UNIX scripting tip: guard against bad directory names
Most UNIX/Linux folks write shell scripts, often in an ad hoc manner, and there's an easy mistake that can be very painful: attempting to copy/move to target directories that do not exist. Let's look at a contrived example, where we... Read More...
Posted Tue, Nov 17 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
Paychoice update
Paychoice continues to have a bad time of it: they had a second flurry of attention this week when a customer of one of their licensees noticed a bogus payroll with four unknown employees with checks of around $8,000 each.... Read More...
Posted Sat, Oct 17 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
Payroll Associates doesn't care about its customers
There, I said it. In the ongoing story of the Online Employer security incident, the story seems to be dying down in the news, and I'm sure that PAI just wants it to go away. Who wouldn't? So far I've... Read More...
Posted Tue, Oct 6 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
How not to respond to a targeted security attack
For the last week, I've been working on this Paychoice data breach, and I'm getting a little concerned about how Payroll Associates, Inc. is handling it: they're giving terrible advice to their licensees (and by proxy, the customers/employees...
Posted Fri, Oct 2 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
Security Response: the Paychoice/Online Employer incident
For the last week or so, I've been working on a security incident involving the online web portal of Paychoice, a very large payroll software and service provider in the United States. They provide payroll for many companies directly, plus... Read...
Posted Wed, Sep 30 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
New Tech Tip: Analysis of initial patches for Microsoft's Hyper-V driver in the Linux kernel
In July, Microsoft released a Linux driver to allow Linux to run better in a Hyper-V virtual machine: it was done in source code under the GPL. This was pretty big news at the time, and in September, more than... Read More...
Posted Sun, Sep 20 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
Aligning objects with angled lines
I was creating another one of my Tech Tips (so far unfinished), and one of the illustrations required that an object be aligned along a diagonal line. Though AI has a tool for doing text along a path, I don't... Read More...
Posted Sun, Aug 16 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
New Tech Tip: Configuring Windows 7 for a Limited User Account
Last week, I got a copy of Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 (build 7100) and loaded it on my laptop. Though I help customers with limited Vista issues on occasion, I had let it pass me by on my own... Read More...
Posted Wed, May 27 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
New Tech Tip: Understanding Microsoft's KB971492 IIS5/IIS6 WebDAV Vulnerability
In May of this year (2009), a security researcher discovered and reported a vulnerability in Microsoft's Internet Information Server (IIS) WebDAV component. Microsoft published some guidance on this in a KB article, but it was really sparse and not...
Posted Tue, May 26 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
Windows 7 UAC: Where do I type the Administrator password???
I've been diving into Windows 7 lately (Release Candidate 1, Build 7100), and it's my first real introduction to User Account Control on my own equipment. I've been running XP on my primary desktop and laptop, having let Vista pass... Read...
Posted Sat, May 23 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
Neat C# features - Properties
I took up C#/.NET programming a few years ago, and the learning curve was not too terribly rough given my experience with C, C++ and (a little bit) Java. But as I immerse myself in a larger project, I keep... Read More...
Posted Mon, May 18 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
California Election Analysis - May 19, 2009
For (almost) every election in California, I write up an analysis of the ballot propositions, and I just barely made it this round under the wire. This time it's six propositions, all of which I oppose. It seems that the... Read More...
Posted Sun, May 17 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
Coding tip: including a mechanism to ignore a cmdline option
I write lots of command line tools, mainly in perl and C#, and am pretty rigorous about providing good command-line support to allow setting of tunable parameters and the like. My command-line processing (in perl) typically looks like: ... foreach......
Posted Fri, May 1 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
Visual Studio 2008 feature request
Is this really too much to ask? Read More...
Posted Sun, Apr 26 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
Windows XP Reinstallation failures on Dell Dimension 8400
This is written mainly for Google, hoping to save somebody some time. I was helping a friend clean up a Windows machine — a Dell Dimension 8400 — and it was decided that the best road was to flatten and... Read More...
Posted Tue, Apr 21 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
How to estimate a software project
Take your best estimate of how long it will take Double it Go up to the next unit of time Example: 3 days »» 6 weeks Sigh. Read More...
Posted Sun, Apr 12 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
Stupid highway design
Living in Southern California for the last 20 years, I've gotten pretty used to the roads, and it was helpful when a couple of toll roads were put in to bypass some of the particularly bad traffic on the the... Read More...
Posted Fri, Apr 10 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
"BindingFailure was detected" in Visual Studio 2008
I'm writing this mainly for the search engines. A recent project has me using Visual Studio 2008 with web services, and I spent a bunch of time tracking down this error (click the image above for the exact dialog): BindingFailure... Read More...
Posted Wed, Apr 8 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
Stuff you didn't know: Dry Cleaners
One of the nice things about being a consultant is that I get my hand in a lot of different industries, and it's fun to pick up stuff you'd never know as an ordinary consumer. Some time ago I helped... Read More...
Posted Fri, Apr 3 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
Ok, for real this time?
I stopped blogging a coupla years ago when the spam problem was simply unbearable, and as I had hosted MT on my own server, I was just too busy / daunted to fool with upgrades or adding special sauce to... Read More...
Posted Sun, Mar 15 2009 by I had a backup. Really.
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