Just figured out that Sitemeter.com tracks clicks. It's not something they tell you in their free reports (which are pretty good btw). So, when you click on a link, they know where you're headed. This isn't that hard, technically - it involves attaching a handler onto A tags - but so far, sites don't seem to be doing that. The reason probably stems from the fact that tracking clicks will gather stats on sites that haven't put a Sitemeter counter onto their pages. Seems like a gray area.

So bye-bye Sitemeter. Nice knowin ya.

(I’m not an expert in this.) Here’s some info about the computer junk universe.

I bought a cheap iPhone cable, and it broke, as expected. The soldering in the connector wasn't secured, so a wire snapped. The order of the wires is red, blue, white, green.

This is a collection of articles about system administration of Windows, Unix/Linux/BSD, and Macintosh computers and networks.

What a pain in the ass. Drupal updates look so slick when they work, but when they fail, it's a nightmare. I ended up reverting to a backup and doing it by the book (which seems to matter a lot), and lost a few posts. Oh well. They were mostly programming posts so the code's around somewhere, and probably slightly improved, and may end up on here again.

This is dvd decoding software.

A short list of things to make purchasing an SSL cert easier.

I'm on a low-volume personal boycott against Adobe because of the Dimitry Sklyarov bust 10 years ago. See Wikipedia's entry. It was a long time ago, but, it remains an attack against the First Amendment. /soapbox

Aside from that, Acrobat is expensive. Mac and Linux users don't pay anything to produce PDFs because it's built-in to the printing system. Windows users have to pay.

Also, in 2010, they were pretty lax about dealing with some security issues that led to the proliferation of malware being delivered as PDF files.

The top PDF makers are:

The attached HTML page will generate a page of random 10-character passwords. It helps you manage one password per website, so a password leaked for one site doesn't get used on other sites.

If you keep old emails, and some of that information is sensitive, you should archive them offline on a computer that doesn't get connected to the network all the time. While this isn't failsafe, it does prevent intruders from accessing sensitive data on backups. (Need to explore backup security issues.)

So I read that they used a rainbow table of 8-char passwords of all lowercase and numerals. That's a rainbow table with 37^8 or 3.5 trillion entries.

Suppose you go onto a foreign network and need to print. There's no network administrator around. How do you install the printer?

So I'm running some old web software that has possible vulnerabilities. Here's a log line with the hack attempt.

I got a cheapie from AJ Wright for $12, and it works okay, looks grainy but acceptable. At work we have a Logitech, and I think the model is the "9000". It cost around $70 and has a nicer picture, better auto-exposure, and a sharper lens.

The thing you don't notice right away is the "lag" that the cheaper camera has. There's a noticeable lag between the audio and the video, and this also seems to translate to a lag during videophone. I suspect that there's a little DSP work going on in the images, and the chips in the Logitech are faster.

For business meetings, if you have the chance to upgrade, go for it. The Logitech was rated high, as were the Microsoft LifeCam and whatever Apple sold, all in the same price range. Get one with HD resolution, a glass lens, and if you can tell, a fast DSP.

I'm looking at some email archiving systems.