According to MacWorld UK, Apple has got approval for the “Learning with ICT Schools Technology Upgrade Project” to offer Macs to schools upgrading their equipment over the next two years.
Month: February 2007
Lot of room in this mall…
There is something about my geek psyche that makes me find it deeply fulfilling when someone in the store overhears me ordering a hard drive that is so large they feel the need to exclaim 🙂
Meanwhile, several hours later, it’s still writing out many billion zeroes to the disk (Disk Utility’s original estimate was 6 hours, we’re now coming up on 11. Yes, the progress bar is still increasing). I’m glad I don’t have to do a secure erase of it!
Annoyingly this drive (Seagate) doesn’t have an ‘old style’ power connector, so I couldn’t plug it in where I wanted to. Looks like I’ll have to find an ‘old style’ to modern SATA power cable, which I’m pretty sure I have lying around somewhere, otherwise it’s off to the shops again…
Upgrading EasyX509TrustManager source
If you’re looking to update your Java source for EasyX509TrustManager.java or EasySSLProtocolSocketFactory.java to Java 1.5.x then you can find the updated versions in Apache’s Jakarta SVN repository (Because they weren’t immediately obvious to me when I was googling).
Mac LoJack
It started with this script to use the Mac’s inbuilt camera to grab an image when an incorrect password was used during login (presumably because someone’s stolen your Mac). But that was a bit hard for most people to install, so now there’s MacLoJack which does that, and more. Includes code for the server so you can run your own for your Mac to dial home to.
Weirdness
My work mac is continually complaining
kernel[0]: ERROR: couldn't open provider
and is running somewhat slowly. Not sure if this happened after the latest security update 2007-002
Win a copy of Opal
TidBITS are running their regular DealBITS competition to win a copy of Opal (worth US$32). Opal is outlining software from A#, by the creator of Acta (circa 1986).
Lessons for the day
Spent last night pimping my MySQL installation. With the help of phpMyAdmin I decided that I probably needed to add
--log-slow-queries --tmp_table_size=67108864
to my mysql startup. At least until I work out what the slow queries are.
Unfortunately it seems that flushing the open tables causes Livejournal’s feed to barf up old articles.
Safe-sleep your Mac
Matt from the UCC details how to enable safe sleep (or ‘hibernate’, if you’re from the Windows world) on PowerBooks that don’t normally support it. Be warned, it’s not for the squeamish as it requires some Open Firmware hackery, but scripts are provided.
Safe sleep basically writes the contents of your Mac’s RAM onto the hard drive when it sleeps, so even if the battery goes totally kaput (or, for example is removed), your Mac should theoreticaly start back up where it left off when you apply power and turn it on again.
A Day of Apple Fixes
So, no sooner had boxed up the Intel Xserve and filed my bug report about Java bus erroring than Apple released a Java update (Java for Mac OS X 10.4, Release 5), a Daylight savings timezone patch, and a 2007-002 Security update, addressing several of the bugs mentioned by the Month Of Apple Bugs site (I’m not going to link there again as they’ve got an image that attempts to exploit a security hole posted on their site).
Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit celebrates its 10th birthday
Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit recently celebrated its 10th birthday with a lot of Post-It notes. The Mac BU was responsible for Internet Explorer for the Mac, which was arguably the best Mac browser for some time. Also the Mac Microsoft Office Suite.