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NoCOUG SQL challenge
NoCOUG (which stands for Northen California Oracle Users Group) published an SQL challenge [PDF]: using SQL determine the probability of achieving a given number by throwing a non-balanced dice N times. Being a PostgreSQL fanboy that I am, I’ve given a try with PG. Here are the results: To create the table and populate it…
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Getting testing right
Product testing and review is a very important step in convincing people to buy, not to buy a certain product (it is viewed by customers as more credible than marketing aimed directly at them, because the perception is that they are not “bought”, even though vendors pay for many tests!). If the organization / individual…
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Mixed links
From a recent linkfest on The Old New Thing blog come the following links: Some C++ Gotchas – yes, C++ is hard, and if you can keep all the rules in your head, you are a genius (or at least somebody working in C++ for 10+ years). On a related note: Java is also hard…
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Small programming tips
A quickpost inspired by issues I encountered recently. How to concatenate (aggregate) strings with PostgreSQL? In MySQL you can write: SELECT concat(name) FROM test_table Because concat also works as an aggregate function (like MIN, MAX, SUM, COUNT, etc). To get the equivalent result in PostgreSQL, you can use the following query (based on ideas from…
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Adding a world clock to your blog
Quite some time ago I’ve written a post about how to create a clock which shows the blog author’s time zone. The intention was to make relative temporal references (like “tomorrow”, “yesterday”, “within the last hour”, etc) more relevant to readers from different timezones. While the method worked perfectly, it did require you to have…
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The state of web security
If you are a busy (wo)man, I save you the time it would take to read this blogpost: it is deplorable. Now to elaborate on it: Yesterday I was putting together some new templates for the webhoneypot project with a focus on PHP shells. Things like r57, c99 and their derivatives. Then I looked at…
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Updates for Webhoneypot
The development of the webhoneypot is back in swing again. We are aiming for the date of May the 15th as the release date for a beta version. A cool new feature which got committed recently is the possibility to “emulate” RFI vulnerabilities. How does it work (idea taken from the glastopf project): When a…
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Mixed links
From Andy Helsby’s Bookmarks: How do I Reset a Dell BIOS Password? – apparently for laptops there is a free (if you live in the USA) number you can call, and after giving the serial number for your laptop, they give a master unlock code. This is cool, but also a reminder that BIOS passwords…
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Gh0stNet
The latest security news (hype?) is the discovery of Gh0stNet. Links: Original papare: Tracking GhostNet: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network F-Secure blogpost about it The paper from Cambridge: The snooping dragon: social-malware surveillance of the Tibetan movement My take on it? There is no proof that China is behind this. There are alternative explanations (as…
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Alternative regular expression syntax
For a long time I was a believer in the “Perl way” of doing regular expressions and an avid reader of perlre. All other implementations I viewed as a “poor man’s copy” of the one true idea. However, after reading the Lua Patterns Tutorial, I found it quite enlightening. Even though it is called “patterns”…