Andrey Mikhalchuk’s Blog

I don’t know exactly what causes the problem, but I’m unable to download anything from HP (Hewlett-Packard) website. I tried downloading using multiple FTP clients from different platforms and it appeared that Safari under MacOS can download the files, while Firefox under both Windows and MacOS can’t. Right now I tried to get the same file from two XP computers using FireFox and one was able to download the file, while the other one wasn’t. It’s not about firewall settings and not about passive/active mode. If someone knows the reason and how to fix the problem I’d appreciate a comment on this post.

If anyone else is experiencing the same problems use the following solution: copy the URL of the link you’re trying to download the file from (in FireFox right-click on the link and choose “Copy Link location”), paste the link into the browser’s address line, replace “ftp://” with “http://” and hit enter. This will download the file using HTTP protocol.

Domain Name Wire revealed all details about pizza.com domain sale. Here is the source: “National A-1 Buys Pizza.com”. So the real domain owner was Chris Clark and the domain buyer is National A-1 Advertising. Hopefully this answers all questions.

So far the changes on pizza.com website are hardly visible. From what I’ve noticed they removed my name, link to my website and the topmost banner. That’s it. No content updates, no new functionality. Hopefully there is some work in the background and A-1 is cooking something special for pizza lovers. Otherwise that would be really sad story - I had so many plans about new functionality for the website…

BTW, one more funny link: He’s All Over the News, and he e-mailed me. Anyway, I’m very grateful to “itstimetoeatpizza” for his offer, I believe he would be a great moderator, unfortunately I’m no longer related to the website.

After a hard day of development and testing I’m proud to announce Web interface for routerbot It greately facilitates roubot teleoperating. With this interface you have to use telnet and ssh no more. Instead, you just click on colorful arrows on a webpage and see the robot doing exactly what you clicked. Another interesting feature is that the web interface simplified programming.

Last 12 months I was working on an interesting device that provides the network security features many companies and families are dreaming about. You probably already have heard about different threats out there like internet predators, viruses, spyware, dangerous websites, confidential information leaking from your business and others. Also you probably tried to find answers to questions like

• Is my office network used appropriately? Do people really use it for work and not something else?
• Are my kids safe in the Internet? Are their virtual friends really friends?
• Why is my internet so slow?
• Who in my network is using the internet most, when and what for?
• How can I prevent my children or employees from browsing inappropriate content, wasting time in chats or games?

Finally, you might want to get answers to the questions immediately and you don’t want to spend a lot of time configuring every single computer in your network, installing software and other techi stuff … So the answer to all those questions is one small box called MineStream Defender and here is what it can do …

I was recently installing squid at home as a single caching proxy for all computers in my home network. The simple way is just running squid on your linux router as is and configuring every single browser on all computers in your network so they access internet using squid. That’s doable, but boring. The more interesting way is setting up transparent proxy so all your http traffic goes through squid automatically. I’m not going to explain how to setup the transparent proxy as there are tons of articles in the internet about that, for instance:

• http://www.cyberciti.biz/tips/linux-setup-transparent-proxy-squid-howto.html
• http://tldp.org/HOWTO/TransparentProxy.html
• http://www.deckle.co.za/squid-users-guide/Transparent_Caching/Proxy

The documentation is very straightforward, and has just one problem: it is outdated and doesn’t work with the most recent versions of squid. I’ve read several instructions and was always ending up with these error messages:

Here’s how to fix the problem …

I’m getting really nice emails with congratulations on selling pizza.com. From time to time I’m also finding posts and articles about how lucky I am. Thank you very much!! The only problem with that is

I’M NOT THE OWNER OF PIZZA.COM DOMAIN!

Never was and most probably never will be. I’m the one who made the http://www.pizza.com website (design, programming, system support etc) as a hobby project, but this is it.

Anyway, thanks to everyone - I’m forwarding your really nice emails with congratulations on selling pizza.com and posts and articles about how lucky I am to the real (former) owner of the domain. I’m sure he is glad to get them - he is a really nice guy.

Pizza.com had already beaten many records and who knows how many more it will beat in the next two days. So I decided to gather most interesting links about the auction in one place.

Here is the list of the most expensive domain names ever. The list should be up to date April 1, 2008 and it is completely serious.

Well, looks like yes, it will be. In the first day the price went above 600′000 and in the beginning of the second auction day it became almost 1mln. You can find more details here.

Ok, here are the promised details. Pizza.com will be sold on http://sedo.com. The auction starts on March 27th 8pm CET and will last for 7 days. Everyone is welcome to bid.

It is now confirmed that pizza.com domain will be sold on an internet auction. The auction will start by the end of March and last for several days. I’ll post more details when available.

One of the websites I’m technically related to is for sale now. Pizza.com could be yours for a reasonable price. If you know how the domain market works you probably know that the reasonable price for such kind of domain names has 7 figures in it. So if you want the domain please contact the owner of the website directly. All serious offers will be considered and promptly answered.

The website has forum, polls, coupon engine, video, games, directory, worldwide restaurant search and more features. It attracts more and more visitors each month.

The domain is also a great investment opportunity. You have probably heard stories about business.com sold for $380 mln or sex.com sold for $14mln or one of the most recent vodka.com sold for $3 mln.

I recently tried to calculate md5 from *nix using md5sum and PHP md5() function. The result might surprise you - they don’t match in the situation you expect them to match. Here is explanation why and how to fix that.

The purpose of this post is not to replace the original coupons module installation manual, but to provide answers that you might have while installing it. It is based on my own experience and might be different from yours. This post is a part of set related to installing and configuring your own store. Please read the master post here.

The purpose of this post is not to replace the original PayPal installation manual, but to provide answers that you might have while installing it. It is based on my own experience and might be different from yours. This post is a part of set related to installing and configuring your own store. Please read the master post here.

The purpose of this post is not to replace the original USPS installation manual, but to provide answers that you might have while installing it. It is based on my own experience and might be different from yours. This post is a part of set related to installing and configuring your own store. Please read the master post here.

1. You need to signup for USPS web tools. You can do it here: https://secure.shippingapis.com/registration/
2. In a few minutes you’ll get the email with your web tools login and password.
3. Send email to icustomercare@usps.com asking to switch your account to production server. You don’t have to test or wait. Indeed you should not do that as API used on USPS test servers doesn’t match the API used on production servers (sic!!). I.e. your osCommerce standard USPS shipping plugin won’t work with test servers! Actually that plugin is hardcoded to use production servers, but even if you patch it USPS test servers will return you error while production server will work fine.
4. After your account is switched to production you can go to admin menu of osCommerce->Modules->Shipping->United States Postal Sevice and configure it with your account data.
5. You can also test it on a fake order. If the plugin works correctly and you will get shipping rates from USPS sever on checkout page.

The purpose of this post is not to replace the original osCommerce installation manual, but to provide answers that you maight have while installing it. It is based on my own experience and might be different from yours. This post is a part of set related to installing and configuring your own store. Please read the master file here.

If you want to sell something in the internet you have multiple options, like

• Open Amazon.com store
• Open eBay.com store
• kagi.com
• If you’re selling software/non-material goods you can use multiple services like share-it

If you want everything quicker and ready to pay more and have less control on your store – go ahead and choose any of those. This article is about building your store that will physically reside on your server and use 3rd party payment processor to handle your payments.

The AdSense-Deluxe plugin is just wonderful! I used Adsense Manager before and didn’t like the fact it uses old code for Google Adsense and I can do nothing about that. AdSense-Deluxe is way simpler and allows you to modify the actual code - very smart move. Unfortunately after installation it may report “Cannot load adsense-deluxe.php” when you try to add new ad block. Here is the fix to the problem.

I recently uploaded a sitemap for a new website to google and It looks like google webmaster tools do not accept sitemap containing just single url. The error it reports is “Missing XML tag”.