Parallels Desktop for Mac appears to be out of the release candidate stage. This all seems to have been done very quietly, I just downloaded RC2 a few days ago, but checked the website again today and found the RC label has been removed. The current build number is 1848 (RC2 was 1842.7) - and the pricing has been updated as well. You can purchase it for $49.99 through July 15, after which the price is set at $79.99.

Glad I bought in the pre-release stage at $39!

I went price digging today for an additional gigabyte of RAM for my MacBook Pro and found some irritating pricing information I thought I'd share.

Crucial is easily my place-of-choice to purchase memory, so I naturally looked there first. At crucial, you select your manufacturer, make and model and they should you compatible upgrades. Here's what I found:

• MacBook Pro 2.16 Ghz 17": $201.39
• MacBook Pro 2.16 Ghz 15": $184.29
• MacBook Pro 2.0 Ghz 15": $189.82
• MacBook Pro 1.83 Ghz 15: $165.86 (on sale)
• MacBook Pro 1.67 Ghz 15: $165.86 (on sale)

So while you might assume that the different prices are a result of different part numbers representing different memory modules with distinct specifications, you'd be wrong. Each of the memory modules represented above has the following specs:

• DDR2 PC2-5300
• CL=5
• UNBUFFERED
• NON-ECC
• DDR2-667
• 1.8V
• 128Meg x 64

So what gives? Why is it that crucial feels the need to keep distinct part numbers on file for something that is clearly not a distinct unit? And why price them all variably? I find this very frustrating. Needless to say if you go Crucial, get the 1.67 Ghz upgrade and expect to work flawlessly in my 2.0 Ghz model for less.

Crucial, while great, doesn't have the best prices though.

NewEgg sells the same crucial memory for $ 149.00, and has other non-name-brand modules for as low as $79.00!

Ramjet prices their upgrade module at $135.00, while Other World Computing ranks the best coming in at $112.00

Apple by the way, prices a similarly spec'd memory module at $300.00 even.

After a couple days of trying to figure it out - I finally stumbled across a solution to play WMV videos on an Intel Mac. I don't normally have much use for WMVs, but CNN's videos are all WMV encoded, and it's been annoying at best not being able to view some of their stories.

First, download the free edition of Flip4Mac, a WMV player for PPC Macs. If you launch the installer, you'll get a notice saying it cannot install on Intel Macs.

To get past this, open a Finder window and locate the Installer application in Applications->Utilities. Highligh the application and press CMD+I to open the info window. You'll see a checkbox to "Open using Rosetta". Check this box and close the window. You can now install Flip4Mac on your Intel Mac.

You must similarly check the "Open using Rosetta" for the QuickTime Player application, which you'll find in the Applications folder.

That's basically all there is to it! If you wish to view media files directly in your browser, enable "Open using Rosetta" for your browser application. The same approach should work equally well for any application you wish to have play WMV's.

Note: this solution is only temporary, as Flip4Mac is currently working on a Universal Binary that'll play your media directly - so take note of any applications you launch using Rosetta so you can change them back once it's no longer needed.

I was mortified last night on behalf of the tech-savvy Apple user community. Much to my horror, I actually saw a commercial on TV for Mac and OS X starring two two men in business suits, one of whom represented Mac and the other PC (anyone else find Anthropomorphism humorous?); PC man was afflicted by a common cold. Mac man touts his prowess as being generally immune to such viruses.

Now, as a Mac user of several years and counting, I've never encountered a computer virus. However, with the media and tech communities all abuzz with proof-of-concept viruses, and making statements that Apple has been lax in implementing appropriate measures to ensure their OS is virus free, running a 30 second commercial proclaiming your immunity is the dumbest thing you can do.

Apple's OS X is, in my opinion, generally more secure than Windows in an out-of-box configuration simply because of it's roots in the BSD world. However, no operating system or computer installation could ever be immune to viruses. The simple fact of the matter is if you don't want to get a computer virus, you must take the following precautions:

• Never connect your computer to the internet.
• Never insert media into your computer from a third party.
• Never allow a computer that has ever violated either of these rules to be networked to your computer in any way.

Further, I'd like to point out that many viruses in the world take advantage of flaws in the software you run on top of your operating system - not the operating system itself. Therefore, even if it were valid to state that an operating system is entirely immune, it's still a completely meaningless statement! We all run software on our computers, and virtually every piece of software you run will expose some level of security threat to your computer.

What Apple needs to do is step down from their high horse and openly admit what the tech community already knows; no computer is safe. OS X tends to be safer for a variety of reasons, the most significant being lack of interest in attacking the platform. With the ever growing popularity of OS X, though, that level of interest in the malware community is going, and will continue, to grow... attacks will be made, viruses written, and our computers will be compromised... OS X, Windows or otherwise.

It's also worth noting that in all the time I've used Mac OS X and not gotten a virus, I've also been using PC's running either Linux or Windows and have never been comprimised on those platforms either. It's all about taking good precautions, running virus scanning software, sitting behind a firewall (built into most network routers you can pick up at the local Best Buy, Office Max, Staples, etc), and updating your software with the latest security patches.

So to close, I repeat, someone should be fired for approving that ad. It was a terrible idea, and will only further peak the interest of those who now wish to do harm to the platform that's touted as immune among the naive.

Just as a quick follow up to my previous post, I wanted to give mention to HandBrake - the software I use to rip DVDs to MPEG4/AAC. It supports a bunch of other codecs, including MPEG4/Vorbis for you open standards nuts (I'd prefer to use MPEG4/Vorbis, but quicktime doesn't play it and if quicktime won't play it, Front Row won't play it). It's easy to use, relatively relaible, and on my mini, rips at an average of 50FPS at full quality.

I also discovered that ripping boxed-sets of TV shows yields .mp4's that aren't properly tagged for FrontRow to pick up as TV Shows. You'd have to list them under Movies. Unhappy with this, I did some searching and found Atomic Parsley - it's an mp4 tagger that lets you tag the movie file properly.

Disclaimer

HandBrake uses libdvdcss - I'm not sure about the legalities of using libdvdcss - I'm sure it depends on what country you're in when you do. Needless to say lots of people worked very hard to entertain you, and you shouldn't break their copyrights. I'm not a fan of DRM or the DMCA, but I'm even less a fan of breakin the law. Don't do it. Remember kids: It's illegal to break the law. I'm pretty sure what I'm doing falls under "acceptable use" of the copyright laws... ah well.

Any of you who've spent more than a couple hours in my presence (I'm sorry), know beyond much of a doubt that I'm what Cheese likes to call a "Fan Boy." I admit it. I'm a marketer's wet dream. Show me a pretty picture of something with buttons and I'll want to buy it.

Unfortunately for me, Apple excels at putting together pretty pictures of things with buttons.

I'm typing to you while lying on my floor infront of my entertainmnt stand in my living room; staring wide-eyed at my 30" high definition TV which is currently playing "monitor" to my new Core Duo Mac Mini. I wanted to post some first impressions of the mini with Front Row as a relative new-comer to the Media PC world.

I say "relative new comer" because I follow the world with some green-eyed wonder. I've done the TiVo thing. I've done the TV-Tuner card thing. My friends have a MythTV Box of Doom of which I'm envious. I've just never had the opportunity to set one up for myself... and after years in the out-of-the-box world of OS X, the do-it-yourselfiness of setting up a linux media PC had been keeping me away. I don't know that it would have been all that difficult... but Uncle Steve (as I like to call him) has spoiled me. I'm a brat. A fan boy brat.

So needless to say I was thrilled with my new investment. Not only did it detect my bluetooth keyboard and mouse on initial startup, it also correctly chose the proper wide-screen resolution supported by my TV. After some initial set up of ripping my music collection off my iPod onto my new mini (which includes Lost Season 2 Episode 1), I quickly grabbed my Apple Remote to play with Front Row.

Front Row is ... well ... dreamy. I love everything about it. I think it could use a couple more features, but I won't go into that here. Having my entire music collection at the tip of my thumb without having to crouch down to look at my iPod (also hooked into my sound system thanks to an iPod Universal Dock) is awesome. I listen to music more than I watch TV, and being able to scroll my play lists, artist lists, and anything else I can access in iTunes is just great. It's fast, it couldn't be simpler, and the on-screen display of what's playing -- it's like having a 30" iPod.

After playing with the music, I flipped to Videos and threw on Lost... while I'm not thrilled with the large-screen quality of the 320x240 video from the iTunes Music Store, browsing videos, playing, pausing, fast forwarding, etc... it's all as simple and intuitive as you'd expect. Of course the real test was DVD's... since I have my Mini hooked up using an HDMI cable, my TV recognizes it as a 1080i input source. And thanks to a handy multi-function line-out jack, I have the Mini hooked into my sound system using a digital optical cable for full 5.1 surround. I popped in Star Wars Episode IV and was taken away. The picture clarity was better than my actual DVD player (which I've come to find out had Progressive Scan turned off...) and the 5.1 Dolby Digital Surround worked without a hitch.

So as if having my entire music collection and new dvd-player in one weren't enough... I went and hooked up 500G of external firewire storage to it, and have been ripping my entire DVD collection to MPEG4/AAC format. Now, in just three tiny little well-matched boxes (the mini, and two 250G stackable LaCie mini fw hd's), I have my entire music collection, my entire movie collection, and the ability to rip DVDs in uber-high quality, all accessible using a tiny white 6 button remote.

All in all, I'm impressed. Did any of you expect that I wouldn't be?

I spent a little while tonight getting ramped up to finally implement a database layer for Blosxonomy, and discovered that getting Ruby DBI working was more difficult that I expected. In particular, it turns out my Mac had multiple versions of Ruby installed, resulting in mis-linked binaries that cause abnormal terminations when I tried to use DBI. The specific error I got was:

/usr/lib/ruby/site_ruby/1.8/powerpc-darwin8.3.0/postgres.bundle: [BUG] Bus Error

Here's what I did to resolve this error and get DBI working:

Cleanup your Rubies

OS X 10.4 ships with Ruby 1.8.2. I had also installed Fink, which installed Ruby 1.8.1. I don't recall if I caused it to do that, or if it was a dependency of something else. This was my first problem. You can check to see if you have them both installed by doing:

/sw/bin/ruby --version
/usr/bin/ruby --version

Ideally, only /usr/bin/ruby will work, and /sw/bin/ruby won't exist. If this is not the case, you should remove the Fink installation. The latest version of Ruby DBI wouldn't link against Ruby 1.8.1, it would only link against 1.8.2 or 1.8.3. To remove Fink's Ruby, I did:

fink remove ruby18-dev ruby

This removed Ruby 1.8.1 and the development header files from your system.

Next, we'll upgrade to Ruby 1.8.3 - Download 1.8.3 Here, extract the tar bundle, and perform the following steps:

configure --prefix=/usr
make
sudo make install

I have XCode 2.2 installed, and use GCC 4.0 by default and did not have any problems. You shouldn't either. This will install the new Ruby over the old one, and also install the new development headers. Confirm that the installation was successful:

ruby --version

Should now show version 1.8.3

Install Ruby PostgreSQL

Download the latest snapshot PostgreSQL Ruby bindings from http://ruby.scripting.ca/postgres/. At the time of this writing, the latest snapshot is 20051127, which is compatible with PostgreSQL 6, 7 and 8. The installation is simple:

ruby extconf.rb \
	--with-pgsql-include-dir=/path/to/postgres/includes \
	--with-pgsql-lib-dir=/path/to/postgres/libs

make
sudo make install

You can omit the --with-pgsql... options if you have PostgreSQL installed in a standard location. I installed PostgreSQL 8.1 using Fink, and did not need to specify these options.

Ruby DBI

Finally, we'll install the DBI library. You can download it from their Rubyforge project page. At the time of this writing, version 0.0.23 is the latest, released on May 20, 2004

Again, installation is very easy, just do:

ruby setup.rb config --with=dbi,dbd_pg
ruby setup.rb setup
ruby setup.rb install

--with=dbi,dbd_pg tells the config to prepare the DBI library, and the PostgreSQL driver. You can specify as many plugin drivers as you like in that. Popular ones will include dbd_mysql, dbd_odbc and dbd_db2. Once this step is complete, you'll be able to connect to your PostgreSQL databases using DBI.

A very very very short sample

Here's the quick sample I was using to test that DBI was properly installed. It's very simple and doesn't do anything at all, but it makes calls to DBI enough to have caused the error earlier.

require 'dbi'
dbh = DBI.connect('DBI:pg:databasename')

dbh.disconnect