So, I was reading an article about how Macs cost twice as much as PCs, and how they’re such a rip off, and only gullible consumers buy Macs. I thought, oh no, not again, not the vim vs emacs, linux vs windows troll bait.
Anyway, Macs cost a lot of money, PC’s cost less money. We get it. Pound for pound, spec for spec blah blah blah.
Well did you know that if you drive a Porsche at 60 miles per hour, and a Nissan Sentra at 60 miles per hour, they both travel the same distance at the same rate? They both stop for red lights, and they both get to the same destination at the same time? So why buy a Porsche?

Personal preference, some people like mid engine cars, some people like rear wheel, some people like the ability to get to 60 MPH in 4 seconds (please don’t start on exact times, or model numbers). People work hard for their money, and they usually make a conscious decision to buy a mac, they feel it gives them a better experience, and they’re willing to pay more for it.
I’m sure you can make your Ubuntu, Windows, OS X box to do the same things the other OS has, or you can find 40 reasons why y or more open than z.
Yes I’m sure you can tune your Sentra to go from 0-60 in 4 seconds, but that doesn’t mean that everyone should do it.

Let them be. They aren’t spending your money, let them spend it how they want to. Don’t you have a more pressing problem like:
If Worf was to fight Chewbacca, who would win?

To the KTLA reporter who was amazed by the people standing in line for the iphone. Yes, we know it’s just a phone. It’s just a phone, for God’s sake. Yet, you seem to miss the sad truth about your career. It’s a line, for a phone, and you are so horrible at reporting anything else, that your bosses sent you to report on a line. A line for God’s sake . Now, I could go on insulting you for your pathetic job, but you have kids to feed, so I understand you had to do what your bosses told you. So, let’s try to see this from another perspective.

Have you ever been excited about a sporting event? A football game, soccer, basketball, etc? Have you gone early for a movie premiere? I hope you said yes to at least one of the above, because otherwise you lead a very boring life. Now try and rationalize the logic of people who want to be home for kick off, tip off, or have to see the movie at midnight, the day of the premiere. Think about all the people who stand outside the line for the Oscars, who want to catch a glimpse of their favorite actor or actress.

Watching the opening kick off, with all your buddies at home is not going to change the outcome of the match. Getting to see a celebrity in the heat, is not going to change your life for the better. Yet, people do it. It’s called excitement, about something they care about. Something they’re passionate about.

Don’t mock someone’s passion, chances are you’re passionate about something they can’t relate to either.

Disclaimer: I stood in line for one hour on opening day, and decided to leave due to a conference call I had to attend, and I’ll be in line at 1:30AM for the premiere of The Dark Knight, so I can watch the 3:15AM show. I expect 450 other people in line with me, to watch “just another movie”.

Please take these with a healthy grain of salt.

1. 50 % of the internet people will think the new product announced is better than anything ever, EVAR!!!
2. 50 % of the internet people will think the product is a copy of some other product, and that it’s not doing anything their current product can’t do.
3. 50 % (this is teh internet after all), will say they’re going to wait for version 2.0, cuz they think they’re smarter than the early adopter beta testers.
4. 100% of the folks will balk at the price
5. The remaining 98% of the world will not understand the excitement and fervor about such products, especially in light of the huge crisis, Britney, Lindsay or Paris are going through.. (or will be)

Since it’s the end of the year, and a lot of the “year in review/new years resolutions” type posts will be coming up every where.. I would like to thank all the people who did not tell me about Zend Framework, the PHP Abstract Podcast, and other community events.

I really would like to thank all the developers who did not post tips to PHP Advent, because if it wasn’t for their non contribution, I may have spent more time reading about PHP than reading important posts like:

- Why self promotion is bad
- How this blog post is not self promotion
- How some bloggers have ethics, and don’t link to other bloggers when giving them credit (cuz that just creates a self promotion circle jerk).

Thanks to everyone who didn’t tell me about faking the unexpected, ways to secure my code, and tools to help me increase my productivity, the tough love is really appreciated.

Because of you, I was able to to do less in more time, and that is just the way I want things to be.

I look forward to not reading your posts next year.

Nik Cubrilovic has gone on a little troll and posted 4 tips on ‘Preventing PHP Leakage’. I have some more tips for him and others who think he had something valuable to say..

Make sure you’ve read AND understood the PHP INSTALL doc before you deploy a production server.

… If that’s too hard, I also recommend the following industry practices, which will only help secure your site against this unreliable and clunky language known as PHP. If you use any other language, you can ignore these tips.. since they aren’t PHP.

1. Use firewalls : Firewalls can help prevent unauthorized access to your web servers. If you use PHP, more than likely your server will just give out the root password under high load.
2. Enable SSH on a different port: All PHP hackers know that SSH runs on port 22, trick them all by using port 4222.. they’ll never be able to guess it. For more fun, write a script that will change the SSHD listen port randomly by the hour..
3. TEST : There is thing that you absolutely need to do with PHP code, and that is called testing. See, PHP code unlike any other code sometimes just doesn’t do what you want.. it does what you told it do… unless of course you’ve tested it, and trained it. So, if you test and train the PHP (mod_knowwhatimeant), you’re guaranteed to have the code work to your liking.

All of these solutions are well kept secrets by the upper echelon of the PHP community. Rasmus, Andrei, Sara et al, use these techniques all the time, but won’t tell you this stuff unless you pay them in large sums of picture postcards, or beer.

If you feel all the work above is too much, use a different language, anything but PHP will suffice.