Stats, stats, stats!
Jim has upgraded our server stat software to AWStats, and I am mightily impressed. I determined long ago that I would not become obsessed with traffic, and by and large, I haven't. Mainly, this has been because I have avoided looking at any statistics any server analysis software installed might provide. Once I get over how wicked cool AWStats is, I'll likely revert to this habit. It is interesting to note that in 28 days of July, my site has moved 400 MB of bandwidth, twice as many people view the site on a Windows box than a Mac (surprising, considering the pro-Mac tone of my computing posts), and while, of course, IE is the browser used by most, Safari comes in second, and is used three times more than #3, Mozilla. Most people get to the site because they've bookmarked it, and for that, you have my thanks. The second way people get to the site....anyone? Anyone? Anyone? The answer we're looking for is Google. Google. Two things AWStats shows (and according to Jim, our old stat software did the same; like I said, I rarely looked at it) that fascinate me: the most common search keywords and keyphrases used to hit the site; and what IP domains pages are being served to. I can honestly boast of having a worldwide readership, though by a tremendous margin, most of the traffic is, not surprisingly, from the U.S. Australia is high on the list (thanks, Raena!), but I have served at least one page to the following: Slovenia, Malta, Argentina, Israel, Malaysia, Guatemala, Iceland, Slovak Republic, Oman, the United Arab Emirates, Nigeria, Greece, Poland, Libya, Algeria, Indonesia, Croatia, and the list goes on. I know, there just may be some simple router-hopping going on that returns those values, but it's still fun to think about.
Panther 32-bit
MacMinute notes a Register report that Apple has confirmed Mac OS X 10.3 Panther will be a 32-bit OS, but with 64-bit libraries to support the new Power Mac G5 and beyond. Is this really a big surprise? Maybe I just hang out online with, and read, more technically-minded folks, but I thought this was a foregone conclusion. From my daily use of Panther (no, I didn't dump the WWDC beta for Jaguar this past weekend like I said; rather, I have begun a much more rigid backup procedure), it is already an evolutionary step forward from Jaguar. Faster on the same hardware; the Aqua GUI is a bit more subdued, though I have mixed feelings over the new Finder. Quite simply, I like it, even in beta form, the same way I liked Jaguar over 10.1, and 10.1 over the original release. The OS simply keeps getting better, and at a much faster pace than what the competition offers. Expect a 64-bit OS somewhere around 10.4, maybe even 10.5. There's a lot of work that has to be done for that to happen, and developers have to be brought on board as well. A 64-bit OS will be something more revolutionary, and revolutions--at least ones that will matter in the long term--do not happen overnight.
Us Wacky Cube owners
Wired has a new article on the staying power of the Power Mac G4 Cube, and the lengths some Cube owners will go to keep their beloved system up to date. As for me, I've upgraded everything in my Cube except the processor. I decided after WWDC that it would be more beneficial to me to turn those funds in to a new G5 (this daddy-in-waiting plans on utilizing Final Cut Pro quite a bit for all those DV movies I'll be capturing via our new Canon ZR70). The Cube could then be turned in to the house's file server. I certainly do not wish to get rid of it; it is a work of engineering art...
Billy copies Stevie again...?
MacMinute reports on a CNET story that Bill Gates told analysts Microsoft is considering a music download service. Gee, wherever would he have gotten that idea from?
More BuyMusic.com madness
Bob Levitus rips in to BuyMusic.com: bq. Simply put, while iTunes Music Store is the Rolls-Royce of online music, BuyMusic.com is a Yugo. Jon shows how to use Safari to get around that nasty Windows-only business BuyMusic.com has decided to shovel...
SuperDrive in any PowerBook G4
MacResQ is now offering a SuperDrive upgrade for any PowerBook G4. Too bad I know my employer would not pay for this for my TiBook/500. Eh, I'm looking toward a future PowerBook G4 12" with SuperDrive purchase, and I have two G4 desktops with SuperDrives at the office...
The Panther honeymoon is over
Having experienced my second kernel panic with the WWDC beta release of Mac OS X Panther 10.3, and the corruption of some of my emailboxes, I'll be doing some volume cloning and Jaguar reinstalling this weekend...
Second-rate from the Windoze world once again...
By now everyone has heard about buymusic.com, the Windows answer to Apple's iTunes Music Store. Don't be impressed; don't be worried. According to a few reader notes from yesterday's MacInTouch, buymusic.com is not all it's cracked up to be:
Buymusic.com claims tracks cost "from $.79," though I found most popular music to be either $.89 or $.99. The DRM is also complicated, varying from track to track. Some tracks can only be burned 1,3,5, or 10 times. Others can only be downloaded to an MP3 player a limited number of times. Some can be stored on 3 computers while others can only be stored on 1. (Ryan Greenberg) Dominic Mazzoni writes: BuyMusic isn't nearly as price-competitive as the AP article would have you believe. First of all, their lowest song price is $0.79, not $0.70 as the article claimed. But if you browse their site, you'll discover that the vast majority of songs are offered at $0.99--the same rate as the Apple store. I found a few songs available for $0.89, but in a few minutes of searching through a number of genres, I only found one song available for $0.79.
Not only that, but quite a few of their songs aren't even available for purchase. That makes me wonder how their catalog size (which they claim is 300,000) actually compares to Apple's if you only consider songs that you can actually purchase and burn to a CD. Apple does need to get its act together with getting iTunes and the Music Store ready for Windows users. The iPod is already burning up the sales charts in Windoze-land, and Apple has a huge advantage over any music-selling competitor. Strike while the iron is hot, Steve. UPDATE: 9:20 A.M. More from MacInTouch's Thursday report, as Greg Orman shows that BuyMusic isn't actually letting you buy music... The fine print clearly states that you're only licensing the music, not purchasing it, and furthermore that the license is tied to the computer used for the transaction. If you replace your computer, you lose access to everything you've licensed and downloaded (though you'll still have any copies you burned to CD or transferred to a portable, assuming that the DRM on the songs you licensed allowed you to do that in the first place). So there you go. The Apple iTunes Music Store remains the only place one can actually buy music for their own personal, pretty much unrestricted use, online.
Intelligence 101
Frank Gaffney, Jr. has an excellent summary of the intelligence side of the SOTU non-scandal.
Inventing scandals and conspiracies when there are none
Yes, yes, a Demobrat favorite tactic: inventing a conspiracy, a scandal, when there is none. The Left has been attacking the President and his administration for a couple of weeks now over sixteen words from this year's State of the Union speech: bq. "The British government has learned that Saddam Hussein recently sought significant quantities of uranium from Africa." The Left claims this is false, and that Bush willfully and knowingly lied to the American people in making the case to go to war against Saddam Hussein. Let's break this down, shall we?
- The intelligence came from our British allies; whether or not it was confirmed by the CIA, NSA, or any other alphabetized agency within our own government is irrelevant at this point.
- Hussein was seeking to buy uranium. Sought. Looked for. He didn't buy. We don't have a credit card receipt for a few tons of yellowcake (and even if we did, I doubt that would satisfy the Left). That's not what the President said. That's not what he implied. He said the Brits received word that Saddam was looking to buy.
- Saddam has been known to seek radioactive material from certain African nations in the past; he was simply following his old habits.
Where is the scandal, the conspiracy? The Demobrats and their friends in the Left act like this single, solitary sentence was the entire case, and the only reason they voted, for removing Saddam Hussein and his regime from power. What a joke. The President's statement is one hundred percent accurate. Counter that with "I did not have sexual relations with that woman..." And now the Demobrats are running commercials spreading falsehoods! The President and his staff need to stop trying to appease the unappeasable, stop apologizing when he has done nothing wrong. Need we remind the Left that in just the first three years of his presidency, Bush (43) has done more for AIDS in Africa than Clinton, despite his blustering and blubbering, did in his two terms? Oh no, W. doesn't get any credit for that. And would the mass media please stop whining over American casualties in the Iraqi aftermath? The President told the truth about this as well; he told us that our involvement in Iraq would be long, and it would be tough. These soldiers, sailors and Marines deserve our utmost support, and I privately grieve and say a prayer for each's family when I hear of another killed in a bombing or ambush. But a little perspective, please: over a hundred people die in auto accidents in the U.S. every day; approximately fifty Americans are murdered each day. Yes, it's a shame that two soldiers were killed in a single day, but hundreds of their fellow Americans are dying right back here in the States. Let's remember them all, and thank those who give all not just for our protection, but for those who cannot protect themselves. (Props to Rick for the link)
Two down...
Iraqi citizens celebrated in Baghdad Tuesday evening as word spread that Saddam Hussein's feared and reviled sons, Odai and Qusai, were killed in a firefight with U.S. forces in Mosul. One hundred percent identification is still pending, but it sounds like excellent intelligence backed up the raid, and there is currently a "90 to 95 percent" certainty that two of those killed in the raid are Saddam's sons. I would have liked to have seen the two captured, so they could have led coalition forces to Saddam himself, but as far as the Iraqi people go, dead is just as good...
WebPhisch™
Yes, Virginia, you too can build a web browser without a single line of code. Thanks to Apple's WebKit SDK, available here (free registration), the Mac OS X Developer Tools (latest version available via previous link), and these instructions by Brian Kendig. Presenting version 0.1 of WebPhisch(tm). It's no Safari, but it's a start. No, I'm not going to become a browser developer. Why would I, when there's Safari? This is just to show the awesome power of Mac OS X and the tools available to developers. Think you can build a web browser in five minutes with .NET? Think again... (Yes, Michael, I used the metal appearance just like Safari. No, I don't know why. Just because I could, I suppose. Yes, I used DropDMG for the disk image. [New version's out!] Yes, this is just one of about a million Safari-wannabes now popping up on the Mac web...)
Coulter talks <i>Treason</i>
Joseph Farah of WorldNetDaily interviewed Ann Coulter on his new radio show last week. A transcript is available here. Good stuff, including a quick overview and some examples from her latest book.
Panther panic
Just had my first kernel panic under the WWDC Panther beta on my PowerBook G4/500. This is the first kernel panic I've had with OS X on any Mac since before 10.1 was released. To be honest, I cannot recall any kernel panics prior to the OS X beta program. So we're talking about two-and-half, three years? Contrast this with my XP-equipped Compaq Evo, which goes down about once every two weeks...
Supremes, take note
"[T]he opinion which gives to the judges the right to decide what laws are constitutional and what not, not only for themselves, in their, own sphere of action, but for the Legislature and Executive also in their spheres, would make the Judiciary a despotic branch." --Thomas Jefferson
Ongoing site maintenance:
- Killed the "Retrolook" tab in the tab navigation bar
- Subsequently, killed the old style sheet and index2.html file; so now the look you see (if you're not just reading with NNW) is the only look available. Until I decide to start skinning the site...
- Have begun conversion from .html files to .php. This will help streamline the amount of work I have to do, along with continued use of CSS, for the look and feel of the site. So if your bookmark for the main page is _[www.retrophisch.com/index.htm...]([www.retrophisch.com](http://www.retrophisch.com)/index.html_,) rather than just _[www.retrophisch.com](http://www.retrophisch.com)_, you'll need to update with the latter.
- As part of this conversion, the Retrophisch Read(tm) page is now rendered via PHP as well and has the new site look. Other pages to follow.
- So far, it appears that the old archives have remained intact as .html files, as well as having .php peers. So everyone who has permalinked to me (Lee, Michael, Eric) shouldn't have to re-link.
If you have linked to me, and you find the permalinks breaking, the quick and dirty fix is to replace ".html" in the link with ".php". And my apologies if you have to do so; such is the price of progress.
Treo 600
So forget the Kyocera 7135, and the upcoming Samsung SGH-i500 Palm OS smart phone. Jon has turned me on to Handspring/Palm's next beauty, the Treo 600. Mobile Burn has more on the 600's appearance at CeBIT America. Best news: Palm OS 5, something the other two Palm OS smart phone contenders don't currently have access to. Yeah, I'll have to wait until November, maybe December to get it, but I believe in the end, it'll be worth it. Even if I have to drive to Florida to beat Jon senseless for his review model...
Lee's Birthday
Today marks the 8th anniversary of Lee's 25th birthday. He's being a bit of a curmudgeon about it, so be sure to stop by his blog and comment your birthday wishes to him. :) Happy birthday, bro.
Ronnie the bear
The Santa Barbara Council of the Navy League of the United States, a civilian organization that supports Navy and Marine Corps families, has adopted the new Nimitz-class carrier USS Ronald Reagan, CVN-76. While the floating cities that are today's aircraft carriers are well appointed, there are numerous things not found aboard ship that many of us take for granted. The Santa Barbara Council and other similar organizations raise funds to provide our sailors and Marines with the sort of amenities that make life at sea all the more bearable. Like transportation when they arrive in port; bet you didn't know that once you hit the docks, you're on your own, did you? One of the things the Santa Barbara Council hopes to raise money for the Reagan is a van, or vans, for in-port transportation. Not only does this keep our fighting men and women from getting ripped off by local transportation, it's safer for them to boot. The big fundraiser for the Reagan through the Santa Barbara Council is the selling of the Ronnie the bear Beanie Baby, starting next week. The bears will retail for about $5. One hundred percent of the proceeds will go to the Santa Barbara Council, which will in turn use the funds for their Reagan projects. Honor those who will serve aboard the ship that honors the man who won the Cold War. Buy a Ronnie bear Beanie Baby and show our sailors and Marines you care.