It’s hard to work the concept of a “software update” into a cow analogy, but here goes: You willingly purchase a cow, which, the purveyor of said cow makes explicitly clear, is intended only to be used to produce milk. You buy it and figure out a way to make cheese. Two months later the purveyor of the cow offers you a pill, free of charge, which, if administered to the cow, will result in slightly better-tasting milk, but which pill comes with a stern and plainly worded warning that, if administered to a cow that had been used to produce cheese (which, recall, was made clear from the outset the cow was not intended for), the pill might kill the cow, and that, even if it doesn’t kill the cow, will prevent all previously known cheese-making hacks from working. Further, let’s stipulate that there is no medical or bovine pharmacological reason the pill could not have instead been engineered in such a way that it would enable the cow to produce the better-tasting milk and still allow the previously discovered cheese-producing hacks to continue unabated — that the reason for this frustrating limitation is, at best, marketing, and at worst, spite — and so that, in some way, the whole situation is, undeniably, at least somewhat shitty.

• libsigc++ 2.0.17 Framework
• libxml++ 1.0.4 Framework

Support for the Teredo protocol is actually in WindowsXP, but it is disabled by default. However, that has changed for Windows Vista—where IPv6 and Teredo are enabled by default². This is important because this means that relatively soon, widespread deployment of IPv6 will become a reality. This is great for Windows users, but what about other platforms?

Miredo is an open-source (GPL) user-space teredo implementation for linux and BSD. Someone went thru the effort to get miredo to work on MacOS X, but setting it up is not something your average joe can accomplish. What is needed is an installer package.

Well, that's exactly what I'm putting together. I'm releasing a prerelease version of the package today for early-adopters and power-users. You just download it, install it, and you should have IPv6 connectivity.

IMPORTANT: This package is a prerelease version intended for early adopters, and is NOT intended for widespread deployment. If you decide to install and use this experimental package, you should subscribe to the miredo mailing list, paying serious attention to any security advisories.

. . . Imagine a world where every online store sells DRM-free music encoded in open licensable formats. In such a world, any player can play music purchased from any store, and any store can sell music which is playable on all players. This is clearly the best alternative for consumers, and Apple would embrace it in a heartbeat. If the big four music companies would license Apple their music without the requirement that it be protected with a DRM, we would switch to selling only DRM-free music on our iTunes store. Every iPod ever made will play this DRM-free music.

Why would the big four music companies agree to let Apple and others distribute their music without using DRM systems to protect it? The simplest answer is because DRMs haven’t worked, and may never work, to halt music piracy. Though the big four music companies require that all their music sold online be protected with DRMs, these same music companies continue to sell billions of CDs a year which contain completely unprotected music. That’s right! No DRM system was ever developed for the CD, so all the music distributed on CDs can be easily uploaded to the Internet, then (illegally) downloaded and played on any computer or player.

I knew I liked this guy.

It seems that Macrovision's CEO, Fred Amoroso, has formally responded to Steve's "Thoughts on Music". Luckily, John Gruber of Daring Fireball has translated the letter from PR-speak to plain English. Worth a read.

Why in the world Apple doesn't provide a nice user interface for changing these things without mucking around in the terminal is beyond me.

MacSaber is a program which will make your mac sound like a light saber. Go ahead. Wave it around like a lunatic. If you have one of the new backlit keyboards, the keyboard even lights up when it "hits" something, mimicking the flash of light that shines when two light sabers touch.

This is just too cool.

• MacStumbler 0.75b FIXED SIGNAL STRENGTH! (Source Code)
• SSHKeychain 0.7.1

NOTE: I just fixed the weird negative signal strength issue. Try re-downloading the file above and giving it a try.

Yesterday I upgraded it to 2 gigabytes of DDR2 RAM, making this laptop the most RAM endowed machine I have had the pleasure of working on. It is quite likely that this laptop is now the most powerful machine I own. Yum.

The "Keychain Access" application that comes with MacOS X is one of the most useful tools that come with Macintosh computers, but it is also one of the most neglected. If you are a Mac user and don't know what this tool is or how to use it, read on.

Speaking of releases, expect Synfig to be released next week by the end of the month*. It may be a little bit of time before the native MacOS X version is ready, but it will happen.

(*) I've changed my moving schedule around so this makes things a bit more uncertain.