Submission + - Pirate Bay 4 found guilty
clickclickdrone writes: The Pirate Bay 4 have been found guilty according to early reports. No links yet. Discuss.
Submission Summary: 0 pending, 43 declined, 5 accepted (48 total, 10.42% accepted)
Submission + - Amazon to block Phorm scans 1
clickclickdrone writes: "The BBC are reporting (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7999635.stm) that Amazon has said it will not allow online advertising system Phorm to scan its web pages to produce targeted ads. For most people this is a welcome step, especially after the European Commission said it was starting legal action against the UK earlier this week over its data protection laws in relation to Phorm's technology. Anyone who values their privacy should applaud this move by Amazon."
Submission + - British ISPs censoring Wikipedia
clickclickdrone writes: "It has emerged that a group of British ISPs have been censoring Wikipedia by passing all traffic through a filter since last Friday. The information from Wikipdia themselves is that there are claims that an album cover by the German band Scorpion is being accused of being child porn so under the The Protection of Children Act 1978, they have taken appropriate actions to prevent viewing of the material. Wikipedi's version of the story can be seen here http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/British_ISPs_restrict_access_to_Wikipedia_amid_child_pornography_allegations"
Submission + - 'Hacker' loses extradition appeal (bbc.co.uk)
clickclickdrone writes: "Yet another example of laws designed to fight terrorism being used elsewhere, British hacker Gary McKinnon has lost his Law Lords appeal against being extradited to stand trial in the US. Gary McKinnon, 42, could face a life sentence if found guilty of gaining access to 97 American military and Nasa computers from his London home.
Glasgow-born Mr McKinnon admits breaking into the computers but says he was trying to find information on UFOs. He lost his case at the High Court in 2006 before taking it to the Lords.
He is being extradited using the asymetric agreeements put in place between the US and UK designed to help with fighting terrorism but as is so often the case, the US has yet to hold up its side of the deal when it comes to shipping its own citizens abroad for trials."
Submission + - Blu-ray future limited for some (bbc.co.uk)
clickclickdrone writes: "Hot on the heels of the debate about the imminant death (or not) of HD-DVD, Sony have announced new features for Blu-ray (http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/7187179.stm) but admitted existing players may not have the needed hardware to make use of them. Machines released before November 2007 are designated as profile 1.0 with new machines being 1.1. Even with the weight of more studios behind the format, this sort of kick in the teeth for early adopters can only hurt the format and may put consumers off the whole HD thing until some sort of stability occurs."
Submission + - UK govt lose 25m records including 7m bank detail (bbc.co.uk)
clickclickdrone writes: "The Inland Revenue have admitted they sent disks containing confidential information via normal post — and it got lost. The Chancellor Alistair Darling said it was "an extremely serious failure" and the chairman Paul Gray has already resigned over the matter. It is not yet clear if the data was clear or encypted."
Submission + - UK Inland Revenue lose discs with 15m bank records (bbc.co.uk)
clickclickdrone writes: "The UK Inland Revenue have apparantly lost disks containing 15m bank records. The Chairman has already resigned and parliament are to be told the details at 3PM. It is unknown at this point if the data was encrypted or exactly what details were included."
Submission + - Colossus cracks codes once more (bbc.co.uk)
clickclickdrone writes: "The BBC is reporting that Colossus which played a vital role in cracking codes in WW2 has been resurrected and is once again working at Bletchley Park. Interestingly they're putting it up against a modern PC to see how they compare on this particular task.
The re-built Colossus is to be put to work on radio messages transmitted by radio amateurs in Paderborn, Germany that have been scrambled using a Lorenz SZ42 machine — as used by the Germans in WW2."
The re-built Colossus is to be put to work on radio messages transmitted by radio amateurs in Paderborn, Germany that have been scrambled using a Lorenz SZ42 machine — as used by the Germans in WW2."
Submission + - Nuclear Missile for Sale on Ebay (bbc.co.uk)
clickclickdrone writes: ""Larson Site A" a former Titan missile silo and one of the few surviving in good condition is up for sale after its previous owner decided to part with it after buying it on a whim back in 1998. It seems almost unimaginable now the amount of money and effort that went in to building these vast nuclear facilities both in the US and elsewhere and with the end of the cold war, more and more are falling in to private hands."
Submission + - Jury penalises music file-sharer (bbc.co.uk)
clickclickdrone writes: "Looks like Jammie Thomas has failed in her attempt to beat music sharing charges filed against her. She was the first person accused of illegal file-sharing who decided to fight the case in court, according to the BBC web site. Now she faces a $222,000 fine (24 songs at $9,250 each) rather than a much lower out of court settlement as so many others have accepted. I'd certainly like to know how the losses on a single song are calculated at these levels."
Submission + - PHP Oracle Web Development
clickclickdrone writes: "Having recently been involved in both PHP and Oracle development, but not together (the PHP used MySQL and the Oracle was via C) I was interested to find a book from Packt Publishing that married these two technologies together.
PHP Oracle Web Development by Yuli Vasiliev is the first book I've seen from Packt Publishing so I was interested to see how it shaped up. To quote the cover, the book describes data processing, security, caching, XML, Web Services and Ajax. Quite a lot for a mere 360 or so pages but the book lives up to its title in terms of content.
The book assumes you already know about PHP and Oracle as individual tools so if you want a tutorial on either products, look elsewhere but if you already have a working knowledge of both, you'll get on fine with the book. You certainly don't need to be guru grade in either though as the pace and level make it reasonably easy going.
The book starts off with notes on both PHP and Oracle and describes how to obtain them both and how to get everything up and running using the PHP OCI8 extensions from Oracle. Whilst Oracle is a market leader in the big database arena, many developers will be surprised to learn that the full and unrestricted product is freely downloadable for development purposes — you only need to buy a licence for a production system. Even then, a free cut down version is available if you don't need the full bells and whistles.
So, with everything up and running, the book launches in to the subject at hand. I was immedietely impressed with the author's clear and easily read prose. Every subject is presented with just the right balance of detail with lots of additional notes and background information to help fill in any gaps. The author's real world experience shines through with sections on locking issues and coding for reusability. The section on object-orienation was particularly welcome.
I also liked the fact that the book didn't just cover the core subject of using Oracle with PHP but also covered vital related material such as various security models including splitting the database into two and three with each database acting as a gateway to the next. In additiona, a sizeable and useful section on caching techniques was both interesting and illuminating and might provide much to consider for some developers who don't normally worry so much about performance as they should.
The sections on XML, Web Services via SOAP and Ajax ensure all the current must-have skills are represented. Ajax was presented via an example application which featured all the aspects you'd need including both code and style sheets but I'd have liked a bit more general advice and description here. Web Services was also somewhat brief but got the point over and is a useful springboard for further reading. I was happy with the XML section although so far I am yet to work on any project that uses it so couldn't comment on it's accuracy or usefulness to any great extent.
The bulk of the book though is the coverage of the OCI8 extentions and here you can find out how to issue a wide variety of SQL statements including selects, update and delete as well as using stored procedures, making use of triggers and a good section on transaction handling that didn't just show how to use them but also had useful advice on structuring your code to make best advantage of them. I would have hoped for some notes on avoiding things like SQL Injection attacks but that apart, the security section had some interesting nuggets.
The section on object-orientation warrents close inspection if you want to really leverage the power of the tools available in this development environment. It didn't have much on the 'big picture' of how you'd structure applications this way but it does describe how it all works and how to extend existing objects as well as create your own. It certainly got me thinking about how I should be approaching certain types of project in the future.
One thing I did feel was that the screen shots were a bit poor. The overall presentation and production values in terms of layout and paper quality aren't as high as some books with the result that fine detail in illustrations is lost due to most looking like photocopies rather than proper screen grabs. They're usable though so this is really a minor gripe in an otherwise enjoyable book.
Conclusion
I can safely say that if you need to get to grips with PHP in an Oracle environment, you'll find everything you'll need here to get up and running very quickly. The pace, content and structure of the book are all excellent with my only reserve being the assumption that everything works as it is supposed to with not much in the way of troubleshooting advice. Certainly, my experience of Oracle is that it has a tendency to do odd things for no obvious reason, especially when you're coming from a different database environment but that's probably true in reverse too. That apart, this is a fine book.
You can see details at the publisher's website http://www.packtpub.com/, or more specifically http://www.packtpub.com/PHP-Oracle-Web-Development-XML-Ajax-Open-Source/book where you can download code examples, check for updates and more. It's worth noting that in this respect, the publisher's post-sales support appears rather better than most and is to be applauded."
PHP Oracle Web Development by Yuli Vasiliev is the first book I've seen from Packt Publishing so I was interested to see how it shaped up. To quote the cover, the book describes data processing, security, caching, XML, Web Services and Ajax. Quite a lot for a mere 360 or so pages but the book lives up to its title in terms of content.
The book assumes you already know about PHP and Oracle as individual tools so if you want a tutorial on either products, look elsewhere but if you already have a working knowledge of both, you'll get on fine with the book. You certainly don't need to be guru grade in either though as the pace and level make it reasonably easy going.
The book starts off with notes on both PHP and Oracle and describes how to obtain them both and how to get everything up and running using the PHP OCI8 extensions from Oracle. Whilst Oracle is a market leader in the big database arena, many developers will be surprised to learn that the full and unrestricted product is freely downloadable for development purposes — you only need to buy a licence for a production system. Even then, a free cut down version is available if you don't need the full bells and whistles.
So, with everything up and running, the book launches in to the subject at hand. I was immedietely impressed with the author's clear and easily read prose. Every subject is presented with just the right balance of detail with lots of additional notes and background information to help fill in any gaps. The author's real world experience shines through with sections on locking issues and coding for reusability. The section on object-orienation was particularly welcome.
I also liked the fact that the book didn't just cover the core subject of using Oracle with PHP but also covered vital related material such as various security models including splitting the database into two and three with each database acting as a gateway to the next. In additiona, a sizeable and useful section on caching techniques was both interesting and illuminating and might provide much to consider for some developers who don't normally worry so much about performance as they should.
The sections on XML, Web Services via SOAP and Ajax ensure all the current must-have skills are represented. Ajax was presented via an example application which featured all the aspects you'd need including both code and style sheets but I'd have liked a bit more general advice and description here. Web Services was also somewhat brief but got the point over and is a useful springboard for further reading. I was happy with the XML section although so far I am yet to work on any project that uses it so couldn't comment on it's accuracy or usefulness to any great extent.
The bulk of the book though is the coverage of the OCI8 extentions and here you can find out how to issue a wide variety of SQL statements including selects, update and delete as well as using stored procedures, making use of triggers and a good section on transaction handling that didn't just show how to use them but also had useful advice on structuring your code to make best advantage of them. I would have hoped for some notes on avoiding things like SQL Injection attacks but that apart, the security section had some interesting nuggets.
The section on object-orientation warrents close inspection if you want to really leverage the power of the tools available in this development environment. It didn't have much on the 'big picture' of how you'd structure applications this way but it does describe how it all works and how to extend existing objects as well as create your own. It certainly got me thinking about how I should be approaching certain types of project in the future.
One thing I did feel was that the screen shots were a bit poor. The overall presentation and production values in terms of layout and paper quality aren't as high as some books with the result that fine detail in illustrations is lost due to most looking like photocopies rather than proper screen grabs. They're usable though so this is really a minor gripe in an otherwise enjoyable book.
Conclusion
I can safely say that if you need to get to grips with PHP in an Oracle environment, you'll find everything you'll need here to get up and running very quickly. The pace, content and structure of the book are all excellent with my only reserve being the assumption that everything works as it is supposed to with not much in the way of troubleshooting advice. Certainly, my experience of Oracle is that it has a tendency to do odd things for no obvious reason, especially when you're coming from a different database environment but that's probably true in reverse too. That apart, this is a fine book.
You can see details at the publisher's website http://www.packtpub.com/, or more specifically http://www.packtpub.com/PHP-Oracle-Web-Development-XML-Ajax-Open-Source/book where you can download code examples, check for updates and more. It's worth noting that in this respect, the publisher's post-sales support appears rather better than most and is to be applauded."
Submission + - How Much Memory Can I Have With Windows Vista? (practicalpc.co.uk)
clickclickdrone writes: "With Dell and others pushing PC's with 4GB of RAM and 32bit Vista, it's not always clear that you'll only get to use 3GB of that. An article at Practical PC outlines some of the pitfalls and issues when adding larger amounts of memory to PCs."
Submission + - Facebook open up private data (pcbookreview.com)
clickclickdrone writes: "Facebook are opening up their users details to Google and other search engines in an attempt to make it easier to find friends and woo new users. http://newsforums.bbc.co.uk/nol/thread.jspa?thread ID=7251&edition=1&ttl=20070906091614 notes that already privacy pundits are raising doubts as to how good an idea this is, especially when things like date of birth will be revealed. I for one will certainly reconsider having an account there but we'll see how it pans out first."
Submission + - Sony bales out of DSLR market
clickclickdrone writes: "Having had trouble pulling market share away from Canon and Nikon, it seems Sony have called it a day in the DSLR market.
http://stock-photo.blogspot.com/2007/08/sony-bails -out-of-dslr-market.html"
Submission + - Yahoo CEO steps down after poor results (bbc.co.uk)
clickclickdrone writes: "The chief executive of internet search firm Yahoo, Terry Semel, has quit his position and has been replaced by co-founder Jerry Yang. After suffering poor results in Q1 2007, pressure has increased on Semel as Yahoo continues to struggle against rivals such as Google.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6765893.stm notes the rumours of a Microsoft tie up and reports that Yahoo stock rose 3% on the news."
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/6765893.stm notes the rumours of a Microsoft tie up and reports that Yahoo stock rose 3% on the news."
