Then, several issues disturbed me during the delivery process :

• even if all 3 ordered items were available at ordering time, the Canon S100 was suddenly not available anymore, without explanation. I contacted Canon Switzerland, they informed me that Digitec was known for such behavior.
• after talking to Digitec, they informed me that I have to wait up to March to get the Canon S100. I told them it’s not serious.
• then I started to get the 3 items in 3 separate packages, in 1 day interval. All packages were delivered to my door by 3 distinct vehicules.
• the tiny SDHC card was sent in a huge box, see picture below.

In short : Digitec has no idea about delivery time, and their poor shipping strategy cost them (and therefore us customers) vast amounts of money. I will therefore stay away from them for my future purchasings.

BTW: the Canon S100 appears to be a very good camera, based on my initial testings.

Mode d’emploi :

• télécharger sur votre Mac
• dézipper
• démarrer iCal
• importer le fichier .ics dans votre calendrier

feries_2012_suisse.ics.zip

Corrections et compléments bienvenus, mon email se trouve dans la page “About me”, ou alors sous forme de commentaire.

Pour ceux qui désirent le calendrier des numéros de semaines, cherchez le freeware NumSemaine.

The reason : you probably updated your Perl distribution and are now running Perl 5.10 against Perl 5.8 libraries. Perl 5.10 and Perl 5.8 are not binary compatible, sadly. Any perl packages that have binaries in them (like Digest::MD5 or Compress::Zlib) cannot be re-used from a perl 5.8 machine to a perl 5.10 machine.

So if you have all your packages coming from the same source, everything should work. If you mix things (like having compiled some libs yourself with “perl Makefile.PL”), you will most likely encounter the error above . The cure is to recompile your lib with the new Perl version:

/your/new/perl Makefile.PL
make
make install

You can’t even imagine how much I like apt-get.

Anyway, after hours of googling, I found an easy method to upload a file to a sharepoint server : curl. Sharepoint supports HTTP PUT commands, but wants NTLM authentication. Initially, I thought I could use this :

import httplib2
bytes = open(filename, ‘rb’).read()
h = httplib2.Http()
h.add_credentials(user, password)
resp, content = h.request(url, “PUT”, body=bytes, headers={‘content-type’:'text/plain’} )

Well, it works only for BasicAuth servers. However, $harepoint wants the proprietary NTLM auth scheme, and httplib2′s python wonder can’t produce NTLM…

So back to the root : what tool can do HTTP and NTLM ? curl. This works for me :

curl –ntlm -u domain\\user:password -T /etc/hosts https://sp.domain.com/dirspec/hosts

Well, I’m not very proud of forking curl from my scripts, but it works. Pycurl is probably the next step to elegance.

Mode d’emploi :

• télécharger sur votre Mac
• dézipper
• démarrer iCal
• importer le fichier .ics dans votre calendrier

feries_2011_suisse_ics.zip

Corrections et compléments bienvenus, mon email se trouve dans la page “About me”, ou alors sous forme de commentaire.

Pour ceux qui désirent le calendrier des numéros de semaines, cherchez le freeware NumSemaine.

To avoid this syndrome, I tried to hack the registry. It worked until the next reboot, where the deployed policy broke my hack and returned the timeout to 15 minutes.

I then found out a nice solution in the form of caffeine. Put it in your auto-start folder and forget about the problem. And for the ones thinking I’m breaking the company policy, they are wrong. When I leave my place, I always lock my two screens manually. And yes, even to go to the printer. This is IMHO a much better way of ensuring the security of the servers and networks I can access from my machines than waiting 15 minutes until the screen saver starts.

Due to the way Microsoft Windows loads dynamically linked libraries (DLLs), an application may load an attacker-supplied DLL instead of the legitimate one, resulting in the execution of arbitrary code.

OK, I suppose an attacker must have administrator rights to plant a hostile DLL ? Or maybe not ?

… Windows uses several different search algorithms to find DLL files. The interaction between the application and Windows can result in a DLL file being loaded from the current working directory … The current working directory could be the desktop, a removable storage device such as a USB key, a Windows file share, or a WebDAV location.

Well, it appears Windows will load DLLs from just about anywhere they are, even on remote systems. What a nice, well-thought feature. What were they smoking when they designed this OS ?

I didn’t even try to use the onboard Google indexing features or data. I was given the box in condition of erasing the internal disk, so I simply had to install another OS on it. Simple mission, isn’t it ?

Well, Google tried to make our life hard. But as Bruce Schneier says : protecting public bits by DRM is futile. I shall add : special screws don’t help either.

To open the box :

• cut the top plastic cover for 3 cm on the front
• unscrew the 2 lateral strange screws (a small flat screwdriver made the job, even if the special screws should prevent it)
• slide the cover to the back

Hardware :

• motherboard SuperMicro P8SCT
• Pentium 4, frequency 3 GHz
• 2 Gb RAM
• 250 Gb SATA disk
• 2 Broadcom gigabit ethernet interfaces
• 2 USB ports

BIOS :

• version 1.1
• plug-in a VGA monitor and a PS2 keyboard
• power on
• press <Del> during the Google splash screen to enter the BIOS
• OOOppps : the BIOS is protected by a password. Nasty Google…
• clear the BIOS by jumping the JBT1 pins according to the motherboard manual page 2-19, chapter 2-7 (Jumper Settings). Remove Power and AC coard, short-circuit a few seconds with a small screwdriver, job done.
• at the next boot, the BIOS password is gone. Yeahh, got you, Google

Reinstallation :

• modifiy the BIOS boot order to first boot from a CDROM and external device
• connect a USB DVD drive
• boot Ubuntu 10.04 LTS 32 bits and install OS
• after a few minutes, I had a perfect nice server running Ubuntu.

Issues :

• the server pulls about 100 W of electrical power. That translate to about 120 CHF electricity cost a year.
• it is noisy as hell, between a hacked motorcycle and a plane taking off.