While changing some things on my computer setup today I decided to change the name of my harddrive and computer to match my local DNS entry.
Having done this many times before I knew that there would be certain applications that would be looking for an absolute path that would have issues, such as Dreamweaver sites and the root folder locations for them.
Adobe Contribute (formerly Macromedia Contribute) has the same problem with the stored sites that you have setup prior to the name change.
Here is how to fix Contribute after changing the harddrive name:
- Open up the Contribute preferences file located in
/Users/USERNAME/Library/Preferences/(in my case the filename was Contribute 4.1 Preferences, this will be different for other versions) in your favorite text editor. - Start searching at the top of the file for each instance of the old harddrive name.
- Replace each instance with the new harddrive name.
- Save and close the file.
Now the next time you start Contribute, you won’t get the any error messages related to having missing site files.
Oh, and don’t forget to backup the file first. You do back up your data right? 
Posted by: Andy Fore in Copyright, Cyberspeech, Music
Everyone wanted DRM-free music and EMI partnered with Apple to make it happen.
Now apparently it’s not being done right. Of course, we all knew that the account holder name and associated e-mail address was being stored in the DRM encrypted tracks. But somehow everyone seems to think that Apple was going to just cease to embed that because the song was DRM-free.
Ars Technica has a story up on this.
I wouldn’t be surprised if some data was being analyzed in aggregate, although Apple’s current privacy policy does not appear to allow for this. As with the dust-up over the mini-store, Apple should clarify what this embedded data is used for.
Give me a break. Sure, if the privacy policy states that Apple isn’t going to use the data for purchase analyization, then fine. But I would be willing to bet that the author of the story has at least one of those grocery store cards, or a gas station card, or even a driver’s license, that contains some sort of barcode or mag stripe on it. What exactly do you think the stores do with all that data on your purchasing habits? They analyze it for trends of course.
Chicken Little, the sky is not falling.
Posted by: Andy Fore in Sayings
Another day, another off the wall saying.
So my father used to use the phrase “You Can’t Roller Skate In A Buffalo Herd” all the time when I was growing up. Until recently I never really cared what the origin was, I used the phrase and went on.
Recently, however, the subject of my unusual phrases came up at a luncheon for one of my student assistants that had just gotten a new job as a full time staff member in another department.
So, here’s the origin. The phrase comes from a song by Roger Miller entitled, strangely enough, You Can’t Roller Skate In A Buffalo Herd. For the complete lyris visit .
Posted by: Andy Fore in Gaming
Many of us have played online games. Even more of us play them with the intent of socializing during the game with our fellow players.
However, there is another group of online gamers, the mute ones.
Ars Technica’s Opposable Thumbs journal has an interesting post concerning the online gamer segment that just wants to play against a human. They don’t have any interest in interacting outside of the regular game play itself.
I wonder how many gamers there are out the like this. Is there a market for a service that caters to those who only use the online games and online components to garner non-AI opponents?
Posted by: Andy Fore in Free Speech
From the Ars Technica story:
A Michigan man is being prosecuted for using a cafe’s free WiFi… from his car.
The Michigan law apparently bars you from accessing someone else’s network without their explicit authorization.
Seems to me that this is really getting out of hand. Where’s the law that says that the owner of the network has to secure it to prevent unauthorized access? Given the ease with which you can secure a network and still allow your customers access when they wish, I would think that this is a no-brainer.
Also, is there a law that says I can’t stand on the street corner, on the public sidewalk mind you (because I would hate to get arrested for loitering), and use the street lamp that the store is paying for to read a newspaper or book? Isn’t that unauthorized use of their electricity?
Posted by: Andy Fore in arfore.com
So apparently I am just way behind the times.
According to a news story at WashingtonPost.com, one girl ran her family Verizon Wireless bill to the tune of $1,100.
When I last upgraded my phone, about a month or so ago, the Cingular rep asked me if I wanted to add text messages to it. He seemed real surprised when I told him that I sent and received a total of 10 or 12 messages per month.
I guess I am just not hip enough.
Posted by: Andy Fore in Linux, Windows, Apache
Well, over the weekend some of the other sysadmins of the world provided the solution to the Office 2007 file download problems.
It’s all about the mime types. For those of you not in the know, a MIME type is an Internet Standard that is used to help webservers and e-mail servers know what kind of files are being served up and sent out. Check out the Wikipedia article for more.
So on an Apache webserver you need to add the following to your mime types file:
application/vnd.openxmlformats docx pptx xlsx
Thanks goes out to Vlad Mazek and his post on this one.
Now if only it was so easy for a Windows webserver running IIS. For the process on updating IIS, surf on over to the entry on David Oberton’s blog at a href=”http://uksbsguy.com/”>UK SBS Guy.
Posted by: Andy Fore in Windows
So with the impending roll out of Microsoft Office 2007 here at work, we have discovered something interesting. Apparently IE 6 and IE 7 don’t understand how to deal with the new file types that were introduced with Office 2007.
For those of you who aren’t aware, with the introduction of Office 2007, Microsoft has moved to new new file format for Word, Excel, and PowerPoint called Open XML. The new extensions for the files have an x added to the end of the familiar Office file extensions. For more on the file types check out the Wikipedia entry Microsoft Office 2007 file extensions.
The behavior when attempting to download the files using IE is that the browser treats them as zip files and displays the familiar “Run, Save, Cancel” box after starting the download. The fun part is that Firefox 2.0.0.3 and Netscape 8.1.3 both check the file extension against the file types list of the OS and if the new file types are listed appropriately, they tell you the correct type of Office document that you are attempting to download. (Note: you only get the new file type definitions if you have installed Office 2007 or the Office 2007 File Compatibility Pack for Office 2003).
Good game, Microsoft. I really hope that you produce a fix soon.
For those searching for more information on this, here’s a couple of links I found on the problem:
http://www.tutorials-xe.com/ERRORS/docx-becomes/
http://www2.nau.edu/~d-elearn/faculty_support/tutorials/office2007/office2007.php
Posted by: Andy Fore in Linux
In the process of rebuilding my MythTV box with Gentoo, I found a bug in the 2.6.19 kernel when it comes to using wireless and ndiswrapper for my Linksys WMP54G v.4 PCI card.
When you configure the kernel you normally have to only select CONFIG_NET_RADIO=y and CONFIG_NET_WIRELESS=y.
But with the 2.6.19 kernel I discovered via post on a board that you also need to select one of the wireless chipsets as a module, even if you don’t plan on using it. If you don’t do this then CONFIG_NET_RADIO will still be marked as “n” when the kernel is built even though that isn’t what you selected at config time.
To check the required values you can use the following command:
zgrep CONFIG_NET_RADIO /proc/config.gz
zgrep CONFIG_NET_WIRELESS /proc/config.gz
Posted by: Andy Fore in Mac OS X
So, I hate developers. Wait, let me clarify: I hate developers who can’t think through the user experience.
When an uninstaller is written it really should remove all file associated with the application.
Case in point, recently I moved to a Windows Mobile-based smartphone, so I needed to cross-grade to Missing Sync for Windows Mobile from the PalmOS version.
When I run the uninstaller it removed a lot of stuff, but the following data was left behind:
- Missing Sync under the home library Application Support
- Palm Hotsync under the home library Application Support
- com.markspace.missingsync.ConduitManager.plist under the home library Preferences
- com.markspace.missingsync.palmos.plist under the home library Preferences
- com.markspace.MemoPad.plist under the home library Preferences
- Palm under the home Documents directory
- Palm Hotsync under the system library Application Support
Admittedly, some of these files/directories might be valuable if you want to re-install your software for some reason, but at the very least the installer should ask you if you want to remove it.
Also, in the Hotsync folder(s) there are sometimes conduits that are not part of the Missing Sync software, so it was actually nice that those were left behind.