...more recent posts
Google launches a browser: Chrome. Somewhat strangely there is a comic to go along with the launch that explains what it's all about. It's based on Webkit which is the open source project behind Safari. In short: yet another browser isn't that interesting, but this isn't that. More thoughts when I collect them.
Wine Disorder launches. This is the first bulletin board running on Geneva. Funny bunch of guys - their FAQ is really good I think.
I'm seeing lots of weirdness in the server logs connected to this sql injection attack. Not sure what to make of it. Don't think it can be doing anything to my servers. Maybe it's just the result of other sites having been hacked. In any case, I'm getting requests with this query string tacked on the end:
';DECLARE%20@S%20CHAR(4000);SET%20@S=CAST(0x4445434C41524520 [...snip...] C655F437572736F72%20AS%20CHAR(4000));EXEC(@S);
This Week in HTML 5, episode 1. Looking forward to this series.
MobilMe, Apple's online services that are a rebranding of their .Mac services and which was launched in conjunction with the iPhone 3G, has had a rocky start. To put it mildly. This is a dangerous situation for Apple.
They have the hardware (iPhone, iPod, Macs, and MacBooks) and the software that runs the hardware (OS X,) but in this increasingly networked world, they also need a third piece that glues all your devices together. In the old world this meant syncing, like when you plug your iPhone into your Mac, say, all your contacts are updated. In the new world this means some variant of what people like to call "the cloud." Syncing becomes not just an intermittent event, but a constant operation. All devices are connected, in real time, to each other and changes made in one place show up immediately in all other places. The internet is the medium over which this takes place, and in Apple's case the whole bundle of software - running both on each device, and on servers in Apple's datacenters - is called MobileMe.
The story is that Apple didn't get it right. There were massive problems on launch (including not only the complete failure of certain services, but also worse things like people losing all their email,) and big problems still remain today. This is a massively difficult thing to get right, but Apple should have been able to do it. And to reach their goal they'll have to get it right. This is the last hurdle - one they'll either clear leaving competitors too far behind to catch up, or stumble over giving someone else the chance to take the lead (Microsoft? Google?) Or, to be less abstract, if Apple can get it right then their devices will be so easy to use - and so easy to use in conjunction with each other - that there won't be any way for a competitor to offer a similarly complete experience. They will have control of all the oxygen in the personal electronics marketplace.
For more details on Apple's infrastructure problems and the internal reorganization aimed at fixing them, here's an interesting post from someone with inside experience at Apple. It's a generally hopeful look at the situation, but it makes sense to me. The iTunes store does work, and does appear to prove that Apple can do infrastructure on this level. Now we'll just have to see if that knowledge can be applied to MobileMe. I just hope they hurry. They've gained a lot of traction with their message of making products that "just work," but customers, especially the coveted first time "switcher" customer, are at least for the moment having a more difficult experience. They won't get many chances to fix this.
Beautiful pictures of the Large Hadron Collider, the worlds largest and highest energy particle accelerator, which is about to start operation outside of Geneva Switzerland. The internet is full of theories about how the LHC is going to destroy the world, but it doesn't seem like any respected scientists are worried about that. But two well known physicists are speculating about something less troubling, but quite possibly much more weird:
The authors of this paper claim to show that other terms can be added to the quantum mechanical action that are consistent with current theory and experiment. However, some of these possible terms include conditions in the future that need to be taken into account and summed over. That is to say, what happens in the future could (according to this paper) affect what happens in the present.
Why the LHC? The authors argue that these sorts of time-violating interactions could be associated with whatever new particles we create at the LHC. For example, the production of a large number of Higgs particles in the future could have a backwards-in-time causal effect on the machine that produced them, stopping the machine from ever running.
Today, July 25th (last Friday in July) is the 9th annual Sysadmin Appreciation Day. And, coincidentally, August marks the 9th anniversary of digitalmediatree.
Death of software patents? Sounds a little too good to be true.
For the past few weeks I’ve been working with a fellow developer on a project that required an all-out programming effort. It’s done now, so we’re back to a regular schedule, but when people hear about the crazy hours they often say they’re sorry. They really shouldn’t be. I would never do this often, or for long periods, or without proper compensation if done for an employer, but the truth is that these programming blitzkriegs are some of my favorite periods in life. Under the right conditions, writing software is so intensely pleasurable it should be illegal.++.
Damn, Apple (aapl) is getting hammered after hours (down 11.2% to $147.98 right now.) They reported earnings today. Looked good to me, but I guess Wall St. didn't like their guidance for next quarter. If I believed in the market at all and had extra cash I would be buying in the morning.