Sky on Tech

There is only one way to avoid SQL-injection attacks ( Bobby Tables attacks)
* Do not create SQL statements that include outside data.
* Use parameterized SQL calls.

take a look at database performance, and the reasons why it remains one of the most important topics for any DBA, developer or systems administrator. I'll also cover some golden rules for performance tuning, which tend to apply regardless of the specific platform or application you're responsible for.

What's New in MySQL 5.5 "It's been a busy year for MySQL. Perhaps you've heard. Here are some recent improvements to the speed, scalability, and user-friendliness of the MySQL database and the InnoDB storage engine that we think deserve their own headlines. Now is a great time to beta test the 5.5 release and give feedback to the MySQL engineering team."

One of the latest additions to the Domino Web developers' toolkit of technologies, XPages, is also arguably its most powerful and revolutionary to date. XPages allows for functionality and capabilities previously thought impossible to achieve in Domino application development. With the inclusion of XPages, you now have the ability to easily create Web 2.0 user experiences in your existing applications. To demonstrate the power of XPages, this tutorial shows you how to Web 2.0-enable the personal address book Domino application template.

Tungle.me eliminates costly double bookings, frustrating time zone mishaps and the endless back and forth of finding a time to meet. It makes it quick and easy to schedule meetings, and it works hand-in-hand with your calendar: Outlook (with or without Exchange), Google Calendar, Apple iCal, Entourage for Mac and Lotus Notes.

FullCalendar is a jQuery plugin that provides a full-sized, drag & drop calendar like the one below. It uses AJAX to fetch events on-the-fly for each month and is easily configured to use your own feed format (an extension is provided for Google Calendar). It is visually customizable and exposes hooks for user-triggered events (like clicking or dragging an event).

In the developing world, access to incubators is limited by cost and distance, and millions of premature babies die each year. TED Fellow Jane Chen shows an invention that could keep millions of these infants warm -- a design that's safe, portable, low-cost and life-saving.

Harnessing the Power of Proven Entrepreneurial Techniques to Drive Innovation in a Large Company. Innovation in large companies presents more significant challenges, since they tend to be more financially driven and less tolerant of risk. In this paper, we look at this issue and how three companies, Danfoss, Hewlett-Packard, and Qualcomm, have stimulated innovation in a relatively short time period by harnessing the power of the business plan competition, a concept that was leveraged from the world of entrepreneurship.

A review of Daniel Pink's newest book, Drive: The Surprising Truth that Motivates Us (and talk held at the Rotman School of Management to a crowd of at least 200 eager listeners). In terms of entertainment value, Pink's talk was worth it. As a speaker, he was funny, engaging and for many people in the crowd, inspiring. At a deeper level, however, the substance of his book wasn't all that new.

Feeding the world with indoor vertical farming - Guest: Dickson D. Despommier, Ph.D., Professor of Microbiology, College of Physicians and Surgeons, Columbia University, New York, NY. A discussion of Dr. Desponmier's work in parasitology research and a concept project of his that could revolutionize farming in the 21st century: the vertical farm ( http://www.verticalfarm.com/).

Forensics, archeology, genealogy, and genetics are devoted to figuring out what really happened. In this hour, we hear surprising stories of playing detective and finding that what really happened in the past is not at all what you’d expected. We start at a trash dump in Egypt, where we find Jesus, Satan, sissies, and porn. Next, the mystery of why hundreds of old letters written to the same woman were discovered on the side of Route 101. And lastly, a blood sampling tour of Asia reveals a prolific baby-maker and potentially a world conqueror.

A discussion with Heike Bruch, professor of leadership at the University of St. Gallen in Switzerland and coauthor of the HBR article The Acceleration Trap - constant acceleration isn't always the best way to maximize results, sometimes "the race is won in the pits, not on the track". For more information see http://hbr.org/2010/04/the-acceleration-trap/ar/1

Dr. Atul Gawande, surgeon at Brigham and Women's Hospital and author of The Checklist Manifesto explains how chceklists help bring some order to otherwise chaotic situations.

What can extreme surfing and World of Warcraft teach the enterprise? Independent Co-Chairman of the Deloitte Center for the Edge and former Xerox PARC Chief Scientist John Seely Brown holds them as examples of the power of frequent benchmarking and full industry info-share. He also uses them to show how the core ecosystem can be made stronger by sharing knowledge gathered from learning on the edge. In addition, Seely Brown touches upon his theory of a monumental economic shift from a push to a pull economy as outlaid in his 2010 book, The Power of Pull: How Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things in Motion. For more info on John Seely Brown see http://www.johnseelybrown.com/

Dr. Moira Gunn and David Ewing Duncan talk personalized medicine with Wired magazine Executive Editor, Thomas Goetz, the author of The Decision Tree. They highlight the fact that personalized medicine is NOT just DNA testing, but helping people make healthy life decisions based on their specific circumstances and body.

Moira interviews Dr. Paul Dick, CEO of Chemaphor, a small Canadian company with products for both animals and humans. The Company's technology is based on the idea that carotenoid compounds, such as beta-carotene and lycopene, are actually nutritional sources of a diverse family of non-vitamin A carotenoid oxidation products that possess hitherto unrecognized biological activities. Many such carotenoid oxidation products are found pre-formed in plants and many of them inevitably become part of the human diet, as well as the natural diet of many animals. For more information on the company, see http://www.chemaphor.com

Moira interviews Jonathan Littman and Marc Hershon about their book I Hate People!: Kick Loose from the Overbearing and Underhanded Jerks at Work and Get What You Want Out of Your Job. In it they have selected and analyzed the ten most troublesome types of people likely to appear in the workplace.

In the developing world, access to incubators is limited by cost and distance, and millions of premature babies die each year. TED Fellow Jane Chen shows an invention that could keep millions of these infants warm -- a design that's safe, portable, low-cost and life-saving.

Nick Veasey shows outsized X-ray images that reveal the otherworldly inner workings of familiar objects -- from the geometry of a wildflower to the anatomy of a Boeing 747. Producing these photos is dangerous and painstaking, but the reward is a superpower: looking at what the human eye can't see.