Installing Silverlight on OS X

So I have to use M$ silverlight to get access to course material.
The installer doesn't recognize intel macs as intel macs, so you have to do a little jiggery-pokery to get the plugin working.

Download Silverlight.2.0.pkg
Open Terminal.app
cd ~/Downloads/Silverlight.2.0.pkg/Contents/Resources
./preflight
cd ..
open .

This will open a finder window. Then double click on the archive Archive.pax.gz, this will produce a folder Library/Internet\ Plug-Ins/. Open this directory and drag the file Silverlight.plugin to the directory ~/Library/Internet\ Plugin-Ins/.

then in Terminal
cd Resources
./postflight

I don't know if you even need to run the pre- and postflight scripts, but I figured they were there for a reason and that I might as well wave a dead chicken at it.

Recursion

noun. See Recursion

DARPA Urban Challenge

Hoo-ray!

Carnegie Mellon's Tartan Racing team has won the DARPA Urban Challenge. On the first try too.
http://www.darpa.mil/grandchallenge/index.asp

The Future

In the future will people look back on us today and our quaint ways?  Will going to the cinema be an outmoded extravagance that the upper crust affect?  If so, it serves them right, having to sit through 16 hours of William Shatner's "The Tempest".

Tastes Like Chicken

Apple Problems Resolved!

I've finally fixed my problem with the AirPort card. I'm returning my computer. Richard, the Apple customer service rep who I spoke with was very accomodating and he understood my problem, namely I need the computer to work, and this one wasn't working, nor was the previous MacBook I had. Hopefully Apple has fixed this problem in the new laptops they have just recently produced, but I don't care any more. Apple, as an institution, is not prepared to admit it has a problem to me, a loyal customer, and did very little to make me feel assured that they were doing anything to fix the problem. So I've left Apple in favour of a Lenovo 12.1" thinkpad. I'll be installing linux on it as soon as I get my Windows Tax Refund

On a side note, Richard the Customer Service rep was very helpful and patient, and he went and got a "one time exception" from the powers that be to allow me to return my laptop. This is in fact not the first time that Richard helped me out like that. The other time was when I was returning the first power adapter that came with my second MacBook. It wasn't properly grounded, so I had it replaced. I returned it too late, and between the jigs and the reels, Richard got me my money back. Richard should be promoted, or get some kind of a bonus. In fact, if all the people who worked at Apple computers were as concerned for the interests of the customers as Richard was, I'd probably still be using Apple computers.

So the moral of the story is: Don't buy Apple products, they seem to be dropping quality in favour of attracting a hipper customer base, and some one give Richard in the customer service department at Apple Canada some more money and a promotion.

Continuing Apple Problems (Part 3)

I found this forum on Apple's website.

Here the "solution" was to replace the airport card.
Don't know if it solve the problem or not, but if it did, that would give creedence to the theory that Apple is trying to avoid a recall.

Still no word from Atheros.