This analysis is correct. My take is a little different, though. They didn’t *break* the internet; they broke IPv4. By doing that, they have slyly added a reason (i.e. impending doom) to accelerate adoption of IPv6, where their scheme will no longer suck. Greater adoption of IPv6 will *save* the internet. So they didn’t break it… they saved it. Q.E.D.
Things like this make me feel like I need to go get a degree in psychology to make any more headway with information security. It’s semi-well-known that idiotic password complexity/change requirements generally have the opposite of the intended effect. That is, people either write them down or choose predictable ones, and go to greater lengths to make them predictable. PayPal™ has taken this to the next level. (Screenshot after the jump since I can’t get my style sheet right for images here within the 5 minutes I’ve allocated for posting this…) (more…)
Andy Lee’s AppKiDo is free, source is available, and it’s drastically better than XCode’s doc viewer. And this is the third or fourth time I’ve discovered it only to later forget all about it. Maybe writing this note about it will help me remember. It’s worth the download just for its consolidated method lists (one of my biggest gripes with Apple’s AppKit documentation). Get it here. I wish Apple would adopt this and ship it with XCode.
Developers often have a love/hate relationship with wxWidgets, especially on the Mac. The common complaint, which I can’t dispute, is that wx applications don’t look and feel particularly well-integrated on the Mac. If you devote some effort to polishing the look and feel, this doesn’t have to be the case. It can be a lot of effort though, to build something that really feels native. That said, sometimes I’m just amazed at what you get for free. Here’s one of the test applications for PKIF, with no tweaks other than some mild build system manipulation, running on the Mac (not an officially supported platform). Screenshot after the jump.
Mac|Life has a nice list of the 5 best and 5 worst Apple laptops of all time. The list is mostly good, but I have to quibble, naturally. Anyone who puts the Duo on the list of the best seems unlikely to have used one. They were a neat idea, and ahead of their time, but they really sucked both as laptops and as desktops. They certainly weren’t among the worst, either, but clearing them off the list would make room for the 12″ aluminum G4 PowerBook.
As for the worst, most of the stinkers they name deserve to be there; not the “toilet seat” tangerine and blueberry iBooks, though. Those were great, solid machines and among the first inexpensive machines with available built-in WiFi. But even if you think they’re bad, the hideous ball of suck that was the PowerBook 1400 has to overshadow them. And every machine Apple’s produced since, to be honest.
My “desktop” machine has been a problem of late. I do most of my home computing on a Mac laptop and like it a great deal. My desktop machine is a tougher call, though. I like the Mac OS well enough to use it there, too, but Apple doesn’t sell the desktop I want. They offer either the all-in-one iMac, the underpowered mini, or the insane Mac Pro workstation. I want a machine in between the iMac and the Pro. Its purpose is to run server applications that I want to use on my LAN (along with serving as a development sandbox for my own stuff) and to be a virtual machine host so that I have a beefy and convenient place to try out new software that I don’t trust yet.
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So I’ve been playing with Symfony a bit lately, and it’s growing on me. I think I understand most of the “magic,” and am now looking to convince myself that it’s actually safe.
Since the different notes I found through google all have undesirable side effects (IMO), here’s how I did it. My goal was to minimize lasting impact on my system (i.e. I’d like to delete /Applications/MAMP and have everything back to normal, more or less) and minimal deviation from the standard MAMP install.
These notes were taken while setting up symfony 1.0 on MAMP 1.7.
Word on the street is that Verizon is going to stop carrying most of the Usenet. Apparently this is how they plan to implement their settlement with the NY AG. You have to suspect the rest of the mob who’s settling will use similarly coarse filters. With that, at least in the alt hierarchy, September could at last be over. I’m sorry to see it go, for a reason like this anyway.
I’ve finally decided to bring my personal projects out of the dark ages. After using CVS for years and years, I’m making the leap to Subversion. Git and friends look appealing, but, the fact is that “a little better than CVS” does it for me at this point. Plus I understand Subversion and the tool support on the Mac is excellent. For my server, I’m using VirtualBox 1.6.2 as the host and Ubuntu JEOS 8.04 as the guest. These notes may or may not be useful for others. I’m just trying to keep track of what I did here.
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Auction 73 is over. Most of the spectrum that will be freed up by the discontinuation of analog television broadcasting in 2009 has been sold off. According to Engadget, Verizon and AT&T bought most of it. Verizon had previously warned the FCC that the open access rules it was imposing on the spectrum would prevent telcos from bidding on it. Looks like they decided it was valuable anyway.
