bad

We now use permanent VirtualBox OSes to run part of our infrastructure.

We ran in all sorts of issues with those, but one thing for sure is that you do not want your OS hard drive to fill up because a (re)boot may not be possible after that. This is because the drive is likely to go bust if completely full.

You should, of course, have tools to let you know how filled up your hard drive is to make sure to catch such issues early. In our case, we had a Jira instance that filled up the drive mainly because we made one backup of the database per day. One day, one of those backup ended that ...

Double Retweeting and How to Avoid Over-Duplication

I have seen many people retweeting like crazy and I've noticed that once in a while these people have been retweeting the exact same tweet more than once.

I'm pretty sure that in most cases these people ignore the fact. Personally I find their twitter feed annoying because of that. Retweeting is totally okay, it's sharing what others have tweeted and there is nothing wrong with it. However, seeing the exact same tweet 2, 3, 4, or even 5 times pretty much in a row is rather bad taste. I understand that this very tweet is super ...

In the last few days, we started hearing about a massive bug in the implementation of the VM memory handling.

Intel has been frantically working on fixing host machines kernels in order to prevent one VM from accessing the memory of other VMs that run on the same machine.

Of course, most users are not going to attempt to read someone else memory so in that sense, most of us are relatively safe. But all of those who are not so lucky and have uninvited guests on their systems are running at very high risk. The information available from Intel says the memory is accessible only in Read mode. ...

About a week ago I got a customer who started having their website appear in Google with HTTPS (the secure version of the site.) The pages are served securily, but it uses our website certificate so you get a big bad error saying that everything is broken and if you proceed you'll know what hell is like.

The fact is that this customer never had a secure certificate. In other words, there is no reason for the site to have been referenced with HTTPS unless someone typed a link to their site and inadvertendly entered https://... instead of http://...

I checked a few of the pages where there ...

It always amazes me when one finds a security issue that looks like something that should never have happened in the first place.

This one was found earlier this year by Wietse Venema who first discovered the issue in Postfix.

He fixed the Postfix server quickly, however, he went further. He actually tested many other servers sending commands that bypass that very security measure and to his surprised he found out that Postfix wasn't the only system affected by the problem.

For those interested, all the details of the problem can be found on the Postfix website as CVE-2011-411.

A ...

The default Aggregator Drupal module does not work very well. There are several problems with the Drupal Core module, one of which we have not fixed in our version (i.e. the flatness of the item table.)

There is a list of the known issues and our comments and whether we fixed the problem:

Security Issue

A security issue was found in all versions of jsMath before 2.x-dev for Drupal 6.x of Jul 29, 2010.

You may still securely use older versions of jsMath on private websites and websites were you are the only user (as in, the only one who can log in.)

The Drupal Security Advisory issue is here: https://www.drupal.org/node/854402

Other Problem

There is another problem: jsMath offers a JavaScript function that parses entire web pages (although there are ways to circumvent that problem, the module does not currently make use of those.) The jsMath Drupal module uses the ...

That's it! The phone commissioners have finally decided that it's OK for telemarketers to call cell phones and try to sell you their products and services.

Personally, I do not think that, in itself, it is a bad thing... except that if I receive even just 1 call a day and have to spend 1 minute each time, I will be burning 30 minutes a month for nothing. (Okay, with 1,000 minutes a month, it wouldn't matter that much, but that's like text messaging... if you receive spam via your phone and you have to pay 20 cents for each spam email you receive, the bill goes up quickly ...

/* the filter type */
struct swf_filter_type {
	unsigned char	f_type;
};

struct swf_filter_glow {
	swf_filter_type	f_type;		/* 0, 2, 3, 4 or 7 */
	if(f_type == GradientGlow || f_type == GradientBevel) {
		unsigned char		f_count;
	}
	else {
		f_count = 1;
	}
	swf_rgba		f_rgba[f_count];
	if(f_type == Bevel) {
		swf_rgba		f_highlight_rgba[f_count];
	}
	if(f_type == GradientGlow || f_type == GradientBevel) {
		unsigned char		f_position[f_count];
	}
	signed long fixed	f_blur_horizontal;
	signed long fixed	f_blur_vertical;
	if(f_type != Glow) {
		signed long fixed	f_radian_angle;
		signed long fixed	f_distance;
	}
	signed short fixed	f_strength;
	unsigned		f_inner_shadow : 1;
	unsigned		f_knock_out : 1;
	unsigned		f_composite_source : 1;
	if(f_type == Bevel) {
		unsigned		f_on_top : 1;
	}
	else {
		unsigned		f_reserved : 1;
	}
	if(f_type == GradientGlow || f_type == GradientBevel) {
		unsigned		f_passes : 4;
	}
	else {
		unsigned		f_reserved : 4;
	}
};

struct swf_filter_blur {
	swf_filter_type		f_type;	/* 1 */
	unsigned long fixed	f_blur_horizontal;
	unsigned long fixed	f_blur_vertical;
	unsigned		f_passes : 5;
	unsigned		f_reserved : 3;
};

struct swf_filter_convolution {
	swf_filter_type	f_type;		/* 5 */
	unsigned char	f_columns;
	unsigned char	f_rows;
	long float	f_divisor;
	long float	f_bias;
	long float	f_weights[f_columns × f_rows];
	swf_rgba	f_default_color;
	unsigned	f_reserved : 6;
	unsigned	f_clamp : 1;
	unsigned	f_preserve_alpha : 1;
};

struct swf_filter_colormatrix {
	swf_filter_type	f_type;		/* 6 */
	long float	f_matrix[20];
};

struct swf_any_filter {
	swf_filter_type			f_fitler_type;
	swf_filter_blur			f_filter_blur;
	swf_filter_colormatrix		f_filter_colormatrix;
	swf_filter_convolution		f_filter_convolution;
	swf_filter_glow			f_filter_glow;
};

A filter defines how to transform the objects it is attached to. The first byte is the filter type. The data following depend on the type. Because each filter is much different, they are defined in separate structures. You can attach a filter to an object using an ActionScript or the PlaceObject3 tag.

The following describes the different filters available since version 8.

struct swf_definesound {
	swf_tag			f_tag;		/* 14 */
	unsigned short		f_sound_id;
	unsigned		f_sound_format : 4;
	unsigned		f_sound_rate : 2;
	unsigned		f_sound_is_16bits : 1;
	unsigned		f_sound_is_stereo : 1;
	unsigned long		f_sound_samples_count;
	unsigned char		f_sound_data[<variable size>];
};

A DefineSound tag declares a set of samples of a sound effect or a music.

The sound samples can be compressed or not, stereo or not and 8 or 16 bits. The different modes are not all available in version 2, although the same tag is used in newer versions with additional capabilities.

The f_sound_is_16bits is always set to 1 (16bits samples) if the samples are compressed (neither Rawnor Uncompressed).

The f_sound_rate represents the rate at which the samples are defined. The rate at which it will be played on the target computers may differ. The following equation can be used to determine the ...