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JibJab … the original. Always good. Always good to share. 

Disclosure: I support Barack Obama. 

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Every now and then I see something that makes me smile. The cool thing is that the web lets me share.

Disclosure: I support Barack Obama. 

Well, that’s what Computerworld said.

And, it is what PHP said too (www.php.net/archive/2008.php#id2008-08-07-1). I’d considered it dead since 03.Jan.2008 with the release of 4.4.8 (www.php.net/ChangeLog-4.php#4.4.9). But it managed a few more breaths.

Of course users should migrate to PHP5. But gee, it is hard to blame them for not doing it yet. After all, post-beta version 5.0.1 has only been out since 12.Aug.2004 (www.php.net/ChangeLog-5.php). You really can’t expect technology people to turn on a dime you know.

See article at www.computerworld.com.au/index.php/id;1239055978

California has a problem. Seems the governor and the legislature can’t agree on a budget. (That’s news?)

So Governator Schwarzenegger opted for an approach to try to force the issue. He decided to cut payroll.

He issued an order to temporarily reduce employee salaries to the federal minimum wage level. As Bill Snyder wrote, he tried to “cut (albeit temporarily) state employee salaries to the level of fry cooks at McDonald’s”. But wait. Seems that is impossible because state Controller John Chiang, (the Controller issues the checks) believe that all the COBOL programmers have died and that it is just impossible.

In 2003 my office tried to see if we could reconfigure our system to do such a task,” he told a State Senate committee on Monday. “And after 12 months, we stopped without a feasible solution.

Well, at least Bill Snyder knows a fairy tale when he hears one.

The story has been interpreted by the media (including the New York Times on Wednesday) to make it seem like COBOL is similar to ancient Egyptian, carved on stone walls and only read by priests in loin cloths or cloistered academics. In particular, the writer quoted some bozo at Carnegie Mellon University who likened COBOL to “a television with vacuum tubes,” and then said: “There are no COBOL programmers around anymore. They retired centuries ago.” Wrong, wrong, wrong.

Well, I don’t know about California, but this COBOL programmer is alive.

But Why in the world would you change the programs anyway?

Just write a quick and dirty file update to store the current payroll file, then update all the records with a new pay rate.

After the crisis, write a quick and dirty program to change it back to the stored value.

You don’t even need to know anything about COBOL.

Article:
weblog.infoworld.com/tech-bottom-line/archives/2008/08/calling_all_cob.html

Every now and then, government politely gives us a lesson in one of the many ways to do things that really aren’t government’s business. It is good to watch for these. After all, the United States of America exists, in part, because Mother England kept trying to do things that really weren’t any government’s business.

The 01.Aug.2008 issue of the Houston Chronicle carries this story
“State loses attempt to argue anew for sex toy ban”
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/5919987.html 

I wonder how many of my tax dollars we spent trying to protect me.

In the comments of that article, I was alerted to a film entitled “Dildo Diaries”. It’s for sale. It is 63 minutes long. But an 11 minute excerpt is available for free on You Tube here
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TYXUUsDGxkU

It’s a simple but very sad story. Dr. Libshitz want to get an account with Verizon to have DSL.

Verizon wouldn’t let him use his own name. Specifically Verizon’s computer objected to 4 … count’em 4 … characters in the doctor’s last name.

Ok. Computer’s aren’t perfect. But come on. It shouldn’t take an act of the gods to get this sorted out. The problem wasn’t the computer saying “no”. The problem was that no person would override it and say “yes”. Every person thought their job was to do what the computer told them to do.

GIVE ME A BREAK!

Verizon should put this story of incompetence in their new employee orientation for every single member of their customer service team.

Read the story here
http://www.philly.com/philly/hp/news_update/26089374.html 

(A special thanks to Jim Huggins (no known relation) for posting this here
http://jkhuggins.livejournal.com/96029.html?view=149021)