Inside Stretch

So the other day, I posted about a windows fanboy attacking Apple related sites. Well, its a fake. It was a big PR stunt for MacHeist II. Not only did Phill Ryu make a bad judgement call, so did the owners of three websites. MacApper, Glenn Wolsey, and AppleMatters all took part in Ryu’s stunt.

Each owner was contacted and agreed to help Macheist and Ryu to promote Macheist II. They put up the supplied “hacked” site for 24 hours, then switched back to their normal sites, stating things like:

Yes - I was indeed hacked yesterday. I didn’t expect it to stir up so much conversation in the community. The Digg homepage piece contains over 450 comments, a number which is very rarely achieved on an Apple related Digg piece.
I’d like to quickly thank all the people who have sent me emails offering words of kindness, my designer Andreas Lengyel, and the great guys at my host, Media Temple for their excellent support and precautionary measures over the past 48 hours.

from Glenn Wolsey

The problem is that the exploit appears to be unknown to Wordpress as far as I can see (I will be reporting it to them), so other Wordpress blogs may be susceptible. I wish I could offer more help. I’ll try to post more as we pour through the logs.

from MacApper

So now people are assuming that Wordpress is easily hackable, and are wondering why Media Temple couldn’t get their hosted websites back under their owners control. To top it off, Macheist still thinks its a big joke.

It’s too bad that it spiralled so far out of control because it would’ve been a great way to lead off this year’s festivities, which are about to start very soon. As you know, we always try our hardest to come up with cool missions and we thought it’d be great to have mission 1 have a rogue hacker that was running rampant that you heisters would put a stop to. But then things got a bit crazy and beyond our control, unfortunately.

We really hope that the people behind the “hacked” sites, their hosting compaines, and the companies that create their content management systems aren’t looked upon negatively by you all. The intent of everyone wasn’t malicious but just to have some fun.

Yeah, it would be great to bring a ton of bad publicity to Wordpress, Media Temple, and the Expression Engine that hosts AppleMatters. Glenn, and Hadley are the only ones that seem to be truely sorry about the whole thing.

But what can you expect from Phill Ryu? He’s pretty good at taking good ideas and destroying them. First ResExcellence, and now MacHeist.

Instead of participating in MacHeist II, do the developers a favor, and buy the software directly from them.

apple, blogs, internet

Recent technology advances are ruining consumer experiences. Companies are doing what benefits them, and ignoring the needs of the consumer. Blu-Ray and HD-DVD is one example of this. Both want to be the one that consumers choose, both have their own advantages and disadvantages. But instead of working together to produce one format that will benefit everyone, its an all out war between the two. So consumers like me that want to upgrade to High-Def movies don’t know where to go. If I go with one, and the other one takes over, what happens with my previous media?

It’s frustrating that so many recent trends in consumer technology seem to not have the consumer’s best interests at heart. Thankfully, though, some of the trends mentioned here are starting to fall by the wayside as corporations bow to consumer pressure. Here’s a look at ten of the most annoying trends that take the “consumer” out of consumer technology.

4. Proprietary File Formats
There’s a reason why MP3 has been the ubiquitous digital audio file format for so long, and it has nothing to do with quality. While there are plenty of file formats that can outstrip the MP3 when it comes to size-to-quality ratios, MP3 has stuck around for one simple reason: it’s compatible with every device under the sun! The freedom to transfer files seamlessly from one device to another is an enormous convenience, especially when it comes to audio - as anyone who’s tried to import WMA audio files into iTunes will attest to. Consumers should be able to listen to the same file on their PC, portable music player, cell phone, or even streaming wirelessly through a videogame console. Unfortunately, sea of formats, which include WAV, WMA, AAC, ATRAC, OGG, FLAC and others, makes it impossible to do so without using annoying conversion software.

Via Digg

gadget

Edit: This was all a hoax, and a pretty pathetic one at that. More on this later.

It seems that some windows fanboy is jealous of us Mac users and that we choose to use a superior operating system. In fact this loser was so jealous of one mac user that he attacked and took down his site.

This just really goes to show the class of some of the windows fanboys.

Reviews of Leopard have been popping up all over the internet. Some are better of others, and some are looking at specific features. Here is one review that compares it to Tiger, and tries it out on two different architectures. Testing on both a G4 Powerbook, and a C2D Macbook Pro.

What this article is is a frank evaluation of a brand new OS performed over the 5-days since it’s release using a fairly current computer, a October 2006 MacBook Pro with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor, both at home and at work, which is a Windows dominated environment. 5-Days is not a long time but I have tried to “kick the tires” thoroughly (certainly more than I did for the Tiger review) and I’ve quite a lot of material to work my way through. While I consider myself an Apple fan since I switched about 4-years ago I am not an Apple apologist and I’m not going to be pulling many punches in this article. I’m also writing this review without having read other reviews or opinions of the OS so that what you read here is my own review without influence from others.

It is an excellent review. Well worth the read, although he recommends not installing Leopard quite yet. Wait til 10.5.1 is released, and a few of the bugs are fixed.

Via 9rules

apple, leopard, os x, review, software

If you put an image on the internet, its up for fair use. People will download it, edit it, modify it, use it for whatever they want. There is no way to stop them. The only thing you can do is claim it under copyright if other people try to claim it is their work.

The image above is for internet viewing only, and may not be saved outside your browser or used without a license.

Oops, its now on my website, and on my desktop. *Note: This is not my image.

Via Reddit

humor