It’s official, PHP sucks

Just kidding. But I did think it’s interesting that the latest SANS Top 20 list devoted a spot *specifically*
to PHP. This should be a wakeup call to the PHP community, particularly that segment of the community
that would like to see PHP taken seriously as a commercial tool and/or an alternative to Java.

The other thing I find interesting about this years list is the
recognition that the security landscape has changed; attackers are focusing on attacking applications
and network infrastructure devices in addition to just looking for OS level vulnerabilities.

“This SANS Top-20 2005 is a marked deviation from the previous Top-20 lists. In addition to Windows and
UNIX categories, we have also included Cross-Platform Applications and Networking Products. The change
reflects the dynamic nature of the evolving threat landscape.”

http://www.sans.org/top20/

Maypole has too many dependancies!

I tried to install the Maypole yesterday. For those who aren’t aware, Maypole is a MVC
(Model/View/Controller) framework for building database driven web apps in Perl (kind of similar to the
mondo popular Ruby on Rails). I of course use CPAN to install it.

The availability of so much re-usable code on CPAN has long been one of the strengths of Perl, but for
Maypole at least, they’ve taken it to far. Why? Because installing Maypole required the install of 41
modules!!! That’s insane! And I’m quite sure it doesn’t have to be that way. I’ve installed Ruby on
Rails on the same system (OSX 10.4), and it was definitely NOT that large of an install.

At any rate, while I was waiting for the install to finish, I found a few articles like this one that seem to indicate that Maypole has
been superseded by Catalyst. So I guess I’ll bail out on Maypole and try installing Catalyst.

For reference, here are the Modules that CPAN tried to install for Maypole:

cpan> install Maypole
—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [T/TE/TEEJAY/Maypole-2.10.tar.gz] —–
Class::DBI::SQLite
Class::DBI::FromCGI
CGI::Untaint
Class::DBI::Loader::Relationship
Test::MockModule
UNIVERSAL::moniker
Class::DBI::AsForm
HTTP::Headers
Class::DBI::AbstractSearch
Class::DBI::Loader
Class::DBI::Plugin::RetrieveAll
CGI::Simple
Class::DBI::Pager
Template
Class::DBI
Template::Plugin::Class
UNIVERSAL::require

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [M/MI/MIYAGAWA/Class-DBI-SQLite-0.11.tar.gz] —–
DBD::SQLite
Class::DBI
Ima::DBI

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [M/MS/MSERGEANT/DBD-SQLite-1.09.tar.gz] —–
DBI

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [T/TM/TMTM/Class-DBI-3.0.1.tar.gz] —–
UNIVERSAL::moniker
Class::Accessor
Class::Trigger
Class::Data::Inheritable
Ima::DBI

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [M/MI/MIYAGAWA/Class-Trigger-0.10.tar.gz] —–
Class::Data::Inheritable

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [T/TM/TMTM/Ima-DBI-0.34.tar.gz] —–
DBIx::ContextualFetch

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [T/TM/TMTM/Class-DBI-FromCGI-1.00.tar.gz] —–
CGI::Untaint

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [T/TM/TMTM/CGI-Untaint-1.26.tar.gz] —–
UNIVERSAL::require

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [S/SI/SIMON/Class-DBI-Loader-Relationship-1.2.tar.gz] —–
Class::DBI::Loader
Lingua::EN::Inflect::Number

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [S/SR/SRI/Class-DBI-Loader-0.22.tar.gz] —–
Lingua::EN::Inflect

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [T/TM/TMTM/Class-DBI-AsForm-2.42.tar.gz] —–
Class::DBI::Plugin::Type
HTML::Element

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [S/SB/SBURKE/HTML-Tree-3.18.tar.gz] —–
HTML::Tagset

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [M/MI/MIYAGAWA/Class-DBI-AbstractSearch-0.07.tar.gz] —–
SQL::Abstract::Limit

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [D/DA/DAVEBAIRD/SQL-Abstract-Limit-0.11.tar.gz] —–
SQL::Abstract
Test::Exception

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [A/AD/ADIE/Test-Exception-0.21.tar.gz] —–
Sub::Uplevel
Test::Builder::Tester

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [M/MI/MIYAGAWA/Class-DBI-Pager-0.07.tar.gz] —–
Data::Page
Exporter::Lite

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [L/LB/LBROCARD/Data-Page-2.00.tar.gz] —–
Class::Accessor::Chained::Fast

—- Unsatisfied dependencies detected during [S/ST/STAS/libapreq-1.33.tar.gz] —–
Apache::Test