Foolish Book Review: "The SAIC Solution"
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The author tells the story of how he grew SAIC into an employee-owned powerhouse.
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Unethical choices by major tech companies &gt;&gt; Advertisement &lt;&lt;  ALERT: "How A Hacker Launches A Blind SQL Injection Attack Step-by-Step"!" - White Paper  Blind SQL Injection can deliver total control of your server to a hacker giving them the ability to read, write and manipulate all data stored in your backend systems! Download this *FREE* white paper from SPI Dynamics for a complete guide to protection! https://download.spidynamics.com/1/ad/bsq.asp?Campaign_ID=701600000004c29
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An MIT inventor bent on public service creates practical solutions to life-threatening problems around the world. Her approach: be a master of the obvious. Second in a series profiling this year's MacArthur 'genius award' winners. By Kari Lynn Dean.
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Everyone in the PHP community (as is probably true all around the web) is buzzing about the new offering from Google - the Google Code Search. In the PHP community, the ones talking about it so far include:  Chris Shiflett's look at the security aspect of the search Ilia Alshanetsky's take on the search as it possibly being a hacker's good friend Pierre-Alain Joye's searches for macros and the term "virtual_file_ex" Harry Fuecks' own search for superglobal-related issues Ivo Jansch's happy look into frustrations other developers have had (ex. this search)    Check out this handy tool and see what you think. Does it provide too much access to code that needs to stay out of hacker's hands? Or does it promote the "open" in open source better than most of the tools out there?
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Looking at the steam coming off the mail in my inbox this week, I definitely need a place to lay low for a while. One reader kindly recommended Geek Cruises, where I could work on my tan and my Perl programming skills at the same time. He also thought it would help my love life but I'm not so sure. The brochures are full of guys with goatees and laptops -- not exactly my idea of The Love Boat.
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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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In a new post to his blog today, Stuart Herbert continues the theme he started in a previous post about a business case for PHP. In this new entry, he shares some things he's done to further the effort.   To turn this from an idea into reality, I've setup a Google group where anyone who is interested can join in, and help build this resource. Please come along with your ideas and concerns, and let's see what we can achieve together.   He also suggests some "first steps" to get the ball rolling, namely a list of topics the business case needs to cover.
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Matthew O'Phinney had the chance to present the Zend Framework during a meeting he attended of his local PHP user group (BostonPHP) as a part of a series their doing.   Horde was also represented as part of the evening's fare. It was the first time I've attended a UG, so I got the double whammy of that and being a presenter. Oh, make it a triple whammy -- Boston is a 3+ hour drive from the Burlington, VT area I now call home.   He mentions a talk that Chuck Hagenbuch (of the Horde project) gave on the current state of the project and a bit about his presentation (including some portions that pointed out problems with the Zend_Db component). You can check out this and the rest of the contents of his presentation here [pdf] and here [mp3 podcast].
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Brian Moon has posted some thoughts about "the post" that Terry Chay recently wrote including comments on smart versus intelligent, object nonense, and funky function names.    So, if you are not smart, then stop coding PHP.  Its a good thing that C developers are smart.  They have to remember all those functions.  Assembly language developers donât have to remember functions.  I guess they are not smart?   Ok, that last paragraph was tongue in cheek.  Knowing 3000+ functions does not make you smart.  It means you have a good memory.  I will take intelligence over smart or a good memory any day.     His comments on the "object nonsense" makes note of the difference between functions and methods and the function naming issue - well, he has "no solid defense" as they do make it difficult to learn the language and send some developers running back to the manual to make sure the parameter order is right each time.
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The other day I was thinking about all the edge-cases within Linux and how there are hundreds of little commands and tricks.  I these know now but only after using UNIX for more than 15 years now (has it been that long!).  I wish I would have known all these tricks when I was just getting started.  This is similar to Danny O'Briens Life Hacks  but since so many of us spend our life tied to our shell these are essentially "Shell Hacks".  NetCat is one example.  Very powerful tool with a simple syntax.  Just run 'nc' and you can connect to a host/port and interact with it manually.  You could even write an HTTP client with bash if you really wanted to.  The zsh  shell looks like it might becom ...
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One of the proverbial back stories of IT operations has always been the battle between the "suits" and the "techies." From the techie point of view, the hapless but disturbingly powerful suits are the business guys who put more thought into picking out hundred-dollar silk ties at Nordstrom than they put into million-dollar IT decisions. Worse, the suits gravitate towards outsourcing and service firms that implement big-dollar solutions. Many techies start on the other end of the spectrum with free open source solutions that reflect a substantial DIY ethic. Will the twain ever meet?
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Paul Reinheimer has written up a review of one of the latest offerings from No Starch Press - "Object-Oriented PHP, Concepts, Techniques, and Code".    I'll get this out of the way up front; I approached this book with a completely inaccurate perception of what it was going to give me. I would consider myself an intermediate to advanced php developer, and I was hoping this book would teach me awesome ways to use PHP5's OOP power to make my applications better, faster, and more attractive to women.   That wasn't what this book does. This book introduces OOP, explains why it's useful, and goes through to develop several sample applications to demonstrate OOPs power, and more importantly how to use it.    He goes on to talk about the content/size of the book (relatively thin) including what it covers - beginning OOP, OOP in PHP4 and PHP5, a sample application, and a brief look at some of the more advanced features possible.   His overall opinion of the book is good, but there were two complaints that he had, more of a technical nature than just about the content (like the quality checking of the font size in paragraphs, changing in the middle). He'd still recommend it to those looking to get into OOP in PHP, though.
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One thing Tantek  is good at pointing out is that for the most part RDF is a failure in the wild.  I don't think the problem is RDF itself or even that the RDF/XML serialization format is so difficult.  The major problem is that developers are lazy and most of them aren't as smart as RDF format creators and specification authors.  In a former life I was a member of the RSS 1.0 Working Group and once argued that RDF was inevitable .  The theory being that people are going to want to extend RSS and stretch it into new and complicated areas and that only RDF could accomplish this.  The problem is that the RDF/XML serialization format is beyond horrible.  As an olive branch I presented my though ...
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A few days back there was a post on the "The Codist" blog about why the author would never quite understand the appeal of PHP to the masses and some of his thoughts behind it. Well, there was such an outcry and response to his comments that he's written up another post on what he learned from comments made.   Clearly I touched a nerve. However I did learn a lot of things that you don't read in a quickly tutorial on PHP. The whole point of writing something is to get feedback, positive or negative, and hopefully learn from it.   He admits that his experience with PHP and its developers has been limited, so his perspective might have been thrown off a bit. He still holds to one thing from the previous article, though - that PHP just isn't for him.
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The Zend Developer Zone has posted their latest episode of the PHP Abstract podcast hosted by Cal Evans himself covering ways you can attract quality talent to your organization.   Along the way I've picked up a few truths, mainly stolen from people like Joel Spolsky. Some of these ideas can be found in an article I wrote a while ago titled "Nerd Herding", a link to which can be found in the show notes. Recently, I've had many people ask me variations of the same question, "How do I find talented programmers?" So today, I'm going to share with you some of the things I've learned.   The latest show is available for direct download or, as always, you can subscribe to their feed to get this and lots of other great shows.
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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.