Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Thursday, November 13, 2003

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Microsoft's New Security Mojo: "[D]espite the software giant's own executives saying publicly over a year ago that their products "weren't designed for security" the company continues to point fingers at third parties, hackers, and crackers as the source of the many problems plaguing the Windows-based portions of the Internet. It also demonstrates the ineffective organized chaos that remains Microsoft's response to the marketplace demands for better-developed, better-tested products." [The Register]

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Sure I'd trust Microsoft with my data again...: " I will never buy into a world of Microsoft controlled DRM. They don't build the kind of software that I would trust not to lose my licenses, invalidate my data or lock me out of my system. If this was Outlook + Palladium then doubtless the PST files on my backup CD wouldn't be readable by now either." [Curiouser and curiouser!]

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The Myths of Children: "The homeless children of Miami have developed an interesting and amazing belief system, which brings them hope and the ability to understand the world and the circumstances they exist in. This story, as written by Lynda Edwards for the Miami New Times gives an insightful and at times, beautiful look into the folklore and tales of the children." [kuro5hin.org]

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iTMS Sales Pose New Problem For Billboard Charts: "Rising sales of digital tracks through music services such as the iTunes Music Store are raising questions about how such transactions should be measured on the Billboard charts." (MacMinute via MyAppleMenu) [MyAppleMenu]

Programming on Mac OS X -- Comment()
I'm a Fortran programmer, because I work with computational science. However, every now and then it is nice to do some graphics, and experiment with graphics-related ideas. I have been using Mathematica and Matlab for this kind of work.

Recently I discovered two nice (and free) graphical programming tools for Mac OS X: ACSLogo and F-Script. I once made quite a lot of graphics with a Logo-like language, and ACSLogo seems to be a competent implementation. F-Script on the other hand provides a nice interface to the windowing environment on Mac OS X - you can experiment on the fly.

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Spam set to soar this Christmas: "Christmas is coming and spammers want to fill your inbox with more messages than ever. Net filtering firms report that senders of spam are already starting to change the messages they send in an attempt to cash in on the festive season." [Privacy Digest]

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I've had enough: "Every couple months or so I hear a horror story from a friend about connecting their new PC or laptop to the Internet. These are not dumb people. they're just not half as geeky as you and I may be. [...] Buy a new machine Go to microsoft.com to update the buggy windows everyone keeps talking about. .. oops, machine already infected with some virus or trojan in less than 5 minutes after being connected to the net.. [...] it won't boot up again without some major fixing and updating. [...] I've had enough.. sorry friends/family/whoever has my phone number.. your windows won't boot? Call Microsoft. I'm going on geek-strike." [kasia in a nutshell]

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G5, iTunes get Popular Science 'Best of What's New' nods: "Popular Science magazine has posted its 2003 Best of What's New retrospective, where its editors highlight advances in technology and science over 2003. A dozen different individual categories are recognized, and Apple picked up a couple of nods in the Computing section, for the G5 and iTunes Music Store." [MacCentral]

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CNN apologizes for Mac vs. PC question: "Following a Brown University student accusation that producers of last week's Democratic presidential candidate debate coerced her to ask candidates whether they preferred Macs or PCs, broadcaster CNN admitted to the action and said that a producer on the show "went too far" in telling the student what to ask." [MacCentral]