OK, I like Fark and probably go there almost every day to catch up on interesting news. However, it seems Drew wants to trademark the phrase “Not Safe For Work”! How can you trademark something so vague and intermixed amongst the ‘net as that? I think they are reaching a bit far on this one and personally I hope it gets thrown out.
Latest EVE-Online Patch Bricks Windows XP
This is an interesting article from Slashdot, so I thought I would post it here. Check it out!
“CCP’s latest major patch to the EVE-Online client, Trinity,
comes with an optional DX9-enhanced graphics patch that dramatically
improves the visual quality of the in-game graphics through remade
models, textures, and HDR. It also has an unfortunate bug: the
incredibly stupid choice of boot.ini as a game configuration file,
coupled with an errant extra backslash in the installer configuration.
The result is that anyone who installs the enhanced graphics patch
overwrites the windows XP c:\boot.ini file with the EVE client
configuration file, bricking the machine on the next boot. Discussion
in a couple of forums threads is becoming understandably heated.”
Need a good cross platform IM client?
I do! Or should I say, did. I am not a huge IM (Instant Message) junkie, but I do have friends and family that I communicate with that way. This means that I have several different IM accounts, because no one can seem to agree on just one. Many people reading this are nodding in agreement sharing my frustration right now. Until recently, I have used Trillian on Windows because it spoke all the different IM languages (AIM, YIM, MSN, ICQ, IRC, etc) so I was able to consolidate all of my separate clients into one. Lately though, I have been having some troubles with Trillian crashing a lot, so I went on the hunt for a new client to try out.
One thought that I had was about Linux, and the fact that on Linux I used GAIM, and IM client that was much like Trillian in that it talked to everyone. One thing I liked about GAIM (among many things), was that it was fast, lightweight, and powerful. It just ran really well. On a whim, I searched for GAIM for Windows and low and behold, I found that not only did the name change (it’s now called Pidgin), but it’s setup for many different operating systems with Linux and Windows being two of them.
I decided to give it a try and I haven’t looked back. It’s very much like the GAIM I am used to on Linux, and it’s very slick. It looks good, it runs good, and hasn’t crashed once! 🙂 So far, I think I have found my IM client of choice and I highly recommend it to anyone that is looking for a robust cross platform and multi protocol client. Check it out here on Wikipedia, and download a copy from the Pidgin homepage to see for yourself!
Creating MySQL database tables
A while back I posted an article on creating MySQL databases from the command line (see here). I am a command line junkie, and usually prefer it to a GUI. I thought I would add to that last database post by sharing how I work with MySQL, designing databases and their structure in the initial phases of application development. Keep in mind, what I am going to go over in this post is strictly for quick and easy database structure design, possibly with test data, from the command line. This is not for mangling your database after you have real data in it, or else you will mangle your data! Continue reading
Comcast Using Malicious Hacker Technique Against Own Customers
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
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