http://otweb.com On The Web Blog http://otweb.com/phramework/pw/module/blog/index.php?id=952 Near Record Low Mortgage Interest Rates Failed To Bring Home Buyers Back Housing Market Plunged in July, Fueling Anxiety Homes sales vs home supply Employment U.S. Economy Slowed to 1.6% Growth Pace in 2nd Quarter Fed ready to take 'unconventional measures' http://otweb.com/phramework/pw/module/blog/index.php?id=951 This past Sunday, we were visiting my parents in Houston, so we decided to go visit Lakewood church (Joel Osteen's church). It is currently the largest church in the US. We've never been there before and since I don't really think too highly of Joel Osteen, my expectations were low. We went to the 11 AM Sunday service. Not knowing how busy it would be, we arrived a little past 10. Turned out that getting in is not a problem. It was easy to find a parking spot and easy to get inside. So, we waited around in the bookstore, which is a pretty good sized bookstore. We got a seat at 10:45 and there were a lot of seats empty. Only by 11:30 was the stadium pretty full. Praise and worship was a pretty dynamic time. I don't think they say that they are charismatic, but it rivals any charismatic worship time with plenty of shouting, clapping, hand raising, and dancing. Afterwards, they had prayer lines to pray with prayer counselors. Lines were formed all over the stadium, all were fairly long. And they prayed with everyone in the lines, which took about 15 minutes to get to everyone. I was pretty impressed with this, since I haven't seen this done in any church service. They also had communion concurrently during the prayer time. Joel Osteen spoke at another church that Sunday, so the Spanish pastor, Marcos Witt preached. He was actually pretty good, and in some ways even better than Joel Osteen. He was funny, had great facial gestures, and can act. And of course he can also sing. But the thing that impressed me the most about the church is that it is very diverse. I would say Whites are the minority there. There are a lot of Blacks and Hispanics there. And there also was a decent size of Asians there. People are dressed from flip-flops to suits. Age also spans from young to old. I have not seen that much diversity in a church of any size. Leaving the church is a problem. It took us awhile just to get out of the building to our car. And once we made it to the car, it took us over 30 minutes to get out of the parking lot. What don't I like about the church? What I find is that the messages are quite shallow and only emphasize on prosperity and victory. Though there's nothing wrong with being prosperous and victorious, it is a skewed view of Christianity and life. The theme of the entire service is positive thinking and the tendency to focus on self. But, as evidenced by the size and diversity of the church, this is a theme that many people are attracted to. But, if you're ever in the Houston area, it's definitely worth the trip to go visit there. http://otweb.com/phramework/pw/module/blog/index.php?id=950 This is the first time I've heard of an airport shut down because of a UFO sighting. On July 7, a UFO was identified in the Xiaoshan airport in Hangzhou City in China. It was spotted at 8:40 PM local time and shut down the airport for several hours. Some theories are: - Secret military aircraft - Foreign missle/spyplane - Crashing airplane - Helicopter - Private craft - Alien ship A secret military aircraft doesn't make sense cause why would they be testing a secret aircraft near a major city? And especially where there is public air traffic? If it was a foreign missle/spyplane, why hasn't the Chinese officials condemned it? It wouldn't be surprising that the Chinese would cover-up a crashing airplane. But, there would be wreckage that would be reported if this was the case. And that would be very difficult to cover-up. A helicopter would make the most sense. However, it seems to be quite high. And it supposedly moved very fast and looked like a comet. A private craft would be a possibility. But, this should be readily identifiable by air traffic controllers. An alien from another planet? Can't completely rule it out, but highly doubtful. Also, several of the other supposed images are not from July 7 and not from China. But the fact that an airport officially closed due to a UFO sighting makes it interesting. Links: Airport closed after UFO appears on radar screens Chinese News Report - Youtube UFO in China's Skies Prompts Investigation Space.com forum http://otweb.com/phramework/pw/module/blog/index.php?id=949 Yesterday, I was driving to Lowe's. As I pulled into the parking spot, a cop stopped behind me. "He's blocking my car", I thought. Then he got out and walked to me and asked for my driver's license. "Driver's license?" I asked as I fished it out. "You know what you did?" he asked, and then pointed to the Lowe's entrance. "You could not turn left into the entrance." He was right. As I was pulling into Lowe's, I noticed that the entrance was only for the other side, but noticed it too late so just pulled in. "I've already stopped 11 cars this morning for that" he added, "It's a $150 fine." Great, I thought, a money trap. He just sits there for easy picking and racks in the fine. During the entire time, I remained respectful and humble. I said, "Sorry, I didn't see any signs." "Yes, there's a sign there" he replied, "Do you want me to write you up a ticket or are you going to remember?" I had no idea what he was talking about. I thought it was another trap. So I said, "Go ahead and print me a ticket." I guessed I confused him this time, so he said "Let me ask again, do you want me to write you a ticket or should I let you go?" At this point, it dawned on me that maybe this was not a money trap and that he was willing to forgive me. So I said, "I guess let me go. I won't do it again." And then to my surprise he let me go. As I left Lowe's, I went to check to see if there really was a sign, and yes there is, but not in a place where you'd ever notice it. It was on the right side of the road, but the turn into Lowe's was to the left. Why would anyone look to the right to see if you can turn left. They should've place the sign next to the entrance. Thinking about it afterwards, I thought it was a good example of our spiritual run-in with the law. When God judges us, it doesn't matter if we know what the laws are or not. But instinctively, we do know what the laws are and that we've violated them. And it doesn't matter if 11 billion people have also done the same thing. We are still guilty before the law. If we humble ourselves before God, he can forgive us. But if we rationalize, justify, argue, be arrogant, God will not forgive us, but fine us. I'm pretty sure that if I had been disrespectful and argumentative, the policeman wouldv'e just given me a ticket without any option of mercy. But since I remained respectful, and even willing to be fined, he was willing to forgive me. http://otweb.com/phramework/pw/module/blog/index.php?id=948 - Largest US oil spill disaster - April 20, 2010 10 PM CDT explosion occurred on Deepwater Horizon oil rig - Rig was 41 mi off Louisiana coast - Oil well located 5,000 feet below the ocean surface - Rig owned by Transocean, built by Hyundai, leased by BP, Anadarko and Mitsui - Macondo prospect estimated to contain 50 million barrels of oil - Blowout preventer made by Cameron and installed by Halliburton - Halliburton said that it had finished cementing 20 hours before the fire Coverage: Deepwater Horizon Unified Command White house NOAA CNN MSNBC gCaptain ADN Upstream NOLA Companies: BP Transocean Halliburton Hyundai Heavy Industries Anadarko Petroleum Corporation Cameron Articles: BP Gulf Oil Spill Cheat Sheet: A Timeline of Unfortunate Events Oil Blowout: What Did BP and Halliburton Know, and What/When Did They Tell Us? Wikipedia: Deepwater Horizon oil spill List of oil spills Maps: Topo map CNN Spill Tracker Oil Spill Tracker Where Oil Has Made Landfall Nola Video: Spill Cam 60 Minutes Photos: Boston Globe Nachofoto Yahoo photos http://otweb.com/phramework/pw/module/blog/index.php?id=947 Probably one of the top issues in running a website is security. A hacker successfully getting into your website could effectively shut it down. Though there is no guaranteed way to stop a determined hacker, one needs to put up as many walls as possible to deter the casual hackers. Here's some tips on hardening a Linux web server: - Disable root login. I see this attempted all the time in my logs. - Use ssh/sftp and disable telnet/ftp. - Disable all logins, except for the necessary ones. - Keep all software up to date. - Keep regular backups of data. One time, a hacker did get through. Fortunately, I had a recent backup and didn't lose too much data. - Make sure any code is immune from SQL injection and XSS attacks. There are libraries/tools that run on top of code that will catch suspicious activity before it hits any code. - Install Brute Force Detection. This will detect authentication failures and automatically block them. - Install an Intrusion Detection System (IDS) such as OSSEC. It monitors many things and also automatically blocks suspicious activity. Links: Hardening Linux Web Servers 20 Linux Server Hardening Security Tips Securing and Hardening Red Hat Linux Production Systems 28 Steps on how to harden your linux server Hardening Linux http://otweb.com/phramework/pw/module/blog/index.php?id=946 - Superset of C - C with features of Smalltalk - Object oriented - Created in 1986, almost 10 years before Java - Passes messages instead of calling methods - Simpler than C++ - Has no "standard library", unlike C++ and Java - No namespaces - Uses label names for method parameters - Run-time type checking, instead of compile-time (C++, Java) - Dynamic linking. Code is loaded as needed at run-time. - Code is comprised of interfaces (header) (.h) and implementation (methods) (.m) - Objects are introspective at run-time - Can add methods to any class without subclassing through categories - "@" is a compiler directive - "id" type for all objects - "nil" type for a null object - Operations on nil objects do not generate an error - "NS*" type for "Next Step" objects - Uses dot syntax for getters/setters - Has both manual and automatic (2.0) memory management - Latest version has exception handling - Typically Objective-C programs have fewer (but larger) classes than other OO languages Intro: Wikipedia Learning Objective-C Objective-C Beginner's Guide C++ and Objective-C Compared Objective-C is Fun Reference: The Objective-C Language Mac OS X Reference Library Learning Objective-C http://otweb.com/phramework/pw/module/blog/index.php?id=945 Links: XMLRPC vs REST vs SOAP vs CIM vs RMI vs Message Bus vs … Lots of RPC Options Web Services and PHP – SOAP vs XML-RPC vs REST REST vs. SOAP – The Right WebService Share Justifying your choice in web service infrastructure Wikipedia: XML-RPC SOAP REST Specs: XML-RPC SOAP http://otweb.com/phramework/pw/module/blog/index.php?id=944 Snow Leopard actually has Apache 2 and PHP 5 preinstalled. To get PHP working, here is how to do it: Enabling PHP and Apache in Leopard. MySQL is not preinstalled, but here is how to do it: Install MySQL on Mac OSX. Links: Install Apache/PHP/MySQL on Snow Leopard http://otweb.com/phramework/pw/module/blog/index.php?id=943 I love my new MacBook. Here are the reasons: - Fast bootup and shutdown time - Based on Unix - LED backlit screen - Fantastic graphics - Watching Hulu is as good as a DVD - Not filled with adware/bloatware - Multi-touch trackpad - Doesn't lock up or freeze - Long battery life - Quiet - Mag power connector - Seemless connection with Windows computers - Coolness factor