Author Archives: daniel

AU copyright reforms

The AU government gets with the programme, proposes to make ripping CDs to MP3 players legal, as well as taping off radio or TV for domestic purposes… though you’ll be legally obliged to wipe the tape after watching it. Uh huh.

“Hey did you catch Monday night’s Six Feet Under?”

“Yeah but it’s on too late, so I taped it and watched it the next day.”

“Can you lend it to me?”

“I’d love to but the copyright laws say I’m not allowed to.”

Meanwhile the Brits have trained sniffer dogs to detect DVDs, for the purposes of fighting piracy.

Old PC getting you down?

It’s been long known that outdated computer equipment could have direct consequences for productivity, by slowing the workers down to the speed of their machinery. But a new survey concludes that it also has effects on morale in offices, causing not just unhappiness, but also more issues with things like eye fatigue, headaches and RSI.

(Hey boss, can I have a new PC?)

Not quite unlimited

Customer vs Netspace in VCAT, after Netspace moved customers on “unlimited” plans to “Fair Go” (eg. not quite unlimited) plans. The customer won, though Netspace claims the case isn’t proven, because they failed to appear due to a mixup.

I’m a Netspace customer. I’ve found them to be pretty good, but I know of a few who disagree. What’s going to be more interesting is if this has ongoing effects for ISPs who change their ToS after customers signup.

Dev SSL certificates

If you’re just mucking about with IIS, you don’t really want to pay a CA to get a legit certificate, do you?

No, of course you don’t. Fortunately these guys have a freebie certificate generator. Mucho handy.

Just don’t even think about using it in production code.

Oh, and don’t get the page to email you the certificate to a mailbox you can only look at via Outlook. Outlook’s dumbarse “protecting you from shadows” attachment filter won’t let you at the CER certificate file that comes through.

No more security through obscurity

Feel safe using Firefox and/or Mac OS X? Don’t. This article discusses recent research showing both are subject to a number of vulnerabilities. Not as many as poor ol’ Windows users using IE, but still enough that it’s wise to be wary.

Not to mention the issues in the various media players.

Oi, pirates!

This copy of Windows is not genuine. Cough up, you smegging pirate.Windows XP users in some countries who use Windows Update have got a new tool on their machines: the Windows Genuine Advantage Notification. Basically if it reckons your Windows installation isn’t legit, it’ll pipe up “This copy of Windows is not genuine. You may be a victim of software counterfeiting” on the logon screen, with similar messages appearing as popups at random times.

Could be irritating enough to get people to cough up. I’m sure it won’t be long before it’s hacked into submission, of course. Meanwhile Office is joining in with an Office Genuine Advantage verification being pilotted.

Explorer Destroyer

Ed Bott writes about Explorer Destroyer, a programme some Firefox fanatics have dreamed up to try and force people into dumping IE and using Firefox.

I’ll side with Ed on this. To deliberately degrade an IE user’s browsing experience is just the kind of thing FF supporters should be against.

And bear in mind that a significant number of web users aren’t in control of what browser’s on their desktop. They might be home users on a machine set up by a geek who don’t know how to change browsers… they might be corporate users who are using IE because of corporate policy… they might be in a Net cafe.

To my mind it’s just as ratty as, say, MS deciding to release some software for XP only, when there’s no technical reason it can’t run on Windows 2000. Screw the user, it’s all about market share at any cost.

As a contrast, here’s the WordPress mob’s campaign: BrowseHappy.

MySql woes

We’ve got MySql problems here at Geekrant central.

MySQL said: Documentation
#1016 – Can’t open file: ‘wp_comments.MYI’ (errno: 145)

Doesn’t sound good, does it? The ISP is looking into it.

Nothing else seems to be AWOL, but I’ve taken a backup of everything just in case. Wouldn’t you know it, the backup I have of wp_comments isn’t particularly recent. Hopefully the ISP has a newer one, but if not, I’ve grabbed a bunch of comments via Newsgator’s cache. Gawd knows how I’d restore them though.

Update: Fixed. May I just say, the support guys at AussieHQ hosting are deadset legends.

WordPress Most comments

Here’s the SQL to find which of your WordPress posts have the most comments:

SELECT wp_comments.comment_post_id, count(*) as commentcount, wp_posts.post_title, wp_posts.post_date FROM wp_comments, wp_posts
where wp_comments.comment_post_id = wp_posts.ID
group by wp_comments.comment_post_id, wp_posts.post_title, wp_posts.post_date
order by commentcount desc