Howto: Disable AirDrop on OSX Lion

Although it might be a nice feature to some people, OSX 10.7 new feature called AirDrop is a liability for everyone trying to keep a Mac secure. To disable this feature, open a terminal and type the following command:


sudo defaults write /Library/Preferences/com.apple.NetworkBrowser DisableAirDrop -bool YES


You will need the administrator’s password to use this command. It will permanently disable AirDrop on your Mac. Stay secure!

Happy birthday Linux!

Path: gmdzi!unido!fauern!ira.uka.de!sol.ctr.columbia.edu!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!wupost!uunet!mcsun!news.funet.fi!hydra!klaava!torvalds
From: torva...@klaava.Helsinki.FI (Linus Benedict Torvalds)
Newsgroups: comp.os.minix
Subject: What would you like to see most in minix?
Summary: small poll for my new operating system
Keywords: 386, preferences
Message-ID: <1991Aug25.205708.9541@klaava.Helsinki.FI>
Date: 25 Aug 91 20:57:08 GMT
Organization: University of Helsinki
Lines: 20

Hello everybody out there using minix -

I'm doing a (free) operating system (just a hobby, won't be big and
professional like gnu) for 386(486) AT clones.  This has been brewing
since april, and is starting to get ready.  I'd like any feedback on
things people like/dislike in minix, as my OS resembles it somewhat
(same physical layout of the file-system (due to practical reasons)
among other things). 

I've currently ported bash(1.08) and gcc(1.40), and things seem to work.
This implies that I'll get something practical within a few months, and
I'd like to know what features most people would want.  Any suggestions
are welcome, but I won't promise I'll implement them  

		Linus (torva...@kruuna.helsinki.fi)

PS.  Yes - it's free of any minix code, and it has a multi-threaded fs.
It is NOT protable (uses 386 task switching etc), and it probably never
will support anything other than AT-harddisks, as that's all I have  .

Is Dropbox really so unsafe?

Recently a blog post by Derek Newton drew my attention like a magnet. Derek claims that the authentication of Dropbox is insecure by design as all the data is stored in a SQLite database file and you could simply hijack anothers Dropbox account by simply moving this database file to ones own computer. This news are indeed disturbing. As Derek only checked the Windows version I wanted to know if this problem exists crossplatform (ie. on my Mac).
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HOWTO: setting up DAViCal on CentOS 5.5

I use calendars a lot: I use MS Exchange at work which I can also access with my iPhone. At home I use the Gmail calendar service which also works quite well with Apples iCal and the iPhone. However I always disliked the idea that Google knows all about my private schedules and appointments. So I decided to setup my own calendar service on a CentOS server. There are several iCalendar projects available, some of them open source, others commercial. As it was clear I would only go with an open source project I looked at several candidates and then I found out about DAViCal, a php/postgresql based service that looked good enough to give it a try.

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Getting rid of nasty proxy settings

I recently had the problem that some application was not able to connect to the internet although all other applications could. It took me some time to realize that somehow this application was using an old proxy-server setting. Checking in the network preference pane I found that there was no proxy in the settings.

Yet the application still persisted in using this proxy server. As googling this was no use I continued to play around until I found out that on the terminal there was a system variable called $http_proxy set, which pointed at exactly this proxy server. Checking the .bash_profile was unsuccessful, the variable was not set there. But where else? Well, some time ago I wrote a blog post about setting environment variables. And there I explained how the stuff works: in the users home directory there is a hidden directory called .MacOsx. And in this directory there is a plist-file called environment.plist — everytime the user logs on to the system, this property list is read in and the environment variables are set. It appears that when I entered the proxy settings in the network prefpane OSX automatically set the environment variable for the proxy here too. So deleting the entry and logging out and in again solved the problem.

Today is 42

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Microsoft Product Excellence

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How to make an URL-shortening service

Recently I was a little bit bored. And always when I’m bored I gonna start working on small projects just to drive away boredom. What I did this time was an URL-shortening service. URL-shortening service? What’s that? I’m pretty sure, most of you have used one before. Everybody hates long addresses like http://www.example.com/this/is/a/horrible/long/url.php?id=laksdfjlkfadjoweiu – they are extremely uncomfortable, especially when you want to copy them into an email or share it on a service like Twitter. So URL-shortening services like tinyurl.com come in handy, as they shorten an address like above to something like http://tinyurl.com/AB734 (this is just an example).

These services use special algorithms to shorten URLs. Although I was using this service regularly, I was never paying attention to how it is achieved. Until yesterday. As I already mentioned I was bored. And suddenly it struck me – why not build an URL-shortening service? This can’t be so difficult, I thought. So I started to google a little bit and then started to code. And to be honest, it was not that difficult. In this blogpost I gonna show you how I wrote my URL-shortener.

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Automated Backup-Jobs on Mac OSX

It is always a good idea to backup a system. In my case I was looking for a bulletproof way to backup the mysql-databases on my web server.  In the past I used to run mysql-dump locally on my Mac to backup those databases. When I lived in New Zealand and had only restricted access to the web (due to the restricted network of the University of Otago) this was no option anymore. So I ended up with making the mysql-dump directly on my webserver. A cronjob would control it and periodically backup the databases. This however, was not the most intelligent way to solve the problem as the backup now was done on the same system as the database. So if the system would go down, not just the database would be gone but also all the backups. So I ended up downloading the dumps manually using sftp which was possible as I used Corkscrew to bypass the proxy. I’m pretty sure that I would have found another way to automate the backup on my Mac, but it would have definitely been awkward and complicated.
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