Tiago’s Tech Blog

Today, I bring you something that happened with me recently and that I think it is worth sharing.

As some of my readers may know, I applied for a Master’s degree in Advanced Software Engineering at the University of Leicester. As of a couple of months ago, I received a letter saying I had been accepted. The said letter was a conditional offer from the University, where the condition was obtaining my current degree (BSc in Computer Science) with an average grade no lower than 65%.

“Perfect.” - I thought. 65% in a 20 point scale represents 13 points, which would be totally doable with my 14.2 points average.

Still, just to be sure, I decided to e-mail the Post-Graduate Admissions Office to assert how much would 65% be in my scale. For much of my surprise, I am told that 65% actually corresponds to 16 marks in my grading system. I was shocked. This meant that my goal simply could not be done…

I e-mailed the PGA office back, asking whether that hadn’t in fact been a mistake. Some days passed. Since the last time I e-mailed the PGA office it took them some two weeks to come back at me, I thought I’d send in the artillery and decided to call them. The lady who picked up my call didn’t know how to help me but checked with a colleague who told her that I would have to contact the UK NARIC if I wasn’t happy with that grade comparison.

So I did. I e-mailed UK NARIC, only to realize that this is actually a paid service in the UK that provides people with comparison statements between systems in foreign countries and the UK system. Without being very helpful, their reply mentioned a £40 fee for requesting such a statement, without a warranty at all that I would get in at Leicester in the end.

In the same day (yesterday), I also decided to e-mail my course coordinator (Prof. Patrício Domingues) at ESTG; I thought that perhaps he could help me and he did in fact help me. He provided me with a link to the Portuguese Republic Diary (Diário da República) where it clearly states that the grade range of 60% through 69% in the UK corresponds to 16 marks in Portugal. Bummer. It was all going down the drain… but I wasn’t just about to give up. There was one last option: having my entrance requirement lowered.

The last thing I did yesterday was e-mailing Ms. Stacey March, from the Department of Computer Science at Leicester. She’d been the one to announce that I had been accepted so I thought that she could help me in this situation. In my second e-mail, since the artillery had failed before - I had to send a nuke. And so I did. I factored it all in. I mentioned the fact that on the entry requirements it says that the applicant should have a good Second Class degree, and that Second Class is actually divided in the First and Second division (60 to 69% and 50 to 59% respectively). So technically I do have a Second Class degree with my 14 marks. Plus, I threw all that I have left at them: my work experience at Omerta, the one-month job I got in Leiria, the fact that I am currently engaged in the Google Summer of Code program, and that I still am a Microsoft Student Partner. That, on top of the fact of having scored much higher than what’s required in the TOEFL exam.

An hour ago, I had a surprise. The PGA office was e-mailing me, notifying that they reviewed my transcripts and together with UK NARIC they agreed that I would be accepted with a minimum of 13 points in a 20-point based scale.

YAHOO!

Essentially I feel like I was accepted twice…

Till the next time

It might be old news for some, but I am sure that not everyone is aware of this yet.

The good folks at the iPhone Dev Team did it again and after some days that just seemed too long, they released the new tool called redsn0w. This tool is meant to jailbreak the iPhone 3G only, and only with the firmware 3.0 - jailbreak for the 3GS still hasn’t been released but since the flaw seems to exist in the 3G, it should only be a matter of days (and of the Dev Team getting their hands on a 3GS - feel free to chip in) until the jailbreak is released.

The process is pretty simple, just update to 3.0 normally through iTunes and when that’s done, search for the correct IPSW in the following folder (if you’re using Vista or 7):
C:\Users\<username>\AppData\Roaming\Apple Computer\iTunes\iPhone Software Updates
(For XP, search around the Application Data folders under Documents and Settings)

When you have this file, just feed it to redsn0w and follow the steps. In under 5 minutes you should be running a jailbroken 3.0.

After this is done, if you also want to operator-unlock your phone, you’ll need ultrasn0w. This is the replacement for the long-lived yellowsn0w. In case you weren’t aware of this fact, the new baseband has a hole again, which allows for it to be hacked. This way, we can all use different operator SIM cards without a problem.

To install ultrasn0w, you simply need to add the repo http://repo666.ultrasn0w.com and then search and install the application ultrasn0w on Cydia. Reboot your phone, and you’re done. It really is THAT easy!

So what are you waiting for? Go for it!

With the advent of Microsoft’s latest operating system, the Windows 7, many people have come to state that Windows 7 is Windows Vista done right. Well, excuse me tech whizzes but as an IT professional myself, I beg to differ.

Windows Vista was a massive stepping stone in Microsoft’s history. It was the first upgrade from the ever so loved Windows XP, that admittedly had its flaws at birth but it grew to become perhaps the most stable operating system that Microsoft had built until then. It is lightweight and to prove that we have the netbook market share that is dominated by Microsoft.

Now, we have to be analytic. What did Vista bring to the table when compared to XP? In a very brief and sketchy approach, it brought cleanliness to the user folders (no one really liked the spaces in ‘Documents and Settings’), it brought UAC that albeit poorly-loved, it brought with it a great layer of security, it brought some driver modifications including a redesigned sound-stack and these last two put together with the bloated memory usage, made Vista Microsoft’s bastard child.

Well, when you look at it closely, pretty much every Vista driver will work on Windows 7, including the soundcard drivers. UAC is also part of Windows 7 and has been partly redesigned so that it isn’t so naggy. Still, my bottom line is that when switching from XP, Microsoft was always going to get complaints. When you add security, people will complain because the system is more restrictive. When you add features that change the way people interface with the computer, people will complain because we have an inertial nature and are typically against change.

However, now that Vista was Microsoft’s escape goat for all the changes that simply had to be made, Windows 7 can come in its shinning armour and save the day. Because Windows 7 is so much better than Vista, even though it’s actually Vista, just lighter.

Yep, the title says it all. Today I have received my shiny new VISA from Citibank with the initial $505 loaded on it. The other kewl stuff in the envelope included a neat, Google-branded, moleskin and two GSoC 2009 stickers. One’s going on my laptop, if I can gut it!

Well, I’ll leave you with some photos now!

Howdy readers,

Today I bring you one of the long time mysteries for me. Why in heavens does Mozilla insist on making different menus for Firefox and Thunderbird depending on whether you’re using it on Linux or Windows? Seriously, I just can’t figure out the reason for this… the Options menu sits in the Tools toolbar in Windows, whereas in the Linux version, it goes under Edit. But WHY?!

‘Till the next time!

Alright people, this is really happening . Today, I got the final acceptance letter from Leicester’s Postgraduate Department. They provided me with a conditional offer where the only condition is that I finish my degree with at least 65% of overall grade average. This is totally feasible since my grade average, last I checked, was of 14 marks in a 20-point scale, which rounds to roughly 70% in a loose conversion.

Cool, hey? Now let’s just hope those money leechs at the bank will loan me the money I need!

Just on a little background, I’ll be taking the Advanced Software Engineering (MSc) course at the University of Leicester, with a start date of September 28th 2009. When I’m done, I’ll finally be a jack of all trades and a Master of Advanced Software Engineering

Jeremy Allison over at ZDNet has just posted an article where in a nutshell he states that Microsoft broke the interoperability of the ODF format between Office 2007 and other implementations of this format. According to this gentleman, the guys over at Microsoft are mean little bastards because they implemented the ODF standard verbatim. Whoa, whoa, whoa little Timmy!

Last I checked, there was a war going on towards Microsoft because they were mean chauvinistic bastards who insisted on not making Internet Explorer more standards compliant, because the standards were the way to go and anything other than the standards just breaks pages on browsers that implement the standard. I totally agree with this point, but by the same measure, I have to disagree with this ODF quarrel.

With SP2, Microsoft implemented the ODF specification to its fullest. Then there are other implementations like OpenOffice’s that have additions to the specification, but that aren’t part of the standard! Yet, it is Microsoft that people come out to the streets to criticize, and not the people who engineered a poorly designed standard. Please, don’t take me wrong. I am also against OOXML, but that doesn’t mean that the alternatives are perfect and perhaps Microsoft is just proving a point amongst narrow-minded people who don’t care for a little reasoning.

Want spreadsheets to properly support formulas in ODF? Make it part of the friggin’ standard! Don’t expect Microsoft to deviate from the standard for interop’s sake, especially now when you have before criticized the company for not being standards-compliant.

My bottom-line is: who is to decide whether a standard should be implemented in a strict manner or not? And to which extent should interop efforts be made? All in all, if Microsoft designs interoperability towards OpenOffice, it might just break things with another Office Suite that decided to implement things differently.

Hold your horses, this isn’t a flaw per se. There isn’t a massive hole in Windows 7 that allows the execution of malicious code. Instead, there’s a legacy feature that has been around ever since Windows 98 (maybe even 95, but that I do not know for sure) that is used by virus writers to fool users into executing their viruses.

The feature I am talking about is the ability to hide the extension for known file types. This comes enabled by default on XP and Vista and it was not addressed in Windows 7. Basically, as Adrian over at ZDNet reports, with this feature enabled, a file with ‘double extension’ can easily be fooled for its fake extention. For example, a file named Report.txt.exe will automatically have the ‘.exe’ extension hidden, and to the eyes of the less computer-savvy it can easily be mistaken for an innocent Report.txt file. Moreso when the creator of the virus is careful enough to add an innocent notepad icon to the malevolent application.

To be perfectly honest, I agree with Adrian. This is a feature that I disable right after I install Windows. More often than not I find myself having to change the extension of a file, and it’s impossible to do so with this feature enabled and without resorting to the command line.

This feature is dangerous and it has been the gateway for many viruses to spread. Adrian also suggests adding some sort of overlay to the icons of executable files that aren’t digitally signed - this is an incredibly good idea. Maybe something glarey as the icons of running applications on the new Windows 7 start bar. If properly done, this could be flashey and would cause a good impression on end-users, both visually and safety-wise. Personally, I would remove the feature altogether and leave it off - and please, without the possibility of working around it on the registry - but that’s just my two pennies worth of opinion.

Have a good one.

‘Times are a changing’ - nowadays more than ever this is true. Companies and individuals rely more and more on the Internet and let’s be honest: the Internet is not a safe place, not by a slim chance. I’m not even talking about viruses, which on their own are a pretty big threat. What I am going on about are hackers. You know, the evil guys who want all your money and your credit card numbers.

Don’t take it personally, no hacker has a grudge especially against you or your company, but unless you take preemptive measures to be on the front line, then you are at risk. There is a chance that you are at risk right now. This is the sort of thing where you cannot possibly think “this only happens to other people” - well, think again, it happened to electrical power plants in the US.

Are you convinced that you need to do something about it yet? I hope you are.

So what’s the whole idea you ask? Well, the idea is being ahead of the hackers, it is thinking like an hacker so that you can be preemptive and patch the holes in your organization. Do you know how store-owners set up motion sensors near windows that can easily be broken? The idea here is just the same.

This concept is called ethical hacking. You are taught on the ways, tricks and subterfuges of hackers so that you can have a different insight on your company. Believe it or not, but the biggest flaw in computer systems is actually us, the users. We are easily duped and deceived by people pretending to be who they aren’t, and this has reached astronomical levels. The most blatant case nowadays is when you get an e-mail that pretends to be a legitimate e-mail from your bank, from a work-mate or simply people who would be innocently sending you pictures.

Well my fellow Internauts, no enough care is much care these days. The EC-Council provides you with the security training that you need not only to help yourself and your company, but also to help other companies. This of course is an investment that can get a return flowing in so in the end, it is all benefits! This isn’t all; if you are trained in IT Security, your job opportunities simply tenfold. Is that not what everyone wants at a time of recession and crisis?

The iClass by the EC-Council has the following categories:
-Security Fundamentals
-Ethical Hacking 
-Penetration Testing 
-Computer Forensics
 
-Disaster Recovery 
-Secure Programming

So whether you are a newbie (hey, there’s no shame about that!) and you need the fundamentals, or whether you fancy a job at a crime lab doing scientific forensics for a living, the iClass covers it all. You just take your pick!

If you are interested, and here’s hoping that you won’t miss this great opportunity, then here are some links that will help you on the EC-Council site.

Program Site:
http://iclass.eccouncil.org/

Different Certifications:
http://iclass.eccouncil.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=68&Itemid=91 

The CEH (Certified Ethical Hacker) :
http://www.eccouncil.org/ceh.htm 

Certification Center:
http://www.isc2.org/ 

CompTIA:
http://www.comptia.org/

IT Security

As the newest LG KM900 is released, I can’t help the thought: LG, you’re doing it wrong.

Honestly, I do not feel motivated to write about this phone simply because it is not aimed at mainstream; whoever tells me otherwise is clearly missing on the whole point. Put it this way, a phone isn’t really just a phone anymore these days. The market requires customisable and flexible phones, such phones that can be expanded. What is the point of having a next-gen, touch-screen phone if afterwards you can’t extend it with third-party applications and functionality?

In my humble opinion, it is safe to say that nowadays, a phone without:

1) Windows Mobile
or
2) Symbian OS
or
3) iPhone OS

is just doomed to extinction and failure. I know I wouldn’t buy anything outside that. (I am a proud owner of an iPhone 3G by the way)