scott.hodson.blog

January 29, 2008

Cancel Your Cox Telephone Service!

Filed under: Cox — scott @ 9:49 am

I recently received a phone bill of more than $300 on my fax line the other day. The fax line number is a Cox Telephone number. The reason the bill was so high was that there were several strange calls to Asia (South Korea, Singapore, and Japan). I never call anyone in Asia, and the only device attached to the line is a fax machine. I thought maybe my kids were pushing buttons on the fax machine but the calls were too late at night for them to be playing with it.

After calling Cox and complaining about these calls they kept trying to upsell some international dialing plan. They didn’t believe me that I didn’t make these calls! I finally got them to submit a refund request and turned off all international dialing capabilities for that phone line.

Recently, I received a letter denying my request for a refund, stating that their switch showed that the calls originated from my line. I still have no idea how that’s possible. I’m certain it’s a bug or someone hacked into their phone network to make these calls against my account.

If you have Cox Telephone service, keep an eye on your long distance calls because their phone network or billing system is incorrect and/or vulnerable to hackers using their network at your expense.

January 16, 2008

Macbook Air Will Fail…at Least v1.0 Will

Filed under: Apple, Mac — scott @ 12:48 pm

So I think the MacBook Air will be a flop. It is the same size (screen-wise) as a MacBook, has less horsepower (slower CPU, slower and smaller hard drives, etc), fewer connectivity options, and it costs more. And for what? Just to be thinner and have the latest, coolest looking one? It’s a CEO, show-off send email, process docs, etc, laptop that’ll turn some heads next time he’s in the First Class cabin of his LA to NYC flight, not a mobile knowledge worker productivity workhorse. I guess students will like it too for coolness as well to write their papers on.

I guess if you don’t mind trying to get important stuff done at a slower speed, but at least you’re looking sexy doing it, and don’t mind paying more money for it then it’s for you!

I think eventually this will replace the MacBook and then it won’t matter: if you need a notebook that cranks speed-wise then you’ll get a MacBook Pro.

I’m all for ditching the optical drive though, not needed 99% of the time. I think we’ll see a thinner MacBook Pro sometime this year as well.

P.S. Don’t laugh at me or call me a hypocrite if you see me strutting around with one of these at some point. :)

Here’s a comparison of similar small notebooks from other vendors, compared to the MacBook Air

January 13, 2008

gem install mysql error

Filed under: Technology — scott @ 8:07 pm

On OS X 10.4.11 (no leopard yet!) when I try to install the mysql gem I get an error, something about native bindings.

ScottBook:~ root# gem update mysql
Updating installed gems...
Bulk updating Gem source index for: http://gems.rubyforge.org
Attempting remote update of mysql
Building native extensions. This could take a while...
ERROR: Error installing mysql:
ERROR: Failed to build gem native extension.
/usr/local/bin/ruby extconf.rb update mysql
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lm... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lz... yes
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lsocket... no
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
checking for main() in -lnsl... no
checking for mysql_query() in -lmysqlclient... no
*** extconf.rb failed ***
Could not create Makefile due to some reason, probably lack of
necessary libraries and/or headers. Check the mkmf.log file for more
details. You may need configuration options.
Provided configuration options:
--with-opt-dir
--without-opt-dir
--with-opt-include
--without-opt-include=${opt-dir}/include
--with-opt-lib
--without-opt-lib=${opt-dir}/lib
--with-make-prog
--without-make-prog
--srcdir=.
--curdir
--ruby=/usr/local/bin/ruby
--with-mysql-config
--without-mysql-config
--with-mysql-dir
--without-mysql-dir
--with-mysql-include
--without-mysql-include=${mysql-dir}/include
--with-mysql-lib
--without-mysql-lib=${mysql-dir}/lib
--with-mysqlclientlib
--without-mysqlclientlib
--with-mlib
--without-mlib
--with-mysqlclientlib
--without-mysqlclientlib
--with-zlib
--without-zlib
--with-mysqlclientlib
--without-mysqlclientlib
--with-socketlib
--without-socketlib
--with-mysqlclientlib
--without-mysqlclientlib
--with-nsllib
--without-nsllib
--with-mysqlclientlib
--without-mysqlclientlib
Gem files will remain installed in /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.7 for inspection.
Results logged to /usr/local/lib/ruby/gems/1.8/gems/mysql-2.7/gem_make.out

This should fix it (and yes after the first “–” there is another “–” preceeding the “/usr/local…” path).

sudo gem install mysql -- --with-mysql-config=/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql_config

References:

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