Warning: Constant ABSPATH already defined in /home/public/wp-config.php on line 27
Because — Why Now?
On-line Opinion Magazine…OK, it's a blog
Random header image... Refresh for more!

Because

funny pictures of cats with captions

How about the annoying people who write the installation software for HP printers.

Note to self: when replacing an HP printer with another HP printer, always remove any and all HP printer software first, as the installation of new software does not update or overwrite existing programs, it duplicates them and they want different versions of .dlls with the same freaking name located in the same directories.

7 comments

1 cookie jill { 09.28.09 at 1:31 am }

Love the LOL kitty…and the new “space suit” background
.-= last blog ..Planned Parenthood’s Book Sale – The last day =-.

2 jams O'Donnell { 09.28.09 at 10:59 am }

Haha. And I;m glad this cat speaks the Queen’s English too!
.-= last blog ..A man bites dog story: van Meegeren forgery proved genuine masterpiece =-.

3 Bryan { 09.28.09 at 11:27 am }

Fighting with software bends you mind, Jill. That’s part of the star field from the Hubble.

True evil requires erudition, Jams.

4 Kryten42 { 09.29.09 at 12:50 am }

Told u… HP sux. 😉 😛

I could use a kitty like that right now. *shrug*

OT: Finished the two assignments finally. Next 2 are due in 3 & 4 weeks.
Getting the test03 site up. Learned what I needed from 02. Hopefully, 03 will be the final. I can hope…

5 Bryan { 09.29.09 at 3:07 pm }

HP outsources their software, including their printer drivers, which means there is no consistency. I bought the follow on product to the one I replaced, so the programs have the same names, but they are totally different in look, feel, and function. The damn .dll problem is something that everyone screws up. If you want to use tweaked .dlls, you keep them in their own, separate directories, you don’t screw around in the general directory.

I didn’t even get into what it took to kill Quicktime. The worst of both worlds – Steve and Bill battling for control at boot.

OT: Hopefully I get things in line so I can actually see about mucking up your site. Between me and the cats, it should get tested.

6 Kryten42 { 09.30.09 at 8:02 am }

Don’t mention HP software products!! I was manager for their SoftBench CASE and IDE development tools in the 90’s. We won a $250 mill project where HP (HQ USA) promised to deliver certain key software. We discovered half-way into the project that HP often promised a product them if they had to actually deliver it, to buy out some company that had it. In this case, PeopleSoft. Of course, as was HP’s habit, they screwed the company and fired everyone who actually knew anything about the products, and instead of the 6 months they promised to deliver a certain integration, the project was canceled after 1.5 years of failure, and my rep sunk with it. The primary problem was that the core project was based on Sybase RDBMS, and the peopleSoft products they swallowed were based on Oracle, and never would that train ever meet! The morons hadn’t even done basic 9and very critical) research before they blew hundreds of millions on products that wouldn’t work.
/rant!

I think Steve and Bill are either clones or long-lost twins personally. They now have an almost identical business model. And Bill did take a 40% bailout stake in Apple. *shrug* After working for Apple until a few years ago, they went from a company I respected greatly in the early 90’s, to a clone of M$ (as far as business practices go).

OT: (whatever OT is in this case anyway!) 😛 Don’t worry about the 02 site (unless you are curious). I got what I needed from it. I’m building (what I hope will be the final test!) 03 now. Should be up on the weekend if all goes well. Will have a new registration system I want tested, so everyone will have to reregister anyway (even though i can easily migrate their registration to the new site. Part of the ‘Disaster Management’ system I developed.)

BTW, during the course of this development process, I’ve written many notes and documents about the process and learned a lot that I wish I didn’t have to know! LOL Here’s an example just for a laugh… 😉

Centos 5.3 x86_64 Updated PHP v5.2.10 rpm’s, rationale.

I was forced to compile/test/modify/recompile/test… several php modules and lib’s (including php itself) to v5.2.10 because of serious security and performance issues in the stock version and the latest update available via yum and Centos rpm packages (php v5.1.6).

Two major problems for the LM site are that Centos 5.3 and PHP 5.1.6 do not work with ‘open_basedir’ restrictions and ‘symlinks’. Version 5.2.10 does. There are also several security reasons to update, and compatibility issues with various other required software.

I have taken the standard Centos 5.3 php rpm files (php-5.1.6-23.2.el5_3.src.rpm and php-extras-5.1.6-15.el5.centos.1.src.rpm) and installed them. After that I updated the php version to 5.2.10 in the php.spec and php-extras.spec and, by a time consuming trial-and-error process, removed all patches that did not apply cleanly.

Though there have been php updates since v5.2.10, I resisted using them because v5.2.10 is known stable (especially on x86_64 systems) and is known to work with all the software I intend to use! Sometimes, “latest and greatest” is not always a good thing, or even necessary. Then again, neither are “golden oldies”!! Give us poor damned developers a break Red Hat and Centos!! If you expect people to use your EL servers in real-world production environments, the least you can bloody-well do is ensure we have decent and proper tools to bloody-well work with!!! Morons!
/rant

Here is the list of rpm’s recompiled for the LM system:

php-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-bcmath-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-cli-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-common-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-dba-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-devel-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-eaccelerator-5.2.10_0.9.5.2-1.x86_64.rpm
php-extras-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-gd-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-imap-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-ldap-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-mbstring-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-mcrypt-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-mhash-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-mysql-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-ncurses-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-odbc-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-pdo-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-pgsql-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-readline-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-snmp-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-soap-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-tidy-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-xml-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm
php-xmlrpc-5.2.10-1.x86_64.rpm

…and much rejoicing was heard, and much fun was had… by… all…? Aha, right.
/snark!

That’s one of many such! You get the picture, I’m sure! If you want any others… let me know. 😉 😆

If you or anyone is thinking of hosting on a VPS, ask me first!! There are many hidden gotcha’s!

7 Bryan { 09.30.09 at 12:12 pm }

Apple was fine until Pepsi guy was allowed to screw things up based on the misconception that CEOs are interchangeable and don’t really need to know anything about the product the corporation sells. That attitude really worked well for tech companies and the car companies. When the guys at the top only understand things that matter to Wall Street, the company doesn’t provide what Main Street wants and/or needs. MBA CEOs are the bane of corporations.

OT: We had PhP issues at my host not long ago regarding security and WordPress had similar issues not long afterward. It was the case of a “Patch Too Far”. The latest and greatest “feature” opened up a major hole in the defenses. I spent too many years on the “bleeding edge” of progress to automatically upgrade anything. I tend to wait until after the first service pack is released and they have cleaned up the major bugs.

There is a lot to be said for stability. I had to work with a client whose contact person was into every new thing. He kept trying to get me to upgrade components, and I refused. He made an upgrade on his own which cost him his job, and the company a major bill fixing what he had done because the upgrade corrupted their database. I suspected that would happen from testing, and was able to get them back up in a couple of days because I had already written the software to clean up what the upgrade had done.

The guy lost his job because I tracked the conversations, and my recommendations. I sent a copy to the guy’s boss, because I wasn’t going to accept any responsibility for what happened and wasn’t going to include the fix in the standard support agreement.

This Pollyanna belief in the newest and greatest thing is scary. The majority of the “upgrades” are for gaming and “gee whiz”, with stability a poor step-child.

Test it, so you don’t have to fix it on a critical system has become a lost concept.

If I get a VPS need, I guarantee that I’ll be bugging you.