Windows 2003: Prevent user login via the console
You’d think that “Deny logon locally” would do it right? Even the documentation suggests that this is the case. But of course you can’t apply that policy to administrator account (presumably because any user called ‘administrator’ must be dumb), so it’s completely useless.
The perfectly obvious and not at all in any way obfuscated way to do it is actually to add the user in question to ‘Remote Operators’ group.
Wonderfully clear isn’t it. Windows I mean.
Popularity: 10% [?]
getmail FutureWarning with python2.3
Posted by Bricky in Programming on May 5th, 2009
Some python (I assume) update on an old Centos box made getmail bork:
/usr/lib/python2.3/optparse.py:668: FutureWarning: %u/%o/%x/%X of negative int will
return a signed string in Python 2.4 and up
return ("<%s at 0x%x: %r>"
It gets more than a little annoying when you get emailed those few lines several hundred times per day. However, according to the getmail FAQ, it’s not their fault – it’s the nasty evil lazy python developers’ fault.
Changing the top of the /usr/bin/getmail file to ignore the warning made it go away:
#!/usr/bin/python -Wignore::FutureWarning
Popularity: 7% [?]
CSS min-width for Buttons in safari/webkit
Posted by Bricky in Mac, Programming on April 16th, 2009
… has stopped working in the latest webkit versions (for quite some time actually).
CSS min-width ignored for input type=”button” on webkit
(ok, you guessed it, I’m posting this just to draw uncle G’s attention. Sorry!)
Popularity: 12% [?]
United Buddy Bears, Plaza San Martín, Buenos Aires
A rather novel idea: bear statues, each decorated independently by an artist on the theme of a country. Called the United Buddy Bears, they are touring the world and spending a few weeks in Plaza San Martín in Buenos Aires.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Floralís Genérica, Buenos Aires
This is simply a gigantic metal flower which opens and closes in response to the sunshine.
Designed by Eduardo Catalano, and built with the help of Daimler, it was gifted to the city in 2002.
Popularity: 9% [?]
All zero dates, mysql, and jdbc
Posted by Bricky in Programming on April 3rd, 2009
Cannot convert value '0000-00-00 00:00:00' from column N to TIMESTAMP
Familiar? This problem arises because ‘null’ dates in MySql are generally represented as ‘0000-00-00 00:00:00′, which, while valid in MySql, are completely forbidden in jdbc.
There is a wonderful workaround however, simply add the zeroDateTimeBehavior parameter to the end of your jdbc url as follows:
jdbc:mysql://hostname/dbname?zeroDateTimeBehavior=convertToNull
And that’s it, zero dates will be converted to nulls and jdbc will be happy.
Popularity: 7% [?]
iPhone 3.0 Update, but no delivery reports
How could apple develop things like MMS, vCard support, and even peer-to-peer connections for the iPhone, and yet omit gaping holes like SMS delivery report support? I’m starting to think that SMS delivery reports don’t work in Cupertino.
Edit (July 2009): If you’re interested in getting this feature added to the iPhone OS, please vote for it here: Please Add Delivery Reports to the iPhone.
Update (October 2009): No more silliness with prefixes needed – if you’ve a jailbroken phone, you can now get genuine delivery reports. More info here.
Popularity: 13% [?]
The Millimetre Crisis in Hoodwinked Kingdom
Posted by Bricky in Uncategorized on March 2nd, 2009
The Great Big Millimetre Crisis in Hoodwinked Kingdom. by Christopher Brooks
It came about that a whole kingdom was cast
over by a spell from a tiny sect in it’s territory
that from this day forth all “millimetres” belong and are
controlled in supply by their new “mm” bank.
This sect grew in power and found many clever
ways to manipulate and pervert the “mm” from
it’s genuine honest scientific function as a stable
medium of exchange.
The sect grew it’s influence by supporting
the Hocus Pokus University to research
the scarcity of “mm” theory and the
Spellmaker Press always published
the “Coping with limited “mm” stress”
reports. Read the rest of this entry »
Popularity: 8% [?]
htmlspecialchars for mysql
Posted by Bricky in Programming on March 2nd, 2009
Yes, it’s bad, evil, nasty, and just plain wrong.
But that doesn’t mean that there aren’t occasions when you do need to spew out html directly from mysql (or at least I’ve found one).
DELIMITER $$ DROP FUNCTION IF EXISTS `htmlspecialchars`$$ CREATE FUNCTION `htmlspecialchars` (_str text) RETURNS text BEGIN set _str = replace(_str, '"', '"'); set _str = replace(_str, '&', '&'); set _str = replace(_str, '<', '<'); set _str = replace(_str, '>', '>'); return _str; END$$ DELIMITER ;
Usual disclaimers apply.
Popularity: 7% [?]
‘Revert’ does not mean ‘Reply’
Posted by Bricky in Uncategorized on February 25th, 2009
I’ve seen three occurrences of this stupidity recently (all, as it happens, in communications to/from Irish solicitors), and it is really starting to vex me. Particularly because the people involved should all know better.
Generally, the usage tends to be:
Please revert to me
which, while grammatically correct, only has meaning if the person you are writing to was, at some time in the past, you. Read the rest of this entry »
Popularity: 9% [?]