Author Archives: B

Interesting tidbit.

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I friend just asked me an interesting question: in Leopard, can you print a document without opening the parent application? The answer, it turns out is a conditional yes.
Having never tried it, I thought; well, open the printer’s queue and drag the document in and see what happens. I’ve only tried .xsl, .doc, and .pdf. The Microsoft documents immediately open the appropriate application and print immediately. With .pdf’s it’s a different story. Pdf’s print without opening Preview or Acrobat.
That’s pretty cool.

PCI Compliance extortion racket

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So, two of my clients have received a letter from Elavon (formally) NOVA indicating that they need to pay a third party “Qualified Security Assurance Assessor” to validate their PCI Compliance. This is bullshit. The merchants in question do not store cardholder data. My clients have been told they have until Dec. 15th to get this assessment; or, pay $135.00 a year to Trustwave, until all of the issues are hammered out.
The claim is simply not true. If you look at the PCI Compliance website it lays out the level of PCI Compliance to which one must conform. If you are selling stuff online and you are not storing cardholder data, you should be done. Instead, the credit card companies are asking you to shell out cash to have verification performed.
I’m not against PCI Compliance. In fact, it is a legitimate concern; however, if you are not storing credit card numbers, and you aren’t doing 2 million dollars worth of transactions, you are in compliance. This is an extortion racket created by the credit card companies to scare merchants into buying things they can’t afford. Why this surprises me, I’m not sure: what’s the point of having a credit card if you’re only going to buy things you can pay for outright? My recommendation to my clients is to refuse to accept credit cards on their sites and instead sell through PayPal or Google Checkout. There is no excuse for punishing people who are abiding the principle and the letter of the PCI standards by squeezing them for money. I find it interesting that this letter arrived with a deadline two weeks before Christmas and when Congress is out of session. I see that Elavon donated to the McCain campaign; so, I can bet they are trying to strike while the iron is hot.
If you’re reading this, please use cash. Stop working for these bastards. They don’t care about you except how they can get you to give them money for nothing. I am a capitalist and I don’t mind trading my money for a service; but, this is gangster behavior and it must stop. Until it does, create a PayPal account, and fire these assholes.

Dubai

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I just saw this:
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/middle_east/7472722.stm

I understand that they have a relatively small geographic area; ‘slightly smaller than Maine.’ and they have lots of money. Still, one marvels at their use of space. Their policy on crumbs found on airline customers aside (it’s a big aside, I know), one is curious how it is that we can’, in our infinite wisdom, afford similar efforts of engineering.

My theory on this is probably population density and relative ethnic, tribal hegemony. I’m guessing that the more populous, hegemonous, and dense is a population, the easier it is to get things done. It’s too bad that we cannot somehow formulate some sort of national identity. I’m not talking about patriotism as much as self identifying as an American.
After 911, there were AdCouncil ads with people of various backgrounds saying, ‘I am an American.’ I wish we could somehow get back to that idea.

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Bejuntu

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So, I installed Ubuntu Server 8 today on an aged Dell that’s been sitting around. The installation was as easy as falling off a log. Really. It was straightforward and
apt-get is stupid easy. I did this because I needed a development platform for this Drupal book I’m working through. I started to put it on my Macs; but, getting
GD to play nice with Leopard has proven a pain. All of the workarounds I’ve seen are for Leopard Server.

I’m hoping to deploy Drupal for Augusta West’s (here is the old one) new website. I’ll have to be patient with myself as I learn this stuff. At least I’m having fun learning something new.

Net Neutrality

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I’m watching this:
Real Audio Link
The first speaker after the chair was Representative Cliff Stearns. He goes on and on and is wrong, wrong, wrong.
Guess who’s paying his way in DC?
Here comes Fred Upton.
Guess where his money comes from?
Here is Mike Ferguson
His top donors?
His argument is that piracy, read bit-torrent traffic devastates the internet;
and yet, check this out.
John Shimkus?
From what I hear so far, it’s a three hour hearing, these shills for the telcos are full of it. They want content creators to pay for the privilege of residing on their networks. It’s the same as saying that only Lamborghini’s will be allowed to drive on surface streets. That’s great if you can afford a Gallardo; unfortunately, that’s going to make we mere mortals unable to play. This is how the ISP’s want it. I think the chairman of the hearing has it right on the money that there are so many red herrings in this debate you could fill an aquarium.
Please write your representative and tell them to support network neutrality

 
Here is another place, saying it better than I can…