Get a Mac version of Google's Superbowl ad
(via tuaw.com)
Apple Resigns From U.S. Chamber of Commerce Over Climate Change Stance
Multiple sources, including the Washington Post, are reporting that Apple has given up its membership in the the U.S. Chamber of Commerce over the Chamber's stance on climate change legislation.
In a letter to Thomas J. Donohue, President and CEO of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, Apple's Vice President of Worldwide Government Affairs, Catherine A. Novelli, stated Apple's position and submitted Apple's resignation.
Apple is committeed to protecting the environment and the communities in which we operate around the world. We strongly object to the Chamber's recent comments opposing the EPA's effort to limit greenhouse gases.
Apple supports regulating greenhouse gas emissions, and it is frustrating to find the Chamber at odds with us in this effort. We would prefer that the Chamber take a more progressive stance on this critical issue and play a construtive role in addressing the climate crisis. However, because the Chamber's position differs so sharply with Apple's, we have decided to resign our membership effective immediately.
The Chamber's stance on regulation was stated in its Five Positions on Energy and the Environment and a press release.Apple is not the first organization to resign from the Chamber over this issue. California's largest utility, Pacific Gas and Electric Co., and other companies have similarly resigned.
Apple recently launched an environmental publicity initiative to showcase its efforts on such issues.
OS X slowdown and speedup
Recently I encountered some unusual, and intermittent system slowdowns where OS X would hang for 10-20 seconds once or twice a day. Keyboard and mouse input was ignored in every application, and by OS X (10.6.1) itself.
I thought that it might be a problem with Flash since installing Click2Flash seemed to help. Also, I began noticing the problem after installing 10.6.1, which was supposed to reapply a newer version of Flash. However, I'm not so sure if Flash is the culprit. The problem happened again this evening and since my logs only indicated Safari and 1Password entries at the time, I ended up searching on those terms. This led me to information about the /var/db/CodeEquivalenceDatabase file, which apparently is used by securityd when determining if an application has access to the Keychain. On a whim, I renamed the file, as several articles suggested, and logged out & back in. I have no clue if this is related to the occasional system hang (it's intermittent and unpredictable), but amazingly many apps -- and in particular, Safari -- are loading significantly faster. This leads me to believe that my CodeEquivalenceDatabase file had some corruption. The odd thing about this is that I wasn't experiencing any of the symptoms that led others to take this step. For example, there were no processes (such as securityd) hogging the CPU during the system hangs. So -- either my situation is unique or perhaps there are other reasons to rename this file and let the system rebuild it. In any case, here are a few links that reference this file in case others find it helpful: http://www.macosxhints.com/article.php?story=20070608010326883 http://iparrizar.mnstate.edu/~juan/urania/2007/08/08/hint-what-to-do-when-keychain-using-apps-lock-up/ http://www.43folders.com/2007/01/22/securityd-keychain-fix http://mactip.blogspot.com/2007/10/securityd-memory-hogging.html http://www.mattberther.com/2008/01/UPDATE: This did not resolve the occasional hangs, but it did indeed speed up application launches.
UPDATE #2: Looks like this thread describes the situation I experience -- and judging by its length, I am definitely not alone.
UPDATE #3: OS X 10.6.2 appears to have addressed the issue. I no longer experience the hangs.
SweetFM is now open source
If you like Last.fm and are a Mac user, check out the SweetFM client. http://www.chocomoko.com/Four new Mac ads are out
Speeding up VMWare Fusion
I don't often have to launch a VM, but when I do I want it to be as fast as possible.Over time I've noticed drastic fluctuations in VMWare Fusion's performance -- especially with Windows as the guest OS. I noticed the same sort of thing with Parallels in the past, as well.
This time, I think I've found the culprit. I had inadvertently turned on 3D acceleration in an earlier version of VMWare Fusion and forgot to turn it off. Having that setting turned on would occasionally slow the performance of OS X dramatically. Now that it's off, things are snappy again.
If you've got other suggestions for speeding up the performance of VMWare Fusion or Parallels, please share in the comments. For instance, I've heard some people report that changing the screen resolution in their VM provided a speed boost (perhaps temporary).
Plex Media Center for OS X
Plex is a great alternative to Boxee for Intel Macs. It's open-source and has Hulu support in its beta version.
Fresh - Mac App
There's a neat app called Fresh for the Mac which shows recently modified files and files you're working on in a popup display. It also allows for file tagging.Tagging on OS X
There's a great post on The Unofficial Apple Weblog about a new tagging app for the Mac -- Tags.About Me
Matt KaufmanI am a philosopher, software engineer, computer geek, Buddhist, vegan and now, expert noun-lister.
My Email: ws.20.mdea at spamgourmet dot com
About Kompato: It means compassion in Esperanto.
My Code:
Teamspeak Monitor - A web application to monitor Teamspeak usage (PHP/MySQL)
tsmonwatcher - A client-side application that works with TeamSpeak Monitor to alert on TeamSpeak events (Python)
Tags
- technology (47)
- humor (29)
- health (26)
- politics (23)
- art (17)
- mac (16)
- news (16)
- misc (15)
- fun (8)
- personal (8)
- View all 29 tags »
