Posted: March 18th, 2007
I just found JFLAP an incredibly useful java program for anyone doing (basic?) automata theory (e.g. automata theory classes, compilers classes) stuff:
JFLAP is software for experimenting with formal languages topics including nondeterministic finite automata, nondeterministic pushdown automata, multi-tape Turing machines, several types of grammars, parsing, and L-systems. In addition to constructing and testing examples for these, JFLAP allows one to experiment with construction proofs from one form to another, such as converting an NFA to a DFA to a minimal state DFA to a regular expression or regular grammar. Click here for more information on what one can do with JFLAP.
Many THANKS to the people that developed it.
Posted: August 9th, 2006
What Were They Thinking? Anti-Virus Software Gone Wrong made me wonder if it’s such a good idea to be runing anti-virus software. I’ve always used AV software in Windows and I’ve advised others to do so too but in the past (almost) 10 years all that the AV software has managed to do effectively is bug me. And I’m not talking about what it did to my 29a files or about it making a fuss about stuff like the admw0rm source code every now and then. I mean:
- they make PCs considerably more unstable – I’ve tracked back several windows crashes to AV software.
- kaspersky actually messed up my javascript the one time I used it. Who knows what else it would’ve messed up if I had continued to use it.
- norton made a reputation for itself as a major resource hog (I dunno if this has impreved in the last version of norton but I doubt it). And while others are better, the system always takes a considerable performance hit.
And as if that wasn’t enough, they also introduce more vulnerabillities. And all that for what? In the past 10 years AV software hasn’t protected my computer from a single real threat. Not one. And it offers very limited protection against new malware.
And this has nothing to do with the fact that I think current AV software is flawed by design (enumerating badness). What has AV software actually done for me? Nothing. So I’ve been introducing vulnerabillities and instability into my PC for nothing? But what about the future? What if I don’t use AV software and get infected by a virus that would’ve otherwise been detected and stopped by AV software?
I’ve decided to remove AV software from my PC. To be honest, I don’t use windows as much as I used to and that makes the decision much easier. I do encourage you to think about it – but I do not encourage anyone to remove AV software from their PC and I will continue to recommend the use of anti-virus software. I’m a very careful user, I take a lot of steps that are the reason why my PC hasn’t been infected by virus or worms.
While I was writing this post (about 3h ago) I received the following email:
From: pucik@overflow.pl
To: full-disclosure@lists.grok.org.uk, bugtraq@securityfocus.com
Subject: [Overflow.pl] Clam AntiVirus Win32-UPX Heap Overflow…
Additional Links:
How To Keep Your Computer Spyware Free – Basic Windows Security – I need to update it but it’s still ok.