ZachWingo

My dad wanted me to put a website up so that he could use it to showcase some of his work to potential employers/customers. As I’ve mentioned many times before, I am not a designer so I once again tried to keep things really simple and it seemed to work pretty well. He really wanted a way to show off pictures of his work and provide a short description/caption for each picture. I didn’t want to make the photo section myself, so I used Zen Photo and made a template using the same design and so you can’t even tell the photo gallery is another application. It was fun even though I still have to make some finishing touches. You can see it at IvanWingo.com.

Purpose

The purpose of Unit 01 is to discuss the history and purpose of the Java Language. We discussed in detail the concept behind the Java VM with it’s pros and cons.

Concepts

• Compilation ─ in the Java language the code does not get compiled into the Operating Systems native language but rather it gets compiled into Byte Code.

• Byte Code ─ is code that can be run on the Java VM.
• Java VM ─ is short for Java Virtual Machine and acts as a virtual machine on which the Java byte code can run.
• Object Oriented Programming ─ is a programming paradigm based on the idea of creating objects. These objects contain all the code necessary to use them just like real world objects contain all the built in functionality needed to use them. This does not mean all possible features are available, but all the functionality available is designed to work on/with that specific object.
• Class ─ is the blueprint that defines the data and functionality that can operate on that data.
• Object ─ is an instance of a class. The class defines the object and one the object is create it contains everything define in it’s class.

Implication

The Java Language was created by Sun Microsystems in 1995 and promised “Write Once, Run Anywhere”. The idea was to create a Java Virtual Machine for each of the many different operating systems from appliances to servers. Java code would then be compiled into Byte Code that could then in turn run on any of the Java VM. This made code portable across many different platforms because developers would only need to write a single application and compile it once and it could then be run on any machine that had a Java VM.

The language was developed almost exclusively as an Object Oriented Programming Language. The purpose behind this type of programming is to model the real world in which objects contain all the necessary built-in functionality to use them. We define an Object by using what is called a Class which is essentially a blueprint for the object. The Class defines all the necessary data and function/methods to operate on that data. It’s not actually an Object until we actually create an instance of it which would be like actually building an automobile at a factory. It remains a concept on paper until it’s actually built and then it becomes an automobile. Objects are define in a class and remain nothing more than a concept until actually created.

Note: Since the creation of this list better solutions are now available. When I created this hostfile list there weren’t any good free solutions to blocking adult sites…but now you can get a free and more comprehensive solution by using Opendns.org for your dns server and it allows you to create a free account and then block adult sites. It works very well and it’s free so you should use that instead and leave your hostfile for blocking adware/spyware sites.

About 1 year ago I began working on a host file that would contain porn sites for the purpose of blocking them. This has been done for years now to block things like ads and spyware but no one has been willing to work on one for adult/porn sites.

To make this work all you have to do is go to C:\WINNT\system32\drivers and open the hostfile with notepad or any text editor. It’s important to note that this file does not have and extension. You can rename it so it has a .txt to make it easier to open but remember to remove the extension when your done. Currently the list contains over 16,000 porn host names. In other words, zachwingo.info and www.zachwingo.info are considered two different host names so you will see two entries for almost all domains. To see the list follow this link to the Host File

The site All.net has produced and excellent, well written but concise article on input overflow. The article is titled Input Overflow and discusses exactly what input overflow is, how it happens and how to prevent it.

Google now offers StarOffice 8 for free as part of its Google Pack. It costs $70 if you purchase it from Sun Microsystems directly. Before you download the Google Pack for the first time it will ask you to select the products you want to download and install. You can choose to install only StarOffice or everything—it’s your choice. Once you click ‘download’ it will download the ‘Google Updater’ which actually downloads and installs the software for you. After the installation is complete you can uninstall the updater.

I am interested in this because a $70 product is being offered for free compared to Microsoft Office which is several hundred dollars. In a corporate environment Microsoft Office is the best Choice hands down. But for the average person who doesn’t want to spend hundreds of dollars this is a great opportunity. Google does look to profit from this in a few way such as through the integrated search bar included in the Office Suite. See Picture below.

The functionality of StarOffice Writer offers virtually all the same features as Microsoft Office with a few differences. It doesn’t include a ‘Grammar Check’ but that really shouldn’t be an issue for most people. The menu system is arranged slightly differently with different name. This difference is very minor and will be easily understood by the average person. The picture below shows the difference between the “Insert” menu in both office suites. I’m not sure if the color highlighting I added makes things more confusing or not but I wanted to show how the same items in each menu are related.

The first time you open one of the programs in StarOffice, you’ll notice speed is slow compared to Microsoft Office taking almost 3-10 seconds to fully load depending on the system. On my old Dell 700MHZ it takes about 10 seconds and my newer Dual Core AMD X2 3800+ it loads in about 2-4 seconds. On the flip side, Microsoft Office loads almost instantly on my newer system and only about 2 on my old system. On an older system Microsoft Office is significantly faster.

When working with images in StarOffice 8 Writer, it can be very frustrating because it wants to anchor the image to the page, paragraph, a character and does not give the option to float the image anywhere you want thus often locking the image in a weird place that can’t be easily moved. Microsoft Office give you the option to display the pictures “In front of text” creating a float that can be placed anywhere, even over text without affecting the wrapping of the text around it.

A feature that is very useful is the ability to export documents into a large number of different formats including PDF files. Also, files sizes tend to be a little smaller from StarOffice when using the Open Document Type (.odt).

In my opinion StarOffice and OpenOffice are far superior to Microsoft Works or Corel Office Suite which usually comes free when you buy a system from a major manufacturer like Dell, Compaq, hp, etc.. I didn’t talk about the other products in StarOffice but I may in the future. Overall its a great opportunity for those who don’t have a need or desire to spend the hundreds of dollars on Microsoft Office.

In my last post titled Bayesian Spam Filtering I talked about why the Bayesian probability theory is the best method for detecting spam email. In order to get around this approach and other techniques which rely on the text, spammers have turned to images and PDF files. They have been using images for a number of months now, but have only recently began using PDF files. Technically speaking this is a brilliant method because PDF files have become a standard for sharing documents. The website ZDNET.co.uk is reporting that an engineer from Adobe has said in an email that there is no known security risk involved with PDF files in the article Adobe: No threat from PDF spam

It will be interesting to see what methods are developed for detecting this type of spam. There are solutions being discussed such as filters that read each PDF attachment and applies same probability formula as with any email. However, this method is not without error. One example is that images can also be embedded into PDF files just like emails. Computers are able to read text in images but when you have to embed them into PDF documents and then extract the pictures to read the text in the images, it becomes a very resource intensive task. The best way to combat spam is to watch how you give out your email information and a lot of patience.