The FuzzyBlog!
Marketing 101. Consulting 101. PHP Consulting. Random geeky stuff. I Blog Therefore I Am.

Wednesday, June 26, 2002

The PHP 4.2 Issues In Detail All, As I noted in an earlier blog entry, I got what I feel is HOSED (that's not good) by the 4.2 release of PHP when my ISP installed it today.  Maxim, my editor in chief at www.phpbeginner.com, was technically savvy enough to attempt to make this acceptable to me.  And he did a great job.  But you'll see my final response at the end.  I'd also like to really, really thank Guy K. Haas who was nice enough to both edit this document and confirm that I'm not nuts (at least to him, or we're both nuts).  Guy has a history of working at the ANSI standards level for programming languages so it's fair to say that he more than understands this.  Note -- This one is real geeky although at least one of the fundamental issues at hand is economic. -- Scott ==> Read Story <== Closing Comment: I let Maxim have the last word in the email exchange so I'll make my point here.  I still think it was a bad decision on the part of the PHP developers.  I totally understand the techical issues behind it.  And while they may be right the overall decision was wrong.  IMHO of course. 10:56:39 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

How Cool!  They Listed Me as a Speaker at Web Builder! Ok this one is vain.  I'll admit it.  With being nonstop at a keyboard since 3 am (going on 19 hours now), I deserve it.  Anyone wants to have lunch or dinner on September 9, 10 or 11, I'll be in Vegas speaking at the Web Builder conference. http://www.webbuilderconference.com/speakers.asp#Johnson  and here's my topic: http://www.webbuilderconference.com/sessions.asp#BestPractices My thanks to Robert Scoble for asking me to speak.  I'm looking forward to it. 10:16:12 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

If You Use FreeBSD and Open SSH A serious vulnerability in default installation of OpenSSH on the OpenBSD operating system has come to light. A vulnerability exists within the "challenge-response" authentication mechanism in the OpenSSH daemon (sshd), according to an alert issued today by Internet Security Systems. http://www.theregister.co.uk/content/55/25910.html 8:08:23 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

The Best Beginning to a Programming Article Ever! In the beginning, the file was void, and without text. The Programmer brought text to the file by saying "Let there be hello world" and there was hello world, and it was good. But soon hello world was not as good as it once was, and the Programmer said "let there be change!" And where there once was static content in the file, there was now variable content. Beholding the creation, the Programmer was happy, and all was well... More ... 8:03:51 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Feedback About SysAdmins My piece about when you need the SysAdmin to "Leave the Building" generated a lot of input.  Given that I've been at the keyboard since 3 am (below) continuous I'm not even going to try and rewrite my essay -- I'd just make a mess out of it.  Instead you should read Kjartan's piece on this.  He's a damn good admin as far as I'm concerned and he took what I wrote to the next level. Thanks Man!  And thanks to everyone else who responded on this one. I'm trying to compile them but it's been a baaaad day and it's going to take a bit.  And it's going to get worse before it gets better.  Why?  PHP 4.2.  It's a big deal when a new version of your main development language is arbitrarily installed by your ISP.  My ISP decided to move to PHP 4.2.  4.2 has a new "improvement" -- form elements used to be automatically cast to variables on the fly.  Wonderful feature.  Now, in 4.2, they require declaration.  And, yes, I know that I can configure this myself with a .HTACCESS file.  Don't care.  Don't care.  Don't care.  It's just plain nasty to change fundamentals in a move from 4.1x to 4.20.  That's a 4.x to 5.0 change.  Or if you have to introduce it then you make the default so it's not used. My ISP didn't tell the customer in advance or even real time so when I noticed code stop working, I dove into a wasted hour of debugging only to find out afterwards what the problem was.  That's 1 hour out of my life that my I feel my ISP's blatant arrogance, stupidity and utter disregard for their customers cost me.  My response?  Simple.  I'm out of there.  A migration that I would have put off until much later is in process NOW.  Nothing like migrating a 650 megabyte website with no notice, don't you think ?  I won't even bother to bitch to them.  So when you wonder how you lose a customer?  This is a great example: Make it "better" without asking if we want "better".  I was fine.  I've been with these guys since 99, spent several grand with them and now I hate them with the passion of a thousand dying suns (or with the anger of one really mean smelly Yak that hasn't eaten recently). Oh and my laptop?  The saga continues.  More in a bit. 7:29:41 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

When I'm Wrong, I'm Wrong -- I Love Rackspace -- And I'm a Customer Again I wrote a critique of RackSpace back in April? in which I criticized one of their policies.  And I'm happy to suck it up and admit that I'm a customer of theirs again.  That's right -- I left and I went back.  Why?  Because when push comes to shove, I'm fanatical about things like uptime, reliability and customer service.  And so are they.  I know the definition of 5 9s and while I'm not there yet, I feel pretty good that with a server from them located in their data center, I have a chance of getting there.  So, yes, they are more expensive.  And, yes, you pay for everything.  But you know what?  It's 100% worth it.  In less than 1 day I've gotten more done in terms of raw SysAdmin stuff than I have in about 3 weeks with stinky, crappy, brand x.  And a lot of the reason was that they have fantastic tech support.  I mean just fantastic.  I'm currently getting even tough problems resolved pretty dang quick. Note: I still think my RackSpace essay was on point -- it wasn't how I would have done it -- but does that really matter?  The important thing for me is that I have a reliable data center that I know will just plain work. RackSpace.  Highly Recommended. Sidebar: Understanding "5 9s" The term 5 9s is really, really simple but misleading if you never saw the math.  All it means (and if I have this wrong, I know someone will let me know) is that if your service, whatever it is, is "5 9s" then it's online and usable for 99.999% of the year.  So I made a little spreadsheet that looks at a full year's time and what this means in terms of uptime. # 9s %age that Means Days Per Year Hours Per Year %of that Time You are Up in Hours Amount of Time You Are Down in Hours Time You Are Down in Days Time You Are Down in Minutes 2 9s 99.0000% 365 9125 9034 91.2500 3.8021 5475 3 9s 99.9000% 365 9125 9116 9.1250 0.3802 547.5 4 9s 99.9900% 365 9125 9124 0.9125 0.0380 54.75 5 9s 99.9990% 365 9125 9125 0.0912 0.0038 5.475 6 9s 99.9999% 365 9125 9125 0.0091 0.0004 0.5475 So if you are only 99% reliable that actually is exactly the same thing as saying "Mr. CEO Sir?  We're going to turn the web site off for 3.8 days".  That's not a good thing.  I know that my stuff will probably never by 5 9s but why not try?  Quality.  It's a good thing.   3:09:58 PM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Now this is Weird: I'm Trying to Convince Someone Else to Go iMac / OS X I mean I haven't done this myself yet (fully done it that is) and I'm now an advocate.  Go figure. 6:34:38 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

Remember CTRL+A, CTRL+C -- My "Software Bug" Condom Just reminding you of it since I just lost an entire essay when I forgot and then I clicked on Post & Publish in Radio (it just went into the ether) when it didn't work.  Notice that the title of this piece has no resemblance to what this post is about?  That's because when you backtrack with the rich edit control under Internet Explorer for Windows, you lose content in that form object -- but not in a normal form object.  And so it goes (sad too since it was a good angry rant).  Oh well. Interesting: It's seems to be tied to the # of visible windows on screen -- not the amount of memory (I'm at 1/2 gig of RAM).  I close more windows and then I can do stuff.  Anyone got a thought here?  I'd say it's GDI resource leaks but I thought more RAM made that better.  And I never saw GDI crap affect server style stuff like Radio but perhaps ... 5:26:52 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This

www.pageseeker.com = Actually an Evil Spammer Long time readers may recall that I have something going on in the Email space.  I talked about it at the beginning of this blog when I thought we were about to ship (yup, I can blow ship date estimates as well as everyone else -- when it's my own code -- not a client's thankfully).  Now that we just got the install routines written, which of course illustrated some new interesting errors to fix, ah yes, love software, we're starting to feel better about talking about it.  I just got a new spam that indicates to me how much we are on track in terms of the need for our product.  The product, which will remain unnamed for now, is an inline anti spam system for a leading email product and does lots and lots more (think about our background in implementing relevancy ranking in search and retrieval and you'll get some ideas -- and then you'll still be surprised).  We've basically rethought email based on about 18 months of thinking and ten months of coding.  One of the reasons why I expose my personal email address so much is to get as much spam as possible.  If it gets past our spam filters then we rebuild them / rethink them.  So, anyway, pageseeker... I just got an email that sneakily slipped by us.  It had one of those oh so lovely hard core pornographic images embedded in it via a <IMG tag and it got by us because all the textual content was graphical, not text.  Sneaky!.  Sigh.  Unacceptable.  The concept of someone's 7 year old child or, worse, my Mother getting this is basically our criteria for a successful anti-spam routine.  Explanation: My partner in this project, someone I've worked with for 15 years now, is a Dad with another on the way and my Mother now uses the Internet.  I do not have any kids. Anyway, back on track: Drop into analysis mode.  Tracert it, nslookup, etc.  And I discover that www.pageseeker.com is sharing the same damn IP address with this hardcore site.  So, either www.pageseeker.com just happens to be on the same box by chance or what looks to be somewhat legit is actually a pornographer.  Sigh.  Here's the thought: PAGESEEKER: WOULD YOU PLEASE CHOOSE YOUR BUSINESS MODEL? I mean there isn't anything wrong with pornography; it's a personal thing.  And that's not something I even bother to debate anymore.  Flames on this topic don't even get read anymore, they just go to /dev/null so feel free.  And bear in mind that I don't have any personal issues in this area -- I just think that it's a personal choice that shouldn't be forced on anyone. And when you deliver hardcore imagery right to a mail box that may have Preview Pane turned on, that is forcing it and that's just plain wrong.  (And that's how my day started -- go into email -- cursor down -- and Yikes!).  And then it got worse.  More in a bit. 4:16:28 AM  Google It!  comment []   IM Me About This