Drupal site building tips - From These tips were written for Drupal6 and have not yet been edited for Drupal7 and therefore may not be accurate; this section is under construction. Introduction Drupal is one of the most widely used website servers in the world. It is even used by the US White House. It is free and open source and can be customised to many different uses by installing additional modules. Initial user setup It is not a good idea to give anonymous users access to the site or create accounts until you have the site completely set up and are ready to publish. Drupal -> Administer -> User management -> User settings -> Only site administrators can create new user accounts. Create an administrator user role: Drupal -> Administer -> User management -> Roles -> Add role -> administrator -> edit permissions -> check all Create a new user who will be an administrator Drupal -> Administer -> User management -> Users -> Add user -> Adminuser -> roles -> administrator Create a Welcome page Create a Welcome page: Change:
Allen's Weblog: Unicode in Python, and how to prevent it [UPDATE 16 Aug 2011] Armin Ronacher has written a nice module called unicode-nazi that provides the Unicode warnings I discuss at the end of this article. Though I can't use Python 3 for any of my projects, it does have a few nice things. One particular behaviour where it improves on Python 2 is forbidding implicit conversions between byte strings and Unicode strings. For example: Python 3.1.2 (release31-maint, Sep 17 2010, 20:34:23) [GCC 4.4.5] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> 'foo' + b'baz' Traceback (most recent call last): File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module> TypeError: Can't convert 'bytes' object to str implicitly If you do this in Python 2, it invokes the default encoding to convert between bytes and unicode, leading to manifold unhappinesses. Python 2.6.6 (r266:84292, Sep 15 2010, 15:52:39) [GCC 4.4.5] on linux2 Type "help", "copyright", "credits" or "license" for more information. >>> u'foo' + b'baz' u'foobaz' Hey!
10 Cool Ways to Use Nmap Nmap (“Network Mapper”) is a free and open source (license) utility for network exploration or security auditing. Many systems and network administrators also find it useful for tasks such as network inventory, managing service upgrade schedules, and monitoring host or service uptime. In addition to my list you can also check out this Comprehensive Guide to Nmap here and of course the man pages Here are some really cool scanning techniques using Nmap 1) Get info about remote host ports and OS detection nmap -sS -P0 -sV -O <target> Where < target > may be a single IP, a hostname or a subnet -sS TCP SYN scanning (also known as half-open, or stealth scanning) -P0 option allows you to switch off ICMP pings. -sV option enables version detection -O flag attempt to identify the remote operating system Other option: -A option enables both OS fingerprinting and version detection -v use -v twice for more verbosity. nmap -sS -P0 -A -v < target > 2) Get list of servers with a specific port open
Free Books A lot of people keep asking about a good list of programming books. Hence, we are building this list to save your time and to spread the knowledge. Some of these books will definitely help us to evolve our coding skills and thought processes for developing better solutions. Meta-List Graphics Programming Language Agnostic: NerdDinner Walkthrough Assembly Language: Bash Advanced Bash-Scripting Guide See .NET below Django Djangobook.com Emacs The Emacs manual Thanks Emacser (October 17, 2010) Forth Git Haskell Dive Into HTML5 Java JavaScript Linux Advanced Linux Programming Lisp Lua Programming In Lua (for v5 but still largely relevant) Maven Mercurial NoSQL CouchDB: The Definitive Guide Objective-C The Objective-C Programming Language Parrot / Perl 6 Perl 6 (Work in progress) Perl PowerShell Mastering PowerShell Prolog PostgreSQL Practical PostgreSQL Python Learn REBOL Thanks Nick (October 19, 2010) Ruby Scala Scheme The Scheme Programming Language (Edition 4) Smalltalk Subversion SQL (Implementation agnostic) Symfony Vim
Human Bagel Web Services ubercharged.net - Tales of Team Fortress 2 pwnage and other hilarity GPG Quick Start Initial publication: July 7, 2004 Most recent revision: July 20, 2011 A quick gpg HOWTO for getting started with GnuPG. A colleague at work once asked me how to get started using gpg, the GNU Privacy Guard. Private and public keys are at the heart of gpg’s encryption and decryption processes. Generate a private key. gpg --gen-key You’ll have to answer a bunch of questions: What kind and size of key you want; the defaults are probably good enough. Encrypting a file for personal use Encrypting files for your personal use is quite easy. Encrypt a file called foo.txt. If you have an encrypted file that you think you’ll want to edit on a regular basis, you might consider using the gnupg.vim plugin for transparently editing gpg-encrypted files. A more DIY approach can use make to automate the process of viewing and editing your encrypted file. Encrypting a file for someone else The really cool thing about GnuPG is that you can safely encrypt files for others using publicly available keys.
GNUPG Windows Setup - Coresecure, Inc. Original version by Marco Di Folco (marco.difolco AT coresecure DOT com) Latest revision 0.2 on 05/22/2006 Summary: Install the software Create your personal key pair Import a public key Encrypt a message Export your public key Install the software We will be using Windows Privacy Tools (WinPT), included in the gpg4win package. gpg4win is an installer package for Windows (95/98/ME/2000/XP/2003) for email and file encryption. gpg4win and the software included with gpg4win are Free Software. Download the latest stable release from the gpg4win web site: DOWNLOAD The default installation settings are fine, you should not change anything: Accept the "Licence Agreement" by clicking on the "Next" button. Choose the components that you want to install, pay attention to choose WinPT component. Proceed by clicking on the "Next" button: Leave install location and the other options as they are and press the "Next" button. Once the installation is complete, click the "Finish" button. back to top
Open Letter to Amazon.com To Customer Service and Jeff Bezos, I’m disgusted by Amazon’s cowardice and servility in abruptly terminating its hosting of the Wikileaks website, in the face of threats from Senator Joe Lieberman and other Congressional right-wingers. I want no further association with any company that encourages legislative and executive officials to aspire to China’s control of information and deterrence of whistle-blowing. For the last several years, I’ve been spending over $100 a month on new and used books from Amazon. That’s over. I have contacted Customer Service to ask Amazon to terminate immediately my membership in Amazon Prime and my Amazon credit card and account, to delete my contact and credit information from their files and to send me no more notices. I understand that many other regular customers feel as I do and are responding the same way. So far Amazon has spared itself the further embarrassment of trying to explain its action openly. Yours (no longer), Daniel Ellsberg
PhilipBrennan.Net HiR Information Report: Make your own lock picks - Part 1 Series: Make your own lock picksPart 1: Grind out a simple lock pickPart 2: Make a tension wrenchPart 3: Advanced lock pick profiles In this series, I'll show you how to make a set of high-quality lock picks from stuff you either already have laying around the house, or materials that are easy to acquire for cheap. The first part will cover the basics of how to grind out a simple pick. I chose to use a "Diamond Rake" because of the simple shape. Skills you should pick up in this part: Selecting pick materialCleaning the raw materialUsing a rotary grinding toolQuenchingRounding sharp edgesPolishingTools and things you will need to follow along doing it my way:Beer (very important, or not. They measure .035 thick, which is narrow enough to fit in most traditional keyways, but thick enough to be really strong. Alternatively, an old hack saw blade I had laying around measured .0285 thick. I stuck with the street sweeper bristles for this article, because they're easier to work with.
The TSA and America's Turning Point | Scragged The recently-escalated battle between the American people and the TSA is far more important than it first appears. The final outcome of this argument will determine whether we still live in a nation "of the people, by the people, for the people", or whether we have become a soft tyranny where our democratic forms of elections and representatives have been reduced to a meaningless veneer as in the old Soviet Union or Red China. The Consent of the Governed If America has a single founding principle, it is this: no government has any authority to take any action without the consent of the governed. Our Founding Fathers did not object to the principle of paying taxes per se; they objected strongly to the idea of being forced to pay taxes to a government where they had no input. Freedom's cry was not "No taxation" then, and it isn't now; it was "No taxation without representation." The concept of "the consent of the governed" means more than just voting, however. We are about to find out.
I was just detained by the TSA Today, I was detained by the TSA for about 30 minutes for taking pictures while going through security. Taking pictures is perfectly legal. I took pictures of the "advanced imaging" machines that see through your clothes – the machines that are the subject of so much controversy lately. I should point out that (as far as I know), taking pictures is perfectly acceptable. 2.7. I wasn’t trying to cause trouble. Some sort of manager (old grizzled guy) was summoned to deal with me. The old guy, with a couple other agents, escorted me through the normal process of putting my bags through the x-ray and going through the "advanced imaging" scanner. When I finally got through the machine, my computer and iPhone had been taken off the belt, and had been in possession of the old guy for several minutes. I asked him to return my items and let me go. Some added the following: TSA: You have to show us your pictures and delete them. Others added: TSA: Show us the pictures you took. Postscript
4thamendmentwear 4th Amendment Wear 4TH AMENDMENT UNDERCLOTHES Now there's a way to protest those intrusive TSA X-ray scanners without saying a word. 4th Amendment Metallic ink-printed undershirts and underwear. Assert your rights without saying a word.