Showing posts: 76-90 of 236 total posts
I wandered over to MacUpgrades to pickup a firewire cable and a miniDV tape. I could not help but notice the kryptonite G5 case mod. I stood and gawked for about five minutes. The details of the inside of the case really showed up nicely.
OS X Hints offers saving Safari tabs
I finally picked up my PC from the shop, where it had been for about three weeks or a month getting a new power supply. This also included a couple weeks for me getting around to picking it up from the shop. When I got the heap home it had 9 critical updates, comprising 15MB to download and about 35 minutes of updating, not including two additional critical updates after the first batch of 9 was completed.
Nearly all of these were vulnerability patches (they all may have been, but I will give MS the benefit of the doubt as I did not want to read, this patch fixes "X" only to be followed by two more patches explaining the first patch did not actually fix the vulnerability, but opened two new holes. Then a third patch to try and fix the original "X" vulnerability again.
This month of sending out a fully patched machine and having it return with more examples of shoddy coding, make me ever more grateful to have a Mac. You see I have had one vulnerability needing to be patched in the last two months on the Mac. The reason viruses are not often written for the Mac is that it is built on a mature operating system, UNIX (essentially BSD to be exact) that has been tightened over the years. The UNIX platform towers above the horrible dross that is Microsoft. The money wasted by businesses and others patching and leaving their bits and bytes open to the world of hackers and children playing hoaxes on a poorly crafted operating system is foolish at the least.
The PC is used for games now and testing how poor the soon to be neutered Windows version of Internet Explorer (others may be neutered too) handles displaying the results of standards compliant markup and the output of various applications built for Web-based information gathering and dissemination.
I have been trying to find the Apple laptop ads from around 1990 to 1993 that showed what people stored on their laptops. If I remember correctly these were celebrities based print ads. For example, a musician had lyrics, recording dates, agent's address info.
I have been digging on line for weeks, but can not find examples. If somebody could provide a link I would be truly grateful.
MacOSXHints offers AvantGo-Palm sync using a basic AppleScript, which actually uses malsynch. This has been one last gem I have struggled to get working. This could be a project for later in the week.
InfoWorld CTO switches to Mac OS X as he replaced his Linux server and two PCs. This was a three year old G4 box that made the other boxes obsolete.
I have had a the similar experience with one Apple Powerbook. My PC, which has been relegated to games and a Windows test platform, has been in the shop for over two weeks getting a proprietary power supply (PCs have been commoditized?). I have not missed it, actually it has been ready to be picked up for four days now, but I do not need it. I do want to burn some stuff off on to discs that is resident on its hard drives, but that is all it really means to me.
Hmmm, for future use, MacOSX Hints provides Installing JBuilder 9 on OS X. I have run previous versions on Windows and Linux, but have not attempted on OS X yet.
In an article from the New York Times regarding software oversight needed because some large companies don't check their own software for vulnerabilities, I ran across the following:
Proposals for government action being discussed by policy makers and computer security experts include strengthening the Department of Homeland Security's cybersecurity division and offering tax incentives to businesses for spending on security. Another proposal would require public companies to disclose potential computer security risks in Securities and Exchange Commission filings.
and the double standard for Microsoft
"There's a reason this kind of thing doesn't happen with automobiles," says Bruce Schneier, chief technical officer at Counterpane Internet Security in Cupertino, Calif. "When Firestone produces a tire with a systemic flaw, they're liable. When Microsoft produces an operating system with two systemic flaws per week, they're not liable."
I can just see it now the SEC requiring companies to divulge on their filings that their security threat is using the Microsoft OS. But, this would explain the day or two of lost productivity each quarter. I know of more than a handful of major firms (through friends that work at them) that had whole divisions (200 to 1,000 people) that were knocked off-line or completely out because of the last vulnerabilities. These did not show up in the news and their investors most likely were not informed.
At work I lose two to four hours per week of productivity to software bugs, security vulnerability patching, or operating system issues on the Windows platform we have to use. At home I do similar tasks on a Mac OS X based system and use Linux servers and I have a half an hour per month lost for the same things. Given I do more rigorous work at home and spend about an equal amount of time on the computer at home as I do at work I don't see why folks use Microsoft.
Great things should be in store for the Apple web site, as Jeffrey Zeldman and Doug Bowman will be teaming up with Apple's in-house crew to redesign the Apple site.
This is a dream come true. Well, it would be better in one way.
A Mac Cocoa interface for MySQL looks promising.
Rael explains about the streaming iChat icons from the iSight. I noticed Matt had this going on the other night. It was very cool to see live movement in the chat icon in my buddy list. At first I thought it was an animated image with one insanely long loop, but soon realized that the mannerisms of Matt were not perpetuating in the same order.
I was very close to picking up the iSight today, but am holding off for just a little longer. A digital video camera is also on my purchase list, for parental reasons (also some of the reason behind iSight).
Switching to Mac or just wanting to see what others are using on their Macs, check out Dion Almaer switch to Mac statement and comments offering suggestions on helpful applications to ease the conversion.
My friend Fred picked up an iBook just prior to his trip to Cambridge, England for a summer study session. So far the switch has been good. He has posted his first pictures from Cambridge on his .Mac site. His pictures bring back wonderful memories of mine from the other side of the Oxbridge family.
He has found a rather inexpensive WiFi connection in a coffeehouse there. If you know of others post them and I am sure it will be greatly appreciated.
Mike demonstrates iChat unteathered. Yes video chatting from the South Street Seaport in NYC all with WiFi (no wires). I am so glad Mike got to test this and posted it so we all could see it works.
Mac OS X Hints offers View a summary of installed Perl modules