Mountain Xpress Forums

Going Totally Open Source

2009-11-18T17:26:03-05:00

I’m taking the plunge and going 100% open source today (or as close as I can get, depending on plugins). No more Windows XP, and no more ancient student versions of software I got a decade ago. Assuming Firefox 3.5, the FTP client, GIMP and a video editor works (I’m looking at Kdenlive), I should be fine. I really don’t use anything beyond that in Windows as is.

I’m using Linux Mint, since that seemed to impress the heck out of willc.

Anyone here ever tried to go totally open source? Any warnings?

Credit card security

2009-11-05T12:04:30-05:00

After eating lunch at Thai Basil yesterday, I noticed that when I was signing my receipt they had printed my whole credit card number on there. I hadn’t seen that happen in years, and I immediately scratched it out. I happened to be with a group of cyber security guys, and they were all in disbelief as well.

It would be very easy for a thief to pick up your receipt just after you leave, then go home and have an online shopping spree. The server or anyone else handling your receipt could do the same thing.

I looked up the laws on this, and it is in fact a federal offense to print out the full credit card number on the receipt:
http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/business/alerts/alt007.shtm

So, be warned if you eat there, and always be vigilant about looking at your receipts anywhere you use a card.

The other annoying credit card related issue is when there are establishments that tack on a surcharge for using a credit/check/debit card. For example, if your purchase is not over $5, they tack on a $0.50 fee for using a card. This is in fact in violation of Visa and MasterCard terms of service:
http://fso.cpasitesolutions.com/premium/LE/06_le_ic/fg/fg-merchants.html#C

Additionally, they cannot require a minimum purchase amount to use a card. This is a very common thing to see, and I can think of 5 places in Asheville that do it off the top of my head:
http://fso.cpasitesolutions.com/premium/LE/06_le_ic/fg/fg-merchants.html#B

So, be vigilant when using your card, and ask to speak to a manager if they require a minimum purchase or try to tack on a fee. You can send complaints about a merchant here:
http://fso.cpasitesolutions.com/premium/LE/06_le_ic/fg/fg-merchants.html#F

Visa Terms of Service (PDF):
http://usa.visa.com/download/merchants/card_acceptance_guide.pdf

Digital Video Camera

2009-10-05T16:54:48-05:00

Hi.

I want to buy a fairly good video camera, and was looking for advice. what shoudl i be looking for/what should i want to avoid?

and stuff…

tatuaje?

Spreading Web Paranoia with half-truths starring Glenn Beck!

2009-08-18T13:55:29-05:00

Glenn Beck claims the Obama administration is run by “evil, wicked, crazy, frightening people” because a government website uses cookies.

Now, maybe i’m behind the times, techies, so help me out, but isnt this what basically any website does to your computer?

what says you?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RAOBlqUqUZ8[/youtube]

and a response from http://trueslant.com/christopherthomas/2009/08/01/glenn-beck-and-the-governments-fictional-plot-to-hijack-your-computer/

An astute viewer of Beck’s expose might notice that the website that Beck is browsing is blue whereas the cars.gov website is green. This is no trick of the studio lights; though he never mentions it, what Beck is demonstrating only occurs on the dealer side of the website. The consumer side – the side that anyone who is not an automotive dealer will access – is green. What Beck demonstrates is not even something that a casual user of the site could stumble upon; they would have to go looking for it.

Can’t keep up with the forum

2009-10-20T21:13:52-05:00

Example:

I logged in this morning. Tons of new posts. No time to read all of that.

I log in this evening and everything is marked “read.”

This has been happening since the middle of August. We switched to a wireless router and from Charter to AT&T back then. Same computers, same Firefox.

Help!

metaspam the forums in protest of richey

2009-11-11T20:26:38-05:00

metaspam the forums in protest of richey

Anyone here know WordPress design better than I do?

2009-09-23T16:18:06-05:00

I’ve run into this issue on one of my sites, and while I think it’s easy to fix, I don’t know enough about PHP to figure it out.

I’m introducing a special user role to my site, the “Gold” members, which is for people who have chipped in a few bucks to keep it going. I’m using Role Scoper to define the new user role, and that’s working fine. What I’m looking to do is create a TOTALFARK like icon for these folks, which would display next to their user name every time they make a comment.

The problem is, I can’t figure out how to get WordPress (I’m on 2.8.4) to display just one specific user role, and then to output that as an image rather than as just the user role.

The closest I’ve been able to get is for it to display all user roles, using this ...

<?php
$user = get_userdata( $user_id );

$capabilities = $user->{$wpdb->prefix . ‘capabilities’};

if ( !isset( $wp_roles ) )
$wp_roles = new WP_Roles();

foreach ( $wp_roles->role_names as $role => $name ) :

if ( array_key_exists( $role, $capabilities ) )
echo $role;

endforeach;
?>

I’m not a web designer, obviously, and I expect the solution is really, really simple, but I’m just too ignorant of PHP to figure it out. Any ideas?

The Death of Geocities

2009-11-07T18:49:57-05:00

Last week, Yahoo shut down the legacy that was Geocities. Just after the explosion of the World Wide Web started in the mid 90’s, Geocities was a melting pot of hackers, foreigners, teenagers, and fools, all staking out their territory on the Internet with spinning mailboxes and dancing skeletons (not to mention the scrolling text).

One of the best sites on Geocities was WebTekRocks. Luckily, the brilliant minds behind WebTekRocks have pulled together and given it its own domain name and a permanent place to live: WebTekRocks.com

That web site is a true representation of everything that was possibly wrong with GeoCities, which makes it so right.

Enjoy.

Help me test AVLLive.com

2009-10-14T14:18:23-05:00

So, the Xpress is putting together a local blog aggregator and blogroll to be a central resource for all local blogs, bloggers and blog readers. (It’s one of those “secret” projects I sometimes allude to in the Xpress’ “development pipeline.”) The site is called AVLLive.com.

http://avllive.com/

It’s not really ready for the public yet—there’s considerable tweaking to do—but since you spiffy MX Boarders enjoy checking out such stuff, I thought I’d let all of you know about it first. If you have suggestions, ideas for improving it, notice things that don’t work right and so forth, we can use that information to improve it before we “officially” launch it.

Also, to save us all a little time, here are some known issues ...

1. The page loads kind of slowly. This appears to be due to the caching plugin not working with the “syndication” plugin we use to aggregate the RSS feeds.

2. The image sizes from some blogs sometimes break things. I’m looking at the best way to handle that. Incidentally, if this really bothers you, you can switch it to just the headlines by clicking on the “Toggle Posts” button on the right-hand side.

3. Sometimes, the posts are really long and it makes reading the page a drag. I’m looking for a good way to address this without resorting to using the “excerpt” function in WordPress, which I know from my experience with SparkleCityBlogs.com (which is very similar to this project) doesn’t work so well with the syndication plugin.

Wonky Xpress Forums Issues

2009-02-28T16:02:39-05:00

cant uplaod an avatar. whaddup wi dat? The size and dimensions are withint he perameters.

An error was encountered while attempting to assign your image