Apple, Poste e copyright

Stamattina nella cassetta della posta (quella vera) ho trovato una busta con la pubblicità di Posteitaliane e dei loro servizi per le imprese.

Visto il retro della busta ho pensato: "Wow!!! Avranno fatto qualche accordo con Apple, chissà magari anche per accedere ai servizi PosteItaliane via iPhone"....

Apro la busta....leggo il depliant e mi accorgo che non c'è parola su Mac, iPhone o altre mela-servizi: si è trattato solo di un rip del design di un iMac per attrarre l'attenzione.

Ed eccoci alla solita domanda che accompagna i miei post.

Visto che nè sulla busta, nè nel depliant non c'è menzione di marchi, di Apple, di copyright, o robe simili mi chiedo se pure io posso fare una foto al mio iMac, togliergli il marchio della mela e usarla per tutti gli scopi pubblicitari che mi pare per attrarre potenziali clienti verso la mia impresa :-)

Here's to the crazy ones

The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently.

They're not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo.

You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can't do is ignore them.

Because they change things.

They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.

Maybe they have to be crazy.

How else can you stare at an empty canvas & see a work of art?
Or, sit in silence & hear a song that's never been written?
Or, gaze at a red planet & see a laboratory on wheels?

We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones, we see genius.

"Because the people who are crazy enough to think they
can change the world, are the ones who do."


dedicated to a friend.

(from the Think Different campaign of Apple Computer)

Young (cheap) system administrators...

...should be avoided, or at least well trained, when required to manage a name server like that one which controls APPLE.IT and APPLE.COM domain.

This morning my squid complained about http://www.apple.it/ couldn't be reached cause www.apple.it did have No address records...so I thought: WTF? Can't be!

Well..it actually is:

iscamac:~ rlucia$ date
Fri Sep 28 13:03:43 CEST 2007
iscamac:~ rlucia$ host -t a www.apple.it
www.apple.it is an alias for euro-red.apple.com.
iscamac:~ rlucia$ host -t a euro-red.apple.com
euro-red.apple.com has no A record
iscamac:~ rlucia$ host -t ns apple.it
apple.it name server nserver.euro.apple.com.
apple.it name server nserver.apple.com.
apple.it name server nserver2.apple.com.
iscamac:~ rlucia$ host -t a euro-red.apple.com nserver.euro.apple.com
Using domain server:
Name: nserver.euro.apple.com
Address: 17.72.133.64#53
Aliases:

euro-red.apple.com has no A record
iscamac:~ rlucia$ host -t a euro-red.apple.com nserver.apple.com
Using domain server:
Name: nserver.apple.com
Address: 17.254.0.50#53
Aliases:

euro-red.apple.com has no A record
iscamac:~ rlucia$ host -t a euro-red.apple.com nserver2.apple.com
Using domain server:
Name: nserver2.apple.com
Address: 17.254.0.59#53
Aliases:
euro-red.apple.com has no A record
iscamac:~ rlucia$


I think some homework is required, or at least encorauged.

I know you're in a hurry, for a quick and dirty solution, add these two lines into apple.com zone:

$ORIGIN apple.com.
euro-red IN A 1.2.3.4

where 1.2.3.4 should be replaced with the IP address of your actual web server :-)

P.S.
• hey, don't forget to bump up zone serial ;-)
• for the rest of us that still want to access Apple web site in Italian, it's possible to reach it at http://www.apple.com/it/

Once upon a long ago...

...Apple released Mac OS X Public Beta. Tonight I was making some housekeeping and I stumbled upon some old screenshots of my first iMac. Pics were taken on October 1st, 2000!

The apple just in the middle of the menu bar was so strange, but a piece of art itself.

Woah, We still had Internet Explorer, and what a release!!! Great piece of software. Congrats MacBU@Microsoft. And Sherlock in the Dock!!!

As far as I can remember the most visual "shocking" thing for me at that time, was the extensive and constructive use of alpha channel in UI elements.  Very Good Thing (tm)! Along with the Finder column view, straight from X-Window, and the polished-striped Aqua interface.

Another nifty feature, was the window content preview when minimizing windows on the Dock.

As of OS 9 compatibility I admit I can't remember if SoftWindows worked on Classic, but I remember I switched to VirtualPC for emulation purposes. What a pity that SmithMicro/Insignia abandoned the emulation arena. Not to mention FAXstf pearl, that was always late with releases respect to OS X point release...so I abandoned it for PageSender.

Jeez, and what to say about the Terminal.app? basically it was sooooo FreeBSD-ish, and it really was :-) ifconfig, and ipfw!!! Ahhh... I felt at home and I decided to switch to Mac OS X!

Tomorrow it will be, 7 years since the Public Beta. It's been a long and bright way, so congrats system developers; but today we are missing a great ingredient of this recipe that during the years made the magic possible: the PowerPC.