Posts

The other day I was going to write this cool post about how I’m trying to speed up the performance of Movable Type using FastCGI for the Perl bits and eAccelerator for the PHP bits. The nice thing about FreeBSD is that both packages were really, really easy to install. I can’t tell how much faster they’ve made things, but they seem to have improved the performance situation at least a little bit. (I think that part of my problem may be that the blog has over 7900 entries, and that just makes things a bit slow.) ...

Ed Felten explains how free iPhone unlocking software came to be released. The creators of iPhoneSimFree reverse engineered the iPhone’s configuration to figure out how to unlock the phone, and started selling the software. Someone then purchased iPhoneSimFree, reverse engineered that, and released the information on how to unlock an iPhone to the public, and now free software is available that does the job of iPhoneSimFree. Of course, if you unlock an iPhone and move it to another network, you won’t be able to take advantage of the killer voice mail integration that the iPhone has, so it’s probably worth it to stick with AT&T anyway. ...

I still have friends who are doubters when it comes to the causes of climate change. I wonder what they’ll say to the fact that President Bush’s science adviser does not appear to share those doubts. The BBC interviewed Professor John Marburger, and he was unequivocal in his agreement with the idea that increased burning of fossil fuels is causing global warming. Like most scientists, he’s not sure how much we need to reduce carbon emissions or how soon we have to do it, but he states clearly that if we don’t change anything, the consequences will be disastrous. I’d pull some juicy quotes, but unfortunately the best stuff is in the audio interview linked from the article. ...

Unobtrusive JavaScript is a programming philosophy that appears to have really taken hold among Web developers. The basic idea is that just as people try to contain presentational elements within stylesheets rather than littering their markup with tags and attributes that are associated with appearance, you should also avoid littering your markup with JavaScript references, by way of the script tag, attributes associated with events (like onclick) and worst of all, javascript URLs in links. ...

Baghdad blogger Riverbend posted her first hand account of departing Iraq for life in Syria as a refugee last week. The story is heartbreaking, but I’m glad she and her family are safe, or at least safer. Fred Clark puts her post in the wider context.

Sometimes, only satire can suffice. To wit: Jobs Offers Apple Lisa Early Adopters Store Credit.

Recently I’ve been reacquainting myself with Perl. I was once a heavy duty Perl programmer, and used it to write everything from large Web applications to throwaway utility scripts. Over the years, though, I’ve spent more time working with Java, and lately I’ve been investing a lot of my effort in Ruby. Over the past couple of weeks, though, I’ve realized that Perl needs to be part of my day to day life again. ...

Former Bush administration foot soldier Jack Goldsmith has written a book saying that the Bush administration has gone too far in expanding its power and shirking accountability. That says something. Disgraced former New York Times reporter Judith Miller has found a new job at a conservative think tank. Old software never dies. Texas Monthly digs into the case of the border patrol agents who were prosecuted for shooting a drug dealer and trying to cover it up. This story is a really outstanding piece of reporting. ...

Last week I spent $15 on iToner, which allows you to turn MP3 files into custom ring tones for your iPhone. I’m not a fan of ring tones, but I thought that iToner was a cool hack, so I went ahead and bought it. Unfortunately, Apple killed it with this week’s iTunes 7.4. Ambrosia is promising a fix, so we’ll see what happens. I hope Apple didn’t kill it deliberately, but it wouldn’t surprise me if they did. ...

Apple has just announced a $100 payback to people who bought iPhones at yesterday’s price. You have to spend it on Apple stuff, but I’m OK with that. I wasn’t really angered by the price cut, anyway. I mean I would have loved to pay $200 less for the iPhone, but I was willing to pay the price they were charging at the time, so what would be the point of complaining now? Electronics get cheaper, sometimes very quickly. ...