Bill's Words

23 of the top 25 music videos on iTunes are Michael Jackson’s. Any bets on how long until Lady Gaga and Black Eyed Peas are off the list?

We had a group meeting a few weeks ago. Our manager, obviously perturbed, had written a few numbers up on the board. With no explanation, he said, “Does anybody know what these numbers are?”

Silence.

Dead, uncomfortable silence. We knew these numbers meant trouble.

Then, from the back of the room, one of the techs said…

“That’s the money we could be saving with Geico?”

Even the manager lost it.

Couldn’t have said it better myself.

Makes me want to cry..

If only this were the pervasive mood in Hollywood…

This montage of cool guys, walking away from explosions, should be subtitled “How to tell ‘Whodunnit’: Look who’s not looking at what they dun.”

You must see… Squirrel!.

This airplane’s engines were tested on equipment that I designed. Happy day! See a video of their first on-wing start here.

Mediocre story, great action.

The FTC will get involved in those horrible car warranty robocalls. Finally.

Indeed, this is good news. Senator Charles Shumer (D-NY) got a robocall and got the FTC involved, which apparently, means that the FTC will actually do something about the problem.

But the article mentions that 30,000 other Americans have already complained to the FTC, too, and yet the FTC has done nothing.

So let me get this straight: 30,000 Americans… taxpaying Americans… complain to the FTC, and the FTC does nothing. But one senator who happens to get a robocall in the middle of a session complains to the FTC and they not only jump but ask “How high?”

Does anybody else see a problem with this?

Yeah, I thought so.

Mac OS X Server 10.5.7 Update breaks PHP custom installations.

Apple installs PHP v5.2.8 over your custom PHP installation, and you can know this if you dig from the main article referenced above to the security content of the update.

Here's what I did to alleviate the pain associated with the upgrade:

Before I upgraded, I backed up my configuration information (which I can use to reconfigure PHP if necessary) and current PHP installation so I can downgrade in a hurry if I can't rebuild the new PHP quickly:

php -i > ~/php-config-2009.04.13
sudo cp /usr/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so /usr/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so.old
sudo cp /usr/bin/php /usr/bin/php.old

I then did the update.

If I were very concerned that PHP weren't working correctly and quickly, I'd have swapped the newly-installed Apple PHP with the old one and set it to running while I rebuilt PHP. I didn't need to do that, though, so I just proceeded with rebuilding and reinstalling 5.2.9, because Apple is already 0.0.1 behind the power curve (and because I was too lazy to go looking for the 5.2.8 tarball).

Once the update was done, I looked at what Apple used to configure php...

php -i

...and noticed that it wasn't all that unusual. I then backed up the Apple stuff...

sudo cp /usr/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so /usr/libexec/apache2/libphp5.so.apple
sudo cp /usr/bin/php /usr/bin/php.old

...and grabbed the 5.2.9 PHP tarball from PHP.net, php-ized GD, configured it, made it, and installed it. (Your configure command might look different, of course.)

tar xjfp php-5.2.9.tar.bz2

cd php-5.2.9/ext/gd

phpize

cd ../..

MACOSX_DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=10.5 CFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe -no-cpp-precomp" CCFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe" CXXFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -g -Os -pipe" LDFLAGS="-arch ppc -arch ppc64 -arch i386 -arch x86_64 -bind_at_load" ./configure --prefix=/usr --mandir=/usr/share/man --infodir=/usr/share/info --disable-dependency-tracking --with-apxs2=/usr/sbin/apxs --with-ldap=/usr --with-kerberos=/usr --enable-cli --with-zlib-dir=/usr --enable-trans-sid --with-xml --enable-exif --enable-ftp --enable-mbstring --enable-mbregex --enable-dbx --enable-sockets --with-iodbc=/usr --with-curl=/usr --with-config-file-path=/etc --sysconfdir=/private/etc --with-mysql-sock=/var/mysql --with-mysqli=/usr/bin/mysql_config --with-mysql=/usr --with-openssl --with-xmlrpc --with-xsl=/usr --without-pear --with-freetype-dir=/usr/local/lib --with-jpeg-dir=/usr/local/lib --with-png-dir=/usr/X11R6 --with-xpm-dir=/usr/X11R6 --with-gd --with-ttf --with-iconv=/usr/local/lib --enable-gd-imgstrttf --enable-gd-native-ttf

(That's all on one line, and note that I'm compiling a universal binary here for four architectures--why, I don't remember, exactly, but you probably won't need anything before "./configure" unless you're compiling for multiple architectures.)

make

make test

sudo make install

I then restarted Apache2 with Server Manager and PHP5 was happy again.

You have got to see these pictures of the Manhattan flyover that caused so much controversy last week.

Amazing. Simply amazing. I didn’t realize you could make noises like that with your body.

via GeeksAreSexy

Hilarious writeup of a first experience with Microsoft’s $17,000 touch/table computer, “Surface.”

It’s here. Go read it now.

They’re comic strip characters who might be falling in love.

One more time: Comic strip characters.

So why do I care?

From Good Clean Funnies:

1. In my many years I have come to a conclusion that one useless man is a shame, two is a law firm, and three or more is a Congress. — John Adams

2. If you don’t read the newspaper, you are uninformed; if you do read the newspaper, you are misinformed. — Mark Twain

3. Suppose you were an idiot. And suppose you were a member of Congress. But then I repeat myself. — Mark Twain

4. I contend that for a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle. — Winston Churchill

5. A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul. — George Bernard Shaw

6. A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money. — G. Gordon Liddy

7. Democracy must be something more than two wolves and a sheep voting on what to have for dinner. — James Bovard

8. Foreign aid might be defined as a transfer of money from poor people in rich countries to rich people in poor countries. — Douglas Casey

9. Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys. — P.J. O’Rourke

10. Government is the great fiction, through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else. — Frederic Bastiat

11. Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it. — Ronald Reagan

12. I don’t make jokes. I just watch the government and report the facts. — Will Rogers

13. If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free. — P.J. O’Rourke

14. In general, the art of government consists of taking as much money as possible from one party of the citizens to give to the other. — Voltaire

15. Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn’t mean politics won’t take an interest in you. — Pericles (430 B.C.)

16. No man’s life, liberty, or property is safe while the legislature is in session. — Mark Twain

17. Talk is cheap… except when Congress does it. — Anonymous

18. The government is like a baby’s alimentary canal, with a happy appetite at one end and no responsibility at the other. — Ronald Reagan

19. The inherent vice of capitalism is the unequal sharing of the blessings. The inherent blessing of socialism is the equal sharing of misery. — Winston Churchill

20. The only difference between a tax man and a taxidermist is that the taxidermist leaves the skin. — Mark Twain

21. The ultimate result of shielding men from the effects of folly is to fill the world with fools. — Herbert Spencer

22. There is no distinctly native American criminal class… save Congress. — Mark Twain

23. A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have. — Gerald Ford

from Lol Celebs

I was just watching Showtime’s The Tudors and the king was busy Lording this guy and Duking that guy and Earling somebodyorother.

And it struck me that this could have just as easily been present day royalty in England, save for one thing:

No shutter clicks.

There was silence.

I miss it sometimes.

Delicious. We’ll be back..

Cheap interior, mediocre food.