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Finding a string in a set of MySQL result rows and replacing the text is very easy. Use the following command as a template:
UPDATE [table_name] SET [field_name] = REPLACE( [field_name], '[string_to_find]', '[string_to_replace]' );
Posted in Uncategorized.
– July 17, 2010
The holidays are upon us! Or so I am told. Given that many of us will be traveling and visiting family for the holiday, the techies in us always seem to have a misleading simple question posed by family: “Hey my computer is running slow? Can you look at it real quick?”
For many of us, it’s a dreaded task for we only have to think back one year to the massive amounts of spyware, viruses and outdated security software we may have found on these systems. Regardless, it is our duty as techies to step up and make things work again.
So, what are you doing this holiday season to your family’s computers? What are your favorite apps to help keep a computer you probably won’t see for another year clean? Certainly one thing I am doing is upgrading family systems to Windows 7. I need to select a good anti-virus through. Suggestions?
Posted in Uncategorized.
– December 12, 2009
The Internet is a dangerous place. That may be what your parents told you when you were young after reading some scary article about a bank account being drained from a scam. Certainly the Internet can be a dangerous place.
As I’m writing this, MTSU just sent out an announcement from the Information Technology Division (ITD) warning students of a scam being spread by email. Apparently someone is sending students emails claiming to be from the helpdesk, seeking information such as their name, MTSU account login and password.
With this valuable information, the attacker could login to a student’s MTSU account and get private information such as parent’s name and contact information, a copy of the student’s transcript, access to class information, and more. Moreover, with this access an attacker could login to the student’s email and use that as a means to reset passwords to popular social media sites, such as Facebook.
Clearly, unauthorized access to a student’s account login is not good. There are a number of things one can do, however, to minimize the risk or prevent such attacks all together.
These types of attacks are called Phishing. When I was young, I remember going fishing on hot summer days. However, this is a much different kind of Phishing.
Phishing is using electronic communications, such as email, as a means to fraudulently obtain private information such as usernames, passwords or credit card numbers. A certain level of “social engineering” goes into these attacks, because the attacker must present himself in a manner that makes the victim believe they are being contacted by an authority that has a valid need for requesting this information.
Phishing attacks go beyond the campus of MTSU though. Banks are large targets of this type of fraud. Users are constantly being bombarded with emails that appear to come from their bank with links in them. When a user clicks the link, they are taken to a site that looks like their bank’s website, but is far from it. These sites seek to have the user enter their password or account information.
Because the website looks similar in design to the bank’s official website, users are less likely to question the validity of the site and feel comfortable providing this information. The end result, unfortunately, is usually an empty bank account within a few hours. Certainly banks have measures in place to prevent this type of fraud, or to insure customers against fraud, but prevention is the best insurance.
Prevention is indeed the key. And prevention only comes through knowledge. Simply being aware of these types of attacks and knowledgeable of how to properly use email can go a long way toward preventing Phishing attacks and make the Internet a much safer place.
First, be aware that MTSU, your bank, or any other reputable institution will never seek personal or account information through email. Additionally, never release this information over the phone unless you initiated the phone call. If someone calls you and asks for this information, even if they are your bank, offer to call them back and verify the number provided is indeed who you think it is.
For email, it is wise to look at the From: address and verify the email address looks valid. Although attackers can manipulate email so the From: address looks valid even when it is not, many don’t even bother and you can quickly spot a fraud this way.
Next, never click a link in an email unless you know exactly who the message came from, you expect the link to be there, and you know where the website will take you. Links can be changed so that the text in the email is one address and the link you click is another, so it is usually better to copy and paste the link into the web browser rather than clicking the link directly.
Although not usually associated with Phishing, many attackers sent viruses and other malicious software through email in the form of attachments. Avoiding this is simple – NEVER open an email attachment that you weren’t explicitly expecting, including image files and office documents.
Truly, the Internet can be a dangerous place. Proper knowledge of attacks and careful use of electronic communication will ensure your private data remains private.
Posted in Technology.
– October 9, 2009
The Sarbanes-Oxley act (SOX) was a bill sponsored by Paul Sarbanes (D-MD) and Michael Oxley (R-OH), passed by congress and signed into law by President George W. Bush in 2002. The bill was a result of outcry from the financial industry and business world about the then-recent failures of several large companies such as Enron and MCI due to accounting scandals.
The act, also known as “Public Company Accounting Reform and Investor Protection Act,” might be better called the “Accounting Industry Protection Act” because the result of the new legislation has been in alleviating financial auditors from liability of poor work on the auditor’s part.
Specific restrictions and costs for small companies who are or want to be publicly traded are found in the details of section 404. This part of SOX regulation requires that auditors effectively do risk-assessment of the organization being audited relative to the entity’s internal controls, focusing on the effectiveness of these controls.
Under the new guidelines, company boards and executives are now forced to focus and sign off on auditor reports covering mundane details about the internal control effectiveness of the organization. In order to succeed, smaller companies often focus on higher growth revenue models that often result in higher risk and higher return. Investors generally know of these inherent risks simply by the fact that these companies have shorter trading histories, are more volatile or are smaller in revenue than a more established company.
Companies that are publically traded – small or large – should not be punished by the additional cost of implementing SOX regulations. By the US having a more complex and costly business environment than other markets in the world, it is actually diminishing the return seen by investors and making it a much more difficult environment to operate in. Companies can operate in other countries and see an immediate increase in their bottom line through reduced costs of confirming to regulation.
Certainly a significant benefit is obtained in the legislation for auditors, as their liability is decreased and shifted to management who must approve and accept full responsibility for the audit reports. This forces management to have a strong internal auditing department validating claims made by external auditors so that any misstatements on the external auditor’s part are not overlooked. Both add significant costs to the entire process for little benefit.
Creation of the Public Company Accounting Oversight Board (PCAOB) by the SOX act helps ensure that external auditors are operating properly by auditing auditors. Although this provides some level of comfort to management in the findings of external auditors, this adds only additional cost to the process ultimately burdened by companies being audited. Some estimate that the cost of SOX auditing is upwards of 3% of gross revenue for small companies, leaving such costs to have a significant impact on the cash flow of these companies.
The additional layers of audit requirements and regulation have led a shift of publically traded companies from listing on US-based exchanges such as the NYSE and NASDAQ, to foreign exchanges such as Euronext or OMX that are overseen by less demanding regulation.
The failures of Enron, MCI and the likes were spotted and brought into public light before the SOX regulation was in place. Companies that engage in fraudulent activities, or activities of unusual risk have long been chastised for their actions by the market. It is naive to think that additional layers of extremely costly regulation will prevent this from happening. The costs investors who loose in these specific situations is simply the cost of investing; that is, the cost of risk of letting someone else use your money.
A better alternative to SOX regulation, especially for small companies, is for government to support and subsidize companies who develop innovative ways that allow investors to see and validate internal operations and controls of their organizations. Instead of hoping the government’s regulations work and instead of placing decisions about risk in the hands of the auditor, extend these decisions out to the investor.
It is not appropriate for government to assess or force the use of an assessment framework for companies. Instead let companies who choose to implement such transparencies see the results themselves. These companies will find that investors are more willing to invest and both the company and investors will receive an absolute, measurable value. Today’s regulatory environment supposes that the government is the best entity to regulate and set forth risk assessment guidelines, which is simply not the case.
References
http://www.heritage.org/CDA/upload/SOX-CDA-edited-3.pdf
http://www.heritage.org/CDA/upload/SOX-CDA-edited-3.pdf
http://www.sec.gov/rules/interp/2007/33-8810.pdf
http://dodd.senate.gov/index.php?q=node/3852
http://www.infoworld.com/t/business/senator-introduces-us-competitiveness-bill-831
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=978834
http://www.pcaob.org/Rules/Docket_021/2007-06-12_Release_No_2007-005A.pdf
Posted in Accounting.
– October 6, 2009
Since March of this year major stock market indices have gained about 50% in value. The tech industry is on par with this growth during the second and third quarters of 2009. This increase is from a bottom in the market back in March originating from a decline that started in late 2007. This decline was due in part to overinflated fear of financial system collapse and the changing political environment in the US.
As a result, the past two years have seen a major shift in the landscape of tech industry entrepreneurship.
Looking back, the late 1990’s and early 2000’s brought a wave of tech Initial Public Offerings (IPOs) that made silicon valley the place to be. Today, most technology companies seek financing through private equity investors, while the IPO landscape has nearly faded away.
Exploring the trend of the few tech IPOs made in 2009, they all have one thing in common: their initial market capitalization is much less than that of the “boom” days. Once an IPO has been made, a common pattern is for the company’s market value to fall, although the IPOs from this year eventually regain to their initial offering price.
This is a sad realization for those wishing to find short success by building a company with little investment, make an IPO and become an overnight billionaire. The truth is this just doesn’t happen in today’s economy.
For the more established tech companies and companies in other industries, the recent increase in market value may be misleading. Financial reports show that indeed companies are able to make a profit in today’s economic environment, but only by taking sometimes drastic cost-cutting measures.
The result we see today is increasing unemployment due to companies reducing their overheads to maintain profits and keeps investors happy. While this may be a good short-term solution to increasing or sustaining the bottom line, looking longer-term, zero or negative growth is a danger to the entire global economy.
Recent market IPOs include Rackspace, a web hosting and infrastructure company; Bridgepoint Education, an online education company; Rosetta Stone, a maker of language learning tools; and DigitalGlobe, a company who has satellites that take digital images for services like Google Maps.
These companies all resemble each other in that their initial price quickly dropped once publically traded, though usually rebounding later on. Of companies doing IPOs today, we see they are mostly established companies with a proven business model that is clear for investors to understand.
Companies today need to focus on building better products and services to generate strong revenues. While short-term gains may be won through cutting costs, decreasing revenues and marketing of existing products and services will lead to failure.
Although traditional retail and manufacturing have fallen victim to the pattern of cost-cutting rather than innovating, the tech industry has this problem magnified.
Announced last week, the next tech IPO in queue is NewEgg. This company is a distributor of computers and electronic components online, and is a massive force in the consumer hardware industry. Recent financials show it is over a 2 billion dollar company. However, with margins under 2% the company has little room for error.
Looking at the gold of the industry, giants like Microsoft, Apple and Google continue to dominate. With the exception of Apple who is up 108% since March, these industry leaders have not grown a significant amount. They do have a business model that is understood by investors, however.
Apple’s innovative products and lead in the smart phone market make it a key player for growth. As Microsoft comes out of its worst fiscal year ever, the launch of Windows 7 to a welcoming crowd brings hope that the worst is behind the company. For Google, its continued dominance of the online advertising space provides a solid foundation of revenues that seem to weather economic turmoil well.
Compare these companies to the likes of Twitter and Facebook who can’t seem to find a solid business model; or to Palm, whose recent gamble on the Pre smart phone was met with a deafening lack of enthusiasm.
To overcome the current market recession, companies should focus on what they do best. Certainly becoming more efficient and cutting costs is a positive thing to do, now is the time to develop new and innovative products and services that can be a catalyst of growth and innovation for the next 5-10 years.
Posted in Technology.
– October 6, 2009
Here’s a cool video I found of the band members from Rush playing their own song on Rock Band. They got 31%. ha!
(Note: If it says the video is no longer available, just hit play… it should start)
Posted in Music.
– October 3, 2009
After having issues due to version problems and assembly mismatch (DLL hell) with the Microsoft MVC Futures project, I had to recompile the MVC 1.0 Future assembly from source code on my system. I am running Visual Studio 2010 and don’t have Visual Studio 2008 installed. Thus, I have MVC Framework 1.1 installed, NOT MVC framework 1.0. When loading the DLL provided from Codeplex, I received an error about unable to locate System.Web.MVC 1.0 because instead, System.Web.MVC 1.1 is installed on my system.
If you manually reference this DLL instead of the binary from Codeplex, your issues should be resolved.
Good luck! Download the file here
Posted in Uncategorized.
– October 2, 2009
In late 2006/early 2007 Microsoft released what they deemed a revolutionary operating system called Widows Vista. Plagued with compatibility, stability and performance issues and greeted by the technology community with a big “no thanks,” most would agree it was a flop.
After a rough launch of Windows XP in 2001 and nearly three years of delay combined with many dropped features originally planned for Windows Vista, many were wondering if the tech giant had lost its edge.
Certainly over the past few years competitors have moved in, allowing Apple’s Mac OS X to gain market share with Windows dropping below 90% for the first time ever, according to Net Applications Inc.
Later this month on October 22, Microsoft will release the next version of its popular Windows operating system called Windows 7. Those who experienced a bad transition to Windows Vista may be hesitant to upgrade or to buy a new computer with the operating system pre-loaded, but Windows 7 has come a long way since its Vista roots.
Developers and IT professionals were given early access to the Windows 7 release, planned for October 22, and I have been running Windows 7 on one of my two primary systems since July. Overall, the experience has been great and I discovered a number of useful new features.
The most obvious change Windows 7 delivers is a redesigned task bar. The task bar is the application bar that runs across the bottom of the screen and shows which applications are open, gives quick access to applications in the application tray, and provides a place for the Start menu from which the rest of your computer’s resources are accessed.
Historically, Windows has been developed around one block of the task bar designated for each open application window. With Windows XP, we saw the addition of application grouping when a single application had many windows open, allowing a user to simply click a single taskbar icon and be presented with a menu of windows to select to open.
Windows 7 brings a new approach to the task bar. First, it is slightly taller to accommodate better use on touch screen computers, although a smaller taskbar is available. In the past, a Quick Launch bar was used to hold application icons that could be quickly opened directly from the task bar. Windows 7 eliminated this feature and now allows you to “pin” an application to the task bar. When pinned, the application icon will remain in the same place on the task bar. When the application is running, it will be shown with a boxed glowing frame.
As a Mac user, this new task bar feels more like OS X than anything else. It is unclear if that was the intent, but once you adjust to the way the taskbar works most will find it more intuitive.
The new task bar notification and application tray areas group together and streamline the system notifications that are presented to the user. No more endless balloon popup messages on the bottom right of the screen; instead there is now an alert area where these are managed from.
For more modern computers, Windows 7 inherits a feature called Aero originally found in its predecessor Vista. Aero is a visual user interface feature that adds “eye candy” to the Windows experience. Features include transparency for windows and menus, a more interactive way to rotate and sort through open windows, quick access to items in the task bar and better font rendering that make reading text easier on the eye.
Aero requires a more powerful or modern computer due to the demands placed on the system by this feature. Also, if you are running a laptop on battery it is suggested that Aero be disabled to maximize battery life.
As has been the trend over the last several releases from Microsoft, the option for a 32-bit or 64-bit operating system has been given to the user. While the underlying differences are highly technical in nature, 64-bit is certainly the future. It allows single applications to access more system resources and allows the system as a whole greater system memory. But be careful when selecting a version, however.
If you have an older computer and are upgrading rather than buying new pre-installed, you may want to consider 32-bit. Also, if you have older, legacy hardware such as an old printer or scanner, you will need to check with the device manufacture to ensure it is supported in 64-bit mode.
For example, I use an old HP laser printer. Admittedly, it is over a decade old but it prints black and white like no other. It was only after I had Windows 7 up and running that I found out this printer is no longer supported in 64-bit mode.
Overall, the Windows 7 experience has been a good one. Many in the industry are saying Windows 7 is what Windows Vista should have been, and I certainly agree.
Posted in Technology.
– October 1, 2009
I often am found in the situation of being a team member collaborating on a group project for a presentation. Generally, someone in the group will become the person designated to compile the presentation slides or document segments contributed from each team member into a final document.
As the project deadline approaches, a never-ending slew of emails begin to go back and forth among team members submitting their contributions or making edits making the process even more complex. There is a better way.
Google Documents is a suite of online office productivity applications that are accessed from any computer through a web browser. It is available online at docs.google.com.
Instead of using the trusty Microsoft Office suite many have become so accustomed to, Google has developed a replacement that can be run from any computer.
Google Documents supports four main types of documents: text, presentations, spreadsheets and forms.
Text documents are similar to what you would normally use Microsoft Word for. Standard formatting, printing, and content manipulation tools are available, making your content creation endeavors a simple task.
Presentations are slide-based documents, similar to that found in PowerPoint. When it is time to present, simply open the presentation on the computer from which you are presenting and select “Start Presentation.” Your slides will then begin full screen.
Spreadsheets are similar to what you find in Microsoft Excel and support advanced features such as functions and formulas, making calculations a snap.
Finally, forms allow you to create data input documents that you can email out to collect input from others. This might replace the less well known Microsoft InfoPath component of Microsoft Office.
These tools are more than just documentation creation tools. Documents created and saved in Google Docs format are stored on Google servers. This means you can access and work on the documents from any computer with an Internet connection.
If you need to work on the documents while offline, you can install a program called Google Gears, available at gears.google.com, to enable offline support. If you have a long airplane ride, your online office suite can go with you.
The best part is found in the collaboration tools. Google docs can be shared with others. This means anyone with a Google docs account can view and edit documents you share with them.
For group projects, simply create a project document and share it with your teammates. When they login to Google docs, they will see the newly created document and will be able to edit it.
If more than one person is working on a document at the same time, changes are sent back and forth in real-time. This means that if you are in the middle of a paragraph and someone is adding a paragraph above you, you will see the words as they type them in near real-time.
While Google docs addresses many of the features Microsoft Office and similar productivity suites target, it does lack some of the more advanced or complex features traditional Office users may be accustomed to. For example, there are only a limited number of fonts in the documents system. Document styles are also preset, limiting how the document can look and feel to set of standard formats.
Additionally, because it is run from within your browser Google docs sometimes feels slow or sluggish. Although it is a lightweight system overall, the fact remains it is running within your web browser.
If Google docs doesn’t fit your needs, you may find that other similar solutions work better. Zoho offers a suite of web-based document tools. They have over 20 products in their portfolio generally targeted at small and medium businesses. Zoho is available online at zoho.com.
Moreover, the next big release of Microsoft Office to be called Office 2010 is expected to have many new features targeted at web-based use. The Office team at Microsoft is also developing a browser-based component called Office Live intended to complete with Google docs, or at least extend the Microsoft Office experience onto the web.
Posted in Technology.
– September 29, 2009
Oh darn, I missed the signup deadline for a Windows 7 Launch Party. The people in this video make it seem so much fun… if I could have a party…. (sarcasm)
Posted in Technology.
– September 26, 2009
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