Extra88

This falls under so many categories. MacOSXHints has this storyAn AppleScript to look up NetBIOS names. but Real Men use the Terminal. Here's the command line bit that does the real work:

nmblookup -T -U <WINS server IP> -R <NetBIOS name>

Not that we don't love our FileMaker databases but at some point we might need the FmPro Migrator. Someone on MacSlash had an interesting idea. They might use FileMaker as a database prototyping system the use the migrator to move everything to MySQL when it becomes a production system.

demo available but I'm not sure what the demo's capabilities are. The migrator can also handle FileMaker-to-Oracle but I don't think we'll be using Oracle databases anytime soon.

Mac OS X: Audio Application Unexpectedly Quits If Third-Party Audio Device Is Disconnected or Turned Off

It doesn't affect only USB audio devices but also FireWire. Their solution is to quit the app before disconnecting the device. Seems pretty lame, I hope they fix that in a patch before releasing 10.3. We have a bunch of Macs which we want to switch to OS X this Summer but we'll be going with 10.2 because that's what we already own.

That reminds me, this year, we need to make sure our Mac orders are placed late enough to definitely get 10.3. included.

From MacInTouch:

Released after an extended beta-testing period, Radmind 1.0 is a suite of Unix command-line tools and a server designed to remotely administer the file systems of multiple Unix machines. It can detect changes to any managed filesystem object (files, directories, links, etc.) and can optionally reverse the change. For Mac OS X, Radmind Assistant provides a graphical interface to the command-line tools. Radmind is free for Mac OS X, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Solaris.

It’s a little thing but I do it all the time in Mozilla. In Safari, I can’t load a URL by dragging it onto a tab. In Safari I have to either right-click then choose New Tab from the menu or command-click the link, which requires two hands. Then I still have to click on the tab to bring it to the front (there are keyboard commands for tab switching but they’re also two-handers - shift-command-right arrow and left arrow). When I’m done with the page, I have to close the tab because it’s not much good for anything else.

We're looking to fill a new position so we are, yet again, trudging through resumes. I'm accustomed to tech geeks not being too strong wit de social skills or writing skills but I do find spelling and grammar errors in resumes and cover letters a bad sign. We don't automatically send them to the trash bin, in fact one of our better candidates had the most errors, but it can tip one into the "No" column. I thought this sentence from a recent cover letter was most unfortunate:

I am very hard worker and a stickler for details.

We're finally adding someone to our department, they start Monday. The main office isn't big enough for all of us so I've moved into a private office nearby. I hope it will help me hunker down when working on projects but I don't like the feeling of being out of touch. The office has other drawbacks, which are explained in this little "photo essay", with comments.

As far as I'm concerned, my use of the copier is free-to-me but I want to see if this trick works on the models we have. The stuff about messing them up so badly a technician has to come fix it is not cool, though.

HOW TO: Obtain Free Copies and Do Other Fun Stuff to Copiers

This is an interesting script. It has some room for error but I have an idea about how to avoid that.

Some fellow who seems to work for Microsoft in some capacity has written a batch script called MakeMeAdmin that uses runas in clever ways to make a program run as the user but with admin privileges. The advantages over simply running programs using a local admin account are the program will use the user's profile instead of the admin account's and the programs will have access to domain resources.

Here are the phases of the script:
1. Open a command prompt as a local administrator (user is prompted for this account's password)
2. Current user is added to the local Admin group
3. Open command prompt (or another specific program) as current user (user is prompted for their own password)
4. Current user is removed from the local Admin group

Changes to group membership don't affect existing login sessions, only new ones. Therefore when runas is used in step 3 to start a program as the current user, it's a separate session and therefore the Admin group membership takes affect. Step 4 can happen immediately because the user's removal from the Admin group won't affect the session opened in step 3.

There's a lot of info flying around about Google's new web accelerator app, how it works and its affects. This article on
Google Web Accelerator's affect on web applications is particularly interesting. Basically since the accelerator will cause the Google proxy to prefetch not only images and embedded objects but also links, it may cause some actions being taken without you realizing it. Say you have a "Delete All Entries" link on your blog management web page. If you're using the Web Accelerator when visiting that page, Google may try to follow that link and therefore perform the action.

The comments on the article indicate that the "best practice" in web design is to use the PUT method rather than GET for any requests that could alter (including deletion) the content of the server. That's pretty straightforward when you're just doing normal <form method="put"> tags but I'm not familiar enough with other action request methods to know how it's done with them.

Boston College Will Stop Offering New Students E-Mail Accounts

Instead of a standard college e-mail account, next year’s freshmen will be offered an e-mail-forwarding service that will pass along messages to whatever personal e-mail account a student specifies, said Mary C. Corcoran, associate vice president for user and support services at the college. A student named John Smith might be given the address johnsmith@bc.edu, for instance, but the address will simply pass any incoming mail along to Mr. Smith’s Google mailbox, or to his Microsoft Hotmail, or to any other account the student might already have. The college currently runs such a forwarding service for alumni.

This sounds like a bad idea. When the institution provides a mail system, you can reasonably expect students to be responsible for reading what's sent there. Not so when you're just letting it go off to where ever. Most school email systems let you configure your account to forward elsewhere but when you choose to do that you're still responsible for what was sent to your school address.

Maybe BC has a web-based course system that's used for all important class information so school email isn't so important.