SE51 > /dev/null > 2007

Usually you should never mention “Internet Explorer” and “W3C compliant” in one sentence, I know. But don’t just stop reading yet. After an astonishing time of more than a decade and seven versions of Microsoft’s (probably not much longer) leading browser, it finally becomes more close to be compliant to the W3C standards with IE.next, otherwise known as Internet Explorer 8.

In the IE Blog of MSDN, they have announced that a test version of the browser’s next installment passes the ACID2 test. This test is designed to find flaws in a browser rendering engine, but at the same time is designed to see if the rendering engine is compliant with the web’s standards. Apparently IE8 passes the test in “Standards Mode”.

Dean Hachamovitch, the General Manager of Microsoft’s Internet Explorer division, has called this a milestone, and is describing the procedure, and what exactly the browser does, in this post on IEBlogs. On the bottom a so-called Check-In is listed, outlining the updated source code files in Internet Explorer which now avail of code to pass the ACID2 test.

It is quite interesting to hear these developments. However, no exact release date has been given, or if the browser is available for XP users, or other features. We can only be left puzzling with what they mean with “Standards Mode”. Maybe the browser will have two modes, such as “IE Mode”, and “Standards Mode”. The latter is probably not enabled by default, and it won’t be available for XP. A pity. Because a lot of people like XP more.

Whatever you may think of this headline, do not forget what UFO basically means: Unidentified Flying Object. It is the media which coined the term Ufo instead of UFO, automatically linking such devices to machines flown by an advanced alien race, which, if true, possesses a knowledge about time and space, superseding ours. However, so far, the search for hard evidence has regrettably come up with nothing concrete. So officially we do not know of other intelligent life than on Earth. However, having had a personal experience with one of these flying machines, I cannot deny the reports of many people around the world who have seen similar objects in the sky, or even first hand when they came up close.

Where as the USA denies any existence of these objects, Japan is more forthcoming and acknowledges their existence, although they also lack on the hard evidence.

TOKYO (Reuters) - Yes, UFOs do exist, Japan’s top government spokesman said on Tuesday.
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The comment by chief cabinet secretary Nobutaka Machimura drew laughter from reporters at his regular briefing on government policy.

Earlier the cabinet, responding to an opposition lawmaker’s question, issued a statement saying it could not confirm any cases of unidentified flying objects.

“This is an issue that the nation is interested in — it is a defence issue and a confirmation operation needs to take place,” Ryuji Yamane, a lawmaker from the main opposition Democratic Party who submitted the question to the cabinet, told Reuters.

The thing in bold is the key sentence here. This means they may be planning an military operation to get photos, and more information about these objects. I think this is a huge step forward in the right direction.

So personally, yes, after having seen one of those things relatively close, I also do believe they exist, and are not from this world. I cannot deny what I have seen.

Yahoo! News: Japan government spokesman says UFOs do exist

The truth is out there, trust me.

That would ultimately boost sales for the DS even more, as Mario Galaxy is already the highest rated games of all time. The below is either leaked footage, or a damn well done fake… I hope it’s the first one.

UPDATE: Regrettably, the video is indeed fake. The comments at another video over at YouTube state this:

It’s fake this video is created by psyco3ler, not Nintendo

Damn it.

…but the gate was still boarding this morning when I barely made it to the plane. But when I got there, I was able to make this shot before I flew to Germany. =)

Every year, I create a sampler for myself, in form of a double CD, which contains the songs that meant something to me. Every year around December, I complete the Cover Art and the back, which I then print and put it into a CD label, then I also burn the CDs as Audio CDs.

This year’s cover concentrates on OS X Mercury, as it was on the center stage this year for me, combined with a Leopard box like look, and the back obviously is from Time Machine. The older iTunes windows reflect the backside art from the two years before.

Time Machine through the year.

Silently, Google has launched a new interface for the iPhone and iPod touch. It now sports access to its major services along a row on the top of the screen, such as Mail and its Reader service, as well as the Calendar. Everything works as expected, but with a cooler look.

If you own an iPhone or iPod touch, open Safari and navigate to google.com/m.

If you made it right, you should get a screen like this:

Many in the IT world consider this to be a Holy Grail, a true ultimate in software milestones. Imagine you have a Mac, you like it, but you need to run Excel - and then running it without any other tool in between, just doubleclick it. No Parallels, no VMWare, not even Boot Camp. How does that sound to you? Amazing? It sure does to me.

And here’s the real juicy part: There seems to be an undocumented and so far very well hidden feature in Mac OS X Leopard, which could be counted as evidence that Apple’s developers are indeed brewing on the recipe for Windows apps and might add it to the meal.

This is not the first time that this subject come up. Rumor had it a lot of times that Apple might be working on such a thing, as there was one Code Name which never took form, but was mentioned. When Apple’s systems were older, and just called Mac OS, the layers for each framework (such as Carbon and Cocoa) were put in symbolic boxes, so that the entire thing was easier to understand.

Yellow Box:

The Yellow Box is the application environment for “Rhapsody” software, whether on the PowerPC or Intel platform. It is preemptive (applications must share the CPU; no program can take over), multithreading (several applications can run at the same time, not just coexist in memory), and memory protected (an application may crash, but that will not crash the operating system).

Blue Box:

Blue Box is how you run Macintosh applications under Rhapsody for PowerPC. It fully duplicates the Mac OS right down to its limitations, such as memory management and concurrent multitasking. (If it went beyond that and offered more robust services like Rhapsody does, many Mac applications might not work properly.) The first Blue Box release runs in full-screen mode, hiding Yellow Box; this may change in the future.

And the Holy Grail read as follows.

Red Box:

Red Box, although not confirmed by Apple, would be how you run Windows applications under Rhapsody for Intel - and possibly under Rhapsody for PowerPC as well. Like the Blue Box on a Power Macintosh, the Red Box will give Rhapsody users a way to run Windows applications.

A little more detailed information about the tree boxes can be found here.

But Red Box never took some interesting shape. Steven Edwards on the WINE mailing list points out that he has found some VERY interesting behavior of Leopard while trying to test something with WINE. It seems as if he has uncovered a hidden and undocumented feature that might lead show that Apple is indeed trying to make native Windows execution a reality. Without Windows.

In the below I have left out some parts, so that the more important information is directly visible.

When tracking down a crash in the kernel32 loader test, Dmitry found a
bug in the Mac OS loader when Wine tried to load his dummy PE file.
Upon further research I found that the Mac loader seems to have its
own undocumented PE loader built in. I did some further testing with a
windows binary and got some really interesting results.

[...]

Its trying to load the dlls. I get this output:

[...]
steven-edwardss-imac:temp sedwards$ file procexp.exe
procexp.exe: MS-DOS executable PE for MS Windows (GUI) Intel 80386 32-bit
steven-edwardss-imac:temp sedwards$ open .
steven-edwardss-imac:temp sedwards$ ./a.out
dlopen(./procexp.exe, 258): Library not loaded: MPR.dll
Referenced from: /Users/sedwards/Library/Application
[...]

So this leads to the question. Whats going on? Is Apple going to be
adding a win32 compatibility layer to OS X?

On the second reply he himself wrote in the thread, he has again listed outputs of commands, and further states:

PE Files were rejected on Tiger, which is interesting to me because I don’t
think that this is just a hold over from EFI support. I think it may be a sign
of future addition of a Win32 subsystem to OS X.

On the third (and in the moment the last) page, he states:

More information

(Link to more information at Apple Open Source)
[Note: You must be registered in Apple Developer Connection to access this code!]

which contains

# local symbols to suppress
*PE*
*Win*

The project file references ImageLoaderPE.cpp, but that isn’t included
in the source…
all the other files are here, so yes it really looks like they are
trying to hide support for
PE. Why would they go to all this trouble to hide Windows Binary support?

So. Steve. What’s happening here? Is you or is you ain’t implementing Windows Executable support in OS X 10.6 maybe?!

If you want to see all the output, go to Steven Edward’s WINE mailing list thread and read the three entries he has done, which do uncover very interesting information.

This could be a leftover from an earlier, unfinished project. But then, how are the same things rejected when attempted on Mac OS X Tiger, Apple’s previous system? Is Red Box taking shape? Or is it just weird behavior of Apple’s system, maybe throwing oil into the fire on purpose? I guess we won’t find out at the next MacWorld, but maybe at WWDC 09 or so.

Stay iTuned.

I made a video showing the possibilities of a jailbroken iPod touch, in case you haven’t seen what the device can do with a little bit of work.

Luckily this never happened to me. And it certainly won’t as I use Macs now. But what to do, if this should happen to you? Microsoft explains it to you. In detail. And why.

Click on the image, and read the information very carefully!

And if you don’t believe this is a real entry in Microsoft’s KB, then click here and behold.

Don’t worry. I’m not in a jail right now. And luckily, my iPod touch which I got yesterday, also is no more in jail. I helped him out with a procedure that is commonly known as “Jailbreak”. The legality of this is pretty much open to interpretation, as the procedure changes a device you own, and there’s nothing wrong with changing ones property. So Apple can say little to nothing about the super intelligent hackers that are out there, giving us the pleasure of open iPod touches. If you do this on an iPhone, I think it is more questionable as you would most likely want to unlock the phone. And at that aspect, I can understand when Apple gets mad. On the iPod however, I don’t think massive damage is done to the company.

And this is why I give you a quick rundown of what to do to Jailbreak your iPod touch, with current Firmware 1.1.2. Got the touch? Got some minutes? Let’s go.

What you need:
iPod touch, wireless LAN with web access, the sync cable, and iTunes.

What you have to do:

1.) If your iPod is on 1.1.2 already, you have to download the Firmware 1.1.1 from Apple, and downgrade to it. It’ll wipe the touch, but don’t worry, you can re-sync later.

2.) Connect your touch and open iTunes. In there, select your iPod, and then hold down the Option key (on Windows it’s the Alt key), and click on Restore. This will force iTunes to open a dialog from which you can chose the file from step 1. Let it do it’s thing.

3.) Once it’s done, unplug the touch and open Safari on the device, and navigate to JailBreakMe.com, scroll down to the end, and click on install AppTapp application.

4.) The touch will reboot and on your Springboard you’ll see the Installer icon. Your device is now jailbroken.

5.) To update to 1.1.2, open the Installer.app on the touch, go to Install on the bottom, then Tweaks (1.1.1), and select OktoPrep. This tool is really important for the upgrade. Once it’s installed, reconnect the touch with the Mac or PC.

6.) Now, download the 1.1.2 firmware from Apple’s servers. If iTunes asks you to upgrade, cancel it.

7.) Once the download completes, like before, in iTunes go to your iPod and Option-click (or PC: Alt-click) on “Update”. Again, iTunes opens a dialog. Select the new firmware downloaded from step 6.

8.) Cool. If you made it this far, you’re not far away from your pleasure. Now, download the 1.1.2 Jailbreak from the linked page.

9.) Got it? Good. Extract the zip. Connect the touch to your computer, and important: quit iTunes. Everything that has the name iTunes or iPod as running process must go. Seriously. Do this now.

10.) Alright. At this point, you’re very close. Open the folder into which you extracted the file from step 8. For Windows users, doubleclick the windows.bat file, for Mac users, the .JAR file. Make sure you’ve got Java installed.

11.) Wait. Watch it do it’s thing. When it’s done, your iPod will reboot 3 times or so, and there’s the Installer.app again!

—

Let the fun begin. If you want to install 3rd party apps, go to the Installer.app, and install what your heart desires. Ah yes, you’re running on 1.1.2 now. Cool eh?

If you made everything right, you can have a Springboard screen like this:

iPod touch showing multiple apps, including previously unavailable iPhone applications

Second page of my Springboard

Enjoy!