Answer My Query

You've been looking into the world of Rich Internet Applications for a while now but how do you make the jump? Whether you're a developer working in Java or C++ looking to get on the web or a designer working in an art department wanting to do more interactive, the RIA world is a fast-growing and exciting field many people are looking to transition to. Unless you're lucky enough to have some personal connections into an RIA firm, the decision to move requires hitting the pavement and convincing an RIA company that you're worth hiring. This article comes from my experiences as both a former interviewee and current interviewer at a mid-sized RIA company. I've seen both the good and the bad; the ups and the downs; the ins and the outs. After roughly every interview we conduct I think of a few things I wish I could share about how the candidate could have improved their chances of getting hired - this article is the collection of all of those ideas.

September 2nd was a sad day for Smashing Magazine. Late in the evening, we received an email from one of our readers, reporting that the data on our Web server may have been compromised. We have conducted a careful examination of the situation, and it turns out that someone attempted to infiltrate our main server and has indeed managed to manipulate some HTML data.

As soon as we discovered what happened, we took our WordPress-powered server offline to make sure that no harm would be done to our website’s visitors. As far as we know, no machine of any of our readers has been compromised. Our readers’ data is of the highest priority to us, and we didn’t want to take any risks.

Smashing Magazine went down around 7:00 pm CST on Tuesday, 2nd September 2009.

Once we turned off Smashing Magazine’s main server, we loaded a back-up with the new software on an external mirror server using Amazon’s E2 Cloud. Loading the back-up, re-building the database and configuring the server to our needs took some time: our system administrator, Rene Schmidt, worked away at it all night.

The attack was “only” on our main blog server; our forum, job board, shop and RSS feed all run on separate servers, and the attackers didn’t gain access to any of them. And because our shop’s server does not store any credit card details or PayPal data, our customers’ private data could not be attacked. As we examined the problem, we kept our users updated through a makeshift maintenance page and our Twitter account, @smashingmag.

Smashing Magazine is now (almost) completely restored. In the process, we were prompted to update our software, and we have used this as an opportunity to improve the security of our servers and revise our security server requirements.

We don’t yet know how exactly this attack was done. Very likely, an outdated WordPress plug-in or old script allowed it to happen. We also don’t know what the main purpose of the attack was.

We express our sincere gratitude to everyone who has offered us help and to everyone who has supported us. We’ll do our best to keep the magazine alive and out of harm’s way in future.

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Web2py is free and open source full-stack enterprise framework for agile development of fast, scalable, secure  and portable database-driven web-based applications. Written and programmable in Python.

Web2py was inspired by Ruby on Rails and, as Rails, it focuses on rapid development and follows a Model View Controller design. But web2py is based on Python and provides a comprehensive web-based administrative interface, includes libraries to handle more protocols, and can run on the Google App Engine.

Web2py was also inspired by Django and, as Django, it has the ability to generate forms from database tables and it includes an extensive set of validators. But it is more compact, easier to learn and does not have any project-level configuration files. It is less verbose than Java-based frameworks and its syntax is much cleaner than PHP-based frameworks. This makes applications simpler to developer, easier to read and maintain.

Features

• SSL-enabled and streaming-capable web server
• Relational database
• Web-based integrated development environment
• Web-based management interface
• Database Abstraction Layer that writes SQL for you in real time
• Internationalization support
• Multiple authentication methods
• Role based access control
• Error logging and ticketing system
• Multiple caching methods for scalability
• jQuery library for AJAX and effects

Web2py can run on Windows, Mac, Unix/Linux, Google App Engine, Amazon EC2, and almost any web hosting via Python 2.4/2.5/2.6, or Java with Jython. It is available under the GPL2 License with an exception for easier commercialization of applications. You can find further information, demos, documentation & download on Web2py’s Website.

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