Vista’s File Copy - The Real Story
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
This post by Jeff Atwood is definitely a MUST READ. Everyone’s been complaining about Vista’s file copy. “It’s so much slower!” they say. However, Vista’s file copy is based on an improved algorithm and performs better in most cases, as compared to XP.
The thing is, Vista’s file copy performance is only perceived to be slower. It does not reflect it’s actual performance. No point in me repeating the whole article, go read it yourself now!
Tags: out_there
Standard Security Measures, Please
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
I’m so pissed - a group of developers, paid to maintain an intranet/website, don’t even know how to implement the most basic of security/privacy measures.. and they call themselves “experts”.
Dear “experts”,
1) Beware of SQL Injection
SQL injections are one of the things most (decent) web programming books cover in their database access chapters. SQL injection hacks easy to detect and carry out. Fortunately, it is equally easy to prevent - in ASP.NET for example, the OleDbCommand has a parameters property. Always use Parameter.Add() to add in user supplied data to a SQL query.
2) Encrypt passwords!
Never, ever store passwords in plain sight in a database! Anyone who’s able to gain read access to the users table, may be able to execute other parts of your Website. In PHP for example, there’s a MD5() function that encrypts a given string using a one-way algorithm. When a user is registered, MD5() the password before storing it in the database. When the user next logins, simply MD5() the password again and check if it matches the one in database. If you want to provide a “Forgot Password” function, then you’ll need to look for a suitable 2-way encryption algorithm.
Of course, there a lots more security best practices, and I think these best practices should be covered in each and every IT course’ syllabus.
Gay Week?
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
*Shiver*
The past week can’t get any gay-er.. I watched “I now pronounce you Chuck and Larry“, where there were scenes like:
Then came our TARC Imagine Cup 2007 promotion week, where there were scenes like:
To top it all off, I watched “Blades of Glory” just now.. what a week..
*shiver*
Pondering Google
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
Larry Dignan has written an excellent piece on Google’s future. Who would possibly imagine Google to be targeting $100 billion in annual revenue?
Most interestingly, he mentions that Google dives into all sorts of markets, but they do a lot of these things just to keep competitors like Microsoft on it’s toes guessing their next move. Also much misunderstood is the rumor that Google is releasing a Google OS. Thing is, much of the Google OS is already out there!! “Google OS” is actually alive and kicking in Google’s datacenters - all the stuff we’re using now, like it’s mail, video, word processor and spreadsheet tools are in effect running on Google OS.
I can’t possibly summarize Larry’s article. You’ve simply gotta read it for yourself.
The Only Thing I Like About Vista
Posted by Jonathan Ng | Filed under Technical
The only thing that I truly love about Vista, is the recovery options available.
I was trying to patch some files for themeing (more on that later), and screwed up my shell32.dll file. I could have just repaired the installation, but I opted to format my C: drive. Since all of my files were already on another partition, I just needed to copy some files on my desktop. That’s when the command prompt came in handy. All I did was:
C:\> d:
D:\> mkdir OldDesktop
D:\> c:
C:\> xcopy \users\jonathan\desktop d:\olddesktop /s /e
mkdir command makes a directory, and xcopy command copies entire directories.
After some effort, I was able to patch my uxtheme and apply visual styles to my Vista. The instructions here are pretty good, but remember than you only need to patch the 3 files. The tricky thing is, when you try to copy certain files (by copy and pasting them), it might not work. I had to use xcopy (again) to forcefully copy certain files. Anyway, patching uxtheme in Vista is definitely not for the faint hearted.
