It's strange to have gone from years of uncertainty and vaporware to a steady annual supply of major new operating system releases from Apple. But some important questions quickly follow. Do I really want to pay $129 every year for the next version of Mac OS X? Worse, do I really want to deal with the inevitable upgrade hassles and 10.x.0 release bugs every single year? Just as the 10.2.x code base was finally settling down (the botched 10.2.8 release notwithstanding), the Mac community is asked to start all over again with 10.3.0.

I upgraded to Panther on my powerbook last weekend. I took the time to do a very through set of backups beforehand, which is always a good idea, but didn't appear to be necessary. It was a very smooth upgrade, and all my apps worked fine afterwards.

The new Finder is what people will like most, at first.. Expose however, is the real stand out feature in Panther. After installing Panther, I decided to give using Expose a shot as my primary (and only) method of managing all the windows on my desktop, and I stopped using virtual desktops. On average, I usually have about 15 - 20 windows open. Browser, IRC, IM, Mail, and at least 5 terminals connected to various machines.. (The number of terminals I have open gets out of control when I'm coding.. +20, on average.) In general, its been working out pretty good.. Better then virtual desktops in some ways, worse in others.

Using virtual desktops you can lay out your windows across more space, and navigate by sliding between them.. Expose on the other hand, just spreads out the windows cluttering your desktop allowing you to select and focus the one you need. When all the windows return to their normal size, the one you selected is on top, but the rest of the layers remain the way they were. You can have it display all apps, or just windows from the app you are currently using. You can also push all windows out of the way to get a clear view of the desktop for selecting files, opening finder, etc.

Expose is very simple and it seems to solve many of the window management and selection issues that I use virtual desktops for. Kudos to Apple on the feature.

That being said, you can still use virtual desktops with Panther. I just decided to plunge into Apple's new take on task switching head first.

Mac OS X 10.3 — the definitive Panther review

] The quest for American supremacy qualifies as a bubble.
] The dominant position the United States occupies in the
] world is the element of reality that is being distorted.
] The proposition that the United States will be better off
] if it uses its position to impose its values and
] interests everywhere is the misconception. It is exactly
] by not abusing its power that America attained its
] current position.

] Where are we in this boom-bust process? The deteriorating
] situation in Iraq is either the moment of truth or a test
] that, if it is successfully overcome, will only reinforce
] the trend.

This piece by George Soros really hits the nail on the head.

It appears that the Bush administration is doing exactly the opposite of everything I believe makes an entity a leader in a network.. That is if you consider sovereign states to be nodes in a network, their links things such as the trade (of both goods and ideas). George Soros shares that view, (economics in general share that view) and expresses it way more eloquently then anyone else I have read or seen recently, including our current crop of presidential candidates. (I fully agree with both Decius and Jeremy on that point. The current candidates are doing a really lousy job of saying why the Bush Administration sucks, in a high level way. At this point, none of them has yet won my support.)

He makes a good argument that seeking American supremacy via unilateral action as a primary piece of our security and foreign policy strategy, isn't going to get us supremacy. Not abusing our position of power has given us supremacy. Not being secretive has what has given us supremacy. Being an open society has been what has given us supremacy. Et cetra. This is a call from Soros to not flush these elements of our society and government down the toilet, and break the bubble before it breaks us.

However reasonable this may be, the neocons are sure attack this stance, and they will have an easy job doing so. The obvious troll to this is "you think america should be weak!" and "you appeaser you!".. All things that will work very well in that Bill O'Reilly kinda context where its all about being strong and right.

We may be uncovering another one of the 42 great true lies.

The Bubble of American Supremacy

] Like the Segway, Bombardier's Embrio concept--a prototype
] that may or may not make production--uses gyroscope
] technology to balance riders but adds a dash of flair
] absent in the Segway, which we as car nuts find slightly
] nerdy.

leet!!

Canadian Segway

] Two young men sitting in a car in the parking lot of a
] Lowe's home improvement store in Southfield repeatedly
] hacked into the company's national computer network over
] the past two weeks, gaining access to credit card numbers
] and other information, federal prosecutors said Monday.

] Timmins said he is a $38,000-a-year computer network and
] security specialist for a Southfield software company.
] Botbyl said he's a student at ITT Technical Institute in
] Troy. Morgan released both men on $10,000 unsecured
] bonds.

] FBI agent Denise Stemen said in an affidavit that Lowe's
] alerted the FBI recently that intruders had broken into
] its computer at company headquarters in North Carolina,
] altered its computer programs and illegally intercepted
] credit card transactions.

Waterford men hacked store files, FBI alleges

] Gangs based in Eastern Europe have been found to have
] been launching waves of attacks on corporate networks
 . . .
] The attacks involve gangs commandeering as many as hundreds of
] computers through hacking methods to use without their owners'
] knowledge. A command is then issued to each one simultaneously to
] make a series of bogus requests to the servers of the victim. The
] weight of traffic brings the servers to a halt and legitimate
] requests to carry out transactions cannot be completed.

Elonka thinks that this type of thing is a likely use for some of the recent clone-army building worms we have seen. I think I agree with her..

Eastern European Hackers Using DDOS Attacks to Blackmail Companies

] Observation this year of Veterans Day comes as about
] 130,000 troops 102,000 active military and 28,000
] reserve — remain on duty in Iraq. As of yesterday,
] according to the Pentagon, 394 have died in the war.
]
] Below are excerpts from among the final letters home of
] some soldiers who died there.

Veterans Day: The Things They Wrote

] Wikitravel is a project to create a free, complete,
] up-to-date and reliable world-wide travel guide. It is
] built in collaboration by Wikitravellers from around the
] globe. So far we have 634 destinations, itineraries,
] travel topics and other articles. Check out the Help page
] to see how you can edit any page right now.

Started in July.. Its still pretty new, and doesn't have content for many places yet. However, if the Wikipedia is any example (it is), this is going to be awesome. Lonely Planet, only anyone can contribute.

Main Page - Wikitravel

With the multidimensional twists that bind his music to his narrative, he's stitched the novel into a whole new set of clothes.

This is listed for only $14.99 on Amazon.

Neil Young is cool. I must pick up a copy of this.

Have You Heard the New Neil Young Novel?

] RHUM is an easy to use script for merging updated RPMs
] into a RedHat style distribution. RHUM can merge RedHat's
] RPM Updates and your own custom RPMs into the copy of
] RedHat you use for Kickstart installs, eliminating the
] need to apply RPM Updates after install. This script can
] also use Fedora Core has a base for building custom
] distributions.

I have updated RHUM to work with Fedora Core. You can now create custom Linux distributions based of Fedora using RHUM the say way as RedHat 6 through 9.

There is also a crude script linked from this page that will create a network install base using the yarrow images.

RHUM - RedHat Update Munger (Version 1.2)

] In fact, Wallop is Microsoft's venture into the red-hot
] social-networking arena, using the common Microsoft tack
] of piecing together existing technologies and packaging
] them for the novice user. Those technologies include
] Friendster-style social-networking capabilities,
] super-simplistic blogging tools,moblogging, wikis and RSS
] feeds, all based on Microsoft's Instant Messenger
] functionality.

Wired News: Will Microsoft Wallop Friendster?