April 8, 2006
OSX 10.4.6 Update
There’s been a bit of fuss bit more fuss than usual about Apple’s most recent update to OSX, 10.4.6 (well, in the days just before the Boot Camp release anyway), saying that it can slow stuff down, affect networking capabilities, yadda yadda yadda, and it’s because of those comments that I bravely delayed my upgrade until now.
Anyway, you’ll no doubt be as happy as I am to know (!) that everything went smoothly for my little square PowerPC buddy sitting on the desk next to me. Everything went more or less as predicted - reboot, 1 minute 30 seconds looking at the grey screen, reboot, a slightly longer-than-normal look at the blue progress bar, then about 1 minute waiting for Finder and the desktop icons to appear (I did get a little concerned at that point, I must admit!). I’ve now tested everything I need (Safari, Camino, Firefox, IE 5.2, Opera 9 beta, iTunes, and the network connection to my main PC) and it’s all peachy! Niiiiice!
If your upgrade procedure went a bit ‘pear-shaped’, I’m pretty sure that this post won’t cheer you up, but as a Mac-newbie I’m just pleased I don’t have to hack around in there to get JP up and running (NOTE: JP is the childish name that I’ve chosen for the Mac on my PC network - it’s short for ‘John-Paul’ and is a tribute to the fine work of Apple Corps Ltd.)
September 13, 2004
Universal Emulator
It seems that a significant step towards universal hardware emulation has been made at Transitive Corporation. Their QuickTransit software apparently …allows applications to run ‘transparently’ on multiple hardware platforms, including Macs, PCs, and numerous servers and mainframes
, and even video game hardware, such as the Xbox.
One other interesting point: although Transitive Corp. are based in California, the software itself is based on Alasdair Rawsthorne’s Dynamite research project during the mid- to late ’90s at the Manchester University Department of Computer Science - nice to see yet more exciting work from the UK!!
July 10, 2003
A moment of mirth and then…
The SoundHunters program, a fascinating development from the computer scientists at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia, follows a user around the office allowing them to access email, for example, from the nearest computer. The interesting part of the system is that it actually validates the individual using the sound of their voice or laughter.
I found this very amusing - so amusing in fact, that before I knew it, I was looking at Tony Blair’s inbox!! Must turn off that microphone…
June 3, 2003
I Know What You Did Last Summer
Welcome to DARPA’s new toy - LifeLog. This ‘Super Diary‘ project aims to capture and store everything about the user - everything you see and hear, your movements, your physical state, your telephone calls and voice mail, all of your computer interactions such as email, instant messaging, browsing habits - EVERYTHING!
DARPA have said that the project is not connected to their data-mining project, recently renamed Terrorism Information Awareness, and that the “…allegation that this technology would create a machine to spy on others and invade people’s privacy is way off the mark,” but they have told potential contractors that the data collected could facilitate “early detection of an emerging epidemic.“
Frederick Douglass said, “Freedom is a road seldom traveled by the multitude.“
I think that we’re going to need a new A-Z!
