Breaking Windows

posted by Iain: One thing that can dramatically change the time to write ID3 tags, is if there is a format change. ID3 v1 tags are or fixed length, so if you alter the data you only have to rewrite the tag. However, if you start adding additional info such as in V1.1 tags or V2.3 tags (not sure what itunes uses) - then the tag suddenly becomes longer. At this point instead of just rewriting the tag the program has to rewrite the whole file to disc - this takes more time. This may account for the difference in write times you are experiencing. I suspect that Itunes is converting the tags.

Wasn't the Internet, this weightless kingdom of bits and bytes, supposed to make distribution costs just vanish? Apparently not.

"Leave it to (Hustler publisher) Larry Flynt to do something like this," said Paul Bogaards of Alfred Knopf, publisher of "I Am A Soldier, Too: The Jessica Lynch Story," which was released Tuesday.

Consumers can move their home or office phone number to a wireless service starting on Nov. 24, the Federal Communications Commission ordered Monday. Wireline-to-cell-phone number portability will take effect in the nation's largest 100 markets the same day wireless-to-wireless portability kicks in, the FCC ruled.

Mobile phone giant Nokia is investigating whether hackers managed to disable security that protects its N-Gage cell phone games. If various Web reports are true, someone has discovered a way for the games to be played on any cell phone that, like the N-Gage portable video game machine, uses the Symbian operating system. Symbian is an overwhelming favorite among handset makers that develop next-generation cell phones.

Last week (and in our Panther Special Report) we covered the change in Panther that lets any administrative user move, or even delete, important system-level files by simply authenticating (providing their admin account password) when trying to perform the action. What we didn't cover at the time is the fact that what is actually happening "behind the scenes" is that you are actually using the Unix sudo command -- a way to temporarily perform actions with root-level access -- to execute the desired action. Why this is important is that the sudo command has a built in timer: once you've authenticated, it provides you with that root-level access for five minutes (by default). So after you've first authenticated, subsequent actions -- even dangerous ones that could render OS X inoperable -- can be performed without requiring you to authenticate again. Obviously, this could result in a messy situation. However, at least you're aware that you've authenticated, so you know to be careful what you do for the next five minutes or so. The real danger of this "feature" -- as pointed out to us by Chris Breen, Macworld Magazine's 911 columnist -- is that when an admin-level user logs in, the act of logging in itself constitutes an authentication. In other words, for the first five minutes after logging in, you have root-level access and you probably aren't even aware of it. You can move or delete system-level files without being warned and without being prompted to authenticate -- it just works. After those first five minutes are up, you resume your normal level of access. As Chris pointed out, these first five minutes can be quite risky: "I've confirmed this by dragging my System folder to the Trash. And no, I couldn't get it out again without booting into Mac OS 9 and recovering it from the .Trashes file." We would add that sometimes people accidentally delete files -- using the command+delete keyboard combination in Mac OS X's column view sometimes makes it easy to delete an enclosing folder rather than the sub-folder you actually wanted to delete. In fact, Chris makes another good point about the risks of this situation: "Although some may argue that this is perfectly acceptable because you shouldn't be an Admin if you don't know what you're doing, bear in mind that any new Mac owner -- your aged Aunt who's upgrading from her trusty Performa -- is an Admin."

Microsoft plans to add pop-up blocking features to Internet Explorer next year as part of its Service Pack 2 update for Windows XP, a move that would go far toward stamping out the Web advertisements.

Posting an email address in a public place is not an invitation for companies to send unsolicited advertisements. Hosting a public Web forum or Usenet server does not give companies permission or the moral right to advertise on it. And soliciting comments from the public on a weblog entry or other Web page does not mean that companies or individuals are invited to use it for their advertising purposes. Usenet news succumbed to spam long ago. Email was next. Now spammers have turned their attention to weblogs and comment forms. In order to increase search engine rankings you are posting advertisements to our Web pages. What you failed to understand is that bloggers are smarter, better connected, and more technologically savvy than the average email user. We control the medium that you are now attempting to exploit. You’ve picked a fight with us and it’s a fight you cannot win.

What you can do Sign the manifesto by linking to it, leaving a comment or sending a TrackBack ping. Get the word out and let spammers know that their days are numbered. Write tutorials on how to track down spammers and shut down their operations. I wrote about how to get spammer’s affiliate accounts terminated. Perhaps someone else could write up how to trace a domain back to their hosting company. Or how to use tools like dig to find someone’s ISP based on their IP address. Start a posse. People particularly good at tracking down spammers could volunteer to help others. If a blogger is spammed, the volunteers could track down the culprit and shut him down. Stopping comment spam in one corner of the web will be good for everyone.

Administrators of e-mail systems based on Microsoft's Exchange might have spammers using their servers to send unsolicited bulk e-mail under their noses, a consultant warned this week. Aaron Greenspan, a Harvard University junior and president ofconsulting company Think Computer, published a white paper Thursday detailing the problem, discovered when a client's server was found to be sending spam. Greenspan's research concluded that Exchange 5.5 and 2000 can be used by spammers to send anonymous e-mail. He says even though software Microsoft provides on its site certifies that the server is secure, it's not. "If the guest account is enabled (on Exchange 5.5 and 2000), even if your login fails, you can send mail, because the guest account is there as a catchall," he said. "Even if you think you've done everything (to secure the server), you are still open to spammers."

They make computers so you have to buy a new one whenever there's a full moon. If my Underwood (typewriter) had been a computer, I'd have had to buy a new one every time I needed a new ribbon because Bill Gates would have designed new ribbons so they didn't fit last year's typewriter.

The Uru project absorbed Larkin for nearly three years. “The graphics are so incredible,” he says. “As you walk through the Uru environments, everything moves with you — in real-time, photo-realistic 3D.” Watching these scenes evolve provided continual inspiration to the composer. “I’m very visual,” says Larkin. “When I’d go through an area in the game, I could hear what music or ambient sounds should be introduced.”

He was a symbol of American pluck in his screen debut, "Steamboat Willie," on November 18, 1928. The film at New York's Colony Theatre showed an irreverent rodent who takes Captain Pete's steamboat on a joyride and woos Minnie Mouse by making music on the bodies of various farm animals.

A federal judge on Tuesday refused to dismiss the two most serious criminal charges against Martha Stewart, the lifestyle trendsetter due to face a federal trial early next year.

I recently wrote about this with regard to problems I was having sync'ing in Panther. As it turns out it has nothing to do with Panther, but it is important enough to devote a separate post to it.

If you use a Mac *cheers* and you have one of the many Palm Keyboards (I have the 1st party Thin Palm Keyboard) then you need to disable the keyboard before you can HotSync to your Mac. This problem does not exist in Windows. We are so lucky.

You need to remember to go into the Keyboard app (on your Palm) and un check "Enable Keyboard." Now HotSync is possible. This is annoying, because when I want to use my keyboard, I have to remember to enable it again.

The way I understand it, the Palm cannot talk to the Mac, and the Palm Keyboard at once, or simply it cannot talk to two I/O devices if one of those devices is a Mac.

What really chaps me is the fact that I spent many phone calls to Palm Tech. Support, well over 3 hours with Level 1 Tech's and none of them bothered to ask if I had a keyboard, they all knew I had a Mac, you key that in when you make the call. The last Level 1 tech. I talked to finally had me talk to a Level 2 tech. Barbara D. called me Monday morning (I had talked to the Level 1 tech. on Saturday) and within a half hour I was syncing (in Panther no less) because she quickly after trying to get me to sync with fail, asked me if I had a keyboard for my Palm.

I am not disrespecting Palm Tech. Support. Palm, like Apple, in my experience, have very very good technicians manning the phones. I find that it sometimes takes talking to a couple different techs. to get a clear or corroborating answer, but that is something that is not unique to any tech. support department I have dealt with.

For a number of days Palm was not supporting Panther, Barbara D. told me that just recently they officially support Panther, and the word had not gotten around to all the techs. yet. (When an OS is not supported, the techs. will not help you).

OK, I have gone off on a small tangent, but it was related :-P.

If this issue is readily discovered and fixed by a Level 2 tech. then I would think the Level 1 techs. should be made aware of it. That, and there should be a FAQ page about it on the PalmOne Support Site.

Measure would outlaw most unsolicited e-mail; Senate approval is expected. The House voted overwhelmingly Saturday for a bill to outlaw most Internet spam and create a "do not spam" registry for those who do not wish to receive unsolicited junk e-mail. Online marketers who flood e-mail in boxes with pornography and get-rich-quick schemes would face multimillion dollar fines and jail time under the measure. It passed by a vote of 392-5 at dawn Saturday, following an all-night session of the House that was largely devoted to a separate Medicare bill. The Senate unanimously passed a similar anti-spam bill last month, but it must assent to the House changes before the measure can become law. The Senate is expected to do so in the coming days. Anti-spam bills have died in Congress for six years while unsolicited commercial e-mail has grown from a nuisance to a plague that threatens to derail the Internet's most popular means of communication. .... It would outlaw spammers' attempts to cover their tracks by requiring marketers to identify themselves clearly and avoid misleading subject lines or return addresses. Pornographic messages would have to be clearly labeled as such to allow users to more easily filter them out. Violators would face millions of dollars in fines and up to five years in jail. The bill would not allow individuals to sue spammers.

Reports have surfaced of a steamy sex video, featuring 22-year-old Hilton, which could soon be available on the Internet la Tommy and Pamela's infamous romp. Shot about three years ago, the tape features the then-barely legal celebutante getting X-rated with Shannen Doherty's on-again, off-again husband Rick Solomon, 33.

I take as a given that Ms. Hilton's recent escapade, as noted at Fleshbot (not work safe) and elsewhere, does not represent any fundamental new ground for the young lady. When you devote your life to being watched: to being observed, the step that you take when finally allowing that observation to extend to your most intimate --- or at least, most explicit --- moments is not a particularly bold one. When put in the context of her past behavior, the act is different only in degree, not in kind. But observing Ms. Hilton (no, not observing her do that, but more generally) makes me wonder about a personality so in need of attention from others. She yearns for the spotlight; for the eyes of the world to focus on her for a moment, and, if possible, longer. She seeks notice wherever she can find it; basking in the radiance of strangers' gazes and thoughts. Where once, we can assume, she sought such attention a source of approval, a validation of her own worth, now, the notice itself has become the end. Positive or negative; embarrassing or flattering, whatever keeps her in the spotlight is by definition good.

WASHINGTON, DC—The U.S. Department of the Treasury deemed the new multicolored $20 bill a raging success Monday, thanks to its $30 million advertising campaign. "Due to our print and TV ads, people across the nation are choosing our $20 bill when they need to exchange currency for goods and services within the United States and its territories," Secretary of the Treasury John Snow said. "We couldn't be happier. Americans agree that the Series 2004 U.S. currency is the legal tender for all debts, public and private." Due to high demand for the bill, the Treasury has already ordered second and third printings.

Apple's highly recommended AppleCare premium warranty service is now available for the iPod. The plan is priced at US$59 for two years of protection. One caveat, however: "The AppleCare Protection Plan cannot be sold to consumers residing in Florida. 'Consumers' are persons who use their computers primarily for personal, family, or household purposes."

Wired News has a report on the practice of iPod 'jack ins,' where one user will plug their iPod headphones into the iPod of a passerby. "Sharing an iPod through its headphone jack is also a crude, low-tech version of what some predict is the real killer application of future iPods: transforming them into short-distance broadcasting devices by adding Bluetooth or similar radio technology, coupled with Rendezvous, an Apple-developed networking technology that allows devices to discover each other automatically."

Today is the day cellphone number portability goes into effect. You can take your current cellphone number with you if you transfer to a new service provider. You may even be able to add your traditional landline phone number to a wireless plan. Before you make the switch, there are a few things you need to do first. Watch today's show to learn all about cellphone number portability. Most carriers will not charge you to switch your number to their service. However, some carriers will charge a nominal monthly fee to cover the costs of enabling number portability, whether you switch your number or not.

The Norwegian programmer who distributed the first widely used tool for cracking the copy protection technology found on DVDs has turned his attention to Apple Computer's iTunes. Late last week, programmer Jon Johansen posted a small program called QTFairUse to his Web site, with little in the way of instruction and even less explanation. But during the next few days, it became clear that the program served as a demonstration of how to evade, if not exactly break, the anticopying technology wrapped around the songs sold by Apple in its iTunes store. Johansen's software isn't for technology novices. In its current form, it requires several complicated steps to create a working program from source code, and it doesn't create a working song file that can be immediately or simply played from a digital music program like Winamp or Microsoft's Windows Media Player.

"The exploitation of iTunes vulnerabilities forces Apple to revisit their code -- this results in a challenge of how much developer time can Apple dedicate to patching security holes rather than enhancing features," Tim Deal, senior analyst with Technology Business Research, told MacCentral.

1. Safari really likes it cache. It likes it a bit too much. You can select Empty Cache... from the Safari menu, but even doing that sometimes (a lot of times) does not work. I recommend using Safari Enhancer, it does a number of things, one of which is turn off cache entirely. You might not want to do that with a dial up connection, but who has that these days? (that was a joke) Even with cache disabled, it seems Safari still keeps cache too much. I really don't understand how it does that, with it disabled and all, but it does. Why does this cache thing bother me? Because I am a web designer. I need fresh copies of my pages. I think Safari loads pages so fast because of its affinity to cache. Let go. It will be OK!
2. When Apple does something, they always add some twist to it to make it unique. This is by far one of the best things about Apple products. For Safari 1.0 it was the SnapBack feature. SnapBack is a very handy feature, and I use it a lot. It means I do not have to go through the History menu when all I want is the history of the current web site. SnapBack on Google results are also very cool. URL auto-complete is very handy feature. This is something that needs an Apple twist. What if when typing a URL, and it finds a site that is in your history, it automatically selects the the root domain first, and not some page that is deep in the site? I don't know about you, but I would really like that. Because I am always either arrowing to the root domain, or deleting from the URL field if the root domain is not in short reach.
3. The Open Page With... Menu that is in the Debug Menu should not be a hidden feature. For those who do not know, the Open Page With... Menu shows all other installed web browsers. For me it is Internet Exploder, Mozilla, and Opera. This is a wonderful feature of Safari. It needs to be out in the open. I use it a lot, again, because I am a web designer. But, it is a worthwhile feature for anyone who comes across a web page that just does not work correctly in Safari.

Last week Paul Thurrott's SuperSite for Windows made some bold claims about Mac OS X and Longhorn, an upcoming version of Windows. The X vs. XP site, which claims to compare OS X and Windows XP in an unbiased manner, responds: "Perhaps Longhorn really is technically superior to Panther (with three more years to work on it, I sure hope it's superior), but it would take more to substantiate such a claim than to merely cite Longhorn's task-based file system."

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