Preventing Security Holes
I was recently browsing a very popular review website, when I noticed the following warnings popping up:
From simply loading their web page and seeing these error messages, I could conclude:
- The website is using Drupal.
- The website is using memcached.
- The website is running on Acquia's managed hosting cloud.
- The website has error reporting set to print all errors to the screen.
If I were trying to break into this review site, or cause them a bad day, the information presented in this simple error message would
The Importance of All Souls
Yesterday, at a Mass celebrating the Solemnity of All Saints, the priest's homily was about how All Saints was like Thanksgiving; we're all gathered around a table for a feastâour chatty aunt, our boisterous grandpa, our crazy grandma who drinks a little too much. And all those relatives who have diedâour aunts and uncles, our grandmas and grandpas, some of our siblings, and maybe childrenâare saints. The feast is to celebrate all of them
Windows 8 - A Long Way to Go [Updated]
[ Update : I've been playing around with Windows 8 Pro for a few hours since receiving it from Amazon ( Win 8 Pro is only $66 on Amazon! ), and I have a few more observations:
- For an IT staffer or someone doing normal Windows configurationâadding printers, changing TCP/IP settings, etc., Windows 8 is almost exactly the same as Windows 7, with some typical version-to-version text and icon arrangement changes.
- Using gestures with a mouse in
Year of Faith - Resources
Tomorrow begins the Year of Faith , when, as Pope Benedict points out, "we must rediscover a taste for feeding ourselves on the word of God, faithfully handed down by the Church, and on the bread of life, offered as sustenance for his disciples."
Here are a few resources I'd like to highlight for making the Year of Faith personal:
- Read the Catechism in a Year - Flocknote (disclaimer: I work there) is offering an email-a-day with one reading from the Catechism
Trouble sending emails from localhost or MAMP? Check your SPF
Email is hard. In fact, it's so hard that I probably have five or so blog posts half-written on this blog that I've abandoned simply because I don't think I could distill them down into something worthy of posting (I like being able to explain things understandably or not at all!).
I don't think there's anyone involved in administering a domain name and email who hasn't gotten burned by SPF (TXT) records at least once. Here'
Contraception, Abortion, and the HHS Mandate
A recent study supports the popular opinion (used to justify the HHS birth control mandate , among other things) that providing free contraceptives to women reduces the rate of abortion:
Free birth control led to greatly lower rates of abortions and births to teenagers , a large study concludes, offering strong evidence for how a bitterly contested Obama administration policy could benefit womenâs health. The two-year project tracked more than 9,000 women in St. Louis, many of them poor or uninsured, who
'Stir' over Facebook comment caused by breach of privacy [Updated x2]
I was disheartened by the following news story from the St. Louis Post Dispatch: 'Mormons: 1. Indonesians: 0' debate post by STL Catholic exec causes stir .
The story notes that Alderwoman Lyda Krewson , a Democrat in the 28th ward in St. Louis, tweeted a comment made by an employee of the Archdiocese of St. Louis on the employee's personal Facebook wallâ which is set to private , and only accessible/visible to the employee's friends. (Note
Force SSL (https://) for only one virtual host with .htaccess
Many servers I help administer host many websites; and every now and then, someone wants me to set up a secure (SSL) certificate for one of the websites on the server. Once the certificate is working in Apache, and users can access the site at https://example.com/ , they also request that all traffic that was originally destined for either https://www.example.com/ or https://example.com/ be routed to the secure site.
This can
Line breaks instead of Paragraphs in TinyMCE (by default)
Most people who have grown up on the web, and have used Wysiwyg utilities online, or newer text editors/word processing applications are used to having a simple 'return' create a new paragraph, with (on average) one extra line of empty space between the new paragraph and the one before it.
However, a lot of people like having the 'return' key just go down one line. There are a few ways this is possible in most Wysiwygs:
- You can change the block style from 'Paragraph
Goodbye, iPhone 4
It was a great run! Now that I have the iPhone 5 (see my iPhone 5 review here ), this trusty iPhone 4âwhich still looks and runs perfectâis going to be passed along to some other owner. What an iconic and well-crafted product:
Read my review of the iPhone 4 , from 2010.