If you've got experience with PHP and Smarty under OS X, I'm having a problem with if()s in the compiled templates. Any suggestions?

A 10.3.2 update is now available on Apple's site and via Software Update. Miscellaneous fixes, uh, I mean "improvements."

The changes don't seem to include a fix for this bizarre Address Book bug in which the last four digits of phone numbers match in reverse order. I'm not kidding. Discuss

Over on /. a storm's a'brewin' over this rather weak article at ABC News in which the author compares one Mac OS vulnerability to all Windows vulnerabilities and concludes that they are the same, security-wise. Blah blah whatever. Same ol' religious war...again.

What is interesting, and useful, and worth it's weight in pixels, is this chunk of a comment posted by psychogentoo regarding the OS X vulnerability and how to actually close it:

1. Click the Finder icon in the Dock.
2. From the Go menu, choose Applications.
3. Find the Utilities folder and double-click to open it.
4. Open the Directory Access utility.
5. Click the lock button, type your password, and click OK to authenticate.
6. Select the LDAP service and click Configure.
7. Deselect the "Use DCHP-supplied LDAP Server" option. See Figure 1.
8. Click OK. Your computer is no longer susceptible to this exploit.

(How To Read Slashdot Comments: locate the Threshold pop-up and switch it to 5. Click "Change". 719 comments distilled to a readable and interesting 48).

In which Ben Hammersley figures out how to turn a TiBook into a WiFi repeater at the XML 2003 conf.

Here's a nice example of combining OS X GUI-stuff with its Unix underguts, of interest to you if you use BBEdit to write PHP code: John Gruber has posted a nice little Applescript that runs a PHP syntax check on the contents of the current window. You need to have the command-line version of PHP installed for this to work. If you're running Panther, you're all set; if not, you'll want this.

File this under "Stupid Exposé Tricks": to make Exposé transitions happen in slow motion, hold down the Shift key when you press F9, F10, or F11 (or whatever you've reassigned Exposé functions to).

FWIW, the shift-key thing is not new. Try holding shift when you click the minimize button or double-click the title bar (if you're fast, you even can tap shift right after pressing Cmd-M); then hold shift when you click on that minimized window in the Dock.

Amaze your friends! Discuss!

A friends recently took the plunge and installed MySQL but got a bit stumped when it came time to muck around with settings via the command line. Perhaps our exchange will be of use to others looking to do the same:

I've installed the MySQL package from Server Logistics and I'm real rusty in the Terminal. I'm trying set the path so I don't have to type the entire string all the time.

Now I don't see a file called ".tcshrc" in my home directory so I need to make one. Just call name the file with the extention?

Yep, exactly. In Unix a file that starts with a period doesn't actually have an extension, the period tells the system that the file should be invisible (like the Finder's Invisible flag). This is used to hide configuration files from the user and works with any file (stick a period at the beginning of a JPEG's filename and it'll disappear from sight).

Before we go further, a few key unix commands you'll need:

ls
Shows all the _visible_ files in a directory

ls -al
Shows _all_ the files in a directory, including the invisible ones

locate
Unix locate utility, much faster than the Finders and it'll find files the Finder won't (like .tcshrc)
Used like: > locate .tcshrc
Returns: > /Users/god/.tcshrc

pwd
Stands for "print working directory". Shows you the complete path to where you currently are

Not to mention I get confused between /Users/myuser and /usr/local for "home directory". It would be /Users/myuser, right?

When docs refer to the Home directory, they means yours, in this case /Users/myuser. /usr/local is system-wide and probably not where you want to make these changes.

Can I make this file using Pico? The Thomas Berger notes mention an app called "vi" but running that in Terminal appears totally greek to me.

Yes but the Unix geeks will laugh at you. Personally I like pico and use pico for all my cmd-line text editing because I've never been able to figure out how to use vi or vim or emacs and don't care to take the time to learn. Your choice of text editor appears to be a huge deal in the Unix world (go figgur). When unix geeks ask me and I say "pico" they laugh at me and then usually get into a shouting match with each other over vi vs. emacs.

I don't know how familiar you are with pico but none of the key commands are the same as any standard Mac app. The important ones:

Saving: control-O (oh)
Quitting: control-X
Cancelling: control-C

BTW, BBEdit's "Open Hidden..." feature is invaluable for this sort of thing too, as it'll let you open and edit text files normally invisible to GUI applications. pico's great for small stuff like this but for editing the likes of Apache's massive conf files nothin' beats BBEdit.

Finally, here's what my .tcshrc looks like so you have something to compare to:

setenv PATH "$PATH":/Library/MySQL/bin
setenv PATH "$PATH":/Library/PostgreSQL/bin
setenv LC_ALL C
setenv CVSROOT "/usr/local/cvsrep"

Discuss

Over on Submit Response, this plea for help:

Can anyone help my cousin Keith? He installed Panther on his PowerBook, found it didn't play nice with some of his applications (he makes films and videos) and so re-installed Jaguar, using the Archive option, rather than doing a clean install. Now, when he boots up, he sees the usual login screen, types his username and password, and is then faced with Darwin in all its texty glory.

So, how can he fix this? Is there a command he can type to into his terminal to, you know, er, sort of launch Jaguar the way you can launch applications? Or is he just totally buggered?

If you've got suggestions, please head on over and post 'em.

Obligatory periodic Launchbar reference: there's a new beta available. It fixes a couple minor Panther problems and adds some slick Address Book integration. There are other smart tweaks as well. Brilliant as ever.

MacWorld just posted some neat OS X hints I'd not yet encountered:

• View Album Art for the Current iTunes Track
• Create an iChat Message That Spans Multiple Lines
• Pick Multiple Genres for iTunes Songs

[many thanks to SteveJ for inviting me to this excellent blog; we work together on the Blogger team at Google]

My post on migrating to (and back from) KDE/FreeBSD turned out to be quite long and detailed, with gigantic screenshot PNGs, so I've posted it on my server. Please read, and feel free to comment via the Quicktopic link at the bottom of the page.