The strain on the data structure for AT&T because of the various iPhones is enormous.

yes, that is apparently why there's been such a problem with getting voicemail

I don't suppose anyone's used OpenSSL and its base64 encoding/decoding?

I'm trying to figure out a way to collect customer data, encode it using a public key cypher and save it in a mySQL database. Then I would bring it onto my PC and decode it using my secret passcode. OpenSSL seems like the perfect solution and PHP has built in support.

I've written a small PHP program that takes text input, encodes it using OpenSSL and my public key, Base64 encodes it (so that it can be stored as text) and then writes it to a file. I download the file to my PC and run "openssl enc -d -base64 -in download.txt -out download.bin"

The problem is that download.bin is 0 bytes. And, indeed, if I try to run "openssl rsautl -decrypt -inkey private.pem -in download.bin" I get the message "Error reading input data".

It *does* work if I don't base64 encode/decode. But for data portability, I'm way more comfortable with ascii data.

Yes.

Ordered! Now let's hope I don't fry my motherboard when I install it. Annoyingly, it has a 4-pin Molex cable that can be used to plug into the power supply, but I don't need it; my current one appears to be hooked up only to the motherboard. So it's just going to be an annoying loose cable. What can I use to keep it out of the way of things so it's not flopping around? Can I tape it to the side?

You mean the new one has two cables? One that'll plug into the motherboard and one directly to the power supply? Yeah, just tie it up with a twist tie of something. Taping it to the case won't hurt anything.

Taping it to the case won't hurt anything.

Can I use Scotch tape or do I need to use electrical tape or something? Also, if I use a twist tie, does it have to be one of those plastic things or can I use, you know, a regular twist tie that's made of metal? I know I need to be all anti-static in there. From what I can tell, the loose cable is going to be hanging over my Ethernet card, so I'd rather just tape it to the case rather than have it scratch it or something like that.

The cable is insulated so it shouldn't matter how you attach it to the case.

I don't suppose anyone's used OpenSSL and its base64 encoding/decoding?

In case anyone cares, the problem seems to be that OpenSSL expects the base64 encoded file to have linebreaks every 64 characters. The PHP base64_encode function doesn't insert those breaks. After manually adding them, the OpenSSL base64 decode worked properly. Yay!

My "new" apartment building was actually built around 1920, and I only have a single grounded outlet in the living room. Is it save to plug my new LCD TV in a non-grounded outlet (using an adapter) if it has a grounded power cord?

I'd suggest at least having a good surge suppressor on there, too

My dad wants to know if there's a way he can batch download from one of my Flickr sets (I finally got all the Canada pics uploaded).

I can't find any way to do this, but maybe I'm just not looking in the right place. He doesn't want to order prints, just download the original size photos.