dot dot romkey

Apple’s first security update of 2009 for MacOS X may solve some security issues in the OS but it also seriously breaks Perl by installing old versions of some modules along with Perl. It looks like Perl works okay for things that MacOS X uses it for, but if you do development using it or have installed other modules than what it came bundled with you may find that it no longer works.
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sudo is a command-line UNIX utility that allows you to execute a command as another user (most likely, the superuser). Usually you’ll use it to execute a single command:

sudo dmesg

or to start a shell:

sudo -s

sudo is similar to the su command – the su command also allows you to become another user (most likely root). The difference is that su requires you to type the other user’s password. sudo allows you to use your own password. The file /etc/sudoers tells the system who is allowed to do what using the sudo command. In a multiuser environment, this has the benefit of allowing multiple users to become root (or other users) without giving them the root password. Then you can easily revoke root privileges from a user if you need to without affecting the other people who may need to become root.
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I’m rewriting UVFood to use jQuery instead of Prototype. I’m liking jQuery quite a bit and my code’s looking much better (and tighter).

I don’t always have reliable online access when I’m coding – in particular, I was on a bus today for a couple of hours and didn’t always have Internet access. There are a couple of dashboard widgets for MacOS X which I found that helped out on the jQuery documentation front.

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A brief discussion on a private mailing list I’m on reminded me that there might be some interest in this.

MacOS X Leopard has been out for a while, but there are still a lot of folks who haven’t upgraded to it.

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