Web browser caching is good. But even now in the days of 20+Mb broadband, caching web requests still speeds browsing up. It’s also saves money in bandwidth costs.

At home, and work, I set up a caching proxy server with pfSense and Squid, rendering my browser cache effectively useless. Here’s how to disable FireFox’s browser cache completely.

1.    Fire up FireFox
2.    Type about:config in your address bar
3.    Type ‘cache’ in the search bar, and look for network.http.use-cache, and double click it to set it to false. Double clicking it again will set it to true and re-enable the cache

To forcibly reload a page and all its dependencies, direct from source, ignoring local and proxy caches hold the shift key and hit reload. This applies not only to FireFox but also IE6/7 and Safari (maybe others too).

Just run the following command from the command line:

echo 'd *' | mail -N

Great little perl snippet to let you know the number of files and directories in the current directory. Run from the command line.

ls -l |perl -e 'while(<>){$h{substr($_,0,1)}+=1;} END {foreach(keys %h){print "$_ $h{$_}\n";}}'

<form method="post" action="blah.php" onSubmit="return confirm('Are you sure this is correct?');">

Been thinking of using a PHP framework found a very interesting slideshow on the Zend Framework. Any opinions?

| View | Upload your own

Found a great slide that talks about the top 10 mistakes when programming scalable applications with PHP. Discusses everything from hardware to AJAX. The AJAX piece I found to be very interesting. Check it out and give me your thoughts.

| View | Upload your own

Quick and easy way to validate email strings. I picked this bit of code up from somewhere, not sure where….Think it was the Zend site. Credit goes to the original unknown author, not me.

<?php
function is_email($address) {
$rc1 = (ereg('^[-!#$%&'*+./0-9=?A-Z^_`a-z{|}~]+'.
'@'.
'[-!#$%&'*+\/0-9=?A-Z^_`a-z{|}~]+.'.
'[-!#$%&'*+\./0-9=?A-Z^_`a-z{|}~]+$',
$address));
$rc2 = (preg_match('/.+.ww+$/',$address));
return ($rc1 && $rc2);
}
?>

In Opera, go to Tools –> Preferences, and click on the search tab. You should “Add a new search engine” and fill in the blanks. Here is what I use:.

• Name: PHP
• Keyword: p
• Address: http://www.php.net/search.php
• Query string: pattern=%s&show=quickref

You have to check “Use POST” to be able to type in a query string.

Click OK, and then click Ok.

From now on you will be able to search the PHP function list by typing “p function” in the address bar. You can change “quickref” to “all” if you want to search all php.net sites, or “manual” for the online documentation.

Enjoy! I orignally picked this tip up from PHP.net, don’t know the exact URL tho.

When Apache generates any web pages or error pages, some important information about the version and other details implemented on the system are displayed in th web site server header. For example, the information text may be like this:

Server: Apache/1.3.37 (Unix) mod_auth_passthrough/1.8 mod_log_bytes/1.2 mod_bwlimited/1.4 FrontPage/5.0.2.2635.SR1.2 mod_ssl/2.8.28 OpenSSL/0.9.7a PHP-CGI/0.1b

Server: Apache/2.0.53 (Ubuntu) PHP/4.3.10-10ubuntu4 Server at xx.xx.xx.xx Port 80

The line in the server header expose important version and variant information about the Linux operating system and Apache software used on the machine, indirectly expose the possible security holes that are existed to the hackers, or at least make malicious attackers easier to identify your system for available attack points.

To ensure that the Apache HTTP web server does not broadcast this message to the whole world publicly and fix possible security issue, modify these two directives ServerTokes and ServerSignature in httpd.conf file.

1. Login as root user or perform a sudo to the web server.
2. Open and edit httpd.conf or apache2.conf (in Apache 2) with vi or other text editor. The Apache config normally located in /etc/httpd/conf/ or /etc/apache2/ or /etc/apache/ (for Apache1.3) depending on which Unix you’re using.
3. Locate the line with ServerTokens. You can perform a search by typing “/ServerTokes” and hit Enter.
4. In Apache 1.3, you will likely to see a line starts with #ServerTokes Full In this case, remove or delete the # character (by pressing d key). Also modify the Full to become Prod (press r key to replace one character, or R to replace multiple characters), so that the line becomes ServerTokens Prod. In Apache 2.0 or 2.2, the line normally does not exist. So the search will fail. In this case, go to the bottom of config file, and add the new line with the following text. You can add new line by pressing o key.ServerTokens Prod
5. Next, search for ServerSignature. In Apache13, the line should just above the line of ServerTokens. Edit the line so that it looks like this, and in Apache2 which doesn’t already have this line, add in at new one.ServerSignature Off
6. By now the Apache configuration file should have this two directives set as below:ServerSignature Off
   ServerTokens ProdThe first line “ServerSignature Off” instructs Apache not to display a trailing footer line under server-generated documents (error messages, mod_proxy ftp directory listings, mod_info output, and etc) which displays server version number, ServerName of the serving virtual host, email setting, and creates a “mailto:” reference to the ServerAdmin of the referenced document.The second line “ServerTokens Prod” configures Apache to return only Apache as product in the server response header on very page request, suppressing OS, major and minor version info.
7. Save and close the config file by pressing Shift-Colon, and then type wq keys, and hit Enter.
8. Restart Apache. Typical command is service httpd restart or /etc/init.d/apache2 restart.
9. Now, you will get only the Apache in the server response header:Server: Apache

This was sent to me by my brother. I do not in any way take responsibility or claim writing any of it. I am sure this has been passed around on the internet since the internet was conceived as a bunch of tubes. Thats a bad attempt at humor BTW.

All credits to (unknown) original author. Additions made by several others , and by myself

How to Shoot Yourself in the Foot using:

Ada
After correctly packing your foot, you attempt to concurrently load the
gun, pull the trigger, scream, and shoot yourself in the foot. When you
try, however, you discover you can’t because your foot is of the wrong
type.

APL
You shoot yourself in the foot, then spend all day figuring out how to
do it in fewer characters.

Access
You try to point the gun at your foot, but it shoots holes in all your
Borland distribution diskettes instead.

ActiveX

Ole_Registration_Error: Cannot find object “ActiveFoot”,download the latest drivers.

Assembler
You try to shoot yourself in the foot, only to discover you must first
invent the gun, the bullet, the trigger, and your foot.

Basic(interpreted)
You shoot yourself in the foot with a water pistol until your foot is
waterlogged and rots off.

Basic(compiled)
You shoot yourself in the foot with a BB using a SCUD missile launcher.

Visual Basic
You’ll really only appear to have shot yourself in the foot, but you’ll
have had so much fun doing it that you won’t care.

C
You shoot yourself in the foot.

C++
You accidentally create a dozen instances of yourself and shoot them all
in the foot. Providing emergency medical care is impossible since you
can’t tell which are bitwise copies and which are just pointing at
others and saying, “That’s me over there.”

Cobol
USE HANDGUN.COLT(45), AIM AT LEG.FOOT, THEN WITH ARM.HAND.FINGER ON
HANDGUN.COLT(TRIGGER) PERFORM.SQUEEZE RETURN HANDGUN.COLT(45) TO
HIP.HOLSTER.

Concurrent Euclid
You shoot yourself in somebody else’s foot.

dBase
You buy a gun. Bullets are only available from another company and are
promised to work so you buy them. Then you find out that the next
version of the gun is the one that is scheduled to actually shoot
bullets.

Delphi
MyFoot := TFoot.Create( Self );
Gun := TGun.Create( .45, SOFT_NOSED_BULLETS, 6 );
Gun.Aim( Self.MyFoot);
while Gun.BulletsAvailable do
Gun.Shoot( Self.MyFoot );

FORTH
Foot in yourself shoot.

FORTRAN
You shoot yourself in each toe, iteratively, until you run out of toes,
then you read in the next foot and repeat. If you run out of bullets,
you continue anyway because you have no exception handling ability.

HTML
<a target=”http://body/lower-half/leg/foot.appendage”>Shoot here</a>

HyperTalk
Put the first bullet of the gun into the foot left of leg of you. Answer
the result.

Java
The gun fires just fine, but your foot can’t figure out what the bullets
are and ignores them.

LISP
You shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with
which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with
which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with
which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with
which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds the gun with
which you shoot yourself in the appendage which holds…

Microsoft
>ActiveX Object “Foot” not found.
>”Foot” will possibly be included in the next release.
>You can upgrade for $500.
>Press OK to Retry or Esc to cancel.

Modula2
After realizing that you can’t actually accomplish anything in this
language, you shoot yourself in the head.

Motif
You spend days writing a UIL description of your foot, the trajectory,
the bullet, and the intricate scrollwork on the ivory handles of the
gun. When you finally get around to pulling the trigger, the gun jams.

NeXT
We don’t sell guns anymore, just ammunition.

Paradox
Not only can you shoot yourself in your foot, your users can, too.

Pascal
The compiler won’t let you shoot yourself in the foot.

Perl
1. You go to CPAN and download Geek, Body::Foot, Gadgets:Gun and
Accesories::Bullet modules.
2. Then:
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
use strict;
use Geek;
use Body::Foot;
use Gadgets::Gun;
use Accesories::Bullet;

my $me = Geek->getBorn($ENV{‘USER’});
my $foot = $me->{parts}->{feet}->[0];
die “No feet (maybe both were cut off?), stopped”
unless defined $foot;
my $gun = ($me->{money} >= Gadgets:Gun::price ? Gadgets:Gun->buy() : Gadgets:Gun->steal);
my @bullets = map { Accesories::Bullet->new() } (0..5);

$gun->load(\@bullets);
while ($gun->{bullets})
{
$gun->shoot($foot);
last if $foot->shot();
}
print “Looser!\n” unless $foot->shot();

PL/1
After consuming all system resources including bullets, the data
processing department doubles its size, acquires 2 new mainframes and
drops the original on your foot.

Prolog
You tell your program that you want to be shot in the foot. The program
figures out how to do it, but the syntax doesn’t permit it to explain it
to you.

PHP

After loading the gun you notice your foot is missing after some noob PHP programmer forgot to validate his input and now some cross site scripting has inflitrated and stole all your bullets.

Smalltalk, Actor, et al
After playing with the graphics for 3 weeks, the programming manager
shoots you in the head.

SNOBOL
If you succeed, shoot yourself in the left foot. If you fail, shoot
yourself in the right foot.

Sun
Just as soon as Solaris gets here, you can shoot yourself anywhere you
want.

Unix
% ls
foot.c foot.h foot.o toe.c toe.o
% rm * .o
rm: .o: No such file or directory
% ls
%

XBase
Shooting yourself is no problem. If you want to shoot yourself in the
foot, you’ll have to use Clipper.

Windows95
>shoot self in foot
I don’t see any self here.

>shoot me in foot
There is no you in the foot.

>shoot foot
I don’t know which foot you’re talking about.

>shoot left foot
You don’t have the gun.

>get gun
You take the gun.
You’re lantern just went out.
* * * YOU HAVE DIED * * *
Press OK to confirm.