If you want to submit a talk for FrOSCon in June, you will have to hurry: The deadline for the call for papers is approaching.

Talks can be submitted until March, 15th 2006. The organizers ask for talks about free software and open source. Expert knowledge on programming languages, free software on the desktop, security, administration and networks is in demand. Talks about the philosophy of free software and experience with free software in business settings is another focus of the conference.

Besides the conference program, the organizers have a special offer for open source projects: Projects can apply for a developer room at FrOSCon. This room is managed by the project and can for example be used for developer meetings. Members of the project can meet in this room, exchange ideas, …

Thanks to hartmut for pointing to this: MySQL AB acquired Netfrastructure Inc. Jim Starkey, one of the founders of Netfrastructure Inc., is now working full-time for MySQL AB.

Well, who's Jim Starkey?

Jim Starkey, the original creator of InterBase which became Firebird, just made it publicly known that he now works for MySQL AB.

More details on Firebird News.

Listen to Digitally imported to get the url

Harry, thanks for the praise for Eventum. This is mainly the result of my work and Bryan Alsdorf at MySQL, even though I’m no longer with MySQL AB anymore. We do agree with you on the aspects of making the page controllers as simple as possible, and also trying to let the code be as simple as possible, but still easy to maintain and change.

For some of its technical weaknesses such as the use of HTTP_GET_VARS and etc, there is a reason for this. Eventum was initially supposed to be a commercial product, and I wanted to sell commercial licenses of this application, to be then installed at the customer’s server. I tried to make the installation process as easy as possible (and it still is one of the easiest web applications to install around), and that meant working with whatever PHP …

Chris has written a compelling piece about how the use of addslashes() for string escaping in MySQL queries can lead to SQL injection through the abuse of multibyte character sets. In his example he relies on addslashes() to convert an invalid multibyte sequence into a valid one, which also has an embedded ' that is not escaped. And in an ironic twist, the function intended to protect against SQL injection is used to actually trigger it.

The problem demonstrated, actually goes a bit further, which even makes the prescribed escaping mechanism, mysql_real_escape_string() prone to the same kind of issues affecting addslashes(). The main advantage of the mysql_real_escape_string() over addslashes() lies in the fact that it takes character set into account and thus is able to determine how to properly escape the data. For example, if GBK character set is being used, it will not …

I was wondering how people handled this situation themselves. I'm personally trying to decide whether my constants be in the class files, or a global configuration file. Right now I have a global.conf.php which contains things like:

 

<?php

define('MYSQLUSERNAME','mysqluser');

define('MYSQLUSERPASS','mysqlpass');

define('INCLUDE_PATH','/path/to/my/include/files') ;

define('CONTACTS_TABLE','sometablename');

So, my question is: Is it better to have one big configuration file, or should some things be defined on top of the individual classes ? (CONTACTS_TABLE.. is a clear example). I see pros and cons for both approaches.

…

The first Free and Open Source Conference ("FrOSCon") takes place on June, 24th and 25th 2006 in Sankt Augustin, near Bonn, Germany.

Organized by a commited team, it aims to become a significant event for free software in the Rhineland. The conference is hosted by the faculty of Computer Science of the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg in collaboration with the student body and the …

The first Free and Open Source Conference ("FrOSCon") takes place on June, 24th and 25th 2006 in Sankt Augustin, near Bonn, Germany.

Organized by a commited team, it aims to become a significant event for free software in the Rhineland. The conference is hosted by the faculty of Computer Science of the University of Applied Sciences Bonn-Rhein-Sieg in collaboration with the student body and the Linux/Unix User Group Sankt Augustin.

In a Call for Papers, the organizers ask for submission of contributions. A broad variety of topics concerning free and open …

The year started in January (obviously ;-) with the publication of my first book, "Professionelle Softwareentwicklung mit PHP 5".

In February I joined the Gentoo Linux development team, attended the Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting (FOSDEM), and launched a new website for …

The year started in January (obviously ;-) with the publication of my first book, "Professionelle Softwareentwicklung mit PHP 5".

In February I joined the Gentoo Linux development team, attended the Free and Open Source Developers European Meeting (FOSDEM), and launched a new website for PHPUnit.

In March I gave a …