Twitter Chatter: Push Notification vs Background Processes
I recently had a good discussion over Twitter with a PC fan about the reasons for Apple’s iPhone Push Notification in their upcoming 3.0 release.
Here’s the conversation via search.twitter.com:
My buddy Chris Pirillo (we go way back) has been busy fighting off the pundits that are slamming him for slamming Vista.
…these are the same pundits that claim OS X is a cult? Please. Listen to yourselves guys.
Gundeep Hora thinks that Microsoft should acquire Linux. Well that just makes perfect sense…wait, what?
Although you shouldn’t judge a book by its cover, that method seems to work with guys named “Gundeep”. (via Daring Fireball)
There’s No Way I’m Going To Write About Boot Camp
So I’m minding my own bussiness today and all suddenly I hear a pounding at my door. It kinda sounds like a hard knocking, but not too hard…I think it was meant to be pounding though. I open the door and I see three nerdy looking guys standing outside covered in sweat.
“Whats going on?” I try to ask, but I’m cut-off by the nerdiest of the three.
“Were you asleep?!!!” the little nerd in the back drops and passes out from exhaustion, ” We’ve been trying to knock down your door for like 15 minutes out here. Do you have one of those fire-proof metal doors or something?”
“No, I think its kind of a plywood, cheap hollow door…”
“Shut up!”, the nerdy one retorts as he begins to catch his breath, “The reason we are here is because we know you have a website…”
“Yeah, Hell Yeah Bitch! .com.”
“…and its 1:00 in the afternoon and you haven’t written anything about how Apple released Boot Camp today! What the hell man!? When Apple releases something, especially as unexpected as this, you are supposed to drop everything and write a long comment on it basically saying what everyone else is.”
“I’m sorry, I didn’t know.” I lie…I totally know, I was just trying to get away from endless Apple posts. I had no idea the Nerd Police knew where I lived or worked. “What is everyone else saying?” I continue.
“What?! They are saying that this is a throw down move by Apple. They are saying that this is HUGE! By our records, you own two Apple computers, you should be screaming about this all day on your site like everyone else!”
“Sorry guys, I just don’t see the big deal. Its just a way to dual boot Windows on your Intel Mac. After everyone installs it and boots into Windows they will stare at it and realize that Windows sucks and wonder why they took 20 gigs of HD space for this useless experiment. I’m not going to take up space on my site for that. Thats space that could be used by a picture of Kate Beckinsale.”
“What?! A picture of Kate Beckinsale? You aren’t even doing that anymore, you are just using her as a title and posting pictures of other chicks! Its freaking stupid!”
“Ok…Well I know that. I’ll work Kate back in eventually…”
“You write a blog! You have to write about this! Everyone is! In fact, they already have!”
“I know my site is technically a ‘blog’, but I really hate calling it that…it seems so trendy, like its a big fad..”
“Sweet Captain Picard shut up and go write!”
“Look, I’m not writing about Boot Camp. Its just something to preoccupy the world for a day or two and then it will settle to the background where a few college’s will use it regularly and nothing more. In fact, if you buy a Mac to run Windows on it, then you really didn’t need or want the Mac to begin with. You are just buying it to be cool and not getting any of the benefits of it…its like buy a Livestrong bracelet for the fashion…lame. See you later Nerds.”
“We aren’t done yet Flynn!”
“Hey, I think I hear people playing Ultimate Frisbee in Forrest Park..”
“Whoa, really? Lets go boys!” and the Nerd Police hopped in their Mini Cooper and took off.
Stupid Nerd Police, trying to make me write about Base Camp just because everyone else is. Screw that. I have better things to do. Now, time to go check my Double Matches on HotorNot.com!
Run IE 5 and 6 on Windows XP
As you can imagine, we are going through the debug process with the new site I just put up and the need arose today for a copy of Internet Explorer 5.0. We looked around the office but the old computer we had was ironically too old. Windows 3.1 in fact. Google to the rescue though…I found a great little tutorial about how to take a IE 5.1 install file and make it work as a stand-alone browser, perfect for testing.
Just thought I would pass it along to all web designers that don’t know, or you freaks that want to use IE 5.1 and think about the good old times.
How To: Windows Security Hole #3739234098
Nitesh Dhanjani, doesn’t post as often as most others do on the O’Reilly blogs, but when he does, its always good. Take today’s for instance. Want to see the power of the newest un-patched (as of this writing) expolit of Windows’ “Picture and Fax Viewer Metafile Overflow Vulnerability”? Nitesh shows you the way…Exploiting the Windows XP/2003 Picture and Fax Viewer Metafile Overflow Vulnerability
I’m not going to bother quoting it. You can click the link if you want. But its truly interesting, powerful and scary for those of you that have Windows boxes at home. (I don’t by the way [insert Nelson from the Simpsons laugh]).
Now don’t go and do anything bad with that ok?
Getting Tip-sy With Phaticon #001
Editor’s Note: We are trying out a couple of new things with this post. The first thing is “tips” for different random computer things for our less techno-savvy readers (and maybe some of the savvy ones too.) The second thing we are trying out is a new writer, who’s name is sadly Mike, so that we’ll have to do something about that.
Please leave any comments or thoughts you have on either of these additions in the comments. Also, if you have any ideas what we can call “New Mike” because we can’t have two Mikes, and I was here first so I win this battle.
Since Dan and I can’t seem to shut up about Macs all the time, we thought it would be nice to have the first tip be about Windows. Enjoy.
Change the registered organization and/or owner of XP
Okay so you bought a used PC from someone and it still has their name under the General Tab on the System Properties. It can be annoying to see someone elseís name on there when it should be yours. After all, you own the PC. Maybe the PC belonged to you and a significant other that you are no longer with. Now you can get rid of that name and add yours with this tip.
Please use this Registry edit at your own risk. You should make a backup copy of your Registry everytime you change registry files.
- Open the Start menu, click on Run, then type regedit and click OK.
- Find the following registry key: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows NT\CurrentVersion.
- Find the string value RegisteredOwner, then right-click Modify and edit the value. This is the value where your name goes.
- Click OK.
- Find the string value RegisteredOrganization, then right-click Modify and edit the value.
- Change this value to the Organization that you belong to if this applies to you.
- Click OK, exit the Registry editor and reboot your system.
Now your name will be displayed in the System Properties as it should be. I know this tip really isnít useful as it quite pointless, but at least now you can change the name of the Owner and/or Organization of your PC. You can see from mine that I changed it to Tardmonkey. This is an easy edit for this type of thing.
Would You Run An Ad-Based OS?
So would you? Would you run an ad-based operating system? Maybe the OS would be cheap, or free, and in a bar across the top would run ads that you can’t remove, would you run that on your machine? Everything else worked fine, there were just ads on it. Maybe the ads took the form of a pre-install spyware machine, with the occasional pop-up and a start page you can’t change. Or maybe the ad was a wallpaper that changes every 30 minutes to a new ad. Would that be worth the cost of an OS? According to a leaked memo, Microsoft has at least been exploring the idea.
Is Windows A Necessary Evil?
So I’ve pretty much decided that I will be taking the plunge and buying one of the new G5 iMacs when they hit stores here in St. Louis on October 25. Rest assured I will give a full review in a week once I’ve set it up and gotten a chance to play with it a bit. I realize the fact that I’m buying a new computer is not news-worthy, but I think the problem I’m having might be worth a read. The question I have been turning over in my head the past few days is: Should I have at least one Windows machine?
In my current home networking setup, I have: 1 iBook, 1 Windows XP machine, 1 Linux server. When I get my shiny new iMac, my plan was to bump the XP machine to another (faster) Linux server, and move my media files off the older computer to the faster Linux server and then use the older Linux server as a web / asterisk / whatever server. After the initial euphoria of the thought of living in a Windows free house, I got a little worried that I might, at some point need a Windows server. What if I can’t open some a file or a friend’s hard drive? What if I need to run a program that is only on Windows? …etc. Do I really need at least one Windows box or am I just nervous about that annoying yet comfortably easy to use Windows box not being around for the first time in 10 years?
What do you think? If I got with a *nix (fedora and OS X) based world at home (I still have to use Windows at the office), will I be a fool or finally liberating myself? Please, do try to keep the” Windows sux” comments to a minimum, I know it sucks, but the majority of the computing world runs on it, so will I be screwing myself by taking it away?