A Sun blogger called Hein spotted something humorous in Google’s search results. Google’s AdWords policies permit the purchase of competitor keywords, but not their display in a competitive ad:

Saw a funny one on Google today, a search for “solaris x86” reveals Apple as the one paying for the relating keywords? They must agree with us about the mind share and popularity Solaris has as an Open Source technology then.

Apple’s ad leads to a section on the Apple.com website, describing the compatibility of OS X with various Unix technologies.

Big Nerd Ranch Europe is pleased to announce the next opportunity of learning Mac OS X Programming in the most desired Cocoa training course available: Cocoa Bootcamp with instructor Aaron Hillegass. The intensive five-day training taught at the retreat environment of Kloster Eberbach near Frankfurt, Germany is scheduled for August 6-10, 2007.

The five-day class provides the most comprehensive training available for Cocoa developers. The class covers a spectrum of topics, from lessons building on Cocoa fundamentals to more advanced topics that create a well-rounded Cocoa programmer. “As Apple’s market share continues to increase, the demand for Cocoa programming skills is growing” commented Aaron Hillegass, founder of the Big Nerd Ranch, on the explosive demand for Cocoa training.

The course requires no previous experience in coding with Cocoa but students attending the bootcamp should be familiar with an object-oriented language like Java or C++. The primary text for the class is “Cocoa Programming for Mac OS X” by Aaron Hillegass, the course instructor. The class is taught on the latest releases of Mac OS X and Xcode with extensive attention given to Core Data.

After class, novice students will understand the design patterns used in Cocoa and emerge fully skilled in the ability to develop complex applications for Mac OS X. Key topics include, but are not limited to:

- Mastering the Objective-C language

- Using design patterns, like Model-View-Controller, delegation, target/action, categories, and notifications

- Using Core Data, including advanced features like unsupported data types, inheritance, and validation

- Mastering Cocoa bindings

- Making your custom view deal with mouse and keyboard events, drag and drop, images, and the open panel

- Handling custom drawing, printing and pagination

- Discovering Nib Files and localization for the global market place

- Creating 3-D views with OpenGL and reusable frameworks

More at the website.

For those who don’t know, this command makes your Mac speak. It’s really quite simple to do.

Here are the steps:

1. Open up Terminal.app. This application is located in the your Utilities folder on your Mac.
2. It will start up and have a prompt ready for you. At this point just type “say (insert words or sentence here) and push return.

3. As soon as the sentence is done, another prompt will appear. You can type a new sentence or just hit the up arrow if you want to repeat the last one.

And now for the fun part.

Richard and I both had Macs. We would have my Mac in the living room and be sure that SSH was enabled. (video tutorial here) Richard would have his Mac in the next room within hearing distance of mine. From there, he would log into mine via SSH so he had the prompt on my computer. (This wasn’t visible on my computer.)

We’d then invite a friend (aka, a cute girl to impress) over and tell her how cool Macs are because they can hold conversations with you. We’d then encourage her to “ask the Mac a question.” Richard would than answer the question and keep the conversation going by typing the “say” command from his computer.

One tip to make it more smooth is to let the victim friend know that sometimes the microphone couldn’t pick up the question because it was too soft or slurred. Of course that isn’t the case, but this gave Richard extra time to type the responses.

This is a very fun prank to do. It’s especially interesting to hear what kind of questions the person will ask the computer. If it’s a fella, it’s a given that there will be a question about the “size of his hard disk.”

If you are new to using Terminal, or Unix in general, you might consider keeping an eye on FreeMacUnix.com. Richard has started from the very beginning in his explanations on how to use Unix on your Mac.

Shownotes:

• Setting Up VNC On Your Server- an earlier tutorial that is referenced in this video.
• Chicken Of The VNC- VNC Client for controlling your Mac server
• Mac mini colocation

Video Link: Enable SSH On Your Mac Server