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iMovie 3 Updates, Anyone?
Just setup the Lion Server Software Update Service. Amazing how far back the update history goes.
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The Internet Wild West
(or, Why a firewall isn’t just a nice idea anymore)
So my “Weekend Home Project” these past couple of days has been setting up an OS X Lion Server on a new Mac Mini. This came as a result of a desire to tinker somewhat (I sometimes feel nostalgic for my former life as an IT consultant), but also primarily its use as a much more capable home router than what my Time Capsule provides. The latter point was prompted by my switch to Teksavvy as my ISP and their offering of native IPv6 connectivity along with a pair of subnets for both IPv4 and IPv6.
I originally plugged it in last Tuesday without giving too much thought to setting up a firewall on it… The only listening service was sshd, and I had already hardened that to work with only a single, non-root account and require public-key authentication for that one rather than a password and everything else living quietly on private IPs behind NAT. So, for the first few days it was easier just to keep the firewall off until I actually had time to tweak it appropriately.
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There's never been a simpler time...
“There’s never been a simpler time. Never. In all of human history, everything has always been as complex as it is right now. The people change. The technology changes. But the … the forces at work, whatever it is that drives us to be human, that’s always the same.”
— Micah Brack to Zefram Cochrane in Federation by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens
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Analysis Paralysis
A good example of analysis paralysis in general, but what’s particularly interesting is how many people readily believe random stuff they read on the Internet, from random people, just because it’s on the Internet.
(In a larger sense, I think this is tied to the tendency for most people to believe more of what they read than what they hear, regardless of the source, but it’s still interesting the amount of undue influence that random posts by complete strangers can actually have on somebody’s viewpoint)
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The Steve Jobs Effect
Call it a reality distortion field, a cult of personality or simply good presentation skills, but I think the real issue here is that Steve Jobs made things work in a much more subtle way than many people realize.
As Matt Thomas very cleverly illustrates, the three key things that Jolie O’Dell calls out in her article as being a departure from Apple’s previous style have all been done by Apple before.
The point is, however, they were done by Steve Jobs, rather than Tim Cook. Now, some may argue that this is simply a question of Jobsian Fanboyism; that somehow those who worshipped at the altar of Jobs were willing to give Apple a pass for such things.