The Guru: Rick Rubin
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Rick Rubin, popular music's most powerful producer, has Grammy-nominated acts in almost every category. A look back at his prolific career
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In response to this recent article from the Hiveminds website, Marco Tabini has a few choice words about some of the topics they cover in the article, and cover incorrectly.   Over the last few years, I've made it a point of trying to respond to at least some of the "PHP is dead"-type articles that crop up on the Net from time to time. The latest one comes from Hiveminds and reveals a complete misunderstanding of almost every point it covers.   He notes that though the article seems to be a coherent whole for why PHP is dwindling, it's "based on nothing more than a string of misinformed concepts cobbled together to give the appearance that the author knows what he or she is talking about". Marco comes back against each of the points made in the article, setting things right and eliminating some of the FUD (fear, uncertainly, and doubt) that the Hiveminds article spreads.
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As a companion to the podcast version of his review, Matthew Turland has posted his comments in text form over on his blog today.   I received an e-mail recently from a very nice gentleman at Packt Publishing - their representative asked if I would be willing to review one of their books, namely PHP Web 2.0 Mashup Projects by Shu-Wai Chow. Reviewing books is not something I had done before, so I thought I would give it a good old-fashioned college try.   He mentions the size of the book (and how it's not an indication of the quality) and the basic structure of the book, including spotlights on some of the specific topics covered.
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Chris Hartjes has posted again about the "rebirth" of a Zend Framework component he's worked on - the Zend_Service_Audioscrobbler.   So, dear readers, I received some nice emails and comments from those you have used Zend_Service_Audioscrobbler, along with having a nice email conversation with Wil Sinclair from Zend.   He still wants to "rip things up and start over", but has decided on a slightly different route - mapping the older function calls to the new ones via a __call catch and including a message stating that the older function call would be deprecated.
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Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles who introduced the West to transcendental meditation, died yesterday at his home in the Dutch town of Vlodrop
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The PHP Community is buzzing about a new article, posted on the O'Reilly Ruby blog, about how the author (Derek Silvers of cdbaby.com) made the decision that Ruby on Rails just wasn't right for the project he was working on.    Back in January 2005, I announced on the O'Reilly blog that I was going to completely scrap over 100,000 lines of messy PHP code in my existing CD Baby  website, and rewrite the entire thing in Rails, from scratch. [...] The first few months showed good progress, and Jeremy could not have been more amazing, twisting the deep inner guts of Rails to make it do things it was never intended to do.   But at every step, it seemed our needs clashed with Rails' preferences. (Like trying to turn a train into a boat. It's do-able with a lot of glue. But it's damn hard. And certainly makes you ask why you're really doing this.)    Recounting the rest of the story, Derek mentions the turning point ("Is there anything Rails can do that PHP CAN'T do?") and the speed at which they were able to make up for the two years of lost development time. To helps others make a decision for their project, he also includes seven reasons why he made the decision to switch back, including:   Our entire company's stuff was in php: don't underestimate integration Don't want what i donÃ¢ÂÂt need I love SQL Programming languages are like girlfriends: the new one is better because *you* are better   There's also been several bloggers in the PHP community that have responded to the article:   Elizabeth Naramore - "Derek Sivers' Article on RoR vs PHP" Paul Jones - "Is there anything Rails can do that PHP cannot do? *No.*" Terry Chay - "Why PHP triumphs over Ruby" Jeff Moore - "Ruby versus PHP or There and Back Again"
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Rubinius is important.  A whole lot of folks agree.  Ola Bini wrote up a whole post about how important he thinks it is.  In it, he writes:
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Rui Capela's software has appeared in this column many times. I've written about it directly (see At the Sounding Edge: Using QSynth and QJackCtl and HDRs and DAWs For Linux: The New Breed) and it shows up in almost every article I write. I'm not exaggerating when I state that Rui's programs have become indispensable components here at Studio Dave, so naturally I'm interested in the mind behind it all. In this entry I'll recap the nature and state of Rui's software, after which we'll meet the man himself in another lively interview here at the sounding edge.
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Has Ram Gopal Varma lost touch with the pulse of the masses? Or is he the experimental maverick you've always loved?
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After he recovered from a bout of  depression brought on by the Sony BMG rootkit fiasco, in which  the company coded his acclaimed "12 Songs" album with  potentially malicious anti-piracy software and then pulled the  disc from retail, Neil Diamond went back to work writing songs  for his next effort with producer Rick Rubin.
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On the Zend Developer Zone today, Cal Evans has posted his look at the Phrasebook series from Sams Publishing covering Javascript, MySQL, Apache, and, of course, PHP.   I get a lot of books to review. Currently the stack is about waist high and UPS hasn't been here this morning. So in an effort to trim down that stack of books, I'm going to talk about books 4 in one review.   He looks briefly at the contents for each of the books, pointing out specific areas they seemed particularly helpful in. He doesn't recommend them to someone trying to learn the language right off the mark. These are, as their title implies, just clips and handy snippets of information to help you get to where you're going. You have to know how to get on the road first, though...
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Making Records: The Scenes Behind the Music, By Phil Ramone
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"Rubinius is a project to watch", so says Charles Nutter in his post Rite, Rubinius, and Everything &mdash; I think he's right.  Evan is hard at work making things work better in rubinius.  He's now got continuations working (I think this makes him the first alternative implementation of Ruby to do so), and says he should have serializable continuations soon (see his post on it here).  W00t!
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Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru to the Beatles who introduced transcendental meditation to the West, died at his Dutch home overnight, a spokesman said on Wednesday. He was said to be 91.
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This week, Cal Evans is reporting live from this year's php/db|works conference in Toronto. Since today is "Tutorial Day", the schedule is a little lighter, and he makes to time to catch Rob Richards' talk on PHP and Advanced XML and Web Services.    Rob Richards is the author of Pro PHP XML and Web Services. He literally wrote the book on using PHP and XML together. At php|works, he is leading a tutorial on using XML in web services using the DOM extension.    If you ever get a chance to hear Rob do a presentation, let me warn you, it is not for the faint of heart. As I learned last night when I sat down with Rob to record an interview, Rob likes to speak on leading edge and advanced topics. This tutorial is an excellent example of that philosophy.    Cal talks more about the content of the talk - its simplicity despite the complex topic, how much info is jammed in, and the fact that it's not just one giant pitch for Rob's book.
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Music documentaries like CompaÃ±eras and Dirty Country premiering at SXSW will gain a wider audience through rapid DVD release. Plus: Web design for Flash vs. Ajax and more from SXSW in Listening Post.
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An interview with the master filmmaker about his new films.