Frothy Good PHP Stuff

The PHP Cookbook has been announced by O'Reilly and Chapter 8 on Web Programming is available as a downloadable PDF.  I'ved added it to my permanent collection and you should too.  There's a very nice trick about "unregistering" users who register but don't confirm their account with you.  It's also already in the Amazon listings (it's due out in November).  It looks sweet ! (and it's on my wishlist too).  I'd definitely but it from Amazon since they have it for a 30% savings.  And, if you are a WaldenBooks preferred reader member, I have it on pretty good authority that WaldenBooks preferred reader members will shortly be able to use their discount cards at Amazon.  That's cool.

[ O'Reilly Home Page ] [ PDF of Chapter 8 ] [ Amazon ]

A really good article on working with Files in PHP over on O'Reilly's Lamp site.  [ Go ]

From Keith comes a really good pointer to a PHP Builder article on vCalendar / iCalendar programming in PHP.  Given that I'm regularly hacking WebCalendar (and want to add this), that's an awesome find.  Thanks Man! [ Go ] 

A pretty good article on PHP error messages.  Good stuff to understand.  [ Go ]

An interesting class library, Eclipse, for PHP.  It seems to be written by a rather arrogant fellow who doesn't seem to even like the language.  So why'd he even bother?  Here's a quote: "The real war is between .NET and JSP. PHP will stand on the side, I think. The reason I use PHP is its high availability. Nothing more. "  That's fine but he should really go use Perl if that's his criteria.  Anyone ever used this puppy?  It seems way too object oriented for my taste.  [ Go ]

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Greece Bans Video Games and Now France Taxes Pornography at 93 % !

What happened to Europe?  They're making the U.S. moral majority look like a bunch of pansies.  Get a load of this:

France to Slap 93 Percent 'Supertax' on Porn Films
Fri Oct 11, 8:21 AM ET

PARIS (Reuters) - The French government will hike taxes on profits from sexually explicit films to 93 percent as part of an anti-pornography drive by ruling conservatives.

This was one of several proposals to fight pornography to emerge from the center-right majority elected in June. Several deputies want to ban X-rated films from television, but others in the conservative ranks oppose this as censorship.

"Our aim is to make this sector financially unattractive," right-wing parliament deputy Charles de Courson told Le Figaro daily on Friday after parliament's finance committee agreed his initiative would be applied from January 1 next year.

Courson said the measure would raise to 60 percent from 33 percent a special tax already levied on profits from the production, distribution or showing of any French-made film deemed pornographic or an incitement to violence.

Once added to France's standard 33 percent tax on all corporate profits, French porn film-makers will be left with a mere seven percent of their profits net of tax.

"We want to destroy their profitability to discourage further investments," Courson said.

[ Go ]

So the only question is when do the Dutch handcuff Amsterdam?  Or the British take out the page 3 girls?  Please note that this comment is neither positive or negative.  I view pornography as analogous to politics and religion -- it's a personal thing.  I'm just plain astonished.  And it's not even April Fools day.

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Blogback, BlogForward, Whatever

Today's post, brought to you by the random IM interactions from the fine folks over at the Kalsey Group (why?  Not sure, he was just the last person I IM'd with before crashing last night) will be a little bit different. Rather than my long rants on different topics, today I'll blog just lots and lots of little tidbits.

The Kalsey Group points out that the Amazon API lets you sort electronics by price and that while I attribute their lack of price sorting to maliciousness, it might just be "plain shoddy management".  I'd agree with that. [ Go ]

If you still believe that email marketing works (I don't) then you might want to read the Kalsey Group's essay on it.  [ Go ]

Best Blog of the Week?  IASlash which covers a range of Knowledge Management issues and never fails to impress me.  [ Go ]

The blogger who has lost his way and needs to blog more?  Kjartan over at Natrak.net.  Please come home man.  We miss you.  (No go link since he's not updating all that regularly as of late).

Ray Ozzie has an excellent essay about "What If There Was No Privacy in (work) Email".  It's an interesting question and one that I think about all the time.  I do think his essay is, unforunately, totally self serving since the only privacy alternative to email he suggests is a Groove Space.  Come on man.  People can also have "privacy" with just a Hotmail account.  Yes it's not encrypted but that's not a big deal.  The bigger issue with privacy in work email is the communications between you and your friends / family / significant others that gets mixed in.  Requiring employees to NOT use their work email account for this is a much simpler alternative to a Groove space.  No client software, no training, no costs to the company.  Note to Ray Ozzie: We all know Groove is good but you don't always need to be a schill for your product.  And I'm gonna take flame from the Groove boys on this one.  So be it.  Asbestos boxer shorts at the ready.  [ Go ]

JabberCentral is shutting down.  That's a shame so go over there if you need any of it's resources.  [ Go ]

The Microsoft HTML Help Workshop?  It sucks slimy green toads.  Let's just say that recently I ran out of disc space and the culprit was a 1.7 gigabyte temp file that this little odious troll of a program left behind when compiling a 1.4 meg help file.  No there are no errors on those #s.  Check the picture. [ Go ]

Thanks to my friend Guy Haas for translating "Who Benefits" into latin for a future blog essay.  He used google to do it.  And not the Google translation feature.  It's "Cui Bono".  [ Go ]

Shame on Jakob Nielsen.  I have nothing but respect for Jakob, who is a really sweet guy; I met him back in the ACM Hypertext 9X conference days when he was still at Sun, but Useit.com is getting misleading.  Here's the text I'm referencing.

Learn More

158-page Intranet Design Annual with 104 screenshots of the ten winners is available for download.

It would be nice if he pointed out that "is available for purchase and download".  I wouldn't have bothered clicking on that link if I knew that in advance.  Neither would most people and wouldn't that be more usable?  Still Jakob's essays remain excellent and I have huge respect for the man.  [ Go ]

And Googlefight remains awfully, awfully cool.  [ Go ]

The combination of Google News and blogs really does tranform your view of the news.  Now this may be a lot more significant for Americans than the rest of the world since we tend to be inward looking.  But now when I want to know what's going on in Indonesia, I turn to Joe.  And I feel that Google News has brought me balance by letting me see how news organizations outside the U.S. perceive things.  For example I saw a good article in the Sydney World Herald the other day with an alternate perspective on Bush's intelligence.  While some of us may argue about whether or not Google news is needed or if it's as good as a personal aggregator, I can't see how it's anything but positive.  Sure I can't add my own feeds but that's NOT what's for.  It's a global newspaper that's always updated.  Even in this age of the Internet, newspapers are still useful.  Google News is just a 21st century version. [ Go ]

And for the funniest geek humor of the day, check out Burning Bird's look on programming languages.  I especially loved the take on PHP.  [ Go ]

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