Tech Talk

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The Fall of Mighty Mac?!?

A month ago, I blogged about Apple’s new OS X Leopard operating system, and commented on how so many of its features seemed similar to those in Windows Vista, a comparison that usually runs the other way when it comes to comparing OS’s.

Well, the other day, Apple did something else that made it seem hauntingly similar to Microsoft:

Apple has released a major security update to current and previous versions of its OS X operating system.

Most significantly, the update fixes 41 vulnerabilities, many of which could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary — ie: malicious — code on the affected system. The affected software includes the Adobe (NSDQ: ADBE) Flash Player Plug-in, AppleRAID, the Mach Kernel, the Safari Web browser, and other core system components.

On Thursday, Apple released an update (10.5.1) for Mac OS X “Leopard,” which debuted last month. It includes three fixes to the Application Firewall that could lead network services to be exposed. Apple also released a security update (3.04) for Safari 3 Beta for Windows XP and Vista on Wednesday. The patch fixes a tabbed browsing flaw that could expose user credentials, several cross-site scripting vulnerabilities, and a buffer overflow bug, among other issues.

As I’ve said many, many, many, many, many, many times before, Apple’s starting to play with the big boys now, and they’re bound to encounter similar issues (and take similar) action in this regard.

Tune in next week, when we read about the poor sysadmins who didn’t install the 41 patches right away because they decided to spend some time testing on their network infrastructure before rolling them out to hundreds of users, only to be attacked by the hacker who has now downloaded the patch, reverse-engineered the malicious code, and sent it crawling for servers in exactly that position…

Welcome to the party Apple. Sit back and enjoy Microsoft’s new ad campaign, starring John Hodgeman comforting Justin Long: “It’s OK, Mac, it happens to everyone eventually. It’s nothing to be ashamed of. I’m told there’s a patch you can get that will clear it all up. Kinda like smoking…”

Categories: Tech Talk | 6 Comments »

In which I let down dozens of people (maybe)…

I wound up working from home today, so I don’t have a live picture of the tree to share. But there is an update. Depending on your glass-is-half-empty/glass-is-half-full score, I’m sure you’ll conclude that I’m either very resourceful with the tools at my disposal, or a lousy, stinkin’ cheater.

Also, Jason Bennion pointed out to me in the comments from my last post that the oh-so-witty captions I’m putting on my posts are not available on Firefox, as they are on Internet Explorer. Given my limited skills with Javascript, I’m quite frankly surprised that Firefox can’t handle something I’ve written. Either I’ve written the code wrong, or Firefox breaks on the simplest of Javascript code.

For the geeks out there, here’s the relevant snippet. Any feedback? Also, if anyone knows how to set the alt text on the picture when it changes, let me know & I’ll do that. I don’t know off the top of my head and I don’t have time to Google it right now.

function Fade_Image(inc){
//Set fade speed
if (document.all){
document.images.imagetofade.style.filter=”blendTrans(duration=1)”
document.images.imagetofade.filters.blendTrans.Apply()
}

//Load up next picture
curr_img = curr_img + inc
if (curr_img > (p-1)) curr_img=0
if (curr_img < 0) curr_img=p-1
document.images.imagetofade.src = preLoad[curr_img].src
caption.innerText=Cap[curr_img]

//Do the Fade
if (document.all){
document.images.imagetofade.filters.blendTrans.Play()
}
}

[…]

<td width=605 height=1000 valign=”top” align=”left” colspan=2>
<img src=”images/shim.gif” name=’imagetofade’ width=600 height=400 onclick=”Fade_Image(1)”><br>
<center><span id=”caption”>

Categories: New York, New York, Tech Talk | 6 Comments »

Random Acts of Blogging II

Friday, October 19th, 2007

Once again, the things I want to blog about have exceeded the time I have available to blog. Hence, we move into “quick hit” mode.

First up: Violent crime has increased for the first time in more than a decade. What is to blame for this distressing news? The Bush Administration? The Democratic Congress? A weakening economy causing increased pressure on low-income youth? No. Apparently, it’s the iPod:

In the first three months of 2005, major felonies rose 18.3% on the New York City subway — however, if cell phone and iPod thefts are excluded, felonies actually declined by 3%.

Thus far, in Washington, D.C., in 2007, robberies of iPods on the Metro alone account for approximately 4% of all robberies in the city, compared with well less than 1% of robberies in 2005. Likewise, in San Francisco’s Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) system, there were 4 reported iPod robberies in 2004, 102 in 2005, and 193 in 2006. The increase in iPod robberies on the BART between 2004 and 2006 accounts for a 23% of the increase in robbery in the entire city over that time.”

You see, it seems that iPods are criminogenic, which means they “create crime.”

iPods [are] “criminogenic (creating crime)” because they lack antitheft protection, because they are not tied to a subscription service and can thus be used after they’re stolen, because they’re “high-status items and may be stolen for their status,” because they make the owner less aware of his or her surroundings, and because they’re easy to identify, thanks to the visible white headphone cord and ear buds.

It sounds crazy at first, but when I look at that list, it starts to make some sense…

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Next, we have Apple’s new OS X Leopard Operating System, due to ship on October 26. Apple touts more than 300 new features of the OS, although many of those are features of the applications that ship with it (like Address Book, Dictionary, DVD Player, iCal, iChat, etc.). Hey – remember when bundling applications inside your OS was considered anti-competitive, monopolistic behavior? But I digress…

What I found absolutely fascinating about this list of features was how many of them already exist in Windows Vista. There are semi-transparent window title bars, dynamically populated folders, live icons that show a preview of the application rather than just a static icon, improved Spotlight searching (including Boolean operators), e-mail stationary, group calendar scheduling, etc. In all, I counted roughly fifty of the three hundred changes as things that Vista already has up and running.

I’m not complaining, of course. These features are useful in Vista, and I’m glad they’re in Leopard now. I’m just surprised, because an Apple OS release typically includes innovative interface ideas, which are then implemented by Microsoft in the next Windows release, sparking cries of “Foul!” from Mac Zealots who claim Microsoft is just parroting what Apple has done. It seems we’ve achieved more of a “leapfrog” model now, which is just awesome news for PC consumers…

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Moving from technology to politics, the month of October was a big one for high-profile, liberal documentaries. First there was this report about Canadian, Belinda Stronach, formerly a Member of Parliament (MP) from the Conservative Party, who switched to the Liberal Party in 2005.

In 2004, she gave an interview with the CBC defending the Canada Health Act and arguing against a two-tier health system, in which those who could afford to pay more would receive speedier access to health care (the system touted as far superior to the United States’ system in Michael Moore’s Sicko).

In 2007, she was diagnosed with Ductal Carcinoma in Situ (a common form of breast cancer), which required a mastectomy and breast reconstruction. On the advice of her doctor, she flew to California and paid out of pocket to have the surgery done there (something Canadians can’t do in Canada under the Canada Health Act she so stauchly defended).

And of course, if we’re going to mention Moore, then we have to mention Gore. Al Gore’s film, An Inconvenient Truth (review here) has been distributed to 3,500 London schools, along with four other short films about the environment.

A lorry driver and father of two children, 11 and 14, sued to have the film declared unfit for schools because, he said, it was “politically biased and contains serious scientific inaccuracies and ‘sentimental mush’.” The British judge agreed that the film promoted “partisan political views,” but did not ban it from schools, instead requiring that teachers “warn pupils that there are other opinions on global warming and they should not necessarily accept the views of the film.”

Later in the month, Gore went on to win the Nobel Peace Prize, although his opponent got more votes (kidding…)

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Sticking with politics, a quick mention is warranted on the Iraq war:

A congressional study and several news stories in September questioned reports by the U.S. military that casualties were down. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.), challenging the testimony of Gen. David H. Petraeus, asserted that “civilian deaths have risen” during this year’s surge of American forces.

A month later, there isn’t much room for such debate, at least about the latest figures. In September, Iraqi civilian deaths were down 52 percent from August and 77 percent from September 2006, according to the Web site icasualties.org. The Iraqi Health Ministry and the Associated Press reported similar results. U.S. soldiers killed in action numbered 43 — down 43 percent from August and 64 percent from May, which had the highest monthly figure so far this year. The American combat death total was the lowest since July 2006 and was one of the five lowest monthly counts since the insurgency in Iraq took off in April 2004.

During the first 12 days of October the death rates of Iraqis and Americans fell still further. So far during the Muslim month of Ramadan, which began Sept. 13 and ends this weekend, 36 U.S. soldiers have been reported as killed in hostile actions. That is remarkable given that the surge has deployed more American troops in more dangerous places and that in the past al-Qaeda has staged major offensives during Ramadan. Last year, at least 97 American troops died in combat during Ramadan. Al-Qaeda tried to step up attacks this year, U.S. commanders say — so far, with stunningly little success.

Things are still not going well enough over there, of course. And one large bomb can reverse all of these statistical trends. But regardless of what party you belong to, this has got to be good news…

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And finally, it’s been a while since a newspaper sent undercover reporters through airport security in order to embarrass the TSA, right?

WASHINGTON – Security screeners at two of the nation’s busiest airports failed to find fake bombs hidden on undercover agents posing as passengers in more than 60% of tests last year, according to a classified report obtained by USA TODAY.

Screeners at Los Angeles International Airport missed about 75% of simulated explosives and bomb parts that Transportation Security Administration testers hid under their clothes or in carry-on bags at checkpoints, the TSA report shows.

At Chicago O’Hare International Airport, screeners missed about 60% of hidden bomb materials that were packed in everyday carry-ons – including toiletry kits, briefcases and CD players. San Francisco International Airport screeners, who work for a private company instead of the TSA, missed about 20% of the bombs, the report shows.

These studies, while making for great headlines, continue to miss the point. The goal of airport security is not to find every bomb. The goal is to make people who would consider bringing an actual bomb on the plane think twice about doing it because of the high likelihood that they will be caught. In other words, security works when it prevents people from trying to bring bombs on planes, not only when it catches someone in the act of doing so.

That number, of course, is impossible to measure…

Categories: Political Rantings, Random Acts of Blogging, Tech Talk | Comments Off on Random Acts of Blogging II

The unknown dangers of RSS feeds

Thursday, September 27th, 2007

Check out what the RSS Feed on My Yahoo! page did to my Life Lessons post. Reads a little like Daddy isn’t being very nice to his Child, doesn’t it?

For the record, Daddy’s line at that point is “Go for it.” I swear. Click through and look if you don’t believe me. Please click through. Before Child Services comes to my home to “discuss” it.

Ugh…

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How Not to Design a User Interface

Monday, September 24th, 2007

For those of you who design user interfaces for web applications (you’d be surprised, there’s quite a few of us…), here’s an object lesson on how to do it wrong.

Ladies and gentlemen, the University of Pennsylvania’s Residential Maintenance Request System, FacilityFocus, provided by a software company called Maximus who, quite frankly, should be ashamed of themselves…

 

Categories: Tech Talk, University of Pennsylvania | Comments Off on How Not to Design a User Interface

Problems Uploading using FTP to Yahoo GeoCities

Monday, September 24th, 2007

Attention, my five or six regular readers: the reason I disappeared for a few days and then returned with four posts in a row was late last week, my Yahoo! GeoCities account stopped allowing me to upload files to my familygreenberg.com domain. When I tried, the GeoCities File Manager would return an “invalid file” error message. Furthermore, since this blog is hosted on that domain, the Blogger publish function also produced errors. In most cases, I received a message that said “Unknown FTP Error, Port=0” (even though Blogger gives you no apparent way to set the port and the function had always worked in the past).

Somewhat skeptically, I e-mailed customer service at GeoCities who, to their credit, responded within a few hours with some suggestions, and requested permission to login to my account and test my problem themselves. I described the problem in more detail, provided a screen shot of the error message, and gave them permission. By the end of the next business day, they had tested the problem, were unable to replicate it, and told me that it was probably transient. I agree with them, although I suspect “transient” means that one of their servers went down and needed a reboot. Anyway, FTP is back up and running.

An important note to Blogger users who might be experiencing problems with the publish function, though: even after the FTP problem was fixed on the Yahoo! side, Blogger was still timing out while trying to post. In looking at the settings, I noticed that my FTP user id was set to “bgreenber,” which is my Yahoo! user name. On the Yahoo! site, the suggested user id is “bgreenber@familygreenberg.com” (no quotes in both cases). I changed the blogger user name (which has been working properly for many months now) and the publishing timeout went away. So, if you’re having trouble publishing to GeoCities (or anywhere else, for that matter), you might want to consider adding your domain name to your FTP user id.

We now return you to your regularly scheduled nonsense…

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Tempted by the Apple, but No Thanks…

Wednesday, September 5th, 2007

Fulfilling my obligation under the law that all blogs must post about Apple’s new product line announcements:

Ringtones on the iPhone
I’ve never understood why ringtones are so popular. Maybe if they were free. But people pay real cash money to change how their phone rings. Go figure. I don’t have an iPod, and I’ll never pay a single penny to make my phone ring differently. I guess I’m just weird that way.

My Rating: Meh…

iPod Shuffle in New Colors
$79 for an iPod that’s missing most of the cool features of an iPod. Again, I don’t get it. But they sell like hotcakes, so once again, I’m the weird one. And now, you can get one to match all your different outfits.

My Rating: <Headsmack>

Redesigned Nano
The postage stamp is dead! I haven’t seen it in person yet, but it looks like the screen’s dimensions are much more watchable. Still a little tiny to watch more than a few minutes of video comfortably, I’m guessing, but this sounds like the reasonable low-cost alternative in the iPod line.

My Rating: Nicely done…

iPod Classic
Yeah, because “Classic” worked so well for Coca Cola. Actually, it did. I’m just bitter because my super-cool Video iPod is now called “Classic,” and my 30GB is smaller than anything they currently sell. But, it does what I need and that hasn’t changed with this announcement. I think this upgrade is a “check the box” move. I can’t imagine anyone who has a Video iPod upgrading to a Classic. It’s only for folks who don’t have one yet.

My Rating: Meh…

iPod Touch
Oh, the pictures looked so good. The screen looks super cool, the touch screen interface is awesome. It’s got OS X, so it can do more than an iPod does – multiple windows on the screen at once, WiFi, that YouTube app, etc. And now I don’t need to pay exorbitant monthly fees for a phone that I don’t really want in the first place! But wait, what’s this? 8GB and 16GB? Aw, crap – it’s just a big Nano! Call me when you put a real iPod inside one of these cool devices, OK?

My Rating: So close, and yet so far…

WiFi on iTunes
A step in the right direction. If my friend is playing a song I really like, I can browse over to ITMS, tap a few times, spend my $0.99 and have the song on my iPod. They’re starting to tap into the impulse-buy market. Good for them. Next stop – digital radio, where I can listen to music for free, and then click when I hear a song I like and buy it for a dollar. I’ve always considered this the killer iPod app.

My Rating: Good progress toward nirvana

iPhone Changes
Cheaper 8GB model. Good for most folks. Really sucky for people who shelled out the higher price just a couple of months ago. Also, the 4GB is dead?!? That’s gotta be the shortest lifespan for a successful product in technology history, right?

My Rating: Wow…

Categories: Tech Talk | 4 Comments »

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