PanNotes blogs

Crime Occupies Too Much Thought

2008-11-11T21:53:05+05:00

The euphoria is over, or close to it. And while our fraternity with Obama and the world made us feel good for a moment, we have to come back to earth now. More specifically, we have to come back to Jamaica’s own domestic situation.

This abduction business is getting worrisome, as is crime in general. Concerned people are especially perturbed by the amount of children that are victims of what seems like a crime spree.

We might be a bit heartened if the people responsible for going after the criminals seemed more competent and proactive. But their pronouncements of late have given us anything but comfort.

The insidious thing about crime is that its impact is so intrusive. Even those who have not been touched by crime live with it constantly, in conversations and in the way it reorders our activities. So when I see a car parked outside my house, often to take advantage of the shade from the trees, I inquire of the driver his business there if too much time has passed. I’m also a bit more careful at night now when I drive in certain communities.

Worse than anything, crime’s intrusiveness is patently evident in the time it is now resident in our consciousness. It occupies too much thought, stealing from us valuable time for better things in our lives.

Why so many assumptions?

2008-10-15T19:57:45+05:00

Speaking with friends and colleagues is always useful for getting to know each other and sharing cares and fears, ambitions and failures. But there is a particularly awkward moment in a conversation that sometimes really irritates me. You know, when someone stares at you like you are not from this planet because you do not know the answer to a question or you are unfamiliar with a subject? You are also looked at as some unearthly being because you unknowingly asked a ‘stupid’ question.

This generally comes from people who start a conversation with you at a function, or elsewhere, without properly introducing themselves or finding out who you are and why you are there. You know, the type that launches into some arcane topic because that is their interest, without even considering whether others care about it. It is generally someone whose ego is bigger than his or her ideas and they just want to get something out to show their expertise.

Come on people! Just because you know something, that does not mean the whole world knows it too. People should not just assume other people understand what they are talking about. It is humiliating to get the ‘Is there anybody in there’ look. If someone asks you a question, just answer. Whether or not you think they should know the answer.

People need to be aware that not everyone is worldly. They believe that if you are asking questions about a topic then you do not know anything about that topic. That’s just silly! Whenever I am talking to someone about some new piece of technology or a new stock on the market, I prefer to listen to them and then ask questions. That’s just my style. Even if I have something to contribute, I still like to ask questions, just so that I can be clear about the other person’s point of view.

So I encourage those of you who find yourselves in a conversation where your knowledge of the topic is lacking to fire away! Do not be afraid of people thinking you are stupid because you ask a question out of ignorance. Not asking when you do not know the answer is stupid. As the Chinese proverb said, “he who asks is a fool for five minutes, but he who does not ask remains a fool forever.” Do not let those “experts” intimidate you.

OpenOffice.org 3 released

2008-10-13T20:52:50+05:00

If you are looking for an alternative to the expensive and bloated Microsoft Office package you can now download the much improved free and just about as bloated OpenOffice.org 3. Mac OS X users should feel more at home with the new OpenOffice.org since it now has native support for the OS X user interface.

I use OpenOffice.org on a daily basis and it is good enough for my use but I am pretty sure it is not for everyone. While its support for reading and writing Microsoft’s file formats increase with each release it will always be a little behind. The current release can read the Microsoft 2007 file format but not write it.

I use OpenOffice.org mainly to read files from clients and create very basic Word and Excel documents. If you plan on working mainly with the Open Document Format then OpenOffice.org should be more than perfect for you. It’s a pity more organisations don’t standardise on this format. I would love if this was the case and most organisations and individuals would not feel the need to purchase or pirate a copy of MS Office.

I sincerely hope more people become aware of OOo so we can lessen the grip MS Office has on the office suite market. OpenOffice.org could do to this space what Firefox did for browsers but I don’t think it’s there yet.

Have a look at the new list of featrues.

Update: One feature that I am really glad to see is the editing of PDFs, this will be especially useful.

Also, the site seems to be taking a beating from the onslaught of downloads so here’s a mirror.

Christopher’s

2008-10-06T20:53:03+05:00

Christopher’s is buzzing again, if I’m to judge by the numbers on a Friday night. A friend, Kyle Lewis, suggested it’s probably that people have begun to recover from the several Ponzi schemes that have claimed numerous victims here in recent months. Another friend, Colin Steele, believes that coming out to one of Kingston’s premier bars is probably part of the recovery.

I suspect though, that people want a sense of community to help them understand what the hell is going on in the world’s financial markets. They are fearful of the likely impact in Jamaica where remittances and visitor stopover determines what action there is in our economy.

Christopher’s is ideal for feeling the pulse of corporate Jamaica. On tab there last Friday night were credit cards from several top companies. Amid the networking and ogling, however, there were heated conversations about what the US meltdown means.

There is deep concern for Jamaica’s economy if things in the United States and elsewhere get funkier. A depression north of us will bite hard.

Many businessmen already see a tightening in this market. Receivables have begun to lag, and there is extreme caution in planning new projects.

Those of us who earn a living in marketing, advertising and web development are particularly sensitive to these signs. Our not so mission critical services are usually the first items on the expenditure chopping block.

Stamping out corruption in customs

2008-07-02T18:46:05+05:00

Danville WalkerDanville Walker knows how to make a headline. The Commissioner of Customs gave businessmen some food for thought this week when he spoke at the PSOJ’s Job Creation Awards Ceremony. He made it clear that his major mandate is to root out corruption in customs.

Forsaking all diplomatic language, he told his audience of mostly CEOs: “If you have been involved in things you shouldn’t be involved with, stop!” He promised those who don’t heed the warning: “I am going to catch you and I am going to embarrass you. We will throw the book at you.”

No one doubts his sincerity. He has already proven himself to be a tireless public servant and showed quickly in his first month on the job that customs will no longer be a centre of corruption. How he arrived at this ethical and moral juncture having started as a baker when he returned from his studies abroad may be the subject of someone’s UWI thesis.

Tender Requirements

2008-07-02T18:12:36+05:00

Writing proposals for web development is often tedious because few of the RFPs are clear and detailed. In such an imperfect market it means getting creative in our responses is the only solution.

Recently, however, it’s become more tedious than usual because more than a few of the requests for proposals might be called false alarms. These seemingly prospective clients aren’t really interested in what Panmedia has to offer. They are sending us an RFP simply to fulfill procurement requirements. These tender requirements are Jamaica’s worst blow to business productivity.

In a way, we don’t mind if someone asks us a favor in that kind of situation. Knowing the purpose of the exercise saves us time and our expectations are nil. But most of those people with such needs are usually in no mood for honesty.

To protect our valuable time and avoid rancor we now interview prospective clients with a rigor that elicits righteous indignation when their motives are not pure. When they object too strenuously to our questioning then we know to take a pass.

We are moving...

2008-05-02T19:48:38+05:00

As of today Panmedia will no longer be located at the TIC building on The UTech campus. We are relocating to 10 Argyle Road, Kingston 10.

An official post will be made on our main website once the move is completed. We don’t have a new number as yet but that information will be included in the announcement.

Wish there were some pictures to show of the demolition but our main camera is not working and no one else thought it pertinent to bring one :(.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have cables to disconnect and servers to shutdown.

Increase in attacks on financial institutions?

2007-08-31T19:56:07+05:00

According to the Gleaner the First Global website was hacked sometime yesterday. Also, according to a release by NCB (originally heard on the radio but the advisory can be found here) their customers have been receiving phishing emails that links to a replica of NCB’s website. The email asks NCB customers to enter/change their personal information.

Now, hacking and phishing are nothing new. They have been very prevalent in other countries. But I’m wondering if these two attacks are the start of a trend. Jamaican financial institutions have certainly had websites for years now. Why the increase of attacks now (if this wasn’t just a fluke)? Is it that we are more visible or just more vulnerable?

I certainly hope that First Global wasn’t keeping users personal information on their website and that this will lead to better security considerations by our financial websites. There is not much you can do against phishing, some of the biggest on-line companies have the same problem. Paypal comes to mind. The response NCB gave was the correct one I think. Notifying their customers as soon as possible of the threat. Let’s hope no one lost their life savings because of this fraudulent behaviour :)

I would love to hear more about these two stories and I wish them the best of luck in dealing with their individual situations.

Note: I never really understood how people got caught by phishing attempts. It’s a little bit like those Nigerian emails - never understood those either.

Enjoying the storm

2007-08-22T22:03:42+05:00

Things seem to be getting back to normal even as the loud sounds of generators add to the clatter of chain saws and hammers. Power and water are still problems for many, but I’m assuming that traffic in some areas of the corporate area means people are getting back to business. JPS is busy clearing its many downed power poles and the NWC is moving quickly to restore water to everyone.

Both phone companies say they did well in the storm. The only problem still is that mobile phone owners who still don’t have electricity now have to find outlets wherever they can. Someone is sure to start a business from this need.

The two main dailies screamed at the government for imposing a state of emergency. But just as Portia’s move may have been seen by some as over the top, so too were the editorials. With a week likely added for the election, we can expect blame and shame from all quarters.

I have a different take on Dean and his sideswipe of Jamaica. We looked at the storm from the comfort of my living room because the shape of the patio allowed us protection from the wind and pelting rain. At times it seemed surreal watching trees bend to breaking as the wind howled. At other times it was just a good day to stay inside and enjoy those things we have little time for these days.

Eating dinner outside the night after Dean was perhaps the best moment of all. I looked up at one point and almost dropped my glass of wine. There in all its splendour was the wonder of the universe as it was probably intended to be viewed by human eyes. Without the glare of urban lights, the stars were glorious in their brilliance. I realized then what beauty really is.

Zend Framework 1.0 released

2007-07-03T07:39:06+05:00

Zend, the primary company behind PHP, has just released version 1.0 of the web framework they have been developing for the last 20 months.

Frameworks speed up the development process by providing programmers with a flexible, easy-to-use library of components that solve the majority of the problems that they are likely to encounter. This then frees you up to focus on issues that are unique to your project.

The last few years have seen a explosion in the web framework scene with Rails headlining the list for Ruby developers and Django gaining popularity with many Python programmers. PHP on the other hand hasn’t had any clear winners. CakePHP is definitely popular and Code Igniter has received good reviews, but many people (myslef including) have been anticipating the arrival of the Zend Framework as the PHP Framwework.

ZF sports most of the usual features of today’s frameworks:

MVC Architecture
Easy-to-use Database Wrapper/Mapper
Caching, I18N, Validation, Filtering, Feeds, Web Services
Built and tested by an active open source community

ZF also has a couple features that differentiate it:

PHP5 based
Includes a Lucene compatible search engine component
Thorough, well written documentation
Extensive test-suite, with high code coverage and rigorous testing requirements
Solid community and commercial backing (including contributions form IBM and Google)

All this makes for a very reliable, high-quality project that both individual programmers and large enterprises will feel comfortable working with.

Nevertheless there are a few missing pieces that Zend needs to address in the not so distant future. Some of these are outlined on their roadmap page:

Better Forms and AJAX support
Digital Identity Management (OpenID and CardSpace)
Developer Tools Command-line and IDE

A few things that they don’t mention on the roadmap page but have discussed extensively in the forums are:

Short, clear tutorial style examples. The documentation is thorough, but it sure ain’t fun to read. They need more examples like this to get people hooked.
Example code and best practices
Built in support for handling more advanced templating: two-step views, partitals, inheritance, etc

All in all I am happy to see that 1.0 has finally arrived. I am going to try to carve out some time to re-implement a small PHP app I did in the past using ZF. Should be fun.

WYSIWYG or Not

2007-05-25T16:51:52+05:00

When delivering a CMS to a client a WYSIWYG editor can sometimes be the Achilles’ heel of the complete product. These editors were created as a means of allowing users to easily create HTML without actually knowing HTML. While the intent is great they usually produce more problems than solutions. I actually agree with most of the sentiments in Why NOT to install TinyMCE.

We do need to provide an easy way for users to update and create content on their website but the current breed of editors are not the solution. So what is? My thought on the matter has always been that users need to know at least a little bit about the system they are using. The CMS is not a word processor. It’s a different paradigm and that needs to be communicated to the users.

A partial solution may be, as suggested in the post linked above, using less buttons on the editor. Ideally these should include “bold”, “italic”, “underline”, “link” and some means of inserting an image. Image insertion comes with its own issues, which I won’t get into right now. My suggestion is the use of more lightweight markup languages such as Markdown and Textile. These use special markers that when interpreted generate correct HTML but the inputted text is still readable by someone who doesn’t know the first thing about HTML. My personal favorite is Markdown. In fact this post is written in Markdown and the comment form on this site accepts Markdown.

People still like to see buttons that remind them of their word processor, so for the time being I am watching WYMeditor. WYMEditor takes a different approach, according to the website:

WYMeditor’s main concept is to leave details of the document’s visual layout, and to concentrate on its structure and meaning, while trying to give the user as much comfort as possible (at least as WYSIWYG editors).

WYMeditor is written as a JQuery plugin. JQuery is a javascript library that is included in Drupal as of version 5 and happens to be my library of choice :)

There is seemingly another option cropping up. Control.TextArea provides a bridge between the WYSIWYG editors and the plain text options by providing buttons that generate the markup for you. It is not a WYSIWYG editor though.

The good news is; people do realize current solutions are not ideal and are working on better solutions. For the time being though we are stuck with editors such as TinyMCE and FCKEditor.

Dot Soon Com

2007-04-25T00:13:52+05:00

First World Technology in Third World Hands

As a tiny dotcom in a part of the world that sits on America’s doorsteps geographically but technologically is far removed, our experience giving clients an interface with the Internet is both rewarding and frustrating.

If nothing else, the engagement reveals that as much as they want access to this new media world, they refuse to leave behind old notions and processes, and their legacy systems. Critically, they have little desire to understand the implications for their business. The result is a strange mix of old and new thinking where ideologies clash and culture, corporate and general, is remixed.

For many, it’s their first venture into an unknown un-explicable world. They come kicking and screaming, and arrive with untold anxieties that seep into our development process, and our profit.

Bringing Corporate Jamaica into a networked universe is as much an educational challenge as it is a technological one. Sometimes we have to introduce them to email, PDF, JPEG and MPEG files. What we encounter trying to equip clients with the functionality that today’s business needs and helping them to define their online presence borders on science fiction.

Even before our discovery phase we now present a document that outlines the nature of the work and what a web site development proposal will contain so that we aren’t carried wide before someone discovers they wanted an egg fried and not an entire restaurant.

Our work begins with simple explanations of what the Internet is and how a web site works and ends with appeals for updating and keeping material current. In between, we encourage people to drop dial up, to give Internet access to their managers, and to buy decent hardware and software.

We must try to keep client sites alive with ideas and content. We even have to explain conceptually how and why information gets stale. We also have to teach them how to let their web sites become a feedback loop to help inform their new products. We always have to explain how best to build communities of common interests.

Panmedia once took to the relevant government ministry an island wide backup plan to ensure essential services could still get on the web if Jamaica’s main access point was broken, as was the case in Hurricane Ivan. We were greeted warmly, but heard not another thing about it.

The upside is that Jamaicans’ use of technology offers the world an approach that is bold and enlightening. Cell phone penetration is closer to European levels. Eighty Three percent of Jamaicans own cell phones versus 53 percent in Trinidad, a much richer country.

Curiously, the rate at which Jamaicans replace technologies is astounding.Those who utilize modern technology often possess the best even when they don’t need them or the infrastructure is not in place to make use of the features. For example, we have had web enabled cell/mobile phones since their inception but none of our telecom providers built the infrastructure to make those features available to consumers.

Many here have ambitious notions of what meager resources can do online. We have been approached to build a Jamaican eBay and something close to Amazon. Some months ago, a client asked that we build him a replica of the Bloomberg site.

Looking at what happens in the developing world as people try to capitalize on new technologies even with limited knowledge of how such things work is perhaps part of our reward working in this space. But it can be terribly frustrating at times.

Zend Core 2.0 Released. Zend Accelerator silently removed.

2007-03-10T03:59:12+05:00

On Tuesday Zend released the final version of Zend Core 2.0. Zend Core is a fast and easy way to install a stable combination of PHP, MySQL and Apache on Windows, Linux or OS X. See my previous post for more details. Overall this release is good news, however there is one big change in the final package that nobody seems to be talking about.

Zend has silently removed one of the key components that it had offered in beta versions of ther product, the Zend Accelerator, an opcode cache which can boost performance by up to 300%. From the looks of it, this was a hasty, last-minute decision.

During the beta the overview page used this professionally designed diagram to illustrate then Zend Core architecture:

Original Zend Core Diagram

However now the website shows this simple diagram that looks like it was done by an intern using MS Paint. Note the absence of the Accelerator block.

New Zend Core Diagram One can only guess what kind of internal turmoil could have caused this last minute policy shift.

The skeptics amongst us might wonder if it had anything to do with the newly appointed CEO who joined the company after the beta release. There is a obvious (albeit short-sighted) concern that releasing the accelerator component would cannibalize a part of their Zend Platform market.

Others might wonder if it has anything to do with the recent barrage of fixes that went into APC the popular open source opcode cache that is slated for inclusion in PHP 6. Has Zend finally woken up and realized that they should get behind APC right away? If so, why isn’t it included along with the other certified extensions.

Time may tell what really happened; ~~for now I am going with a Zend Core + APC combo. APC’s recent inclusion in the Windows installer for PHP 5.2.1 alleviates some of my previous concerns about its stability on windows.~~

Update: It looks like the Zend Optimizer (used by Zend Core to run encrypted/obfuscated PHP files) has some inherent conflicts with APC. This makes the removal of the Zend Accelerator from Zend Core 2.0 even more unacceptable…now it seems the only options are to not use an opcode cache or buy Zend Platform…bad move Zend.

Firebug: The kind of bug you learn to love

2007-01-25T22:54:09+05:00

Firebug 1.0 was released today. Firebug takes the process of debugging HTML/CSS/Javascript to a whole new level. I could try my best to extol its virtues, but their website would still do a better job.

If you are web developer and you have never heard of Firebug, you need to stop what you are doing and get it now. Run, don’t walk.

An interesting footnote to this new announcement is that Firebug’s creator almost decided to start charging for the product in order to bring on a full time developer. In the end he decided to keep it open source and continue to fund development from donations.

I think there is a lot of room for innovation in “business models” for individually developed open source projects. For Firebug specifically I think any of the following could have been explored:

A donations drive before the 1.0 release. Preview the features, set a target amount and provide a graph to show how close the community is to achieving the goal. If you don’t hit the mark before the release date, only provide the 1.0 code to the people have donated. Once you reach the target, release it to the general public. This could be repeated for all major releases.
Corporate Sponsorship. A product like Firebug could probably garner sponsorship from the likes of Google, Yahoo!, Amazon or The Mozilla Corporation.
On-demand merchandise. With the advent of stores like Cafepress and Lulu.com it is fairly easy for anyone to sell branded t-shirts, mugs, or books (printed documentation) without any start-up costs.

It will be interesting to see how these open source “business models” mature over time. They will make it easier a talented individual developer from Jamaica to develop an interesting product, have it used by thousands of people worldwide and get paid all at the same time.

Panmedia has made a donation to support continued development. If you use and enjoy this product you should consider donating too, even if it is just $5 or $10. Firebug will probably save you more money in a single day than the dollar figure of your donation.

P.S. For debugging in IE you should check out the IE Web Developer Toolbar it is not up to par with Firebug’s features, but it is still very useful. Hopefully Microsoft will feel inspired to make it even better by the time it reaches 1.0.

Zend Core 2.0 (The Future of PHP part II)

2007-01-20T04:05:52+05:00

On Tuesday Zend launched a beta of Zend Core 2.0, a brand new and extremely important addition to the Zend Core line up. Unlike its predecessors, Zend Core 2.0 is not designed for a specific database or hardware platform, it is a stable, certified, and (optionally) supported PHP Application Server bundle provided by Zend. It looks like they won’t be releasing a Zend Core for Windows or Zend Core for MySQL but instead will deliver a single, cross-platform product that includes the improvements from the collaboration with Microsoft. In addition to that, they are including a whole lot more…

Things you were already getting:

Certified Release (open source and proprietary components have been QA’d together).
User-friendly Installer.
GUI Console (includes interfaces for monitoring, configuring, benchmarking the server).
Bundled proprietary database drivers (IBM and Oracle).
One free web based support ticket.
The option for standard support (web based tickets, hotfixes and knowledgebase) or premium phone support.

New things:

Bundled MySQL 5.0 Server and Drivers.
It is bundled in relatively loose way; the server is automatically downloaded by the Zend installer, it then launches MySQL’s standard installer (of course this is an optional component).
Bundled Apache 2.2
It would be perfect if they offered basic support for Apache with their Zend Network package - updates, trouble shooting, simple web based config. This would greatly simplyfy the process of keeping your server secure and up to date.
Improved performance and reliability on windows. 200%-300% boost plus support for IIS and Vista.
PHPMyAdmin.
Becomes part of the Zend Admin GUI.
Zend Enabler (FastCGI).
A proprietary FastCGI module for Apache on windows. This one deserves special mention. I have spent several days trying to setup a stable, production quality PHP installation on Windows for a client and it is a very difficult task. Running PHP under a threaded web server (IIS using ISAPI or Apache2 using the PHP module) is strongly discouraged by the PHP group. FastCGI is recommended instead. mod_fcgid provides FastCGI support for Apache2 and there is even a windows binary available. However I have had questionable results using this module with PHP 5.2 (I was able to reproducibly crash the server) and the author offers no support or certification of testing. I had high hopes of Apache releasing their own FastCGI module (which would result in a greater amount of QA on windows) but that still hasn’t happened yet. Microsoft is developing their own FastCGI module for IIS in collaboration with Zend.
~~Zend Accelerator~~ Removed from final release!
A PHP bytecode caching and acceleration component (200%-300% performance boost). A opcode cache is way overdue for PHP; I was glad when I heard that APC would be included by default in PHP 6. I think that Zend should have open-sourced their cache from long ago for this very reason. They risk having their implementation sidelined by an good open source one. Well PHP6 might not be out for a while so in the meantime this is a very welcomed addition. I was also looking for an opcode cache to use with PHP on windows. There is an auto-compiled version of APC for windows available but I have seen some issues and I wasn’t able to get any response from the PECL mailing list about its production readiness .
Zend Optimizer
Wider distribution of Zend Optimizer will provide more opportunities for PHP developers to sell compiled PHP applications without source code using the licensing scheme of their choosing. It will also provide Zend the opportunity to sell more copies of Zend Guard.
Zend Debugger
This server-side debugging component will complement the new Eclipse based IDE/Debugger. It can also be used by Zend’s proprietary Studio product. I am curious how they plan to modify their studio offering over time to target it at a more enterprise-ish crowd.
Zend Framework
Widespread distribution of the Zend Framework is good news for everybody. Quality components and patterns that will influence the creation of quality code. This also makes it easier for developers to write application that depend on the framework.

Things you have to pay for (Zend Network/Support)

Incremental hot-fix updates (you don’t have to do a complete re-install)
Web based support tickets
Access to knowledgebase and bug-tracking system

Things you will (probably) get in the future

The new Eclipse based IDE/Debugger will probably be bundled.
The enhanced MySQL driver

Baseless conjecture that probably won’t happen

It would be interesting to see Zend Core supporting multiple languages using the virtual machine approach that Microsoft’s CLR and Sun’s JVM each use (see IronPython, JRuby, Jython and Groovy). It would be really interesting if they used Parrot for the VM (of course Parrot/Perl 6 would have finally to be released for that to happen).

Big picture

With the upcoming releases of Zend Core 2.0 and Zend Platform 3.0, Zend has provided a smooth path for choosing the package that fits you best and easily transitioning between them. Functionality like the Accelerator and the FastCGI component have moved downstream into the free Zend Core offering, while Platform 3.0 has taken on more enterprise features like Active Monitoring, Java integration, High Availability, Job Queues and SNMP Traps. We now have the following options.

PHP from php.net - targeted at Unix/Linux/BSD distributions and people who like/want/need to roll-their-own (e.g. mass hosting companies).
Zend Core - targeted at developers, production windows users, and other production users who have their own servers.
Zend Core + Zend Network - targeted at small and medium sized businesses that want updates and support.
Zend Platform - targeted at enterprises and business whose web presence is mission-critical.

It will be very interesting to see how Zend promotes and fine tunes each of these products over the next few years to respond to the demand of the market. So far their basic strategy looks pretty solid to me.

Ok I’ve babbled on for long enough. I really need to learn to write shorter blog posts.

Postscript

For those who want to try it out, here are a few installation tips

The installer will download and launch the MySQL installer but it doesn’t install it anywhere special or do anything interesting, so if you already have a MySQL database running, don’t bother selecting that option.

If you choose to install the bundled Apache 2.2, it will be installed in the Zend folder and configured to run on the port of your choosing, however if you already had another apache 2 installation (albeit in a different directory) and it is installed as a service, the Zend installer (at least the beta version) uninstalls the service entry for your existing apache installation. You can remedy this by going to you original apache install location and re-installing the service with a specific name:. This has been fixed in the final version.

cd C:\Program Files\Apache Software Foundation\Apache2.2\bin

httpd.exe -k install -n "Apache2Original"

Apparently certain desktop firewalls and antivirus programs conflict with Apache2 on windows causing it to eat up all your CPU, continuously fill your error log with messages and just generally not work. This can be remedied by adding “Win32DisableAcceptEx” to your httpd.conf file. I had run into this problem before with my antivirus software so I knew exactly how to fix it.