Cus Productions

Just a quick code snippet. This isn’t ideal – it needs to be run twice in order to work. I’ll update it as I debug it, but I thought if I threw it ‘out there’ others can use/suggest changes as necessary. You should be very careful about putting this on a web site – you need to add your username/password so I’m running this in a cron job in a protected area of my server, with the output only going to a user-accessable area.

$ch = curl_init();
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, “https://eu.wowarmory.com/login.xml”);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_USERAGENT, “# Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 6.0; sv-SE; rv:1.9.0.2) Gecko/2008091620 Firefox/3.0.2″);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POST, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_POSTFIELDS, “accountName={youraccountname}&password={yourpassword}&redirectUrl=/vault/guild-bank-log.xml%3Fr=Steamwheedle+Cartel%26n=Argent+Dawn+Exiles”);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_RETURNTRANSFER, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_FOLLOWLOCATION, 1);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_REFERER, “http://eu.wowarmory.com/vault/guild-bank-log.xml?r=Steamwheedle+Cartel&n=Argent+Dawn+Exiles”);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEFILE, “cookie.txt”);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_COOKIEJAR, “cookie.txt”);
$result1 = curl_exec($ch);
curl_setopt($ch, CURLOPT_URL, “http://eu.wowarmory.com/vault/guild-bank-log.xml?r=Steamwheedle+Cartel&n=Argent+Dawn+Exiles”);
$result2 = curl_exec($ch);
curl_close($ch);
echo $result2;

Mental note – this site shows how to do it all, connecting to Amazon…

Kitty Burns Florey believes “that diagramming a sentence provides insight into the mind of its perpetrator.” With this in mind, she set about analysing some choice quotes from John McCain’s VP candidate. Sarah Palin has already caused the term ‘Palinism’ to be coined, with some choice quotes here.

Got my copy of Schneier on Security yesterday. Bruce had signed it and included the following code:

OHOE
OEYN
KBTJ


Sweeet

Wise words from XKCD:

Courtesy of xkcd.com

This follows on from WalMart’s decision to shut down the authentication servers which would render all the digital music bought from them in the past 5 years unplayable. They’ve recently overturned the decision to stop a riot from customers, but will have to maintain the servers in aeternum. There will come a point where the cost of maintaining the servers will overtake the profit they made on selling the the music and *still* Walmart will have to carry on paying. The short term ‘piracy prevention’ has turned into a long-term albatross.

By making mp3s or other non-DRM encumbered music readily accessible you won’t necessarily stop piracy, but you will always have a core group of people who will always pirate regardless. Lower the price point and you’ll get more buyers – simple economics. If the point of sale is easy and the price low you’ll get repeat custom without having to support previous sales, all for the cost of supporting the sale infrastructure and little else, given there’s no physical media being passed to the customer.

Of course, it helps if the music is good as well

Until Sin City 2 comes out sometime in 2010 I thought I wouldn’t see anything similar, let alone based on Frank Miller’s work. ‘Rats: A Sin City Yarn‘ provides both. David Brocca has directed a film with the look and feel of the much higher budget Robert Rodriguez flick with all the power of the original comic, which tells the story of an aging war criminal’s final days.

This came out in 2004 and I’m astonished it hasn’t had more promotion. I’m just gutted it took me 4 years to see it