I ordered my BTO Mac mini the day it was available and received it on Monday. The invoice email states:
Should Apple reduce its price on any shipped product within 10 calendar days of
shipment, you may contact Apple Sales Support at 1-800-676-2775 to request a
refund or credit of the difference between the price you were charged and the
current selling price. To receive the refund or credit you must contact Apple
within 14 business days of shipment.
so I called them up about the bluetooth + wireless option that I'd added, and they credited my account the $30. It took all of 3 minutes to do. Painless.
... and I'm sure you all will, but I was under the impression that iPodder was a fancy automatic way of downloading MP3s, not converting streaming radio to MP3s and then storing on your iPod which is what this story seems to imply. It is not " the first portable time-shifted Internet audio application", it just "raises the prospect of truly portable time-shifted audio programming on the Internet". I believe Audio Hijack Pro will let you record streaming music, but iPodder looks like it just downloads MP3s.
I'm a huge Konfabulator fan and have written several widgets that I use on a daily basis (FTP drag and drop, MySQL query tool, IP address, Uptime, Notebox, etc) and I've never had a problem with clutter. I have a 12" PowerBook so my screen real estate is precious.
I wrote a very small script that I include in all my widgets (~15 lines of Javascript) that will leave them at whatever level I choose (usually Desktop or Below All) and when I hit Command+F8 they all come to the top. Command+F8 again will put them back to whatever level they were at beforehand. It's my own little implementation of Expose and it works flawlessly. It would be just as easy to modify the script to set their opacity to 0 leaving them completely hidden from view until exposed.
All it takes is a little imagination and you can get around almost every problem I've heard about Konfabulator.
Also, Konfabulator just released a new version with "Konspose" which is their own Expose-like solution.
The device can hold over 1,000 songs or 100 movies... is available in 20, 40 and 60GB models.
Seeing as how the iPod mini holds over 1,000 songs and it's 4GB, this should say can hold over 5,000 songs. You know Apple wouldn't understate a product.
Yeah, I know I'm nitpicking an April Fool's joke, but seeing as how there's no real news I have to waste my lunch break somehow.
(And no, I'm not flaming Apple. I'm an OSX switcher myself.)
I once spent about 3 months recoding (PHP, HTML) the website of the dot com I worked at. 5 days a week, 8am - past midnight, and some weekends. I actually coded through the new year and commented the code accordingly (/* just celebrated the new year writing this */). I got no overtime, and when I was done they decided they wanted to redo the design of the entire site because the CEO was pissed at the original designer who'd recently quit. So then I spent another month or so redoing all the HTML and was laid off soon after, but told to work one more week to make the site "self maintaining". Someone (not me) submitted this to Fucked Company using the term "self-maintaining" because it was so ridiculous, and I was blamed. The CEO refused to talk to me or even look at me for that last week. What a child. That shows what 3 years of loyalty will get you.
Still, I look back at that job fondly and wish I'd had a bigger taste of the non-dot-com work environment so I'd be able to appreciate the freedom we had a bit more. A lot of it was a nightmare, but I've yet to have another job with a basketball court in the parking lot, great friendships, and beer at lunch.
"crazy window" screenshot
on
Friday Apple Fun
·
· Score: 5, Informative
if anyone is interested, here's a screenshot of a partially minimized safari.
My iBook has the same problem. I got it for a Christmas / birthday present in 2002 and the backlight started dying in December 2003. I bought AppleCare from the website on Dec. 13 but they wouldn't accept it as apparently my iBook was purchased on Dec. 11 and was therefore 2 days out of warranty. Even though it wasn't registered until Dec. 25 they wouldn't make any exceptions.
My specific problem is when I open up the screen and turned the iBook on the backlight would flicker and I'd have to put a little pressure on the back of the screen to push it forwards a little bit for it to work. I had to hold it like that for a while and then it usually took 10 minutes or so until I found a position where it would stay on. Oddly enough though, after it's been on for a while I can move the screen any way that I want and it'll stay on.
So my solution was to set it up as a music server, connect it up to some good speakers, leave it open on my desk and buy a PowerBook. I'm a little pissed, but on the bright side I guess I now have a 12" PowerBook and a sweet little web based interface to iTunes that I wrote last week. On the downside my employer hasn't paid me for 6+ weeks so perhaps the PowerBook wasn't the best idea.
No, seriously. That really helps at my company. Granted, it's only a small company of around 30 people, but every last Friday of the month (and occasionally others) they bring us beer and sometimes margaritas. Everyone hangs out in the kitchen and lets off some steam and it really does help. There's usually leftovers too, so my friend and I sneak back there about 15 minutes before quitting time on other days and have our own little party. Several times the owners have walked past on the way to the bathroom and occasionally they join us.
Careful with the Best Buy approach. A few years ago my Toshiba Satellite laptop battery died while still under warranty at Best Buy, so I took it back there and clearly explained the problem and that I was just looking for a new battery. 2 weeks later I got my laptop back with the hard drive reformatted.
A co-worker had a similar problem a couple weeks ago with a key on his keyboard not working. Same thing - they reformatted and he lost everything.
Obviously you should back everything up before you take it in for repair but it's still poor service on their part. What if I were an average Best Buy customer who knew nothing about computers? I'd be confused as hell when I turned it on to find nothing there, not even an operating system. The worst part was, they didn't even replace the battery that time. I had to take it back AGAIN.
I tend to get messages days later, if at all. When I was on vacation in Illinois (I live in California) I didn't get a single message sent to me, and my friends swear they sent several. I use Sprint, FYI.
First of all, I don't think PHP is stupid. I've been a PHP programmer professionally for several years now and I know how and why it works like this. It's not PHP's stupidity that I wrote about, it's user error that's the problem.
I've been able to see several people's/etc/passwd files this way. I'm not going to provide specific examples, but trust me that it can be done. What happens is that people use include($p) or require($p) but don't include from the document root or check for valid paths, so you can include anything with read permissions from any directory.
The same thing goes for backup file extensions, such as.php~. The first thing I do when I set up Apache is to make it parse those files as PHP just in case. You'd be amazed at how many peole have vulnerable files like that just lying around. Try looking for index.php~ and you can often find all kinds of stuff from there.
I wrote my own skinnable website package which includes multi-blog functionality with all the usual features. A few months ago I added a wireless skin (WML) and can now post to my blog and change my mood from my cell phone. While I don't often post to my blog via the phone, I do have a private blog section that I post to sometimes. It's basically a "note to self" type thing and it's very handy typing a quick idea here and there via my cell phone. It saves carrying around a PDA a lot of the time.
And yeah, blogs are lame and boring and all that, but they're damn handy to remember what on earth I did yesterday.
this "haxie" (lame name, i know) might be able to get rid of the brushed aluminum, assuming it's a cocoa app. i haven't tried it yet as i'm at work and they won't let me hook up my iBook to the network, but it's worth a shot. it unmetallifized iChat just fine for me. plus it's free. their windowshade haxie is also a nice addition, although that one will cost you $7. and no, i don't work for them, i just happened to stumble across their site and really like their stuff.
from my old job at a dot com I was instructed to make the website "self-maintaining". I was laid off on a friday but was told I had to spend the next week doing this. I remember one of the last scripts I worked on had something like this:
I actually posted a similar question to "Ask Slashdot" about a year ago. It didn't get accepted, but basically it said the following:
[snip]
This brings up the question of whether or not the benefits of disclosing the information out weigh the problems. While attackers can exploit the holes, it pushes companies to release a patch as soon as possible. Personally I'm all for disclosing the full information. But that got me thinking about another example of security disclosure. After September 11 it was impossible to escape "news reports" speculating on the next terrorist attack and their next weapon. They mentioned that small pox would be a good weapon and went on to detail why. They said we have no cure and we're not prepared for it and basically said that if they used that against us we'd be powerless to stop it. I also saw reports on the least secure airports and how people sneak weapons through security and so on. I was angry when I saw this information being broadcast for anyone, including terrorists, to see. They could easily use this information to plan another attack. The reporters were doing the terrorist's research for them. In theory, these are the same debates. Should vulnerable information be disclosed in order to better prepare for or fix the security hole? I'd be curious what other people think. Can you support full disclosure of security holes in software, but not support full disclosure of certain national security threats without being a hypocrite?
Slashdot Mirror
That line was part of his most recent act. Starting around 2:10
Ever since I read this comment I've been wanting to say "triple u" instead of "www".
(For those not interested in following the link, credit goes to Douglas Adams)
wow, that's friday the 13th, and my 30th birthday. that satisfies my usual unluckiness, monkish tendencies, and desire for presents all at once.
... and with the necessary infinite emphasis on privacy ...
10 PRINT "What happens if someone removes it?"
20 PRINT "You're removing the right to privacy, and who says they won't track you for other purposes?"
30 GOTO 20
(I'm sorry. I'm very, very bored. And apparently in retro mode.)
I returned my free iPod to my local Apple store for ~$323 store credit and they took it back no questions asked.
... and I'm sure you all will, but I was under the impression that iPodder was a fancy automatic way of downloading MP3s, not converting streaming radio to MP3s and then storing on your iPod which is what this story seems to imply. It is not " the first portable time-shifted Internet audio application", it just "raises the prospect of truly portable time-shifted audio programming on the Internet". I believe Audio Hijack Pro will let you record streaming music, but iPodder looks like it just downloads MP3s.
I'm a huge Konfabulator fan and have written several widgets that I use on a daily basis (FTP drag and drop, MySQL query tool, IP address, Uptime, Notebox, etc) and I've never had a problem with clutter. I have a 12" PowerBook so my screen real estate is precious.
I wrote a very small script that I include in all my widgets (~15 lines of Javascript) that will leave them at whatever level I choose (usually Desktop or Below All) and when I hit Command+F8 they all come to the top. Command+F8 again will put them back to whatever level they were at beforehand. It's my own little implementation of Expose and it works flawlessly. It would be just as easy to modify the script to set their opacity to 0 leaving them completely hidden from view until exposed.
All it takes is a little imagination and you can get around almost every problem I've heard about Konfabulator.
Also, Konfabulator just released a new version with "Konspose" which is their own Expose-like solution.
Yeah, I know I'm nitpicking an April Fool's joke, but seeing as how there's no real news I have to waste my lunch break somehow.
(And no, I'm not flaming Apple. I'm an OSX switcher myself.)
does anyone have Lance Bass' email address?
I once spent about 3 months recoding (PHP, HTML) the website of the dot com I worked at. 5 days a week, 8am - past midnight, and some weekends. I actually coded through the new year and commented the code accordingly (/* just celebrated the new year writing this */). I got no overtime, and when I was done they decided they wanted to redo the design of the entire site because the CEO was pissed at the original designer who'd recently quit. So then I spent another month or so redoing all the HTML and was laid off soon after, but told to work one more week to make the site "self maintaining". Someone (not me) submitted this to Fucked Company using the term "self-maintaining" because it was so ridiculous, and I was blamed. The CEO refused to talk to me or even look at me for that last week. What a child. That shows what 3 years of loyalty will get you.
Still, I look back at that job fondly and wish I'd had a bigger taste of the non-dot-com work environment so I'd be able to appreciate the freedom we had a bit more. A lot of it was a nightmare, but I've yet to have another job with a basketball court in the parking lot, great friendships, and beer at lunch.
if anyone is interested, here's a screenshot of a partially minimized safari.
but flowers are so much prettier
-- mac user
(it's a joke. not a troll. i'm a linux->osx switcher)
My iBook has the same problem. I got it for a Christmas / birthday present in 2002 and the backlight started dying in December 2003. I bought AppleCare from the website on Dec. 13 but they wouldn't accept it as apparently my iBook was purchased on Dec. 11 and was therefore 2 days out of warranty. Even though it wasn't registered until Dec. 25 they wouldn't make any exceptions.
My specific problem is when I open up the screen and turned the iBook on the backlight would flicker and I'd have to put a little pressure on the back of the screen to push it forwards a little bit for it to work. I had to hold it like that for a while and then it usually took 10 minutes or so until I found a position where it would stay on. Oddly enough though, after it's been on for a while I can move the screen any way that I want and it'll stay on.
So my solution was to set it up as a music server, connect it up to some good speakers, leave it open on my desk and buy a PowerBook. I'm a little pissed, but on the bright side I guess I now have a 12" PowerBook and a sweet little web based interface to iTunes that I wrote last week. On the downside my employer hasn't paid me for 6+ weeks so perhaps the PowerBook wasn't the best idea.
Does that mean that Dali isn't actually dead and there will be a sequel?
No, seriously. That really helps at my company. Granted, it's only a small company of around 30 people, but every last Friday of the month (and occasionally others) they bring us beer and sometimes margaritas. Everyone hangs out in the kitchen and lets off some steam and it really does help. There's usually leftovers too, so my friend and I sneak back there about 15 minutes before quitting time on other days and have our own little party. Several times the owners have walked past on the way to the bathroom and occasionally they join us.
Careful with the Best Buy approach. A few years ago my Toshiba Satellite laptop battery died while still under warranty at Best Buy, so I took it back there and clearly explained the problem and that I was just looking for a new battery. 2 weeks later I got my laptop back with the hard drive reformatted.
A co-worker had a similar problem a couple weeks ago with a key on his keyboard not working. Same thing - they reformatted and he lost everything.
Obviously you should back everything up before you take it in for repair but it's still poor service on their part. What if I were an average Best Buy customer who knew nothing about computers? I'd be confused as hell when I turned it on to find nothing there, not even an operating system. The worst part was, they didn't even replace the battery that time. I had to take it back AGAIN.
I tend to get messages days later, if at all. When I was on vacation in Illinois (I live in California) I didn't get a single message sent to me, and my friends swear they sent several. I use Sprint, FYI.
First of all, I don't think PHP is stupid. I've been a PHP programmer professionally for several years now and I know how and why it works like this. It's not PHP's stupidity that I wrote about, it's user error that's the problem.
/etc/passwd files this way. I'm not going to provide specific examples, but trust me that it can be done. What happens is that people use include($p) or require($p) but don't include from the document root or check for valid paths, so you can include anything with read permissions from any directory.
I've been able to see several people's
The same thing goes for backup file extensions, such as .php~. The first thing I do when I set up Apache is to make it parse those files as PHP just in case. You'd be amazed at how many peole have vulnerable files like that just lying around. Try looking for index.php~ and you can often find all kinds of stuff from there.
one of my favorites is index.php?p=blah.php where you can easily replace blah.php with something a little more interesting, such as /etc/passwd
I've emailed several people notifying them of this problem but not one single person changed their code.
I wrote my own skinnable website package which includes multi-blog functionality with all the usual features. A few months ago I added a wireless skin (WML) and can now post to my blog and change my mood from my cell phone. While I don't often post to my blog via the phone, I do have a private blog section that I post to sometimes. It's basically a "note to self" type thing and it's very handy typing a quick idea here and there via my cell phone. It saves carrying around a PDA a lot of the time.
And yeah, blogs are lame and boring and all that, but they're damn handy to remember what on earth I did yesterday.
this "haxie" (lame name, i know) might be able to get rid of the brushed aluminum, assuming it's a cocoa app. i haven't tried it yet as i'm at work and they won't let me hook up my iBook to the network, but it's worth a shot. it unmetallifized iChat just fine for me. plus it's free. their windowshade haxie is also a nice addition, although that one will cost you $7. and no, i don't work for them, i just happened to stumble across their site and really like their stuff.
from my old job at a dot com I was instructed to make the website "self-maintaining". I was laid off on a friday but was told I had to spend the next week doing this. I remember one of the last scripts I worked on had something like this:
if ( $get_out_while_you_can == $or_they_will_fuck_you ) {
$with_a_cold_aluminum_baseball_bat = 1;
}
and
if ( $this_company_is_run_by_morons == $i_hate_them_all ) {
die();
}
I actually posted a similar question to "Ask Slashdot" about a year ago. It didn't get accepted, but basically it said the following:
[snip] This brings up the question of whether or not the benefits of disclosing the information out weigh the problems. While attackers can exploit the holes, it pushes companies to release a patch as soon as possible. Personally I'm all for disclosing the full information. But that got me thinking about another example of security disclosure. After September 11 it was impossible to escape "news reports" speculating on the next terrorist attack and their next weapon. They mentioned that small pox would be a good weapon and went on to detail why. They said we have no cure and we're not prepared for it and basically said that if they used that against us we'd be powerless to stop it. I also saw reports on the least secure airports and how people sneak weapons through security and so on. I was angry when I saw this information being broadcast for anyone, including terrorists, to see. They could easily use this information to plan another attack. The reporters were doing the terrorist's research for them. In theory, these are the same debates. Should vulnerable information be disclosed in order to better prepare for or fix the security hole? I'd be curious what other people think. Can you support full disclosure of security holes in software, but not support full disclosure of certain national security threats without being a hypocrite?