I've put together some docs on creating a standalone Safari 4: http://vasi.dyndns.org:3128/svn/SafariBeta/ . It runs exactly like the beta, only it does not replace the system's WebKit library and does not replace Safari 3. So you can continue to use the old Safari, and your applications will not use the new WebKit (and potentially break because of it).
It also has a tiny patch allowing the use of an auxiliary preferences file. This lets you disable incompatible InputManager hacks for Safari 4 only, while Safari 3 will still use them.
A couple of responses to miscellaneous comments in this thread:
- Following the "Looking for Safari 3" link will just end up overwriting Safari 4 and its WebKit. Congratulations, you've reverted back to where you were before! But you still can't run Safari 3 and Safari 4 side-by-side.
- Seriously, WebKit nightlies include WebKit inside their bundle, and other apps therefore don't see the new WebKit. This works. It is a standard technique on OS X, do not be surprised.
- It is indeed a good thing that the Safari 4 beta upgrades the WebKit library, things really need to be tested before Safari 4 final is released and millions of users have their apps break. However, there's no excuse for Apple not providing a standalone Safari 3 so we can test in both versions. Also, this public beta is quite different from the last semi-private developer release of Safari 4--Apple really should have provided the beta as a dev release first, so folks could fix their WebKit-using apps.
They've got full PPC support, I had much better luck with it than Yellow Dog, Gentoo or Debian. But when one distro doesn't work another usually will, yay for variety and forking.
The (unofficial) PPC version of Fedora Core 3 unfortunately didn't work too well for me, so I'll be trying it again when FC4 final is released.
If you want to stream MP3's portably, stick with QTSS or Slimserver. But if you want to duplicate iTunes functionality, only without the GUI--but including AAC streaming and browsing from within iTunes clients--try daapd. Of course, it's available in Fink, so it's not hard to get started.
I was there too, I just set up a Yahoo group so that we can figure out better places to meet, and just generally reassure people that the meeting will happen:-)
studies have shown that, when given a diverse and statistically equal group, where certain students are described as teachers to be "slow learners" - when there is no basis for that - that the students then become slow learners based upon the treatment by the teachers on the assumption that they are slow learners
I agree with most of your comment, just this little part irks me. I don't see why we should be concerned that a teacher, when told that someone is a "slow learner", ends up teaching them in a way such that they learn slowly. Lemme think of an analogy that would work...ah, here we go.
Say you're teaching one of those "Make your own website!" courses to two groups of people. Nothing fancy, just some course to show people the basics of HTML, how to use bold, italic, header tags, etc. If you're told that group A has learned how to browse the web, send e-mail, and so on already, but that group B has never touched a computer, you'll obviously treat them somewhat differently. With group A, you'd get them to fire up a text editor and start, while with group B you'd take more time, and make sure to show them how to open and quit programs and such.
Even if the newbie group really was computer literate, and what you were told was wrong, they'd still probably sit there and pretend to be interested while you were showing them where the on button is. So yeah, they would learn slower cause of their label, but it's not the teacher's fault, it's just because you as a teacher are adapting to your students. You have to make sure to blame the one giving them the label without justification, not the one who reacts appropriately (although misguidedly) to the label.
That's a very good point, and so I'd like to continue with my example and show you why a split like this is incredibly risky.
The "new version of Reform" party in Canada, the Alliance, still can't win. The Conservatives collapsed, but they still have a core of about 10% who traditionally vote for them and won't change, and this 10% is what's keeping the right-wing vote split. In the US, the Dems almost certainly won't have as disastrous leaders as the Conservatives did. This is partly because minority leaders in the US aren't as important as in Canada, and because the chances of a party being led by so many incompetents is so small. It's like if three Newt Gingriches led the Republicans, all in 12 years.
Also, to get the Conservatives to collapse, the Alliance has had to move to the left a bit, to pressure the Conservatives into the shrinking center. So they abandoned their originally strong principles of an elected Senate and free votes (without party whips) in Parliament. So if you're so positive about Nader now, will you still be so when he abandons his environmentalist policies because too many Americans won't vote for them? I hope that never has to happen, since even though I'm no fan of the Green party, I do respect Nader and I don't want him turning against his principles.
>So are you Canadian or not? I realize there
>are other possibilities (dual citizenship, or
>absentee ballot), but this apparent
>contradiction demands explanation.:)
Dual citizen. Born in Boston, but live up here, and wishing the Rhino party was still around so I could vote for it this Now 27th.:-)
vasi
I'll offer my Canadian perspective on why voting Green isn't a good idea.
Up north here, we've historically had two big parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives. A few years ago, a new party to the right of the Conservatives started up, the Reform party. Since then, the Reform and the Conservative parties keep splitting the right-wing vote, letting the Liberals run away with majority governments despite receiving only 35-40% of the popular vote.
The only reason this stopped in Canada is because of a succession of completely inept leaders of the Conservatives (Mulroney, Campbell, and Clark -- though Charest wasn't bad). So the Conservatives collapsed, and now we're back to having two big parties.
My point is this: If you vote Green, and they DO get more popular, or even their 5%, you're contributing to a split among left-wing voters. Not just a split this election, but a split that will last in all the other elections until either the Greens or Dems collapse. Since neither is likely to happen, you'll be handing maybe up to 10 consecutive terms to the Republicans. So that's why I voted Gore even in safe Massachusetts (well, besides the fact that I don't like anything about the Green party beyond Nader himself).
>If I were to tell you to go into my car, on the front seat, look for the jewel case with the >sexpot on the front, and bring it to me, how many "normal" people would be able to find it >as compared to telling someone to find it on my computer.
But then again, who wants to have to click between cushions on pictures of couches every time you want to hit "play" in Quicktime/RealPlayer/WMP?;-)
>Dr. A. was commenting upon the fallacy that >"children don't need to learn the nuts and bolts >of technology, they just need to know how to use >it.
Well, the Good Doctor was just partly right. When a kid learns to use a pencil in first grade, he doesn't have to take Why Graphite Writes on Paper 101 or How to Make Skinny Wooden Tubes with Holes in Them. He (or she) just uses the blippin thing! And a pencil must have been high tech once. It's just that the use of the tool is more important than its technology.
Eventually, though, the kid may learn all the science of pencil-making, which is good; but making the knowledge of how something works a prerequisite for using it eliminates one of the things that has taken our society so far scientifically and technologically: specialization. Somebody can be as great a scientist today as Ben Franklin was without having to be as great a politician; it would be much harder now to do both, so we might as well let the scientist take the political system's well-being (does that exist?) for granted so he can specialize on the science.
Exposing every kid to computers is a good thing. Giving them the opportunity to do things with computers is good. But making them learn the inner workings before using computers would be as inappropriate for some students as it would be for others to have to learn to act before reading Shakespeare...or something like that, it's too late for me to think of good examples.
Slashdot Mirror
Chrome has to ship its version of WebKit in the .app, while Safari puts its WebKit in /System . Comparing .app sizes is a rather unfair comparison.
I recently consolidated all my instant messaging logs, but ICQ for Mac has been abandoned since 2003 and uses a weird binary file format that's never been fully documented. So I wrote a tool to parse the parts I could figure out, and extract them into Adium-format logs: http://github.com/vasi/icq-mac-export . Thanks to the Miranda folks for putting up docs for a related format here: http://code.google.com/p/mataes/source/browse/Miranda/Plugins/Dbx_mmap_sa/import_sa/docs/import-ICQ_Db_Specs.txt
I've put together some docs on creating a standalone Safari 4: http://vasi.dyndns.org:3128/svn/SafariBeta/ . It runs exactly like the beta, only it does not replace the system's WebKit library and does not replace Safari 3. So you can continue to use the old Safari, and your applications will not use the new WebKit (and potentially break because of it).
It also has a tiny patch allowing the use of an auxiliary preferences file. This lets you disable incompatible InputManager hacks for Safari 4 only, while Safari 3 will still use them.
A couple of responses to miscellaneous comments in this thread:
- Following the "Looking for Safari 3" link will just end up overwriting Safari 4 and its WebKit. Congratulations, you've reverted back to where you were before! But you still can't run Safari 3 and Safari 4 side-by-side.
- Seriously, WebKit nightlies include WebKit inside their bundle, and other apps therefore don't see the new WebKit. This works. It is a standard technique on OS X, do not be surprised.
- It is indeed a good thing that the Safari 4 beta upgrades the WebKit library, things really need to be tested before Safari 4 final is released and millions of users have their apps break. However, there's no excuse for Apple not providing a standalone Safari 3 so we can test in both versions. Also, this public beta is quite different from the last semi-private developer release of Safari 4--Apple really should have provided the beta as a dev release first, so folks could fix their WebKit-using apps.
The (unofficial) PPC version of Fedora Core 3 unfortunately didn't work too well for me, so I'll be trying it again when FC4 final is released.
The full list of PPC distributions: here
If you want to stream MP3's portably, stick with QTSS or Slimserver. But if you want to duplicate iTunes functionality, only without the GUI--but including AAC streaming and browsing from within iTunes clients--try daapd . Of course, it's available in Fink, so it's not hard to get started.
Toodles!
vasi
I agree with most of your comment, just this little part irks me. I don't see why we should be concerned that a teacher, when told that someone is a "slow learner", ends up teaching them in a way such that they learn slowly. Lemme think of an analogy that would work...ah, here we go.
Say you're teaching one of those "Make your own website!" courses to two groups of people. Nothing fancy, just some course to show people the basics of HTML, how to use bold, italic, header tags, etc. If you're told that group A has learned how to browse the web, send e-mail, and so on already, but that group B has never touched a computer, you'll obviously treat them somewhat differently. With group A, you'd get them to fire up a text editor and start, while with group B you'd take more time, and make sure to show them how to open and quit programs and such.
Even if the newbie group really was computer literate, and what you were told was wrong, they'd still probably sit there and pretend to be interested while you were showing them where the on button is. So yeah, they would learn slower cause of their label, but it's not the teacher's fault, it's just because you as a teacher are adapting to your students. You have to make sure to blame the one giving them the label without justification, not the one who reacts appropriately (although misguidedly) to the label.
So that's my rant for today.
vasi
I'm a dual citizen.
vasi
That's a very good point, and so I'd like to continue with my example and show you why a split like this is incredibly risky.
The "new version of Reform" party in Canada, the Alliance, still can't win. The Conservatives collapsed, but they still have a core of about 10% who traditionally vote for them and won't change, and this 10% is what's keeping the right-wing vote split. In the US, the Dems almost certainly won't have as disastrous leaders as the Conservatives did. This is partly because minority leaders in the US aren't as important as in Canada, and because the chances of a party being led by so many incompetents is so small. It's like if three Newt Gingriches led the Republicans, all in 12 years.
Also, to get the Conservatives to collapse, the Alliance has had to move to the left a bit, to pressure the Conservatives into the shrinking center. So they abandoned their originally strong principles of an elected Senate and free votes (without party whips) in Parliament. So if you're so positive about Nader now, will you still be so when he abandons his environmentalist policies because too many Americans won't vote for them? I hope that never has to happen, since even though I'm no fan of the Green party, I do respect Nader and I don't want him turning against his principles.
vasi
The final tally:
Bush wins the presidency by half a Nader.
vasi (suddenly feeling good about living in the True North)
>So are you Canadian or not? I realize there >are other possibilities (dual citizenship, or >absentee ballot), but this apparent >contradiction demands explanation. :)
Dual citizen. Born in Boston, but live up here, and wishing the Rhino party was still around so I could vote for it this Now 27th. :-)
vasi
I'll offer my Canadian perspective on why voting Green isn't a good idea.
Up north here, we've historically had two big parties, the Liberals and the Conservatives. A few years ago, a new party to the right of the Conservatives started up, the Reform party. Since then, the Reform and the Conservative parties keep splitting the right-wing vote, letting the Liberals run away with majority governments despite receiving only 35-40% of the popular vote.
The only reason this stopped in Canada is because of a succession of completely inept leaders of the Conservatives (Mulroney, Campbell, and Clark -- though Charest wasn't bad). So the Conservatives collapsed, and now we're back to having two big parties.
My point is this: If you vote Green, and they DO get more popular, or even their 5%, you're contributing to a split among left-wing voters. Not just a split this election, but a split that will last in all the other elections until either the Greens or Dems collapse. Since neither is likely to happen, you'll be handing maybe up to 10 consecutive terms to the Republicans. So that's why I voted Gore even in safe Massachusetts (well, besides the fact that I don't like anything about the Green party beyond Nader himself).
Am I rambling? Or does this make a bit of sense?
vasi
>If I were to tell you to go into my car, on the front seat, look for the jewel case with the
;-)
>sexpot on the front, and bring it to me, how many "normal" people would be able to find it
>as compared to telling someone to find it on my computer.
But then again, who wants to have to click between cushions on pictures of couches every time you want to hit "play" in Quicktime/RealPlayer/WMP?
vasi
>Dr. A. was commenting upon the fallacy that
>"children don't need to learn the nuts and bolts
>of technology, they just need to know how to use
>it.
Well, the Good Doctor was just partly right. When a kid learns to use a pencil in first grade, he doesn't have to take Why Graphite Writes on Paper 101 or How to Make Skinny Wooden Tubes with Holes in Them. He (or she) just uses the blippin thing! And a pencil must have been high tech once. It's just that the use of the tool is more important than its technology.
Eventually, though, the kid may learn all the science of pencil-making, which is good; but making the knowledge of how something works a prerequisite for using it eliminates one of the things that has taken our society so far scientifically and technologically: specialization. Somebody can be as great a scientist today as Ben Franklin was without having to be as great a politician; it would be much harder now to do both, so we might as well let the scientist take the political system's well-being (does that exist?) for granted so he can specialize on the science.
Exposing every kid to computers is a good thing. Giving them the opportunity to do things with computers is good. But making them learn the inner workings before using computers would be as inappropriate for some students as it would be for others to have to learn to act before reading Shakespeare...or something like that, it's too late for me to think of good examples.