Memtest is a commonly used tool for checking your memory. In 2.6.26 Linux is including his [sic] own in-kernel memory tester. The goal is not to replace memtest, in fact this tester is much simpler and less capable than memtest, but it’s handy to have a built-in memory tester on every kernel. It’s enabled easily with the “memtest” boot parameter.
Craig Hockenberry on App Store reviews:
Some have suggested that buying the app should be a requirement before leaving a review. I agree, but this will not completely mitigate the need to vet content. A large percentage of applications are free: the trolls will just download before going on their merry way.
If all of this wasn’t depressing enough for developers, I’ll leave you with my biggest disappointment: reviews are a one way street. I’m not one to feed the trolls, but many of the reviews I’m seeing would benefit from a “Just try this…” or “We’re working on that…” type of response. There’s not even a link to our support on the reviews page.
I’ve found that the effect of having a single, centralized source for iPhone apps can be a two-edged sword. While it gives the developer much greater exposure with much less work, it also provides a single, centralized feedback forum, with a de facto community of users that can and will publicly praise or decry your work.
http://developer.apple.com/iphone
Updates to the Push API that is coming later this year, GPS updates rumored to be getting prepped for turn-by-turn:
A few new things we are seeing in this version of the software is the addition of a bunch of Core Location features that track the direction you are heading, and the speed you are traveling.
The notes state you cannot use this toolchain to build apps for the App Store, and apparently the link to the NDA is gone. (Via GearLive)
Along with the native WordPress client for the iPhone, I’m trying out MarsEdit. The live preview is nice, and so is the ability to quickly look back over and edit previous posts.
It seems strange to use a specialized client app for posting on a website, but not strange at all to use a specialized client app for, say email or Usenet.
Nothing special, but it does allow posting, editing posts, and previews.
TUAW’s point/counterpoint on the iPhone as the long rumored OS X tablet.
http://www.boingboing.net/2008/07/23/fox-tv-news-anchors.html
Pretending it’s a comedy or parody show is the only way I can not cry about this.
http://www.vanheusden.com/multitail/
Great utility for tailing multiple files on one console.
After much reworking, I have updated my spamlearn script yet again.
NEW
You no longer need to specify a list of ham directories. It will automatically scan your $MAILDIR and seek out all folders. All you need to do is tell it which folder(s) to use as Junk, and optionally any folder(s) you don’t want imported as ham. I exclude Trash and the Apple Mail To Do folder, for example.
More complex and repetitive tasks have been moved into functions, and generally the code just looks a lot cleaner and is easier to read.
I’ve moved the 5 variables that most people would need to worry about to the top, with lesser altered variables below that. For a default amavis/spamassassin install, just changing the top 5 will make it work most of the time.
More code has been moved into tight routines, and unnecessary bits have been removed. Some options have been combined, for example, unsetting MAILTO, LOGFILE, or QUARANTINE will disable those features entirely. The verbose mode isn’t quite so verbose anymore since it has been migrated from it’s debugger origins. The log and mail report are now prettier, and adjustable timestamps have been added to all log entries.
All you absolutely need to change are the top 2 variables, but have a look at them all for your own adjustments.
I have posted my spamlearn script for anyone to use. I tried to make it as useful as possible for cleaning up those things that amavis/spamassassin don’t cover, and made it as easy as possible to change to anyone’s needs.
The script will crawl through a set of user defined spam and ham IMAP-style Maildir folders, importing the new messages into the spamassassin database. It then gzips, renames, and moves the spam into the normal amavis quarantine. It logs everything it imports, and optionally generates an email to you to let you know what it has done. I recommend putting this in your cron.weekly.
If you use this, have a look through the top 30 or so lines and change the variables to suit you. Of particular note:
MAILDIR
Change this to the top level of your user’s Maildir format directory. This script assumes you are using IMAP compatible Maildirs.
SPAMDIRS and HAMDIRS
You can have as many of these as you like.
MAIL_REPORT
This will send out an email to $MAILTO with a report detailing which spam and ham have been imported into the database. But it will only send if spam was found. Just finding ham alone won’t trigger it.
LEARN_AS_USER
If you run spamassassin as a daemon with the defaults, leave this alone.
The rest should be pretty straightforward. Don’t forget to change the From address in MAILHEADER.
Gruber, quoting CNet:
Ina Fried, reporting for CNet on Microsoft Equipt, a new $69 annual subscription software package from Microsoft for Windows users:
The idea behind the subscription service is to convert more new PC buyers into Office buyers. It plays on the fact that although most people don’t buy Office at the same time as a computer, many do purchase a security software subscription.
Microsoft is trying to tap into the fact that while many people would rather find a copy of Office that they don’t have to pay for (either an older version or a pirated copy) they are willing to pay for security software. “Security is basically the No. 1 thing that gets attached with a PC,” said Microsoft group product manager Bryson Gordon.
Equipt includes Microsoft OneCare anti-virus software. So, when you buy a new Windows machine, even Microsoft encourages you to pay extra for security software.
Ars Technica has the story, Jonathan Ive takes home MDA award for iconic iPhone design
“The iPhone is arguably the most talked about consumer-electronics device that has hit the market in the last 5 years,” the judges commented. However, they went a little too far in attributing the iPhone’s touch UI to Ive; that took a team of designers, software engineers, and (according to patent filings) The Steve himself.
“This is complete and total nonsense,” says Reiser’s prosecutor, Paul Hora. “All of a sudden he’s incompetent a week before he gets sentenced.”
The filing came about a week ahead of a scheduled July 9 sentencing date, in which Judge Goodman was expected to sentence the 44-year-old developer of the ReiserFS file system to a 25-to-life term for killing his wife in 2006. The filing is expected to scuttle that sentencing date.
The filing also means that Reiser does not immediately intend to lead authorities to the whereabouts of his wife’s body in exchange for a reduced term — a potential deal both sides were discussing last month.
After Joel Spolsky posted that disabling unusable menu items is bad design, the rebuttals came pouring in, from Gruber, from Jalkut, from Mathis, and others.
The argument is that if you are unable to use a menu item, then you should still be able to click it, and then a dialog would appear telling you why it cannot be used. The other behavior is to simply disable, “grey out” the item so it cannot be clicked on at all. As a long time user who has been thinking very much about interface and interaction, I think the second is a far better option because it does not present a false implication that the item is usable. I do not like to click something and then be told, almost punitively, that I cannot get what I want. If the system could tell me that in a quicker, quieter, less misleading way, I’m for it. Greying out menu items is a great way to do that.
One of the things I loathe about Windows is the way it condescendingly explains things — everything — to me. Most of this I already know and I just feel talked down to while using it. Good, user friendly UI isn’t about assuming the user is stupid. It’s about respecting the user and realizing there are certain things the user doesn’t want or need to care about. The more the UI can get out of the way, the more information that can be implicitly passed onto the user without spelling it out in paragraph form, the better.
Upon further reading, it looks like this only applies to certain work that has been deemed as an “investigation,” and not all repair.
Existing AT&T customers who are not currently eligible for an upgrade discount can purchase iPhone 3G for $399 for the 8GB model or $499 for the 16GB model. Both options require a new two-year service agreement.
The telco says a no-commitment version of the phone will be available for $599 and $699, though it looks like that will come after the initial launch.
I’ve been thinking for awhile about what it is that the iPhone clones are lacking that makes them look like sad, cheap knockoffs, and ultimately doom to failure. Design is not about how it looks; it’s about how it works. Mimicking the shell casing of the iPhone is a very small part of the design, and brings the device no closer to appealing to those on the fence over the iPhone, much less making it an “iPhone killer.”
You can group the iPhone knockoffs into a few categories, starting with the obvious Chinese ripoffs from companies like Meizu, who, despite their repeated claims that they finalized their M8 design a whole four days before WWDC 07, then subsequently had to change their designs to make it less similar, keeps re-revising their final design to bring it as close to the iPhone as possible. In some places they use the exact PNG images from the iPhone firmware. My gripe isn’t just that they are shamelessly ripping off the design (they are), or that they aren’t even doing a very clean and polished job of it (they aren’t), but that even if they 100% copied the look and feel, it still isn’t the same thing. These phones are not really taken seriously by anyone because of how loudly they scream “ripoff.”
The other group isn’t so much accurately described as knockoffs, as “poorly inspired.” These are the phones from Samsung, LG, and probably everyone else soon, that are advertised as “iPhone killers.” This is just not going to happen. While they don’t directly rip any actual images from iPhone OS X, they are very clearly based on them and poorly imitated. They try, as superficially as possible, to make their phone look like an iPhone on the outer surface, what looks good in ad copy without backing it up with user experience. The LG Voyager, for example, was boasted as having an iPhone-esque home screen, which turned out to actually be an application running on top of the real home screen. These companies are not trying to re-engineer their hardware because the iPhone has raised the bar. They are putting new curtains and lighting fixtures in a rotten old house and calling it a new house.
While they stay busy trying to produce a phone that, side by side with an iPhone in a print ad may look similar if you squint really hard, they are missing all the stuff below the surface. The multi-touch screen is a big one here. Simply having a stylus-free touch screen isn’t enough. When the first multi-touch interface was demoed at NYU even I could tell this was going to be huge. Multi-touch means a hell of a lot more than just being able to pinch zoom pictures. It allows a range of dragging, flicking, and motion that is impossible with conventional pressure or electrosensitive screens. This is what makes reading web sites and email on the iPhone such a pleasure: just grab the list, flick it up, and watch it scroll.
They also completely overlook the lack of buttons or other extraneous hardware. One commenter on a forum even said he wished the iPhone 3G had a hardware switch on the side to turn off the 3G chip. Really? If we allow every pet option to become a hardware button, we would end up with a Blackberry.
And of course the big one is that the iPhone runs OS X. Mac OS X is what made me interested in Apple. It saved the company. It’s an open platform that beats the shit out Windows Mobile or any other mobile platform today. It is so because OS X is fundamentally portable, versatile, and Cocoa was already the best app development framework.
Now that the iPhone 3G is going to be available for $199, this knocked the wind out of the sails of their very last argument. If you are alright with being an AT&T customer, there really is no reason to pay money for anything other than an iPhone.
New open source WGR614L router from Netgear may replace the venerable Linksys WRT54G as the router for tinkerers. Not only is it Linux based, but:
As the hardware itself is open-source, it attains a kind of philosophical purity that few major manufacturers care to express. Regulator schematics are available for the pointy-headed few to enjoy, for example, and from looking at them, one indisputable fact is immediately clear: it’s prettier than a Linksys WRT54G.
Netgear has launched http://www.myopenrouter.com to get people involved.
