TerraFrost’s Corner

About a year ago, I observed something Escher-esque in Google Maps. Well, apparently there’s more:

Both are from New York City. The last building is One Worldwide Plaza.

Finally, here’s another picture from Houston, TX:

I think the email says it best :):

Hey TerraFrost,

How’s it going?

I just wanted to let you know that you have been selected as the Featured Author on phpBBHacks.com for the month of February 2007.

What is the Featured Author?
http://www.phpbbhacks.com/features/author.php

phpBBHacks.com recognizes a different author every month. They are recognized for their exceptional contributions to the phpBB community through phpBBHacks.com. For great hacks, templates, related downloads and other contributions. There is only 1 selected for each month - 12 in an entire year.

Congratulations! For more information, please check out:
http://www.phpbbhacks.com/forums/congratulations-…-vt67092.html

If you would like, I have attached an image that you can use however you want, if at all.

Thank you for your contributions to the phpBB community through phpBBHacks.com.

Thanks,

Patrick

Say you’re FTP servers password had been compromised and that someone was intent on using this to attack your website. I think, in the end, that a defacement is probably the best kind of attack that one can hope for. You might get a meta redirect to some shock site or just make the site say, in size 25 font, “Hacked by {insert name here}”. Either way, I think it’s hard to match the immediate impact of such an attack. Immediate, of course, is the keyword here.

Contrast this with someone who installs a so-called CGI proxy on your site at some unintuitive location. Unlike a defacement, this is something that is liable to go undetected for weeks, if ever, depending on the size of the site. In this time, they could, among other things, use your website as a platform to attack other websites. Instead of their IP showing up in peoples log files, it’d be your servers IP. When people realize this, it’ll be you they try to take action against, since it’s your IP that appears in their logs and not the attackers.

So in the end, the scariest attackers, I think, aren’t those who would do defacements, but rather, those who wouldn’t.

The most expensive blog in the world, according to this tool isn’t a blog at all - it’s the ~$1.5 billion dollar myspace.com. With a value of ~$1 billion, www.blogger.com comes in at a not-so-distant second.

Who would have guessed?

The first tool I ever wrote in PHP that I had intended for public consumption was a utility designed to copy users from one phpBB to another. I called it Copy Users. Unfortunately, early versions had “a bug involving user groups” (to quote the changelog). To develop a fix for this bug, I wrote another modification - phpBB Back Up - that was intended to make the process of backing up and restoring a database easier. This was important since the fix required manipulations that - if done incorrectly - could mess the database up even more.

A few years later, I now consider both to be rather poorly coded and actually dislike even looking at their source (although I dislike looking at phpBB Back Up even more than I do Copy Users). Someone, however, has apparenetly managed to wade their way through the source code and improve upon it. Their work can be found here. So if, in the unlikely event, that that is the PHP script of mine that you’re interested in, that’s where you should now look

“If it’s not OOP, it’s a non-extensible, spaghetti-code ridden piece of crap” some of OOPs staunchest defenders claim. And unfortunately, I think a good too many people are begining to believe it.

Don’t get me wrong - OOP certainly has its advantages. Libraries that use it are infinitely easier to conceptualize and, ultimately, to use, then ones that don’t. It’s also harder to make mistakes with these libraries - especially in loosely cast languages such as PHP whose functions can’t distnguish between data types.

However, OOP also has a distinct disadvantages. Namely, OOP code. is, traditionally, much harder to read than non-OOP code. Consider the following:

The Magic Words are Squeamish Ossifrage

vs.

{noun[magic_words]}+{verb[are]}+{noun[ossifrage]}

noun[magic_words]=The Magic Words
verb[are]=are
noun[ossifrage]=Squemish Ossifrage

The latter is kinda like what reading OOP-code is all to often like. Although I realize that even those doing procedural programming can make similarily obfusticated code, OOP almost encourages it. Not only do you have to contend with functions that are often times pointless - you have to contend with constructors, destructors, and inheretance. And that’s not counting the instances when objects reference other objects within them.

Now, I can appreciate trying to remove as many redundancies as possible - it certainly makes for more maintainable code - but it definitly does not make the code easier to read. Cross-reference multiple files and you risk getting hopelessly lost. Which file were you on? Where in that file were you at? Although it might not take much time to figure out, having to ask these same questions over and over again is going to, no matter how you cut it, add up. Before you know it, those looking to contribute small features will just stop. Contributing features should only an amount of itme that is proportional to the features size. Small features should take small amounts of time to develop and large feature should take large amounts of time. OOP makes everything take large amounts of time.

Given that, it kinda makes one wonder just how worthwhile OOP is. Developers who are already familiar with the code may find it easier to maintain but new developers almost certainly aren’t. In fact, OOP may even alienate new developers. And without new developers, who’s going to maintain programs once the old developers leave?

In short, OOP is not without its disadvantages and those who would claim otherwise would do well to think before they speak.
Some IDE’s may sorta mitigate this issue, but not all would-be developers are going to use IDE’s. And who could blame them? Controlling pseudo-WYSIWYG environments through menus and mouse clicks is something better suited to graphic artists then it is to those whose interests lie in code.

A few months ago, I left my first neutral feedback on eBay. The product being advertised was a 1000 mAh battery whereas the one I got was an 850 mAh battery. I contacted the seller, was told that I could return it (although I’d have to pay the shipping), and got yet another 850 mAh.

The battery, itself, was for a Palm Tungsten T. After having read a tutorial on how to disassemble them, I thought replacing the battery would be pretty straight foward. It wasn’t. And so for about four months, I did nothing with it. Until today. Today I took apart my Tungsten T (whose warranty had expired several years ago) and found that not only did the auction incorrectly state how many milliamp hours it had but it also incorrectly stated the units it supported!

Here’s a picture of a the Tungsten T’s original battery alongside the battery I received from the seller:

The Tungsten T’s original battery is the smaller one. The one I got off of eBay quite literaly doesn’t fit.

Now let’s look at the plugs:

Note how they have different sizes. The original plug is on the bottom.

The best part of all this is… the seller is still selling these batteries. The only thing it looks like they’ve changed is the mAh, but having received two from them, I suspect that’s just more misinformation on their part.

All that said, those looking to get batteries for Tungsten T’s should be forewarned - the batteries are glued in. You’re not going to be able to get them out unless you’re willing to permanently break your Tungsten T to do it.

Last season (or rather, mid-season), the 2006 Gates arrived:

Promo 1
Promo 2

This season, anything is possible with a little Stargate:

Promo 1
Promo 2
Promo 3

I guess viral marketing has penetrated TV. Not that I’m complaining, heh

M. C. Escher would be proud. And maybe a little confussed.