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More on “tiny” URLs…
I keep getting them from very smart, very security conscious people. However, to make my point: http://goo.gl/1LJ1Wz I love what they offer but… Some do offer a preview, but users aren’t used to seeing that and unfortunately won’t care (ie: they are so used to getting them without preview, they won’t expect it or demand…
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Python – some truth in this…
I have to say even as a relative newcomer to Python, I find a fair bit of truth in this: https://medium.com/@deliciousrobots/5d2ad703365d/ Working in a non-homogenous (that is, heterogeneous OS) environment where Python 2.x vs. Python 3.x is not guaranteed, the lack of backwards (or forwards) compatibility is problematic. If nothing else it erodes trust in…
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Using LDAP Paged Controls with Python
Most LDAP servers can be set to return an unlimited number of entries on an LDAP search, however depending on the size of the LDAP database/directory this can possibly exceed your memory. Moreover if you want to write portable code, you probably should not depend on the LDAP server being able to return unlimited entries.…
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How to probe ethernet capabilities…
Mostly for my own edification – use “ethtool”, eg: 1# Â ethtool eth0 Settings for eth0: Supported ports: [ TP ] Supported link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Full Supports auto-negotiation: Yes Advertised link modes: 10baseT/Half 10baseT/Full 100baseT/Half 100baseT/Full 1000baseT/Full Advertised auto-negotiation: Yes Speed: 100Mb/s Duplex: Full Port: Twisted Pair PHYAD: 1 Transceiver: internal Auto-negotiation:…
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How to dump the Firefox history (Linux)
Not pretty, but gets you there: Find and go to your Firefox profile (usually you can locate by going to “~/.mozilla/firefox/*.default”). Run “sqlite3 places.sqlite .dump | grep moz_places” If Firefox is running you may have to copy the “places.sqlite” to a new file then run the “sqlite3” against it. You can’t dump it while Firefox…
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Out of the mouths of Astronauts…
Applies to IT as well: “And it’s worth remembering, too, there’s no problem so bad that you can’t make it worse also.” – Commander Chris Hadfield, Canadian Astronaut
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Testing “sendmail” with immediate delivery
In the old days when using “sendmail” if you wanted to watch the SMTP conversation between the local host and the next mail relay all you’d have to do is either run “sendmail -v” or “mail -v” (or “mailx -v” depending on the OS). It would then output the entire SMTP conversation with the remote…
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Make Excel text fit row height
As part of my job I for better or worse have to deal with Excel on a regular basis. One of the issues I have is the sizing of rows (the cell height) not properly expanding, or conversely shrinking, when I add or remove data in the cell. It turns out there is a very…
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And now for something completely different…
My big sister who I am eminently proud of: http://www.lisajensencostumedesign.com/ Bragging done for today.
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Dear Secure Companies…
Dear Secure Companies, Please stop sending me emails to pick up critical documents or surveys where the URLs I need to follow point into random unverifiable domains. A link that leads to a URL like: http://wl1.peer360.com/b/J9dqJDSALAS87ZWR3Te7/mle.asp?hl=5621312750&r=BBGGHHSF&CID=305151 is not going to inspire confidence and, assuming it isn’t spear-fishing or malware, is teaching end users bad practice.…
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Four keyboard shortcuts you should know…
I’m writing this because I see so many people who use computers regularly who don’t know these basic keyboard shortcuts. They’re easy – learn them and your computer life will be much better. Most work on pretty much any GUI (Windows, Unix, even Mac substituting the CMD key for the CTRL key). So with no…
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Why is WLAN “signal quality” in negative decibels?
If you use “iwconfig” on Linux to get statistics on your wireless LAN you’ll note that the “Signal Level” is expressed in negative decibels. On the surface that would appear confusing – how can decibels be negative?! Fortunately an anonymous poster explains at Toms Hardware: Absolute power of a signal is measured in wattage. The…
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Dumping SSL certificate information
It seems lately I’m regularly having to dump the information from SSL certificates (for instance to get the “Subject” or CA signer). Since I keep having to look up the exact syntax, I thought it easier to save here and figured it might help others. So, if in PEM format, use the following: openssl x509…
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Forcing a Window Media Player library rescan
If you’re using your Windows Media Player (WMP) as a Windows Media “server” to share your music library, yet don’t use WMP directly to manage your media (I use the much more rich MediaMonkey) then you may want to force a library rescan when you add new tracks to your file-store(s). This isn’t very hard,…
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BankInfo Ramnit Article
Tracy Kitten at BankInfo has an interesting article about the Ramnit worm which is worthy of a read (even I would say by the general public). Ramnit is particularly pernicious because: Ramnit’s man-in-the-middle looks like an actual social-media or bank-account sign-in page that captures a user’s ID and password, and sometimes other personal information en…
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Why I hate tiny-fied URLs…
In theory if the world were filled we universally good people, “bitly” and “TinyURL.com“, which given long URLs provide short ones, are a great idea. However whenever I get one I find that I’m frankly terrified to click on them. Why? Because while they could be going someplace useful, they could also be going to…
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Adding ringtones to Android
To add ringtones (or notifications or alarms) to Android phones, connect the phone to your computer and go to the top level of the drive that is mounted. Under that drive you can create (though they may exist already): /alarms or /media/alarms or /media/audio/alarms /notifications or /media/notifications or /media/audio/notifications /ringtones or /media/ringtones or /media/audio/ringtones In…
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Useful Intel links…
Two links from Intel are particularly useful for desktop/laptop users. First, this tool will find out if the Intel drivers you’re using are up-to-date: http://www.intel.com/p/en_US/support/detect since many if not most desktops/laptops include some Intel based chipset (even if it isn’t the main CPU), then this is a pretty useful site to use. If you’re interested…