Net. Unfortunately, in true Microsoft style, the download servers were unable to keep up with demand and many eager early adopters were left high and dry.

What does this mean for people wanting to grab a copy for themselves? Good luck! MSDN only accounts for a small number of the users wanting to grab a copy.  While we can hope that Microsoft will be beefing up their servers to account for the load in the coming days, there’s no guarantee that there will be enough bandwidth for everyone.

The RC1 give away copy is good till June 1, 2010, at which point you will have to pay for the privilege to continue using it… though it may take till then to download in the first place.

Update: Download available HERE

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I was browsing the CBC.ca website the other day and found an article about Canadian universities which compelled me to leave a comment, so I clicked on the handy “sign up to comment” button.  Things went downhill from there.

Apparently every time I tried to submit my information it was considered “unsafe” and it would return me to the sign up screen to fill in all my information without telling me exactly what it was I was doing wrong.  I went through the signup page 3 times before I realized what was happening.  CBC.ca was filtering the form input, common practice for protecting a database from an SQL injection attack, but instead of removing or encoding the offending characters they were just rejecting the input with no feedback.

For the those unfamiliar with databases, the & (ampersand) symbol, as well as a choice few others, mean certain things when used in a database function.

This makes sense to protect against someone trying to compromise the database, but what about someone who was just trying to say that the very excellent Quirks & Quarks hosted by Bob McDonald is their favorite CBC radio show? How many people would actually realize what was going on?

I’ll add this to my list of things not to do when designing a website…

One of the biggest obstacles I’ve come across during my first few years at University is that there are no clear jumping off points if you want to break out of the theory behind it all and get in to the practical aspects of computers.  Finding these jumping off points can be difficult and will vary depending on what it is you’d like to do. Check out some great suggestions after the jump!
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In the last few months I’ve been making a few more professional decisions.  I’m nowhere near done university yet I’ve been so anxious to learn everything I possibly can about my chosen field of Computer Science that I have less than a year left in my major yet I’m still close to two years away from graduating.

I’ve realized that it’s time for me to pick a specialty.  I started this degree because I have had a genuine interest in programming ever since I got my hands on an old APCO Turbo and the book “101 BASIC Games” courtesy of my dad (who in his defence had no idea what he picked up at a library sale for fifty cents would keep me locked in the basement teaching myself to program for almost 3 years instead of going outside and mowing the lawn).  Over the last few years, however, I’ve discovered that while I still enjoy programming, there are quite a few things which I find more interesting.

I’ve developed quite an interest in the field of networking and security.  The feeling of magic is the same one I had all those years ago when I first layed hands on that old APCO Turbo and discovered that by changing what was in the PRINT statements I could make the computer talk to me, but there’s more to the story than that…

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Antivirus 360 is one of the dirtiest little malware applications I’ve had the pleasure of coming across lately. It embeds itself in Word documents generally received through email or MSN from “friends” who are infected as well. Characterized by popups and warnings telling you that your computer is infected (no kidding?), it links you to a website that wants you to pay for an application to remove the virus.  This is the new definition of “viral marketing”.

I’ve seen this particular virus popping up quite often lately, and I’ve had first hand experience removing it from several computers, so I figured I’d post my 4 step guide to removing Antivirus 360 in under 10 minutes.

1) Download Malwarebytes Anti-Malware

2) Install and run Malwarebytes Anti-Malware (deep scan)

3) ????

4) Profit!

Note: Be absolutely SURE to remove all your restore points afterward as I guarantee you it has embedded itself in one if not all of your restore points. A scan of all disinfected computers with Avast! Antivirus has confirmed this behavior. AV360 tends to block the execution of Malwarebytes, but it can be closed easily with task manager as long as there are no browser windows open.

Sometimes if you’ve tried to remove this program manually it can leave you with an incredibly annoying error popup saying that it can’t find certain files.  This can be removed using Autorun Eater from Download.com (don’t be afraid, it’s supposed to make that goat noise).

Quick Recap:

• Malwarebytes Anti-Malware  [link]
• Autorun Eater [link]
• Avast! Antivirus [link]

Amazon just went nuclear on the public API front, making over a terrabyte worth of information available to developers through a searchable API rivaling Google. Everything from US census information and labour statistics to the entire English section of Wikipedia in machine readable format.

What kind of programs could you write having access to publicly available genomes and the entire chemistry library for the National Center for Biotechnology Information? With thousands of computers sitting around just waiting to crunch numbers for you through Amazon’s EC2 service, we’ll have self aware robots with Stephen Hawking’s genome and the entire encyclopedic knowledge of Wikipedia knocking at our doors in no time.

The only problem I can see from this set up so far is that these are not dynamic data sets but merely snapshots (albeit huge snapshots) from a point in time and Amazon is still unclear as to how often they plan to update them. Labor statistics are all fine and dandy if they’re up to date, otherwise you’re really just doing a history project.

The amount of data on the web these days is enormous and having it all organized through one standardized interface is a powerful tool. It’s only a matter of time before we start seeing more sites like this pop up.

Okay, this makes me happy and I’m not sure why. http://qcjeph.livejournal.com/100901.html

A fine example of what Apple Logic Studio is capable of, and I’m looking forward to seeing the Apple Pro Apps team at SIAST on Thursday demonstrate the newest features of this platform.  Just in case anybody wasn’t in the know, the Pro Apps team is doing a two day seminar on Apple media programs, registration is free and if you’ve got some spare time on your hands I’d suggest going to take a look.

At the very least? Free swag I’m sure.