independence
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Hitting the Books: America might not exist if not for a pre-Revolution smallpox outbreak
As historian Andrew Wehrman explains in The Contagion of Liberty: The Politics of Smallpox in the American Revolution that our downright violent resistance to, and demand for freedom from, this disease also helped galvanize our mobilization of independence from England.
Wiretapping Act could spell 'finito' for Italian Wikipedia
This week, lawmakers in Italy are debating a controversial new bill that could have disastrous implications for Wikipedia. Yesterday, the encyclopedia posted a lengthy letter on its Italian portal, informing visitors that the site may be shuttered within the country if parliament passes the proposed DDL Intercettazioni, or "Wiretapping Law." If ratified, the legislation would require all online publishers to amend any content considered objectionable or defamatory within 48 hours of receiving a complaint. Offenders would face a fine of €12,000 (about $16,000), and any requested corrections would not be subject to review. Of course, this presents obvious problems for the crowdsourced (and crowd-edited) Wikipedia, which characterized the law as "an unacceptable restriction of [its] freedom and independence." The site took particular umbrage at the bill's apparent disregard for third-party review, pointing out that the "opinion of the person allegedly injured is all that is required" to force a re-write, "regardless of the truthfulness of the information deemed as offensive, and its sources." At the moment, the portal is still up, but masked by Wikipedia's letter. If the Wiretapping Law progresses further, however, the organization says it will have no choice but to delete its Italian platform altogether. [Image courtesy of Toutlecine]
Wurm Online to open new PvE server 'Deliverance' -- commence land rush!
Wurm Online, the classic sandbox MMO partially crafted from the mind of Minecraft's Notch, has announced today that it will open up another Freedom PvE server on September 6th. This server will be the first time new virgin land has been available in the game for years, setting the stage for an exciting land rush. The server will be named Deliverance (oh, now you get the header image), and will only be accessible through the tutorial portal or the southern edge of the existing Freedom Independence server. So if you're interested in scoping out the newest and best land for your Wurm Online village, get your settlement token ready at 12 p.m EDT on the 6th and good luck!
WoW Insider Show Episode 97: Chasing silhouettes
Good times as always on our podcast this past holiday weekend -- while Turpster was away, we Americans took over the show, and declared our independence the only way we know how: by talking about the most popular stories in the World of Warcraft this past week. Adam Holisky, Alex Ziebart, Michael "Belfaire" Sacco and I answered your emails, and then chatted about Blizzard's addition of faction changes to the game (and who'll go for it), patch 3.2 and its extendable raid lockouts and universal armor tokens, Exodus and Ensidia and how Blizzard has dealt with both, and of course, that sneaky Cataclysm trademark and what it might mean for Blizzard's future releases.Whew! If it sounds like a full show, that's because it was. It even went on longer than usual, so you can enjoy the extra-long WoW Insider Show at any of the links below (including clicking on the iTunes link to subscribe directly there). We won't be back next Saturday -- instead, we're setting up for a special Thursday evening show this week at 6pm Eastern, so those of you who can't make it on Saturdays can instead tune in on Thursday night to chat and listen live with us on the Ustream page.Enjoy this past weekend's show, and we'll see you on Thursday.Get the podcast:[iTunes] Subscribe to the WoW Insider Show directly in iTunes.[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.Listen here on the page:
Easy 1.1.4 jailbreaking with iNdependence, Ziphone, and... iTunes?
If you happen to own an iPhone, and you happen to have updated to the 1.1.4 firmware, you can now easily jailbreak, activate, and unlock your phone with a couple of simple solutions. As you may have heard, iNdependence 1.4 beta 5 is out, which will do all sorts of non-Apple approved things to your device from OS X, though if you're looking for the ultimate cross-platform solution, you probably can't do better than the latest version Zibri's all-in-one package, Ziphone 2.5. Both apps make it about a million times easier than this was a few weeks ago, though we've seen video of a new solution -- jailbreaking directly from iTunes -- that could make this process even simpler (though considerably more illegal). Check that out after the break and get a glimpse of your deviant future.[Via TUAW; Thanks to everyone who sent this in] Read - iNdependence Read - Ziphone's Blog
iNdependence utility updated to work with 1.1.4 firmware
If you're waiting for a jailbreak tool for the iPhone 1.1.4 firmware (and you aren't eager to hang around for the promised update to Ziphone), iNdependence 1.4 beta 5 might be for you. The latest version of the tool is built to work with the new iPhone firmware without difficulty.iNdependence is billed as the "easy-to-use interface for jailbreak, activation, SSH installation, and ringtone/wallpaper/application installation on your iPhone." With the new beta, the SIM unlocking (gunlock) capability is rolled in. Full changelog is here.As always, you jailbreak or unlock your device at your own risk.Thanks to everyone who sent this in.[via Digg]
The case of the missing resolution independence
What the heck happened to resolution independence?In Gruber's review of the Powerbook a few years ago, he trumpeted the coming of a feature long evading the Mac faithful, a resolution independent interface. Others at the time expected the same thing to appear in Leopard: UI elements that were completely independent of the screen's resolution, and, finally, a fully scalable interface, and freedom from whatever screen you were working on. Higher resolutions without squeezing down the UI elements. And as we got closer to Leopard, more and more word went around that OS 10.5 would have it. At WWDC 2006, some developers even confirmed it. And Apple even filed a patent to get it done.Except now it's November, Leopard is out, and resolution independence is nowhere to be found, at least at the user-accessible level. What gives?
iPhone jailbreak interface INdependence updated to 1.2.2
We just received word that Independence, the interactive Cocoa jailbreak program for iPhone has been updated to version 1.2.2 and now supports 1.1.1 jailbreaks. The notes on the site say the the activation/jailbreak process is more complicated than it had been previously, presumably due to the infrastructure changes to 1.1.1.Thanks to everyone who sent this in.
Will Australia get the first look at Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard?
Tim Gaden (of Hawk Wings fame) has written an interesting article for his 'day job' column at APC Magazine about the possibility of our friends down under getting a first peek at Apple's forthcoming update to Mac OS X, 10.5 Leopard. Apparently, Apple has sent emails stating that they will be previewing the August WWDC during special seminars in Australian capitals during the month of June - nearly two months before the real WWDC takes the stage.If this is true, it would be great to hear real details of what Leopard is going to bring, as opposed to mere rumors of a re-built and Spotlight-dependent Finder, Windows virtualization and resolution independence. Here's hoping our Australian neighbors can't keep secrets very well.
On resolution independence
There is a lot of buzz and speculation floating around as to what we'll see in the Mac OS X 10.5 update that will be previewed (and I suspect released) at this August's World Wide Developer's Conference. One exciting 'fundamental feature' John Gruber hinted at last November has been mentioned again by a developer named Dustin MacDonald: resolution independence.Gruber broke this concept down in a November '05 post titled Full Metal Jacket (under the Display heading), but to summarize: most of the dimensions of elements in Mac OS X (and other OSes to my knowledge) are defined in pixels - the menu bar is 22 px high, for example. This explains why things 'seem to look a little smaller' when you move from the 1024 x 768 dimensions of a 12" display to the 1440 x 900 resolution of the latest 15" PowerBook G4 or MacBook Pro displays. Conversely, if you decrease the resolution on the machine you're working on now, things will look a bit bigger; you have smaller resolution and fewer ppi (or dpi) on screen, so some elements change size. This can become a problem in the context of notebook displays and their resolutions - if you take the 15" MacBook Pro's resolution higher than 1440 x 900, things could become smaller than what many might consider usable (these same rules apply to Windows and I believe Linux as well). Further, you can't just keep increasing notebook display sizes like you can with desktop displays; I've heard of the 19" notebooks Engadget has come across, and I personally don't consider a 16 lb computer worthy of the 'portable' adjective.
