************************************************************
Free Speech and the WebThis week
’
s topic is of a little more serious nature than many of my
newsletter pieces, concerning as it does, matters of an adult nature.
It concerns an operator of an adult web site that has recently drawn
international attention.
I am not endorsing adult web sites or
pornography or any such thing, but rather want to present some
information for you to consider which I believe could be important for
any website operator.
For a little background: the Constitution of the United States includes
several Amendments, the first of which deals with the right of
individuals to express themselves freely.
The relevant wording is as
follows:
"
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of
speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to
assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.
"
Freedom of speech has been threatened recently by such things as the
ability for people to be arrested for saying things including certain
words in an airport, or cracking the wrong joke at the wrong time and so
on.
Website content may now be included in the list of
"
not so free
"
speech.
Not far from where I am, here in Central Florida, is a county named
Polk.
There are folks around here who say that when you step into Polk
County, you are stepping back fifty years in terms of law interpretation
and enforcement.
They got themselves a lot of national notoriety
recently for the manner in which they attempted to prosecute an
obscenity case against a resident of the county for operating an adult
website (for information see
)
The detective involved in that case, and some others in the county,
detective Charlie Gates and prosecutor Brad Copley are up to their
tricks again, this time, however, drawing international attention.
Rather than having me tell the story, I would like to refer you to a
series of articles covering the story written by reporter Dana Willhoit
and published in the local paper, The Ledger.
These are the links:
Mr. Mark Glaser of Online Journalism Review provides a breakdown of
issues here:
It is not my intent to persuade you one way or the other regarding these
issues, but I do think it is important that these issues be considered
and discussed.
Thanks for reading!
–
Vince Barnes
************************************************************
Q & A Goodies***********************************
Questions are taken from submissions to our Community
Mentors. You can ask a Mentor a question by going to
Is there any way to place text on top of pictures?
A.Here is the link to see how that
’
s done:
I am constantly creating files (pdf or word) files that I need to
show to many co-workers. Instead of having to email everyone everytime I
finish a file, I would like to upload the file to my server and have
them view the list of files online and download the ones they want.
These files need to be password protected as different people in
different departments should only see files pertaining to them. Here was
my idea, create a bunch of password protected folders on a server
–
one
for each department, and I will upload the file to any folder that
should be allowed to view these files.
Two questions: 1) I put the
files in a folder, but when I try to view the folder in a browser it
tells me I don
’
t have permission to access this folder (I assume because
I never created an index file). How can I set it up that I should be
able to view a list of files that are in the folder?
2) how can I
create a page that will allow me to upload files to folders using a
browser?
A.I believe you are correct in that you do not have an INDEX file for
the server to show when you try to access the folder. You could create
an INDEX file with the links to the documents for downloading. I am
assuming that you have already password protected the folder? An even
easier way would be to use a password log in feature for your pages. The
application would allow users to sign up themselves and you would
control which group the user should be in and only the documents or
files you allow each group or person to view. There is a nice web
application called ASPLogin. It has to run on a server that supports
ASP. For example, to make a document available to all users in a group
called
‘
management
’
, members of a group called
‘
administrators
’
and a
user called
‘
fred
’
(who may or may not be in either of the groups), you
would add the following code to the top of the document:
<
%@ LANGUAGE=VBScript %
>
<
%
Set asplObj=Server.CreateObject(
"
ASPL.Login
"
)
asplObj.Group(
"
management
"
)
asplObj.Group(
"
administrators
"
)
asplObj.User(
"
Fred
"
)
asplObj.Protect
Set asplObj=Nothing
%
>
Any other group or person trying to see that document will not be
allowed to see it. It is a pretty slick application You can take a look
here:
http://www.asplogin.comTo create a page to allow you to upload documents would call for some
scripting. This all depends on what type of server you site is hosted
on. If it is a Windows server then it will support Active Server Pages
(ASP).
Q.Is there was a way to position a background image in the center of a
page regardless of screen resolution?
A.This code will position the image in the center:
body {
background-image : url(image.jpg);
background-position : center center;
background-repeat : no-repeat;
}
To position in the center of a table, try using this (be sure to replace
__ with the height and width of the image):
<
body
>
<
table height=
"
100%
"
width=
"
100%
"
>
<
tr
>
<
td valign=
"
center
"
align=
"
center
"
>
<
table height=
"
__
"
width=
"
__
"
background=
"
image.jpg
"
>
Any text on the background
<
/table
>
<
/td
>
<
/tr
>
<
/table
>
<
/body
>
I have a question regarding the
"
on click
"
command, which I
’
ve used
successfully in the past with form buttons, but how can I use the same
command to work with an image in place of the form button?
A.To use it with an image you would use the onClick like this:
<
A HREF=
"
#
"
onClick=
"
some_function()
"
>
<
img src=
"
mypic.gif
"
>
<
/A
>
If you want to use an image to submit a form then you can just specify
the type as image like this:
<
INPUT TYPE=
"
image
"
SRC=
"
subpic.gif
"
>
Also with the first example you can simulate the onClick this way:
<
A HREF=
"
javascript:some_function()
"
>
<
img src=
"
mypic.gif
"
>
<
/A
>
The above is preferable because of a bug in IE5.0 version browsers with
the void
"
#
"
character in the HREF causing an error.
Q.
I need to learn how to pass a variable(s) from web page to web page.
Do I use a cookie? Do I use a file and perl? Can it be simply done with
the hidden fields in a form?
A.There
’
s a tutorial on just that subject:
I want to add
"
add to favorites
"
code (see
) to my page
but I am using frames and the code will only
"
add to favorites
"
the URL
for the frame from which it was clicked. How do I add the frames page
URL?
A.In place of
"
location.href
"
add your URL that you want and instead of
"
document.title
"
use
"
parent.document.title
"
.
***********************************
A Standardized Linux Desktop?[
October 18, 2005
]
New effort from the Free Standards Group aims to help
create specifications and standards for the Linux desktop.
Read the article:
[
October 18, 2005
]
Bandwidth.com unveils online test tools to serve
SMBs.
Read the article:
[
October 18, 2005
]
The man responsible for wikis and helping launch
Extreme Programming joins the Eclipse Foundation to build up the
committer community.
Read the article:
[
October 18, 2005
]
Big Blue will buy one of its longtime buddies, XML
security, acceleration and integration specialist DataPower.
Read the article:
[
October 18, 2005
]
New book search services are localized for eight
countries.
Read the article:
[
October 18, 2005
]
The SOA infrastructure providers take the software
functionality in their computing appliances up a few notches.
Read the article:
[
October 17, 2005
]
New business unit will process thousands of news
sources and millions of blogs.
Read the article:
[
October 17, 2005
]
Federal agents shut down Alan Ralsky with some help
from CAN-SPAM.
Read the article:
[
October 17, 2005
]
IBM posted quarterly earnings late Monday that were
well above Wall Street expectations, but the company
’
s sales came in shy
of forecasts.
Read the article:
[
October 17, 2005
]
FBI says Washington, D.C., man had 11,000 images of
child pornography for Internet distribution.
Read the article:
***********************************
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medium?
Ploof! It now is!
If you would like to comment on the newsletter or expand/improve on
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When you send email to this address it may wind up being included in
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Please don
’
t send your questions to this address.
They should be sent
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Thanks for all your feedback!
***********************************
Filtered Directory List Classic ASP SampleThis script allows users to search for files on the file system simply
by
entering any part of the filename.
The purpose of this article is to provide a random password generator
for
ASP.NET.
There are a number techniques for creating a random password,
and
these techniques are explored, along with source code.
With optimistic locking becoming the first choice when implementing web
applications, handling concurrency violations is becoming more and more
important.
There are several approaches to handling concurrency
violations.
This article examines two of them, record time stamping and blocking
multiple logins.
***********************************
1898US Takes Puerto Rico
Towards the end of the Spanish-American war, in 1897, Spain granted
Puerto Rico self-rule.
A year later, in July 1898, US troops invaded
the island.
There was little resistance, and only seven of the invaders
were killed.
By mid August, the Island had been secured, and later,
after the armistice with Spain was signed, the island was officially
turned over on this day in 1898.
The US spent about thirty years
Americanizing the population, including making them US citizens, and
trying to make English the official language of the island, but popular
movements such as the Popular Democratic Party put up strong
opposition.
In 1952 the US Congress made Puerto Rico an autonomous US
commonwealth, approving its constitution which was adopted on July 25 of
that year.
Referendums in 1967 and again in 1993 have both failed to
win the popular vote for Puerto Rican Statehood.
Today was also the day that in:
1016Danes defeat Saxons at
Battle of Assandun (Ashingdon);
16481st US labor organization
formed (Boston Shoemakers);
1748Treaty of Aix-la-Chapelle, ends
War of Austrian Succession;
1767Boundary between Maryland
&
Pennsylvania, the Mason Dixon line, agreed upon;
1776In a NY bar
decorated with bird tail, customers ordered a
"
cock tail
"
;
1922The British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) was established;
1960In Britain, the News Chronicle
&
Daily Mail merged,
&
The London Evening
Star merged with the Evening News;
1962Dr Watson (US)
&
Drs
Crick
&
Wilkins (Britain) won the Nobel Prize for Medicine for work in
determining structure of DNA;
1967Walt Disney
’
s
"
Jungle Book
"
was released;
1979"
Beatlemania
"
opened in London;
Born today were: in
1697Venetian painter Canaletto;
1898Austrian singer and actress Lotte Lenya;
1919former Canadian PM
Pierre Henry Trudeau;
1922comic strip character Little Orphan
Annie;
1925Greek actress Melina Mercouri;
1933actor
Peter Boyle;
1939JFK
’
s assassin Lee Harvey Oswald;
1947actor Joe Morton;
1947singer Laura Nyro;
1951actress Pam
Dawber;
1956Czech tennis player Martina Navratilova;
1958Belgian actor Jean-Claude Van Damme;
1962actress Erin Moran;
actor Chris McKenna;
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