By John Gruber
Mux — Video for developers
Linked List: March 18, 2008
Tuesday, 18 March 2008
- Mac OS X Security Update 2008-002 ★
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Available for 10.4.11 and 10.5.2. Includes credit to Daniel Jalkut for reporting an issue with Foundation and NSURLConnection.
Update: Some — not all but some — users are reporting crashes with command-line ssh after applying 2008-002.
Update 2: Signs point to a third-party culprit: Rogue Amoeba’s “Instant Hijack” component.
- Excerpts From Arthur C. Clarke’s ‘2001’ Diary ★
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Via Jim Coudal, a link to The Kubrick Site’s excerpts from Clarke’s diary during the writing and production of 2001: A Space Odyssey, the greatest movie — if not the greatest work of art, period — ever made:
September 7. Stanley quite happy: “We’re in fantastic shape.” He has made up a 100 item questionnaire about our astronauts, e.g. do they sleep in their pajamas, what do they eat for breakfast, etc. […]
October 3. Stanley on phone, worried about ending… gave him my latest ideas, and one of them suddenly clicked — Bowman will regress to infancy, and we’ll see him at the end as a baby in orbit. Stanley called again later, still very enthusiastic. Hope this isn’t a false optimism: I feel cautiously encouraged myself.
- Arthur C. Clarke Dies at 90 ★
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A titan in the field of science fiction:
Co-author with Stanley Kubrick of Kubrick’s film “2001: A Space Odyssey,” Clarke was regarded as far more than a science fiction writer.
He was credited with the concept of communications satellites in 1945, decades before they became a reality. Geosynchronous orbits, which keep satellites in a fixed position relative to the ground, are called Clarke orbits.
- Jackass of the Week: Roger Kay ★
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Shorter Roger Kay: With no evidence whatsoever, I assert that both the Mac and iPhone are suddenly beset by security problems and Apple is getting exactly what it deserves for being successful.
- iPhone 2.0 SDK: How Signing Certificates Work ★
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In-depth look at code signing certificates from Daniel Eran Dilger and Jason Smith.
- Translation From MS-Speak to English of Selected Portions of Joel Spolsky’s ‘Martian Headsets’ ★
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I was going to link to Spolsky’s “Martian Headsets” piece with a one-line comment: “You reap what you sow”. Mark Pilgrim’s take is much better.
- Hulu ★
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Hulu, the NBC-and-Fox-spearheaded free online video service, is out of beta, and it’s pretty sweet. The video quality is good, the selection is good, and the advertising is remarkably minimal — two mid-show ads of 15 or 30 seconds for a 22-minute show, for example. Individual skits from Saturday Night Live, like this one from Saturday’s show, are commercial-free. Real movies, like The Big Lebowski and The Usual Suspects have just two or three minutes of commercials — and are uncensored. They even have good URLs.
No download option, alas, so there’s no supported way to watch these things on your TV, but it’s pretty damn cool overall.
Update: Another downside: International copyright restrictions limit what’s available outside the U.S.
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Chris Foresman on NPD computer sales data for February:
In unit sales, Macs represented 14 percent of sales last month, up from 9 percent for February 2007. The dollar share, however, is a full 25 percent of the market. While other PC makers continue to make cheaper commodity machines, Apple continues to make better machines and earn more for each one. […] In terms of revenue, the industry grew just a paltry 5 percent on its 9 percent gain in units while Apple’s revenue is up 67 percent.
And that’s revenue, not profit. Given that Apple’s profit margins are higher than any other major PC maker, their profit share of the U.S. market must be even higher than 25 percent.
- DiskWarrior 4.1 CD Updater ★
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If you don’t own a copy of DiskWarrior, you should.
- The Origin of the iChat UI ★
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1997 prototype of the iChat speech bubble UI design from Jens Alfke.
- Obama: ‘A More Perfect Union’ ★
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Stirring — dare I say historic — speech from Barack Obama today here in Philadelphia, addressing racial issues head-on, and, more importantly, challenging the level of political discourse in our news media:
We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies. We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.”
Not this time, indeed. (Excerpt via Greg Sargent.)
- Safari 3.1 ★
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Safari 3.1 is out. Web Kit additions include support for local (i.e. not over the network) SQLite databases, CSS 3 web fonts, CSS transforms and transitions, and the new HTML 5
<video>and<audio>elements. The security content of the update is listed here. New browser features include double-clicking in the tab bar to create a new tab, a new (optional) Develop menu for web developers, a Caps Lock indicator in password fields, and more.