Link: Apple may have the last laugh as Parallels and VMware duke it out
Will Leopard’s Boot Camp integration be the end of virtualization? Probably not, at least for most users. But Apple has made Boot Camp significantly more appealing in Leopard, and may give the other two options a run for their money.
Link: Self-Healing Plastic Skin
An anonymous reader writes “Scientists have developed a form of plastic skin that can heal itself when damaged. The material relies on an underlying network of vessels — similar to blood capillaries — that carry a healing agent to areas on the material’s surface that sustain damage. Unlike previous self-healing systems that relied on capsules of agent buried in the polymer and which became depleted after one use, the new system can respond to damage at the same point many times over.”
Leopard is looking really good, particularly the improvements in Mail.app. Will it be improved enough to make me ditch Thunderbird? If it still stores mail in a proprietary pain-in-the-ass format, then no. But if all the new bells and whistles work with IMAP and nothing stored locally, I’m there, man.
And of course, it’s about damn time they got around to virtual desktops. Looks like they did it pretty well, with a good-looking couple of pager options.
Link: Remember The Milk: Online to do list and task management
This is probably aimed squarely at forgetful folks like me…
Link: Free Rootkit with Every New Intel Machine
In light of the recent book on BSD Rootkits by Joseph Kong, some of us have been paying closer attention to possible rootkits in the wild. This post on “The Cryptography Mailing List” highlights Intel Active Management 2.5, which essentially boils down to hardware rootkit functionality built right into the machine.
Link: Which ISPs Are Spying On You?
firesquirt sends us an article from Wired about a survey they conducted to determine major ISPs’ data retention and other privacy practices. Over a period of two months, four national ISPs would not give Wired the time of day; and another four answered some of their questions in a fashion not altogether reassuring.
Read more of this story at Slashdot.
Link: Everything I Know About Design I Learned from The Sopranos
Last night, after eight years, 86 episodes, and untold quantities of gobbagool, The Sopranos finished its run on HBO. And this is what we’ve learned, from a design point of view.
The University of Colorado at Boulder forbids concealed firearms on campus. CU Police Department Commander Brad Wiesley says switching that policy could decrease safety on campus.
“There’s no standard way to identify the good guys versus the bad guys in the middle of an active shooting situation. It tremendously complicates the response for officers responding,” said Wiesley.
On the mental health front, the National Alliance on Mental Health says there are alternatives to institutionalizing more people.
Link: Sheriff calls for guns on campus and mental health reform
Larimer (Colorado) County Sheriff Jim Alderden has an interesting take on guns on campus… In his county, CSU allows concealed weapons. In Boulder County, CU Boulder forbids them.
Alderden was instrumental in passing Colorado’s CCW law, and apparently the shall-issue program was based on his practices in Larimer County.
Link: nimrangul’s “netjihad” for the Beastie
It seems that the BSD daemon image has been blatantly ripped off for years by a British sex-toy vending machine company. McKusick knows it, but can’t do anything about it, being a foreigner. Hmmm.