Creosote archive for Thu 07 of Jul, 2005

Atop Lupy Nevow Pyndex Quotient Reverend Shtoom Xapwrap

Stephen Thorn posted a note about a PHPXMLRPC exploit. Whenever I see such things, I try to figure out what implementation would cause that. At first I was baffled, but then I realized that the XMLRPC parser created an array of arguments, then created the text of the function call somehow like "$method_name($param1, $param2, ...)" and used eval on it (instead of call_user_func_array). This is partially the fault of PHP, as the eval page doesn't give any warning about how dangerous the function is. It's the fault of the person who wrote PHPXMLRPC for being really dumb -- the code isn't just insecure, it's really buggy too.

ming (swf library) binaries for win32, python2.3. save mingc.pyd in py DLL directory, ming.py in py Lib directory

a nice discussion of scoping, rebinding vs mutation, closures and ruby vs python

cross-browser cross-platform screenshots. Python based toolkit can be downloaded to run locally

Le Viaduc de Millau is the tallest bridge in the world, as measured to the top of the tallest pylon. It's quite an impressive architectural acheivement. The story of the construction is pretty amazing, too: the deck of the bridge was built incrementally in two pieces, with hydraulic jacks pushing them out over the piers until they met in the middle! More pictures.

Sorry couldn't help but commence round 3 (I believe it is) of Versa vs SPARQL. In all honesty, however, this is has to do more with RDF itself than it with either query language. It is primarily motivated by a very informative and insightful take (by Benjamin Nowack) on the problems regarding identifying BNodes uniquely in a query.

I hadn't seen a problem with Prototype's Object.prototype.extend method until recently, when I added Xinha support to the Paste filebrowser example, and it broke Xinha. I would have actually been mystified about the breakage, if I hadn't read Bob's rant on it (and another critique of Object.prototype). Here's the code in question: Object.prototype.extend = function(object) { for (property in object) { this[property] = object[property]; } return this; } Here's what I first replaced it with (and this didn't work!): function extend(ob1, ob2) { for (property in ob2) { ob1[property] = ob2[property]; } return ob1; } The problem was that methods became unbound, and Prototype uses .extend({...}) to do something subclass-like. I'm personally highly confused about how functions become bound to objects.

TypeKey and OpenID are an "and," not a "vs."

There has been a lot of good comment on my earlier entry on outline formats in XML. I've been pretty busy the past week or so, but I'd better get my thoughts down before they deliquesce. Bob DuCharme pointed me at Micah's article which includes mention of XOXO. Henri Sivonen asked what I think of it. Taking the name "outlining format" literally, it's actually just fine. As Micah says: Some people might feel warmer and fuzzier with elements named outline, topic, item, and so on, or with elements in a freshly minted namespace, but microformats can still claim the semantic high ground, even when reusing XHTML. In the above, the parts of an outline are ordered lists and list items, exactly as the XHTML element names say. The problem is that what made me start looking into outlining formats was the fact that I'd heard from others that these make such a great format for personal information space organization, and XOXO is just about useless in that regard. Along that vector, I wonder what a pure outline format is useful for, anyway? I can't remember having ever needed a stand-alone outline document separate from what I'm outlining. If I'm writing a presentation or a long article, I'd prefer to have the table of contents or presentation outline section generated from the titles and structure of the full work.

Hmm.. I've been a bit quiet recently. I'm also about [1] to fly out to Romania for a week, to visit the in-laws - so it will be quiet for a little while yet.

Every year on Bainbridge Island there is a parade on the 4th of July. The island is small enough that it's a very local affair, and you are likely to see a few somebody's that you know marching across your path. This year, I tried using the parade as a photography exercise. The full Flickr set is here.

I've finally settled the rules for the 1st Python Game Programming Competition . The rules are still up for comment, but are unlikely to change significantly. The actual date is to be settled, but will be around the end of August / start of September...

Python as a community is plagued by massive amounts of wheel-reinvention. The infamous web framework proliferation problem is just the most egregious example.> >Why is Python "blessed" with so much reinvention? Because it's often cheaper to rewrite than to reuse. Python code is easy to write, but hard to depend on.

Dmitry Dvoinikov has submitted a recipe to the Python Cookbook that adds parameter type checking to method or function invocations.

Michael Bommarito has released version 0.1 of pystats, a Python module which implements algorithms for statistics and information theory.

Kedai asks how you would describe Zope in your own words.

Egor Zindy has submitted a recipe to the Python Cookbook that uses XML definitions to create a wx.MenuBar.

In an article for XML.com, Joe Gregorio describes how to implement a sparklines web service and web application, and also provides Python and Javascript code for both.

Egor Zindy has submitted a recipe to the Python Cookbook that shows a way of using wxPython's ColumnSorterMixin with virtual lists.

Martin Elsner has submitted a recipe to the Python Cookbook that provides an easier-to-use wrapper around the standard ConfigParser module for reading .ini files.

Michel Pelletier and Munwar Shariff have released an online version of their "Plone Live" book. Subscribers get an electronic book that is updated monthly to track the changes and newest trends in Plone over the next year.

Edward Ream has released version 4.3.1 of Leo, an outliner and literate programming tool. Changes in this version: added support for Tk resource files; added support for coloring the PL/SQL language; all Mark commands are now undoable; improved Resize To Screen command.

Andrew Kuchling reports that the slow transition to the new python.org machines took another baby step forward a couple of weeks ago when he and Barry Warsaw set up Subversion access for everyone who had a login on the existing python.org web server.

As the beginning ideas of a new web site have begun to enter my mind, I decided to search around for the "perfect" web environment for it. Of course, this would be better stated as the web environment that sucks the least. It seems as if things are making a turn for the worse as everyone tries to imitate Ruby-On-Rails which I'm not too fond of.

generated on Thu 07 of Jul, 2005 at 01:32:28 PM in Melbourne, Australia

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