I'm an advocate of DragInstall for Macintosh.

Once you start down the slippery slope to a code-driven installer, there's no turning back.

Today I installed an art program for the Mac, and the installer requested administrator access. Hmmm, am I missing something here? Since when does an art program need to run as root?

This continuous prompting for Administrator access significantly weakens security, paving the way for malware and viruses. When the issuing of security priviledges happens on such a frequent basis, it loses all meaning, becoming nothing more than an annoyance for users.

Drag Install. If OfficeX 2002 can do drag install, you too can do drag install.

Adobe chief predicts everybody but Adobe will continue to make compelling desktop applications. Adobe, on the other hand, will roll out Flash based solutions that provide at the minimum twelve features, at least until you press the BACK button on your browser, accidentally erasing everything you did.

Adobe is introducing limited functionality Photoshop Express as part of its move to providing software as a service. Company chief executive Bruce Chizen has recently vouched his belief that online software will become the de facto standard for software distribution within the next decade.

According to MacNN, Apple has filed patents on OpenGL multitexturing techniques widely discussed in the public domain:

Apple’s Abstract: A system which utilizes the processing capabilities of the graphics processing unit (GPU) in the graphics controller. Each frame of each video stream is decoded. After decoding the compressed image is separated into an image representing the luminance and an image representing the chroma. The chroma image is resampled as appropriate using the GPU to provide chroma values corresponding to each luminance value at the proper locations. The resampled chroma image and the luminance image are properly combined to produce a 4:4:4 image, preferably in the RGB color space, and provided to the frame buffer for final display. Each of these operations is done in real time for each frame of the video.

Here's some "prior art" OpenGL multitexturing code circa 2004 (Source: fourcc.org).

I think the MacNN patent numbers or links are incorrect, as they link to some unrelated patents.

As far as the homebrew misfits spending time in jail for "crimes against humanity", probably John Draper has done enough time and penance for all those lads.

Vista may corrupt iPods, Apple warns

Until then, PC-using iPod customers could experience a number of other problems if they're running Vista, including contacts and calendars that won't synch with their iPods and problems making changes to iPod settings.

In the meantime, some users report that they can get downloaded iTunes songs to play on Vista if they right-click on the iTunes.exe program, select Properties, click on the Compatibility tab, and check "Run This Program As An Administrator."

Maybe it's better to just wait for the update.

Usually EETimes is pretty dry, but that last sentence is quite droll.

Myself, I ran the Vista upgrade on Tuesday and it was completely painless. The new UI candy is very nice. Like Apple, Microsoft has no trouble painting the Window bits into a quad and texturing it in 3D space. Unfortunately for both of them, as far as "OS innovation" goes, SGI had this particular flashy feature back in 1993. So it's neither competitive nor innovative. So stop complaining.

I grabbed a great screenshot of Safari crashing hard while I attempted to view a youtube.com clip of Bill Gates on Jon Stewart's show discussing the Vista launch. If only I were faking it with Photoshop.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16488399/