In the past few months I have started making the transition from reading on my computer monitor to physical books, simply because my eyes can not handle the strain of focusing on the monitor for hours. After reading a good deal of computer related books I have started to realize an annoying pattern, authors and book publishers are trying to appeal to the wrong demographic. It does not matter how technical a subject may be, the author still attempts to write it from a home user perspective.

In the past few months I have started making the transition from reading on my computer monitor to physical books, simply because my eyes can not handle the strain of focusing on the monitor for hours. After reading a good deal of computer related books I have started to realize an annoying pattern, authors and book publishers are trying to appeal to the wrong demographic. It does not matter how technical a subject may be, the author still attempts to write it from a home user perspective.

Operations Analysis and Research Center for the Internet (OARCI) will hold it’s third annual DNS Operations Workshop at Brooklyn College this upcoming June. Registration is now open, and you do not have to be a member of OARCI to attend the workshop! Check out OARCI DNS Operations Workshop website for more information!

Much to-do has been made over the past week regarding Apple’s Safari web browser using “secret” undocumented code to make it run faster than competing web browsers. It’s important to note that this was simply an overreaction on the part of a Mozilla developer which became a shot heard around the world. An important comment on this same blog elaborates on the fact that this is in fact not super-secret undocumented code, and that the forces of corporate evil are in fact not out to get us.

Last week Symantec, F-Secure, ZDnet, and many others have reported on the first iPhone trojan called iPhone firmware 1.1.3 prep. The user must jailbreak their iPhone using unauthorized software. Find unauthorized software from an unreliable source. Willingly install said software. Holy shit! You mean when you do that something bad can happen?! Symantec and F-Secure are yet to report on the trojan that impacts all UNIX based systems. I guess there is no FUD in that.

Many credit Microsoft’s Mac support for saving the platform in the late 90’s. This is very true, but while they did this it’s important to keep hold of the more objective view of their Mac support. It’s whitewash. Microsoft’s motivation to support Apple in its hour of need was clear. Antitrust proceedings forced Microsoft into a corner, and the destruction of Apple would have only proven Microsoft’s nature as a monopoly force that was eradicating its competition.

Generally speaking Mac OS X has very good security background and that is commonly used as a sales pitch, rightfully so, or to simply rub it into your Windows using friends face. Because of that, every single time there is a minor Mac OS X security advisory every Windows users comes out of the woodwork screaming “you see! I told you! OS X is not secure!”… and that is obviously bullshit.

UPDATE If you’ve arrived here looking to use iSCSI with Time Machine, I’ve switched to another more robust method. I’ve run into some of the same problems as commenters below, and I’ve become convinced the iSCSI angle is too risky for now. Open a terminal and run: defaults write com.apple.systempreferences TMShowUnsupportedNetworkVolumes 1 Then you can use a Samba or AppleShare (even Netatalk) server share as a time machine backup location. This works perfectly, as Time Machine creates a disk image with an HFS+ filesystem on which to perform backups, and mounts that.

One of my Macs is a 2001 vintage G4 733 with a dual 1.8GHz G4 upgrade. This should fit well within Leopard’s minimum system requirements, but the CPU upgrade I’m using presented a complication. Without a kernel extension from Gigadesigns called ‘Giga-Meter’, MacOS recognizes the upgraded CPU’s as ‘PowerPC 60? 467MHz’ and therefore won’t update due to the new minimum requirement of 867MHz. This extension can’t be loaded from a DVD since you’re booted from the Leopard installation CD at the time you get denied.

Evidently the intention has been to allow third party apps on the iPhone all along. This is good news - while the current selection of web apps are higher in quality and usefulness than the unofficial native apps, official support will result in some vendors stepping up and creating some good stuff (and as mentioned, a lot of other vendors stepping up and writing crap - caveat emptor). Quoted from apple.