Has Google heard of the Macintosh?

From a Google blog post on malware:

Official Google Blog: Working together to fight malware

... Use anti-virus software. Most anti-virus software is specifically designed to find and remove harmful software on your computer. Be sure you have anti-virus software installed on your computer (you can get a free trial through Google Pack if you don't), keep it current, and use it to run frequent full-system checks...

I don't know any OS X user running antivirus software; in any case it would cause far more problems than viruses have to date.

Clearly, someone needs to bring a Macintosh to Google's office. That's the problem with these big, slow, corporations, they're stuck in the 20th century.

Then Google could write something like this ...

Avoid Windows XP. We recommend Vista with anti-virus software if you want to invest in a brand new quad core 4GB 64 bit system with all new hardware, Desktop Linux, or any Macintosh.

OS X support notes - recent updates

Several interesting Apple Support articles have come out recently:

• Mac OS X 10.4: Keychain Access asks for keychain "login" after changing login password. The keychain password and the user account password are stored separately. It's possible to change one and not the other. This tells how to manually change the keychain password to match the login password.
• Browsing for PCs on a network requires that the PCs have NetBIOS enabled. (Wow, that's really old and creaky stuff.)
• How to recover when a server won't let you connect with a different account
• Single user and verbose startup (verbose is new to me)

Someone else has noticed a one year lifespan for a modern XP hard drive

I have two corporate XP machines, and between then I have to replace a drive every six months. My home XP and OS X drives last for years.

So I now have two completely unrelated corporate backup systems that run nightly.

I haven't seen anyone else comment on the lifespans of corporate hard drives, so I liked this post (emphasis mine)...

DadHacker » Blog Archive » Thoughts while rebooting

On the IT-ridden machines I regularly have to swab out twenty megabyte log files, logs from things that I didn’t even know were running on the machine, and when I find something like “ArScnr38″ running I have no idea if it’s spyware or something that an IT monkey stuck on my laptop to scan my Excel spreadsheets.

It’s hilarious when four different scanners are fighting for disk access. No wonder our drives are dying after like a year in service. I don’t work late, so I can only imagine what the buildings sound like at 3AM when Windows Update goes into its happy dance and reboots every single workstation.

“Shhhh… wait for it.”

“What, Dad? I’m sleepy.”

“Any second now…”

clikclickClickClikCLIKCLICKCCLLIICCKK-CLICK-***KA-CHUNGGGKGKGKG!!!!!***

“Wow! Do the lights flicker like that in every time zone?”

“That was nothing. Wait until they all ask the DHCP servers for an address!”

...The IT philosophy of bloat appears to be: “Screw the user, we own the machines, and if they can’t get work done with them then they can’t do any damage. More scanners! And loggers! And Java-based enterprisey things with *****up XML configuration schemas! If there’s CPU or disk space left we’re not doing our jobs; we have to pay for that call center expansion somehow!”

That's what I see. Between my heavy duty database work, the antivirus scanner, the corporate HP monitoring systems, Windows Search indexing, and the two nightly backups the hard drivers are being worked to death.

I really need to switch to an in-office NAS with a hot-swappable RAID array -- so I can rotate out bad drives without the hassle of a restore.

Aperture's SQLite Database

I'm going to fire-up the SQLite Database browser and follow these directions: The Deep Dark Depths of the Database (and some fingerprinting) - Inside Aperture. I wonder what iPhoto is doing these days -- be interesting to look for SQLite files in other Apple applications.

I recall that SQLite was thought to have threading issues with 10.4. I wonder if that's better with 10.5.

A last lesson from our Samsung i500

I like my iPod. I liked the Palm Vx. I even mostly like my MacBook.

So I ain't impossible to please. Just not easy.

So it was hard so say the long good-bye to our Samsung i500s and all their accesories!

They were great tech for their day and today. Palm Classic goodness -- fast, super reliable, elegant. Graffiti One. Compact clamshells with good sound quality and an excellent form factor. Line 'em up against the iPhone and they do pretty well. Sure -- no mobile web. On the other hand, way more reliable and they have tasks too!

Alas, they gradually died. When my wife's failed we switched to AT&T for her BlackBerry and to line-up for my iPhone.

There was one major flaw of the i500 though -- and one related lesson. All the connectors were proprietary - and transient. No USB goodness (BlackBerry, Nokia 6555), and no evil-but-ubiquitous connector like the iPod -- just another one off from Samsung.

So, when a "free for anyone" listing on Craigslist got no hits, I had to toss everything out. Connectors, chargers, accessory cables, -- the whole bit.

That's the last lesson, though most of us have figured it out by now. Don't buy devices that use proprietary connectors -- unless they've made it to evil-but-universal status.

It's a great way to narrow your purchasing options ...

Introduction to the relational database

ATPM 14.04 - FileMaking: Getting Relational turns out to be a fairly comprehensive and quite readable introduction to relational database design. I didn't see anything that's FileMaker specific, it applies equally well to MySQL, Microsoft Access, Oracle, etc. (The promised f/u articles will be FileMaker specific.)

It's a handy reference to keep around for colleagues, students, etc.

Charles Ross covers a range of topics typically taught over the course of several lectures, so don't be surprised if it takes a while to get through the entire article. If you need to understand the topic, this is worth printing out and studying.

More iPhoto humiliation: the vanishing edited video

iMovie '08 is so abominable that it makes iPhoto look good ... by comparison.

Still, it's not hard to humiliate iPhoto, even if we forget that after 8 releases it still can't import a Library.

We know that iPhoto has a nasty video export bug that can result in total data loss. That's bad, but this is at least comparable:

1. Import 3ivx MPEG 4 encoded video with AVI wrapper into iPhoto.
2. Right click on the Edit button and open in QuickTime Pro.
3. Trim the video and save. QT Pro offers to save in .MOV format. Choose that.
4. Return to iPhoto. The video you see is the previous version.

Basically the "Edit" option in iPhoto doesn't work for Video. It should be "grayed out" and unavailable for selection.

I bet QA found this one in early testing of iPhoto '08, but product management decided it wasn't worth fixing.

They should be ashamed.

Firefox 3 beta: they didn't tackle the tab UI problem

I've been using Firefox 3 beta 5 with OS X. I've noticed a few problems -- windows initially appeared almost off screen, one window would abruptly close, but overall it looks like a good incremental improvement. It hasn't pegged my CPU yet, so that's encouraging. (Firefox 2 would do that without any help from Flash.)

Alas, they didn't do anything to tackle the multi-window tab UI problem. I was looking for a view that would render windows and tabs in a browseable outline view with tab names and mouse-over window views, but there's no sign of this.

Lesson from FLIP Video: your video is doomed

Petabyte-equivalents of home video have vanished over the past 40 years. Odd sized films, film degraded and glued together, beta tapes, odd VHS variants, digital tapes, digital disks, abandoned digital file formats ... there are many routes to the graveyard.

Things are not about get get better. I don't have any data, but I'm blogging -- I don't need any friggin' data.I'm guessing most video now is coming from cell phones, digital cameras, and new packagings like FLIP Video. So how well will this video do over the next 40 years.

Digital cameras commonly use "Motion JPEG" [1]. Mobile phones use all kinds of formats, but they're converging on a wrapper called "3GP", behind that wrapper are all kinds of semi-standard data formats. The FLIP Video camera the kids and I are using on our Wisconsin Dells holiday uses 3ivx, of which I recently wrote:

Gordon's Tech: FLIP Video Ultra camcorder: iMovie HD works, iMovie '08 doesn't

...Videos are in "AVI" format -- that's a metadata wrapper around a codec. In this case coded is 3ivx MPEG-4... 3ivx Technologies is hoping you'll buy the full version from them...

I ended up writing an extended post with lots of updates; I learned quite a bit about iMovie '08 (disgraceful, Apple shipped at least one year too soon [3]), QuickTime and QuickTime Pro, MPEG Streamclip, video formats, video codecs, editing software, etc.

I haven't quite figured out the optimal strategy for editing and storing FLIP Video 3ivx encoded video, but I think there's a very good chance the 3ivx files will be completely unreadable within 15 years. It's a completely proprietary format, with no particular reason to expect it to become a lasting "standard".

So what will last? Well, I'm betting reasonably compliant still image JPEG will be readable a hundred years from now [2], so I think Motion-JPEG video might persist. Motion-JPEG's simplicity makes it easy to edit too, assuming one doesn't try to convert from the highly JPEG compressed images to any lossy format. I'm not so sure about the sound formats though. DVD-Video without copy-protection might also be expected to last, but that simple name hides a lot of complexity and variation with sound and video compression standards and metadata wrappers.

So called DV-stream is one name given the streamed version of 'digital video' standard (actually is a standard), but a casual glance at Wikipedia reveals lots of room for incompatible variations on digital media. It does lend itself well to editing (no intra-frame compression) but it makes for huge data files. It's dying off as MPEG-4 and HDV "standards" take over.

Hmm. Sounds like a real mess. I've read lots of discussions about archival image formats, so I'm sure this Google archival video search will yield lots of great advice.

Well, as of April 2008, not so much great advice. Basically, no advice at all.

Those petabytes of lost home 8mm home film recording are about to joined by peta-giga-tera bytes of every conceivable unreadable combination of video, audio and metadata formats.

Don't get to attached to those precious video moments ....

-- Footnotes --

[1] I'm still figuring out what this corresponds to in QuickTime Pro's export menu. I think it's the JPEG export option that shows up in the video export list, but I've reason to suspect things are even more confusing than they appear.

[2] Assuming our non-human inheritors are curious about their precursors. JPEG is what I store my photos in, I assume the original RAW files will be absolutely unreadable within 10 years.

[3] Seriously. The more I play with it the worse it gets. For example: even the one or two video formats it can import aren't recognized when the same files are stored in an iPhoto repository. If anyone ever has the delusion that Apple has some special magical interest in their customers, they need to review the iMovie '08 story. I use a lot of Apple products, but they're not marvelous. They're only better than the alternatives.

HP 15C emulator for the iPhone

Found this via Cosmic Variance: hpcalc-iphone - Google Code. It's a GPL project, includes the beloved HP-15C. I'll want this one, it will be out with the official SDK.

WD Hard drive - what's the warranty?

I go through hard drives ... like clockwork. Every six months the six work and home machines I maintain need a new hard drive.

None of the brands seem better than any other. I try to pay about $150 - $200 since that seems to the price of reasonably current drives with most of the bugs worked out.

The only other thing I look for is the warranty. Not that I ever bother to use them, but I figure a longer warranty means the manufacturer has a bit more confidence in the product.

Today I had to replace a drive quickly, so I didn't look for a warranty. When installed it, I couldn't find any reference to a warranty period.

I found something on Western Digital's web site when I entered the serial number:

Warranty Check for End User

By default, the warranty date is calculated from the manufacture date. However, if you have proof of purchase, we can update the warranty to calculate it from the purchase date. If you feel that the warranty date needs to be updated from the purchase date, please follow the instructions below.

1. Send us an email from this link:
   http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/ask.php
2. Put in "Update warranty" in the subject line.
3. Attach a picture or a scanned copy of your purchase receipt (jpg, jpeg, or gif formats only, max 500KB)
4. Send the email.

The date I was given was 10/2008, or about seven months from now. So I'm guessing the US warranty is one year, but if you don't have a receipt you can still make a claim for a shortened period.

Odd development.

PS. I am getting tired of restoring from backup. I'm planning to at least put NAS storage at home, with a RAID array so I can just swap dead drives without having to do a restore.

Aperture and Time Machine: a joint bug

Apple suggests disabling Time Machine when Aperture is running  :

Time Machine may back up the entire Aperture Library on each run

As a workaround, turn Time Machine off (in Time Machine preferences, in System Preferences). When you want to manually back up, quit Aperture, then choose Back Up Now from Time Machine's menu bar icon (Mac OS X 10.5.2 or later), or by Control-clicking or right-clicking Time Machine in the Dock and choosing Back Up Now.

Translation: We have a nasty bug.

Aperture 2.1 is out -- and the installer is broken ...

I got hit by this bug:

Apple - Support - Discussions - Aperture 2.0.1 doesn't recognize that ...

Aperture 2.0 or later is required to install this update.

The Aperture 2.1 48MB updater doesn't recognize that Aperture 2.01 is installed. I tried various hacks that have worked for others: removing pref files, removing receipts from all prior Aperture installs, removing the Aperture ID file from Pro Apps, deleting Aperture, emptying trash, reinstalling from DVD using an Admin account, etc.

No joy.

Not coincidentally, when I run Software Update I'm not notified of the 2.1 update. On my G5 iMac running 10.4.11 and all security updates there's something broken in the Aperture registration department.

I was able to install the 184MB Aperture 2.1 trial version. It recognized my registration key and it includes the "dodge and burn plugin"

Even after successfully installing 2.1 trial however, the updater still does not work.

Very annoying.

BTW, the sample projects that are installed from the DVD occupy 3GB of disk space. They're stored in Library\Application Support\Aperture.

What Time Machine can and can't do

via DF, I came across a great review of OS X Time Machine backup software. For example:

X.5 Time Machine (Quarter Life Crisis)

...A point that is rather sore as well for me is the fact that Caches folders are completely excluded from backups. By Spotlight’s poor design the Caches folder contains a Metadata folder which applications have to store their data in if they want it to be found in the index. Those metadata files will not be in a backup. As a consequence restoring your system from a backup will leave you with an incomplete Spotlight index until you run all the applications which stored data in the Caches/Metadata folder and make sure they re-create them. Ultimately this is a Spotlight issue, I think, but with Time Machine being made by the same company, they should have had an eye on it...

Quarter Life has an extensive list of critiques: the UI is truly awful, there's no encryption of the backup (!), there's very limited control of what's backed up, etc.

Firewire, USB and SATA performance on Macs

I have an old 3G Firewire iPod and a several USB iPods. The old Firewire iPod is a joy to sync. Extremely fast, instant dismount. The modern USB devices are a pain. My Mac Firewire connected drive feels as fast as an internal drive, my PC USB drives are sluggish.

Gigabit ethernet connected drives, in my experience with my CPUs in heavy use, are much faster than local USB drives and even comparable to local Firewire 400 connections.

This, of course, contradicts the theoretical performance figures for USB drives. It makes me mourn the lost beauty of Firewire 400.

So I really enjoyed this discussion of Firewire, USB and SATA on Macs, with Windows specific footnotes.

AppleInsider | Exploring Time Capsule: theoretical speed vs practical throughput

USB has a faster theoretical maximum than Firewire 400 (400 Mbits/sec; 50 MB/sec), but Firewire 400 is actually much faster than USB because it uses smarter peer to peer interface hardware rather than pushing low level work onto the PC host's CPU as the simpler master to slave architecture of USB does.

On a Mac, Firewire is typically around twice as fast in real world transfer rates, with USB hitting around 18 MB/sec and Firewire reaching 35 MB/sec throughput. Windows' implementation of USB has historically been faster than Mac OS X's, with Windows' USB reaching throughput closer to 33MB/sec..

Firewire on a Mac is far faster than USB on an XP box, I suspect Firewire on XP is comparable to Firewire in OS X and also much faster than USB in real world use (ie. when the CPU is loaded down with other tasks, and so unable to respond to USB demands).

Given my experience I'd expect a USB drive on an gigabit wired Airport base station to be significantly slower than a SATA drive inside a wired Time Machine.  I hope that will be tested in a future post.