Is that big doggy running Windows?

Boston Dynamics call it “Big Dog” and it looks rather funny, like two guys carrying a sofa, mixed with the Hunter from Half Life 2 Episode 2.

I am in two minds about this puppy – whilst it is an awesome piece of hardware and software engineering which I would love take apart or ride around town, if you pop some weapons on it i’ll be waking in cold sweats about the T3 Sci-Fi Mule coming back from the future to kill me…regardless you should take a look and prepare to be amazed or amused at it’s handling of icy conditions!

PHP 5.2.5 on Windows 2003

There is an oddity in the PHP 5.2.5 installer (and possibly earlier) on Windows 2003 in that it’s default install path is C:\Program Files\PHP. Nothing odd there and indeed the install finishes without issue with the PHP Application Extension and PHP Web Extension configured automatically in IIS (I was tried with both ISAPI and CGI) however when you try to view a PHP page in IIS you get a 404.

It turns out that the path of the PHP Application Extension is in 8.3 format whilst the Web Extension is in LFN format – as far as IIS is concerned that these are two different paths. Editing the PHP Application Extension to include the LFN path enclosed in quotes ( e.g. “C:\Program Files\PHP\php5isapi.dll” ) makes IIS happy.

So if you find you install PHP to a path with non 8.3 paths and you get a 404 on PHP pages then edit the Application Extension to get it going!

Zeitgeist

I’m not sure exactly how much of this 2 hour film is true (a great deal of the details certainly are), but even if just half of it is true then it explains a whole lot about the world and the way it is. Either way it is fascinating (even for someone who doesn’t revel in conspiracy theories), so with Z-Day drawing near (15th March 2008) it seems appropriate to give it a link and hope one of you two visitors (I know who you are…) watch it…