Working with Xcode: Building Applications for the Future:

"Xcode, Apple's tool suite and integrated development environment (IDE), is the fast and easy way for developers to create applications for Mac OS X Tiger.

Xcode is designed to let you take advantage of all the great technologies that ship in Mac OS X. In addition, you can ensure that your application is ready for the future: starting with the current version, Xcode 2.1, you can build a universal binary application that runs both on current PowerPC-based Macs and the upcoming Intel-based Macs. Developing with Xcode helps you create great applications now, and brings you well along the path to the future."

I've yet to use Xcode, even though I've been meaning to. I'm more of a texteditor/comand line kind of person.

Slashdot | The State of Linux Graphics:

"'ve written a lengthy article covering what I learned during the last two years building the Xegl display server. Topics include the current X server, framebuffer, Xgl, graphics drivers, multiuser support, using the GPU, and a new display server design."

Since I've been using OS X, it seems a little strange to run Linux and only have X as the graphical system. It seems weird that their isn't a native system which runs X within it. But then again, that gives you choice. Choice to run whatever windowing system you want (I love WindowMaker).

Treo Essentials:

"What are your favorite Treo essentials?"

(Via Lifehacker.)

Sigh, I have to get a Treo first.

MSN Search quietly introduces feed search:

"MSN Search introduced feed-specific search last week using two new search operators for advanced users: feed and hasfeed."

(Via Niall Kennedy's Weblog.)

Hmmm... looks to me like the Google rivals might be catching up, at least in terms of search technologies.

How to Get a Cheaper Flight:

"My co-blogger at Crooked Timber Ted Barlow points out that it is possible to save money on last-minute flights by booking a hotel room with your flight even if you don't need nor plan to use a hotel room."

(Via Lifehacker.)

Might come in handy!

Giant South American centipede found in London:

"A London man heard what he thought was a mouse scurrying around behind his television. What he found was a 9-inch-long venemous giant centipede. "

(Via Boing Boing.)

Bink.nu | MSN Toolbar Roaming Favorites First Look :

"Released to beta testers earlier today, the MSN Toolbar Roaming Favorites Add-In Beta 1 is Microsoft's first attempt at allowing users to access their internet bookmarks (a.k.a. Favorites) remotely without having to be signed up to the MSN Internet service. Because the MSN Toolbar is free, anyone will be able to install this addition once it's released."

Is this the move towards having the same desktop everywhere. Sort of like on StarTrek when Geordi leaves the engine room for the bridge, and transfer his desktop to the bridge when he gets their? Is this a move from Personal Computer, to Personal Desktops?

Microsoft Purchases VOIP Company To Boost MSN Messenger's Capabilities:

"This is pretty good news for MSN Messenger users. Instant Messaging is more than just sending text from one computer to another."

(Via Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life.)

Yes but is it good news for MSN messenger users on the Mac?

The WordPress Security Update:

"Dougall Campbell, a developer for WordPress, responds to what he sees as a campaign of fear, uncertainty and doubt against the 1.5.2 release. Dougall admits that the first downloadable archive to be posted on wordpress.org didn’t contain all the security fixes they intended to include, but that the situation was rectified before the initial announcement of the release was posted, and therefore anybody who downloaded the archive after the posting of the official announcement is safe from the problem."

(Via SitePoint's PHP Blog: Dynamically Typed.)

PHP with Apple's Developer Tools:

"Project Builder is an excellent tool for Web developers working in languages like PHP and Perl."

Dori Smith tells you how to whip up a widget:

"Who knew that all a Widget consists of are 3 files in a folder with a special extension."

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Using The Coroner's Toolkit : Rescuing files with lazarus

Black people loot, white people find?:

"The images were shot by different photographers, and captioned by different photo wire services. The Associated Press caption accompanying the image with a black person says he's just finished 'looting' a grocery store. The AFP/Getty Images caption describes the white couple 'finding' bread and soda from a grocery store. No stores are open to sell these goods."

(Via Boing Boing.)

Uh-oh. I just realized no permalinks showing up on the blog after the new template. Will have to fix that!

Update: New template, now with permalinks!

Web Application Security Reviews | PHP Everywhere:

"As we continue to develop what I like to think is Enterprise PHP software, one of the most painful parts of the software installation is when we have to go through security audits. The most sticky and difficult ones that i have seen are the audits of financial institutions."

SpiritedAway

A utility that minimizes application windows open in the background for a certain amount of time. A great way to keep your desktop clean.

PBS | I, Cringely . August 25, 2005 - Has Google Peaked?:

"That pace of technical development, which probably isn't sustainable for long at any company, isn't POSSIBLE at all at more mature companies like AOL, Yahoo, and especially Microsoft. That adolescent energy is the mojo that makes a startup scarier to Bill Gates than a mature competitor. He knows that if Microsoft ever takes a big dive, it will be because of a Google, not a Yahoo, and certainly not an AOL."

Apple Mail plug-ins and tools

Everyone's Killer Feature is Different:

"I've been using GMail since the first day it was available and search has never been the standout feature for me. Instead, it's the fact that GMail acts like a desktop app, has lots of room, and something that approximates threading."

(Via Jeremy Zawodny's blog.)

Blogger tools

Some very helpful links to help you improve your blog.

New ShellBOT spreading via awstats.

May 2003 Linux Productivity Magazine: IPTables:

"You will see that the mountd daemon is bound to different ports every time you restart NFS. How do you accurately pinhole such as service?
There are 3 ways:
The shotgun method -- pass all TCP and UDP from 32000 to 34000
Use the NFS start script to peg it to a single port
Create an NFS restart script to first detect all mountd ports, then restart NFS, then detect all new NFS ports, then alter the firewall to accommodate the changes."

Slashdot | Apple Hedges Its Bet on New Intel Chips:

"The Mercury News is reporting that Apple is still planning to use PowerPC chips well into 2008 for its low end and portable systems. Does this increase the 'warm fuzzes' for the Intel move?"

Umm... what's going on? Should I wait for a new mac mini with an Intel processor or not?

Slashdot | The Invasion of The Chinese Cyberspies

Price Guides, August 2005: Storage:

"500GB hard drives are now available in the retail channel. We also have details on SAS, LightScribe and new Western Digital SATA IO drives!"

(Via AnandTech Article Channel.)

Google APIlity Library Documentation:

"The APIlity PHP Library provides an object-oriented way to easily access and manage the Google AdWords API from within PHP. This comes along with an abstraction from the SOAP and WSDL details."

October 2005: From the Editor - rm -rf /opt/bs | Linux Journal:

"Consider this filler, I mean essay, to be a bug report on the big companies that are doing Linux for the
desktop. 'Let's 'position' Linux as a simplified desktop for 'transactional users'', they say. That's right-employees, if your company gives you Linux, that means Management thinks you're a human servlet. Decision-makers and content creators get a proprietary desktop OS."

Has Open Source Become A Marketing Slogan? - Forbes.com:

"What gives? Officials at VA Software say they can't release SourceForge Enterprise Edition as an open source program, because, if they did, copycats could create knockoffs of the program, and that would hurt sales."
...
This is the latest twist in the evolution of the free and open source (FOSS) movement. What began as a revolution has now become just another marketing slogan. Startups are latching onto the hype around “open source” to gain interest from venture capitalists and earn street credibility with the FOSS community, but then proceed with a business model predicated on making money by selling closed source code.

HOW-TO Bonanza: 50 Great Summertime Projects for You & Your Mac mini

Acts As Tree:

"Combining the Rails Confidence Builder and Atom’s processing model for content, and I’m nearly ready to consume some real data.  Trouble is, each feed contains both entries and comments."

(Via Sam Ruby.)

FreeMacWare.com � URLwell

SiteSucker

SiteSucker

FreeMacWare.com

Linux Test Project Homepage

Linux Test Project Homepage

CRASHME: Random input testing.

Spew -- an I/O performance measurement and load generation tool

CPU Burn-in Homepage

How to install OpenSSH sshd server and sftp server on a Windows 2000 or Windows XP or Windows Server 2003

JSF vs. Tapestry:

"In this article we put these frameworks head-to-head, comparing each on its merits. We rate the two on critical aspects of their design, development and runtime environments. The intention is to provide users with a basis for making informed choices about the advantages and disadvantages of each, and for deciding which to choose when embarking on a new project. Our comparisons are based on JSF 1.1 and Tapestry 3.0.3 (with occasional references to the forthcoming Tapestry 4.0 where appropriate)."

More information on STI's Cell:

"Sony and IBM released a ton of Cell-related documentation today."

(Via Ars Technica.)

Microsoft vows to play nice with security chip - Personal Computer World:

"Windows Vista will switch off certain features of the trusted platform module due to privacy concerns, Stephen Heil, technical evangelist for Microsoft's Core OS Division has said."

Major Changes in Web Development from Whidbey Beta 2 to RTM:

"MSDN has published a document outlining the major changes to the programming model and APIs used by developers working in ASP.NET between Beta 2 and the final RTM"

(Via TheServerSide.NET: Your Enterprise .NET Community.)

launchd editor:

"Launchd Editor is a GUI tool that lets you set up your own lauchd items without having to use the scary Terminal (and if you aren't a least a little fearful of the Terminal, you should be. You can really screw up your Mac in the Terminal, though in the right hands and with the proper respect you can also accomplish great things). For 5 bucks, which is suggested, you too can use Launchd Editor like a Unix jockey. Before you know it you will have everything on your Mac running on a tight schedule."

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

An Illustrated Guide to IPSec:

(Via LWN.net.)

Sign Up for GMail via Your Mobile Phone:

"The privacy implications of having a company collect people's verified mobile phone numbers just for free email accounts boggles the mind. It is common knowledge that web surfers often give websites information they consider private thus I'm sure lots of people will take them up on their offer."

(Via Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life.)

sms.ac are evil…:

"I recently got an invite to sms.ac (the evil of evil SMS companies). Who was it from? My recently deceased best freaking friend. Who didn’t do cellphones in the first place. And wouldn’t blind invite people like that."

(Via Ensight - Jeremy Wright.)

USATODAY.com - Tech titans wish we wouldn't quote them on this baloney

You mean the Bill Gates quote, 640 KB should be enough for anybody is not real! (or something to that effect, read the article!)

Serious PHP flaw found

Google, Yahoo! or MSN - Who sends you traffic?:

"Having looked recently at the traffic from a handful of busy and not-so-busy websites, I got to wondering: there sure is a lot of talk around the web about search, and how important it is. But if that is really the case, why has GOOG been the only engine to send me traffic over the last 4 years?"

(Via Fiftyfoureleven.com Web Development Weblog - Full Posts.)

This is so true. When I look for referrer logs, most people are coming in from Google. Only occasionally is someone from Yahoo. MSN is non-existent.

Credit card makers forced to scrutinize security | CNET News.com

Building a Call Center with LTSP and Soft Phones | Linux Journal:

"A new customer approached us with a need to provision the office. The customer was receptive to open-source software and was interested in using Linux. Being a nonprofit organization, the budget for the project was tight."

Audiolicious: Turn Any RSS Feed Into A Podcast:

"Audiolicious is a Windows program that lets you turn any RSS feed into a podcast."

(Via Threadwatch.org - Marketing and Technology Discussed.)

ADmitMac 3.0 released:

"ADmitMac makes your Mac a full fledged member of the Active Directory and enables you to access all the resources that your Windows brethren can. This is a wonderful thing for Mac users in the corporate environment because the central IT office can manage all their machines using one tool."

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Adaptive Defense Against Various Network Attacks:

"This paper is much like earlier papers on threshold random walk detection methods used to detect failed connection attempts as well as host and port scans."

(Via worm blog.)

10.4: Search current directory using an mdfind alias:

"The Unix mdfind utility lets you search files using the Spotlight index from the Terminal. This is a great tool, but it doesn't quite replace find, which makes it very easy to search the current directory."

(Via macosxhints.)

Yahoo's Ad System Crash:

"MarketingVOX report that Yahoo! ads are down, and have been for 3 days now. Im not sure if they've been fixed this morning, but man, that's gotta HURT. "

(Via Threadwatch.org - Marketing and Technology Discussed.)

Bender casemod, talks, glows, and stores a terabyte:

"This casemod is a life-sized 'Bender' from the show Futurama. His eyes glow and he says 'Bite my shiny metal ass' on demand. He also has a terabyte of storage, WiFi, and a DVD burner."

(Via Boing Boing.)

usability, power, and senior project:

"I had an interesting discussion with Eugene yesterday about some of the reasons why usability practitioners aren’t involved in open source projects. The main motivating factors for devlopers are also true for usability practitioners (to scratch one’s own itch and reputation), but there’s a problem with knowing how to get involved. For developers, there are clear paths to take like using sourceforge to create a new project or submitting a patch to an existing project. We need a light weight method for usability practitioners to provide feedback to an existing project like a source code patch."

(Via Are You Pondering What I'm Pondering?.)

Slashdot | SpaceShipThree to be Orbital Spacecraft:

"The president of spaceflight company Virgin Galactic has recently stated that if the upcoming suborbital service with SpaceShipTwo is successful, the follow-up SpaceShipThree will be an orbital craft"

"It's been a long road, getting from there to here.
It's been a long time, but my time is fin'lly near.
And I can feel a change in the wind right now,
Nothing's in my way.
And they're not going to hold me down no more,
No they're not going to hold me down."

Enterprise

Slashdot | Terabyte DVD Recorder Available Next Month:

"Japan's Hitachi Ltd. on Wednesday unveiled the world's first hard disk drive/DVD recorder that can store one terabyte of data"

Stockholders approve Adobe/Macromedia merger:

"You can start shopping for wedding presents because it's official! Shareholders have approved the merger between Macromedia and Adobe (we all know that it is Adobe gobbling up Macromedia but it isn't polite to point that out on their special day)."

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Google Earth - Karachi:

"Google has recently uploaded some very high resoulution satellite image and it has some very decent pictures of our city Karachi. The resolution is remarkable that you can almost recognize your own house."

(Via Metroblogging Karachi.)

Are we spammers?:

"There's been an interesting cross-blog conversation going on lately:

Phil Ringnalda: O'Reilly joins the search engine spam parade
Tim O'Reilly: Search Engine Spam?
Shelley Powers: Who is gaming who?"

(Via Backup Brain.)

I've been fighting with my conscience, should I place Google Ads on my blog? Will people think this is one of those many spam blogs, and move along? Would it hurt to try?

Slashdot | Enlightenment DR17 On the Linux Desktop

I wish I could get excited about this. The screenshots don't look that impressive. Maybe its the performance that will be more impressive?

Mort Gets the Message

O'Reilly Radar > Search Engine Spam?:

"I just read Phil Ringnalda's comments claiming search engine spam by advertisers on O'Reilly sites. This was a bit of a shock to me. Since then, I've spent a bunch of time talking to people about Phil's complaints, looking into what we're doing and what I think we should do. It's clearly a complicated issue, and my opinion has changed a couple of times as I've gotten more information. Apologies for the length of this entry. I'm still in fact-finding mode, but wanted to share my process rather than waiting till I have a complete solution."

SOA programming model for implementing Web services, Part 6: The evolving component model

Girls Girls Girls! - and er... Search! | Threadwatch.org

Dana Epp's ramblings at the Sanctuary: Defeating Windows XP SP2 Heap protection

Share Skype

Skype IM API has been released so that third party developers can tie in to the text only chat system of skype. No tie in with voice. For me, the only thing missing from IM right now is integration of all the various IM networks. Other than that, I already have all the features I need from an IM network.

Right now, I use AIM (work), MSN (friends), Yahoo (family), Jabber (thanks to google), Skype (Gaming friends) and IRC (Linuxhelp channels). I used to use ICQ, but most people migrated to MSN from their so, I no longer use it at all. And I have to use them, because its almost impossible to get people on one network to move to another. Can we standardize on ONE IM protocol, please!!!!

MySQL: FOREIGN KEY Constraints:

"This avoids problems with tables having to be reloaded in a particular order when the dump is reloaded. For earlier versions, you can disable the variable manually within mysql when loading the dump file like this:

mysql> SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS = 0;
mysql> SOURCE dump_file_name
mysql> SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS = 1;"

I am having problems dumping a database from one system to another. Not sure if the problem is above, will have to try. It wasn't the above problem.

From this post I learnt that you have to force backticks on table names using:

--quote-names

when doing a mysql_dump. Or else if the name conflicts with key words, the dump will fail to import.

Build grid applications based on SOA

Grids and the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) are two systems that appear to be on a collision course. The SOA is a standard for building discrete services, potentially across multiple machines, which can be combined to build an application that reduces integration costs. Most modern grids employ Web services like the SOA, but there is more to merging the two systems than simply employing Web services. You must also adjust the architecture of your grid solution. This article explains the concepts behind SOA and what you should consider when moving your grid applications toward an SOA model.

Distributed Tiger: Xgrid comes of age

And to get a start on Xgrid as the above article says:

Integrating Xgrid into Cocoa Applications

Bye, Bye, Library!

Hey I used to work and study at the Flawn Academic Center. We were called Proctors, and were supposed to help people with their computer problems.

Here is the slashdot thread.

Relax, Bill Gates; It's Google's Turn as the Villain - New York Times:

"But instead of embracing Google as one of their own, many in Silicon Valley are skittish about its size and power. They fret that the very strengths that made Google a search-engine phenomenon are distancing it from the entrepreneurial culture that produced it - and even transforming it into a threat."

:)

Yesterday in Instant Messaging News:

"There were two instant messaging releases shipped yesterday from two of the major online players."

(Via Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life.)

Ahh.. yes there were two clients released. And I installed both. I installed MSN messenger 7.5 yesterday. Saw very little that affected me going from 7.0 to 7.5 (the login screen is different). Moved on.

Google IM on the other hand, was a service release for me, not an application that I have to install. All I had to do, was go to my chat clients on the mac (adium, iChat AVI), add an account with the jabber protocol and thats it.

Which experience was more exciting? Google IM is more exciting, because when I get to my windows box, I'll install the lean and mean google IM client, which should load fast. Unlike the MSN messenger with all its ugly disgusting tabs. Thats what I hate about the MSN client. Its bulky, takes too long to login, and the interface is cluttered with stuff I have never cared about. I dont even do voice chat, I just type some stuff and I'm done. Jabber also has the possibility of allowing interaction within various Instant Messaging systems (MSN/AIM/ICQ). Although I don't see it now, there is hope that I'll be able to interact with my msn and aim buddies just through google's jabber server. Thats whats so exciting.

Google's entrance into the instant messaging landscape is interesting although unsurprising. As usual Google has entered the space with a disruptive move but instead of the move being the feature set of its IM client it is by not treating their IM network as a walled garden as AOL, MSN and Yahoo! have done. People aren't restricted to the Google Talk client and anyone can write a client application to connect people within their network. I'm not sure this is a smart move but it definitely is a disruptive one.

Gratis gaming: 10 real PC games you can download for free - CNET reviews

I'm on Google Talk right now.

Hey, I've got it working with Adium and iChat AV on OS X. Cool. Msg me if you want at awasim (at) gmail (dot) com.

The Summer of Google:

"I think we can safely call this the summer of Google."

(Via Lazycoder.)

050819-securing-mac-os-x-tiger.pdf:

"Corsaire (www.corsaire.com/white-papers/) has released a fully updated version of their guide to securing Mac OS X"

(Via Packet Storm Security Last 100.)

Download of the Day: Google Talk Beta:

"Google Talk, a Google IM client. Integrates with Gmail, XMPP (used by Jabber, Adium, iChat, etc.) and supports audio chat. Requires a GMail account and Windows (for now).

Google Talk

"

(Via Lifehacker.)

Detection of SQL Injection and Cross-site Scripting Attacks

Cgisecurity.com: Cross Site Scripting questions and answers

Asa Dotzler - Firefox and more: chris pederick deserves better

"I just read over at chrispederick.com Blog that an IE developer tool called Web Inspector from a company called AEVITA has totally ripped off his amazing Web Developer Toolbar."

Om Malik�s Broadband Blog � Google�s Jabber is Alive, works with iChat AV

Dare: The Evolution of AJAX: Jason Kottke Beats Me To The Punch

Ahhh... the rich client vs. thin clients. I want my rich fat clients, but the world says "Nay! we want thin!". Oh well, exciting times nonetheless!

Using IIS with VS 2005 and the new Web Project system

python, iis and windows 2003 server

I was setting up Python on Windows 2003 server, and I ran into a problem that I had not had with Python/IIS on Windows XP.

IIS would not accept the string "C:\Python20\python.exe %s %s". It turns out you have to have the following string for it to work:

"C:\Python20\python.exe" %s %s

The change is in the placement of the quotes. It should work fine after that.

MSN Messenger 7.5 Final - Build 0299:

"Neowin Reports. The MSN Messenger team have just released version 7.5 of the client to the masses."

(Via Bink.nu.)

SECURITY UPDATE : Dixons Stores Group - Mass Spamming Engines | Threadwatch.org:

"Because you have checked and verified the authenticity of the link you proceed to the site fill in your name, address, credit card and CVV number along with your mother's maiden name and date of birth as a security measure.
Unfortunately the browser has had the contents of its document object model rewritten and although the browser says you are on a page at www.thelink.com and indeed you actually are, the content is being servered from some nefarious rogue gangster intent on stealing your identity, your credit card details."

macosxhints - Coloring Terminal's SSH server connections:

"If you find yourself heading in and out of various remote servers (especially if done in the same Terminal window), then this AppleScript should be quite useful. I found a few other tips on this site about coloring Terminal windows, but none of them offered what I wanted: A single script which could be activated by a command key (via QuicKeys, iKey, Spark, etc.)."

Getting Started with launchd

Dare Obasanjo aka Carnage4Life - Omar Shahine on MSN's AJAX Framework

Talk.google.com - Jabber Server Listening | Threadwatch.org

Please tell me this is what I have been waiting for. Endorsement and publicity from a big vendor for Jabber, so that others (the non-geek friends of mine) will start using Jabber.

A Comparison of Linux Performance Tuning Books | Linux Journal

SANS: Windows buffer overflow protection

"Today, we would like to solicit ideas for runtime buffer overflow protection on Windows platform. There has been many recent developments in the arena of buffer overflow protection. Many vendors are coming out with their own solution for protecting machines from 0-day buffer overflow attacks. Even the anti-virus vendors are bundling it into the AV solution, is it the next big thing in security or is it another marketing hype? Please write in to let us know what you think... "

The Old New Thing : Why are icons multiples of 8 pixels in width?

"Icons are all multiples of eight pixels in width. It's not just because computer people like powers of two.

Back in the early days of Windows, video cards were monochrome or, if you were lucky, 16-color. These were all planar video modes, the mechanics of which were discussed earlier. Now imagine copying a bitmap to the screen where both the bitmap and the screen are planar. If the starting coordinates of the destination was an exact multiple of eight, then the bitmap could be copied via block transfer instructions. On the other hand, if the destination was not a perfect multiple of eight, you had to do a lot of fancy bit shifting to get it onto the screen."

I love these history lessons!

OpenBSD: Improved Memory Allocation, Beta Testing 3.8

"Theo points out that these changes have a couple of significant impacts. He explains that for over a decade efforts have been made to find and fix buffer overflows, and more recently bugs have been found in which software is reading before the start of a buffer, or beyond the end of the buffer. With these recent memory allocation changes, such an attempt will cause the application to coredump with a SIGSEGV signal."

Miguel de Icaza: Meanwhile, on the other side of the planet

"Most troublesome is the new culture of revenge and the new culture of kidnapping which are emerging in one of the bloodiest months of the occupation:"

Would it be a bad thing, if I included small google adsense advertisements below each post on my blog? The way I see it, its the only way of getting advertisements that are relevant to each post, unless I've missed something. But would the readers leave because of that?

I hate this template, its too confusing and muddled up. I'm going to go back to the old one.

aseigo: kspread: cool even when broken

"i editted it, saved it, went back to my konsole session, re-zipped it up, opened the newly zipp'd .kpr file and lo! my changes were there.

ok, it's a small thing perhaps. but it made me smile."

Shacknews - Unreal Tournament 2007 Screenshots

Man those are good graphics!

Slashdot | Host Integrity Monitoring Using Osiris and Samhain

Performing Remote and Local Rebooting

"Programmatic rebooting of local and remote machines is one of the most common problems that a network administrator faces."

APC - American Power Conversion -Switched Rack PDU

location
Originally uploaded by awasim.

Locations for the last 100 blog visitors from around the world.

Slashdot | A Piece of CherryPy for CGI Programmers

An IBM developer works article that looks at the Python web framework CherryPy.

Boing Boing: Google stealthily monitoring clickthroughs from search-results

"There's some very subtle clickthrough tracking going on at Google. Just before you click on a link on a search-results page, at the 'on mousedown' event, Google rewrites the links in its search results with a long redirector URL that is presumably being used to track which search results are being selected most often."

Micro Persuasion: New Blog Analytics Tool Debuts

"I am currently trying out a new hosted blog analytics tool called blogbeat. So far, it seems pretty handy. We need an alternative to the ad-cluttered SiteMeters of the world."

Niall Kennedy's Weblog: Blogs as an e-mail replacement:

"This couple had a very cool use case and it made me realize how much I take for granted in my daily search for wireless Internet access and the ability to publish and read others."

ScreenCast site opens up:

"Don McAllister has launched 'ScreenCastsOnline.' Cool. Subscribed."

(Via Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger.)

Geeks mad about advertising over on XML.com:

"That links to a post by Phil Ringalda which points out that XML.com is doing a form of spam advertising."

(Via Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger.)

Looks like OReilly can't do anything right these days. And they've done so well uptil now!

macdevcenter on ClamXav:

"This very helpful article goes through the steps of installing the software, setting up the preferences (by default it only scans when you tell it to, for all you antivirus haters out there) and includes an interview with the developer that wrapped GUI goodness around the command line tool CalmAV (which, by the way Apple ships with OS X server)."

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Raw Sugar lets you tag search results:

"This is very cool. It is a search engine, but one with a huge twist: it lets you add tags to search results."

(Via Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger.)

I think its good that there are so many people who are working on cool ideas. But to come up with an idea that catches is going to be really hard. I consulted for a vertical search company and I did not like the idea this particular company was working on. It was the first time I had ever consulted (or worked full time), and I did not accept the full time position being offered. But the company is doing well and the idea was sound. I was fresh out of college, and a year has passed since then. I'm glad I got the opportunity, if nothing else then it was a great learning experience. My first job out of college was working in someone's garage, much like how Apple started out. Cool! :)

Gmail Conversation Preview Bubbles:

"Want preview bubbles for conversations in Gmail, as shown in the screenshot on the left? Then install the Gmail Conversation Preview Greasemonkey script"

(Via persistent.info.)

An Overly Long Guide to Being A Software Architect:

"Another more evasive but satisfying way (well, for me anyway, who has to type all this rubbish in) to answer would be for you to take a look down the list below and see if most of the items means something to you and your job. If they do, then chances are you may call yourself a 'software architect' if you so desired. Alternatively you could also call yourself 'Supreme Commander of the Lesser Dominion of Greater Officetania' if you like too; I'm happy either way.

Here are my top 11 bits of advice for aspiring and/or perspiring architects: "

(Via From 9 till 2.)

Quake III Arena source is live:

"The source code to Quake III Arena is now online under the GNU General Public License -- free to be hacked, spindled, bent, folded and mutilated."

(Via Boing Boing.)

How SSL/TLS is broken, socially:

"SSL/TLS works pretty well on the technical side, but on the social side, it’s broken, because so many sites (especially small ones) don’t use it, requiring users to send passwords and other private information in the clear. The problem is trying to do two things at once with a single standard:

authentication of the server’s (and sometimes the client’s) identity; and
encryption of communications."

(Via Quoderat.)

10.4: Disable ssh password login under Tiger:

"Given the increase in scripted attacks to guess ssh passwords, I decided to disable passwords altogether, and move to public key authentication."

(Via macosxhints.)

LinuxDevCenter.com: Linux for Video Production

"Although he wrote the first incarnation of PiTiVi in C, Hervey decided to rewrite the application in the popular high-level Python language. The main catalyst for the change was to encourage more people to participate in PiTiVi development; Python considerably lowers the bar for people to get involved. 'I'd really like to see all those people who are very knowledgeable at video editing be able to chip in to PiTiVi development, since they have a better idea of what they want,' Hervey says. He continues, 'Python is a very flexible and extensible language, and the plugin system for PiTiVi would be very hard to put into place if it were created in another language; here, the plugins really extend the application.'"

RSS Mystifies Most Blog Readers

I think the difference between email and RSS is that email was required for work purposes. Hence, everybody had to learn it. RSS is something people use for getting news, and therefore, the learning curve for non-geek people is too high. If RSS gets integrated into every day work life somehow, there would be a larger uptake. Just my view! :)

RSS: Geeks Only Please

These figures should be a bit sobering for VCs and the rest of Silicon Valley because not only do 100% of VCs seem to know what RSS is but it seems like 66% of them have already invested in an RSS/Blog related start-up. Some guys are even apparently trying to raise an RSS themed VC fund.

The VC's might be excited about RSS, but are they excited for the right reasons? The excitement of RSS should be over the possibilities that RSS has to offer as a technology. News is only one aspect of it. The second is podcasting. A third might be a video delivery system. If you look at the three above you can easily see that RSS is just a push technology, pushing text, audio and video. It can also probably push other things like software. Its a feed, and a feed can contain the above plus advertising! A way of bringing television/radio to your laptop/PC.

Here is an example of delivering video via RSS.

As far as this renaming RSS brouhaha, Microsoft should not rename RSS to "web feeds". People don't need to know about RSS, they need to know about "News Aggregators". What Internet Explorer version 7 will have is a built in News Aggregator. Why can't they just say that? I think "News Aggregator" is a pretty self explanatory term isn't it? Not as simple as web feeds, but still.

Bink.nu | Vista feature exposes beta machines

"Windows Vista beta testers have stumbled upon a networking feature in the operating system that could pose a security risk to them--but they say they're not worried."

Vmware Workstation 5.5 will run MS Virtual PC/Server on the fly!

Virus Bulletin : Latest news - Black Hat round-up

Probably the most interesting presentation (at least from the point of view of the AV world) was Neel Mehta and Alex Wheeler's presentation 'Owning anti-virus: weaknesses in a critical security component'. This was clearly meant to be a controversial topic, and indeed they did demonstrate that some remote exploits were possible in a range of products. However, it seems more than likely that these holes have been patched, and they did not fail to notice that on the whole anti-virus software is written well, and has fewer such flaws than other systems. On the whole this was an interesting presentation, but I felt it could have been broader in scope, focussing on more than just anti-virus, especially as flaws in other security systems (notably firewalls) have been exploited by replicative malware (W32/Witty for instance), whereas, to date, no Anti-Virus software I am aware of has been.

Metroblogging Karachi: Sleepless in Karachi

Macworld: News: Myst V demo released for Mac

I installed SuSE 9.3 on my laptop yesterday, and the system feels nice over all. I've had two problems with it so far. I did a system update yesterday. Firefox and mozilla refused to work in KDE, giving me a segfault each time I try to run them. I downloaded the standalone tar file for firefox, untarred in my homedirectory, but that too would segfault. However, it does not really matter to me, since I use Windowmaker as the default window manager, in which firefox works.

The second problem occured when I came home today, I found that the mouse would not work. It turned out I needed to create a symlink from /dev/mouse to /dev/psaux and the problem was fixed. The strange part is, I used the system all day at work, and it worked fine. What caused the symlink to be deleted is beyond me at the moment.

The good is that the Netgear WG511 network card was recognized automatically. I did have to download the firmware separately which I did during the system update. Plus, you can tap on the touch pad now to simulate a right click on the mouse, which was nice. So far I'm sticking with this release.

Lazycoder � Why are people still listening to Joel

"Phil Haacked came up with a much better way of questioning what Joel is saying. Joel talks a lot about BDUF, but he doesn�t seem to really follow it much. I mean, if he had would he keep building products that already exist? Does the world need another bug tracker? What�s next on the FogCreek plate, Source Control Management? How about blogging software content management software. Whoops, too late"

Infocon: Yellow

Apparently there is a zero day exploit out for msdds.dll. Patch up every body. Its installed by the following programs:

Here is a list of applications that may install this component:
(Disclaimer: We can't test them all... but it should help you prioritize)
MS Visual Studio .Net
.Net Framework 1.1
Microsoft Office (2000, 2002, XP) [Karl, Juha-Matti]
Microsoft Project
Visio [Chris]
Access 11 (2003) runtime [Scott]
ATI Catalyst driver installed by newer ATI video cards [Eric]

MSDDS.DLL is not found on Win2003 SP1 SERVER with .net installed (not Visual Studio .net). [Andy].

Not all default Office 2000 installs have msdds.dll installed. [Emmanuel]

We get conflicting reports, likely due to various configuration and install choices. Please verify yourself the version before concluding that you are not vulnerable.

The version of MSDDS.DLL installed with Office 2003 is not vulnerable.

Musings from POP! Public Relations: FedEx Speaks

"Are bloggers citizen journalists, and as such is there a responsibility to fact check and get both sides of the story? David Berlind's post brought up the fact checking issue, and it's an issue that will be more and more explosive as time goes by."

If a blogger does not fact check, this will impact his readers. They will stop reading. And if a blogger gets famous on something false, more will know not trust what he writes when the truth comes out. I dont know, but it seems an eco system such as the blogosphere will and should protect itself. I just think thats natural. Look at how successful wiki's are, they have very little authority watching over them.

MySQL Reference Manual :: 2.10.3 Upgrading from Version 3.23 to 4.0

Boing Boing: Internet worms attack each other to build massive botnets

VitalSource: It's like iTunes for eBooks:

"I spotted this via James Duncan Davidson's blog, where he began talking about it by noting, 'The best way to describe it is 'It's like iTunes for eBooks.''"

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Latest OS X update breaks 64bit mathematica

Problems with Mathematica 64 bit, and the latest security update. I'm running a G4, and no mathematica, so I guess I'm fine. :)

Layout-o-matic

Past the AJAX Hype - Some things to think about - Rick Strahl's WebLog

"So as primary technology, do you really want to bet that your customers have support for this technology? I don�t think so. If you work on a Web development shop, you DON�T want to force anything on your customers. Your goal as a business is not to dazzle your customers with your Web development expertise, but to provide a service (in this case sell them your stuff)."

PCWorld.com - Tips & Tweaks: Reading (and Writing) Blogs

"I'll also have a spot for giving you quick things to see, do, and try. For instance, my buddy Rod told me about a terrific site with scads of free, downloadable fonts and customized themes. Without an entire newsletter dedicated to a related topic, I can't use it. It's no problemo with a blog."

Another good reason to have a blog.

Adobe warns over PDF peril

"Adobe has issued updates to guard against a buffer overflow vulnerability in various versions of its popular Acrobat and Reader software packages. The security bug, which stems from an unspecified boundary error in the core application plug-in, might be used to inject hostile code into vulnerable systems by tricking potential victims into opening a maliciously constructed PDF file."

Apple patches OS X security flaws

"Included among the patches are repairs to AppKit which prevent malicious users exploiting buffer overflows with carefully crafted .rtf and .doc files, executing malware stored within those files or allowing the coder to add extra user accounts to the system.

In the Safari web browser, forms presented using the XSL format are now correctly submitted, preventing the data being potentially sent to another web site. Safari is now protected against malicious .rtf and .pdf documents too."

Fun With HTTP Headers

Mac OS X for Intel :: View topic - Rosetta SSE3 emulation: iTunes etc. works with SSE2!

IBM brains capture a PC's soul | CNET News.com

"IBM conducted its tests on a 60GB iPod photo using Knoppix, a Linux software derivative, as an auto-configuration OS, VMware Workstation as the virtual machine monitor and an x86 PC as the encrypted virtual machine. That is where the SoulPad software partitions personal applications such as Microsoft Word or the Firefox Web browser, along with the guest operating system and personal data the user would like to carry around."

I posted with blogger for word, and it messed up the blogger sidebar in IE. It shows fine in Deer Park Alpha 2, but IE displays it in the wrong place. Damn it!

Update:
Things look as if they're back in place.

Debugging Tools for Windows .5.3.8 - August 10, 2005:

"What's New for Debugging Tools for Windows "

(Via Bink.nu.)

CNN.com - Worm strikes down Windows 2000 systems - Aug 16, 2005

DTrace on FreeBSD?:

"I'm happy to now report that Devon O'Dell has started working on a port to one such system, FreeBSD. This has been talked about before (in some cases, with braggadocio), but Devon is the first to start the work in earnest. And indeed, work it will be: DTrace isn't a simple system, and it has several dependencies on other, Solaris-specific system components."

(Via The Observation Deck.)

mdutil

from the man page:
mdutil -- manage the metadata stores used by Spotlight

the -s option:
-s Display the indexing status of the listed volumes.

Here is a good tutorial on spotlight:
FAQ

Moving Beyond the Basics: Scott Isaacs on AJAX Design Patterns:

"Problems that have to be solved [or at the very least considered] include

• How to abstract away browser detection from each page in the application


• How to make the site accessible or at least work on non-Javascript enabled browsers


• How to efficiently manage the number of connections to the server created by the client given the "chattiness" of AJAX applications compared to traditional web applications


• How to reduce the amount of time spent downloading large script files


• How to create permalinks to portions of the application


• How to preserve or at least simulate the behavior of the browser's 'Back' button"

Blogger: Download Blogger for Word

This is such a cool app, but as usual no Mac support from Google. :(

Edit remote files using local copy of BBEdit via sftp:

"I often use the BBEdit command line tool to quickly open and edit local files from the command line. In fact, I use it so much that I would find myself trying to use it while logged into remote machines via SSH:"

(Via macosxhints.)

IEBlog : URLs in Internet Explorer 7:

"Internet Explorer 7 includes a new URL handling architecture known internally as CURI. The new optimized URI functions provide more secure and consistent parsing of URIs to reduce attack surface and mitigate the threat of malicious URIs."

Security Update 2005-007:

"Apple has released Security Update 2005-007 via Software Update. According to Apple, 'Security Update 2005-007 delivers a number of security enhancements and is recommended for all Macintosh users. This update includes the following components: AppKit, BlueTooth, CoreFoundation, cups, Directory Services, HIToolBox, Kerberos, loginwindow, Mail, OpenSSL, QuartzComposerScreenSaver, Security Interface, Safari, X11, and zlib.' This update is also available via the web."

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Windows on a PSP:

"Cory Doctorow:


Now you can run Windows on your PSP. As Alice notes, 'How much money do you think it cost Sony to supposedly make the PSP a closed platform?' Way to go, Sony! Spend a bundle subtracting value from your stuff, then have your users render it moot as they find ways to make the stuff they buy from you more valuable.

(Via Boing Boing.)

Infocon: Green

"Mike from the MSRC sent an e-mail with 'clarification regarding changing the default setting of NULL sessions and what the impact of changing these settings does to the threat profile of the PnP vulnerability addressed in MS05-039' "

John Carmack's QuakeCon 2005 keynote - The Tech Report - Page 1

"Carmack started out by offering his assessment of the current state of PC gaming hardware, noting that he is largely satisfied with current trends. "

...

In a move intended to address this situation, Carmack announced that id Software will, very shortly, be making the source code for Quake III Arena available to the public under the GNU General Public License. This release will include not just the game code, but the development utilities, as well. Carmack looked forward to the possibility of a company doing commercial development work with the engine and actually shipping a game with source code on the CD, as required by the terms of the GPL.

I just met the bloglines plumber. Apparently their database is having problems and needs plumbing.

New Apple Powerbooks could gain Freescale edge

"The CPU is made using a 90 nanometre SOI (silicon on insulator) process and will whizz along at 1.7GHz, use a 200MHz frontside bus and consume about 15 watts."

Using a Mac Video on Metacafe

Chapter 1: Networking Primer

Null Sessions:

"Restrict or prevent anonymous access and account enumeration on your systems:

HKLM\System\CurrentControlSet\Control\Lsa\RestrictAnonymous
Value Name: RestrictAnonymous
Data Type: REG_DWORD
Value: 1

For NT and mixed environments, choose '1' for the data field. Or choose the 'Do not allow enumeration of SAM accounts and shares' directive. For pure Windows 2000 environments or for the paranoid, choose the data value of '2' or 'No access without explicit anonymous permission.' This will prevent NULL session attacks which are a common and frequent threat. For more information on NULL sessions and their vulnerabilities, please see the SANS document at http://rr.sans.org/win/null.php and Microsoft Knowledgebase articles Q143474 and Q246261."

WhatIsANullSession:

"A null session is how Windows represents an anonymous user.
...
This is where the null session comes in. It’s a logon session that represents anonymous users, and here's how you use it."

McD's Bomber Message Malware:

"Visiting the site redirects to a page 'mc.html' on the same site that attempts to exploit the MS05-038 bug, creating a file called w.hta. Handler David Goldsmith has called upon the Yesnic registry to stop resolving this domain, and the China-Netcom ISP to stop hosting this site, but at the time of this writing, the site is still operational. Organizations may want to consider blocking the site at 210.22.50.80 to prevent click-happy users from infecting their systems."

and further down on the page:

A few salient points regarding the current PnP attack threat:

+ There are lots of additional 'bots' in addition to Zotob, directly targeting systems or making use of prepopulated target lists;
+ Ensure all systems have NULL session disabled to block the current threats;
+ Block TCP/445 ingress and egress whenever possible to stop incoming attacks, and to detect infected systems leaving your network;
+ Do not rely on TCP/33333 FTP service detection to identify compromised systems as this port is not used consistently in later bot variants;
+ Ensure AV signatures are up-to-date;
+ Patch!

Seashore for Mac OS X:

"The idea seems to be to wrap the open source GIMP image editor to a Cocoa front end, and I have to say it's pretty damn cool."

(Via DrunkenBlog.)

A splog here, a splog there, pretty soon it ads up and we all lose:

"Whats a splog ? A splog is any blog whose creator doesnt add any written value. Im sure some might argue that packaging data , such as news feeds or the blog posts of others is added value. I dont think it is. After all, thats why there are topics and  indexes. If I want information about the Dallas Mavericks, I can search for it, optimize it, and save it.  Because indexes are based on freshness, my searches are  automatically updated, freshest data first, as new posts are introduced."

(Via Blog Maverick.)

I'm not adding value?!? Or so says the above post. I on the other hand am creating this blog for myself. Its adding value for me. If nothing else then I'm becoming a better critic! :)

Below are two completely conflicting reports:

Blog Readers Are Not RSS Readers, Nielsen Says

"Kleenex may have seemed strange at first."

One is a report linked to by Steve Rubel and the other is Dave Winer's link to a post about the popularity of RSS judged by calculating occurrences of RSS in Google. From what I can tell, it seems that, Steve says Microsoft might be right in trying to find an easier way of telling people about RSS feeds. While Dave Winer believes that RSS has become self explanatory. If nothing else, then this little tiff might at least increase the popularity of RSS/web feeds/whatever, as the main stream media picks this up.

First it was RSS vs. Atom. Now its RSS/Atom vs. web feeds.
From format wars, we go to naming wars.
Round Two: Fight!

AIDE - Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment:

"AIDE (Advanced Intrusion Detection Environment) is a free replacement for Tripwire. It does the same things as the semi-free Tripwire and more."

Categories: aide, IDS

New virus hits Windows; attacker can control computer - Aug. 15, 2005:

"The latest virus drops a copy of itself into the Windows system folder as BOTZOR.EXE and modifies the system's host file in the infected user's computer to prevent the user getting online assistance from antivirus web sites, Trend Micro added."

Zotob.B:

"F-Secure is reporting a new variant in the Zotob worm currently exploiting the PnP vulnerability addressed in MS05-039. The Zotob.B variant uses the same ports (TCP/445 for scanning, TCP/8888 command shell on exploited systems, TCP/33333 for FTP server) as the previous variant, but uses the executable name 'csm.exe' with the description 'csm Win Updates' in the HKLM\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\RunServices to load the worm when the system boots. The Zotob.A uses the executable name 'botzor.exe' in the same registry key.

Jon Udell: Tiger Woods data revisualized in Excel:

"Back in May I echoed a Paul Kedrosky rant on the sorry state of tools that can simplify data visualization -- particularly in the time domain -- for regular folks. Yesterday I noticed that, in late June, the wizards at Juice Analytics posted a stunning example that shows how to use Excel to reproduce Paul's Flash-based visualization of Tiger Woods' (and his competitors') distance and accuracy over time."

Automator actions for Photoshop CS/CS2 updated:

"David Chartier at our sister site Download Squad is reporting that the Photoshop CS/CS2 Automator Actions have been updated. Specifically, this release changes the way filter actions are handled, adding options for closing just the filtered documents, all documents, or none at all."

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

AAA: Average for regular unleaded gas hits $2.48 a gallon - Aug. 15, 2005

"The nationwide average price of a gallon of regular unleaded gas jumped 7 cents over the weekend to $2.484 a gallon, according to AAA, the largest U.S. motorist organization formerly known as the American Automobile Association. In the last year, prices have gained 63 cents, or about 34 percent. "

Its more like 20-30 cents for me. For some friends its even more.

Slashdot | A World of Warcraft World:

"On ebay people are paying real money to buy WoW gold... while some guy in Korea murdered another guy over a rare sword that existed only in an MMORPG."

A murder over a virtual item? This is absolutely nuts! Yet thanks to my world of warcraft addicted friend, I believe it!

Slashdot | 10 Best Resources for CSS:

" The 10 Best Resources for CSS provides an impressive list of the CSS resources which have recently become essential for web-developers"

D-Bus:

"While updating my Ubuntu laptop, I noticed D-Bus being downloaded.  What caught my eye was the python bindings.  Usage of Python decorators reminiscent of C# attributes.  Object_path reminiscent of Java class names."

(Via Sam Ruby.)

PowerBook G4 Graphics Update 1.0:

"New from Apple, it's the PowerBook G4 Graphics Update 1.0: 'The PowerBook G4 Graphics Update 1.0 improves graphics stability for some 1.67-GHz PowerBook G4 computers.' That's the very machine I'm working on right now, but I still think I'll wait a few days until I find out what problem it is that this fixes."

(Via Backup Brain.)

Damn, it doesn't affect 12-inch Powerbooks! You know, the one I have. Is that good or bad?

firefox hits 80,000,000 downloads:

"It's been nine months since the release of Firefox 1.0 and with tens of millions of users we most certainly are taking back the web. Today our Firefox web browser hit the 80,000,000 downloads mark. You can see the live counter over at SpreadFirefox.com."

(Via Asa Dotzler on firefox, cats, mars, and more.)

Response to Dave's response:

"Inch by inch, but as 'RSS team coach' you gotta help me out. fight the RSS battles. Attacking me isn't helping your our cause. It isn't helping move the RSS football down the field. It's increasing the noise. Where there's noise, engineers and PM's stop listening."

(Via Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger.)

Scary Legals, Redux:

"I recently covered a story with a happy ending: the nasty (and misleading) legal barbed-wire in front of NetBeans got taken down. Next step: let’s do the same thing for Java.net. Read on for excerpts from the legals, but the bottom line is simple: to non-lawyers (like me), this is scary stuff."

(Via ongoing.)

The Voice of Reason in PHP - John Lim (PHP Everywhere):

"As a developer with over a million lines of PHP code to maintain, I don't want the headache of keeping up to date with the latest gee-whiz features that break backward compatibility. PHP5 is great because by sticking to a few simple rules, I have code that runs well on both PHP4 and 5."

(Via Planet PHP.)

PHP6 - moving forward in a sensible manner - Lukas Smith:

"Rasmus recently kicked off, what will likely become the largest thread in PHP history. Essentially he came up with a list of changes he would like to see in PHP 6. This has opened the floodgates on feature wishes. I hope poor Steph will somehow manage to fit all of these into a Zend weekly summary. As the stream of new suggestions is slowly dying down Zeev stepped up to remind people that 'Compatibility breakup is not binary, it accumulates'. I very much agree with him on this point."

(Via Planet PHP.)

Hey, Scoble, the Greasemonkey author is at the bar!:

"Funny story: at the beginning of the dinner Nick saw someone walk in and said 'hey, isn't that Aaron?'

Turns out it was Aaron Boodman, the author of Greasemonkey. When I was introduced to him, I still had no idea who he was. I just knew his name was Aaron. Then Nick introduced us and said 'he wrote Greasemonkey.' I answered 'I'm not worthy.'

Now I remember why I love San Francisco."

(Via Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger.)

KDE 4: Understanding the Buzz (KDE.News):

""

(Via LWN.net.)

MacDevCenter on NeoOffice/J:

"One of our recurring points of discussion here at TUAW seems to revolve around the age old question: If not M$ Office, then what?. Well, Matthew Russell over at MacDevCenter has put together a pretty good answer to that question with What Is NeoOffice/J (and Can It Replace MS Office)"

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Worm spreading through Microsoft Plug-and-Play flaw

Exead Your Parameters - news

"Is an instant messenger next for Google? Some say that Google has been planning this move for quite some time. In their Desktop search Google included the protocol handler: google_im://. Google gives the reasonable explanation that it is there for searches of you instant messenger conversations, and it is not there for some future IM software."

Far more likely that they are going to add support for the variousl IM logs created by IM applications or something. As far as the meetro application goes, it seems far more likely that this might be a push towards Googles plan for personalization. Search based on location and so forth. Something like Apples Bonjour and iChat for localized chat:

With the help of Bonjour, iChat AV lets you see which people are available for chatting or video conferencing on your local network, and automatically removes them when they leave.

images
Originally uploaded by awasim.

mein bhee Pakistan houn, tu bhee Pakistan hai :):

"This post is dedicated to every Pakistani who loves Pakistan despite all that it lacks...
Yes...the underpass is still incomplete...yes we are a politically corrupt nation...Yes we could do without all that pollution...
YES YES YES...
I'm still a die hard Pakistani.As cliche` as what i am about to say next may sound, i'll say it anyway mainly because its apt.
'Ask not what your Nation has given you, but what you have given your Nation instead' :)"

(Via who am i?.)

Happy Pakistan Independance day!!

macosxhints - 10.4: Manually clean Safari RSS articles:

"After some digging, I found out that Safari store the RSS information in a SQLite database found in ~/Library/Syndication. Here's the procedure I used to clean my Safari's RSS database of the articles I didn't want"

reports of PnP worm out

"Quick update: Several reports that the PNP (MS05-039) worm was released finally. We are just analyzing the code."

Micro Persuasion: Blogs Give You News You Can't Find Anywhere Else

"One reason I turn to the blogosphere for news is that you find gems that you can't unearth anywhere else. For example, my interest was piqued this morning when I saw on Technorait's top searches a spike in queries for Christopher Walken. Sure enough, I found out that he's running for President. As of right now the news media hasn't really picked up on this one yet...but they will."

.: UNEASYsilence :. OS X PROVEN hacked and running on an ordinary PC

.: UNEASYsilence :. OS X PROVEN hacked and running on an ordinary PC

Where am I going to get a machine with SSE3?

Gizmodo Japan: Auto door

Its freeky! And if you're clumsy like me, you're probably gonna get hurt! =)

Metroblogging Karachi: God doesn't seem to be so happy.

"Karachi coastal areas rocked by mysterious tremors at the night between Friday and Saturday.
The residents of the area ran out of their houses scared by the rocking walls of their homes. According to the residents of Defence and Clifton areas at least two tremors jolt their localities at 2:00 am in midnight, while a loud sound was also heard before the jolts."

Uh-oh. Whats happening in my hometown? I'm sure its ok cause I just talked to my family.

But I wonder how long my city can last without me! :)

Slashdot | Pentium 4 Overclocked to 7.1GHz, Sets World Record

"The article notes that a Pentium 4 had been overclocked faster earlier this year, but at that speed it was not possible for the machine to function beyond BIOS. Of course, they'd yet to try diverting power from the dilthium crystal reactor to the deflector array. "

I'm sure Geordi LaForge and Data will be able to figure it out! :)

BlogWrite for CEOs: Part 2: Steve Rubel's blogging playbook

"I asked Steve in a follow-up email: 'What criteria do you use to include an item when you're scanning all your sources? i.e. how do you decide what's important? What makes something jump out at you?'"

I usually link to what I find interesting. I read quite a lot of blogs, and well, anything that is interesting, or something I might want to refer to later on gets posted on my blog. Sometimes I have some links that are related to what I am working on. Mostly its links that I come across in my aggregator. I started blogging because I wanted a way to keep track of articles I read, and because I wanted to improve my writing.

Free Multiplayer Online Games

Via Digg.

Infocon: Yellow!!!!

Due to a number of very well working Windows exploits for this weeks patch set, and the zero-day Veritas exploit, we decided to turn the infocon to yellow.

libsyn

Dave Winer links to a company called libsyn, and calls it a real business. I agree. If you read the post, its four guys with day jobs, who started out with a hundred bucks.

Your mail is here, come and get it!: Top 5 reasons I love the mail beta? reasons 1 and 2

Hey! Whats this? Is this hotmails answer to the Gmail interface? Looks cool, but is it fast, and is it cross browser compatible?

Now wouldn't it be cool if that interface could be used as an email client and an RSS aggregator. Then tie it in with MSN spaces/MSN messenger so that people can post/interact easily. And wouldn't it be cooler if somehow Microsoft could manage to make it as fast as Gmail.

In fact, why hasn't Google integrated an RSS aggregator together with Gmail. It would be better for them, because it would mean more time spent by people at Gmail, and more adsense ad's served. And we all know from the popularity of Bloglines that people like web based aggregators! Google came out with some kind of RSS thing, but I dont even remember what it was. Just goes to show how useful it is.

Looks to me like someone is losing their Mojo!!! :)

Burningbird - The Business of Algorithms

"Algorithms are big business. Recently I've seen several jobs where the company wants someone who is good with algorithms. "

I like reading Shelly Powers blog. And the above article again is a wonderful, well written article. However, the issue of gender is brought about quite often in blogs written by women. At least the ones I read and it's getting a little irritating. Very few women write about things I like to read. How many blogs by women out their talk about Algorithms? Yup, thats how many I'll link to. I assume thats how it is with other bloggers as well. They link to what interests them. It has nothing to do with whether a blog is a womans blog or a mans. Can we drop it now!

Chris Shiflett: PHP 6.0 Excitement

"Now that Derick has renamed HEAD to 6.0, it's time to look ahead at all the great things that are (or might be) in PHP's future. Of course, a major driving factor in PHP's evolution is the Unicode support that Andrei is now merging in. This alone is enough to generate some excitement - Andrei's goal is to make PHP as good as or better than any other Web development language out there when it comes to Unicode support."

This is great news. However, the PHP developers have to find a way of getting all those people running PHP 3 & 4 to migrate to PHP5 and onwards. Further, the PHP people should really work to get PHP working more smoothly with Apache 2.x and so forth. I'm going to look into the PHP and Apache 2.x problem and see what it was/is all about (if I get time).

#56662: On the Sun Fire V100 and Netra X1 Systems, Replacing Disks Within a Mirrored Configuration May Fail

AnandTech: Athlon 64 X2: New Memory Dividers and Multitasking Performance

"Luckily for AMD, the single core Athlon 64 was not very memory bandwidth limited, and thus, the move to dual core still allowed AMD to scale relatively well. In fact, based on the results that we saw in our Athlon 64 X2 3800+ review, AMD continues to consistently scale better from one to two cores than Intel, despite the reduction in memory bandwidth per core"

Running IE7 Alongside IE6 | Threadwatch.org

"Here's a neat tip for those that want to run both IE7 and IE6 on the same machine. Just a simple matter of deleting one file, and creating another.."

�My heart�s in Accra � Blown Away by Blogpulse

"I�m guessing that Blogpulse is about to become a lot more popular. Blogpulse Profiles adds a number of features that are completely new to the world of blogs. Most blog fans are used to tracking the top 100 blogs on Technorati, and seeing where their (registered) blog ranks in comparison - Blogpulse lets you check the rank of an arbitrary blog (say, mine.) With Technorati, the rank is determined by the number of links over the totality of the blog; Blogpulse recalculates rank on a much shorter term basis, which lets them present a graph of how one�s rank changes over the course of a month. (I was evidently much more influential early last month, when I was talking about Live8, than I am now.) It�s great fun to check out the rank of blogs I admire - a general observation is that the well-trafficked blogs seem to change in rank a lot less often than those of us on the outskirts of the A-list."

Things are pointing towards a weekend with a lot of stuff to play with! :)

Ok, I just came across code that exploits MS05-038 and MS05-039 which were released this tuesday. The code is in the wild, so patch up!

Confessions of a Webgypsy : So you want to be a Senior Developer

"I was told once by a good friend of mine that a senior developer is one who has a firm grasp on the basics and the ability to find any answer they are faced with. I have always agreed with this assessment, but I would also like to propose a list of characteristics any senior developer should exhibit."

Black Hat Blogging Explained | Threadwatch.org

"That funny chap at SEOBlackHat explains how to create fake blogs to increase other sites Search rankings. It's not a bad tutorial, and only the first part of a small series,.... "

Ahhh... yes, and I suggest we change the name "Internet" to "GraffitiNet".

A Quick Runthrough for Echo2

"Echo2 is an open source Java web development framework that aims to simplify the development of web applications using the AJAX model."

Ajax is everywhere! Ajax this and Ajax that... we're back to DOS days! Where every app has its own confusing GUI. Only this time, every web site will have its own weird weird way of display! Thanks to Ajax ofcourse. To hell with standards!

Russell Beattie Notebook - One Computer

"But today I was working at home and instead of reading my news in the morning on my personal machine, swapping to my laptop during the day and then switching back to my own computer in the evening, I've been using the same box all day. Suddenly I'm getting to emails I've forgotten about, updating to-do items, organizing things that crossed my mind later in the day, etc. Ahhhhhh... Wow. What a difference!"

Thats interesting. I on the other hand have moods. I have machines of all kinds. Linux, Windows, and Mac OS X. And I use the one I feel like using. For instance, this morning, I just grabbed the Windows Laptop because I was lazy, and did not feel like walking all the way to the other end of the room to pick up the Mac. :)

Maybe I should just use One Computer.

Micro Persuasion: Technorati Sold?

I wonder if this is what Robert was hinting at? Is that small company Technorati, and has Microsoft bought it! That would be fun wouldn't it? :)

CNN.com - Giant waterfall discovered in California national park - Aug 12, 2005

Ok this is just weird. I guess everybody just ignored the waterfall, until now that is. Probably a nice place for people to get away to, now spoilt because of its new found popularity!

USB server offers Linux to go | InfoWorld | News | 2005-08-10 | By Robert McMillan, IDG News Service

"Because the tiny Linux client has biometric authentication and can be plugged into just about any PC, Cunningham believes it will be a useful and secure way for travelers to logon to their corporate VPNs. "

Boing Boing: Praying mantis catches and eats hummingbird

"Over at birdwatchersdigest.com a guy writes about a large praying mantis in his yard that caught and ate a hummingbird. "

Wow! Can that be true? The site is under a lot of load right now, so I can't tell, but an insect eating a bird!

Read/Write Web: Blog Networks are the new black

"Interesting... I wonder if AOL read my Network of Niches post - I know some MSN folks did ;-) That post, and the one before it, caught the attention of a few Blog Network owners who pinged me afterwards. I won't lie to you - I'm hoping one of them signs me up, pronto. "

Ummm.... sounds to me like the rush of big business to turn blogging into a monotonous drudge the rest of the media has become. And I was so enthusiastic about blogging in just my last post!

Brandon's Vista : MSN Messenger 7.5 Technical Preview Soon

I was excited when the new version of the Mac Messenger came out, and I dutifully downloaded it to give it a shot. However, my excitement was short lived, because I found no real reason to use it (Improvements are mostly in the corporate side of the messenger). In fact, on the Mac, my preferred instant messenger of choice remains Adium, with the growl plugin, for notifications. And frankly I can't help but not feel excited about the new release of Messenger 7.5. **Sigh**

At least we have things like blogging, RSS and Podcasting to keep me excited. :) Thanks to Dave Winer that is. Though I've been blogging since 2001 (I started this blog in 2003, lost the stuff I had from 2001 to 2002). Blogging should have become stagnant and boring by now, but it hasn't. Maybe because its interactive, a medium to generate excitement and interest perhaps.

SANS - Internet Storm Center - Cooperative Cyber Threat Monitor And Alert System - Current Infosec News and Analysis

"The vulnerabilities addressed in MS005-038, MS005-039, MS05-040 and MS-043, all covered in this month's Fat Tuesday festivities, AKA Microsoft Security Bulletin Summary, have fallen victim already to publicly released exploits. Both bugtraq and Daily Dave have postings today announcing the availability of said code. Now, I haven't built or tested any of it, so I can't personally vouch for the effectiveness ot any of it, but if it isn't working as intended you can bet it will be shortly. Patch up, folks. "

Is This The Palm Treo 700?:

"News of the Treo 670 has barely heated up, and already there's a rumor about the Treo 700. Cool Tech Times shows a really convincing photograph of what it purports to be the Treo 700."

(Via Gizmodo.)

Jon Udell: I want my MP3:

"I now have a solution to this problem, but I'd rather not have to use it. The solution is mplayer, an open source media player. Among its protean capabilities, it can save a stream while playing any of its supported audio and video formats, which include progressively-downloadable WMV (e.g., Channel 9) and streaming RealVideo (e.g., JavaOne). It can extract the audio channel from these video streams to an uncompressed WAV file, which can then be encoded to MP3 using lame. So now I can both media-shift and time-shift these videos, and listen to them at my leisure."

I love the hacks that Jon Udell comes up with. He is able to do more with less time, using terms like media-shifts and time-shifts, and creating all these hacks. If only we could all be as creative, instead of being the ones who complain "I don't have the time!". After all, that's what technology is supposed to do, Help us accomplish more in less time.

Unhappiness drives open source adoption - Computer Business Review:

"For instance, DiBona pointed out that if Google used Windows, or any other non-open source software program, to make changes to that system he would be required to essentially ask permission from that vendor. 'Why should we hand over the control of our software support to another company?'"

Well, I guess Google can afford to. They've got all those PHD hackers employed for them! :)

register_globals is not evil - PHP Security Blog:

"During the last months, more and more self proclaimed PHP security experts have started spreading the FUD, that register_globals is evil and that you should always switch it off, when you develop or deploy an application. This has resulted in vendors ignoring or playing down vulnerabilities, which are only exploitable when register_globals is turned on. Even when their own hoster has this option activated, they claim the vulnerability is in PHP's register_globals and not in their application."

If your code is exploitable because of register_globals being on, then its just bad code. Their are much more secure ways to do things.

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger:

"Second, a disclaimer. I spent a bit of time on Monday with the team and I'm planning on spending some more time with them later today. They are listening to the blogosphere and working to make them more interesting, more credible, and more useful."

Well, this is something Microsoft is really good. Listen to their customers, and then try to improve their product over time. It took Windows 3.x for Windows itself to take of didn't it?

Scobleizer: Microsoft Geek Blogger:

"It's weird, I sense my own blogging is about to change quite a bit for a whole lot of reasons (the blogosphere is getting too big for even me to track, for one, and there are tool and service changes coming that made me give up my linkblog (that is obsolete and as soon as one company I'm working with gets their stuff out you'll see why)."

Hmm... Most of what I do on this blog is linking. I havent seriously started writing for this blog, even though I always planned to. Oh well, more incentive to start writing those articles, instead of just posting links, sometimes with one or two line comments. I wonder what company Robert is talking about? (Could it be Amazon?)

Backup Brain:

"In 2004, they required the HP Compaq Business Notebook nw8000 of all incoming Freshman, at a pricetag of over $3200 each. Doesn't matter if it's the best price, or the most suitable machine, or what the student is familiar with: they all have to have identical machines."

Coming to an Adsense Panel Near You, More Control | Threadwatch.org:

"I've read a few brief reports on a pilot scheme to give publishers more control over their adsense, but MediaPost has a lot of detail in this story."

Bink.nu | Microsoft Revamps MSN Blogs:

"The new features, collectively called PowerToys, are the capability to create custom HTML modules, to play audio and video files, and to
significantly customize user interfaces, Mike Torres, MSN Spaces lead program manager, wrote in his blog Torres Talking. 'PowerToys are special features in MSN Spaces designed specifically for you, the advanced users,' Torres wrote. "

Bittorrent:

"The Bit Torrent search engine, and soon a torrent directory service will bring the company one step closer to becoming an even more legitimate part of the broadband world. Navin explained that distributing video games, short video clips, ancillary audio information and software are key areas of focus for the company. Blizzard, Linspire and a slew of other companies have used Bit Torrent for content distribution over the Internet in recent past."

Does that mean a competitor to Akamai, without all the infrastructure (other than bittorrent ofcourse).

Sk(h)ype:

"his is not to say that Skype isn't a lovely addition to the telecom world. Or that it is not nice to see incumbents squirm a tad. Or that is works for my lovely Mac. But $3 billion. come on people! That's a lot of 2 cent a minute calls, especially when you see that most of us love the free calling features of Skype."

Widget watch: Disable Dashboard:

"Here's a seemingly oxymoronic Dashboard widget. The Disable Dashboard widget does just that - one click and Dashboard quits. "

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Splunk your logs:

"Splunk, currently in beta, is a system administrator's dream.  It is a lightweight web application that indexes log files across various machines allowing  you to search multiple log files from multiple machines using one webpage."

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Happy Birthday, Woz:

"Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak was born on this date in 1950. That would make him 55 years old. Before the age of 30 he'd already created the software and hardware for what became the Apple II."

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

Problems with Marsedit.

Update: It seems to be working fine now. It was crapping out with an invalid POST id.

Slashdot | What are the Next Programming Models?:

"In this opinion piece, Simeon Simeonov contemplates what truly new programming models have emerged recently, and nominates two: RIAs and what he calls 'composite applications' (i.e. using Java, .NET or any other programming language). "

"Neat app for neatniks"

Slashdot | Fun Stuff at OSCON 2005:

"MySQL 5.0 is in beta, and has been feature-frozen since April. Back in 4.1, its abstracted table-type has been put to advantage with odd engines like Archive (only insert, no update); Blackhole for fast replication; and an improvement to MyISAM for logging (allowing concurrent selects with inserts-at-table-end). Their Connector/MXJ lets you run a native MySQL server embedded inside a Java application. In 5.0 we're seeing stored procedures per the SQL:2003 standard, triggers, updatable views, XA (distribution transaction), SAP R/3 compatible server side cursors, fast precision math, a federated storage engine, a greedy optimizer for better handling of many-table joins, and an optional 'strict mode' to turn some of MySQL's friendly nonstandard warnings into compliant errors. And they're working on partitioning, ODBC, and letting MySQL Cluster's non-indexed columns to be stored on disk.

PostgreSQL 8.1 is expected to be released in November or December, after a feature-freeze in July -- and it's an impressive list of new features. Their optimizer will make use of multiple indexes when appropriate, which is pretty darn exciting. The recommendation will be that in most cases it will be most efficient to have only single-column indexes and let the optimizer figure out which combination to use. They're implementing a 2-phase commit, they're bringing the automatic vacuum into the core code, and they removed a global shared buffer lock so they're now getting 'almost linear' SMP performance scaling. I've never felt the need for Postgres, but I'm definitely going to look at 8.1."

It seems like these databases are changing versions really fast. Wasn't 4.1 in beta until just a few months ago?

InfoWorld Special Report: Build your business with open source

Integration Developers News:

"Evans also noted that respondents look at web services skills is a world apart from traditional Java/J2EE or .NET dev expertise."