Archive for January, 2010

Google’s Do No evil mantra


2010
01.22

When last did you access google.com/ig/oscheck? It returns a serialized array — with a weird space-holder — instead of “Do no evil” (which implies that you can be evil, think evil, plan evil, but not execute it), they’ve upped it a notch — all the way to “don’t be evil’” (note the trailing apostrophe).

This of course changes the mantra — you can do evil, think evil, plan evil and execute it, but just hug a bunny and buy milk on the way home in your green car (so don’t be evil). Strange deviation. Also, the apostrophe implies omission (or ownership, with bad grammar). So did they mean don’t be evilk (whatever that may mean) — you go through the alphabet and figure that one out.

Happy thoughts! :)

throw 1; < don't be evil' >{m:[{i:1,st:"c=ig&e=APu7icpPle4eIsUPx/8S%2BVe24JQkS/cBvDBsJhSnfdcogQ1nIoym4glNnR1WvsfaswewrREVMvHzqhekfe75PLUAm7A4%2BOlsToBUzAVE4axMYP2Q%2BGGHAMUnq61oFTnlsEU%2BiqWrfH8"}]}

No more silly Google.com fade-in effect


2010
01.21

You’ve seen it, you hate it, you threaten to switch to wolfram or Bing… Or you can just make it go away.

Stylish allows you to apply custom stylesheets to sites by wildcard prefix, so that it works and look the way you want it to. For Firefox. For IE, IE8Pro does something similar (YMMV — I haven’t tried it…)

All you need to apply is a simple CSS script:


@namespace url(http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml);

@-moz-document url-prefix('http://google.'), url-prefix('http://www.google.') {

#ghead, #sbl, .fade, #fctr{ opacity: 1 !important; }

}

Lots of customisations available at userstyles.org!

Dump MS Access data from Ubuntu


2010
01.20

The mdbtools package for Ubuntu Jaunty includes a command called mdb-export.  This allows you to dump the contents of tblName from database.mdb to STDOUT in CSV format like this:

mdb-export database.mdb tblName

Output redirection to capture the output in a file is also supported (not that that’s a feature of the app, as you know):

mdb-export sample.mdb tblFoo > capture.txt

jQuery 1.4 improvements


2010
01.20

Over at jQuery14 the full list of progress, changes and improvements, notably (amongst other things) in the .css and .attr methods, as well as new AJAXian improvements. Also, event multi-binding is now (finally) available! (more…)

How a Web Design goes straight to hell…


2010
01.20

Many, many, many can attest to the tail of trauma, pain and suffering, as well as deep, well-meant user input created by an environment which is free-flowing, without pre-set specifications, requirements and design parameters. Pain. Argh.

Well done, TheOatMeal! He also does a really good piece on What not to Tweet about on Twitter

Oh — and in case you were wondering — here are 10 signs to check to see whether your cat is plotting to kill you. :)

4 more days to Kilimanjaro!!


2010
01.19

Right — now to pack and repack and unpack and repack — need to get the weight and the sorting right so that SAA and the porters carrying the stuff don’t complain.

Worrying bit is — 1.5kg of packaging that came off the equipment — just cardboard and plastic for packaging — excluding bags. Wow.

I wonder how one would quantify the carbon footprint of packaging materials being shipped around the world, and then destroyed, dumped or burned afterwareds?

An update on Operation Aurora


2010
01.19

The attack (Operation Aurora) on around 20 companies in the US, including Google, Adobe, Juniper Networks and others using the zero-day exploit of Internet Explorer is partly linked to social engineering — as the carefully crafted emails were plausibly created and structured, users bought into it. Once the machine was owned after the payload was released, the affected machine would contact a Command and Control (C&C) server that would send back specific instructions based on Workgroup name and machine environment (OS etc), accepting and transmitting data via a home-made encryption based piggy-backed onto the 443 port — typically reserved for the HTTP SSL transfer of data. (more…)

Now on Technorati too


2010
01.18

Wow, that took long! The authority process does take its automatin’ time!

And the count-down to Kilimanjaro is on — only a few more days to go to before heading to the top – and Tanzania! :)

And in other news…


2010
01.06

Matric maths marks are not raised by more than the acceptable 10% (!!!???), and the AbaThembu are all ready to take their plans to Parliament today, saying – hold on, we own most of South Africa, so give us our land, KZN, Northern, Western and the Eastern Cape, and parts of Gauteng, plus R80bn and we’re quits…

Ai, ai, ai…

And it’s time for 2.9.1


2010
01.06

After a few reported issues with prior WordPress version upgrade 2.9, 2.9.1 is here to save the day (full version, not even RC :)

From the source:

This release addresses a handful of minor issues as well as a rather annoying problem where scheduled posts and pingbacks are not processed correctly due to incompatibilities with some hosts.

Yipee!! :)

Y2K vs 2010 vs 2016 — year rollover still an issue


2010
01.06

Ain’t that a kick in the head! Rollover from 2009 to 2010 has not been processed correctly on many systems, including Symantec’s Endpoint Protection Manager, they have confirmed in a statement

An issue has been identified in the Symantec Endpoint Protection Manager (SEPM) server whereby all types of SEP definition content [AV/AS, IPS] with a date greater than December 31, 2009 11:59pm are considered to be “out of date”.

Remember that we spoke about Symantec in the glorious (dodgey) Virus Scanner Comparison.

Australian POS systems have jumped from 2009 to 2016 (pity about the malformed dec2hex function they must have been using (or forgot to use?), and up to 30mil users in Germany can’t use their bank cards at ATMs or POS machines due to invalid date calculations.

In addition, there also seems to be the occasional SMS (or text message) running through networks which have issues with future-stamped timestamps, causing a wide variety of reporting and integrity issues…

Hm, I wonder what implications the 2011-2012 rollover will bring with it (cue Mayan death-drone…)

Happy 2010!


2010
01.01

Another year, another at least 730-odd opportunities! All the best for the next 8760 hours! :)