update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '’', '\'');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '…', '&hellip;');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '–', '-');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '“', '"');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '”', '"');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '‘', '\'');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '•', '-');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '‡', 'c');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, 'â„¢', '&trade;');
update <table> set <field> = replace(<field>, '®', '&reg;');

Hopefully this helps someone (probably even me) sometime down the road!

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As such, I’ve started a cause: Converting IE6 Users: One by One. One of our new coworkers was using IE6. I walked over and suggested he upgrade from IE6, by simply visiting Microsoft Windows Update. This installed IE8 for him, which works even better than the IE7 I thought he would get.

Thankfully, he’ll never show up as IE6 in our access logs again, and I’ve converted another user to a “decent” browser. He uses Firefox by default, but there are times when IE is the only thing that a site supports; at least now things will look right for him.

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When creating these passwords, I’ve been using Upper+Lower+Numbers+Special Characters+Minus+Underline, and a length of 26 characters. I figure this is plenty enough overkill to keep my passwords unique amongst each site. But when I tried to change the password on Digg, it told me that my password could only be between 4 and 15 characters. Ok, I’ll agree that 26 is definitely overkill, so I shortened it to 15. I regenerated a password, and put it in place. Digg then told me that I could only use Upper+Lower+Numbers for my password.

Excuse me? We took the password strength from 170 bits to 89 bits. That’s nearly half the strength. Especially now that Digg has integrated with Facebook, this seems like a very dangerous security issue to me. Maybe I’m just over-reacting, who knows.

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