This came to mind recently, what the hell is Opera Software thinking? They’re code is still proprietary, is there any point or benefit. I mean, even webkit is open source, they’ll only be left further behind if they keep this closed.

Come on Opera! Release your code to the world!

PHP, like any language has its particularities. One of the them is the inability to understand escaped characters which aren’t in double quotes. So yes, there is a technical difference between a quote and a double quote in a programming language, in PHP at least, if anyone asks.

How does it work? Let’s look at some examples!

$stringData = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?> \n SoraGami';
fwrite($fh, $stringData);

So, that PHP script generates an XML file as you can see in our variable $stringData. However I’ve omitted the other code as it isn’t the focus of this article. So, highlighted in blue is the famous escaped character which, in PHP and in all C-insipired languages creates a new line. However, to use it, you must put it inside double quotes (“) and not single quotes (‘). Unfortunately, in the scenario presented here, we needed to put the whole string inside single quotes so that PHP wouldn’t mess itself up with the double quotes inside the XML doctype.

In case you didn’t know, if you have elements with quotes in your string, you can use a combination of double and single quotes to make it work, like this:

'  "..."  '
"  '...'  "

Maybe that helped. Anyway, back to our previous example. The way we made it, because \n is within single quotes, it won’t work and appear as text instead. In this case, $stringData would give this:

<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”UTF-8″?> \n SoraGami

Unfortunately this is far from what we wanted to achieve, which was to have SoraGami on a new line. We could do the following:

$stringData = "<?xml version='1.0' encoding='UTF-8'?> \n SoraGami";
fwrite($fh, $stringData);

That would work, but in my opinion Single Quotes don’t look like XML. So, instead, you can do it like in two sequences:

$stringData = '<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>';
fwrite($fh, $stringData);

$stringData = "\n SoraGami";
fwrite($fh, $stringData);

While this works, you might be wondering why the second sequence doesn’t overwrite what we did before. Our PHP $fh variable is written like this:

$fh = fopen($myFile, 'w') or die("can't open file");

‘w’ says to write, but PHP is session-based in the browser, and so as long as we are in the same session and didn’t explicitly fclose() our writing script, PHP is going to append whatever we write to the file. To overwrite, either reload the page (new session) or fclose() the file and make a new fopen() and fwrite().

If you want to append to the file, just changed the ‘w’ parameter for ‘a’. Tizag has a nice tutorial for PHP File Handling that explains further on what we did here.

You might also be wondering why ‘\n’ doesn’t work and “\n” works. The reason is simple, PHP will escape \n regardless of context when inside double quotes. That means if you wrote that:
“The server can be found through Windows on \\nopi”, you would obtain that:

The server can be found through Windows on \
opi

However, since you don’t want PHP to escape the \n in this situation, you would write the following:
‘The server can be found through Windows on \\nopi’, which would give the correct:

The server can be found through Windows on \\nopi

A few days ago Microsoft released the official US pricing for Windows 7, which got detailed in a beautiful feature comparison by Paul Thurrott. In some ways, I could say Microsoft did exactly what they shouldn’t have done, put the pricing way too high. Windows 7 had an incredible momentum and it just got blatantly killed. And so I decided to take Paul Thurrott’s feature comparison table and pricing and add Mac OS X Snow Leopard and Ubuntu Jaunty Jackalope to it to see how it compares.

Availability

There’s only one version of Mac OS X, and it’s full featured. Ubuntu, along with 99% of Linux distributions, is 100% free, so obviously there’s no point in making different versions. Mac OS X doesn’t really come in upgrade form except for a limited time when a new version comes out. Most Mac users will buy the upgrade when it comes out or get the latest OS with a new Mac, and OS X’s retail price is just 10$ above Home Premium’s upgrade price, so Apple doesn’t have to make an upgrade version permanently available.

User Interface Features

This is one area where Windows 7 excels, the user interface. You get pretty dam close with OS X and Linux, but Windows 7’s interface is arguably more sophisticated and complete. Next up would be OS X of course, with its unbeatable Quicklook, but the Finder suffers. Linux unfortunately isn’t really up to par in this area, something common to the majority of Open Source software.

Security Features

Although IE 8 is the only browser to feature a “protected mode” as is described by Microsoft, Safari and Firefox are patched faster and have less security holes than IE. Both Mac and Ubuntu had better update systems since ages, with Ubuntu’s being considerably far ahead of both Mac and Windows. The Unix roots of Mac and Ubuntu have made them kings in Fast User Switching, Parental controls and granular User Account Control way before Windows, but Windows’ Action Center is a great managing tool lacking in Mac and Linux. The Windows Firewall is adequate, much better than Mac’s good-for-nothing Firewall, but still easily beaten by Ubuntu’s Firewall.

Since the very same Linux Kernel on Ubuntu is being used in high security server environments, you get all the benefits from those companies using Linux that require extreme security. When talking security, Linux is obviously a much more secure environment than Mac or Windows.

Performance Features

Nevermind ReadyDrive and what not, Mac and Linux never needed those and they remain gimmicks of Windows. 64 bit support has been on Linux since ages, OS X just catched up in much more graceful manners, physical processor support has never been limited on Mac or Linux, and Ram support really is only limited by what your motherboard can handle. The 16 TB number on Mac OS X is only a number to put on so users can more easily compare, but there’s no such thing. Every Unix system is entitled to the complete 64 bit support, much more than 16 TB, only limited by your hardware. Unfortunately Windows deliberately blocks users from using more RAM on Windows, and of course, the 4GB limit is only because of 32 bit.

Reliability Features

When talking reliability, Windows is only mostly playing catch-up. Since Mac OS X’s kernel is based on FreeBSD and Ubuntu’s is Linux, both systems have had a history of stellar stability beyond anything ever experienced on Windows. Even though NT 6.1 (Windows 7’s kernel) is fairly ahead of every other Windows kernel up to date, it still cannot match the Linux kernel, which is itself surpassed by the FreeBSD-based kernel called Darwin used on Mac OS X.

OS X never needed previous version compatibility modes, neither does Linux, so there’s no point, and fragmentation has always been an issue on Microsoft’s file systems, but not on Apple’s or the on the Linux community’s. In fact, defragmenting an OS X or Linux disk has always been pointless because of the way the file system is made. As long as you keep your system under 80% of disk space used, you should never face fragmentation issues on Mac OS X or Ubuntu.

All other abilities like Encryption and Virtual Hard-Drives included, are not new to Mac and Linux.

Bundled Applications

Browsers are included on each system, that’s a given. The only thing really missing is a graphics application and mini-games on Mac OS X. On Ubuntu, you get all those games in Linux-version, and more for free obviously, and instead of Paint you get a Photoshop competitor called Gimp, which is also free and open source. However, Gimp is much more complicated to use than Paint, which is easier and more complete than its predecessors, so I have to give Windows the upper hand here.

Apart from that, Mac OS X has had native and fast support for PDF for ever, and Windows PowerShell is shaded by the Terminal (command-line), which, if you know the Unix world, is the base of the system. Indeed, you can control any aspect of your system with the command-line on Mac and Linux, far ahead of what is possible with PowerShell.

Ubuntu also includes OpenOffice and a WordPad equivalent, which makes the WordPad thing really irrelevant.

Digital Media and Devices

Needless to say DVD playback is included on every Mac and Ubuntu system, along with better Image Viewing capabilities (RAW formats) and all the other bling. Where Windows is better though is in its entertainment specialty. TV tuners are abound on Windows systems, the Device Stage and syncing capabilities aren’t limited to the iPod or niche players as in Linux, and Windows Media Center is a truly complete experience. If you really use your computer as a computer though, Mac OS X will do a better job at being multimedia-centric than Windows or Linux (if you know the right software), and your Playstation 3 will be a faster, more reliable, cheaper and Blu-ray capable Media Center experience than the other solutions.

Networking Features

Networking is much more sophisticated on Windows and Linux than it is on Mac OS X, but Linux is definitely ahead. Simply said, Linux is also the most popular sever operating system, and it shows. Although complicated, its networking capabilities are far ahead of anything included on non-server versions of Windows and Mac. But even then, Windows and Mac servers can’t compete.

However, the order is reversed when it comes to simplicity. Mac gets it first for network KISS (Keep it Simple Stupid), Windows is in 2nd and Linux is way behind with its incomplete visual management tools for network (it’s really, really complicated).

Mobility Features

So, although I don’t know why Windows Sideshow is a feature (wasn’t it possible before?), it’s a given it already exists on Mac and Linux, and by the way Mac has way better support for dual screen environments than both other OSes, Windows has the upper hand here because it has more support. The fact is, Windows is more popular, thus, more devices work with it. Syncing with mobile devices is near in-existent on Linux and is relegated to the iPod Touch and the iPhone on the Mac. And of course, Tablet PC functionality is only included on Windows (and possibly Linux to a certain degree), afterall, Microsoft did invent the Tablet PC.

You may want to consider the multi-touch thing in Windows 7 as a disadvantage for heavy Wacom users though. I’ve had a very bad experience with the drawing pad which is recognized as a touch screen and doesn’t act as it should when drawing in Photoshop on Windows 7. Maybe Wacom’s going to fix this with drivers, but consider yourself warned if you’re an artist.

Enterprise Features

Windows has always been stellar in the enterprise. Arguably, there’s still a lot of things not charted here that Windows does better in an enterprise network than OS X or Ubuntu (or any other Linux distribution in fact). The only thing that really irritates me on Windows is Multilingual Interface Languages Packs.

On Linux and on Mac, you have access to all the languages you want, anytime. On Windows Home Premium, you can’t even type in Japanese if your system is in English. What’s more, applications on Mac and Linux install independent of the OS’s language, even better, Linux’s pacakge management ensures your applications are always available in whatever language you would use for your system’s, which, unlike Mac, makes multilingual not limited to Apple applications only.

On Windows, everything is heavily tied to the language you bought your Windows in. Not only do you have to buy the most expensive version to have multiple languages at all, software can only install on the system’s original language. For example, when IE 9’s first beta comes out, you won’t be able to install the English version on a system bought in French, even if a language pack has been installed to make it English. What’s more, you have to download and install language packs to get additional languages. On Mac and Linux, it’s already included and it’s as easy as logging out and logging back in.

Why should you pay?

All in all, the comparison is pretty tight. Where it isn’t is in the pricing. The only way the comparison can be equal is if you are comparing the Ultimate version of Windows to Mac OS X and Ubuntu. However, Mac OS X costs less than the lower-end Home Premium for Windows, and Ubuntu is absolutely free, not counting the myriad of costly software you’ll have to buy for Windows. To match the functionality included for Free in OpenOffice on Ubuntu (also available on Mac and Windows), you have to buy an edition of Office that costs 500$. The difference in price vs the what you get is outrageous.

If you don’t play games or have software only available on Windows and that’s not enough to switch, I assume you’re playing the “I-don’t-pay-for-Windows” game, or that you have a lot of money to waste.

Even though this might be the only reasonable price for Microsoft to keep on doing business, what Microsoft doesn’t see is that reducing the price of Windows would lower piracy and reverse the tendency of Windows to lose market share each year. The current pricing plan may be a short term success, but in the long run it’s suicide for Microsoft’s already endangered business.

But!

You pay for the platform. Buying Windows is buying free developer tools from Microsoft, access to a very prominent gaming platform, a ton of software only built for Windows, support from Microsoft, usability not available on Linux, and a bunch of devices that only work with Windows. So even though there’s the price, don’t forget Microsoft is a genius platform maker and living the Mac life, let alone the Linux life, is an often very limited life.

Today I got a funny experience on TechCrunch that led me to accept that yes, other IE alternatives really are incomplete, well, Safari is at least. So, I’m in Safari 4 on my Mac, browsing Tech Crunch, and I want to send a link to my friend in IM. I right click the link, click on copy link, and paste that in the chatbox.

Pastes: video by College Humor

The name of the link… wait, what? I try again, same thing. WTF?
I go in Firefox, and I right click > Copy Link Location (hey the title’s more obvious)
And it correctly pastes: http://www.collegehumor.com/video:1915736

Functionality issues? Dam right, I just switched back to Firefox.

Wireless network security is something often overlooked. Network is already complicated enough, most will simply bypass the complicated setups and go along with unprotected network access for years. But even if you go through the trouble, there’s a tone of ways to secure your router, some better than others, and sometimes choosing the correct solution is not easy. This is why I decided to create this short guide through which I’ll explain security solutions, what’s good about them, and what’s bad.

Unsecured Access

Although maybe not the best idea, unsecured access guarantees compatibility, speed and ease of use. No complicated key to enter, your network is always available no matter what. This is the worst solution of course, but something to consider if you live in a remote farm area.

SSID (Service Set IDentifier) Broadcast Hiding

Your SSID is your network name. Through your router’s setup, you can choose anything you like. This facilitates recognizing which network is yours when having to connect between multiple networks. It’s also how Windows or other OSes will be able to remember your network settings and automatically connect you. Your SSID is always broadcast over the air so that devices scanning for your network can find it. One easy technique to augment network security has been to stop broadcasting your SSID. This is an easy thing to do. What it does is it hides your router from scanning. That way, only people knowing what your SSID is can access your network.

SSID hiding is however flawed. Each time a user connects to your network, be it you turning on your laptop or a gaming console, your SSID is transferred in the clear, even on an encrypted connection. Widely available software allows to sniff network connections and easily retrieve the SSID. Additionally, most of the time your network isn’t even hidden, it simply comes up as a blank wireless entry, which, however requiring to enter an SSID to connect to, allows a cracker to trick your connection into reconnecting you, broadcasting your SSID in the clear when you connect.

In my opinion, SSID hiding more of a bother than a useful thing. I never hide my SSID, it would just make my already long connection setup longer, and for no real security benefit.

Mac Address Filtering

Every network device in the world has a unique identifier called a Mac Address, something like this: 00-0A-5E-54-59-BF. The theory is, if every adapter has a unique ID, is it possible to enable only the desired network devices to access your network. Fortunately, it is, every single router has that feature, or at least it should. Unfortunately, it’s no means of real protection and again, more a bother than a useful thing. The problem is Mac addresses can be easily spoofed, easier than SSID hiding, and detecting what Mac addresses work on a given network is also pie if you’re the least resourceful as they are transferred in the clear (without encryption).

WEP (Wired Equivalent Privacy)

This deprecated protection scheme for networks (yup, deprecated) is a very flawed but highly compatible security solution for wireless networks. WEP uses the stream cipher RC4, which is unfortunately an old and completely insecure encryption algorithm, so much that WEP’s been delcared deprecated since 2004. In fact, with software mentionned on Wikipedia, I can crack any of your WEP connection under a minute. There’s even step by step articles, not shady and very easy to find, on how to operate the tool that performs Klein’s attack on WEP secured networks. Why isn’t this being pulled down the web? Simply because WEP is deprecated. Such tools are widely available as a proof of concept as to how you should not use WEP protection.

WPA (WiFi Protected Access)

WPA is sort of a half solution. It still uses the RC4 cipher, but unlike its cousin WEP, it implements a different security protocol called TKIP which includes a countermeasure mechanism that makes it impossible to get your network key. However, in 2008, a TKIP vulnerability has been discovered but it only allows an attacker to play with packets on your network (the form in which data is sent out and in). This makes it possible for the attacker to perform ARP spoofing on your network and incidentally sniff data over the air, compromising that data’s security and privacy, and also a DoS attack or denial of service attack (blocking all network traffic, essentially bringing down a server). While a DoS attack may not be of concern for a home network (who would want to DoS attack you, seriously), it certainly is a potential threat for a business.

In other words, WPA remains a perfectly fine solution for home networks and its use of the RC4 cipher makes it compatible with legacy WEP hardware.

WPA2

However similar the name may be, if anything WPA2 is not is similar to WPA. Version 2 is the correctly implemented 802.11i standard. Yes, WPA was made in a hurry before the standard was even finalized so that router makers could address the issues with WEP. This is why WPA support is sketchy, and some routers may offer varients of WPA not intercompatible with other devices. Conversely, WPA2 compliant routers all use the exact same standard, but you have to have recent hardware/firmware for that. Getting WPA2 protection on a computer or router is as simple as having an update firmware, but even recent gaming devices like the PSP 3000, especially due to WPA2’s increased overhead, often do not support it (The Nintendo DSi supports it).

Unlike WPA, WPA2 uses a completely different protocol and cipher, respectively CCMP (Counter Mode with Cipher Block Chaining Message Authentication Code) and AES (Advanced Encryption Standard — AES certification winner Rijndael cipher). Unlike RC4, AES is an extremely sophisticated encryption algorithm used today to encrypt everything from US Government Secret Information to TLS (SSL) secure connections when you shop online.

AES is uncrackable. No one has ever find a way to crack this encryption scheme for the exception of brute-forcing. Brute-forcing a connection involves trying every password possible until you can access the network. However, brute-forcing often implies dictionary attacks, where common words are used against the network’s authentication to find the password. This can be easily avoided with a complete 63 ASCII character key you can make here: https://www.grc.com/passwords.htm

A brute-force on such a key is estimated to take a trillion years, and counter-brute-force mechanisms can slow that down several times. In other words, WPA2 is uncrackable if you use a good key.

The Perfection Solution

Unfortunately, WPA2 is not widely supported on all hardware possible, and making use of combined WPA/WPA2 for increased compatibility breaks your perfect uncrackable unsniffable protection. Fortunately for home users, routers such as the D-Link DIR-655 can handle two networks at the same time. Yup, you can setup a main network in WPA2, and a separate guest network any protection scheme desired for incompatible devices. You can even prevent routing between the two networks so that your secure WPA2 network remains completely isolated from the less secure network.

I use this technique at home to enable compatibility with my PSP, which only supports WPA. My main network is WPA2-only, and my guest network is isolated (not routable) with a WPA-only scheme. This makes my main network, for credit card transactions over the Internet for example, completely secure, while still leaving gaming access for older machines. Since WPA can only be sniffed, it makes also makes it impossible for anyone not authorized to use my own bandwidth, which could happen by leaving the Guest Connection open or on WEP security.

The new video element in Firefox 3.5, despite having been implemented much earlier by Safari, is making all the rave on the web, especially in the open source community. However, you may still want to stick with Flash for the moment, despite the ability of the video element to simply subtract itself for a flash video if it isn’t supported.

Why? Because the video element has no fallback for browsers that do support the element. Since both browsers currently supporting it do away with different codecs, unless you provide specific sources encoded in two different formats, your video simply won’t play in one or another even if you provided a fallback to Flash.

Safari’s support is preliminary too. On Mac it may be fast, but its support is limited to what’s available in QuickTime, which is very slow on Windows. Having complex h.264 videos that easily play in Flash will kill your Safari with the video element, even with a dual-core processor.

Additionally, as mentioned, support is browser-based, much like images. It’s great because it means your user won’t have to install any codecs, but Theora isn’t the best compression you can get for video out there and you’re stuck using it for Firefox’s video element because that’s the only codec its engine supports.

Oh and talking about bandwidth cost reduction with more efficient codecs like h.264, the video element also does not support streaming protocols, which again, is something that would have to be implemented individually in every browser.

Flash is also arguably much more flexible. The video element allows to be controlled by JavaScript, but for now, it’s just about basics and native controls of each browser are also very inconsistent in both appearance and functionality, preventing users of one browser or another to have the same experience on your website.

In other words, the video element for now is what I consider nothing more than a gimmick for Linux freaks.