Brian Jepson’s Weblog

I’ve been getting a lot of bounce messages from Outlook viruses that forge my email
address. I came up with a simple procmail
recipe to get rid of them:

:0B:
* ^From:.*bjepson@jepstone.net
* ^X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook
devnull

(devnull is the folder name I use to test out new recipes like this one;
it will eventually go to /dev/null when I’m sure it’s working right). This recipe
looks in the body (this is where the headers from the bounced email appear)
for my email address on the From: line, and Microsoft Outlook as the
mailer. You probably don’t want to use this recipe if you actually use Outlook (I
use either pine or Mac OS X Mail), since you will lose legitimate bounces.

Volker Weber: “Nope, that is not a joke.”
10GB per hour of tape?! Awesome!!!

Sam Gentile: “Want to understand the JIT? The GC? Its all here.”

It’s 9:59 AM, and I’m sitting in the back, waiting for stuff to start.
I’ll fill this in with notes as I go.

10:02: Steve takes the stage. “So much great stuff today, we may need
to take a stretch break.”

Updates:

• Airport Extreme is in sync with
  the final spec.

• 25 months since Apple opened first store. 58 are open now, 17m
  visitors. Chicago (coming this weekend), SF, and Tokyo stores coming
  soon.

• iPod; days away from shipping 1 millionth iPod
• iTunes music store has been up for 8 weeks; sold 5m songs in that
  time.

• Safari: 5m downloads. In beta for 6 months. Declaring Safari 1.0
  today; it will be on the web in a few hours. Safari SDK to come
  out today, as well.

10:10: Jaguar is over for developers; Panther preview today. A big
silver X, no spots. 100 amazing new features. Some of the interop
stuff:

• X11 bundled in
• NFS file locking
• FreeBSD 5.0
• Better SMB
• IPSec-based VPN
• Active Directory

New Finder. Old one was computer-centric. New one is user-centric:

• Left-hand spot for favorites, kind of like a shelf. This appears
  in the open and save dialogs, too.

• Fast search technology.
• Labels
• Dynamic network browsing (Unix & Windows servers)
• Dynamic search–results are updated as you type.

10:18: New iDisk:

• Automatic two-way syncing of files.
• “Local folder
  that syncs”.

10:20: Expose:

• Multitasking leads to a lot of windows open, and it’s a big
  hassle.

• He opens a bunch of apps; activates Expose, and everything shrinks
  dynamically, arranged nicely.

• You can mouse over each mini-window, and
  it shows the title. Very snappy. You can do it for one app, or for all
  your windows. And of course, you can do it in slo-mo.

• You can also make all the windows fly away

10:25: File Vault

• Encrypts and decrypts files in the home directory on-the-fly.

10:26: New mail

• Faster
• Safari HTML
• Addresses are objects
• View and manage by threads

10:29: Built in Fax

• Every print-panel has a fax button

10:31: Pixlet; breakthrough QuickTime codec.

• Studio-grade quality
• wavelet-based (Pixlet = Pixar + Wavelet)
• 48 bits per pixel source data
• no interframe compression
• no noticeable visual artifacts

10:34: Preview; major work done on this.

• Fastest PDF reader in the world.
• 28 seconds to scroll through a 978 page document.
• search is very fast

(Panther also has on-the-fly PostScript to PDF; can share any printer
as a PostScript printer)

10:39: Fast user switching

• Can’t do this justice–wait for the webcast!

10:41: FontBook; font organization, preview, and search.

10:42: iChat AV

• Audio chat
• Video chat; Video conferencing for the rest of us
• Zero set up or configuration
• Locate people by buddy name
• Works with any firewire camera/camcorder
• Audio chat works OK with 56k modem
• Need broadband for Video
• Beta (times out Dec 31) coming today for Panther and Jaguar
  (will be $29 when it ships; free if you have Panther)

• iSight–$149… unless you are here is the hardware companion for iChat AV (30fps, full motion
  vide at 640×480, F/2.8, dual element mike, firewire for AV and power;
  screen-based mounting system even clips onto portables)

(you’ll have to wait for the webcast for the demos; there’s a nice
little surprise call from a certain Visiting Professor (VP) at UCLA).

10:56: Panther will be $129, and will ship by end of year.
(Wait for the webcast for a little fun with the competition.)

11:01: Xcode; new stuff in Developer tools

• Fast compiles (GCC 3.3) 101,391 lines of code: 377 seconds for
  Xcode, 223 seconds for CW. Still not as fast as CW, unless you use
  distributed builds (think zilla)

• Linking is no more. Only links shit needed to launch the app.
• Predictive compiling while you type (I’m not sure which one of us
  is high…)

• Edit and continue
• Incredible search capabilities.

Chris Espinosa (Apple Employee #8) joins him on stage for a demo. Be
sure to watch this part of the webcast.

11:12: One more thing… A funny thing happened on the Apple web site.

• Many reactions: too good to be true; it’s not true; it’s
  brilliant marketing

• Apple code word: premature specification
• It was a mistake, and it is true: the World’s Fastest Personal
  Computer

The Chip:

• Turned to IBM several years ago to make the coolest CPU: the
  G5

• 64-bit
• Runs existing 32-bit apps no problem.
• up to 2GHz
• 1 GHz Front side bus

The architecture:

• 12-unit core (215 in-flight instructions; G4 can do 16)
• 2 FPUs
• Massive branch prediction logic
• 130 nanometer process
• 58 million transistors
• 300mm wafers

Dr. John E. Kelly, III (Senior VP, Technology Group) from IBM joins
him on stage:

• “6-7 atomic layers in the gate.”
• “a roadmap that’s gonna knock your socks off”

The systems:

• G5 system controller; one of the world’s fastest ASICS
• Memory: 400MHz 128-bit DDR (6.GB/s); entire contents of a DVD in
  one second

• AGP 8X PRO
• 133MHz PCI-X
• Serial ATA
• Optical digital audio

The products:

• up to 8GB RAM
• New enclosures. Slick; all aluminum
• Computer-controlled cooling; 9 fans, but quiet: 35 dBA for typical
  usage

• 3 models: 1.6GHz $1999; 1.8GHz $2399 ; 2×2.0 GHz $2999 (comparable
  Dell is $4031); shipping in August

(see the webcast for benchmarks, including cool stuff from Adobe and
Wolfram)

The future:

• 3GHz in 12 months

Closing remarks:

• First 6 months of the year: 12″, 17″ PowerBook; Safari, Keynote, FCP4, iPod,
  iTunes 4, Panther, iSight, Xcode, PowerMac G5

• And now, a bunch of sessions to learn about all this stuff!

I’m at WWDC this week.
I’ll be hanging around at the O’Reilly booth part of the time, and I’m
sure my name will flash up on iChat from time-to-time, in case anyone
wants to say hi.

Sellsbrothers.com:
“Pick the new name for this feed and win a free seat at the Applied XML
Developer’s Conference in greater Portland, OR, July 10-11. If you’re already
registered (a good idea, since it’s filling fast), you can have a free seat for a
friend or co-worker.”

The Register has
an article on the Linux-based Redfang, “a proof-of-concept tool …
designed to attack the lightest of several optional layers of security built into
Bluetooth”.

There’s a Slashdot story
on ADHD that has some interesting responses (read it at a threshold of 5 for best
results). I tried Ritalin for a while, but it made me jumpy and I crashed when
it wore off.

My doctor told me that ADHD tends to go hand-in-hand with depression and anxiety.
So rather than take a handful of drugs for all the possible symptoms, I reflected
on the years I went without any treatment, and realized that anxiety was far and
above the most debilitating thing in my life. So, my doctor and I have been
working on that with an SSRI, and things
have been pretty good.

So my advice is to consider the things that might be lurking around the
periphery.

GSM
World’s coverage maps. You can click, zoom, and pan. (via AT&T
Wireless GSM(TM)/GPRS General Discussion.)

Pocket
PC Thoughts reported that T-Mobile is offering flat-rate GPRS. There
was a lot of speculation that this was limited to the Sidekick, but it’s
for
real.