So what do you make of it. Simply put, it’s defined as a trade agreement between many countries to bring about the prosecution of any person or organisation who sells  counterfeit products or infringes intellectual property rights through the reuse of digital content, thereby offering an international legal framework to deal with counterfeit trading and intellectual property infringement. The powers stated in the articles within this agreement can be exceeded by participating countries through their own legal systems.

I don’t disagree that there is a need to redefine our copyright laws, nationally and internationally but what I don’t agree with is embedding what appears to be a new international copyright law within a trade agreement. Digital content must be treated differently to physical products beacause we endanger the distribution of knowledge unless care is taken to define the framework within which content can be provided and used.

Countries who have signed up are: UK, Austria, Belgium, Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxemburg, Malta, Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Sweden, US, Australia, Canada, Japan, Morocco, New Zealand, Singapore and South Korea.

I’ve long despised the trade in counterfeit physical goods having seen people lulled into buying knock-off goods just because the things being sold were listed at heavily discounted prices. We’ve all seen them at markets in major cities around the world. I have no objection to providing a way for the rights holder to bring about legal proceedings against someone selling fake versions. The seller of the fake products is making money out of someone else’s time and investment.

But that’s for physical products.

The part that has become a talking point is Section 5 entitled the “ENFORCEMENT OF INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS IN THE DIGITAL  ENVIRONMENT” (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement; p33. http://register.consilium.europa.eu/pdf/en/11/st12/st12196.en11.pdf.

At the start it outlines how anyone infringing another’s intellectual property rights in a digital environment can be prosecuted in accordance with this trade agreement. It goes on to state that any enforcement of the prosecution must not affect anyone who is not infringing the agreement, thereby protecting law-abiding bodies. The thought that is running through my head is whether there is a grey area that will come about due to the difference in interpretation of what is and what isn’t an infringement.What constitutes an infringement? Is paraphrasing a paragraph an infringement? Is copying a sentence or two an infringement? Is using a 2-3 second clip from someone else’s video an infringement?

Going on to Section 5 (4), the rights holder will be able to go to an ISP and request they provide information that identifies the account that was used for the infringement. In addition, (5) states that the ‘Party’, ie country that has signed up to the agreement, must work out ways to prevent the use of technology to deliver copyrighted works in a way that gets round security and other digital rights management processes put into place by the rights holder.

All this seems pretty sensible, be able to identify the person who has reused original content as their own and share this with the authorities and person in a different country, as well as being able to break down the means by which content can be distributed illegally. The key word though is that the account used to infringe the rights should knowingly have done so.

I see no issue with this if the rights holder clearly states that their work is copyright and they do not wish their work to be reused in any way by anyone who has not received their permission to do so. An author who wants their work to be shared, and not in its entirety, should publish it under a Creative Commons licence, which can give others the right to reuse it without express permission.

One perspective on this is to place the responsibility with the owner of the intellectual property. They must explicitly state how they will allow their work to be made available to the public. If they want their work to be shared and distributed then they should choose the appropriate copyright licence and state it clearly. If you don’t have permission then pay for it. If you don’t want to pay for it then don’t use it. Is this a bit harsh? What are the arguments against this?

The one area that worries me is how authorities will go about identifying and monitoring infringements of intellectual property and counterfeiting. ACTA appears to give carte blanche to authorities to do so as long as they can prove their techniques are in place to catch those who break copyright and counterfeit law. There are already highly sophisticated plagiarism checkers in operation and much content has been digitised and available for use within these. Will anything, including film and audio, published via iTunes, Amazon, etc be subject to processing into an immense data library that is used to monitor activity? A small body of people will have the right to limit the online rights of various people as a result of their having permitted intellectual property to be shared in such a way the author did not intend, or did not explicitly state on publication.The net they will need to cast is a wide one indeed.

I agree in principle with not making money out of someone else’s work when they expressly do not wish you to. However, if they aren’t concerned about you doing this then it shouldn’t be outlawed. Additionally, there are currently civil sanctions against this so the author has the option to sue. What happens if the ‘perpetrator’ has not made any commercial gain out of reusing content,  but instead wants to simple spread information?

As you can probably tell, I’m no lawyer and could really do with understanding copyright law better. But, and it’s a big but, creating a new international copyright law and embedding it within a trade agreement does not seem right, and it is this that I’m opposed to. It’s important to not combine the two and allocate more time to the discussion of how intellectual property can be protected where it needs to be. Providing the stick with which to beat people operating in the grey area without adequately defining what that grey area is makes little sense as the final outcome is more than likely to be stricter laws that actually infringe the rights of those who want to share information.

Now, I had a few problems getting this to work. Little documentation and a fuzzy head were the main causes. Anyway, I got there in the end so here’s what I did. Pre-requisites are that you have a copy of MAMP (non-pro version) installed and have downloaded and unzipped the manual file.

Copy the manual file somewhere sensible in your localhost root folder. I put mine into /Sites/root/phpmanual/ giving the localhost url of http://localhost/root/phpmanual/php-chunked-xhtml/.

Next, work out which php.ini file you’re using. To do this create and open a phpinfo.php file. A phpinfo.php file just needs the following:

<?php
    phpinfo();
?>

Search for php.ini and you’ll see a line in the row with a heading of Loaded Configuration File. You’ll have a url of something like: /Applications/MAMP/conf/php5.3/php.ini. Open this file in TextWrangler and make the edits below. Make sure you make a copy of the php.ini file before doing this or have some way to restore the original version.

1. Change display_errors to On.
2. Change html_errors to On.
3. Add base url to docref_root and uncomment (delete the semi-colon). In my case the base url is /root/phpmanual/php-chunked-xhtml/.
4. Uncomment error_prepend_string.
5. Uncomment error_append_string.

277 display_errors = On
311 html_errors = On
319 docref_root = "/ROOT/phpmanual/php-chunked-xhtml/"
320 docref_ext = .html
323 error_prepend_string = "<font color=ff0000>"
326 error_append_string = "</font>"

The final thing to do is save the file and then restart your servers. To test it create a basic php file like the one below.

<?php
include ('file.php');
?>

Launch it and you should see this

Warning: include(file.php) [function.include.html]: failed to open stream: No such file or directory in /Users/zoooj/Sites/root/mailout.php on line 2  
Warning: include() [function.include.html]: Failed opening 'file.php' for inclusion (include_path='.:/Applications/MAMP/bin/php5.3/lib/php') in /Users/zoooj/Sites/root/mailout.php on line 2

Click on the links (in blue) and you’ll be taken to your local copy of the PHP Manual. These links point to my local copy so probably won’t work for you, unless you’ve set it up and used the same location as I have. Simply by regularly updating the manual you can now work offline whenever you want on your php development.

First, create your shell script by opening a text editor, eg TextWrangler (and not an RTF editor), and type:

#!/bin/bash

On the next line type in the commands you would normally do in Terminal. In my case, I wanted to navigate to the MAMP /bin where mysqldump lives. Then, I wanted to use this to dump a sql file of a specific database within my sites directory.

cd /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/
./mysqldump -a -uroot -pPASSWORD mydb1 > ../../../../Users/[username]/Sites/Backups/db1.sql;

Finally, close it with

exit

You then save this in a logical place (ie somewhere you can find it!), in my case /Users/[username]/Sites/Backups/scripts/. Next go to Application > Utilities and launch AppeScript Editor. Type the following into the edit pane.

do shell script "/Users/[username]/Sites/Backups/scripts/backup_nsdaukcom_263323_db1.sh"

Save this to either Applications or a sub-directory within Applications. When you change the File Format to Applications before saving.

Once done, all you need to do to take a backup is double-click the new application you’ve created and your previous backup is overwritten with a new one.

Go to the directory (=folder) where the system level email files for all users are stored, and list them:

cd /private/var/mail/; ls -l

Display the email(s) for the user which you fill into <username>. Either use your username (without the angle brackets) or use the character * (asterisk) if you want all emails from users listed:

cat <username> | less

Finally erase your mail file, in case you do not need it anymore.

sudo rm /private/var/mail/<username>

Obviously, seeing as you’re deleting mail from your mac make sure you’re certain before doing so. Also, the sudo rm command has no safety net. Once something’s gone it’s gone so if you’re unsure, don’t do it.

First, connect to mysql using Terminal. MAMP is automatically set to use root as the user account to connect to mysql. Funnily enough, root is also the password!

/Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql --host=localhost -uroot -proot

Last login: Wed Dec 28 14:48:04 on ttys001
ZoooJs-MacBook-Pro:~ zoooj$ /Applications/MAMP/Library/bin/mysql --host=localhost -uroot -proot
Welcome to the MySQL monitor.  Commands end with ; or g.
Your MySQL connection id is 38
Server version: 5.1.44 Source distribution

Type 'help;' or 'h' for help. Type 'c' to clear the current input statement.

mysql> SET PASSWORD FOR 'root'@'localhost' = PASSWORD('your-new-password');
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.00 sec)

/Applications/MAMP/bin/phpMyAdmin/config.inc.php
/Applications/MAMP/bin/checkMysql.sh
/Applications/MAMP/bin/quickCheckMysqlUpgrade.sh
/Applications/MAMP/bin/repairMysql.sh
/Applications/MAMP/bin/stopMysql.sh
/Applications/MAMP/bin/upgradeMysql.sh
/Applications/MAMP/bin/MAMP/index.php

Restart MAMP and all should be well.

A number of freelancers on freelancers.net have compared quoting for a project akin to buying a car. One in particular wrote:

1) do you want a Ferrari
2) does it need to be 4×4
3) do you want diesel or petrol
4) do you want a maintenance plan
5) do you want extras
6) do you want free MOT
7) do you want continuous improvements (this would equate to a lease hire
where you replace the car for the newer model at the end of each year) do you want free upgrades (top of the range breaks and accessories each time the car is serviced) – £5000 upfront,

Are you a Trader or are you Private Seller or are you an Independent Dealer
or are you an Authorised Dealer.

£125 – £750 per day AND full Professional days. Quote by day and if it
takes you 10 more days than quoted, you can’t ask for extra money. so don’t promise more than you can deliver and agree a continous review to make sure you’re on track.

You need to charge for project initiation (establishing your Business,
Functional and Non-Functional Requirements) this isn’t included in the
Design, Develop and Deploy phases.

Or do you want to go to a trader and buy a car from him in the ASDA parking lot and not know where he comes from, hope the the HPI check is legitimate and hope that he hasn’t thrown saw dust in the gear box as well as 1 or 2 banana skins. £10000 and make sure your buyer can’t find you or review your work and make sure you can’t build a reputation to sell so the same buyer again.

Getting the quote right means treating the project in its entirety. There’s one thing I don’t like about this comparison, though, and that’s likening web developers to car dealers. In my experience, and I use those words carefully, web developers are somewhat more honest. I’m sure there are bad ones around – I’ve obviously been fortunate to meet the honest ones. The same cannot be said for car dealers!!

The first thing you have to do is create any new attributes you require. After specifying the values for these, you then create a new attribute set. Drag the new attributes into a new group called Selectable Options.

Next, you create the configurable product. Select the new attribute set and then select only the options you wish to include for this product. You can see by doing this that you could have one attribute set per configurable product type, or you could have one configurable product for all products in the shop.

After doing this you can assign simple products to the configurable product by clicking on Associated Products and selecting them. If the simple products don’t appear in the list as expected, then it’s most probable you either haven’t set the attribute scope to Global (required for all configurable product attributes) or you have assigned a different attribute set to the product.

Rule #1: Attributes used in configurable products need to have a global scope.
Rule #2: Simple products assigned to configurable products need to be assigned the same attribute set.

1. Create a new category named after the name of the link.
2. Go to Url Rewrite Management. Select the newly created category and note down the target path. During setup this was catalog/category/view/id/21. Set Redirect to Permanent (301). Then save.
3. Next click Add URL Rewrite. Select Custom. Type the name of the page link in the ID Path field. Type the target path copied in (b) to Request Path. Type the URL for the page in the Target Path field. This must be different to the name entered in the category to prevent a circular reference. Last, select Permanent (301) in the Redirect list. Then save.

A good tutorial is here: http://www.geekieblog.com/2011/10/adding-a-new-language-to-magento/ but the basic steps are:

• Grab the translation files
• Upload them to the appropriate directories as they appear in the download
• Change you store view locale
• Delete the cache
• Refresh the page

Invalid server response for http://magento-community

When searching for the extension make sure you select the correct version using the dropdown before agreeing to the terms and conditions.