This is the website of Abulsme Noibatno Itramne (also known as Sam Minter). Posts here are rare these days. For current stuff, follow me on Mastodon

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Time to Check it Out Again

I’d pretty much switched to Firefox, but looks like it is time to once again check out Safari.

Apple releases public beta of Safari 4 browser
(Katie Marsal, Apple Insider, 24 Feb 2009)

Apple on Tuesday announced a public beta of Safari 4, a new version of its share-gaining web browser that packs a powerful new JavaScript engine and the latest web standards.”

Dubbed “Nitro,” the engine in Safari 4 is said to run JavaScript 4.2 times faster than Safari 3. Other new features include Top Sites, for a visual preview of frequently visited pages; Full History Search, to search through titles, web addresses and the complete text of recently viewed pages; Cover Flow, to easily flip through web history or bookmarks; and Tabs on Top, to make tabbed browsing easier and more intuitive.

Baywatching

I’m following the Pirate Bay trial on TorrentFreak. It is an important test. Pay attention.

50% of Charges Against Pirate Bay Dropped
(enigmax, TorrentFreak, 17 Feb 2008)

here has been high drama on the second day of the Pirate Bay trial. Due to serious shortcomings in the prosecution evidence, around 50% of the charges in the case are going to have to be withdrawn. The defense describes it as a ’sensation’, seeing half of the charges being dropped on the second day.

What has been shown in court today is that the prosecutor cannot prove that the .torrent files he is using as evidence actually used The Pirate Bay’s tracker. Many of the screenshots being used clearly state there is no connection to the tracker. Additionally, prosecutor Håkan Roswall didn’t adequately explain the function of DHT which allows for so called “trackerless” torrents.

The flaw in the evidence was pointed out by Fredrik Neij (TiAMO), who requested to comment on Roswall’s explanation of how BitTorrent actually works. Fredrik said that the prosecution misunderstood the technology, and told the court that the evidence doesn’t show that the Pirate Bay’s trackers are used.

Want One

Yes, Of Course They Are

I just got one after finally giving up on waiting for a 32GB version and giving up on bitching about home activation, so of course they are going to. Any day now, I’m sure.

Apple prepping a 32GB iPhone update, bringing back at-home activation?
(Nilay Patel, Engadget, 20 Sep 2008)

We’re not particularly inclined to believe them, but the whispers that Apple is about to bump the top-end iPhone capacity to 32GB are getting harder to ignore — especially since 8GB inventory is drying up, leading to speculation that’s it’s going to be dropped as soon as next week.

AppleInsider also says customers will once again get the option to activate in-home, but we haven’t heard anything about that — we’ll see what happens in the next few days.

I knew it would happen before too long, and I’m quite happy with my iPhone, but still. Sigh!

New Sitemeter

Sucks. Can I have the old one back?

Edit 22:18 UTC: Apparently I can. Pretty much everybody thinks it sucks, and they are rolling it back. Good. Not like the old system was awesome, but it was useful. The new one was unusable.

Few Days

By the way, after about 5 days, I went back to Firefox.

And JungleDisk was 25% done, but still said six days remaining after those five days. I needed to reboot for something unrelated. I haven’t started JungleDisk up again, but I probably will.

Still Not Getting an iPhone

Yeah, today is iPhone day. Well, it started yesterday overseas, but I could go get one right now at my local store if I wanted. But I am still waiting. Here are my current reasons:

  • We’re on Sprint, switching will still be a pain
  • I want a 32GB model
  • I want a SlingPlayer app and there isn’t one yet
  • It just ain’t at the top of the list to spend money on yet

I was going to try to figure out a few more reasons, but those are the main ones. But at the lower price point and higher speed, and with the app store and everything, it is getting harder and harder to resist.

Edit seconds later: Oh yeah, I forgot another reason, I really would prefer to buy one online, have it delivered by mail, and activate it at home, and they have removed that option, which really ticks me off.

JungleDisking

Playing with the 30 day free trial of JungleDisk at the moment. I’ve been getting increasingly ancy that while I have an onsite backup, I don’t have an offsite backup. I’ve of course known about JungleDisk since it’s first release, and S3 even before that, but never bothered to actually try it for anything until now. I’ve always done the math and determined that A) Backing up EVERYTHING at S3’s prices would be more than I really want to pay per month and B) With the volume that changes each day on my machine, I don’t have enough bandwidth with my pokey DSL connection to keep up with it.

Those things aside, I am giving it a shot on just one folder… my pictures… and seeing how it goes. That is a lot less than “everything” that I would really want an offsite backup of, but having just started it about 5 minutes ago, it is estimating “6 days” to complete the initial backup of that folder (29 GB of images). And that is probably sucking bandwidth that the three of us in the house might want to be using for other things.

And yes, I know I could switch to cable instead of DSL and get significantly more bandwidth. My upload and download speeds both suck, and faster DSL is not available at my address, but much faster cable is.

Hmmm… I wonder if my neighbor’s unsecured WiFi is a faster connection than my own… :-)

Back to Safari

I just switched my default browser back to Safari. I’m not sure if it is a permanent decision. We’ll see if after a few days I miss any features enough to switch yet again.

Woo! Profiles Stay!

From Netflix in my inbox, timestamped Mon, June 30, 2008 20:54 UTC.

We Are Keeping Netflix Profiles

Dear Samuel,

You spoke, and we listened. We are keeping Profiles. Thank you for all the calls and emails telling us how important Profiles are.

We are sorry for any inconvenience we may have caused. We hope the next time you hear from us we will delight, and not disappoint, you.

-Your friends at Netflix

Guess we’ll be keeping Netflix after all then.