Mac os x vs windows

Now there are many of these comparisons on the internet, which usually end up with the windows side saying macs cost to much blah blah blah. But thats not what I'm dealing with, this is Mac os x vs Windows and with no messing about, heres why mac os x is better (even on a pc):

No viruses:Typical response is that no one bother writing viruses for the mac. True, but that doesn't take away the hassle of having to deal with them on windows. +1 for mac os x

Great programming environment: This is one many people aren't concerned about, but mac os x with its unix foundation is MUCH better than windows for programming.+1 for mac os x

Smooth, resource efficient graphics: If any of you have had to disable aero because it's slowing the computer down, you'll know what i'm talking about. Mac os x is much quicker and doesn't feel as cumbersome as windows.+1 for mac os x

Ease of use: Now, this is where many windows fans say "well, we're not stupid we don't need it dumbed down". So what? You deliberately make things difficult to prove you're not dumb? The fact is, the easier the better. If its simpler I don't have to spend so much time on it, meaning i can actually get things done.+1 for mac os x

Total score:

Mac os x:   4

Windows:  0


So there you go, conclusive proof that mac os x is better, you can thank me for solving the mac vs pc debate later ;). Any objections?

Screw the people...yeah

The Daily Telegraph has reported on a £30bn railway project for a super fast track between london and birmingham. Not a big deal, the gov is finally doing something for the people, right?
Wrong. The total population of birminghm and london is about 8 million, giving a cost of £3750 per person, even though the vast majority aren't going to use the railway. £3750 is enough to buy a car and at 10L/100km it costs roughly £25 pounds to drive to birmingham from london, yet the current slow train, neverminds the superfast one, costs £40 economy fare. Add that you can do what you want with a car, not just drive between birmingham and london, make this a very hard shafting for an already very sore bunch of people. Why would the government do this?
Well, if they bought the people a car each, they would then be better off, plus having to pay less to travel. This way the people stay poor, and end up paying more so they're doubly worse off.

Results

My assignment results have just been returned from my latest politics exam. I scored 57%. 57 fucking percent. My tutor gave me a meagre 50 words of feedback for a 1200 word essay which he marked so low, was he trying to mark it as quick as possible? Maybe grab a few extra minutes playing Runescape or what? Fuck.

Firefox add-ons

Firefox add-ons

I was reflecting on the inherent awesomeness of Firefox and its obvious superiority to the other browsers, when I realised that a very useful feature is that it is so easy to download and install plugins and that there are so many available. So on to the main point, here are my favourite three plugins:

• Foxyproxy, pretty much the ultimate proxy plugin allowing to enable/disable your proxy very easily. Its also very easy to install new proxies and you can even use more than one proxy at a time.
• Tineye image search, a very handy feature for finding higher res versions of an image or even tracking down people who have posted an image. The goggle of the image world.
• User agent switcher, easily switch between useragents. You can make it look like your using IE on windows NT to safari on a mac, with just a couple of clicks.

If you're on firefox i suggest you go download these immediately. If you're not on firefox, well, why the hell aren't you?

Moving to C++

Well, after finishing my latest bit of C code I've finally decided I've had enough. No more shall I put up with stupid string functions, no more shall I be annoyed at not being able to declare variables in for loops, no more I say, shall I have to put up with C's miserable void, that must be inserted into the parameters of function that don't take arguments. C++ , with the speed and power of C and the clean syntax, and classes, and templates, and not to mention strings. Yes C++ is the future.

Power of the people?

Recently I've been thinking about the broken promises of the UK government. Society clearly voted for what it wanted, and if the people were the ones in control they would have gotten it. However the government turned tail on a shitload of promises meaning, the people didn't get what they wanted, what they voted for, what THEY decided the politicians should do and what the politicians said they would do. Anyone else noticed this cycle?
Labour is voted in because the tories did a bad job, then a couple of elections down the line, the tories are voted in again because the labour are doing a bad job, it's a cycle. This link shows that very well.

Another thing that needs to be cleared up: the UK is not a democracy, it is a republic. In a republic the people elect leaders to decide matters on their behalf, in a democracy the people directly decide matters themselves you can check it out in wikipedia or a dictionary if you don't believe me. We're all in this together, eh?

DoS studies

Well, I've recently been learning about denial of service attacks, and I must admit it is an intriguing subject. Some info:

• The SYN flood method of DoS attacks is perhaps the simplest and spoofs the ip address, so it can't be traced.
• The SYN flood methods (illustrated in the first, rather funny picture) works by sending an ip header with an invalid sender IP address. When the server responds with an ACK packet there is no reply, so it resends it several more times and then finally closes the connection. This is a lot of resource usage for each packet.
• When several computers are used in a DoS attack it is called a Distributed DoS attack or DDoS attack.
• Another method of causing denial of service, and more effective than the simple SYN flood method is the Slowloris method.The Slowloris method is however traceable because it relies on creating a connection meaning the ip has to be sent. The Slowloris method is also ineffective on IIS servers. 

DISCLAIMER: THE AUTHOR IS NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY DAMAGE THAT MAY BE CAUSED USING INFORMATION POSTED ON THIS BLOG. IT IS FOR EDUCATIONAL PUROSES ONLY.

(LOL'd)

First set of assignments sent off

Finally I've completed the first set of assignments for my OU course that started this october, namely:
MST121 using maths
DD203 power, dissent, equility
T175 networked living.

They were quite tough especially DD203, which started with a 1200 word essay(gah) and took me the best part of a week.The other weren't so bad, but T175 wanted some weird crap trying to force me to post to the forums, wtf?