So I’m investigating leaving Sprint after the news of the previous entry, and this doesn’t inspire confidence in the brand for Verizon.

One would think to place basic computational arithmetic well within the realm of web monkeys that can make a web store for a multi-billion-dollar communications giant. One would also, apparently, be quite wrong.

Exactly how do you pay so

Oh boy, this is bad. This is real bad.

BoingBoing reader Steve Parkinson has discovered a customer data security hole in the automated phone care system for Sprint Wireless.

Here’s how it works. You dial a certain toll-free Sprint customer service line (doesn’t matter what number you’re dialing from), then punch in the cellphone number of a Sprint Wireless subscriber (not necessarily yours). The Sprint voice-bot reads back to you the full name and street address of the accountholder associated with that number. Could be you, could be someone else.

Boing Boing: Security blunder: Sprint Wireless leaks customer data

$ sudo htdigest -c trac.db ahknight 
Password:
Could not open passwd file -c for reading.
Use -c option to create new one.

Apple, I love you, but what the fuck are you thinking? Keynote ’06 takes up 1.1 GB of disk space. One program takes up one gigabyte of disk space. One program I own only to view files created by others, not to create myself. That one beast takes up 1/80th of my hard drive.

Why?

Looking inside I find 62 MB of private frameworks, your typical scattered TIFF files, and 1.03 GB of themes. Why so many themes? Each theme has five variations, all variations due to differing screen sizes. Five variations of a 60 MB theme. Up to five variations for each of 27 themes. Every variation designed for one screen size.

I’ve only ever bought one iBook new. It was an iBook G3, the 700MHz cheapo model Apple made to get into the sub-1000-by-a-dollar market a few years ago. I see how they did it, in hindsight, as that thing held together like popsicle sticks and rubber bands. Among the repairs that thing had: video issues, hinge issues, a bad hard drive, two power adapters, a DC board, and then the hinge again. After that last one I just looked the guy at the bar in the eye and said, “Dude, I want another one.” He obliged.

Somewhere in the middle of that story I was given a second iBook, though the “good” model above it. Four or five repairs on that one landed me my other iBook G4, and those are the machines my wife and I run today. Compared to the iBook G3, the G4 is stellar. I’ve not had a single repair on either unit, or the adapters (that revision they made right before the iBook G4 solved every single problem I’d had with it). Well, save one problem.

The quality of the mail application in Mac OS X never ceases to amaze me.

I use Jabberd 2 for my own Jabber server (codepoet at this domain) so when I was investigating Apple’s iChat Server in Mac OS X Server it was a little confusing since they’re using 1.4. I see their reasons for doing so, namely mu-conference, and that’s okay. It’s just that it’s hell figuring out what they’ve done to it.

After some investigation it turns out that they have a pretty sweet setup included out of the box:

• jabberd 1.4.3.1 b35
• mu-conference
• proxy65

This enables the iChat Service to essentially do all the things we expect iChat to do, like, well, chat, file transfers, and chat rooms. It’s pretty nice, and I was impressed.

Step One: Underestimate the size of the memory by 50%.
Step Two: Using that measurement, allocate a quarter of what you think the server has in memory to a MySQL query cache, and the other half to various other caches in MySQL and Apache.
Step Three: ab -kc 50 -t $((5*60)) http://the.server/

In about thirty minutes, when I could actually enter text at the keyboard again, I discovered the folly, adjusted the sizes, and ordered more RAM. During that thirty minutes, however, I was about to die. I’d cancelled the benchmark around thirty seconds into it when I noticed no progress and the fans in the G5 started to sound like La Guardia’s runway around mid-day. It didn’t let up for a half-hour more.

And with a two-month-old backup, too. grumble

I’m not Ganesha: I have two hands. Unfortunately, the folks at Nintendo seem to feel that, well, I’m not trying hard enough with my games and that I should suddenly sprout two more hands. At least, that’s the feeling I got after trying to play Metroid on the demo DS at the local Game Stop.

Move with the pad, turn and fire with the pen, perform actions with the buttons and, oh, hold the damn thing while doing all of this. Excuse me? Are you insane? I barely got a hold on the number of buttons on the Super Nintendo and now I have to put up with all of this? Coupled with having to watch two screens while paying attention to my four arms.

Instead of getting a DS for myself, I bought a second Advance SP for my wife to feed her FF and Metroid addictions, then picked up Paperboy, Metroid: Zero Mission, and Final Fantasy I & II. All used, all functional, and a significantly better use of my money than going through prosthetic surgery.