New Macbook Pro

Posted April 16th, 2007 in Commentary by jayshao

Got a new Macbook Pro (gotta add the pro at the end) at work, and have literally spent the whole day adding in all the stuff I “need” to make it my own development box. It’s amazing how much stuff you end up with that you quickly come to rely on. My short list seems to include:

  • Quicksilver
  • Macports
  • NetNewsWire & Marsedit
  • WeatherPop Advance
  • Textmate
  • Omni Group Stuff (Omnigraffle Pro & Outliner Pro)
  • Micrsoft Office: Mac
  • Eclipse & Webtools
  • SVN (through Macports)
  • … which means Apple’s developer tools, for GCC
  • Maven
  • Colloquy

And I’m sure a whole bunch of crap that I’m forgetting right now… It’s amazing how easy it is to justify all this upfront investment for productivity down the line :)

YouTube Obeys Fake Takedown Request From 15 Year Old

Posted April 15th, 2007 in Commentary by jayshao
YouTube Obeys Fake Takedown Request From 15 Year Old : “Want a video removed from YouTube? Send along a fake takedown notice pretending to be from the copyright holder. At least, it’s a prank that worked for a 15 year old from Perth, Australia, who sent a signed form to YouTube pretending to be from the Australian Broadcasting Company. The form requested the takedown of hundreds of clips from ‘The Chaser’s War on Everything’.”

(Via Mashable.)

I have to admit that I can understand how this would happen.

  1. Given both the lack of authenticity you see in a lot of genuine communications from Banks or companies (that come from only an IP address, or some internal server, etc.) and the general difficulty of verifying identity online.
  2. The current litigious atmosphere in business in general makes it hard to argue for erring on the side of not taking every incoming item carefully. Afterall, if you were a junior-ish person processing these requests, would you like to go on the line if it meant possibly being held responsible for exposing the company to a lawsuit?