Greg Baker mentions a supposed proof from Vinay Deolalikar of HP Labs that P ≠ NP. This is somewhat like the Fermat’s Last Theorem of computer science, with most people believing it to be true, though the proof was elusive. P vs. NP is a more interesting question, however, and the consequences would have been staggering if the result had turned out the other way.
Update (2010-08-11): doespequalnp.com is tracking articles and discussions about the paper.
[This way is] fraught with hassle but is about the best that I could design. I have a Mac mini that will be the “canonical” computer for App Store purchases. Once bought on this machine, iTunes Home Sharing will make sure it appears on all the other machines.
[…]
This is a hole in Apple’s App Store infrastructure that the massive interest in iPads for education is exposing, in a way that the iPhone and iPod touch never did. One can hope that someone at Apple is looking at ways to solve it.
The idle battery life advantage comes from lower idle power, presumably through heavy OS and hardware optimization. While I measured 8W at idle under OS X, running Windows 7 (power saver mode) on the Mac mini resulted in a 12W idle power without any changes to the hardware. Granted I don’t have identical hardware by another manufacturer to confirm that this isn’t negligence on Apple’s part to optimize its firmware for Windows 7. However in the past we’ve shown that systems from Lenovo, despite having similar specifications to Apple notebooks deliver worse idle battery life. I believe it’s safe to assume that part of the reason Apple is able to make such a bold claim about the mini’s energy efficiency is because it is the only desktop that can be sold running Mac OS X.
He also compares the 2010 Mac mini with a PowerMac G5, which actually bested it on one of the Photoshop tests.
Cordless Dog’s Stay is a new utility that stores window configurations for each combination of displays and automatically restores them when you connect or disconnect a display. I’ve been doing this sort of thing via AppleScript for a while now, but it’s nice to see an application that makes it easy. Most Adobe applications don’t work with it, presumably because they don’t support Mac OS X’s accessibility features.
