![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
I think that, somehow, I've lost my copy of Stephen Ambrose's Nothing Like It In the World, about the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. I probably use it as a trivia source too often anyway, but it really can't have gone missing -- I've only got a couple of piles of books of that size, which I've looked through, and it can't be in my office, and it's not in my luggage. That's not as embarrassing as having apparently lost my new debit card (it must be in here somewhere, too, but I have only two weeks to get it activated, and about three weeks before the first routine charge on it should happen), but it's disquieting to have my small possessions squirming out from under me. I did lose a sock, too, but that's to be expected, even when I take pretty careful count of their number.
Singapore Airlines is running ads pledging that from 1 March you can fly them to ``Fascinating Moscow''. I'm glad. They had flown too many times to ``Boring Moscow'', and you can only go to ``Middlingly Acceptable Moscow'' a certain number of times (four) before you're done, and the trips to ``The Binghamton of Moscow'' never sold as well as you'd imagine from that description.
I noticed the Software Update description of the Mac OS X 10.4.5 upgrade lists fixes for Safari rendering of web pages, for Dashboard usability, and for ``time zone and daylight savings for 2006 and 2007''. You can almost hear Steve Jobs thinking through the changes and upgrades for this version and ultimately having no choice but to summon his inner Count Floyd and say, ``look -- just -- download this already, it's got, you know, stuff and all that.''
Singapore's first wheelchair-friendly bus, with an extender ramp so that those in wheelchairs can get on and off, has been unveiled. It's a double-decker bus.
Trivia: For a charity performance in 1849 Charles Dickens dressed in exotic robes and presented himself as ``The Unparalleled Necromancer Rhia Rhama Rhoos.'' Source: The Rise of the Indian Rope Trick, Peter Lamont.
Currently Reading: Gotham: A History of New York City to 1898, by Edwin G Burrows, Mike Wallace.
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 04:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 04:32 pm (UTC)I know, even though I live in a place that either never goes onto Daylight Saving Time or is always on it, depending on your point of view. It's just that when it comes to selling points for operating systems, ``reliable adjustment for Daylight Saving Time'' tends to rank pretty low, somewhere above ``feels like it's going faster if you make little vrooom noises'' but below ``has emulator for Atari 520 ST''.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 05:00 pm (UTC)Inquiring minds want to know!
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 05:06 pm (UTC)True. On the one hand I'd like to have details; on the other, I wouldn't understand them anyway.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 12:13 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 06:50 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 07:15 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 11:17 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 03:27 pm (UTC)Just think of it as practice for when we switch over to 25-hour days.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 07:23 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 03:40 pm (UTC)I'm just curious why the fix was described as being effective only for 2006 and 2007. You'd think it would be indefinite.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 04:12 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 07:11 pm (UTC)... I take it the wheelchairs aren't intended to get onto the second deck. unless that's a ramp that extends very far indeed.
--Chiaroscuro
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 12:14 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 03:30 pm (UTC)Actually, since Apple's trying to stick to the X so much as possible, they pretty much use the first digit as the ``major version number''. So the minor version number has become the petty version number. Still, it's a pretty dull revision even as these things go.
I'd hope the wheelchairs are expected to stick to the first level, though you never know.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 04:15 pm (UTC)The 10 indicates that this is System 10 and is compatible with all the other 10.x releases (mostly, although there are major changes in each 10.x that means that some software requires at least a certain major revision and no earlier).
The first decimal place indicates which major revision it is, and each has a codename to go with it. 0 was "Cheetah", 1 was "Puma" (though I may have these two reversed), 2 was "Jaguar", 3 was "Panther" and now we're on 4, "Tiger". The next one is going to be called "Leopard". Yes, I know that leopards and panthers are basically the same animal. ;)
The second decimal place indicates which system update it is. They start at 0, the initial stamped CDs you buy in the stores (although sometimes the CDs on the shelves become a later revision).
So, 10.4.5 = System 10, 4th major revision, 5th patch.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-15 08:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 12:17 am (UTC)BTW, I found this little OS X ditty (http://community.livejournal.com/macosx/4771148.html) amusing.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 12:22 am (UTC)My guess is they found some devestating network security vulnerability and decided to silently fix it before it hit the news. ;^)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 03:34 pm (UTC)I think they're trying to distract people from noticing they attempted to rhyme ``pirate'' with ``great'', myself.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 04:19 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 04:18 pm (UTC)They're trying to keep it running on Apple-made systems only because they're primarily in the hardware business, not software, and they would lose money if it's installed on generic PCs. So they do try to improve the locks, but they don't shove out random patches just to thwart it.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 08:21 pm (UTC)And, you know, It's really time witht he shift to x86 to have an 11.0 . Otherwise we'll be seeing 10.7.19 in another few years and.. well, do I need to say that's just not right?
--Chiaroscuro
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 08:48 pm (UTC)Any thwart attempts weren't made because of these specific hackers, as people seem to be saying, but as a general attempt to revise the software and make it 'better'; if you think it was a knee-jerk response done in just a few days, you should look into software QA and how long it really takes. There is no way a patch would be shoved out in under a week -- especially since past patches have really screwed up peoples' systems.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-17 04:28 am (UTC)10,7 means you're rapidly appropaching 10.9, and there simply is no 10.10. It's just. not. Done.
--Chiaroscuro
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-17 03:09 pm (UTC)But that's the thing, the revisions that would have been new version numbers have become the first-digit minor numbers now, so the hypothetical 10.7 would be what would otherwise have been something obscene like System 16, although they might have snuck some huge changes in with minor numbers (as in the System 7 to 7.5 change, or System 8 to 8.1). Call it System 14, which is silly enough as it is.
I seem to recall that they did get minor revisions up to 10.3.9, and there was some speculation what the next pre-10.4 update would be called, if it existed. My preference in the As The Apple Turns polls (alas) was ``10.3.9 Extreme''.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-17 08:10 pm (UTC)I could mentally handle 10.3.10 better than, say, 10.10.3 . I think that's mostly SecondLife's upgrades getting to me, as well as my disenjoyment of four-figure upgrades, 10.3.9.1 or such.
--Chiaroscuro
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-17 04:21 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 03:13 am (UTC)I'll have to get that back to you...
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-16 03:37 pm (UTC)No, no, the card is accounted for. It's missing but I know why, and I'm not worried.