Yeah it used to be an interesting thing to see new web apps and write reviews about it but i think things are beginning to change and i understand the times. I have been burned in the past before by same group of people who use root kit tools to hack porous sites and yelp in excitement of their work.
Balewite.com is just 5 days old and i have got heavy hacking activities on it in the past few days of its life. Well i am not surprised and i did anticipate this. I am a hacker myself so i know the roots they take to bring down porous sites. I have developed Balewite.com using technology not to common in the Nigerian landscape of coding so it would take some experience hackers to do some damages on it. Please note that i do not know the faces of the hackers but i do know their IPs and the city the come from and i know what to do when any of them crosses the line. Thanks and happy hacking guys

Balewite http://www.balewite.com is a research project i started working on a couple of months back while studying python programming. Its simply based on the idea that large part of our day to day  conversations consist of series of contextual questions and answers that add a modicum of experience to our daily lives. These information if recorded ,organized , tagged and made searchable ,could argument our general knowledge of topical issues while been preserved for posterity to learn from our present time experience.
The site is currently developed in python and i might be requesting for assistance from experienced python developers in the house to help push further the development of this research work. As it stands, Balewite is launching in beta and invites programmers,webmasters, balewites in the house, students, professionals and experienced site reviewers to review the site and share their opinions.
The name Balewite was choosing because i was a graduate of Abubakar Tafawa Balewa University where i studied computer science. This is in honor of all graduates before my set, my set (2006) and after my set
For those of you (python developers) who might be interested in working with me on the project,you can mail me at ozumba@balewite.com to talk more thanks and God bless

Sometime last week i made a contribution about developing apps on j2me platform and i also told a story about what lead me to start developing for the platform i was shocked to see that my contribution was regarded as a SPAM and even my posting ability was blocked asking me to send some email to some address if i was sure innocent of spam i did not send any email because i was pissed out not by the prompt but by what is defined as a SPAM contribution on the site i was really beginning google about for the meaning of spamming to refresh my understand of it and to see how it applies to me in this context.
Well Today i came back just to see what was happening only for me to see that my posting rights have been given back to me and i am posting this piece because it would really be discourage for to see that their posts are regarded as a spam even when its not. Hopefully this too will not be considered a spam. Their is need to really look at what is a spam and what is not otherwise people will stop posting real stuff; Yet i still can not see that post . Thanks

Stop hacking around security threats that you know someone will always break into, even the best sites have been hacked by the list expected guys, You need not pray that you don't get hacked cos you will when the time comes,Follow the trend in developments, SQL injection in PHP has brought about PDO (PHP Data Object) use that and be rest assure that your database will not have anything called SQL Injection,Though it is not that easy and if i can get around using it anyone else can.The idea behind it is to abstract database object and make it independent of a specific database engine yet it offers same interface to all the underlying engine you might think of using,MySQL,Oracle,SQLite,postgreSQL etc,most interesting is that it comes with preparation of sql statements,during which it automatically filters you inputs and you can bind known variables to place placeholders in your statements the thing to get around is thnking differently from the way run your sql query, this is totally dfferent yet it is the same old sql yuo have known all your coding life.
When i have the i will post a tutorial on using the PDO ,but you can read about it on php community site ,there are a lot of developers examples there

Across the globe there are uncountable frameworks, or pre-built codes that the developers claim makes life easier for other developers, no doubt this is partly true and partly lie.In PHP for instance there are lots of frameworks most notably are Zend,Symphony,CakePHP,Drupal,Joomla, etc, in Python we have Django,Tornado,Zope,Plone etc , in Javascript there are jQuery,Prototype,Scriptaculous,MooTool etc. I have used some of this and they are really helpful when you want to get things done Qiuckly .
The question i am putting forward is this, Does using this frameworks really make you a better developer in the sense that you have an in-depth knowledge of the tool you use or does it make you an ordinary passive user of someone's tools preventing you from learning to do things your own way.Secondly does frameworks encourage the understanding of the underlying technology used in creating such frameworks or does it make developers lazy in learning to understand the technology.
I have worked extensively with jQuery and i have noticed that whenever i want to do something in JavaScript rather than think of how to do this i am conditioned to look for a jQuery plugin and use not knowing how the problem at hand is solved, by this i am now  a passive developer of Javascript because i no longer think in terms of solving the problem but looking for a pre-built solution.

So all developer in the house what are your take on this because in the near future there will be plethora of developers whose creative ability is dampened  by the works of others who set boundaries around which you can not go beyond

Lately i started playing with mixing python and php and it happens to be that easy, the point is what is the sense in that.Anyway like the say give to PHP what is PHP and to Python what is Python, th XP guys will tell you that the best way to mix language is to use the strength of each and leave out their weaknesses Today i show you how to call a python script from within php

   //The php code that calles the python code

<?php
  
  //Simple case , call a python code to add two numbers and return the result to php
  
 $param1=10;

 $param2=20;

  $command="Path\/to\/python\/installation  script_add_number.py $param1 $param2";

  //use the passthru command to execute and return the result

  $buffer='';
  ob_start() // prevent outputting till you are done
   passthru($command);
  
  //get the result out
 $buffer=ob_get_contents();
  //clean up the buffer
 ob_end_clean();
 //echo the result
echo $buffer;

?>

The python code to be executed is shown next

#we need the sys module to get access to the passed in parameters
import sys

# the first parameters in sys.argv[0] is the path to the current executing python script

param1=sys.argv[1]

param2=sys.argv[2]

# Python sees this two parameters as string so we need to cast them to integer before we use it

sum=int(param1) + int(param2)

# send the result back to php
print sum

This is how simple it is to mix php and python, what can be done with this lies in the imagination of the programmer
Happy salah to all my muslim coders

Hello NLs a couple of months back i started working on a social community site for Nigerians but along the line i was discouraged and i stopped developing the site. Months later my geek friends showed up in my place and where going through my works when they stumbled on the social site i was earlier working on. They told me that i have to either complete it or they would do that for me. Somehow i picked up interest on the site again and together with their help we have come this far and yesterday we put up the site www.frendtool.com for beta testing.
As the Nigerian community begin to sign up on the site we saw a need to have a community guides or instructors that would make video tutorials on how to go about using feature of the site. You do not have to be a professional though ,you just have to be able to demonstrate how to use the features on the site with vocal video recording that would be published on the community help center.
You can choose to either do volunteering services or paid services ,its up to you.However we will select the videos to be published on the site for the community to learn from.
If you are wondering what tools to use in making the video tutorials you do have to go far, just search for a firefox add-on called Capture Fox add it to your Mozilla browser and start capturing video shots of any website your are browsing. When you are done with the video upload it to any video sharing site you belong to and send a link of your video to info@frendtool.com we will review it for  possible publishing. If your video is selected for publishing, We will either give you more things to do for the community if you are volunteering or we pay you off for the video tutorial and it will become the property of the site.
We welcome all Nigerian developers on the site to tweek,test,find bugs that we did not  see because we are blinded with writing codes and report it to us we will appreciate it a lot.
By the way we are just a regular Nigerian based geeks doing what we love to do best.

To migrate from a regular table based layout to css-table layout using div has not always been that easy because you have to unlearn everything you have learned about css or should i say look at css from a different angle to get your head around it. That's why a book i read about css-table layout was titled "Everything You Know About CSS is Wrong" what a title, and it caught my attention. This also shows you how to port your designs to all the major browsers with just minor modification of you stylesheet. It is a great read and you can find the book either on sitpoint or google. The good news is that with css-table based layout you can get your design working almost the same on all browsers, however, you will along the line learn the hacks needed to get things working on IE 6 ,7. IE 8 plays along well with other gecko engine browsers when it comes to designing with the css-based table layout.
I hear that IE 9 is in beta and would include the features missing on its predecessors especially that rounded corners with pure css without involving images etc

I have been a fan of the ability to achieve chaining in Javascript as demonstrated by the famous javascript library jQuery with its philosophy of Code less Do More after grappling around this idea for a while i started thinking about the possibility of bringing it to php and somehow i have seen that even php has that ability to achieve chaining too but i am yet to explore the possible application of this concept. though one area i am looking at is web services.This is how i was able to do it. I may have to look for a more viable application of this

/* Sample beta class */

class Beta
{
  private $firstname;
  private $surname;
  private $aga;

 public function __construct($age=0)
{
   $this->firstname='Cdeveloper';
   $this->surname='Ama';
   $this->age=$age;
}

/* A method to set a new name */
public function setFirstname($fname='')
 {
     $this->firstname=$fname;
     return $this;
}
/* A method to set surname */
public function setSurname($sname='')
{
   $this->surname=$sname;
   return $this;
}
/* a method to set a new age*/
public function setAge($age=0)
{
    $this->age=$age;
    return $this;
}
/* a method to get fullname */
public function getName()
{
  return ucfirst(strtolower($this->firstname))." ".ucfirst(strtolower($this->surname));
}

}

Now to see the chaining thing in action i will create an instance of the class

$beta=new Beta(20);
//get the current default fulllname
echo $beta->getName() ;
 Output: Cdeveloper Ama
//to set a new name and output it
echo $beta->setFirstname("Dummy"->setSurname("Don"->getName();
Output: Dummy Don
/* to set firstname, age,surname and out put them*/
echo $beta->setFirstname("Dummy"->setSurname("Don"->setAge(30)->getName();

This is really funny but a viable idea that can be used in building api that people can use much in the same way that jQuery is used.
The secret is in returning $this in the setters methods. This variable is internally an instance of the class itself and when you return it from
the method it allows you to still call other methods associated with the object. This is one place that Javascript is king,and this is the concept
that makes jQuery standout. with one line of code you can do more
House what do you guys make of this?

JavaScript i must say is one language that i have spent well my entire Service year studying way back in 2007, and till today it is a language that i am yet to understand its philosophy because when you think that there is just one way to write code in JS you will be surprised to learn that there are millions of ways to achieve the same thing in JS.
One thing i have kept at the back of my mind ever since i learned JS is that Everything in Javascript is an Object and with that i have been able to write object oriented js codes;unlike other languages, javascript is the only language that even ordinary function is an object meaning that you can assign properties(both member variables and methods) to a function that you just created.

I was beginning to wonder whether there are still programmers in this section of the site cos it have been a long while i last saw codes posted here in the form of tutorial for others to learn from. Well it is a good come back again, but some how i have started wondering what is happening in here today you post something interesting and tomorrow it is gone in to oblivion with no trace, i did not complain at all rather i watched and started seeing others too complaining about post been deleted. I saw the explanation that it was a bot that targets post that look like spam and get it deleted. This i must say started recently. I may not be surprised if later today this post of mine will be attacked too by the bot.

Human knowledge belong to the world some people fail to realize that some people freely share with others are not meant to be sold but to be passed on to others. I know a couple of open source packages you can use to generate codes for you and i do not think i have ever seena price tag on it. If what we do is go get this stuff and think we can sell it just for selfish reasons i am afraid it is a failed idea.

To the Open Source Evangelists "Human Knowledge is a Property of the World Meant to Benefit Those are living Now and the Posterity"

Yeah i am looking at a very large disk space about 80G + or more cos of the photos and other static resources that i am expecting alongside. I have been in a cross road about choosing VPS upfront or sticking with a shared host. The problem comes with upgrading to a higher version and sometimes u get to find out that it wud have been better with VPS.
Anyway i think i might be sticking witha shared host for now until the traffic starts growing then i would consider migrating to higher hosts.
Right now I have a this question

What are your experiences with Hosting companies as a whole, state the company name or url
i could checkout and perhaps leave an honest review

Would appreciate it. I have been conducting research into this and i have come across a lot of them with promising features but reading reviews sometimes shows you what may never see on their site

Thanks for reading this, the question is this If you where to host a community site that is resource intensive, what hosting company would you choose or suggest. post your reviews and links to such reviews if you have one.
further what would you consider a VPS( Virtual Private Server) or A Shared host for a start

might be considering a wrapper for the major payment gateways we have in the country

I think the Nigerian Open Source Developer Community has come a long way and perhaps it is time we start up some open source project that developers can contribute to.I may be alone in this thought of mine but it is worth it in the long run. Our experiences and knowledge about developments should in my opinion be preserved for posterities to not only learn from but also build on.

All programming languages on planet earth have its strength and weakness and to say that because php is open source and can easily be modified or even copied is not in any way a breach of what a secure language should be.The strength of php is in its flexibility and its modularity is left in the hand of the programmer to determine. Much as Javascript is flexible and you can bend it in whatever way you can so is php. Security is not defined by all the built-in functions that a programming language has but in the architecture of the software that the language is used to build.

In theory security should be incorporated into the design of a software ,but the question is how many software developing companies put this in to practice without extending the time limit set for building the application.Secondly software design and implementation plays a major role in determining how secure a software could be. In php we have exceptions objects we can use not only to handle errors that may occur but also track unwanted behaviours in the codes. A good scenario is what do we do when we expected an int in a variable but got a string?. The say that a drop of water makes the mighty ocean so also tiny oversight as this can escalate into something devastating.

For those that want to write legacy codes in php you will need the php code encoders to protect your intellectual property and distribute your code with licence , you could use ZendEncoder ,ironCube etc. This software encodes your source code.
Php has come a long way in it history and it has become the driving force behind major websites on the net.

For usage of php, i figured that even GTBank is running php for there website.

My take on language security is that it depends on how developers use the features that are made available in such languages

While browsing th net i found this letter posted on the net by the developers at SMF asking for a reshuffle of the management. i also found out that development SMF has been slowed down because of this tussle:

Dear Cathy, Derek, and Jeremy,

We're writing to you because we feel that the time has come for us to speak up, take responsibility, and do what's right for the future of Simple Machines.

While we've had our differences in the past, most of us still consider you our friends and can say without a doubt that you've made an impact on our lives.

First, we would like to thank you for the time and effort you've put into the Simple Machines project. You've together put in countless hours supporting and improving not just the community at large, but those inside and close to the team as well. Many of us can honestly say that without you we would never have been on the team and had such great experiences in the first place.

Simple Machines Forum is coming up on its seventh birthday, is greatly recognized throughout the internet, and has shown that it can survive mostly anything and keep running. We ask that you see this not as an attempt at righting the wrongs of the past, but recognizing that mistakes were made and that a brighter future can be found if some sacrifices are made.

Unfortunately, we think it is time for Simple Machines to stand on its own merits and must request that you resign from your positions on both the SMF team and the LLC and let fresh minds make decisions and take responsibility for the project.

We wish you well in your future endeavours and would even like to see you continue to help with the Simple Machines project(s) at some point down the road, even starting immediately at regular team positions.

Our plans for the immediate future are few, but will go a long way towards improving and fortifying Simple Machines for the forseeable future:

* We plan to create a Non-Profit Organization with a Board of Directors to oversee the current forum project and any future projects.
* We would like to investigate and put in place a new license for the product(s).
* We will work together to create a new team agreement that everyone can agree on in principle.
* We will treat each other, the team, former team members, and the community with the respect and dignity that they deserve, and recognize contributions from all.
* We will communicate with each other to create a team structure that fosters a fun and responsible place to work on projects that we all enjoy.

We intend to work with Kindred, the team, and former team members in an orderly fashion to make these plans into reality, and assure you that the Simple Machines project you know and love will continue to exist for many years to come.

In closing, we would like to once again thank you for your contributions making Simple Machines Forum what it is today, and sincerely hope that you will consider what we've said. This hasn't been easy for any of us, but we feel that this is a necessary step in making sure that Simple Machines thrives once more. We would prefer not to draw this process out, and ask that whatever changes are made be made peacefully and with good will. Since none of us have recently been in management positions within Simple Machines, we would appreciate if you would stay on board for a short period while the handover takes place, and understand if you would prefer not to.

Thank you,

Huw "H" Ayling-Miller
Steven "Fustrate" Hoffman
Jack "akabugeyes" Thorsen
Jason "JBlaze" Clemons
Joshua "groundup" Dickerson
Aleksi "LexArma" Kilpinen
Alex "Akyhne" Kühne
Peter "Antechinus" Sharpe
Eren "forsakenlad" Yasarkurt
Chris "ccbtimewiz" Batista
Colin "Shadow82x" Blaber
Nico "aliencowfarm" Boer
Geoff "bigguy" Brunkard
Rick "RickC" Caudill
Sinan "[SiNaN]" Çevik
Bryan "Runic" Deakin
Jan-Olof "Owdy" Eriksson
Gary M. Gadsdon
Brad "IchBin" Grow
Douglas "The Bear" Hazard
Juan Jose "JayBachatero" Hernandez
Bjoern "Bloc" Kristiansen
Jeff Lewis
Justin "metallica48423" O'Leary
Scott "RedOne"
Jordan "Eliana Tamerin" Schnaidt
Ben "Ben_S" Scott
Jeremy "jerm" Strike
Peter "Arantor" Spicer
Jade Elizabeth "Alundra" Trainor
Dannii Willis
René-Gilles "Nao" Deberdt.

The making of a great site in not following the normal way of web development. When the world is building site with tables and divs try to invent your own tools and think outside the box.
The bottom line of this topic is to keep abreast with the latest development in the world of web programming

What happens when a developer goes on leave from company active work?
Does going on leave mean leaving your company laptop behind and not touching any thing called computer?I used to think that way but now i kind of like figured that you do not actually go on "Leave" it is all a sham cos the very work that you do will keep following you where ever you go. I am suppose to be on a leave but i am two days in to it still doing company work for some clients that would not even want to here the word Leave.A replacement for me was sent down but i was begged to still be around for a while. Told then that i am not a machine,and i needed some time off.

When i sat down to wonder what i was going to be doing during my leave period. it is kind of like irony that i am still going to be typing off on the keyboards. This is kind of like weird but it is a good move for me cos i will really be free to do my own coding.I have got to catch up with a long time friend that distance has keep apart and well may be will be doing some coding.

I am not very good at going out ,someone will have to teach me that (an open confession from an open source developer) . Perhaps i should do more of going out, travelling, meeting people,talking with friends etc, that sounds good but what happens when in the mist of talking with friends, you find a solution to a problem that has been lingering in your mind for a while and the problem is computer related.
God save me from this man-made invasion in my life .
In the meantime happy Xmas to all WMasters in the house , i won't forget the code warriors also whose insight i have benefited from.
Cheers

Hey guys i see a lot of guys talking about hacking and the fun of it . yeah it is really fun when you learn how to break into systems and stuff like that but what happens if it turns out that you are the victim of this break-in. Well it is really not fun then cos imagine you have sensitive information in your system like a blue-print for the next biggest innovation in the development of space-craft and only to wake up the next morning and your system is telling you access denied and when you use brute-force on it you trigger off perhaps what is known today as Mutative Algorithm and you do not have a single idea how to go about dealing with it.
That is what i call a living hell cos your intellectual innovation is gone into thin air and within minutes you will be posted a link on where to download the blue-print you have spent ages building.This is a hypothetical scenario but it could happen. I have found that the greatest hacker that ever lived is in the person of Kevin David Mitnick now a computer security consultant. This guy hacking adventure was triggered when the US hired an outsider as a computer security.This single act spurred kevin into an adventurous path filled with jail terms. He was not deterred one bit until the government could not help it but employ him as the chief security consultant.
To get a feel of what this guy did watch "Takedown"  or read some of his books,The art of Social Engineering
This is an epitome of what i called the good hacker who used his knowledge to do something good and i think any one who just sets up a phishing site to collect personal information he or she can use to gain access to someone's account is not in essence a hacker but a rookie learning the basics of digital stealing. A Genius hacker does not need much information to break into a system and i must say that great hacker are also great coders who when they could not find the right driver for a hardware they develop there own.
Hacking involves a lot of programming- especially the grand-father of all programming language C , networking skills and a bit of social ethics. The social ethics comes in handy when you have to enter an organization posing as someone very important and there in front of you is the pretty receptionist practicing  what has been rammed into her brain on how to welcome customers and make then return again. Unknown to her this guy is different, he walked in looking composed and speaking in a professional manner that if the receptionist is not hooked already might fall for him instantly.That would be a plus for the guy because that is one of his motive for coming. Next he comes too close to the receptionist desks and while the pretty receptionist is wondering what this guy is up to in the social sense of it , the guy is busy taking in every bit of information he finds on the receptionist desks, names, phone number, addresses, and most important the receptionist login details for her system.
The last bit of information is what an experienced hacker need to start off his work. Starting first with the receptionist system he gains access to other systems and launches what is called Computer Worms This stuff has the ability to replicate itself,keep track of every instance of itself within the network and transmit information back and forth.At this stage computer systems start getting bogged down with loads of uncalled for  processes and the pretty receptionist calls on the inexperienced engineer to check up the system. This engineer starts the system,runs computer virus scans and peers at the scan logs and finds nothing and he exclaims "Perhaps you need to defragment the system".
But the experienced guys will figure out that their network has been compromised because he knows too well the processes that should be running on the system and when he checks the process logs he sees stuff like Mutative Key Logger Running etc.

This is a typical hacking scenario and i learned about this while writing a research paper on computer worms and its impact on the society as well as reading the books by Kevin Mitnick

This is no joke man, it is kind of like a brain block you are trying to write good grammar and then you keep wondering if your are writing the correct English or not. I have not had Bill's Gates speech maybe i would have to start hunting for it to see if this kind of stuff happens to him or not. I have had about code writer who write incoherent comments in there code that even the comments themselves needs debugging. I think i saw that post on Slashdot.
I am thinking of taking a leave from active coding and away from computer and internet as a whole perhaps that will help me a little cos the more i stay around this gadget called computer the more i am overloading this brain of mine and the last thing i want to do is to start forgetting names of people and that will be a deadly blow.
Truth is i can no longer do without this gadget cos the last time i tried it was during my service year i spent a whole year in Ogoja town ,Cross River state without active access to computer. what was the impact on me, it was like the end of time. I could not stand it so i did the most stupid thing i have ever done.
Went into the only cafe in the town,loaded the wikipedia page ,viewed the source code , got the link to the JS file, loaded it on the browser,( about 37 pages on wordpad) and printed the thing. I got home and started pouring through those codes and i was happy ever after. My room then was littered with printout as though i worked in a printing press, even though i felt like i was running mad then i think i still appreciated what i did then.

For ur information ABU is starting registration of 2009/2010 academic session 17th December 2009 and is ending Feb 17th 2010 late registration is starting Fed 22nd 2010 .u can find the registration guideline in the Nigerian student forumwww.youbanize.com post wat ever question you have there i might be able to help u. Note new student information will be uploaded on their site before the 17th of December so that they can start registration

I have realized that my English both spoken and written is getting rusty because i have been stuffing my brain with meaningless syntax and semantics in the name of programming and each time i pick up a dictionary to update my grammer i end up looking at the structure of the words in the dictionary and how the words itself are grouped in to category A-Z and how each category is grouped in to pages and on and on it goes with out learning a single new word. Does my fellow developer find themselves in this situation.
I n the good old days i wrote diaries ,poems every day about event around me and now when ever i pick up my diaries to read i get stunned by the fact that i have forgotten some of the words i used in my diary.

Thanks man just felt student need to have a haven online where the can find information or talk to someone about what matters to them- school work and the rest of it. I work in a school environment as a developer and i see a lot of times student misses registration deadline because of poor information dissemination by the school and on the other hand student do not know sometimes where to go for project topics.

Tanx Sam for that one, you know when you have an idea or something new and you want to find out what people think about it. You ask for people's opinion about the idea, u where quick to get stats already about an idea that was born two days ago. All the same i appreciate your view.

Yeah thanks man doing some work on that. will keep the house posted