/dev/random

To anyone who sends me add requests on ICQ, unless you tell me who you are, I won’t accept your request. I get far too much spam.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “ICQ Users”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2004/03/30/icq-users/” });

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Aaron Swartz has posted a very interesting analysis of how iTMS & FairPlay works.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “iTunes Music Store reverse engineered”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2004/03/29/itunes-music-store-reverse-engineered/” });

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this tip from Mac OS X Hint solved my Safari slowdown & I’m back to using Safari without the sluggishness.
If you go to ~/Library/Safari and delete the contents of the Icons folder, you’ll find that Safari no longer spins the cursor for several seconds every time you load a page. If you lock that folder, [...]

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I find that Safari has become unacceptably slow. Every time I load a page, it gives the spinning cursor for several seconds when I try to scroll that page. I finally got fed up and switched to Camino as my default browser. That slowdown seems to be limited to Safari; I don’t see the spinning [...]

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This article tells how to build your own self-balancing scooter like a Segway™.
Although the Segway has several exotic components, this one is built from common low-tech parts like wheelchair motors and RC car batteries. The parts, even at small quantity retail prices, cost less than half of a genuine Segway. It also doesn’t need complex [...]

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‘American Idol’ reject William Hung is now on iTunes
Now all they need is William Shatner’s version of “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds”
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Oy Vey!”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2004/03/23/oy-vey/” });

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Six Log has posted a pretty extensive FAQ about TypeKey and Movable Type 3.0.
I’m looking forward to upgrading ASAP. Since I get a lot of comment spam, I plan to set my comment option to “Accept TypeKey-authenticated and moderated comments”
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “You wanted the FAQs”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2004/03/23/you-wanted-the-faqs/” });

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Today was the kind of day that makes me glad I live in Florida. I went to the craft fair at Lauderdale by the Sea, which is less than 10 minutes from me even in bad traffic (like today, with the street closed for the fair). Brunch at Aruba’s beach cafe, and when I got [...]

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MacMegasite was hacked again, using yet another SQL injection hole I missed the last time. I patched a few more holes & I’m now getting ready to upgrade to Nuke 7.1 with the security patches from NukeCops.
There was little damage; they only changed the banners.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Again”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2004/03/19/again/” });

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I just made some script changes which should cut down on the amount of comment spam I receive. Lately, I get 1-3 spams a day.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “Comment Spam”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2004/03/16/comment-spam/” });

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MacMegasite was hacked this morning. Luckily I do daily backups of the database, so I reverted to the backup done at Midnight, shortly before it was hacked.
I was able to figure out how it was done easily by looking at the raw logs, and I patched that particular hole and several similar ones. I also [...]

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I’ve moved MacMegasite to this host after it was down all day with no response from Geek-Hosting. It should take a day or so for the DNS change to take effect.
I now have a web hosting service I like that provides good support and I can host all of my sites and resell hosting services [...]

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MacMegasite has been down all morning due to problems at Geek-Hosting.com.
I plan to move MacMegasite to this host (where I have a reseller account), which also hosts worldbeatplanet.com and shareyourmusic.com.
I still have space & bandwidth available on this host which I can sell. I’m considering the pricing $2.50/month for 100M/1G and $4.75/month for 200M/2G. If [...]

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At least 186 people were killed and more than 1,000 wounded today when a wave of blasts ripped through Madrid’s railway network at the height of the morning rush hour. There has been no claim of responsibility in the attacks, but Spanish officials are blaming terrorists from the Basque separatist group ETA.
Full story at CNN
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ [...]

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I never liked Apple’s mail server, since it stores mail in a proprietary database rather than standard MBOX files, so I built and installed UW IMAPD.
It’s very easy: just download the source (currently at ftp://ftp.cac.washington.edu/imap/imap-2004.RC.tar.Z), unzip it, and build. I built it without SSL since it’s only accessible on my local network. If you want [...]

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The server which hosts this site, as well as worldbeatplanet & shareyourmusic.com crashed and was down most of today. The problem has been fixed.
UPDATE: here’s the explanation from PEHosting:

The downtime was caused by a simple CGI script taking up all the system resources and causing the server to crash. We had a company to monitor [...]

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Since shareyourmusic.com and worldbeatplanet.com now point to the same host and share the same installation of Drupal, the stand-alone script “feedback.php” on both hosts is the same. Since it isn’t part of Drupal, it didn’t know about the two different sites.
I just added a test (eregi(”worldbeatplanet.com”,$_SERVER["HTTP_HOST"])) to set some display variables according to the host [...]

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I was away for a few days due to an emergency. I have the greatest neighbors in the world. They took care of my cats and even cleaned my apartment while I was gone.
SHARETHIS.addEntry({ title: “I’m back”, url: “http://mcdevzone.com/2004/03/03/im-back/” });

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