The BFC Computing Weblog

Anders Carlsson is the first non-Apple committer to Apple’s WebKit CVS repository. WebKit is critical code to Apple and a lesser company would be afraid to let someone on the outside have write access to their code. Anders has been vetted by the Safari team and the meritocracy is working as it should. Apple will gain far more benefit from this than they have to lose by doing it. It’s good to see Apple more fully embracing the Open Source Development Process Model.

The iTunes “Shuffle” or Randomize setting does a great job of randomizing. Which is exactly the problem.

Nobody wants a random distribution of music in iTunes except math geeks on Slashdot who aren’t actually listening to music.

People want variety. People want different artists, genres, song lengths, whatever, even if it has to be enforced in a non-random fashion. Some might call this elimination play. The algorithms aren’t all that hard, though they might take some memory. RAM is cheap.

Some number of years ago, somebody first implemented a ‘Shuffle’ button as a call to rand() as a quick hack until he got back to it next week, and since then everybody has forgotten the entire point of what they were doing in the first place and focused on defending the statistical purity of their PRNG.

We get it, there are Birthday Paradoxes and there’s a real chance in a truly random selection that the same song will be played twice in a row. But that should never happen in a Shuffle function meant for a human to use. Most people don’t know what a PRNG is, how they work, what the statistics are, or even if they do, care. Long live the Variety button.

Say you’ve misplaced the System Install CD for your Mac, and it was released after the box set of Panther you have was made. But you’ve lost the root password to your Mac. What to do?

Any unix geek will tell you to boot into single user mode and reset the root password. But it’s not quite so easy under Mac OS X because of the NetInfo database, where the root password is stored. And the NetInfo server depends on other servers, which depend on… it can be trying to have everything up and running required to just reset the password.

Well, a few simple steps will get everything running that’s required to change the root password. This is very lightly documented and there’s plenty of wrong advice on the Internet about how to do this (supposedly). I’ve actually tested this on a such a machine, a newer iBook that had its passwords changed by a former employee.

First, boot into single user mode. You should know how to do that, or at least go look it up in the Apple Knowledgebase. I’ll leave that as an exercise for the reader so as not to overtly aid cretins who are stealing iBooks. You do have FileVault turned on for you important data, right?

OK, then, type these commands (commands separated by line breaks - watch for text wrap):
/usr/libexec/register_mach_bootstrap_servers /etc/mach_init.d

cd /var/db/netinfo

/usr/sbin/netinfod -s local

/sbin/SystemStarter

and everything will be running. Technically, SystemStarter is cheating since it starts more than you need, but, hey, it works. So, then, you can now change your root password and reboot:

passwd root
reboot


And remember, boys and girls, any machine you have physical access to you own.

According to this page on the Sony website, the PlayStation 3 will Run Mac OS X 10.4, Tiger. The PS3 runs a Cell Processor, which is a PowerPC with the out-of-order and predictive-branching units taken out, and several vector processing units bolted on. This makes it great for media and RADAR applications, but poor for general purpose computing, due to the lack of branch prediction.

Now, remember that Sony’s CEO was on stage with Steve Jobs back in January during the Keynote Speech at MacWorld. When he proclaimed 2005 as The Year of HD.

Let’s see now, the PS3 is already going to be hooked up to the TV and the network, Apple is working feverishly to bring out the iVideo Store, the PS3 runs Tiger, the Mac Mini lacks essential high-quality video output, and they’re working on something big with Sony.

Let’s connect the very close dots with a big fat marker: The PlayStation 3 is the primary deployment platform for the Apple iVideo Store.

My biggest surprise is that Sony Music is busy holding up the iTunes Music Store in Australia because they want their music available in Windows Media Format, which iTunes doesn’t support. It’s well-known that one branch of Sony doesn’t know what the other’s doing, but still, you’d think the CEO could get them to back off their new major partner.

Apple is recruiting for a Senior Embedded Systems Engineer:

The Xcode team is looking for a motivated and talented engineer to improve the support for iPod development within the Xcode tool-chain. The successful candidate will have experience working with embedded systems, hardware simulators/emulators, cross-compilation, and/or remote debugging. Experience with the ARM processor, Cocoa, Objective-C and Mac OS X is a plus.

Perhaps this is only for Apple-internal use, but I’d like to think Apple is opening the iPod to ISV’s. It may also mark the transition to a Mac OS X-based iPod.

Bob Cringely talks about a Video iPod and iTunes Movie Store in this week’s I, Cringely.

<p>He also mentions one of my own favorite companies, <a href="http://www.microvision.com">Microvision</a>.  Disclosure: I still own one share of stock, valued at a bit under $6.  I was going to make lots of money buying early with these guys in the 90&#8217;s.  <img src='http://blog.bfccomputing.com/wp-images/smilies/icon_smile.gif' alt=':)' />  </p>
          <p>Microvision makes retinal scanning technology - their displays paint images on your retina directly.  It&#8217;s a controlled application of photons whereas most display technology puts out a huge number of photons from a fixed location and then lets random distribution get those photons to your retinas.  They&#8217;re very big in manufacturing and military applications.</p>
          <p>Anyway, Bob thinks they&#8217;re going to build the video display device for the iPod.  At first I thought, &#8220;Yeah, right.&#8221;  I&#8217;ve been waiting for an affordable Microvision display for what&#8217;s going on a decade.  Bob talks about something he saw in SEC filings, so I decided to take a look, as he&#8217;s more often than not insightful on such matters.  It turns out you don&#8217;t need to go further than the press releases to see what&#8217;s happening.  </p>
          
          <p><a href="http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=114723&#038;p=irol-newsArticle&#038;t=Regular&#038;id=689261&#038;">First Release</a>: <i>Microvision Announces New Light Scanning Display Architecture for Simulating Wide Screen</i><br />
          

This is perhaps the most significant press release from Microvision to date - they’ve managed to use low-cost LED’s to drive their technology and they can do 1080p HDTV resolution. A benefit to the LED system is ‘everybody’ is afraid of using a Microvision because it shines a laser on your retina. We all know lasers blind people and get shot out of the Death Star, so we’re terrified to use a Microvision. But the Death Star never used an LED.

OK, now for the Second Release: Microvision Names Willey President, Consumer Solutions; Move Follows Company’s Announcement of Breakthrough Design for High Definition Wearable Display

Remember how I said the last press release was the most significant to date? Scratch that. This one is. Here we have the President of the company, Steve Willey, resigning his position to head up the consumer division. Yeah, that’s right. They’re brining in a guy from GE to take over the President/CEO role, starting tomorrow, but already Willey is over working on the consumer side. I’ve never heard of a company president demoting himself to work on a project. This has to be something incredible for Microvision.

The video iPod would qualify.

Somehow I had MacWorld on my calendar for next week. I just read on Ted’s Blog that it was actually this week. Oops.

Ted Roche notes, over at Ted’s Radio Weblog, if you lose your copy of music you purchase from the iTunes Music Store, you have to buy it again.

“Otherwise, if your hard disk becomes damaged or you lose any of the music you’ve purchased, you’ll have to buy any purchased music again to rebuild your library.”

Meanwhile, JHymn still doesn’t work if you upgrade to iTunes 6.