Professor's Fu's Malware Blog

If you're into system security and malware analysis, don't miss Prof. Xiang Fu's malware analysis blog at http://fumalwareanalysis.blogspot.com/.  His malware analysis tutorials are "hands-on" as they can get!

Upsilon Pi Epsilon Computer Science Honor Society Inductees for 2012

Congratulations to the 16 students who were inducted into UPE for the 2011-2012 academic year:

1. Nikia Lubin
2. Oswaldo Crespo
3. Steven Blumenthal
4. Cynthia Cheng
5. Taryn Teurfs
6. Julian Kowalczyk
7. Lukasz Bator
8. Mario Noyola
9. Lorrae Famiglietti
10. Jason Dayton
11. Patrick Colombo
12. Robert Schurr
13. Christopher Blach
14. Michael Bufardeci
15. Amit Goel
16. Michael Bantegui

Hofstra's Distance Learning Master's Program in Computer Science

We're proud of our distance learning program for the Master's degree in Computer Science. Keerat Sharma, a recent graduate of the program, explains on his blog why he got into our program, and what he got out of it.

http://recursor.blogspot.com/2011/04/masters-in-cs-worth-it-after.html

NOTE: His blog post was not solicited by the department.

A good technical blog

Are you interested at all in The Next Big Thing (TM) A.K.A. cloud computing, especially from the point of view of a consumer of cloud computing services? Then you should read Netflix's Tech Blog. They present a lot of the challenges they face and the solutions they've come up with as customers of Amazon EC2.

And now for something completely different

Did you know that the highest rated cable television program, not including sports shows, is ...

Spongebob Squarepants?

Should I be depressed? Oh, barnacles!

A very confusing face.

I was looking for some sample images to process for a program that I wrote when I came across this really confusing image:



Click on the image and you'll see an explanation of why your brain's "autofocus mechanism" fails.

Update 5/7/2011: Sorry, but it appears that the blog I had linked to is now dead. Too bad.

RSA Encryption cracked (?)

RSA is the best-known most widely-used encryption scheme. Anytime you go to a secure website, you're using the RSA public-key cryptosystem. So, it's a bit scary when you see a report about something so widely used as having been cracked. Well, under careful, laboratory-controlled conditions, you can apparently crack RSA, even with very long encryption keys. But I don't think I'm going to stop shopping at NewEgg.com anytime soon.

http://www.engadget.com/2010/03/09/1024-bit-rsa-encryption-cracked-by-carefully-starving-cpu-of-ele/

Thanks to alumnus Elliot Kaye for this tip.

Honor Society Upsilon Pi Epsilon

For the academic year 2009-2010 the department will induct 9 undergraduate students and 2 graduate students into the Honor Society for Computer Science Upsilon Pi Epsilon (ΥΠΕ). I will let Prof. Ammari do the honors of announcing the official list. I offer my congratulations to the (now) anonymous 11.

More "fun" with 64-bit Windows 7

I am not sure the Universe is ready for 64-bit Windows 7, yet. I need to use Python in one of my classes along with PIL (Python Imaging Library). There is a 64-bit version of Python which installs without a problem. The PIL binary for Windows is 32-bit. Try to install it and you get:


Looks like 32-bit PIL "does not love" 64-bit Python. Not very surprising, I guess, still a little bit disappointing.

Ok, let's install the 32-bit version of Python followed by the 32-bit PIL. This is what I get:



Hmm, looks a little familiar. So, 32-bit PIL "doesn't love" 32-bit Python either, under 64-bit Windows 7.

This is getting ugly.

Also, it looks like Firefox is a 32-bit program. So, that's a little bit of a bummer, although it runs well on the system.

On the plus side, it took me like 3 clicks to get connected to the network printer in the department. I'm holding my judgment on Win 7 64-bit at this point.

Trouble installing 64-bit Windows 7, but it was my fault, kinda

I installed 32-bit Windows 7 on a Frankenstein machine that I built myself using old components that I had lying around (except for the CPU and 2GB of memory), and installation was a snap. First, I had 32-bit Windows XP installed on the machine, because I had to make sure that the machine was runnable. Next, I extracted (using 7-zip) all files from the Windows 7 ISO file onto a portable drive. Ran setup.exe from the drive and everything went smooth on the first try! It found drivers for every device I'd hooked up, except for a remote printer. I think I actually like Windows 7.

Then, on a different (and new!) machine, I tried to install 64-bit Win 7 and it was driving me crazy. First, since the machine had 32-bit XP, I couldn't use the trick of extracting files from the ISO and running setup--under Windows XP you can't run a 64-bit executable (setup.exe) from a 32-bit OS (XP). So, I had to burn a bootable DVD (can't use a CD, the ISO file is 3GB in size). When I tried to boot using the DVD, the setup program kept asking a CD/DVD driver file! Google came to the rescue and I found out that the reason that I got the error was probably because my ISO file was corrupt. I checked, and it was true: instead of a 3GB file, my ISO was about 1.3GB in size. Pretty stupid of the installation program to not realize that it was working with a corrupt disk image, if you ask me. Anyway, I re-downloaded the full image from MSDN AA. Then, I tried to use the "ISO Recorder" program recommended by Microsoft for burning ISO files onto disks. But that doesn't burn DVDs on Windows XP. Yecch! Had to use Roxio to burn the installation disk. And then the installation took like an hour--at least it felt like it. But the end result has been great. The machine has been running smooth and Windows Performance Index (or whatever it is called) pegged the machine at a decent 5.3.

Get your Windows 7 here!

Well, not exactly here (with me). But, if you're enrolled in a CS course at Hofstra (other than CSC 005), you are eligible for a bunch of free Microsoft Software through the department's subscription with MSDN AA. If you haven't yet received email about it, please contact Prof. David Klein.

Sabbatical

On a personal note, I am going to be on Sabbatical this Fall 2009 semester. Prof. Xiang Fu will be the Director of Graduate Programs (both online and "on campus") during this time.

--Dr Krish

Most lucrative college degrees

CNN has published the top 15 undergraduate degrees for best pay:

Our department's graduates make positions 4 and 5 on this list. Computer Science is the only degree in the top 10 that does not have "Engineering" as part of the degree title.

Student-Faculty Mixer

Mark your calendars: Students and Faculty of the Computer Science Department will get together for an hour of fun, frivolity, food, facts, friends, and other such alliterations. Be there or b*b.

Date: Wednesday September 16, 2009
Time: 11:30-12:30 (Common Hour)
Place: Adams Hall Room 200

Send email to Prof. Krish at csckzp@hofstra.edu to let us know you'll be there.

PS: Are you puzzled about b*b? Why that's b-square (or b-squared, but I like b-square better)!

new departmental website

Any comments on www.cs.hofstra.edu?

Welcome to the Computer Science Blog

Stay tuned for tips, tricks, and observations from the Computer Science Faculty@Hofstra University.