Concern

Any idea what’s going on with make on Mac OS X 10.5.1?

all: info test

info:
        @echo $$SHELL
        @which echo

test: echo1 echo2
        @diff -q echo.out echo2.out

echo1:
        @echo -n "This is one statement" > echo.out
        @echo ", and this is another" >> echo.out

echo2:
        @/bin/echo -n "This is one statement" > echo2.out
        @/bin/echo ", and this is another" >> echo2.out

For a long time now, I’ve been frustrated with the way my home page renders in Safari: if any line in the main table has a disclosure triangle in the left column (which is hooked up to do a FORM post to expand or collapse that item) the vertical spacing goes all awry. In Firefox, each line in the table is equal height (close to the height of the font), but in Safari, each line has this annoying extra space. Any ideas on how to make this look correctly in both browsers?

Screenshot of Firefox. Screenshot of Safari.

(I feel so 1999, blogging about cross-browser CSS)

Update: Solved! See the comments.

The const keyword means “make my program crash at this point in the file.”

Hope this helps.

I desperately want to love this computer. Apple’s quality just seems to be extremely inconsistent.

The screen is gorgeous. I bought the 24″ model, added another gigabyte of RAM, and have been thoroughly impressed with the system performance and the display. Watching videos — especially HD content — makes this beast well worth the price; it would probably rival some decent televisions, and it works perfectly for my small apartment. The new keyboard design is nice, but it’s nevertheless just a beautifully-designed ergonomic nightmare, and I’m letting my co-worker borrow it instead (since I have a better keyboard anyway). The Mighty Mouse is also neat, but I use a trackball, and could never use that mouse properly since its cable is so ridiculously short. Regardless, it is teh sexy for watching video podcasts and DVDs, and doesn’t hang when doing more than one thing like my Mac Mini did.

But, I’m running into some serious issues. Here’s the list thus far:

1. It kernel panicked the first day, while I was setting it up. Now I was putting some stress on the system — hooking up 1TB of storage through three external drives — but come on. Let me at least install some crazy kernel extensions before it starts panicking on me.
2. There’s a dead pixel, out of the box. It’s near the upper right hand corner of the screen, and thus out of the way, but still.
3. The screen doesn’t feel like glass. Tapping it with my fingernail, it sounds just like a regular old plastic screen, it just looks a lot shinier. I hope I’m just being picky, and didn’t get screwed somehow.
4. This is the kicker: WindowServer will intermittently hang. On Mac OS X, this means that the entire desktop freezes, and while you can still SSH into the system, to use the main display you need to reboot the machine.

   This has happened three times so far, and each time I was looking at the iTunes store in iTunes; I’m starting to suspect that it has something to do with the graphics card, because I can SSH into the system, and using sample can see that iTunes is hung off in the weeds in some graphics routine. Both iTunes and the WindowServer are stuck in uninterruptible sleep, presumably waiting for the graphics hardware to stop freaking out. There’s no obvious crash information, but in the logs I did see this:

   Aug 19 15:02:40 rigel kernel[0]: ** ASIC Hang Log Start **
Aug 19 15:02:40 rigel kernel[0]: 0x01019583 00009062 00009583 00000000
Aug 19 15:02:40 rigel kernel[0]: 0x00000000 00000000 00000000 00000000
Aug 19 15:02:40 rigel kernel[0]: 0x0011a010 00000000 00000000 0083106b
Aug 19 15:02:40 rigel kernel[0]: 0x00f8fc00 00000000 00000001 00008a12

   which continues with a lot of hex values. Fun.

   From reading the discussion boards on Apple’s website, it looks like a few other people have seen this, usually while playing games, which typically means exercising the video.

Update: Rumor has it that the iMac Software Update 1.1 fixes the “ASIC hang” problem. It seems to be working for me.

Update (October 6): Apple seems to be working on the issue. Software update 1.1 does not completely solve the iMac hang problem.

Update (November 3): iMac Software Update 1.2 (Tiger) and 1.3 (Leopard).

So, I got a trademark takedown notice over the Interwebs this week. It was from the Foley Hoag LLP attorneys at law, on the behalf of WANT AD Publications, Inc.

They took issue with me hosting a page, on my personal website, that used the phrase “Want Advertiser.” The page (which I did remove, so you have no frame of reference, sorry) was a half-jokey list of items that I had for sale, or items that I was looking to buy. A personal classified sort of thing.

I haven’t updated that page in years. I thought it was neat at the time to put a little list on my personal website of things that I was selling or wanted to buy, but yeah, I don’t buy or sell anything that often, and if I do, there are better places for that kind of thing. So the page has been there, for ages, static and (for the most part) un-viewed. Then lawyers come around in their lawyery way, and ruffle feathers about taking it down.

It’s not really worth fighting for, so I went ahead and took the page down. Mostly I’m bemused and astounded by this, that these people would go to such an effort for a web page. Not just any web page, not some revenue-generating web site, not even anything that had advertisements. A single, short web page, on a personal web site, that hasn’t been updated in years. They spend money and time fighting that.

I’m not sure if it’s kosher for me to post the PDF they sent. They slap on “CONFIDENTIAL INFORMATION” notices on emails they send out, but I never agreed to receive confidential information. So, can I post the content of their nastygram, here in public?

Yeah, I’m not afraid:

From:	Weinstein, Charles <CEW@foleyhoag.com>
Subject:	WANT AD Publications Inc./Metastatic.org–Infringement of Registered Trademark THE WANT ADVERTISER
Date:	August 16, 2007 07:33:33 AM PDT
To:	Casey Marshall
CC:	Smith, Jim <JAS@foleyhoag.com>
	1 attachment, 113.0 KB Casey S. Marshall.pdf (113.0KB)

Please see the attached PDF file.

Charles E Weinstein, Esq.
Foley Hoag LLP
Seaport World Trade Center West
155 Seaport Boulevard
Boston MA 02210
617.832.1238 (phone)
617.832.7000 (fax)
cweinste@foleyhoag.com

<<Casey S. Marshall.pdf>>

United States Treasury Regulations require us to disclose the following: Any tax advice included in this document and its attachments was not intended or written to be used, and it cannot be used, for the purpose of avoiding penalties under the Internal Revenue Code.

This email message and any attachments are confidential and may be privileged. If you are not the intended recipient, please notify Foley Hoag LLP immediately — by replying to this message or by sending an email to postmaster@foleyhoag.com — and destroy all copies of this message and any attachments without reading or disclosing their contents. Thank you.

For more information about Foley Hoag LLP, please visit us at www.foleyhoag.com.