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Chris Pepper

Chris Pepper

Chris Pepper is a Unix system administrator in New York City. He spends his days sitting in front of Macs, making Linux servers sit up and do tricks. Chris edits and occasionally writes across the Web. He blogs at Extra Pepperoni.

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Library E-Lending Is Usable!

Three years after Michael Cohen’s original report on ebook library lending, Chris Pepper takes another look and finds that things have improved considerably.

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Beware Bluetooth Keyboards with iOS Devices

Apple's welcome support for Bluetooth keyboards with the iPad and, in iOS 4, for recent models of the iPhone and iPod touch brings with it an unfortunate risk: if you regularly travel with a paired Bluetooth keyboard, be careful that it doesn't drain your device's battery, lock you out, or erase your data.

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Zombie Authors Threaten Fiction Ebook Market, from the Grave!

Chris Pepper looks at what's happening with books and reading, and ponders the impending impact on living authors, who are at risk of having their livelihoods (if not their brains) eaten by zombies like Jane Austen, Mark Twain, and Jules Verne.

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How to Schedule Software Update Downloads

If you don't have high-speed Internet access, downloading software updates from Apple may be difficult or impossible. Chris Pepper offers a few solutions, both for scheduling when Software Update runs and for working around it entirely.

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Send SMS Messages for Free on the iPhone

Frustrated with having to pay for SMS messages on his iPhone - both sent and received - Chris Pepper examines alternative ways of sending text messages.

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Securing Communications with SSL/TLS: A High-Level Overview

SSL (Secure Sockets Layer) and TLS (Transport Layer Security) are systems for providing security to Internet communications, particularly Web browsing

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MacFUSE Explodes Options for Mac File Systems

With Amit Singh's release of MacFUSE at Macworld Expo 2007, the Mac now embraces a much broader array of file systems, improving cross-platform compatibility, network connectivity, security, and convenient integration with a variety of online services

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Mac OS X: Breeds of Programs, Part 3

In the first two installments of this article, we looked first at Apple's proprietary programming environments for Mac OS X - Classic, Carbon, and Cocoa - and then at its cross-platform Unix layer

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Mac OS X: Breeds of Programs, Part 2

In the previous installment of this article we looked at three of the five breeds of programs that run in Mac OS X: Classic, Carbon, and Cocoa. Those three are most notable because they're used for the majority of current Mac OS X programs

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Mac OS X: Breeds of Programs, Part 1

As we discuss Apple's new operating system, there's a strong awareness that, no matter how good Mac OS X itself might be, it can't succeed without applications created outside Apple

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Unix Coming to a Mac Near You, Part 2

With Mac OS X, Apple is bringing Unix to a large, new audience. In part one of this article, I offered a brief history of Unix and mapped out how Unix will provide the basis of Mac OS X

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Unix Coming to a Mac Near You, Part 1

With Mac OS X, Apple is building Unix into the Mac OS, and this has technical, social, and political ramifications for Mac users and the rest of the industry

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What’s a Firewall, and Why Should You Care?

One of the best things about the Internet - a legacy of its educational history - is that it lets us share information with people all over the planet