I noticed in the Security Update 2006-007 for OS X, they are including an update to the system Perl. I remembered that Redhat also recently released a security update for Perl on RHEL4, so I did a little digging. Turns out that today's update from Apple has nothing to do with
CVE-2006-3813 which is Redhat fixing their own slip-up. No, Apple is fixing CVE-2005-3962, for which Redhat released an update on December 20 of last year.
Oif! That's not good turnaround. Especially considering there have already been several other security updates for OS X this year and this relatively straightforward perl fix could have been in any of those.
Does OS X Server get more timely security?
I just learned that if you want to go to the Zune store and buy one 99 cent song, you can't just spend 99 cents. You have to buy $5.00 of "points" and then spend 99 cents worth of points.
Just like Expose versus Flip 3D, Microsoft can't just copy something even when the template for success is right in front of them. They have to copy it, and then tweak it, usually tweak it for the worse, so they can claim to be innovative. (Their word, not mine.) If you're going to take something, just take it, cause you're not fooling anybody. You guys already won that lawsuit anyway.
But in this case, there's more. The points system is a way to take your money and give you nothing in return. If you buy $5.00 of points and buy one song, obviously you leave behind $4.01, or you buy five songs and leave behind $0.05. Buy $100.00 worth of points, and you can buy 101 songs and only leave behind a penny. Everyone assumes there's a breakeven point, even if they don't reach it personally. But where is the breakeven point, exactly?
It just so happens that the numbers 500 and 99 are relatively prime. This means their least common multiple is the product of themselves, 500 x 99. The breakeven point is 500 songs at 99 cents each, or $495.
And you thought your grade school math was useless.
If the Zune store is even moderately successful by global standards, it will have a few million customers. Aside from the lock-in effect of the points system (i.e., no one is going to drop $5 and just buy one song), if each of those customers leaves behind a few pennies, we're talking about at least a hundred thousand dollars - not in revenue, but profit - for which those people received no product!
It's like J Allard was watching Superman 3 when he drew up the pricing structure. (Geez, did you know that's his real name?)
