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Festivus was the other day, the traditional day that people “air their grievances”. Since I did not do that but I seem to be a bit fired up today, I’m going to separate from the normal informative, intellectual articles that would normally go up here, and instead rant a bit. Because there are a lot of things to rant about and I believe very good reasons for those rants to come. If you will allow me…

Another year gone and, with it, another decade in the books. 10 years ago today, we all were frantically wondering what the hell was going to happen when the digital apocalypse descended on us in a thing we all called the Y2K bug. The natural disaster that could have been was the first global digital crisis that never happened. Well, that and AOL chatroom dating, but that’s a different issue.

Over the last 10 years, the digital economy collapsed, but not before laying the groundwork for the digital world we live in now. Massive telecom behemoths riding high on the digital bubble of the late 90s (MCI Worldcom, Global Crossings), laid tens of thousands of miles of fiber traversing the Atlantic and Pacific oceans and tying the world together…. and then promptly went bankrupt as a result. But not without leaving their enduring mark on the planet. More after the jump.

AT&T has upped the ante on their service level. Seems they realize they have a really bad reputation of “Fewer bars in more places” and Verizon Wireless is taking it to them with their “There’s a map for that” ads. These ads caused AT&T to sue Verizon Wireless because the ads apparently misrepresented the truth (though AT&T never denied the ads validity – the maps are comparisons between Verizon Wireless’ all-3G network and AT&T’s much more limited 3G network that complements a larger non-3G calling network). Subsequently, AT&T dropped their suit after it became clear they would not win.

So AT&T admits they have bad service back in September (video below) with “Seth the Blogger Guy” (LOLWUT?) and then sues Verizon Wireless for not being wrong (LOLHUHWUT?). More after the jump.

This question, posed and somewhat answered by Kevin Kelleher of GigaOm. In the article, Kevin suggests that with M&A (Mergers and Acquisition) activity up, among other things, some 17,000 jobs in the past month have been lost. More after the jump.

Community events have become very common these days. Ever since the days of the first BarCamp – an unconference event that caters mainly to developers and techheads and is organized around attendees picking time slots to speak in on the day of the event – and transitioning to other similar style events, like PodCamp, WordCamp, and now Gov 2.0 Camp, these events have become a catalyst for grassroots movement in the areas they focus in.

As a WordPress guy, my roots are with the WordCamp events that are held around the country. I just got back from WordCamp NYC 2 and we’ll be announcing details on WordCamp Mid-Atlantic 2010 around the new year. I’ve been to a ton of these kinds of events. I flew to Boston for PodCamp Boston 2, attended the inaugural PodCamp Philly a few years ago (still the best of its kind, in my opinion) and been involved with a variety of other events like it. More after the jump.

The other day, I wrote the popular 10 Things You Need to Know About WordPress 2.9. As usual, most people are very excited about the new release which is now in beta and available for testing. In the article, I made a few fundamental errors which I have since corrected.

Notably, I mentioned that WordPress 3.0 would be going to PHP 5. This was based on conversations I had with a core developer which I now realized I misunderstood. Kinda. WordPress will probably not be dropping PHP 4 support in WordPress 3.0 but as core developer Mark Jaquith suggests:

Some things already require PHP 5, like time zone support or oEmbed. There are no plans that I know of to remove PHP 4 support in 3.0 — last I checked we still had 12% of WP installs using PHP 4.

I see more of a natural and gradual deprecation of PHP 4. We’re very much open to making new features require PHP 5 if it would be a pain to make them PHP 4 compatible.

As a PHP developer, I am on board with calls for PHP 5 support. PHP 4 has been end of life (EOL) since August 8, 2008. That basically means that there will be no more releases, no more security patches, no more nothing. It’s done. Stick a fork in it. However, as Matt mentioned on stage at WordCamp NYC this weekend, there are still 12% of WordPress installations using PHP 4 hosting. He breaks that down as approximately 2M installs, the size of a major American city. More precisely, that’s approximately the size of Philadelphia.