The Design and Implementation of laffer1

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/12/1342258&from=rss

Apple purchased CUPS, the standard in UNIX/Linux printing technologies.  They switched to it years ago.  (10.2 i think)  There are many theories why they bought CUPS including preventing a license change to GPLv3.  The catch is that I believe SAMBA has already gone GPLv3 so Apple will still have to include GPLv3 code in 10.5 anyway.  Well I guess they could stop supporting windows networking, but that would kill their business and education sales.

They could close source CUPS which would be terrible for open source projects.

I found a nice article on Slashdot about the GNUstep LiveCD from last year. 

http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=05/02/06/1827244&tid=94&tid=117&tid=3

Some of the comments are very interesting.  There is a small NeXT following out there.

Caryn and I went to the EMU Library today.  I found a book on NEXTSTEP development and a book on Cocoa.  The NeXT book has the original floppy with it.  If it still works, I'm going to try to copy it over on my NeXT system. Caryn found a book on quantum computing that she's interested in. 

Caffeine contents ranged from 4.9 mg/12 oz (IGA Cola) to 74 mg/12 oz (Vault Zero). Some of the more common national-brand carbonated beverages analyzed in this study were Coca-Cola (33.9 mg/12 oz), Diet Coke (46.3 mg/12 oz), Pepsi (38.9 mg/12 oz), Diet Pepsi (36.7 mg/12 oz), Dr Pepper (42.6 mg/12 oz), Diet Dr Pepper (44.1 mg/12 oz), Mountain Dew (54.8 mg/12 oz), and Diet Mountain Dew (55.2 mg/12 oz).

http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/07/07/205250&from=rss

Diet Coke has more than "real" coke.  WTF

According to an old NS 3 demo, the test was to see if a CEO could use it without a manual!  Sadly, MidnightBSD would fail this test!

iPhone Web Dev is a site dedicated to making Web 2.0 (insert additional buzzwords here) applications for Apple's new $600 device.

I just happened on to the EMU library site.  They have a decent CS book collection including a book on NEXTSTEP Programming.  If I actually go to bed at a decent hour, I might be stopping by there tomorrow or Monday.  They also have a threading and cocoa book I've thought about buying on amazon.  I want to check them out and see what they are like. 

I've been hoping to pick up cocoa programming (think OS X development) this summer. My own projects require that I learn Objective C + Cocoa.  My first task is to write a Cocoa based Just Journal client. 

Caryn and I have been enjoying our Wii.  As we cannot afford more games, we've resorted to renting titles at the local Blockbuster. 

Last weekend, we rented Paper Mario. The game was quite fun.  The game includes elements from previous mario games.  The first level looks like Super Mario Bros. from the NES.  In the game, you shift between 2D and 3D realities.  There is a timer running when Mario enters 3D.  When the timer runs out, Mario loses life energy.  There is a great deal of dialog.  Starting the game can take quite a long time.  Bowser and Princess Peach are kidnapped and forced to marry. 

The second title we rented was the new Zelda game.  The game was released on the GameCube and Wii with control enhancements on the latter.  I haven't ventured very far into the game yet.  So far, I've ridden a horse around, gone fishing, sent a hawk flying into a bees nest and a jumping monkey with a baby crip.  I have a wood sword which must be used with the wii remote.  You swing the remote around to move your sword.  In fishing, you have to pull back on the remote to reel in the fish.  It is quite fun.  Zelda is the first title to impress me graphically.  It looks like an improvement over the GameCube. 

Still, I find the lack of Wii sports-like titles disappointing.  I would love to get more titles like Wii sports.  I hope to get a Wii Play in the next few months.  That includes a controller and a game with billiards, fishing, table tennis?, and some weird little games.  Mario Party might help with exercise too.  I'll have to rent it.

The most disappointing feature on the Wii is the lack of online play.  It is capable of online multiplayer, but it does not deliver.  Pokemon will be the first title to support online play.  I'm not a big fan of Pokemon.  I have a few online friends with Wiis.  One is in the UK and we've successfully  "friended" each other on the Wii.  I can send him text messages over the Internet on the Wii message board.  In order to do that, we had to exchange a unique code found in the console menu.  This friend code was similar to a credit card number.  Once we both added each other, within a few hours we could exchange messages.  It seems to be slower than e-mail. 

The Wii weather and news channels are great.  We can see the current weather quicker than going to weather.com or watching the weather channel.  The news feed includes AP stories and the text is very easy to read.  There are no ads or other distractions.  You can control the size of the text. 

Everybody votes channel allows you to vote on questions submitted to Nintendo by other Wii users.  There are national and international polls.  The polls last several days and often are simple questions like "Do you prefer to be a passenger or driver?"  or "Would you rather solve poverty or hunger?"  It isn't that interesting, but I am sometimes surprised by Caryn's responses.  A tally of the votes is computed by Nintendo and you see them within a day of the end of the poll.

The Opera powered web browser is nice.  Nintendo will start charging for that "Wii Ware" soon.  It includes Flash 7 support.  It is much better than the browser included with the Dreamcast.  I had always wished my xbox had a browser like a webtv.  Now with the Wii, I can do casual surfing online.  I actually prefer doing that over using my laptop since I don't have to dig it out. 

The Wii online has wireless capabilities.  There is a third party lan adapter.  The "Wii Connect 24" feature which means that in standby it keeps an active Internet connection is required for the weather and news channels to work.  It causes the unit to stay very warm while on standby.  There are reports of Wiis overheating on the Internet.  I do worry about that as the fan does not kick in on standby mode.

Finally, i did have one problem with my Wii.  The remote stopped working.  It blinked as if it had battery power, but could not find the console.  I tried swapping out batteries, resyncing and even shaking the remote.  Eventually, I pulled the plug on the Wii and then plugged the power back in.  The remote worked after fresh registration.  There are two buttons that must be pressed.  One is on the remote under the battery cover and the other is in the front of the wii under a door. 

The Wii's GameCube support is pretty good.  SpyHunter worked with my saved games using a GameCube remote.  You have to power cycle the Wii after it enters GCN mode.

There are rumors that Nintendo will launch a revised Wii with DVD support later.  I'm still glad I bought mine now.  Registering the unit extends the warrenty an additional 90 days. 

I had to go into work today. The webserver was not serving pages off the NFS mount. I rebooted the webserver and lost access. In the process, I could no longer get into the network. Chris and I decided to go in to take a look. As his car was in the shop, I went to pick him up on the north end of ann arbor. My car started overheating a bit. We made it to EMU OK. He noticed the link light was not on for the xserve RAID. We rebooted after some diagnostics and got it back up. We still don't know why the connection was lost, although it might be related to the 10.4.10 update.

On the way back, my car's service engine soon light came on. Not sure what caused that, but the car got very hot. I ended up adding oil and letting it cool for a bit at chris's place. By the time I made it home, it was very hot. I was surprised I made it. Tomorrow I'll have to check all the fluids and see if I can figure out what went wrong.

Transformers displaced Pirates of the Carribbean 2's Tuesday record. I think it just got lucky with the holiday release and the only competitor a Die Hard film. They are already talking about the possibility of a sequel.

On a side note, Apple's spell check went off on my spelling of Carribbean. I suppose Caribbean is OK as well.. just I was taught it was "car" "rib" "bean" in grade school. I now wonder a bit on the spelling. Google had quite a few hits for both. I suspect disney used the other spelling since it looks weird now. Hmm...

I can't sleep with all the fireworks.

For people creating websites, it's often useful to know what fonts a device can display. Here's the list for the iPhone.

Arial
Arial Rounded MT Bold
Courier*
Courier New*
Georgia
Helvetica* (default sans-serif)
Helvetica Neue*
Marker Felt
Times New Roman (default serif, also overall default)
Trebuchet MS
Verdana
Zapfino

This list was complied by Pat on the Apple web dev list. Pat didn't notice a difference between courier new and courier. However, Pat also used sans-serif as a backup font for courier so I don't think (s)he knows much about courier fonts.

Oh my God. As a fan of the Transformers series (original), I was a bit surprised by the freedom the writers took in this picture. It is a war film with robots. There is talk of masturbation, flicking off the camera, and some other things that people with children might want to avoid. If little suzy knows what masturbation is, well I guess you're OK to see the movie. I know that sounds wrong, but some idiot brought his little girls (6 or so) to the film. They were confused and annoyed. There were a lot of gasps.

The love story is very strange. "Sam" the dork gets the girl. I might have really liked the film as a geeky teen, but now it seems wrong. This is a typical michael bay film. If you like that guy, go see this. It is not the worst film he's ever done.

The best part of the film is the beginning. There are several attempts at humor throughout the movie. There were jokes in the credits, although I didn't stay for all of them. You "may" want to watch them, but after 2 hours and 30 some minutes I was done with that film.

Early scenes with sam and the car are rather amusing. The character who decides to be a pontiac over a hummer is funny. The weirdest part of the movie is megatron. He doesn't look right. He's a jet part of the time. He is frozen for like 100 years and then battles his brother... wtf.

The battle sequences are difficult to follow. You've got dueling robots, and military types battling.

One thing I can say for the movie is that the acting was good. The writing wasn't so much, but the actors really did try to work with the crap they were given.

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/30/wienermobile.stop.ap/index.html

The "YUMMY" plate was stolen in February and police decided to bust the wiener while in a construction zone!

I found a wikipedia article about the "Console Wars."  It outlines the sales figures and winners of each generation since the atari 2600.  What I find interesting is that I haven't owned the winning game console since the NES and SNES.  (not counting handhelds) 

I loved the Genesis/CD/32x and the Dreamcast.  I never got a chance to buy a Saturn.  The TG16 was OK.  I had one for less than a year.  I had like 8 games for it or so.  The graphics sucked, but the real problem was the play control.  It had a NES style controller with built in turbo.  The Genesis and SNES had more buttons.  The real innovation was the buttons.  It made fighting games possible and really helped with sports titles. 
I might have gotten into the Playstation 1 if I didn't see it as a ripoff of the SNES.  The graphics really suck.  With the PS2, I had a negative feeling about their brand.  Sony killed Sega.  Now with the current generation, I actually like the PS3 better than the xbox360 which means Sony is probably screwed.  The problem with this generation is the broken xbox360s.  A recent slashdot article showed a guy with 11 broken consoles!  Microsoft can't build them right.  Once Microsoft launches the replacement system, xbox live will be cut off too.  Online gameplay is too useful. 

Yeah... it's a condition now.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19078709/

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19509017/

This is bigger than the iPod. 

http://www.cnn.com/2007/WORLD/meast/06/29/un.iraq.weapons.ap/index.html

Now we'll never know about the WMD's!

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LAW/06/29/astronaut.arrest.ap/index.html

OK, if the diapers are not for her, then why tell people that?  She had a great mental defense going and she blew it. 

http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/06/29/us.london.device/index.html

Interesting..

I watched V for Vendetta tonight.  Very weird movie.  I decided to do a little digging on wikipedia.  The entry is interesting, however I found the entry on Guy Fawkes much more interesting.  The terms "guy" and "guys" come from his name. 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guy_Fawkes

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pescatarian

As you can see from that definition, a vegetarian does not eat meat! 

Fish is a meat.