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- New Genius: devic became the
third member at Experts Exchange to reach Genius status in Javascript last week. He
joined EE in August, 2003 and ranks 74th in the Hall of Fame. Congratulations,
devic!
- If this is Tuesday... it must be Patch Day in Redmond. There are
13
on the list today.
- An OS by any other name: After being told by the European Union
to offer a version of Windows XP without the Media Player built in or face
still more fines,
Microsoft has come up with the "Reduced Media Edition". EU regulators have
told Microsoft to come up with a better name. Where's the marketing department
when you need it?
- Number 895 with a bullet: Google is listed as number 895 on ICANN's list of domain
registrars. At the same time, the company is looking for a "Strategic
Negotiator, Global Infrastructure", an indication that Google is looking
at the thousands of miles of fiber optic cable that has been laid but isn't
in use. Add to that its blogger, photo organizer, and APIs, coupled with
its recent hiring of lead
Firefox developer Ben Goodger, and what can be far behind? Maybe an
operating system embedded in a web browser? Is that legal?
- Internet tax?: If you've had email for any length of time, you've
probably seen the email that says that the US Government is going to start taxing
emails. Well, get that pen and paper ready; a Congressional committee
is thinking of using a tax, originally enacted to help pay for the
Spanish-American War in 1898, to raise revenues by taxing all Internet and data
connections.
- I saw it on the Internet so it must be true: This one made the
rounds about five years ago and was then reprised in 2003, even making the
blog of noted
digital guru Stephen Downes, and now it's being sent around again:
the story of the student who was suspended from his Kansas high school for being heard
bragging that he used PHP. Very good AP-like styling.
- Passing it along: cfourkays posted
a question in the Feedback topic area saying thanks to the Expert
community. Yes, we all hear it on an individual basis fairly frequently,
but it's still a nice gesture.
-
MySQL hit with worm: The open source database program MySQL was
hit with a
worm in its Windows version last week. The worm, which was fairly
quickly squashed, took advantage of poor password choices and used
"brute force" to take over systems.
TimYates
sent us an email about the worm, which is described more fully at
sans.org.
Tim also sent a fix:
- Select a strong password, in particular for the 'root' account.
- Restrict root to localhost (or single machine) access
- Don't let port 3306 outside your firewall
- What's your take on 18 months?: Jeffrey Lee Parson, the Minnesota
teenager who wrote a variant of the Blaster worm, was sentenced to 18 months
in a federal prison. There are all kinds of polls out there, but we'd rather
read your thoughts, so give us some
feedback. We'll include comments in a future newsletter.
Looping through files in a folder
"Would someone tell me an easy way to loop through files in a folder.
Ideally I would like to only see files of one kind (.pdf) so that I could
place a link to them on a web page." It took 28 minutes for a solution to
be posted.
Points: 250 Feb 3, 2005 08:33AM PST
View the solution
Security flaw
"I got connected remotely from another server... it means anyone can include
this db connection file in their scripts and can access my tables, data etc. Isn't
it a security flaw? Who has to solve it -- me or my hosts?"
Points: 150 Jan 30, 2005 07:47AM PST
View the solution
Still open: Running PHP5 and PHP4 on the same server
"I run a web host, and we are currently trying to look into some way of
running PHP4 and PHP5 at the same time, with only .php5 files being parsed
by PHP5, and the rest by PHP4. ... I can't find any how-tos or information
on how to do that."
Points: 500 Jan 11, 2005 12:08PM PST
Can you help?
Diablo84
Diablo84's accomplishments in the PHP topic areas are the stuff
of legend: MVP as a new member in 2004, recipient of the first Wizard
and Sage certificates, and a member of the Hall of Fame. Not bad for
eleven months' work.
Registration Date: March 20, 2004
Expert Points: 883272
Certificates: Sage, PHP; Guru, PHP and Databases
hernst42
hernst42 is the second half of last March's one-two punch in the
PHP topic areas. He didn't start answering questions until five months
after he joined, but he's the first PHP Expert to earn certificates
in all of the PHP topic areas.
Registration Date: March 19, 2004
Expert Points: 886851
Certificates: Guru, PHP and Databases; Wizard, PHP; Master, PHP
for Windows, PHP Installation, Mysql
Squinky
Squinky is one of the more rare Experts at EE; he says his OS of
choice is MacOS X, but he also runs Windows, OpenBSD and Linux servers
as a multimedia developer in London. He's also a big fan of the
Feedback he gets for helping out.
Registration Date: October 19, 2003
Expert Points: 344140
Certificates: Wizard, PHP
Tip from the Page Editors: About the
most frequent problem new users have is that they aren't very clear about
a) what their problem is, and b) what they've already tried. Remember that
the Experts aren't looking over your shoulder. Computers come in all kinds
of sizes and shapes, and software does things differently, depending on
which version you have. So when you ask your question, give as much
information as you can. You'll get a lot more help, a lot quicker with a
lot less frustration.
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If you would like to swap links with EE, just fill out the form at
the Link Exchange page.
Okay, maybe it's not exactly MY Top Ten, but Sophos has listed the
top ten most common viruses for January, along with the Top Ten email
hoaxes. I can't believe the Budweiser Frogs screensaver is still making the
rounds.
If you have a software firewall, and someone comes along and suggests
another one, two levels of protection should be better than one, right? Wrong.
When Microsoft released SP2, they included their Internet Connection Firewall
and assumed that everyone would want it turned on. Much of the time, it does
work, but a lot of ISPs include a firewall with their software, so you can
start having connection problems if the two conflict. You can disable the
Windows firewall by going to Control Panel and selecting "Firewall" in Classic
View ("Security Center" in Category view) from there simply check the option
to turn off your firewall. In the Category view you're going to select the
Windows Firewall from the bottom of the Window and then turn it off.
I saw an article the other day about a former AOL employee who pleaded
guilty to stealing
92 million email screen names and selling them to a spammer. U.S.
federal sentencing guidelines say he can get a maximum of 2 years. Maybe
he should spend them reading all of the spam. Speaking of which, an article
from the New York Times makes the case that the Can-Spam Act has
actually caused an increase in the amount of spam we get.
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ameba, one of
EE's prominent Experts, provides us with a list of newly earned Certificates.
His list of all of the Certified Experts is located at
his site. The list
below covers the period from January 23 through February 6.
1230 experts have 1918 certifications: Genius:28 Sage:85 Wizard:126
Guru:337 Master:1342
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