Category Software

Guitar Rig 3 is out!

Guitar Rig 3New amps, new effects, new presets and some new features. Woot! If this is anything like the upgrade from version 1 to 2 then we're in for a rockin' upgrade. :) The order has been placed (the 'software edition' obviously as the new Kontrol is somewhat pointless if you have the previous version). A review is forthcoming, when I get some free time that is...

The Era of Cheap Pixels

Just a few weeks after Tiger was announced in 2004, I was chatting with a friend about how I thought Core Image could revolutionise the bitmap editing capabilities of applications on Mac OS X and, of course, how this would translate into an abundance of competitive image manipulation/editing applications making use of Apple’s optimised routines, […]

One Regulatory Void for Corporations and Some Legal Trickery

The European Court of Justice ruled today on Microsoft’s appeal regarding the Commission’s decision to fine it €500 million for its alleged abuse of its dominant market position. There are two, parallel and basic issues with both the regulatory framework and the charges against Microsoft. First, corporations, as per their mandate, are formally encouraged (viz. […]

Liquid Haptics

One thin container (transparent plastic bag) full of dark coloured liquid, one webcam and a glass table and you get your own multitouch interface. Ingenious and very simple. Tom White seems to have come up with this for his Master's Thesis at MIT in 1998 (check out the comments on the page linked to by the title). Here's a video of someone who --- seems to have independently thought of the same idea and --- actually implemented it on their Mac, using his iSight and writing the necessary control software in Cocoa.

Phrack Issue 64

In the latest issue of Phrack, you can find, among others, a very interesting 'paper' on shellcode and rootkit authoring for Mac OS X. While some of the techniques presented are not new, there are few --- if any --- publicly available texts that present them in such a concise manner. The paper focuses mostly on the Intel platform although there are descriptions and some code for PowerPC too. Worth a read.

Confirmation? No, thanks.

Ever since Safari 3 β came out, I've been feeling a bit like the archetypal Windows Vista user. You see every time I enter text on a page and proceed to close the tab or window it asks for confirmation. This is a new behaviour in Safari 3 and one that I don't like at all, although I can see why it's there. 'strings' came to the rescue and less than a minute later I got the answer. Open the com.apple.Safari.plist and edit it as follows --- or simply type the following in your terminal (make sure you type the whole thing in one line): 
defaults write com.apple.Safari
DebugConfirmTossingUnsubmittedFormText NO
Safari won't ask you for confirmation again. To re-enable the confirmation, replace the NO with a YES and you're done.

Testing Little Snitch 2 (β)

Little Snitch has been a truly great shareware application and one that I've bought and used for years. It's purpose is to provide a filter/firewall for outgoing connections in Mac OS X, allowing a user to put a check to all those applications that like to phone-home every once in a while to test for newer versions or --- in some cases --- send anonymous or eponymous hardware and software information to their developers without the user's consent.

Αυτόνομα Οχήματα: Urban Challenge 2007

Το 2004 η Υπηρεσία Εξελιγμένης Έρευνας των Ενόπλεων Δυνάμεων των ΗΠΑ (DARPA), ο απόγονος της υπηρεσίας που δημιούργησε σειρά τεχνολογιών μέρος της καθημερινότητος μας (με πιο γνωστό ίσως το διαδίκτυο και τις βάσεις γι’αυτό προ τριαντα πέντε περίπου ετών), ξεκίνησε μια σειρά από ‘αγώνες’ μεταξύ αυτόνομων οχημάτων, οχημάτων δηλαδή που δεν ελέγχονται από ανθρώπους αλλά […]

Πείτε ΟΧΙ στο OOXML!

Από τις αρχές της δεκαετίας του 1990 μέχρι σήμερα, αδιαμφισβήτητος κυρίαρχος στην αγορά επεξεργασίας κειμένου, υπολογιστικών φύλλων και παρουσιάσεων (κοινώς εφαρμογών γραφείου) ήταν και παραμένει η σουίτα της Μicrosoft, το γνωστό σε όλους Office. Παραδοσιακά, τα αρχεία που παράγονται από το λογισμικό της Microsoft είναι κλειστού τύπου, δηλαδή δε γνωρίζουμε επακριβώς τη δομή τους. Αυτό […]

Apple Event: First Impressions

Perfectly timed just before the start of the school season, just when most people already are or are soon going to be on holidays (at least wherever people do go on holidays) Apple announced their new redesigned iMac and the long-awaited iLife and iWork updates. It also gave .Mac a badly needed ‘Web 2.0’ update. […]