Book Reviews
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Thursday, October 30, 2003
![[Item Permalink]](http://radio.weblogs.com/0112083/images/ur_bullet.gif){kind=small} Updated impressions of the G5 supercluster -- Comment()
I updated my story about the the Apple G5 dual supercluster at Virginia Tech with details from the TecCon Keynote.
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New virus hits computers: "A virus dubbed Sober which affects many versions of Windows is starting to spread more widely online." [BBC News | Technology | UK Edition]
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10.3: Use a password analyzer to improve password security: "If you try to change the password for a Keychain using the Keychain Access app, you'll notice on the resulting dialog box a circular button with an 'i' in it, as seen in the inset in the screenshot." [macosxhints]
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One More Cool Cat: "Whether Panther is worth the money is ultimately up to each Mac user, but the abundance of cool, desirable features will pry open a lot of pocketbooks." (Baltimore Sun via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]
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@Stake issues security advisories for OS X Jaguar: "Security consulting firm, @Stake issued three security advisories for Apple's Mac OS X operating system late last night. The advisories affect Mac OS X 10.2.8 and lower and do not appear to affect the company's recently released Panther operating system. In fact, @Stake is recommending users upgrade to Panther as a fix for the problems." [MacCentral] It is interesting to note that @Stake recently fired their Technology Director for co-writing the widely cited white paper Cyber Insecurity: The Cost of Monopoly. It was said that @Stake has done software evaluation research for Microsoft, which may have influenced the firing. I understand that these Mac OS X advisories are rather speculative in nature. Seeing the first Mac OS X worm or virus might not be too far in the future, though. But we'll see. We have been waiting for the first virus to appear for several years now.
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Confessions of the World's Largest Switcher: "I was in the market for a new machine. I was hoping to get ten teraflops by the end of the year. I'd never used a Mac and had been looking at Dells and IBMs. Then Apple released the G5 on June 23. A week later I bought 1,100 duals online at the Apple Store. I'm Srinidhi Varadarajan and I build Supercomputers at Virginia Tech."
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Open Source Software economics: "Linux has been around for quite some time, yet Apple came in and created a Unix operating system with a much easier to use and comprehensive UI, becoming the number one vendor of desktop Unix in a few short years. This demonstrates another pitfall of OSS: distributed part-time development on a wide range of projects (many of them competing) does allow for more choice, but it also results in slower progress, and multiple projects with half-implemented features and functionality."
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OS X 10.3 Has Built-in File Defragmentation: "Basically, when a file is accessed, a check is made to see if it is fragmented (split into several different sectors on the Hard Drive), If so, and if it is less than 20 MB in size, the filesystem will copy the file over to a contiguous area on the HD that will hold the file in it's entirety in concurrent sectors, and then free up the HD space the fragmented version used to occupy."
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The Great Mac OS X 10.4 Wish List: "Panther includes more than 150 new features, enhancements and optimizations. However, anything that's 'great' can become 'near-perfect' with a bit more effort, right? Read our 10.4 wish list and then use the comment section to post your own wish list for the next version of OSX. Apple engineers and product managers, take notice!"
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