Sep200926

4

Snow Leopard on the Dell Mini 9

I’ve used a hackintosh netbook since 10.5.6. It even became my primary work machine. When 10.5.8 came around I attempted to do a software update to fix things. I didn’t want to wait around because 10.5.7 had a nasty security vulnerability. Unfortunately software update harfed my install. Apparently you need to use the combo update, and then rerun DellEFI.app, since it messes with the boot area. I took the opportunity to wipe my drive and install OS X again. It led to frustration. Suffice it to say that using Transmac to dump the image onto a hard drive, followed by running NetbookBootMaker.app isn’t good enough.

You really do need to have a Mac involved. Unfortunately, with my hackintosh dead, it took a while to find a Mac user willing to help me out. When you do, the Snow Leopard install is much easier than the old DellEFI method. It involves restoring the Snow Leopard DMG file to an external hard drive or flash drive, then running NetbookBootMaker.app on it. There’s a lot of things that have changed. It’s now trivial to make the boot disk, it’s easy to do off a single flash drive, the install patch now includes a bunch of kernel extensions for netbook users, and it disables hibernate so that you don’t need to worry about crashing.

It doesn’t delete the hibernate image though, so for convenience, here’s how you do it:

sudo pmset -a hibernatemode 0
sudo rm /private/var/vm/sleepimage

Now, is it worth upgrading for a netbook user?

I have a lot more space after a fresh install of Snow Leopard than Leopard

I have a lot more space after a fresh install of Snow Leopard than Leopard

Yes!  First off, it gets rid of the nasty security vulnerabilities present in 10.5.7, and it doesn’t cause the battery problems that are present in 10.5.8. Next, the filesystem improvements have given me an extra gig of space on my 16 GB SSD, and the install is slimmer. Before I was happy with 5 GB free after my install. Now I have 8.57 GB free after an Xslimmer run. And I haven’t even touched Monolingual yet. Supposedly the built-in applications like iCal, iChat and Mail are all faster. I don’t know. I never use them. Having an “Applications” button on the dock is a welcome change.

My tips on saving space are still useful. This time I skipped the need to remove any print drives because I did a custom install and unchecked print drivers. I’ll install them as I need them.

I have not noticed a speed increase, but I do have more breathing room when it comes to hard drive space. I might give it another go with Geekbench to see how it compares to Leopard’s score.

The only downside I’ve discovered so far is that LyX’s 1.6.4′s autosave feature is broken under Snow Leopard. It looks like they’re shooting to have the fix ready for 1.6.5. Until then I’ve got autosave turned off, and the crashes are much less frequent. Shame on Apple for breaking POSIX compliance. The other problem is that the mic jack takes some fiddling in order to get working, but I tend to use a USB headset anyhow.

Netbook users should certainly upgrade, and then immediately update to 10.6.1. Non-netbook users might want to check to ensure that their critical applications don’t have compatability issues first.

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Sep200925

0

Beacon is Dead. Long live Facebook Connect.

Remember Facebook Beacon? It’s gone now. I’m surprised, are you? Not only that, but Facebook funding a privacy group to the tune of $9.5 million as part of their settlement. The Register has the story on how Facebook Connect has eclipsed Beacon.

I expected that Facebook would keep Beacon around since they turned it opt-in. In hindsight, I can understand why they’d close it. The legal costs were ramping up, I’m guessing that the commissions they get weren’t very high, and it’s much harder to keep partnered with all of these companies than to let maintain a widget.

For a more detailed write-up of the settlemet, check out the article titled A Look at The Facebook Privacy Class Action Settlement from blawger Venkat Balasubramani.

I’d like more details about the privacy group the money will go towards, but it seems that’s not available yet.

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Aug200914

0

MobileRead Toronto meetup tomorrow!

I’m going to be heading up to the Eglington area tomorrow to show off my FoxIt eSlick. If you’re in Toronto and want to mess with one, be sure to check out the MobileRead thread.

Unfortunately the attendance list is a little low (8 confirmed including myself), but in my experience these meetups tend to attract a few extras who just pop in. BookNet Canada has a post on it so I’m hoping that one of their reps will be there. I’m curious to see what they have to say about ebook sales.

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Jul200924

5

NanoNote is like my second chance at a Zaurus clamshell

I’ve never seen open source hardware target the mainstream until the OpenMoko team partnered with FIC to release the Neo 1973. Before that, it was just about all hobbyist electronics kits or Verilog code for FPGAs. Oh, and 3d printers, which are awesome. Yesterday I found out about the 本 (běn) NanoNote, an open palmtop.

I was only a little surprised when I found out that Qi Hardware, the company behind the NanoNote, was founded by former members of the OpenMoko team. They’ve already made commitments to copyleft software, community driven software development and upstreaming their Linux improvements. This gadget is particular intriguing to me because I did a fair bit of OS coding for school using OS/161 as a basis, which has a 32-bit MIPS kernel. I might actually be able to contribute to the OS. If not, I could certainly contribute to application development.

This device, with its 32 MB of RAM, doesn’t take aim at the netbook market so much as the gadget market. Think Sony Mylo, or GP2X, or the Nokia Internet Tablet series. It’d be a welcome replacement to my Nokia 770. For one thing I imagine I’d be able to IM a lot more easily with it.

What’s possible? Hard to say. Even for a thin client the machine is very limited. Don’t expect to be able to view websites as well as you can on your iPhone. Do expect something a lot more hackable than a PDA. I missed out on the Zaurus clamshells that I wanted so badly in 2005, but I might save up to grab one of these NanoNotes. Maybe not the 本, maybe I’ll wait, but I would love to play with one. The 本 will ship in fall. I hope that Qi releases their projected price soon.

Take a look at a list of the Zaurus software index for ideas of what’s likely to hit the NanoNote first. My guess is an emulator will be the first port, probably for either the NES or the Commodore 64.

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Jul200920

0

You want extra storage, I want extra storage

I’ve used Dropbox for a while but now I’m considering switching I’ve switched to SugarSync. It’s partly because the client supports Windows Mobile and partly because of the current promotion. And partly due to file versioning. And mobile music streaming (once they support it in WiMo, it’s iPhone only at the moment.)

Long story short, sign up via my referral link and sign in via the client and we both get a bonus of 500mb if you sign up on the free plan, or 10gb if you sign up for one of the paid plans. Then you sign up your friends for more bonuses. There’s a promotion going on where the rewards are doubled until August 31st, 2009. Once that date rolls over the 500mb of extra storage turns into 250mb.

And if you missed it, here’s my referral link again: https://www.sugarsync.com/referral?rf=bprro2ephcy59

Having my phone sync my photos automatically makes me nostalgic for the Hiptop days. Once again I curse Fido for scrapping it. Here’s hoping that the Palm Pre can hold a candle to it once it hits Canada.

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Jul200920

9

Amazon the history revisionist

News has been making the rounds that Some E-books are More Equal than Others. Funny to see an Animal Farm quote referencing 1984, but I digress. The piece by David Pogue explains how Amazon issued a compulsory recall, no user intervention required, on copies of 1984 sold by a particular publisher. To the best of my knowledge this is the first automatic recall, let alone from Amazon, and since then Amazon has claimed that they won’t force you to return your books in the future.

What happened? Well, MobileReference was selling copies of Orwell’s 1984. In some countries the work is public domain. Unfortunately pdregistry.ca is presently down so I can’t say with authority whether it’s public domain in Canada, but I believe it is. Judging from their package of 3,000+ classics for $50, MobileReference took from the public domain and improved on it, then sold their improved versions. The problem is the book isn’t public domain in the United States, where their Kindle edition was sold.

Once Amazon was contacted by the American rightsholders they decided to institute a recall. They refunded users and deleted their books. The problem is the recall wasn’t voluntary as every other recall to date.

When a product is recalled it’s usually because there’s a danger to it. When someone steps on a patent or copyright holder’s toes, it’s usually up to the owner to file a lawsuit, and then they can claim the ill-gotten (or in this case mistakenly-gotten, I chalk MobileReference’s mistake up to ignorance or negligence rather than malice) gains. Now, that usually happens because it’s difficult to replace a product with a legitimate one, or to reassign gains. What could Amazon have done here? Maybe reassign the commissions to the rights holders? Maybe reassign the commission and replace the infringing book with a legitimate one?

It seems that Amazon has already promised that they won’t delete the infringing books. Maybe they’ll replace them, if they can figure out how to preserve bookmarks. Maybe they’ll just change who the royalties go to. Maybe they’ll just stop sales and tell the rights holders to pursue remuneration through the courts.

Are automatic recalls unfair? It’s hard to say. It certainly is a lot less harmful all around than lawsuits but publishers and authors shouldn’t forget that consumers are rightsholders too. If there’s an automatic recall it damn well better put the buyer’s needs first.

Thumbnail image by surfstyle and licensed under CC BY 2.0. Thanks surfstyle!

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