If it’s hard to describe something then you should think about whether there actually is something to describe or not. WordPress.org announces a somewhat whishy-washy concept of some “you name it” – plugins that are acually, well, plugins and – tada – hosted in the plugin repro. Needles to say, this already existed not only since years. In the a-historical announcement, it’s totally forgotten to discuss if somethings missing or not with the existing system. …
Ads are per se bloaty. Related to Software maybe the term Bloatware comes handy. But it’s not good if you couldn’t improve it. In this case the amount of bloat: Online Ads are better protected for some ad-distributors by storing them base64 encoded and “linked” into CSS. for example:
background:transparent url(data:image/png;base64,+jmzYAAAAGXRFWHRTb2Z0d2 [...]
(Exemplary code only, not a real image file)
That pretty much works well against Ad-Block Plus but well, infact it shows how to bloat even more. Base64 encoding takes 1/3 more of the space compared to a standard binary notation.
As an additional improvement, the CSS code can base64 encoded again and then linked in the html header. This will remove “URL” completely which is working towards most of content filters because they use “URL” a lot.
Since Noscript’s main coder’s website is using the method describben above, how high are the chances that the Noscript Plugin will protect us against embedded URLs which are pretty dangerous in the context of XSS / CSFR attacks. Never?
SalesKing soll aus der Beta raus sein (so frisch, dass das Logo wohl erst noch aktualisiert werden muss). Der Geldtacho ist leider nicht mehr mit dabei, dafür gibts neben einer 30 tägigen Testversion besondere Tarife für Schnellentschlossene. Installation auf eigenem Server auf Anfrage möglich. Ich habe schon mal Salz auf der virtuellen Türschwelle ausgestreut.
Autsch’n: Heute ertappe ich mich dabei schon länger nicht mehr auf der Google Homepage gewesen zu sein. Kaum bewegt man die Maus, weiss man nicht mehr was man eigentlich machen wollte. Softe Animationen sind eben auch nur knapp kein Blinken aber immer noch mehr Blinken als alles andere. Das Ende vom Lied ist, dass so-was eine Website nicht einfacher sondern einfach komplizierter macht. T’schade. …
Just a few words to share in a good mood: If WordPress 2.9 comes out within the next weeks, do not feel that you actually need to upgrade. My assumption is that you have to wait at least for more Bugfix releases then (as it becomes more and more normal with WordPress). Currently there are tons of bugs within the base code and instead of fixing even when patches are available, WordPress development is only facing for getting the next release out by shifting bugs from one release number to the next. …
Without Data there actually is no need to do at least something.
Let’s see.
When you’re not in control, you ain’t programming nothin’.
This is just s stub of idea I had yesterday, kinda of a mnemonic rhyme. If you’ve got an old or new app and you think about implementing a MVC pattern somehow, where to start / set priorities? Note: As long as you take something already implemented, you do not even need to think about. This is more about writing own code and refactoring.
GPLed windows binaries (exe) which might come in handy and therefore worth to link: DOS2UNIX, UNIX2DOS, MUUDECODE, UUENCODE and UUDECODE on http://www.bastet.com/. Additionally there is a Perl Eventlog component for Windows NT (NT = NT 4, 2000, XP, etc.).
Update: Additional Disk Partition related Win32/DOS based utilities can be found here: http://www.partitionsupport.com/utilities.htm
Finally some more or less security related patches to WordPress 2.8.4 have been released yesterday resulting in version 2.8.5. Some of my code went in as well, so hopefully ranting did work out. I was not able to fully review the update but most eval and create_function “breakpoints” have been removed for now.
The release is entitled as beign a “hardening release” by the official Blog. What does that mean? Very simple, it’s hardening because WordPress is not aware of actual exploits to their codebase but they are clever enough that they can assume it actually should be exploitable. I would call it hardening if they pick up some weeks doing a full code review and refactoring. This would acutally make sense while switching to PHP 5 but this is currently not on the WordPress agenda. Next PHP Version for WordPress will be PHP 4.4.x. You may ask now, what is the opposite of hardening? So this is another step on the long way of WordPress to a more mature codebase. If code would be poetry, then WordPress code is the crap you would get next to a supermarket’s cashpoint.
askmonty.org is hosting a document called The hacking business model. It describes in pretty much detail how the interests of a developer towards the company she/he is working for and vice versa could be formulated.
You can find some working principles in there, like 80/20, customer centered design and open source project donations. I think it’s pretty much backed-up with the experiences in the “virtual” company MySQL.
This might not well adopt for most of the companies you know but the read can be inspiring nevertheless.
