Bad LANGuage: Derrik Lang's Blog
318361
Generally, Bad Language is against awards shows. The TelePrompTer puffery and please-buy/see-my-latest-CD/DVD appearances are nauseating at best. But it's our job to report on all things pop culture. So we watch. And we watch. And we fall asleep. Then we wake up and watch again.
741179
Christian Wenz has pointed out an older post from Larry Wall talking about the line between scripting and programming languages (mentioning specifically PHP).  From the article "":  I think, to most people, scripting is a lot like obscenity. I can't define it, but I'll know it when I see it. [...] If I had to pick one metaphor, it'd be easy onramps. And a slow lane. Maybe even with some optional fast lanes.   Larry goes through tons of different older languages commenting on their viability in the online community including: Javascript, LISP, Pascal, Python, Ruby and PHP. He then looks at the present and what sorts of things are happening in languages these days. This list includes things like early binding/late binding, eager typology/lazy typology, limited structures/rich structures, class-based/prototype-based and transaction/reaction/dynamic scope.
496780
Lorenzo Alberton has posted some updates about the PEAR packages that he maintains to his blog today including MDB_QueryTool, Mail_Queue2, MDB2, and Translation2.   Even if lately I've been coding way more in C/C++ than in PHP, I still keep an eye on PEAR developement: I reckon in the last month I've closed a bug a day, on average. And after my last call for help about my PEAR packages, I'm also pleased to announce that someone did indeed offer a hand. I'm happy to welcome not one, but two new developers!   Each of the items has links to their PEAR homepage and a few quick words on where the package stands (including developers involved or wanting to get involved). He also reminds developers out there that they can help out too if they want to jump in and get into PEAR.
192439
Mother tongue menaced by 'product-set deep dives' Readers of the Daily Telegraph have got themselves into a bit of a tizz over alleged abuses our our beloved English language.â¦
90760
I see that Cory Doctorow has made another panicked grab at relevancy once again! His most recent InformationWeek article, How To Keep Hostile Jerks From Taking Over Your Online Community, is his latest exercise in self-deception where he tries convincing himself that he knows something about the hip, happenin' thang we call the Innanet.        That Cory has little useful knowledge of keeping hostile jerks from taking over online communities is proven most aptly and amusingly by the way he chose to keep hostile jerks from taking over his weblog BoingBoing: he destroyed its community by shutting off its comments system.
337290
I have an observation I'd like to disclose about the Open Source community: we tend to leap into all kinds of things before we have all the facts and/or information necessary to make intelligent decisions. We criticize other communities, laugh at things like directory services from the two major NOS players, talk about all our great applications, etc. we hang on to old notions about a what makes Linux tick. Sorry, but that model Eric doesn't fit any more. The community natter appears to come mostly from people who lack deep technical skills and knowledge of enterprises.
611981
Bonjour mes amis! If you post a twit with my name in it following an at-sign that is exactly 140 characters in length, my little script will pick it up and add you Le Club 140. (Practicing my French!) For example... @davewiner, you are a very nice person and I enjoy sending you replies. I have actually nothing to say, but when has that stopped me before? If you posted that, your name would appear here... http://club140.org/  Of course you will be more original, won't you?  Meanwhile, in other news, Club 140 has caused at least one person to swear off Twitter forever. Too bad so sad! :-(
460038
In this post to his blog, Chris Shiflett talks about some issues surrounding character encoding and the cross-site scripting issues it can open up in your application.    In the post [on Good and Bad PHP Code], he provides a few useful PHP interview questions, including some questions from Yahoo. He explains that good PHP code should be Structured, Consistent, Portable and Secure   In the comments, many additional improvements have been suggested, but there's one that has yet to be mentioned. When using htmlspecialchars() without specifying the character encoding, XSS attacks that use UTF-7 are possible.    Included in the post is an example to illustrate the point as well as a solution, a simple one involving the header() function, to help correct the problem and prevent bad things from happening.   Be sure to check out http://shiflett.org/blog/2007/may/character-encoding-and-xss#comments">the comments for more great tips.
124297
Tycho:  I can really do without a lot of the corporate sniping that happens in this industry.  Plus, as a licensed demagogue, they're horning in on my territory when they say ridiculous things or make baseless verbal assaults!  I mean, I have mouths to feed.  Seriously, I have more than one mouth.
210165
Tycho:  Despite what the Mr. Period comics might imply, I think of grammar as somewhat tyrannical, and believe that an obsession with the mechanical perfection of language is at odds with actual communication.  At the same time, I know (generally) how things should be arranged, and so non-standard uses deliver naughty thrills.  There are floating syllables in the recent Twisp & Catsby thing that can only be resolved by a very specific reading, and they project from the phrases in a suggestive way.  I even like trade names:  words that evoke fierce, yet sensitive gladiators or spry androids.
339229
He had some Wheaties this morning for sure. My advice... 1. Remember to have fun. 2. We're all bozos on this bus. 3. We're all barking farting chihuahuas. 4. I make shitty software and so do you. 5. It's even worse than it appears. 6. You never learn anything hanging with the same people. 7. Thank heaven for little girls. (A repeat of #6.) 8. It's later than you think. 9. It's not like anyone gets out of this alive.
128531
I love Twitter, but there have been a lot of problems, and this is too much. They're taking it down tonight, for two hours, and we're hot on a big story, and it's developing -- on Twitter. This seems like a bad night for Twitter to go to sleep. (But there probably never is a good night.) I don't think the Twitter guys really understand how much we're doing with their service.  It's been going down a lot lately. And while other people have been complaining about it losing posts, I had never seen it lose one, until yesterday, and now it's losing them regularly, for me too. Read the first three words of this post again.  They raised $5 million, it seems now it's time for them to get the bugs out, hire some people who really understand scaling, if necessary re-implement the system from the ground up. Do whatever is needed to make it as reliable as the other tools we depend on. We need Twitter to work. It's not a fun experiment for us, we're using it.  Jack, Ev, Biz, Fred -- please take note. Postscript: The announcement changed, now they're saying it'll be down on Sunday night. Much better. Thanks!
620459
Linus Torvalds is in a bit of a rage as to the politics of GPLv3, and writes accordingly. Check out this blog and other original content from CNET's Blog Network.
338490
More on the 3D, tabletop UI Letters My recent article 'Why Microsoft innovation is only Surface deep' prompted a number of Reg readers to pick up their keyboards in anger. I had anticipated knee-jerk claims of gratuitous "MS bashing", but these aside, the feedback has mostly been supportive.â¦
114906
The results of the latest International PHP Magazine are in and posted today on their site. The question this time was asking developers and visitors alike what they think sucks about PHP.   Choices included "No lexical scoping", "PEAR", and "Worst Configuration System" but one climbed to the top far above the others - "No namespacing". Trailing that at a distant second were two, getting the same number of votes - "No lexical scoping" and "Can't afford a vowel" (hmm, interesting).    Up for this week is a new poll that asks those out there that have used the Symfony framework to cast their votes about what they think is the best feature the project has included. Check it out and cast your vote today...
666203
Examples of buzzwords that make IT unintelligible.
542302
Only 'folksonomy' inspires more fear and loathing It's official: "folksonomy", "blogosphere", "netiquette" and "blook" are among the net-spawned terms which should be cast down into the eternal fires of hell, AFP reports.â¦