Part 29 of elf's Apple PowerBook G4 Journal
New "something"
mac
Wed Aug 01 07:36:05 2007
Apple has invited the press to a Mac product announcement on
August 7th. The current speculation is that it's the brushed metal iMacs.
August is typically the month for Apple's back-to-school product
releases. September and October see the consumer lines, and the iPods
updated in time for the Christmas season.
Also, Leopard (October release) is now UNIX'03 certified and
shares privileged company with Solaris, HP/UX and AIX. However, from
a brief discussion on #solaris, the UNIX03 spec is quite generic
(because POSIX tends this way) and outdated— awk
is required but not perl; ssh is not required
(it's not installed by default on AIX).
The first iPhone update, which fixes security vulnerabilities, also shipped.
Michelangelo Antonioni, R.I.P.
Wed Aug 01 20:20:19 2007
Is it a coincidence that two famous directors pass away on the
same day? Is it a conspiracy? Or is it the Rule of Three?
The only memorable movie of his I can recall watching is
Blowup with those sexy women from the 1960s; it's a great movie
for fans of photography.
gPhone
"google phone"
Thu Aug 02 18:44:37 2007
The Wall Street Journal today reported about the
possibility of a Google (branded) phone to appear as early as next
year. Unlike the iPhone, it will work with several carriers and has
been designed to Google's specifications (in terms of features and
capabilities). Several gPhone prototypes exist and they typically
have either a slide-out keyboard or a fixed keyboard (like
Blackberrys).
Apple's Product Cycle
humour
Fri Aug 03 00:39:41 2007
In an attempt to guess whether an iPod was going to be released on
Aug. 7 (I don't think so), I was trying to find a site that tracked
the dates that various Apple products were released on. Instead, I
found a site
which describes Apple's product cycle, beginning with:
An obscure component manufacturer somewhere in the Pacific Rim
announces a major order for some bleeding-edge piece of technology
that could conceivably become part of an expensive,
digital-lifestyle-enhancing nerd toy.
It continues with the usual rumours, followed by the product
announcement ("as though it’s just an afterthought"; i.e. One More
Thing...™), then the shipping delays, and then after it finally
ships...
The obligatory “I’m waiting for Rev. B” discussion appears in the Mac
forums. People who’ve been burned by first-generation Apple products
open up their old wounds and bleed their tales of woe. Unsympathetic
technophiles fire back with, “if you can’t handle the heat, stay out
of the kitchen. pussy.” Everyone has this stupid argument for the
twenty-third time.
Etc.
The only thing that's missing in that cycle is the class-action
lawsuit launched by an opportunist (though it's sometimes
justified— iPod battery life and number of colours of a video
card).
Quake Zero
game
Sat Aug 04 06:56:26 2007
id Software announced that they will be releasing a free version
of Quake 3 that can be played in a web browser on both PC and a Mac
(what about Linux, BSD, etc.?);
the game will be supported by revenues from ads.
id also announced a movie version of the popular video game
Return to Castle Wolfenstein and that Enemy Territory:
Quake Wars will be released in October for Windows; the Mac or
Linux release dates have not been announced. In the mean time, you
can salivate over the screenshots—
you're no longer playing a video game, you're now in a movie. I am
afraid to ask what the hardware requirements for this game are going
to be.
Finally, Rage (demoed on the Mac by Carmack at WWDC2007),
based on the new Tech5 engine with
MegaTexture
which can handle rendering massive, unique outdoor areas, will be
released on 2 DVDs or 1 Bluray. Players drive across wide-open
terrain to various settlements and battle mutants. The game can be
played standalone or in co-operative multiplayer mode.
Hugo Nominees
sf
Sun Aug 05 23:30:13 2007
2007 Hugo
Award Nominees. Most of the nominees are available in full text. I
enjoyed reading Mike Resnick's All the Things You Are and
Tim Pratt's Impossible Dreams. I downloaded Michael
Swanwick's Lord Weary's Empire and Robert Reed's A Billion
Eves for later reading.
Update Mon Aug 06 09:46:49 2007: I've gotten to page 5 of
Michael Flynn's Eifelheim. It passed the "intriguing
opening" test. As I mentioned earlier, Vinge's Rainbows End
failed the test (surprisingly).
Mac Buyer's Guide
hardware
Mon Aug 06 20:05:31 2007
David sent me the link to the Macbuyer's guide that I
was looking for, which tracks Apple's product cycle.
Ultrathin Is In
apple
Tue Aug 07 14:52:52 2007
Today, Apple announced:
- upgrades to the iMac line (20 inch and 24 inch aluminium
displays and new keyboards; the Mini is
still around)
- new version of iLife (new features in iPhoto new interface
toiMovie)
- new version of iWork
(the new spreadsheet is called Numbers; they simplified the
page-layout interface in Pages
(connecting the textflow of different columns was insanely
complicated) and Keynote has A to B animation now)
- and upgrades to the .Mac service
Update Wed Aug 08 00:40:02 2007: Note that it's iLife '08, not
'07. Does this means that when Leopard ships in October, iLife '07
will be bundled instead?
Zero Downtime
software
Wed Aug 08 00:25:10 2007
On Monday, IBM announced Live
Partition Mobility a method of moving a running virtualized
computer from one physical server to another without suspending or
rebooting it. This means that if a workstation has to be taken offline
for an upgrade or repair, the processes it is running need not be
terminated and restarted on another computer; with Live Partition
Mobility, the user doesn't even notice that anything changed. (By a
strange coincidence, just last week, I had listed this as a
deficiency of Solaris. It was noted that VMWare has a product called
VMotion
that allows VMs to be migrated between servers.)
Live Partition Mobility, currently in beta testing with general
availability planned later this year, is a continuous availability
feature that will enable POWER6-based servers, such as the System p
570, to move live logical partitions— including the entire
operating system and all its running applications— from one server
to another while the systems are running. The technology will enable
companies to effectively manage and maintain their servers with the
potential to become more energy efficient in the process.
The future is here, now.
Onoes!
disaster
Wed Aug 08 16:46:13 2007
Designwyse is an Apple
reseller in Australia. It suffered a massive fire recently and there are
pictures of melted Xservers (scroll-down).
There are many lessons here about ensuring that there are backup
and disaster recovery procedures in place. Quoting Rule No. 10 of
Sysadmins, "Always have backups. 10 a) Having backups of
backups is nice too (you can never have too many backups). 10 b)
Check your backups everyday."
Monthly Google Rant
google
Thu Aug 09 08:45:35 2007
What good is having a library with all world's information, if
people can't find what they're looking for? Google should have a
digital librarian to help people with their searches.
Today, I was looking for books about identifying flowers; the
keyword that would have made my searching easier was
"horticulture". The problem is that if you're not an expert in a
subject area or you don't know the specialized jargon, searching on
Google is practically useless.
Compiz Eyecandy
Thu Aug 09 15:57:47 2007
These Compiz
animations for mapping and iconifying windows beats the boring
old ones in OS X. I once suggested an enhancement that iconifying a
windows would produce an animation of a window folding like a piece
of paper— well, compiz has done it first.
They Might Be Giants
design microsoft apple
Sun Aug 12 16:06:20 2007
I found a slide (click for a larger view) that Steve Jobs used in
one of his presentations showing two handheld remote controllers
dwarfing a six-button Apple Remote. The
remote on the right looks (from the logo at the very bottom) like it's for
a HP multimedia PC.
I initially thought that the one on the left was Microsoft's
controller, but it isnt— Microsoft's remote is much more hideous
looking innovative— the designers have thoughtfully
contoured the body of the remote to fit the gigantic hands of Americans.
There are reports
that the Apple Remote no longer magnetically adheres to the side of
the aluminum iMac. I'm surprised that Apple didn't redesign the white
plastic Remote to match the new aluminum look.
I Hate Adobe†
Mon Aug 13 13:21:14 2007
†Actually, I hate the pinheads at Adobe who write Mac
software installers.
Installing Adobe software (Photoshop Elements and Flash plugin)
on my Mac causes me no amount of grief— first for the
unecessary reboots after installation (IT'S NOT WINDOWS/XP; IT'S
UNIX, YOU KNOBS!) and second, for causing NIS authentication problems
right after the install/reboot cycle. The solution requires my Mini
to be shutdown and restarted at least twice— a reboot is not
sufficent— before I can login using my departmental account.
See also the Digg post, Dear
Adobe, What happened to you?, for other views on the Adobe's
ignorance of OS X issues.
Scorsese and Allen
cinema scorsese allen bergman antonioni
Tue Aug 14 17:59:24 2007
Last Sunday's NY Times had two articles, one by Martin Scorsese
and the other by Woody Allen, paying tribute to the spirits of
Antonioni and Bergman. Google for 'The Man Who Asked Hard Questions'
and 'The Man Who Set Film Free' to read the articles.
True Story
microsoft unix
Thu Aug 16 23:43:37 2007
This story is true. It was at a USENIX Windows NT conference and
Microsoft was presenting their future directions for NT. One of
their speakers said that they would release a UNIX integration
package for NT that would contain the Korn Shell.
I knew that Microsoft had licensed a number of tools from MKS so I
came to the microphone to tell the speaker that this was not the
"real" Korn Shell and that MKS was not even compatible with ksh88. I
had no intention of embarrassing him and thought that he would
explain the compromises that Microsoft had to make in choosing MKS
Korn Shell. Instead, he insisted that I was wrong and that Microsoft
had indeed chosen a "real" Korn Shell. After a couple of exchanges, I
shut up and let him dig himself in deeper. Finally someone in the
audience stood up and told him what almost everyone in the audience
knew, that I had written the 'real' Korn Shell. I think that this is
symbolic about the way the company works.
—David Korn, Q/A on Slashdot
My personal history of shells begins with csh on SunOS 4.1 and
Solaris 2.3. Then I tested tcsh and ksh for a few days, I also tried
bash for a few days and then found zsh— I found it so much more
elegant— and never looked back.
Cuppa
tea
Sat Aug 18 08:33:21 2007
...tea is one of the main stays of
civilization...
—George Orwell
David sent me a link to George Orwell's 1946 article, "A
Nice Cup of Tea". In the ensuing discussion on #emacs, there was
a question about the meaning of "in the Russian style", as mentioned
in the last golden rule. <bpalmer> found the reference in the
"Russian
Tea Howto for Linux Hackers", which confirms that Russians exceed
the Englishman's obsession for the perfect cup by several orders of
magnitude.
My preference is for Twinings English Breakfast Tea (no milk or
sugar) in the morning and in the afternoon, and the occasional
Three Crown Chamomille before bed (or if I feel like a hot beverage after
4PM; caffiene after 4PM keeps me awake until 2AM).
Book Review: "The Emergence of Probability"
book review probability
Sun Aug 19 19:13:37 2007
My book review of Ian Hacking's, "The Emergence of Probability" is
now available on My
Bookshelf.
Mac vs. PC
"1024 words" ad
Wed Aug 22 19:03:19 2007
![](images/macvspc_thumbnail.png)
Hello, I'm
a Mac.
Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet
branagh hamlet movie
Fri Aug 24 23:40:33 2007
I was overjoyed to read that the long-awaited DVD edition of
Kenneth Branagh's Hamlet (1996) is finally available for
sale. The 2 DVDs set has been mastered from the 4 hour long 70mm
print (2.20:1 ASR)and includes a director's commentary and a couple
of featurettes.
I had to email Amazon.ca to add it to my latest order (Kaufman
Field Guide to Insects of North America and Butterflies of
North America) because the website does not allow new items to
be added to unshipped orders; I don't know if this is a Canadian
thing or whether it's also standard practice in the U.S.— I should ask
our resident Amazon guru.
Before and After
design books
Sat Aug 25 00:10:56 2007
I was poking around Amazon after completing my order and saw that
Binghurst's “Elements of Typographic Style” is
on sale for CAD$20 (added it to my wishlist). After browsing a few
more recommended links I found “Before and After Page
Design”, a collection of various print publications
visually illustrating the improvements after a design
"renovation". It is a book that collects articles from the magazine
which has a website that
offers some free samples.
Forbidden Experiment
linguistics
Sun Aug 26 11:39:26 2007
In the seventh century B.C., the Egyptian pharaoh Psammetichus
conducted an unusual experiment: he plucked a couple of infants from
their mothers and turned them over to a shepherd, to be raised in
seclusion and in the absence of any spoken word. The idea was that
whatever sounds the babies spontaneously emitted would reveal the
oldest, the original human language.
This anecdote appears in the second book of Herodotus' Histories,
and although its veracity is disputed, it continues to tantalize
linguists, among whom it has become known as the Forbidden
Experiment— forbidden because its replication would be ethically
untenable; tantalizing because of the rich psycholinguistic data such
an experiment would surely yield.
The Forbidden Experiment is the specter that haunts "Talking Hands,"
the story of a remote Bedouin village where an indigenous sign
language has drawn the attention of a team of linguists, who hope it
will provide information about our innate capacity for language and
our drive to create it. During the past 70 years, this village of
3,500 people has experienced an unusually high incidence of deafness
(about one in 25, 40 times that of the general population). As a
result of these numbers, and the fact that until recently the
villagers had not been exposed to established signed languages, the
one that sprang up there and is now used by both deaf and hearing
people holds special value for researchers.
—Great opening from Leah Hager Cohen's NY Times
review of “Talking Hands: What Sign Language Reveals About
the Mind”, by Margalit Fox.
Internet Killed the Video Star
tv internet
Sun Aug 26 15:37:20 2007
An excellent summary
of the re-assignment of the UHF spectrum once analog TV channels
operating in that band are replaced by digital TV channels.
Aristotle was wrong!
physiology
Sun Aug 26 22:15:26 2007
In the early 1860s, Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr., then a brash
Harvard undergraduate, wrote an essay criticizing Plato, whose
classifications of ideas he found "loose and unscientific." Holmes
sent a copy of the essay to Emerson, whose books, he later said, had
"set me on fire." He soon received in return a nugget of stern
wisdom. "I have read your piece," Emerson replied. "When you strike
at a king you must kill him."
I recalled this bit of advice recently while reading Scott
McCredie's spirited first book, “Balance,” which
opens with the gutsy Holmesian salvo "Aristotle was wrong." The error
in question is Aristotle's contention, advanced in his treatise "De
Anima" in the fourth century B.C. and perpetuated ever since by
kindergarten teachers around the world, that there are five, and only
five, human senses: sight, smell, hearing, taste and touch. McCredie
has made it his mission to crack this bit of dogma by elevating
balance into the sensory canon, on the basis of its evolutionary
antiquity (540 million years, give or take), its necessity for
well-being and survival (it is likely impossible to live without),
and its surprising relationship to human cognition. Balance, McCredie
argues, "may prove to be the most primary— as in primordial,
life-sustaining, essential— of all the senses."
Broadly speaking, McCredie is right. Scientists now agree that the
classical five senses are not the only avenues through which we
gather information about the world around and, equally important,
inside us.
—Great opening to Daniel B. Smith's NY Times review
of “Balance: In Search of the Lost Sense.” by Scott
McCredie.
Book Design
design books
Tue Aug 28 13:42:40 2007
Recent books designed by
Pentagram include William Gibson's “Spook Country” and a
collection of Kubrick's photographs while he was employed by "Look"
magazine. There is also a new UK edition of Jack Kerouac's On the
Road.
A recent article in the NY Times Book review mentioned a website
with all the covers of the different editions of the novel. The
covers range from the completely and utterly boring (Spain, 1981) to
the exhilarating (UK 1998; Dutch 2006), to racy (Germany 2004), to
recursive (Germany 2006), to bewildering (China 2000, Sweden 2003).
The cover with the man with a bad haircut, in a red plaid shirt,
leaning on a green car (Denmark 1986, Greece 2000, Iceland, Israel
1988) was designed by someone who is not only colour-blind but with
impaired vision. Strangely, the pencil drawing of the same cover
(Greece 1981), showing more of the car, is strangely elegant.
TextEdit Icon
leopard textedit "crazy ones"
Wed Aug 29 16:03:56 2007
...because the people who are crazy enough to
think they can change the world, are the ones who do.
It seem the new TextEdit icon in Leopard (512x512 pixels in
resolution) has the opening text to Apple's "Here's to the crazy
ones" Think Different ad. I notice two problems with
this icon: first, the original ad said "disagree with them" rather
then "disbelieve them" and second, the text is written in Chancery, a
font that can only be rendered with a chiseled edge instrument, not
the mechanical pencil/pen that is shown. The lack of attention to
detail is dissappointing.
Mini Printing Problems
mini printing
Fri Aug 31 17:48:23 2007
Ever since switching the printing system from LPD to CUPS, I've
had two problems with the Mac Mini: 1) printing files containing
images with transparent backgrounds both from Pages and from
Safari/Mozilla— the backgrounds appear black— and 2) the
printer features for the Xerox 255 Workcenter do not remain applied
when they are modified (the printer has a hole-punch & LAN Fax,
and no amount of selecting these two options and clicking Apply
Changes makes them appear in the print dialog).
The transparent GIF/PNG problems appear on whichever printer I
try— HP LaserJet 5Si (IPP through CUPS) or Xerox WorkCenter Pro
255 (direct connection).
I've decided to call Apple Care.
After being on hold for 15 minutes, I got hold of a support person
who was sitting quite close to a woman who was trying to help someone
with some problem with dissappearing folders ("are there other users
on your computer?"). His first suggestion was resetting the printing
system: run Applications > Utilities > Printer Setup
Utility and select "Resetting the Printing System..." from the
menu, which deletes some files in /etc/cups/. I tried
printing again and it made no difference. He then recommended
deleting a printer and re-adding it— when I tried to delete the
printer (HP 5Si) I got an error: "An error occured while trying to
delete the selected printers: client-error-not-found". He admitted he
didn't know what that meant and that he was going to talk to
someone.
I got put on hold and after 5 minutes the music was suddenly
cutoff and the line went dead. Since it was nearly time for me to go
home, I decided to leave it until the following week (I wasn't given
a trouble-ticket so hopefully I will be able to carry on where I left off).
My current work-around for this problem is to use a Windows/XP
workstation in the front-office (half a block away from my office) to
print the final job. ![](images/bm.png)