Scam Alert: Bank of America Customers Beware

If you receive an email with the following body, this is a scam, do not follow the instructions in the email.

Dear Bank of America - Military Bank Customer,

As part of our efforts to meet the requirements of the Federal
Financial Institutions Examination Council (FFIEC), we now ask all
Military Bank Online users to verify their account information. It's a
smart and simple way to add an additional level of protection to your
account.

Here's how it works:
1. Click here to sign on.
2. Complete our quick and simple form.

3. Continue with your Military Bank
Online session.

We may periodically ask you to provide information in Military Bank
Online as a quick identity check. That way, when you drop in to do
business, we'll know it's you.

Thank you,
Bank Of America - Military Bank Online

Windows Anti Virus Poll Results

The results are in. AVG AntiVirus and Eset's Nod32 tied for first with 3 votes each. Nod32 priced at $39 seems to be a strong favorite in the tech community. Favored because of its low hardware overhead and effective protection, it stands as a piece of software worth considering.

AVG AntiVirus comes at a small price, free. Low hardware overhead, effective protection. It is a very popular alternative. One thing that Nod32 shows strength that AVG lacks is an easy to use interface. Not that AVG is difficult to use, it is not as user friendly as other protection programs out there.

But if you are like me, you will gladly deal with a less user friendly interface to save a few dollars.


Chris

HowTo: Enable Alternate File Types in Dreamweaver 8

I ran into a problem when developing a module for Drupal. For a Drupal module, the php files end in a module extension. But when trying to open one of these documents in Dreamweaver, you receive the following error, "Can't find a valid editor for this file extension."

To fix this problem, you have to edit two files that control how Dreamweaver operates. To edit these files, you can use any text editor. Since I am doing this on a windows machine, I am going to use notepad.

The instructions below were taken from Adobe's Support Site which can be found here. Below are the instructions for Windows XP and Macromedia Dreamweaver 8. The source for these instructions also has instructions for Mac OS X and Vista as well as CS3 Dreamweaver.

First we need to enable viewing of hidden filesTo show hidden files, hidden folders, and extensions for known file types:

1. In Windows Explorer, do one of the following:
* In Windows XP, choose Tools > Folder Options.
* In Windows Vista, choose Organize > Folder and Search Options.
2. Click the View tab in the Folder Options dialog box.
3. In Advanced Settings, select Show Hidden Files And Folders.
4. Deselect Hide Extensions For Known File Types.
5. Click OK.

To add file types to the Extensions.txt file:

1. Locate the Extensions.txt file within the Dreamweaver user configuration folder. The location of this folder depends on the operating system and the version of Dreamweaver:
   • Dreamweaver 8 on Windows XP & 2000:
     C:\Documents and Settings\[username]\Application Data\Macromedia\Dreamweaver 8\Configuration
   
   
2. Open Extensions.txt in any external text editor like Notepad or Text Editor. Do not modify the Dreamweaver configuration files in Dreamweaver itself.
   
3. Add the extension to the All Documents line. Extensions must be in uppercase letters and separated by commas.

   Example: HTML,HTM,SHTM,SHTML,MODULE

4. To add extensions to an existing document group, add the extension to the extension list for the desired group.

   Example: PHP,PHP3,PHP4,PHP5,TPL,MODULE:PHP Files

   (This can also be added to the Server Side Include list already within the file.)

5. Save the file and restart Dreamweaver.

Steps to add extensions to a document type definition in the MMDocumentTypes.xml file:

1. Locate the MMDocumentTypes.xml file in the main Dreamweaver configuration folder (not the Dreamweaver user configuration folder). The location of this folder depends on the operating system and the version of Dreamweaver:
   • Dreamweaver 8 on Windows Vista, XP & 2000:
     C:\Program Files\Macromedia\Dreamweaver 8\Configuration\DocumentTypes
2. Open MMDocumentTypes.xml in any external text editor like Notepad or Text Editor. Do not modify the Dreamweaver configuration files in Dreamweaver itself.
3. Find the tag set for the desired document type. Below is the default document type definition for PHP documents from the MMDocumentTypes.xml file:
   
   
4. Add the desired extension to the winfileextension and macfileextension attributes of the documenttype tag. For example:
   winfileextension="html,htm,shtml,shtm,stm,tpl,lasso,xhtml,module"
   
   
5. Save MMDocumentTypes.xml and restart Dreamweaver.

I hope this helps other people, as it took me a while to find a fix for this myself.

Chris

Keychain "login" can not be found to store...

This problem may occur in Mac OS 10.4. It happened to me, it is caused by a corrupted or missing keychain called login.

The resolution for this issue was quite simple for me. I navigated to Applications --> Utilities --> Keychain. Once I was in Keychain Access, I clicked "Keychain Access" in the application menu at the top of the screen. Then scrolled down the menu till I came to "KeyChain First Aid". I ran this utility and it fixed my problem.

Chris

Now a Mac User

Recently, my wife Rachel and I were in need of two new laptops. Mine was failing me after two and half years of solid servitude, and Rachel didn't have one. I was going to be getting a new one to replace my Dell Inspiron 6000, Rachel was going to get one because she is going back to school this fall and needed something that she could work on wherever.

I was about to go buy a new dell, probably a Inspiron 1521, until my wife dragged me into the Apple Store. She bought a 13'' MacBook. I was very impressed with the laptop. Now I have encountered Apple Laptops before, my brother once came to me with a G5 MacBook that he had bought from a friend for $50.

This laptop had a bad logic board, it still was under warranty for about 15 days. The owner was fearful that he would get in trouble for all of the pirated software on the laptop, so he did want to send it in to Apple.

By the time it got to me it was completely dissambled, there was no hard drive, no memory, and it was missing two of the 4 foot pads. Luckilly I had an old 30gb laptop hdd and 256mb of memory that fit the laptop. I reassembled it, brought the laptop into Apple. They transfered ownership of the laptop to me for sake of the warranty and then sent it in. I was completely honest with the Apple "Genius", told him it wasn't the original hdd or memory. Told him it wasn't my laptop, but as far as they were concerned, the laptop was still under warranty and they fixed it.

The laptop came back to me with an OS on it and 4 of 4 foot pads. I was impressed. My brother bought the Apple Care on it and extended the warranty 2 more years for $189 dollars(price is for a student).

So up to this point, I was extremely impressed with the quality of service I received and the internal design of the laptop. With the purchase of my wife's laptop, I had the chance to be impressed with the software. Very intuitive design and interface. I thought that I would have a hard time without my right click abilities, but honestly I am over it.

I went and bought an Apple MacBook Pro. I bought it through the Apple Developer Connection and saved $500 off of the retail price.

There is so much that I love about the laptop, like the illuminated keyboard, not having to click "apply" or "ok" to make settings change, the ability to run both Mac OSX and Vista simultaneously. I am never going back to Microsoft as a primary OS.

Chris

Update to Alexa Ranking How-To

Since I posted the article on how to quickly increase your Alexa Rank, my Alexa rank has gone up to 1,240,080. Another 500,000 towards first in about 16 days.

The original article can be found here.

How-To: Update to Unlocking the Apple iPhone

George has posted on his blog some updated information regarding his steps to unlock the iPhone. They can be read below.

First of all, I don't solder anymore on the phones I unlock. Just get tweezers with a sharp point, scratch away the trace, and use the two prongs on the tweezers to touch the side of the cap and the trace. It's much much easier.
Second, kiwi66 pointed out and fixed some problems with ieraser not connecting to the bootloader. The download link has been updated.
Third, you cannot reboot between ieraser and iunlocker. The wifi will stop working, which I saw happened to several people on the forums. If you do reboot, simply make a launch daemon to run bbupdater -f myver.fls That restores the firmware.
Also using that termcap I have linked seems to make ssh and minicom init slowly. Anyone find a better way, perhaps with just the vt100 file?