Jon Ward is a former student and excellent security analyst. He is a Certified Ethical Hacker and a Linux expert. Here are several post from his blog:
I found some more online classes, this time specifically for network security and cryptography. These come from reputable sources but I have not tried them to see exactly what they offer… yet.
An Introduction to Information Security -The Open University
Network Security - The Open University
Network and Computer Security - MIT
Cryptography and Cryptanalysis - MIT
by AstralSin on 05-21-2008 in Programming
Most programmers that have worked with C or C-like languages are familiar with the main() function. Its the heart of the program and from where all other portions of the code execute. Python doesn’t have a built-in main() function so it can be a little foreign to people like me so I found a way to create a main() and have my code structured more like I’m used to. Its actually quite simple to do.
def main():
<your python here>
if __name__ == “__main__”:
sys.exit(main())
Thats it. You’ll declare a function called main and call it with the two lines at the bottom. Now you can structure your code with other functions and classes and have everything originate from the main().
Programming Tutorials - A Followup
by AstralSin on 05-20-2008 in Programming
OK, last time I ranted about how most programming tutorials don’t really tell you anything. I’ve pinpointed exactly what they don’t tell you. Most tutorial writers tell you the proper syntax of loops, functions, methods, whatever, and for most languages that’s fine because the programs are written the same way. But some languages, like Python, don’t necessarily rely on functions to define the structure of the code. In C and many languages like it, there is the main() function and you know thats the beginning of the program. In Python, there is no main() function.
While I can figure out to put stuff wherever I can fit it, some people can get confused by this, especially beginner programmers. I mean, really, authors please take into consideration that your readers may not have as much experience as you and they may need an extra sentence or two describing the structure of a program. Or like I said earlier, while you’re writing your tutorial, write a little program that demonstrates how to use all the primary features of the language while putting them in context. It makes things alot easier and by doing this, you open the doors to better programmers in the future that may have gotten their start from reading your material. Take a little pride in your work and put some extra effort into your instruction by adding clear context to your example code.
Oh, and btw, please stop using the command line interpreter to show us how to do one line at a time. No one writes a program one line at a time. Its completely useless to show us anything there. Write it with some other code to let us know how at least TWO lines can interact with one another.
