The performance aspect of Acid3 (via Hixie’s Natural Log)

The performance aspect of Acid3

The Acid3 test says “To pass the test, a browser must use its default settings, the animation has to be smooth, the score has to end on 100/100, and the final page has to look exactly, pixel for pixel, like this reference rendering”. (Emphasis mine.)

There has been some question as to what “the animation has to be smooth” means.

The idea is to make sure that browsers focus on performance as well as standards. Performance isn’t a standards-compliance issue, but it is something that affects all Web authors and users. If a browser passes all 100/100 subtests and gets the rendering pixel-for-pixel correct (including the favicon!), then it has passed the standards-compliance parts of the Acid3 test. The rest is just a competition for who can be the fastest.

To determine the “score” for performance in a browser that gets 100/100, click on the “A” of “Acid3″ on the test after having run the test twice (so that the test uses the browser’s cache). An alert should pop up, giving a total time elapsed, and reporting any tests that took longer than 33ms. Test 26 is the only one that should take any significant amount of time, as it contains a tight loop doing some common DOM and JS operations. The test has “passed”, for the purposes of the “smoothness” criteria, if all the tests took less than 33ms (it’ll give you a message saying “No JS errors and no timing issues.” if this happens). Then the only issue is the total time — is it faster than all the other browsers?

An important question is “using what hardware?”. Performance tests vary depending on the hardware, so some “reference platform” has to be picked to make a decision. Since “computer” browsers are the first priority with Acid3, as opposed to browsers for phones or other small devices, and since we want the hardware to be able to run the three major platforms of today, I have decided that the “reference hardware” is whatever the top-of-the-line Apple laptop is at the time the test is run.

As hardware improves, performance improves too, so to take this into account test 26 is set up to take longer and longer over time. Today I calibrated the test so that the performance it expects is plausible and will remain so for the next few years, based on results that browsers get on the past few years of Mac laptops.

Last year’s CanSecWest Winner Repeats on Vista, Ubuntu Wins (via slashdot)

 Last year’s CanSecWest Winner Repeats on Vista, Ubuntu Wins

DimitryGH followed up on the earlier news that the MacBook Air lost CanSecWest by noting that “Last year’s winner of the CanSecWest hacking contest has won the Vista laptop in this year’s competition. According to the sponsor TippingPoint’s blog, Shane Macaulay used a new 0day exploit against Adobe Flash in order to secure his win. At the end of the day, the only laptop (of OS X, Vista, and Ubuntu) that remained unharmed was the one running Ubuntu. How’s that for fueling religious platform wars?”

Apple Is Loser in Three-Way Hacking Contest (via osnews)

Apple Is Loser in Three-Way Hacking Contest

“An Apple Mac was the first victim in a hacker shoot-out to determine which operating system is the most secure. A former US National Security Agency employee has trousered USD 10000 for breaking into a MacBook Air at CanSecWest security conference’s PWN 2 OWN hacking contest. The MacBook was lined up against Linux and Vista PCs – which have so far remained uncracked. Nobody was able to hack into the systems on the first day of the contest when contestants were only allowed to attack the computers over the network,

Good News.

but yesterday the rules were relaxed so that attackers could direct contest organisers using the computers to do things like visit websites or open email messages. The MacBook was the only system to be hacked by Thursday. Miller didn’t need much time. He quickly directed the contest’s organisers to visit a website that contained his exploit code, which then allowed him to seize control of the computer, as about 20 onlookers cheered him on. He was the first contestant to attempt an attack on any of the systems.”

Bad News.

There is more bad news for Apple: “If you have Apple and compare it to Microsoft, the number of unpatched vulnerabilities are higher at Apple.”

Idem. :(

WebKit achieves Acid3 100/100 in public build (via Surfin’ Safari)

Congratulations!!  Great Work!

 

Safari 3.1, FireFox 3.0b4 And Webkit r.31201

The WebKit r.31201 is preforming really well. Firefox 3.0b4 also – indeed, it seems that the Mozilla Team have improved their Mac OS X version way a lot. Try it and colabore in their beta test program; they deserve it, maybe, for the first time (not talking about Camino). The same can be said about the WebKit Team downloading the latest nightly buid. And, finaly, Apple has released Safari v3.1. Let’s see some results – nothing definitive but still.

Acid Test v.3:

• WebKit r.31201: 93/100
• Firefox 3.0b4: 67/100
• Safari 3.1: 75/100

SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark Results:

• WebKit r.31201: 2.855
• Firefox 3.0b4: 3.637
• Safari 3.1: 3.157

…

UPDATE:

WebKit achieves Acid3 100/100 in public build (via Surfin’ Safari)

Actualización de FinderPop (v.2.1.2)

Turly ha publicado recientemente una nueva actualización de FinderPop. En concreto, la versión 2.1.2. Es comptible con Tiger y Leopard. No dudes en probarla. Cambiará tu ‘experiencia de usuario’ y mejorará la forma en la que usas el ‘interfaz gráfico’ del OS X.

The Services Menu and my WRONG post in a forum.

Info: Extracts from Apple docs:
SysServices.pdf
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Cocoa/Conceptual/SysServices/index.html
appservices.pdf
http://developer.apple.com/documentation/Carbon/Conceptual/appservices/intro/chapter_1_section_1.html#//apple_ref/doc/uid/TP30000993-CH204

(…) “A service can be offered as part of an application,” (…) “or as a standalone service —one without a user interface that is intended for use only in the Services menu. Applications that offer services should be built with the .app extension and installed in the /Applications folder. A standalone service should be built with the .service extension and stored in the /Library/Services folder.
When a user logs in, Mac OS X searches the /Applications and /Library/Services folders in the four file-system domains—System, Network, Local, and User. (See Inside Mac OS X: System Overview for details on file-system domains.) The system examines the information property list for each bundle in these locations and assembles a list of available services (see “Services Properties”). It uses this information to populate the items in the Services menu.” (…)

(…) “Once the system knows what data types” the (…) “application can handle, it enables the appropriate services. At that point, the user can choose” the Application> appropriate service “from the Services menu. Figuring out the data types and enabling the appropriate items in the Services menu happens quite rapidly. In fact, to the user, items should appear in the Services menu instantaneously.”…
–
After reading the docs, it seems to me that the basic things I needed to know are the following:

- At the end it’s all about “intercommunicability” between apps. A service gives you features in apps without the need to fully implement these features into every app. This saves code, programatically gives a better user experience, facilities and so on…

- This have restrictions, though. Each service can handle different “kinds of data”. So, you can not expect that every selected data could be passed via “pasteboard(s)” or… to every service from the Service Menu -and submenus. Each of the them are only able to “accept” inputs of some kinds of data -the appropriate kind of data. That is the only way they can understand one each other -as if they were speaking the same language. That seems pretty normal. When this doesn’t happens properly, i.e., when you pass a kind of data that can not be understood for a given service, this service has to be deemed, not enabled or whatever (actually, I don’t ‘really’ know it; well, actually I don’t ‘really’ know anything about coding; that is).

The above said is what I have understood -’filtered’ from my absolutely lack of coding skills and from my limited english as well. So, sorry in advance if I have said something not exactly enough or probably even wrong. But, in fact, it’s the usual process of learning -trial and error.

The question you may ask yourself now is why I’m talking about things that even I say I can’t ‘really’ understand. Easy. Because trying to be somewhat helpful in some forum I said things there that are -fast all- wrong. I can maybe only save from my post the NSServices related comments. So, how I always feel the need of learning a bit more -I like to learn, even knowing the inherent limits of doing it in fields where I’m not an expert- and I also always try to be honest… I have read these docs and, as a natural result, I think that I have to say that I was not only WRONG but also not cautious enough… But, well, at least, I was not rude at all…

As always, any help is really welcome!!
Alas, my vacation -and most of my free time- is over…

Anuncio de Rixstep: ACP-Académico y Xfile-Académico.

Anúncio de Rixstep: Rixstep se complace en anunciar ACP-Académico y Xfile-Académico. Ambos constituyen paquetes especialmente rebajados en su precio, con respecto al ‘ACP’ y al ‘Xfile’ porque están dirigidos a la comunidad académica.

El paquete Xfile constituye una parte del paquete completo ACP -el ‘Apple Core Project’ de Rixstep’-, un proyecto de investigación dirigido a profesionales, lo que no obsta a que los usuários áltamente cualificados también puedan sacar provecho del mismo.

Más infomación en el sitio Rixstep.

Al respecto debo decir que a alguien que sea profesor como yo siempre debería interesarle cualquier cosa que afecte a la llamada comunidad académica. Aunque sólo sea por interés -que no es éste el caso-. Así que, viendo como Rixstep ha decidido rebajar económicamente los precios de sus paquetes de software ACP y Xfile especialmente para la comunidad académica, me ha parecido apropiado recoger aquí el mencionado anúncio. Y, a él, añadir mi anotación. No es que mi opinión cuente mucho pero, por si acaso, ahí va…

Y, para que conste, no tengo ninguna relación directa o indirecta con Rixstep -incluyendo por supuesto la económica-. Simplemente soy un mero usuario del paquete completo (ACP) desde hace tiempo. Un usuario que como ya dije en una entrada anterior en este blog está extremadamente satisfecho de serlo. Imaginaos: ¡¡ no creo haber gastado mejor mi dinero con ningún otro ’software’ para OS X !!.

No sólo es que sea increible, es que además aprendes con él. No creo exagerar si digo que si no lo usas difícilmente puedes saber lo que “realmente” es el OS X. Así mismo, no olvidéis tampoco leer los artículos de la ‘Learning Curve’ -entre muchos otros-.

Así que no puedo sino recomendarlo… Descargadlo, probadlo y judgadlo por vosotros mismos. O, aún mejor, ¡haceros con el paquete completo!

Ambos, tanto en su versión académica como en la que no lo es, en función de si pertenecéis a la comunidad académica o no. Y sí, los estudiantes, pertenecen a ella ;-)

User 99, Unknown (via unixjunkie)

unixjunkie:

“Most of us are familiar with typical user accounts associated with Unix systems, such as root, nobody, and daemon. Mac OS X has an additional interesting account for a user named “unknown”. Unknown has the UID number 99, which is treated specially within the kernel as well as some user-level libraries. The special properties afforded to unknown are needed to make device sharing between computers as painless as possible. Let us look at what makes unknown so special.”

Read the full article at unixjunkie. Interesting… Really.

Ode to security researchers

Martin Pittenauer – 0×2a: Ode to security researchers

“Dear security researchers, that…

• don’t prance around like a pwnie over every 0day
• value responsibility and public interests over your own ego
• have grown up
• don’t complain about people who haven’t, all the time
• understand software development processes and the meaning of “trivial”
• don’t insist on being baby-sitted 24/7 by $BIG_COMPANY
• aren’t at the center of the universe
• can resist making cheap jokes
• have written code worth mentioning, to broaden your horizon
• can make their outcome without having to pimp their personality, sell stuff to questionable characters or use tactics akin to extortion
• face discussion instead of declaring everybody else stupid
• don’t try so very hard to be a cool kid

…, I wish there were more of you.”

Well, as an open-mined person, I have decided to transcript this to your consideration…