How the hell did this survive 14 years? Kill it!

No need for a ugly static variable that just causes pain.

Change-Id: I751f58a5dcfdeaa7bfd61f32ccbc13eaaf827632
clang does not like gnu++11 that much, use c++11 instead

Change-Id: I82c3a4da388cf436ba4f5380c5833a451e28cfd5