Crazy Apple Rumors Site: Broken CD Carrier Used As Justification For Purchase Of New G5.
Cnb pointed me to this sad tale of a man who went into the store to buy a CD case and came out with a new G5, IPOD and Cinema Display. Total cost: $4,185 plus tax
It’s probably a joke, but still pretty good.
Rules of debate: No asking each other questions
A pretty funny read. Good stuff to keep in mind while watching the “debate”
The most stupid points are the ones regarding what the camera’s can show… “No reaction shots of one candidate when the other candidate is answering a question.“.
My theory is that the candidates will have big monkey masks under their podium and while the one candidate is talking the other is wearing the mask trying to make the audience laugh.
e-gold… gold itself, circulated electronically
I’m thinking about opening an e-gold account, but except for this old wired article, I haven’t found any service reviews.
Everything looks pretty straightforward except for the fees page. Since they only use grams and troy ounces of the different metals, it’s difficult to see exactly what you are paying.
Spend Fee schedule is what I have a hard time understanding. From what I can deduct if you recieve anything greater than AUG 5 you only have to pay AUG 0.05. This means that with today’s exchange rate for anything over USD 65 I will only have to pay .65 cents. That makes me think I’m reading the chart wrong.
Anyone have any experience that they’d want to share?
UtterlyBoring.com: Biblical Laws for Children
Very funny set of “Biblical” laws for children…
My favorites:
Laws When at Table: Sit just as I have told you, and do not lean to one side or the other nor slide down until you are nearly slid away. Heed me; for if you sit like that, your hair will go into the syrup. And now behold, even as I have said, it has come to pass.
and
When you chew your food, keep your mouth closed until you have swallowed, and do not open it to show your brother or your sister what is within; I say to you, do not so, even if your brother or your sister has done the same to you.
On Screaming: Likewise if you receive a portion of fish from which every piece of herbal seasoning has not been scraped off, and the herbal seasoning is loathsome to you and steeped in vileness, again I say, refrain from screaming.
I guess every parent is flabbergasted by what their kid can do.
Annie loves drawing but when I saw her butterfly, I couldn’t believe that she had done it. Fabulous! It’s better than I can do. I just need to teach her how to use the GIMP now, and I’ll never need to look for another graphics person 
Clint Laskowski, who happens to have a very cool domain name, sent me a tip on a new custom keyword for my list.
This keyword works with the del.icio.us social bookmark manager, and will bring up the del.icio.us page so that you can add it to your bookmark.
The process works like this.
1. You find a cool page.
2. Ctrl L
3. type “pt” followed by any tags you want
4. Hit enter
And you’re at the add a book mark page, with the tags that you listed on the location bar already in place. All you have to do is click save and you’ll be back at the cool page.
It doesn’t get any simpler than that! The custom keyword is:
javascript:location.href='http://del.icio.us/yourname?url='+escape(location.href)+'&title='+escape(document.title)+'&tags=%s'
You will need to replace yourname with your del.icio.us username.
Someone is selling the Lindows letters (and a free dot) which used to adorn the outside of Lindows headquarters. Very funny ebay posting!
With 45 bids, the price is currently $630 and there are 4 days left.
Note: If you came here looking for a commercial solution to encrypt SQLite Databases, head over to the official SQLite professional Support page.
We return to regular programming…
As discouraged as using register_globals is, most people who write about PHP will never admit that using register_globals is in itself is a security risk. Sloppy coding, coupled with register_globals being turned on can create security problems. Because of this, register_globals was turned off by default. A wise decision.
SQLite could very easily fall into the same category as register_globals. [Note: the previous statement is bullocks... keep moving]
I’ve been going through the Zend Contest Entries and have been very surprised to see that only one of the five software packages that I have reviewed so far which used SQLite, does anything at all to protect their database. Due to the fact that many of these packages use SQLite because of the “no-installation-necessary” factor, it is very unlikely that the end user will bother securing the database themselves.
In a few months I wonder what goodies we’ll be able to find when searching in google for “This file contains an SQLite 2.1 database”. We already have a few hits.
There was recently a long discussion about SQLite security on PHP Internals mailing list, the general consensus was that it was the responsibility of the author of the software to make sure that the security of SQLite databases is maintained. It is also the responsibility of the person installing the package to secure by means of a .htaccess or other protection at webserver/filesystem level.
I realize the futility of this rant, but can’t help but think that there has gotta be a better way.
Quote of the day!
“You know you think about PHP too much when you notice it’s 5:01pm and wonder when it’s going to be 5:02″
In other news, there are a LOT of new entries up on the ZEND Contest page. I downloaded the “ExpenseManager” and was very impressed by its coolness!
I was horrified, however to see that the author took no care whatsoever to protect his SQLite database. It is stored within the webroot and there is no configuration option to change its location. This isn’t the fault of PHP itself, but just sloppy (and dangerous) programming, because of this (and only this) this entry does not get full marks from me.
Anyone who hangs around the #phpc room on freenode, know how much I enjoy complaining about PHP annoyances. The fact of the matter is that because of PHP’s irregularities unless you have intimate knowledge of how a function works, it’s VERY difficult to predict its behavior.
explode('\n', $string);
strtok($string, '\n');
Explode and strtok, are simple examples about parameter ordering discrepancies. The fact that strchr() is an alias of strpos(), but strrchr() doesn’t work like strrpos(), is another example. There are a lot more. These things must be addressed before PHP is ready for the enterprise.
There is a way. My suggestion would be to create a new set of functions which have standardized naming and parameter ordering. The existing functions will still work (there will be no BC breaks), but will throw an E_STRICT warning. Something like this would have been nice to get into a major release (like PHP5), but it could still be pulled off.
The final step takes place in a future Major PHP release which is released in X years and is fully E_STRICT compatible. And we will be forever rid of is_writeable() and it’s ugly friends.
Albino Blacksheep / Flash / Squares 2
Simple yet VERY addicting game!
My Zend PHP Certification Study Guide arrived about 10 minutes ago. This short review is based on the information I absorbed from the book in a quick flip through the pages.
The first impression of the guide is the size of the book. It is very thin, a mere 223 pages, not counting the index. There are 13 chapters, starting with Basic PHP, and then going straight into Object-Oriented PHP, and then PHP and the Web, and then on to Arrays, Strings, Files, Dates, Email, DB, Streams and Network, Security, Debugging and Performance, and finally Getting Ready for the Certification Exam.
Each chapter starts with lists of “Terms you’ll need to Understand” and “Techniques you’ll need to master”, and ends with Exam Prep Questions. Every chapter is full of code snippets to demonstrate techniques, and the syntax of functions.
The introduction explains that the guide and the exam were put together to with the intent of balancing theory and real world scenarios. The Managing Mail chapter displays this well as it not only covers regular mail sending but basic MIME, attaching files, creating HTML email and attaching images, and basic email delivery tips.
I’m was surprised to see that the 11 page database section focuses only on SQL with hardly a single line of PHP code. Seeing that PHP interfaces with so many different databases, and many of the interfaces vary slightly, it’s more logical to take the database agnostic view that they have taken. Later on in the book when referring to database queries they use the object oriented PEAR::DB like $db->query(’…’) syntax. Again, a good choice.
The coding style is too spacious for my liking, but apart from some varying tab length it’s fairly consistent throughout the guide. Format of SQL statements are sometimes inconsistent, with some “SELECT FROM” and other “Select From”, one “INSERT into”, but I can live with that.
You don’t need this book if you just want to use PHP. You can even try your luck, and take the test without reading the book. But an exam is an exam, there’s nothing like a good study guide to get you ready for the exam. You wouldn’t want to flunk because you don’t remember what the third argument to strpos() was would you?
Leaky Tap – Internet.CustomKeywords
I decided that since this page is getting over a thousand unique visits a month it’s time to put up a google banner. I’ve been wanting to do it for a while, but now that I finally got it up I see that google just serves one of their won banners, rather than one that will actaully make earn me any revenue.
I’ve contacted google about this page, when they dropped my page rank from 6/10 to 0/10. They replied saying that I wasn’t banned, but the drop in PR was consistant with their PR ranking system. Now that they won’t show any ads on this page makes me wonder.
All the ads on the other pages in my wiki work fine.
Low cost domain names, domain transfers, web hosting, email accounts, and so much more.
This page boasts about how easy it is to set up, so I’ve been trying to register a domain name with it just to see how it worked. I found out each time that it just doesn’t.
Anyone else get it working? Or does anyone have any way to get in touch with GoDaddy? Their Email support system goes around in a circle, and there is no ticket system or anything.
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