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The iPad is an enemy to openness

Jacob — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 17:33:44 +0000

A friend of mine who is an Apple employee, Quinn Taylor, tweeted, on the day of the iPad launch, about the use of Flash by Hulu and other online video providers. Presumably, he is responding to criticisms that the new iPad, as well as older iPhones, do not support flash and won’t play videos from Hulu. This is what he said:

When is Hulu going to get with the times and support H.264 and HTML 5 like YouTube & HD content? Flash is an enemy to openness & innovation.

So apparently, a system which requires a proprietary SDK to create videos, which then need a proprietary (free) player in order to view videos, is an “enemy to openness.”

Of course, the iPad isn’t exactly the perfect friend to openness. I mean, to develop anything for the iPad, you have to download the proprietary SDK, use it only on a newer Mac, pay to join Apple’s iPhone developer program, submit any developed application to Apple, hope that Apple approves your app, wait for people to find your app in Apple’s App Store, and then if it gets that far, users can download and use the app on the proprietary iPad device.

I just want to point out that on the conversation of enemies to openness, we could use the new iPad as a perfect example, as everything is locked down and closed from beginning to end.

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The Mac Book Error

Jacob — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 19:31:47 +0000

Today Apple announced the Mac Book Air and new ultra-slim laptop computer. Weighing only 3 pounds, this notebook is like someone flattened a Mac Book. Here are a couple of deal breakers for me with the Mac Book Air:

No user replaceable battery
No Firewire
No DVD player (or optical drive
No built in Ethernet connector
$1800 starting price
Only one usb port
Only 1.6GHz processor speed (the slowest Mac Book is 2 GHz)
Only a 4200 RPM hardrive (pretty slow)

On the other hand, it is a cute little computer that would be quite a bit more comfortable hauling around all day in my backpack. I am still. however, exceptionally worried about the built in battery. I’ve had two batteries on my iBook be recalled because of their poof-potential. I would hate to have to go through the trouble of servicing my laptop or watching it explode if ever the battery were to explode.

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Things that make me happy

Jacob — Sat, 26 Nov 2005 07:45:34 +0000

Ice cream
Pumpkin Pie
Photos
My hanging plant Dilbert
Sweaters
Beanies
Google
My fun job ~~at the BYU Chemistry Department~~
Cuddling
Toblerone chocolate
Victory cake
Chocolate chip cookies
homemake frosting on victory cake
Getting messages on my phone
Writing in my blog
My car, even though it makes noise
~~Friends named Sara with red hair (there is more than one actually)~~
Friends ~~without red hair~~
The Facebook
Ham Radio
Costco
Shopping at Macey’s
Stargate
~~Watching movies in the basement~~
Jiffy blueberry muffin mix
Hugs
Playing bzFlag (and winning)
Risk
Coloring with crayons
butterscotch chips
Oregon
Yellowstone National Park
My Apple iBook
Sleeping
Fresh drinking water
Hot chocolate
Happy people
Mount Hood
The echoing circles in front of the JFSB
Astronomy
Science
Star Wars
The Book of Mormon
Love
Poetry and other writings
Families
People being nice to each other when they don’t have to be
The Princess Bride
The Temple
My bike
Playing croquet late at night in my backyard back home
Waffle parties
Free music from iTunes
Getting mail in the mail that isn’t a bill or credit card application
Taking hot showers
People who aren’t drunk
Transylvania
Mozilla Firefox
Linux
Knight Rider
A well decorated apartment
Going out to restaurants
Dancing
Hillsboro
No sales tax
Otter Pops
PHP

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Using GPG For Signing Messages on a Mac

Jacob — Thu, 12 May 2005 03:21:18 +0000

GPG is a way to digitally sign email messages so that other people can know that they came from you. It can also be used to encrypt messages. Getting GPG to work is easy if you know the right way to do it, or difficult if you don’t. Here are some steps for the Mac user to get started with GPG:

http://macgpg.sourceforge.net is the best place to start off. If you want to understand in great depth about all the stuff, you should read the FAQ document (RTF).

First download and run the GNU Privacy Guard installer. This will install all the GPG tools onto your system. However, unless you like using the command line, you probably want to install a couple of graphical programs. I suggest GPG Keychain Access which will help you create and manage keys. I also suggest GPGPreferences which will help you configure the GPG tools, although you probably won’t need to do much with it.

You will probably want to create yourself a key which you will use to sign your emails. You can do this in the GPG Keychain Access program.

Next, you will want to make sure your email program is configured to use your GPG key. If you are using Mozilla Thunderbird, then you can install the GPG plugin called Enigmail. If you are using Apple’s Mail program, you should download, install, and use a plugin available here.

Follow any of these instructions at your own risk. I am not responsible if you or these programs screw up your computer.

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Get a Mac Buddy!

Jacob — Fri, 25 Mar 2005 18:49:27 +0000

Some people just need a mac. What are they doing with that big old windows laptop?

I go into one of my classes a few minutes late. Someone had brought a power strip with a long cord and plugged it in to one of the only avaiable outlets in the room, and then the cord went up the isle a couple of rows. At first I thought it might be for something important, but as I looked closer, I found that someone was using it simply to plug in their laptop.

Please, people. If your laptop doesn’t have enough battery power to allow you to get by without hauling your power supply (and a power strip!) around with you, then you really don’t have a laptop, just a portable computer. Buy a mac! 5 hours of battery life. No power strip needed!

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Configuring and Running X11 Applications on Mac OS X

Jacob — Fri, 21 Jan 2005 20:51:26 +0000

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