Professional Propaganda

Security

• Email Authentication and Confidentiality
• Instant Messaging Authentication and Confidentiality
• IPSec (Internet Protocol Security)
• SSH (Secure Shell) and SCP (Secure Copy)

Web Programming

• PHP (Hypertext Pre-processor)
• MySQL
• CSS (Cascading Stylesheets)

Authoring Tools

• CVS (Concurrent Versions System)
• SVN (CVS done right?)
• LaTeX
• DDD (a front-end to GDB)
• Valgrind (a memory debugger)

Authentication is an important issue when dealing with email. Whenever I send an email, it will contain a PGP signature (usually as a MIME attachment). I have provided a link to my PGP Public Key, which can be used to verify if I am the sender of a particular email (assuming that you also believe that I am the person who wrote this page, which is a fairly decent bet, since UITS and the CSG would both be quite unhappy if anyone else was using my account...).

If you are interested in using cryptography for authentication or confidentiality in email, I recommend checking out http://www.gnupg.org/ to obtain GPG. I also recommend the Mozilla Thunderbird mail client and the Enigmail extension for GPG support.

OTR plugins for Gaim 1.x can be installed both for Windows and Linux. For Mac users, you can use Adium, which has built-in support for OTR, or you can use a proxy on the local machine which will work with iChat and other clients.

One of the more common checkout uses is to use "ext" (the CS FAQ explains more about this). To do so, make sure your CVS_RSH environment variable is set to "ssh".

Next, check out your repository. If you are using the CS machines and using an ACL to share with other users, use the school host:

cvs -d :ext:USERNAME@school.cs.indiana.edu:/path/to/repository/folder co modulename

where USERNAME is of course replaced with your username.

If you have never used CVS before, the CS FAQ under number 6 gives you information on using CVS's help commands. However, for what we are doing, you should only need to know the following:

cvs co MODULE : checks out MODULE. You only need to do this once and I
	have given you the exact syntax above

cvs update -d -P : Updates all the files in the current working
	directory as well as any subdirectories. Purges any removed
	directories.

cvs commit -m "MESSAGE" : Stores any modification you have made into the
	shared repository with the given message.

cvs add FILENAME : Adds FILENAME to the repository. If this is a binary
	file, you should add " -kb " before the filename.

cvs remove FILENAME : Removes FILENAME from the repository.

cvs log FILENAME : Shows the revision history and comments for a file.

• ALWAYS use a descriptive message when you commit. If you made a lot of changes, just describe the overall general action, if needed. These messages are vital when restoring broken code/documents to a previously working version.
• Update frequently and ALWAYS do an update BEFORE you commit! This will reduce conflicts by merging changes and catching when you are overlapping work with others. If you are making major changes in a section, email the others so they don't work in the same area.
• If you have a conflict in a file, fix the conflict immediately. CVS will leave both versions of the code/text in the file and leave it to you to fix. This looks something like:
  

  <<<<
  Newly inserted text
  --------
  Original text
  >>>>

  However, it is different with removed text, etc. So, you must carefully look over the file to see which is the new and which is the old. Make sure you delete the old version and keep the new one. Otherwise, your colleagues will get annoyed.

It is fairly easy to learn the basics of LaTeX, but is difficult to fully master. I have included a helpful primer that I used to learn LaTeX.