Nothing and Some More

Hello world... again! Am I Ugly in Grey, or what ??

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Looking for the The Google Font? It is Catull, but found out more about the Google logo by reading the Google Font Page

Fancy reading my Looking for the Spam collection ? It's even getting multilingual

Linux, Linux, Linux, Linux... want to try it ??? Knoppix is really nice. And easy. Download, burn, reboot. Et voila, Linux is running...

Complains? it's gratis ! - 06/10/2001

results of semi-automatic source code audit on PHP.
php comes shipped with two features enabled by default that make unsuspicious looking source execute arbitrary code:
- variables passed from the browser are stored in global context
- file-system functions work transparent on URLs
One thing I don't agree with is the following advice: - give included php-files a filename that is not executed by the web-server , because in case there is a bug/problem and that the name of the include file becomes public, a simple browser is sufficient to read the source ( putting the include files outside of the webroot is not possible (yet ?) on most php-powered hosting solutions.) And more often than never, there is a password in the included file. This remark is not specific to php, zillions of ASP coders use the .inc extension too.
Another thing I hate in PHP is the absence of the perl use strict (or the VB option explicit ). Or even a smart checking ala python
[I was wrong using error_reporting does that!]
FName = "Bugs"
LName = "Bunny"
FLName = FName + " " + LName
print FULName
fails with Traceback (innermost last): File "test.py", line 4, in ? print FULName

NameError: There is no variable named 'FULName'
use strict;
my $FName="Bugs";my $LName="Bunny";my $FLName="$LName, $FName";
print "Your name is $FULName ";
fails with Global symbol "$FULName" requires explicit package name at test.pl line 8.
But
<?php
$FName="Bugs";$LName="Bunny"; $FLName="$LName, $FName";
echo "Your name is $FULName ";
?>
works perfectly. If I use error_reporting
<?php
error_reporting(E_ALL);
$FName="Bugs";$LName="Bunny"; $FLName="$LName, $FName";
echo "Your name is $FULName ";
?>
it produces: Warning: Undefined variable: FULName in d:\www\test.php3 on line 5
Wireless Antenna in Byte, and an old OReilly article Antenna on the Cheap (er, Chip) or the unknown power of Pringles.
Is there somewhere a DTD for CV/Resume - ResumeML maybe ? xml.org suggests HR-XML...
FT says Sophia Antipolis is great (le résumé en vf sur SophiaNet)
Amazon France marque son territoire. Reste que le nombre de critiques sur le site AMZN français est très faible, par rapport aux sites UK ou US.
En faisant quelques recherches pour FrogLog, le groupe, je suis tombé sur La presse saisie par l'Internet.
Mais il y a pire : l’information n’est plus le monopole de la presse et des journalistes. Tout un chacun peut désormais, pour une dépense dérisoire, éditer sur l’Internet son propre webzine, magazine virtuel réalisé en amateur et parfois– pas toujours – d’une grande richesse en information. Du coup, voilà notre cyberjournaliste saisi par le spleen : si n’importe qui peut s’instituer journaliste parce qu’il édite une page personnelle sur le web, que reste-t-il aux journalistes, aux vrais, ceux qui travaillent pour la presse labellisée ?
Peut-être, tout simplement, à se battre pour leur raison d’être : apporter au public une information rigoureuse, vérifiée, inédite, avec des analyses intéressantes. Rien, sinon leur qualité, ne garantira aux sites de presse leur fréquentationpar le public. La stimulation engendrée par cette concurrence extra-professionnelle devrait s’avérer un puissant aiguillon. Car sur la Toile, plus qu’ailleurs, le lecteur/internaute se comporte en consommateur exigeant et compare l’offre qui lui est présentée.
A mettre en parallèle au Manifeste anti Internet de Philippe Val.
In Seul Edu Report #53,
Web component implements co-browsing. You can open a session within this application, start your web surfing and everybody who is running the same servlet and is joined to the same session will see your pages. So, how does it work ? Run the servlet. On the main screen you can create some session (channel, presentation). Just type the name for new session. As soon as you do that, everybody who is running the same servlet will be able to join this session (channel). They need choose session from the list of opened sessions and type own nick name (for real-time chat). (License: unclear)
The EGg0 Educational Robotics Platform is a project to develop hardware and software tools for designing and building robots with a focus on education. By leveraging the power of embedded systems, currently used hardware, free software and programming languages such as Python, the EGg0 project is building a cross-platform robotic systems that can be used and programmed by everyone. (License: GPL)
An interview with Siva Vaidhyanathan, the author of Copyrights and Copywrongs: The Rise of Intellectual Property and How It Threatens Creativity (via Boing Boing)
On the WUG mailing list, Ev asks would you pay for a weblog service (ala Blogger) ?
Some answers I like:
So yeah, I'd pay. But only if it were really cheap. Once it costs more than my time is worth, I wouldn't pay. (full msg...)

Blogger doesn't do everything I'd like, but it is 90% there. There's a few features I'd like to see. It throws odd errors sometimes. Occasionally it my archives disappear and I have to republish them. But I've never once complained about it. I suppose that's because it's free. (...)

To pay, or not to pay ? - some notes from ye olde consultants perspective

The basic truth: subscriptions are always a tough (and marketingwise expensive) sell.
  • the complete newbie: highly unlikely, unless there's some peer pressure (the $100 Nike or $25 WalMart sneakers question?).
  • your average user: depends on the frequency of use, quality of toolset, competitive landscape (look at the Bertelsmann-Napster deal; their basic idea: take 50 million freebie users, add some nice features like QOS, and hopefully you'll end up with 2 million+ paying subscribers).
  • some tech skills: might anyway start dabbling with open source scripts (depending on the available toolsets).
the competitive landscape
  • any free or cheaper services/approaches available?
  • any better/easier services/approaches available than the one I'm using?
the component aspect: what do you really need to blog? (access, hosting, blog tool, an idea)
  • don't have to tell you about the close relationship of hosting and blog tool (blogspot is just the perfect spot for newbies). trying to charge for hosting doesn't sound too good. but established (free/pay) hosts offering blogging tools sounds pretty convincing (retention, churn prevention).
the utility aspect: ease of use, depth of dabbling, churn prevention
  • hats off: the steps you offer with Blogger are well definied. question is of course: where's the threshold of payin'?
  • a fairly friendly churn barrier is the time invested dabbling vs the time to invest checking out (probably marginally less expensive) services.
  • at a certain point, blogging is about personal knowledge management. OK, big word. call it shareable bookmarks with abstracts and a chronological path. There's definitely some corporate money in there, too (some strings attached: QOS, security, access levels, distribution).
(...)
The YahooPersonals Service is not gratis anymore. I wonder what will be the effect on the quality of the ads.
Originally published as jemisa.editthispage.com/discuss/msgReader$242
06 octobre 2001