Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Friday, December 20, 2002

-- Comment()
It's only just begun: "The not guilty verdict handed down to ElcomSoft was a welcome relief to many, but it is only one skirmish victory in the war against the DMCA. The verdict only slimmed the DMCA down to a 399 lb gorilla and it will continue to be used by the **AAs (and others with deep pockets) to threaten companies, programmers and home computer users." [Ars Technica]

Mac OS 10.2.3 seems to work all right -- Comment()
OS X 10.2.3: "OS X 10.2.3 is now out, and so far, I've installed it on 3 systems. No problems installing, and it seems to be working just fine." [Teal Sunglasses]

I installed 10.2.3 on my PowerBook G4, without problems. Everything is running smoothly, no problems whatsoever. Nothing significantly new either.

-- Comment()
MathML 2.0 second edition Working Draft published (W3C): "The Math Working Group has released a Working Draft of the Mathematical Markup Language (MathML) Version 2.0 (2nd Edition). MathML 2.0 is an XML application that allows mathematical notation and content to be served, received, and processed on the Web. The 2nd edition contains clarifications and errata corrections." [IBM DeveloperWorks: XML News]

Meaningful URLs -- Comment()
Jon's Radio tells that Craig Johnson has posted a wonderful essay: "I would argue that any environment that exposes information via URL is likely to see this kind of spontanious or seredipitous activity because it doesn't require coordination and planning. The only constraint is trust. When information is made available via URL the producer will want to trust the consumer community to not abuse the resource and the consumer will want to trust the producer is not going to disappear."

How to Write a Christmas Story (Short Course) -- Comment()
I wrote this week an Christmas story titled How to Write a Christmas Story (Short Course). The original Finnish title is Miten kirjoitan joulupakinan (lyhyt oppimäärä). The text was published in a weekly newsletter. I decided to publish it also here. I hope you have a good Christmas (even if you can't read Finnish).

Updated guides on the web -- Comment()
Today I updated three of my short guides, which are available on the web in Adobe Acrobat PDF format. All are written in Finnish:

Käytännön ohjeita ohjelmankehitykseen (Practical advice for software development)
Ohjeita LaTeXin käyttöön (Advice for using LaTeX)
Ohjeita Mac OS X:n käyttöön (Advice for using Mac OS X)

Curing the lost postings of Radio UserLand? -- Comment()
I posted a question about lost Radio UserLand postings at the discussion forum. I got the following reply from Roger Turner:

[...] a problem with this mechanism on Macs if databases don't have the correct filetype/creator codes: does weblogData.root show the correct icon in the Finder?

I noticed that none of the .root files show a "correct" icon, only a generic document icon. After another reply from Roger I did the following in Terminal:

% cd '/Applications/Radio UserLand/Data Files'
% /Developer/Tools/SetFile -t TABL -c LAND *.root
% /Developer/Tools/GetFileInfo weblogData.root
file: "weblogData.root"
type: "TABL"
creator: "LAND"
attributes: avbstclInmed
created: 11/18/2002 10:33:25
modified: 12/20/2002 11:33:45

I hope this helps to cure the problem.

-- Comment()
Scientists find 2800-year-old frozen microbes in Antarctic lake: "In ice that has sealed a salty Antarctic lake for more than 2800 years, scientists have found frozen bacteria and algae that returned to life after thawing." [Google Technology News]

-- Comment()
Multiple Vulnerabilities Discovered In CUPS: "Security firm iDefense, which released details of the vulnerabilities yesterday, said exploitation of the vulnerabilities could allow local and remote attackers, in the worst of scenarios, to gain root privileges on a victim's computer." (The Age via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

-- Comment()
Study Seeks Technology Safeguards for Privacy: "The Pentagon has released a study that recommends the government pursue specific technologies as potential safeguards against the misuse of data-mining systems similar to those now being considered by the government..." [Google Technology News]

-- Comment()
Blogging about your job.: "The job, the blog, and you is an Washington Post article [...] that discusses the pitfalls about blogging about your job. Makes some good points, especially how the blogging community needs to take account of things such as non-disclosure clauses in employment contracts." [MetaFilter]

-- Comment()
Mac OS X 10.2.3 Update Available: "Apple has released the Mac OS X 10.2.3 update, now available via the Software Update control panel." [MacMegasite]

-- Comment()
Apple Security Alert 2002-12-19 Mac OS X 10.2.3: "Apple has documented several security issues that have been fixed in Mac OS X 10.2.3, which is now available in the Software Update control panel." [MacMegasite]

-- Comment()
Yet another Windows worm: "Lioten, also known as Iraq_Oil, is a Windows network worm spreading through shared folders. It was found on December 16th, 2002 in the wild." [MacMegasite]

-- Comment()
Matt Croydon::postneo gives congrats to Mark Pilgrim about his story on XML.com titled What is RSS?

-- Comment()
Dive Into XML: "So anyway, I wake up one day, and I have this email from Kendall Clark, offering to pay me to write a monthly column for O'Reilly's XML.com. This is not the kind of offer you get every day." [dive into mark]

-- Comment()
FAST Fine Tunes Features: "Competition is working in the search sector. In recent months, nearly all the major engines have engineered improvements to deliver faster, more accurate results for their users." [Google Technology News]

-- Comment()
No way to tell a person's race from his genes: "The idea of race is not reflected in a person's genes, Brazilian researchers said on Monday, confirming what scientists have long said - that race has no meaning genetically." [Google Technology News]

-- Comment()
Astronomers detect clouds floating above Saturn moon: "Telescopes atop Mauna Kea have recorded for the first time clouds floating over Saturn's biggest moon -- considered by some astronomers to be the most earth-like body in the solar system, scientists reported Wednesday." [Google Technology News]

-- Comment()
New network worm spreading: "The Computer Emergency Response Team's Coordination Center says it has received plenty of reports to date to indicate that thousands of systems are scanning in a manner consistent with known behaviour of the new Windows network worm..." [Google Technology News]

-- Comment()
Microsoft Security Bulletin MS02-072: Unchecked Buffer in Windows Shell: "Who should read this bulletin: Customers using Microsoft Windows XP Impact of vulnerability: Run code of an attacker's choice Maximum Severity Rating: Critical Recommendation: Customers using Microsoft Windows XP should apply the patch immediately." [vowe dot net]

-- Comment()
Quicktime 6 Becoming Mobile-Phone Standard?: "It seems like Apple's QuickTime 6 is becoming standard on some 44 million Japanese mobile phones. Apple and many other companies are pressuring hard to make MPEG-4 the industry standard for video-on-demand services in 3G cellular networks..." [Google Technology News]

Lost weblog postings - again -- Comment()
It seems that the Radio UserLand software is becoming unstable. For the second time this week I lost postings. Fortunately, this time only postings for one day. This is small matter compared to the loss of four days on Tuesday this week.

This time I made a copy of my RSS file, so it is possible to recover the lost postings. However, it is getting tedious to resubmit postings every now and then.