The Image Capture utility in Snow Leopard works with my Epson 3170 flatbed scanner, and is far superior to the clunky and bloated Epson Scan software. What’s more, it can automatically deskew documents that are not perfectly level. Just a small touch, but a nice one. Thanks, Apple!
The new Preview PDF editing behavior is a major step back in usability, however.
WordPress has been getting a lot of bad press the last few days, as a worm is out in the wild exploiting a security vulnerability. This is leading to somewhat unfair comparisons with Windows, and thoughtful articles from John Gruber and Maciej Ceglowski.
To be sure, the ease of programming in PHP leads a great many people to contribute to projects, who may not have the experience or security awareness they should. This is not helped by poorly designed features in PHP that were enabled by default in previous versions, and cannot always be disabled outright due to legacy compatibility concerns, reminiscent of the persistent security woes due to the C standard library’s insecure old string processing facilities.
For many users, migrating away from WordPress may not be a practical option. My recommendations would be:
I upgraded my broadband connection yesterday from a puny 3-6Mbps/384-768K DSL connection to 20Mbps symmetrical Metro Ethernet service from an outfit called WebPass. My current ISP, Raw Bandwidth, has excellent service with no restrictions on hosting servers or traffic shaping shenanigans unlike the likes of Comcast, but they are still hobbled by the AT&T last-mile connection.
WebPass finesses around the incumbent monopoly by using newer buildings’ data-grade wiring plant to bring 100MBps Ethernet connections right into your home (all they had to do was change a wall plate and patch some cables in the closet) and use microwave links to backhaul traffic to their data center. They claim to use a mesh network for backhaul, but I think this just means a standard network of microwave links where some sites have to hop multiple microwave links to get to the transit connection, rather than a purely centralized hub and spoke model. In my case their offices are a mere two blocks away. This would allow me the pleasure of ditching the scumbags at AT&T altogether (were it not for the fact my building requires an entirely unnecessary landline for its security system).
AT&T is probably the worst telco in the US now, and is notorious for starving its infrastructure of investment to maximize short-term profits, unlike Verizon, who is investing heavily in its FiOS optical network. Unfortunately San Francisco is in AT&T territory and will not get true optical networks anytime soon. Municipalities can usually reassign the cable franchise every so many years, but there is no such provision for involuntary transfer of telcos that I know of.
The new service is $45 a month with no installation fee, vs. $70 a month for Raw Bandwidth, but it does not include a static IP address (they do offer it as part of their prohibitively expensive metered business service). Configuring my home router (a Cisco 877) to use both connections was incredibly painful, but I will run the two ISPs side by side for the next few months. If WebPass proves as reliable as Raw bandiwdth, I may just have to find a work-around for the static IP issue, or just rely on DHCP lease pinning.
If you live in San Francisco, or are moving there, definitely have a look at the buildings they have covered. The service is a glimpse of what people not in broadband backwater USA get.
I have an eight-core Nehalem Mac Pro. Most of these cores sit idle most of the time due to poorly written software that is not optimized for the post-Moore multicore world.
I am beginning to wonder if Intel’s transistor budget wouldn’t be better allocated to more SRAM cache instead of more cores. One SRAM bit uses up 4 transistors, the Xeon 5500 have 751 million transistors, of which 8Mx8x4 or 256 million are for the 8MB L3 cache. If the chip were brought down from quad-core to dual-core, that would allow doubling the cache. Many programs could run entirely from cache, including interpreters.
Amano, based in Salt Lake City, makes the best chocolate in the USA, their Ocumare bar, using only Venezuelan criollo cacao (the best in the world).
The founder, Art Pollard (photo taken 2 years ago at Fog City News in San Francisco) claims he gets superior results from roasting at high altitude in Salt Lake City, but I think superior conching technique is primarily to credit.
They recently introduced milk chocolate bars, the Jembrana and Ocumare. Despite its lovely green wrapper, the Jembrana leaves to be desired — it just doesn’t taste chocolatey enough. The Ocumare Milk comes through with wonderful texture, a rich, complex cocoa flavor while avoiding over-sweetness, the downfall of too many milk chocolates, specially in the USA.
It also avoids the harshness of some bars made by chocolatiers new to the world of milk chocolate — the abysmal Scharffen-Berger 68% cocoa “dark milk” bar comes to mind.
