I remember one professor describing SQL to us lowly computer science types as "the universal data-speak".

Like mattoxic said, SQL lets us talk back and forth to databases using agreed-upon standards that, with a little training, most people can learn to 'read' and 'write' in plain English.

So: Without SQL, there's be no: easy way to talk to databases in a format that you and I could easily understand.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 4:02 PM on July 7, 2008

Do you have a shop vacuum and a sock lying around?

Barring that, load one of those humane squirrel traps down there and load it up with peanut butter. The little guys cannot resist the siren call of peanut butter, even if they're about to get flushed down a stormpipe.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 12:10 PM on June 28, 2008

The RIAA Explains How It Catches Alleged Music Pirates, via The Chronicle of Higher Education, Specifically mentions LimeWire. Kazaa seems to be a fave of theirs as well, it seems to show up a lot on their older lawsuits.

I think they're strong with the old clients because the protocols have all been picked apart.

Not that it matters, since they've been duped into C&D'ing printers now.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 5:12 PM on June 20, 2008

The Baghdad batteries.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 9:59 PM on June 17, 2008 marked best answer

Meraki, or, better yet, openMesh?
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 8:50 PM on May 31, 2008

Thanks Lucas - I have a follow-up question as I sit here and dig through their online sales: They seriously want to charge me a onetime $149.99 to connect multiple computers on one line?

I take it I can just wait until their tech leaves and plug in my WRT54G and be good to go (?) - or do they MAC filter or something more invasive?
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 8:36 AM on May 14, 2008

one_bean: With all the providers before me (cox, timewarner/adelphia) I watched them phone in the MAC address of the cablemodem before the thing would come online. Did yours not have to do this? Or did you just call this in on your own?

terpia: noted, agreed

everybody: major thx
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 11:36 AM on May 14, 2008

Final thread update for the next incoming Portland mefi'er who needs Comcast advice:

- The techs had a pre-ordained username and password during the install process, along with an account number they needed when they also called in the MAC. Methinks the consumer-install days are over.

- They did, indeed, install a bunch of their Comcastic helper software, which I removed.

- Once this was working, I waved them goodbye and... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 3:34 PM on May 27, 2008

I assume this station is in the U.S., so ...

It's possible to farm a lot of the streaming infrastructure out so you aren't eating bandwidth costs, worrying about servers, etc. You can usually do some back-of-the-envelope math for 20/50/100 listeners from some well-known streaming hosts (email's in profile if you want some examples) and then the only thing you're worrying about is a single box at the station to send one stream to this host. Low bandwidth, low maintenance.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 1:59 PM on April 30, 2008

Driveshield / MacShield (See also)
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 9:57 AM on April 9, 2008

nth iteration of the free-ntfs-and-fat-utility-that-saved-me-once answer: Pc Inspector
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 6:39 PM on April 7, 2008

FYI, this site says there's ~183 domains hosted on that IP address (209.47.167.180), the first couple of which all look like thing-thing-otherthing.com domains.

The first one I checked is registered to the same person as the first WHOIS here, so, yeah, spam/content farm of some sort. Start a site, use other people's RSS for content, put Google ads on it, rinse, cycle, repeat.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 11:49 AM on April 2, 2008

If you're gunshy about rsync:

Assuming you have immediate or remote access to server A or B, winscp (free) and SecureFX (paid) each have directory synch features, with incremental/diff-only options.

The only gotcha I see is that they both operate with the "local to remote" metaphor, as opposed to "remote to remote", hence the part about immediate access to one of the machines.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 10:27 AM on March 19, 2008

There's also Copilot, but they only do free day pases on the weekends.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 6:28 PM on March 14, 2008

2nding lalochezia's idea above - I once knew someone who nixed similar outgoing d-bag's new hire with Enormous University X using a single Xerox they had been holding onto for three years.

Leave, but document before you go, and stick it in a file somewhere. Might come in handy later.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 8:59 PM on February 23, 2008

Bad capacitors.

There are tons of these out there. Check the capacitors for oozing capacitor goo and if there's even one bad one, there you go.

I can't tell you how many systems I've seen this happen to - dozens of 2004-06'ish mobos.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 2:56 PM on February 18, 2008 marked best answer

2nding flabdablet's 'just replace the mobo'. You didn't say if this was storebought or a homebuild but consider calling the computer or mobo. vendor and politely asking for a new one. They may replace it out of good faith.

I deal with a major PC vendor whose GX2** line was so riddled with bad caps that they're still replacing motherboards even though they're out of warranty. I very much give them props for this, and it has set land-speed records for technical support... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 7:02 AM on February 19, 2008

There's the whole host of the "*-gold" folks out there, but looking at what's happening to E-Gold (US federal lawsuit, relocation to Africa) makes it look like any similar efforts that gain traction are doomed to suffer the inevitable nuclear lawsuit. Even all the weird physical versions that have popped up in the last few years - liberty dollars and a few of the others - all seem to hit a certain growth level before somebody from treasury shows up and shuts it all down.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 11:54 AM on February 11, 2008

Catching it when it's unaccessible is the trick, so you can look at all of these factors at once and ID the weak link. Catch it misbehaving and check top/memory usage, netstat, iostat, ps aux, mysqladmin -show processes, and tail httpd_errors all at once to see if there's any standout issues.

If your host has a bandwidth monitor, you'll want to check that, too. Could be you're just maxing out your alotted bandwidth pipe.

If you have anything... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 11:37 AM on February 7, 2008

1) Download and install VLC media player. It's free. (http://www.videolan.org/vlc/)
2) File -> open network stream.
3) Put the .ASX stream URL in the HTTP/HTTPS/FTP/MMS field.
4) Under "Advanced options", set the "Save stream".

Done.

I also believe this can be scripted, so you should be able to schedule this in Windows with something like schtasks.

Also: most... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 10:27 AM on February 7, 2008

Seconding phrayzee's comment re: the AZ Atty general: I have been getting this as well, on two (520) / Tucson cellphones I own, so I assume these people are targeting AZ.

Makes me want to invent a cellphone firewall, or at least force the cellphone companies to support the kind of per-number blacklisting like maxwelton describes.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 8:41 AM on January 20, 2008

Actually, fish might have half the solution.

If the huge advertising network with hundreds of thousands of publishers can't do per-ip-block specificity, either for technical or business-related reasons (?) the only way to pull this off may be to

1) Purchase city-by-city coverage, targeted by business location
2) *Have the ad image load off of your own server*
3) Do your *own* targeting at the IP-block level, something... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 7:08 PM on January 16, 2008

Linksys WRT54g = the AK-47 of wireless routers.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 7:31 PM on January 13, 2008

Ever looked at Megaseg? I'm not sure about the FLAC support but I'm pretty sure it has cue/preview outs. It also has a nice logging subsystem if you're worried/forced to comply with that kind of thing.

I have some university contacts already using this, email's in profile if you'd like a referral.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 5:16 PM on December 9, 2007

way if Apple kills or modifies its loseless format 30 years down the road, our archive isn't in trouble

Funny thing about that, there's a discussion going on a college radio list I'm on about the argument re: ripping vs. raw .WAV storage because of the decreasing HD price and the rise of things like cheap NAS RAID appliances.

Long story short, lots of folks seem to be ripping to .WAV to avoid what you're describing.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 7:47 PM on December 9, 2007

The 5 Dell power bricks I have killed were all punctured by my cat's chewing on the cord, which resulted in a short in the wire portion from the brick to the computer, which made the brick detect the short and do exactly what you're describing.

The cords themselves have three layers of wire inside separated by shielding - if one touches the other somehow, it shorts, and you get the beep.

Occasionally I could get the thing to work by twisting the... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 6:14 AM on November 20, 2007

Seconding chrisamiller: It isn't uncommon for people who compromise other people's computers to use 3rd party "host stuff" sites like this as a temporary data dump.

When you contact them - which you should, ASAP - you should ask them to remove your documents but preserve any logs they have as to what account uploaded them, on what day, etc. (This article says Docstoc is based in LA, so that's a plus ... if they were in Estonia you'd be a lot worse off)... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 11:24 AM on November 15, 2007

Also, read this: http://www.socialmediatoday.com/SMC/21260

"They are running a promotion that gives away an iPod Touch to the user who uploads the most documents each week. That is a great way to create quantity, not quality. I found an iPod winner in Farhan Khan who uploaded over 20,000 documents. It looks like he also just uploaded his hard drive."

Someone may have just uploaded all the documents they could Google... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 11:30 AM on November 15, 2007

I hate to ask ... but was there a talking bong in there somewhere?
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 4:56 PM on November 8, 2007

Taser?
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 6:56 AM on November 1, 2007

If a taser's out, then perhaps some recreational sporting equipment: baseball bat, 9 iron, etc.

Street legal, but handy.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 5:00 PM on November 1, 2007

I know it's geographically close (Scottsdale) but Taliesin is a great stop.

(2nding the San Xavier!)

If you're OK with dropping some cash for an overnight, try a night at the Arizona Inn. Summer rates == much better.

Also, mark your calendar for All Souls 2007. Do. Not. Miss. This!... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 12:40 PM on October 18, 2007

Some office surveillance happens with the blessings of the entire upper management food chain, so I'd say photos are of the essence here. Certain uses are legal - but Junk-cam certainly isn't...

Casually dropthe phrase my associate who works at a newspaper if you get the sudden runaround from H.R.

And do please keep us posted.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 9:27 AM on July 31, 2007

For what it's worth, I was absolutely stunned at how pretty the Portland-Boise route was (84 east but duck off at any of the smaller random highways like 197, through Maupin).

Not sure if you're into camping, but after taking (and camping) that route, I turned into a convert.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 3:50 PM on July 9, 2007

While you could, indeed, parse the YES page and reformat it, I'm willing to bet this is an instant violation of their terms of use. (Personally, I always wondered why stations put up with YES using their data for a branding-a-thon.)

I take it you aren't using an automation setup? These often have some exportable data that can be used for this kind of thing.

Short of that, yeah, you're typing it all in, but consider for a moment that manual entry... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 12:52 PM on June 18, 2007

At the University of Arizona, in '95, anyway, this demo was part of every engineering student tour. One of the most vivid memories of my life, standing over that pool in the dark, followed by that Indiglo-like flash.

As Good Brain mentioned, though, they, like others, have tightened up the visits thanks to ABC (see the 'campus insecurity' link) ... if you're going this route, expect a background check.... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 12:32 PM on June 15, 2007

Make sure you're speaking proper HTTP get requests, i.e. sending all the right headers, user agent and the like, along with the actual GET line.

"just hang until the connection resets" could just be the webserver waiting for proper header syntax...
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 11:22 AM on June 12, 2007

Gillware.com = $380 for Windows recoveries, and they also handle mac, raid arrays, etc. No fee if they can't recover data (!)

Sent them about eight drives now, and they salvaged them all. Can't recommend them highly enough, they've been awesome.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 6:16 AM on June 12, 2007 marked best answer

Is the application such that you could provide a private beta with interested parties? Or is it not that kind of thing?

I've approached some folks in the related industries for some of my code before and worked out private internal tests at their organizations. This has been a great source of brutally honest user feedback and QA rolled into one.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 6:04 AM on April 12, 2007

Just chiming in: My clearest memory of mono was fearing sleep, because I knew I would have to awake to a throat so swollen and damaged that breathing brought tears.

That throat stuff .. jesus. I still have visible scars.

If you get this, you probably won't be able to eat.

So:
Yogurt and hot tea.
More hot tea, with honey.
Like whatideserve mentioned w/ the vicodin: Throw some... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 11:17 AM on April 6, 2007

I've often thought that there'd be a pretty cool tech niche or two in the 'corporate intelligence' realm (esp. in somewhere like DC) but haven't ever followed through on the concept.

(Also, ethics might hamper a successful career in this arena ... most of the stuff I've read makes some of the C.I. folks look pretty shady)
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 12:38 PM on March 27, 2007

Did it. Loved it. Cannot recommend it highly enough. (!)

a) If you can sleep in the car/camp, do so. Grab the occasional hostel for a shower, but there's something about roughing it that resets the body clock and reconnects you to the outside world. Think: sunrise, birds chirping, cold/hot differences, waking up surrounded by a herd of deer.

b) Take 1k of that and upgrade your car stereo, now, and load up that iPod.

c)... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 7:31 AM on March 13, 2007

Not free, but cheap - and better than putting your trust in random proxies: relakks.com / anonymous VPN.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 7:34 AM on March 5, 2007

Without reiterating a hard-learned lesson involving capillary action, a construction site, a couple of pints of water and a fried Cisco blade - pretend that someday water will be introduced into the cables and plan accordingly.

You're on the right track re: condensation, but think in terms of 'gallons' instead of 'drops'. I believe there's Cat5e/6 with some sort of liqui-gel inside to protect against this sort of thing.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 1:42 PM on February 28, 2007

There are a few cellphone manufacturers doing neat RFID-cell mixes you might want to consider ...
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 4:20 PM on December 16, 2006

If you love the ocean, and are thinking along the lines o' Phoenix, consider Tucson. It'll put you 2 hours closer to the Sea of Cortez :) Economy's a bit slower and the crime's up, but if the ocean is a priority it'll save you the drive time.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 8:29 AM on December 12, 2006

Seconding Maxwelton - You don't mention any sort of current profit level, which - from what I'm seeing as I pursue something similar - is what the vast majority of potential buyers want.

Be able to show them value beyond "It does a bunch of traffic and you can put ads on it". P&L's, traffic growth numbers, rankings, etc.
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 7:48 AM on December 12, 2006

YAPN (yet another product name): Driveshield
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 3:42 PM on December 10, 2006

A key question to answer here would be "When the email that people send you bounces back, what's the error code/reason given for the bounce?"

Posting some headers, the whole shebang, would help ...
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 9:21 AM on December 8, 2006

Most delivery-checking exploit attempts I've seen don't include any sort of spammy filling - they're usually just one-liners to let them know they can bounce mail through your script.

This is probably just some auto-bot taking a poke at whatever your FORM ACTION= points to. Or, if the page is named something generic, like email.php, it could be trying out an exploit for another known email.php script.

Personal experience has shown that... [more]
posted to Ask Metafilter by bhance at 10:23 AM on December 4, 2006