Constitutional flaw in patenting

For all those that love IP news, here's an interesting one.

Poor man's let statement

So we've all read how javascript 1.8 (and ecmascript 2) has let statements, but until our favorite browser gets there, here's how I work around the limitation:

var a = 1
new function() {
  var a = 2;
  alert(a);
}()
alert(a);

Good ol' Bobby Tables

So apparently MSSQL servers all over the place got hit by a new SQL injection attack.

I hate drama

This time, over Ext's license.

CSS variables are back on the table

So there are proposals for CSS variables yet again. Some like it, some don't, some have already proposed it in the past.

My 2 cents is that this feature won't be particularly useful for the next decade or so. Judging from Microsoft's approach to things like opacity, I wouldn't expect to see IE implementing this until *after* it becomes part of the CSS spec.

Money vs security again

Big vulnerability affecting essentially the entire internet: ISPs are hijacking unused subdomains to put up (insecure) ad pages, and it's possible to hijack these pages for spoofing and phishing.

Beating botnets with more botnets

Very interesting research on using a swarm of servers to shield an application server against DDoS attacks.

"It is a very interesting approach that integrates a number of existing ideas," says Yin Zhang of the University of Texas in Austin, US.

"I particularly like the idea of leveraging swarming to defend against botnets," Zhang added. "Converting BitTorrent users into a community-based botnet defense sounds interesting and promising."

Javascript 1.8 features

Tiago Silveira goes over upcoming features in Javascript. There is a lot of neat functional programming sugar going on.

His first comment is intriguing though:

In one sentence: Javascript 1.8 (supported by Firefox 3) has many of Python's features, but is a Frankenstein's patchwork of so many languages it might achieve the highest maintenance costs a language other that PERL has ever seen.

Stuff happening over on the server-side

Dion Almaer talks about RDBMS, ODBMS and Google's App engine. It's an interesting discussion, and it touches on line between the academic world and the business world: RDBMS is the de facto standard for data storage in business, but will it stay so, in the face of all the alternatives that are popping up?

My bet is that in the end, SQL will win. There are too many SQL-driven behemoths out there, and for the ordinary teenage learner, SQL tools (via PHP, or Visual Studio or whatever) are widely available and are very easy to play with.

Nonetheless, I'd like to see some more dissemination for these alternative data storage models, so that their patterns become more apparent, and so that they can ultimately be standardized (even if only loosely by de facto usage)

Weapons of mass murder

So it seems they're banning those red laser pointers in Australia.

Mr Iemma said the misuse of these devices had the potential to cause mass murder.

"It only takes a fraction of a second for a pilot to become temporarily blinded and that could have catastrophic consequences," Mr Iemma said.

"It is a gutless and cowardly act that could result in an horrific outcome."