If watching a progress bar can really be counted as "busy."

From MacRumors.com, the iPhone FAQ:

- Does the Web browser support Flash or Java? –No.

- Can it open Word and Excel documents? –No. (Steve Jobs says it can open PDF files, though.)

- Will it sync with Outlook? –No.

- Does it connect to standard iPod accessories like car docks and speaker systems? –Yes!

- Won’t the screen get smudgy? –It does, but you don’t see it except when the screen is off. The one I played with was pretty streaky, but wiping it on my sleeve cleaned it completely.

Now I'm even less likely to get one. The thing that attracted me initially was not the "iPod meets Phone" capabilities - it's the OS. It looks like it could be a really powerful application platform well beyond the phone/media. And they seem to be ignoring that. I can (and often do) read and write Word/Excel files on my $400, contract-free, unlocked Treo 680. That feature is added on by external software, but Apple has specifically said that there won't be an easy way to write and install new apps for the iPhone. They keep comparing it to an iPod, a closed platform. Which seems like a waste. Let it be the computer it could be.

Here's a hopefully simple question for a PHP/MySQL programmer:

I have a PHP page and I want to give it a date as a parameter. The page will then pull off of the database, all records with a matching date. The database field is called Playdate and the parameter is just date. I'd like the URL to look like

blahblahblah.php?date=20070112

So I thought I should be able to do something like

WHERE date_format(Playdate, '%Y%m%d') = $date"

But that doesn't pull any records.

Suggestions?

I don't know the answer to your question, but your code as written will make you vulnerable to an SQL injection attack.

Please elaborate....

blahblahblah.php?date=foo';DROP%20TABLE%20XXX

Does it help that the page uses read-only access and that there's nothing in the database that I care if people see?

Does it help that the page uses read-only access and that there's nothing in the database that I care if people see?

Yeah, it helps. But avoiding that sort of thing is a good habit to get into.

While riding home, I think I figured out a simple way to avoid injection attacks: simply validate that the $date variable is exactly 8 numeric digits.

That should protect me, yes?

That should protect me, yes?

Yes.