w00t!

[Via: BT Plc.]

I’m using PHP to get each record. There isn’t much on the web about working with timestamp fields in PHP, so I created the function below to convert and store the OLToken as an integer:

function ConvertOLToken ($theToken)
{
   $OLToken = "";
   for ($i = 0; $i < strlen ($theToken); $i++)
   {
      $Byte = dechex (ord ($theToken[$i]));
      $OLToken .= str_pad ($Byte, 2, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT);
   }
   return hexdec($OLToken);
}

This value is passed back to stored procedures as an integer parameter and used in stored procedures:

IF EXISTS (
   SELECT 1
   FROM [Table]
   WHERE [ID] = @pID
      AND [OLToken] = CONVERT([binary](8), @pOLToken))
BEGIN
...
END

It uses concurrent AJAX, calling a lightweight PHP+XML web service layer to communicate with a Microsoft SQL Server.

The management application that the staff at the Links use to administer the bookings is written in C#, using C# web services back to the SQL Server.

Like the online booking, the AJAX layer is based on "The Ultimate AJAX object" by Patrick Hunlock, which I’ve found to be one of the only objects that elegantly supports concurrency.

Kill Bill and Kung Fu star David Carradine has been found dead in a Bangkok hotel room on Thursday.

Thai police told the BBC a hotel maid found the 72-year-old naked in a wardrobe with a cord around his neck and other parts of his body.

[Via: BBC News]

During a time when many people are losing their homes, nevermind their jobs, the members of the Westminster Parliament are still being exposed for making the most outrageous expenses claims on top of their already overblown salaries.

It seems that during the interviews, in which it sounds like they have been forced by their party bosses to explain themselves, the same two soundbites that are heard over and over again.

“The money for that claim has already been paid back.”

Two points.

That implies that had your expenses not been exposed, you wouldn’t have paid them back; and having paid them back, you must have realised that the claim was invalid in the first place.

And who is authorising these claims? Whoever it is gives the impression that they are so far removed from reality, it beggars belief.

“All of these expense claim are within the rules.”

Yes; the rules, you as MP’s, voted in. Sounds suspiciously like “I was only following orders”, or “Everyone else was doing it…”

Apparently, it doesn’t matter how badly the country is doing financially, as long as you can feather your own nest.

Analysis by tax expert Richard Teather of Bournemouth University shows that an MP’s nominal Parliamentary salary [of £64,766] nowhere near reflects their huge package of benefits.

As The Mail on Sunday revealed last week, MPs have voted to make their benefits exempt from tax.

To pocket the same salary, buy the same gold-plated pension and receive the same string of perks as the average MP, an ordinary taxpayer would have to earn a salary of £319,165 – about 18 times the pay of the average voter.

Mr Teather’s findings have been set out in three tables to show how MPs are benefiting and those who are benefiting the most. Here, we show the 20 highest-earning MPs in each of the three categories. You can see the whole list at www.mailonsunday.co.uk/mps.

Welsh Secretary Paul Murphy tops Table 1, which shows the true value of MPs’ pay and perks compared with the average wage of their constituents. The figure for expenses has been adjusted upwards to reflect the tax that would be payable if treated as salary.

To get the equivalent to the wages, pension rights and perks of Mr Murphy, his constituents in Torfaen, South Wales, would have to earn £423,932 before tax and national insurance – 28.1 times their average pay.

[Via: The Daily Mail]

The Speaker, Michael Martin, bore the brunt of my fury during last night’s news.

Patricia Hewitt, the former Cabinet minister, was [also] cut short by Mr Martin as she argued for greater public scrutiny of what MPs are paid and able to claim in allowances.

Mr Martin replied,

“Let me put this to you and to every Hon Member in this House – is it the case that an employee of this House should be able to hand over any private data to any organisation of his or her choosing?”

[Via: The Daily Telegraph]

Since when was how these elected officials spent public money “private data”? Who exactly is this man defending, and on what grounds, because it certainly should not be privacy of the expense claims of public servants.

Shame on you all.

Who the hell do you people think you are? Far from serving us, the public, they are taking us to the cleaners.

Baffle your coworkers with an "Insert Coin" message on the office printer using the HP Printer Job Language (HPPJL) command set.

[Via: Lifehacker]

Clever network admin Pete decided to mess with his wifi-piggybacking neighbors by flipping all the images they’d see on web pages upside down.

[Via: Lifehacker]

It uses concurrent AJAX, calling a lightweight PHP+XML web service layer to communicate with a Microsoft SQL Server.

The management application that the staff at the Links use to administer the bookings is written in C#, using C# web services back to the SQL Server.

The AJAX layer is based on "The Ultimate AJAX object" by Patrick Hunlock, which I’ve found to be one of the only objects that elegantly supports concurrency.

Unfortunately, the hosting package they had chosen supported PHP, but database support was beyond their price range.

That set me wondering if WordPress actually required MySQL to operate. I knew about SQLite as a file-based relational database, so I turned to Google and searched for “WordPress sqlite”. What I discovered was a plugin called PDO (SQLite) For WordPress by Justin Adie which abstracts the database functionality into a separate layer. At the moment, it supports the original MySQL, and SQLite.

This was exactly what I was looking for. It was easy to set-up and is working very well, as you can see.

As I type this Mozilla, the company behind the groovy Firefox browser, has just created a new world software download record of over 5 million downloads in less than 24 hours.

You can get your 7MB download here and track the download progress here.

I got a certificate too! (You can get yours here.)

[Via: Gizmodo]

Update:

It’s official: The latest version of Mozilla’s popular alternative Web browser, Firefox 3, set the previously nonexistent Guinness World Record for most software downloads in a day. The final tally settled at 8,002,530 after judges weeded out duplicates and automated downloads from the 8.3 million total downloads logged on June 18, the day of the browser’s launch.

[Via: The Wall Street Journal]