hacks

Simple MOLAP solution

To analyze lots of text logs I did some hackery that looks like this Locally import logs into Access Reprocess Cube link to previous mdb in Analisis Service 2000 (yes it is 2k) Use Excel to visualize Cube (it is not big - up to milions raw entries) My hackery is a succes and more people are demanding an access to my Tool. As you see I ...

what is a good starting point for learning buffer overflow

an article with examples and pointers would be great ...

Communicating between websites (using Javascript or ?)

Here's my problem - I'd like to communicate between two websites and I'm looking for a clean solution. The current solution uses Javascript but there are nasty workarounds because of (understandable) cross-site scripting restrictions. At the moment, website A opens a modal window containing website B using a jQuery plug-in called jqModa...

Preventing Command Line Injection Attacks

We're currently building an application that executes a number of external tools. We often have to pass information entered into our system by users to these tools. Obviously, this is a big security nightmare waiting to happen. Unfortunately, we've not yet found any classes in the .NET Framework that execute command line programs whil...

Will random data appended to a JPG make it unusable?

So, to simplify my life I want to be able to append from 1 to 7 additional characters on the end of some jpg images my program is processing*. These are dummy padding (fillers, etc - probably all 0x00) just to make the file size a multiple of 8 bytes for block encryption. Having tried this out with a few programs, it appears they are f...

How to find GridItem from click on PropertyGrid?

I'm trying to do some custom UI behavior on a Windows Forms PropertyGrid control. I'd like to be able to respond to clicks and double-clicks on the GridItems to change the state. For example, to flip a binary or ternary variable through its states. I can get at the underlying view by looking up a child of typename "PropertyGridView" and...

cron jobs on google appengine

How can I use cron on Google Appengine? ...

Background tasks on appengine

How to run background tasks on appengine ? ...

What programming hack from your past are you most ashamed of?

We've all been there (usually when we are young and inexperienced). Fixing it properly is too difficult, too risky or too time-consuming. So you go down the hack path. Which hack from your past are you most ashamed of, and why? I'm talking about the ones where you would be really embarrassed if someone could attribute the hack to you...

What is the consensus on "Voice-family" Hacks?

I just started working for a pretty large company and my group manages all of their public facing websites. I opened the style sheet for the first time today and have seen over 20 instances of the designers using the voice-family hack to fix an IE bug. (I don't know why they allow graphic designers to write any kind of markup at all) W...

How do you stop interim solutions from lasting forever?

Say there are two possible solutions to a problem: the first is quick but hacky; the second is preferable but would take longer to implement. You need to solve the problem fast, so you decide to get the hack in place as quickly as you can, planning to start work on the better solution afterwards. The trouble is, as soon as the problem ...

Nano hacks: most useful tiny programs you've coded or come across

It's the first great virtue of programmers. All of us have, at one time or another automated a task with a bit of throw-away code. Sometimes it takes a couple seconds tapping out a one-liner, sometimes we spend an exorbitant amount of time automating away a two-second task and then never use it again. What tiny hack have you found usefu...

What's the coolest hack you've seen or done?

As programmers, we've all put together a really cool program or pieced together some hardware in an interesting way to solve a problem. Today I was thinking about those hacks and how some of them are deprecated by modern technology (for example, you no longer need to hack your Tivo to add a network port). In the software world, we take t...

How to intercept dll method calls?

How to intercept dll method calls? What are the techniques available for it? Can it be done only in C/C++? How to intercept method calls from all running processes to a given dll? How to intercept method calls from a given processes to a given dll? ...

C++ dynamic class ( dynamic hack )

Is there any way to add a field to a class at runtime ( a field that didn't exist before ) ? Something like this snippet : Myobject *ob; // create an object ob->addField("newField",44); // we add the field to the class and we assign an initial value to it printf("%d",ob->newField); // now we can access that field I don't really care h...

Evaluate a css expression only in IE<7 w/out using conditional comments?

I already know: "Don't use css expressions!" My question is not about whether I should be using an expression or if there is an alternative; my question is simply: Can I get a css expression to only be evaluated in versions of IE prior to version 7 without using conditional comments? I occasionally use an underscore hack to hide a rule...

Best IT/back-office system hacks?

Lots of people have things that their systems do for them or for their teams. Source control post-commit hooks are a standard example: have an automated build system that checks out the latest source, compiles, tests, and packages it is a back-office hack that most of us probably use. What other cool things have you done? ...

How to prevent scroll on Refresh in a PropertyGrid?

I'm using a PropertyGrid in a tool app to show a window to monitor an object in a remote app. Every second or so I get an update from the app with the state of any members that have changed, and I update the grid. I call Refresh() to make the changes take. This all works pretty well except one thing. Say the object is too tall to fit in...

How to create your own Windows XP Keyboard Mapping?

My father has found a Russian language keyboard mapping that he really likes here. However, it is non-standard and therefore is not one that appears in the Languages (Control Panel->Regional and Language Options->Languages->Details->Text Services And Input Languages->Add) dropdown for keyboard layout selection. To my understanding, it ...

Is it possible to monkey patch in Java?

I don't want to discuss the merits of this approach, just if it is possible. I believe the answer to be "no". But maybe someone will surprise me! Imagine you have a core widget class. It has a method calculateHeight(), that returns a height. The height is too big - this result in buttons (say) that are too big. You can extend DefaultWid...