Universal Rule

Book Reviews

Monday, February 3, 2003

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Switch: " [Mac] OS X is not just less-bad than Windows, it's Good. Yes, Apple also have sleazy marketing weasels, and the salesdrone at the Apple Store in your mall may be the same woeful grade of maladjusted cretin as the one at Best Buy that tries to sell you $49 monster cables for a $59 VCR, but somewhere in California, in the back corner of some office building where they're deciding what should appear on the screen when you click the next button, somebody is asking themselves not only what could appear on the screen that corresponds vaguely with what you nervously hoped you hit the right button to make appear, but what could jump a couple steps forward and startle and delight you."

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Standards muddy 'open' waters: "IBM, Apple, Microsoft, Sun Microsystems, and Nokia are passionate about their "open" mantra in the quest to address interoperability concerns. But the strategy itself is under threat of collapsing under its own weight. [...] While many vendors ascribe to all the right Internet-based open standards, layers of proprietary technology that limit a company's ability to build a genuinely open infrastructure can lurk beneath the surface." [InfoWorld: Top News]

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Don't Software Update iApps: "Word on the street is the iPhoto update via Software Update totally wipes your photos. Do not install it. Wait for an update. Please spread this around.... Happened to both my dad and sister... And quite a few others :P." [n3rd.net]

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The Battle in 64-bit Land, Re-Revisited, and a PPC 970 update: "Paul DeMone just posted the latest entry in his series of articles surveying the 64-bit computing landscape. This article includes more up-to-date analysis on the looming changes that will be brought on by x86-64 and the PPC 970, in addition to a revisit of Power4, SPARC, and other 64-bit contenders. Though the article contains no new info on the PPC 970, it does help to put the chip in the wider (non-Apple) context of 64-bit computing." [Ars Technica]

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Experts give Microsoft an 'F' for security: 'Computer security experts say the recent "SQL Slammer" worm, the worst in more than a year, is evidence that Microsoft's year-old security push is not working. [...] "Trustworthy Computing is failing," Russ Cooper of TruSecure Corp. said of the Microsoft initiative. "I gave it a 'D-minus' at the beginning of the year, and now I'd give it an 'F."' [...] The worm, which exploited a known vulnerability in Microsoft's SQL Server database software, spread through network connections beginning January 25, crashing servers and clogging the Internet.' [Reuters story < Living Without Microsoft]

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Apple In 2013: "Macintosh [...] will be a total information and entertainment appliance, completely at home presenting a widescreen, high definition TV show, film or your favorite computing program." [MacSlash: A daily dose of Macintosh News and Discussion]

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PowerBook G4 12" Disassembled: "Have you been itching to disassemble that new PB G4 12"? Worried you won't get it all back together? You can save yourself the trouble, because someone has already done it for you, and taken some nice pictures to document the process. (Descriptions in japanese, but the pictures speak for themselves.)" [MacSlash: A daily dose of Macintosh News and Discussion]

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Apple releases iMovie 3.01, iPhoto 2: "Apple has posted iMovie 3.01 and iPhoto 2.0 via its Software Update mechanism in Mac OS X as well as on the Web." [The Macintosh News Network]