Cubic

I was having a conversation yesterday with someone and we somehow managed to get onto the topic of LEDs and how there are too many of them. I wholeheartedly agreed because I've been getting annoyed lately at how bright everything is when the lights are turned off at night. This morning I walked around the place before I turned anything on. I could see my way clearly everywhere. Whatever happened to all the fun we used to have with being able to stub our toes on something in the dark? Light Emitting Diodes. Pff. Whatever. I counted them before turning anything on: 47 LEDs all either steadily on or going blinkety-blink in the dark. No one is looking at them. In terms of brightness at night, the bright blue and bright white LEDs are the worst (i.e. they output too much light). Green falls behind at a close second and red is last. I'm sure there are other colors and maybe different perceptions of how bright they actually are but all this light is wholly unnecessary. Esp...

People who run websites are generally clueless about securing their websites. What follows is a short list of "seven sins" (I know...a cliché) that are committed by those who operate a website that use a dynamic backend scripting language (PHP, Perl, etc.): 1) Installing third-party components without first reviewing them for how well-written they are, if they have had major security vulnerabilities and/or exploits in the past 12 months, how well defended against automated scripts they are, and how well each component defends itself from known and unknown exploits. If you don't know how to do this, then employ the services of a security expert. 2) Not upgrading components the same day an upgrade becomes publicly available. PHP, MySQL, third-party components, etc. All major releases typically have fixes for security vulnerabilities. And most releases likely already have exploits for those vulnerabilities floating around in the wild. Security firms track both the vulnerabil...

People buy things online all the time. They trust the Internet security mechanisms that have been put in place and believe a little gold icon in the corner of the web browser equals security. What most people don't do is stop and think "gee, how does a little gold icon equate to security?" So this wonderous blog entry shall take you through the world of "modern" security, how it works, and then how easily it can be broken. I'll also share some interesting tidbits of information and form an interesting connection that no one else has made that is worth thinking about. Just so you know in advance, I still trust the technology and make purchases online, but it is something that has nagged me for some time now. People have been making stuff "secure" for a really long time. Other people have been trying to break security for just about as long - mostly so they could steal whatever was being made secure. Only in recent years has a third group formed. Thi...

...And they end up on my blog. For some weird reason or other, this blog attracts the weirdest people. Not that it is bad, it just is weird. For instance, my last post caused a RentACoder troller to show up and start ranting, uh...trolling...about some RentACoder experience that happened years ago. I deleted the messages and turned on comment moderation. I figured normal people would show up but they haven't. Well, one exception: One of my posts _finally_ had a normal, everyday person who used it and actually appreciated the post. It was my "Lexmark Printer Driver Removal" post where I provided a tool (old-school batch file) to completely remove what Lexmark was unable to remove with their uninstaller. I suppose talking geek just automatically attracts the wrong crowd. If I started talking about how to use Windows Movie Maker 2 or did Photoshop tutorials on forum avatar creation (borderline geek) or how to safely lose weight (most weight loss programs are unsafe -...