/dev/random

As a developer, my least favorite thing is having to maintain backward compatibility with older systems. It keeps me from being able to use the latest features and I often have to have some code duplicated to do things differently depending on the OS version.
For example I’m using the new, preferred method with launchd [...]

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When I was having trouble with DreamHost a few days ago, I signed up for a Grid Server account at Media Temple to try it out. After trying it, I decided to close my Media Temple account and stay with DreamHost.
I created a mirror of this site (which you can still see here until the [...]

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Today has been a day when everything went wrong. To start things off, my car battery died yet again, even though I left it only one day without using my car. Once again I’ll bring it to my Toyota dealer and see that I get a new battery. The last two times they tried to [...]

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Congratulations to Robert & Maryam Scoble on the birth of their new son, Milan. Robert posted updates on Maryam’s labor all day on Twitter. Let’s not forget Milan’s big brother Patrick.

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Explaining OAuth
Proposed authentication protocol that will allow sites to provide limited access rather than sharing all data.
(tags: API opensource security openid socialnetwork)

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Daniel Brusilovsky, the host of Apple Universe and Tech Today is now writing for MacMegasite. If you haven’t heard of Daniel, see this interview with Scoble.

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Via MetaFilter: You can blow out a candle. But you can’t blow out a fire. Steve Biko died 30 years ago today.

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Scoble reminds us of the events that happened on this day six years ago, 9/11/2001.
I had slept late that day, since I was laid off from Teaching Network the previous Friday, along with more than half of the company. I awoke when FedEx knocked on my door, delivering my CodeWarrior upgrade. I turned on the [...]

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I paid for SoundConverter when I had my old MacBook Pro. It turns out my license is no longer valid on my new MacBook Pro because it’s tied to the Ethernet address of my old one. Furthermore, the license is non-transferrable.
This is the height of boneheadedness. No other piece of software I own wouldn’t allow [...]

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MetaFilter reports that The very great Joe Zawinul has passed at 75 Accordionist, proud Austrian, composer of Mercy, Mercy, In a Silent Way, and Birdland, associate of Miles, McLaughlin, Cannonball, Hancock, and Shorter, arguably the father of world music, Zawinul has left the building.
I really loved Weather Report. During my teenage years I listened to [...]

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This story points out what’s wrong with Florida’s educational system. There’s too much emphasis on preparing for the FCAT (a standardized test), rather than actually learning.
One teacher told parents that there would be no curriculum other than FCAT practice until after the writing test in February. This is for a class of the most advanced [...]

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Perfect Preview With MarsEdit
One of the most time-saving features of MarsEdit is its Preview window, which uses the power of Safari’s WebKit to render a browser-perfect version of your post before you send it to the blog. This is fantastic because you can spot formatting errors and
(tags: blog software tips)

35 Absolutely Essential Mac Apps
Here’s a [...]

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Feast of the Wingnuts
American politics has been hijacked by a tiny coterie of right-wing economic extremists, some of them ideological zealots, others merely greedy, a few of them possibly insane.
(tags: History politics)

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Scoble nails it.

You think you got it bad cause the iPhone dropped in price by $200? My family has bought three of them so far. Well, four, if you include Patrick’s mom, who just bought one a week ago. She’ll be able to get her $200 back, but the rest of us have paid an [...]

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I’ve been using the new version of Parallels for about a week because Windows feels more responsive under Parallels and I really like the features. However, I find that it slows down my entire system very badly and uses a lot of CPU time even when Windows is idle. I finally decided to go back [...]

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I relisted my MacBook Pro a second time, after the first buyer cancelled and it didn’t sell the second time. This time an asshole in Nigeria bought it even though I said very specifically in the listing that I would ONLY ship to the US or Canada. I am not selling it to him and [...]

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Slashdot reports that Comcast is throttling BitTorrent traffic using forged TCP Reset (RST) packets, like the Great Firewall of China does. It turns out that Comcast may actually be violating criminal impersonation statutes in states around the country. While it’s legal to block traffic on your network, forging data to and from customers isn’t legal.
Comcast [...]

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Lowering My GPU Usage on Media Temple’s Grid-Server
I’ve been considering a switch to MT since Dreamhost’s performance has been terrible lately.
(tags: web hosting apache)

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I just upgraded to MarsEdit 2, which I’m using to make the post. The new user interface looks much cleaner and the Flickr integration is wonderful.

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I think I figured out NBC’s twisted logic when they claimed that most content on iPods is stolen: If you import your own legally purchased DVD or CD rather than buying that content in their DRM-crippled format, they consider it stolen.

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