Author Archives: Laz

Comcast Using Malicious Hacker Technique Against Own Customers

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Here is an article I found that shows Comcast (my own ISP) doing things like blocking P2P traffic of their customers, etc.  Pretty interesting read …

One of the nation’s largest telecommunications companies is using a
controversial technique to cripple certain kinds of Internet traffic
traveling across its networks, says a new report from the digital
rigthts  group the Electronic Frontier Foundation in San
Francisco. 

“Comcast is essentially deploying against their own customers
techniques more typically used by malicious hackers (this is doubtless
how Comcast would characterize other parties that forged traffic to
make it appear that it came from Comcast or its subscribers,)” write
the authors of the new report. “In other words, Comcast is essentially
behaving like a telephone  operator that interrupts a phone
conversation, impersonating the voice of one party to tell the other
that this call is over, I’m hanging up.”

Read the whole article: http://blog.wired.com/27bstroke6/2007/11/comcast-using-m.html

Bash script tip, cutting from variables

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Ok, here is a quick tip that has come in handy quite a few times in my days writing shell scripts, for example in bash. Let’s say, for whatever reason, you need to chop off the end of a string (like a variable). Chopping the beginning is easy, just use the cut command, but in order to chop the end you have to know how long the string is so you can tell it where to start. In this example, we are going to us the wc command to figure out how long the string is, and then subtract 1 to cut the last character. You can subtract however many you want depending on how many characters you want to cut. Check it out … Continue reading →

Creating a new MySQL database with mysqladmin

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Here is a quick tip for all of my command line brothers and sisters out there. If you need to create a new MySQL database, it’s super quick and easy to do it on the command line with the mysqladmin command. Yeah, there are some GUI’s out there, but just because you have a GUI doesn’t mean it’s easier or faster. Besides, if you know how to do it via the command line, you will have a better understanding of what that GUI tool is doing, especially when it messes up.

Back to the tip, if you want to create a database named ‘mydatabase’ you would type something like this:

mysqladmin create mydatabase

See? It’s just that easy! From here, it’s easy create tables too. You can type this right into the mysql prompt, or import from a text file. I’ll have more on that coming up soon. Stay tuned!

Game Review: Portal

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Valve Software, the folk that brought us the Half-Life family of games, has something new and (from my experience) pretty different out. It’s a game called Portal, and it’s unique in that it’s a first person shooter type of game, from the perspective of the player and the controls, but it’s purely a puzzle game. You don’t shoot anything (so far anyway, I haven’t finished it yet), but you do use “portals” to maneuver through test chambers and make things happen. So far, it’s been quite fun, rather addicting, and challenging too. Half-Life is great, Half-Life 2 is awesome and truly groundbreaking, portal is ingenious and fun, I recommend checking it out!

Getting the IP of the current visitor in PHP

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Sometimes, you have the need to grab the IP address of the current visitor to your site.  I use this for logging actions like comment forms, etc., but also for blocking IPs if there is a need.  Whatever your reason, this is a good chunk of code, in the form of a function you can call, to return the IP address of whoever is loading that page.  Check it out in the forums!

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Powerful and Free Office Suite

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When you thought of word processors years ago, everyone thought of WordPerfect.  Now, everyone thinks of Microsoft Word.  Spreadsheets are the same way, Quattro Pro in years past, Excel in the present.  Well, I want to share with you an alternative to the current champion of the office software suite Microsoft Office.  This alternative is free, robust and powerful, runs on many different operating systems and can even read and write lots of files, including Microsoft Office.  You can even export your documents as a PDF file, now how cool is that.  The software I am talking about is called OpenOffice and it’s put together by the community, with a lot of help from big names in the industry like Sun Microsystems.  I have been using OpenOffice for years, and it has really come a long way, to the point that I prefer it over Microsoft Office.  Also, consider the price if you are on a budget and it’s even better.  There are some people out there who will argue my sentiment, and that’s fine, it’s a free country.   I bet though, if you check it out you will find you like it.  Enjoy!