April 1st, 2012
What is SOPA and why is it bad?
While this article, linked here, does a good job of explaining things I’m going to quickly summarize what this is all about. SOPA is an acronym for the Stop Online Piracy Act (its text can be read here: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c112:H.R.3261: ), and is a proposed bill aimed at cracking down on copyright infringement by restricting access to sites that host or facilitate the trading of pirated content. On the whole this does not seem like such a bad thing and almost everyone would agree that this is a worthy goal to try and attain. The problem, however, is how this proposed bill goes about obtaining this goal. Any site could be in violation of the law if they “facilitate” copyright infringement. The problem with this is that the word “facilitate” invites very broad interpretations of its meaning. In addition, any site accused of being a “facilitator” will have all services – network connectivity and payment services, among others – cut off in an “ask questions later” approach. The filing of false notifications against an online property is a crime, but the burden of proof that a crime was not committed lies with the site that has just been taken down.
This is a horrible piece of proposed legislation that will very likely have a far-reaching and potentially-devastating impact on the internet as a whole. As a professional software developer that has made his living developing internet applications for the past 13 years, and did so un-professionally for several years prior to that, I cannot allow this legislation to become law.
How can you help stop SOPA?
Lamar Smith has been the Republican Congressman for the 21st congressional district in Texas since 1987 and is the individual that introduced the SOPA legislation. Well, my good friend Richard Morgan, a fellow PHP developer, is running against him in the upcoming primaries and needs your help. Richard Morgan opposes SOPA and will make it a priority to oppose this and other big-government bills that threaten individual liberty and discourage job growth and free enterprise in America. There are three things that you can do to help Richard Morgan win the election: Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: SOPA
Posted in SOPA | 1 Comment »
January 23rd, 2012
I recently had the need to connect to a Subversion repository that was hosted “in the cloud” and only accessible via a https:// address. I was on a FreeBSD server and every time I attempted to connect to the repository I would receive this error:
svn: Unrecognized URL scheme 'https://svn.web.server'
When I ran svn --version I saw that there was nothing configured to handle the http(s) protocols. To resolve this I did the following:
- In
/usr/ports/www/neon29 I ran make clean install
- In
/usr/ports/devel/subversion I ran make config. From the configuration screen I enabled the Neon WebDAV/Delta-V repo access module and then ran make clean install after saving the configuration.
I was then able to successfully access SVN repositories hosted at http(s) addresses! I hope this is helpful to anyone in a similar situation.
Tags: freebsd, svn
Posted in svn | No Comments »
November 23rd, 2011
I recently had the privilege of being asked to write an article for php|architect magazine called “Zend Framework…Without Inhaling” and the honor of being published in the November 2011 issue. You can read all about the issue here and purchase a copy if you don’t already have a subscription. I have previously given a presentation on this same topic and a video recording of it is available on the Presentations page. Below is the article synopsis:
Zend Framework…Without Inhaling
Not sure how to integrate all Zend Framework has to offer into your existing code? Do you want to know how you can use Zend Framework without having to fully adopt the MVC architecture? What if you want to begin using MVC later? This article will present ideas and examples on how you can integrate Zend Framework into your existing codebase with minimal need for future refactoring.
Posted in beginner, php, zend framework | No Comments »
April 12th, 2011
I recently had the opportunity to present my “A Conversation About REST” talk at ClubAJAX. A REST API involves more than just pushing data back and forth between endpoints. REST is a set of principles and not a specification, so as such you have freedom in how to develop your API. This freedom can lead to confusion though, as it’s hard to find concrete examples of its implementation. This presentation explained what REST is and also presented a variety of topics and questions you will certainly come across while implementing your API.
The Presentations page has a link to the video recording of the talk, which was very lively with a lot of audience participation. Definitely worth watching!
Read the rest of this entry »
Posted in REST, beginner | No Comments »
March 16th, 2011
In the course of performing my duties at my day job I recently came across the need for our data to be accessible via an API. After researching the various types available, I settled on developing a REST API. The selection process wasn’t the interesting part of this exercise though. Actually implementing a REST API is what was.
REST is a set of principles
If there is one point that you should take away from this post after reading it, it is this: REST is a set of principles and not a specification. Consider for a moment someone you believe to be moral. Traits that may make them moral, such as trustworthiness, decency or honor, are characteristics of their morality; guidelines they follow in their life – a moral code. There is not a law that specifies what morality is, but there is a general sense of what is expected and what is meant when discussing morality. The same holds true for REST. There is not a specific implementation that makes an API RESTful, but instead certain expectations that one should strive to achieve. Read the rest of this entry »
Tags: API, REST
Posted in REST | 16 Comments »
