Asymptomatic

There must be intelligent life down here

This PC Is Toast
June 03, 2006

I have many, many gigs of data (home movies, photos, software downdoads) on a physical ATA drive in my desktop PC. I don’t want to lose it. Last night while performing a routine system restore, my system booted to an error message “The application or DLL MSVCP60.DLL is not a valid system image. Please verify against your installation disk.” I clicked OK and was left with a black screen and a mouse pointer. No OS.

Troubleshooting this issue has been a nightmare. I’ve tried using the Windows recovery console to replace that file. I’ve tried several linux live CDs, which either don’t boot (Ubuntu) or can’t see my SATA boot drive (Knoppix) or refuse to burn onto a CD from Berta’s PC (Unbuntu again). I’m now at the point that I’ve tried restoring Windows - twice. It gets to a point where it asks for a driver for my motherboard right after it drops USB support, so I can’t type or use the mouse.

Dear Web Development Community
June 01, 2006

Dear Web Development Community,

I’ve been running a web site of my own since 1995. I have used shared servers, dedicated servers, virtual private servers, and all sorts of operating systems with various hosting companies. I even host some services out of my home office.

What is all this Nonce-sense?
June 01, 2006

You might have noticed that the service release of WordPress 2.0.3 is now available for download. I do recommend to users that they perform this upgrade if they are using the 2.0 branch, because it addresses at least one security issue.

One security-related issue that you might be interested in is the new nonce system. It started with this thread on the WordPress hackers mailing list and became one of the most involved and complex discussions we’ve ever had. I personally had all too much to say about it. So what is a nonce and how does it affect you?

First off, “nonce” is pronounced like the prefix “non”, but with an “s” sound at the end. It is not “noun” with an “s” sound. The term “nonce” is used in a variety of ways, but for our purposes it is a unique code that is only used (more or less) once to identify a particular transaction. How is this useful?