Sign in Subscribe

Topic

Geek/Tech

A collection of 242 issues

Landmarks and a gift...

This is a nifty piece of SQL for finding out exactly who entered the five hundredth comment on your blog, assuming you have a WordPress blog with five hundred comments on it. SELECT * FROM "WordPress comment table" ORDER BY comment_date LIMIT 500 , 1 Right now, I don&

Bloglines and Apple security

Bloglines isn't picking up the feed from this blog. I've emailed them about it, checked the feeds are being produced properly, checked my server, and got the databaase issue from last night fixed. Everything's OK on this end. So I'm waiting for

Dealing with comments

I love blog comments. But what's the polite way to respond? A reply comment, or an email? Which would you prefer? I like the email reply, but I don't always get to everyone who comments, and sometimes you need to answer a comment's question

Spam bait and fresh starts

I've temporarily removed the feedback form on this site, because some weasel spammer was abusing it to send me 50 emails a day. It'll come back when it's spam-proof. Even a humble PHP contact form isn't safe! I hate having to lock

Tuesday catch up

Got my Mac back on Friday, 20 days after they took it in for a three to five day repair. By a strange coincidence, the repair was completed 40 minutes before I called the repair centre on Thursday, and on a truck heading home by 8pm that night. I'

Upgraded

Upgraded to WordPress 2.0, easy-peasy. No messing around with the template required, same old "backup everything, I said BACKUP, deactivate plugins, delete files, upload files, reactivate plugins, smile contentedly" routine. So long as you keep up-to-date, the upgrades are a breeze. Love the new live preview thing,

Newsround

Interesting BBC News stories today. Plasma engine passes initial test. The engine uses ionised xenon gas for thrust. It's slower than a chemical drive, but it can operate for longer. Good diagram of how an ion engine works. Mayan treasure found in Guatemala. A mural has been found,

Sony again

More pain for Sony over CD code. Hackers are exploiting flaws in the software Sony is using to remove its controversial copy protection system. Although only proof of concept attacks, security firms fear that users ridding themselves of Sony's copy protection system will soon face other dangers. Other

Sony removal

Microsoft to remove Sony CD code. The software giant said the XCP copy protection system counted as malicious software under the rules it uses to define what Windows should be protected against. It is planning to include detection and removal tools for XCP in its weekly update to its anti-spyware

More bad news from Sony

Viruses use Sony anti-piracy CDs. Virus writers are exploiting Sony's controversial anti-piracy software to hide their malicious creations. In late October Sony was found to be using stealth techniques to hide software that stopped some of its CDs being illegally copied. Now three virus variants have been found

Follow me on Mastodon