ICQ: Changing between local and global keyboard settings

ICQ LogoI just wrote to the ICQhelp Ticket Center about my most outrageous problem. I noticed the „old trick“ of using CTRL+ALT+F1 to change between global-US and local keyboard settings does not apply for ICQ… and I haven’t found any information in their knowledgebase about my problem.

Dear Sir or Madam,

while using ICQ, I am unable to use the specific characters for the german keyboard layout, i.e. „ä“,“ö“,“ü“. Instead while striking the keys, ICQ displays the original US-keys layout. How do I change this back? I installed ICQ again after de-installing the previous installation.

Thank you for your help!

Best regards,
Mike Schnoor

After a few hours waiting, I received the following from Eddie Smith:

Hello Mike,

Thank you for reporting the difficulties described in your ticket. Your feedback is important to us.

Please note that the ICQ Team is constantly working to make available new and improved versions of the ICQ software.

We apologize for the inconvenience.

Thank You,
The ICQ Support Team

My reply was simple…

Dear Eddie,

however you have not provided me with any solution to solve the problem of restoring the „local“ keyboard setting for the ICQ software.

I hope to hear from you or the support-team again. Thanks in advance.

Best regards,
Mike Schnoor

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Ooops…

I’m a forgettable man. I’m really sorry to even consider doing this, but it has to be done. My stationary desktop PC will receive a major bonus now… Windows XP Service Pack 2. I’m so proud of myself to do that after such a long time! After the install routine once crashed – it was probably just a few weeks after hearing about the original release back in time, I hope it will work this time without problems and without the need to reinstall XP. AHEM! ;)

20 minutes later…
Apparently, the installation was successful. Time to reboot… after deciding about automatic updates (denied), it looks quite normal so far with the XP login screen. The Grand Admiral is alive! Goodbye ZoneAlarm, welcome Windows XP SP2.

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Blogspeed

Earlier today while having an instant chat with Katharina, she told me that I’d have blogged too little today. I honestly wonder about that as being a problem. Not that I blog quite regularly and constantly, I rather enjoy to write down my thoughts (and opinions, of course) and just unleash my mind’s power to the public. Nevertheless, today I haven’t had any real reason to pull the trigger and shoot it out. Instead I rather preferred to keep things within me and not vent or scream out loud. But I’ll surely contribute to the Blogosphere with a few thoughts about the changes in the German media about „Das Vierte“ and perhaps I’ll give some insight into ideological troubles from an english-speaking perspective to support Katharina’s post about Mr. Anal Mr. Analytical Edmund Stoiber.

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Stoibers Ost-Kritik

Die CDU erlaubt sich anscheinend eine Entgleisung nach der anderen. An einen Wahlsieg ist denen wohl nicht viel gelegen zumal der gute Herr Stoiber anscheinend nur die Bayern für klever: „Wir haben leider nicht überall so kluge Bevölkerungsteile wie in Bayern.“ Nicht nur dass der Osten mal wieder kritisiert wird, nein, auch die restlichen Bundesländer müssen sich eine indirekte Kritik anhören. Ich frage mich wie die CDU mit solchen ständigen Fehltritten die Wahl gewinnen möchte. Oder steckt da vielleicht eine Strategie hinter, die ich oder auch andere noch nicht durchschaut haben und nur der Herr Stoiber weiß Bescheid?
Man kann sich damit ebenso auch immer ganz einfach machen nach dem Motto: die anderen (die Ostdeutschen) sind Schuld. Ich denke die gerade in Deutschland existierenden Problem sind nicht von heute auf morgen durch die SPD alleine entstanden, sondern haben sich über die Jahre hinweg aufgestaut und das zum Teil schon vor der Wiedervereinigung. Wobei ich letzteres mnachmal doch sehr startk in Frage stellen muss. Ein Politiker sollte in der Lage sein ein Land zu führen und nicht ein Bundesland wie Bayern.

[via AOL]

Update: Na da hat sich der Herr Stoiber mal wieder viele Politikerfreunde geschaffen und die Kritik hagelt auf ihn ein von fast allen Seiten. Am schönsten die Aussage von der Linkspartei, dass Stoiber ja wohl deren bester Wahlhelfer sei.

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WordPress Exploit

WordPress Logo

There’s yet another small major security bug for WordPress users: Florian Holzhauer explains on how to disable the bug which allows to execute an entire set of PHP or shell commands.

There is an exploit for WordPress up and including to 1.5.1.3 out in the wild, which works on webservers with enabled register_globals.
The quick fix is to place
unset($wp_filter);
in index.php at the very top, right after declaring „php“ before any other php statements.

There’s no guarantee and liability for the success or any possible errors caused by this mini-workaround, so the best idea is to use an upcoming WordPress version which corrects the bug.

[via Blogbar]

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The Discovery

The fragile mission is going to return, and we’re again being satisfied with the newest live-feed on TV. Who knows if the repairs were successful…

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BadBehavior 1.2 Release Candidate 1

,

Time to update our Bad Behavior plugin. The RC1 is out and I’ve installed it on this blog – so far it works as usual as it can be. If anybody has problems to post comments, please contact me via email.

  • Bad Behavior now has whitelisting capability. Edit the file bad-behavior-whitelist.php to add any IP address ranges or user agents you need to whitelist for your particular site. (Note that search engine bots should not be whitelisted by user agent, but by IP address range, because spammers pretend to be search engine bots. Bad Behavior already passes all major search engine bots which behave properly.)
  • The specific reason for blocking is now logged in the database. This will help in determining whether new robots should be blocked by Bad Behavior or not.
  • Several additional spammers have been identified and blocked in this release.
  • Bad Behavior now sends copies of spam received automatically for use in Bad Behavior Blackhole. If you don’t want copies of your spam sent in, edit bad-behavior-blackhole.php.

Update:
There’s been already 8 comments which found its way to the moderation queue. I deactivated BadBehavior and wrote Michael an email…

[via BasicThinking, IOError]

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Lost in the Blogosphere

Just after explaining why I had started blogging, Shirazi covered the other side – the Death of Blogs. And while looking at the mentioned examples, I had the same question in my brain: Why are people counting the number of newly created blogs like Technorati‘ s Chiefmaster Sifry does? Aren’t those blogs which are lost, abandoned and closed more important to count in order to get the final number of blogs that exist – and not just those that matter? And on top of that, please let’s be real – what would these estimated numbers ever explain except the fact that people try to rely on themselves and (secretly) overthrown the classic media companies by being a new media phenomenon.

[via Light Within]

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Who the hell is Chad Kroski?

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First of all, the German telecommunication company „Telekom“ pushed their advertisement for their mobile branch. They created a spot with the best seller author Chad Kroski, but this guy has never existed elsewhere but in the brains of marketing specialists. In the spot, some chick tries to date a guy in a bar but has no idea on how to get closer to him. Suddenly, after guessing about his hobbies, she notices a book by Chad Kroski. Out of curiousity or necessity she leaves to the bar’s bathroom and uses her supreme digital boombastical piece-of-crap mobile phone to look up on a Google-powered search for Chad Kroski. Well shit happens, our friend Chad does not exist.

Being inspired by the idea of Minga to talk about Chad Kroski on the web, I decided to write a little bit about the fellow lad Chad. The goal of this small task is to push the Chad site of Minga higher in the google rankings – probably to destroy the self-created websphere about Chad Kroski by the Telekom.

On the other hand, who was this guy for real? Did he exist? Chad Kroski was not a real best seller author but indeed a writer. He was born around 1917-1920 in Texas/USA. His works supposedly included to focus on socio-critical writings, the cold-war and sympathisism with the communists. Wherever Chad Kroski currently lives, he’s probably around 88 years old and not necessarily involved in the German marketing scene. But was this story for real, and if he exists – why not filing a law suit against the Telekom marketing branch to get some money for the future, Chad? ;)

Updates for further reading
Chad, oh Chad…
Chad Kroski – The Second Coming

[via Minga, Mediengestaltung&Mediengestalter]

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First-Timer

I just thought about the past and was wondering what caused me starting to blog. First of all, I was used in maintaining my own website a few years ago. Around Autumm 2003 I began writing some mini-episodes of myself as a bunch of hand-crafted website without using any CMS. Anyways, after having some sort of time-lagging while publishing articles more or less constantly, I stopped putting effort into that webspace. Who knows why, I don’t know – but around November 2004 I was a regular again under the banners of two blog hosters until now.

But what was the first blog that inspired me? I don’t know it anymore, and I wonder what it really was. But no, I was probably searching for some easy-to-use CMS. While I admit that I still had memorized the basic ideas of my former employer’s content-management-system, I never really felt an urge to reprogram a CMS from scratch. I was lazy! I preferred to use some OpenSource stuff, and well – since I haven’t had the opportunity to use a database on my own, I was bound to these free-hosting services that offered me a framework to get startet.

After becoming disappointed from the stuff on i.e. Sourceforge, I guess I was googling for blog, blogs or weblogs – not sure which and when. But whatever kept me there was the germanspeaking Blogosphere. And for being the „First-Timer“ as in reading the first blog, I figure it was either Nico Wilfer, Thomas Gigold, Jörg Kantel or Robert Basic. Thanks!

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