There are many things tech'y people argue about online, from vim vs emacs, Python vs Ruby, imperative vs functional languages. The list is nearly endless.

One of the most common is "Which is the most secure OS". Typically it goes that Windows is the most ridiculously insecure OS, and Linux the far more secure. Mac OS X users then point out that they don't get viruses. Then a Windows user points out that he's run Windows for years without getting any viruses, and that there are lots of exploits for Linux applications.

These arguments are all pretty much right. Windows is insecure. Linux is more secure. Mac OS X doesn't get many viruses.. But you can make Windows secure, and Linux insecure..

The video

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Disclaimer: This post is a post about my opinions and experiences with the pipeline portal application, Cocoon. This disclaimer is included to disclaim any possibility that I may be wrong about this. Period. :-P

What is Apache Cocoon?

On paper its an impressive framework to construct a web application around practically any source medium, dynamic or otherwise. Cocoon is largely based on the XML philosophy (that everything has to be extremely complex and difficult to use to store simple information ([citation][1])).

Ladies and Gentlenerds, Spiders, and bots.

You've found this site because you most likely like technology, computers, coding, learning or Jack Daniels. You may be interested in coding as a hobby, or perhaps you're interest is professional. Perhaps you're just bored. In any case NEVERFEAR! This site is here.

This site is the work of a few e-friends who wanted to try and light the social fire of a technology community. It is as much a website as it is an IRC network. As it is a group of friends.

Prefixed Portage

Most Linux distributions have great package managers like apt or portage. But installing programs when you don't have root access can be a pain. You need to find, download and install all the dependencies and their dependencies, setup a prefix somewhere in your home folder and hope that everything works.

Prefixed portage is perfect for those kinds of situations. It's a modified version of portage, the package manager of the Gentoo distribution. I am using it on a computer running Linux, but you can also use it on OS X, FreeBSD and Solaris to install applications and libraries from the portage repository.

Overview

Currently, most websites log you in the same way: You enter a username and password, the web-server hashes the password (generally via MD5(), or SHA1()). This hash is then compared to the one stored in a database - if it matches, the user knows the original password, so it logs them in.

This method has numerous problems, such as the password being sent unencrypted to the web-server, and the fact many users reuse passwords, if an intruder works out a users password (though any means), there is a good chance they can log into the same users email account, online banking etc etc..

The whole username/password login method has many flaws, most are down to the fact most people struggle to remember a single 5-6 character password, let alone multiple random messy looking passwords such as "Xm2K?pdT&av", as most "good password guides" suggest.