Parental Controls - The wikipedia problem solved

I'm setting up a special account on one of our laptops that will be used by my son with light supervision. It will be much more restricted than the account he uses when closely supervised.

So I'm back with Apple's notoriously buggy Parental Controls. It's been a while, so I was pleasantly surprised to see that several old bugs are better in the latest version of Safari and 10.5.

One is acting strangely however. I wonder if it's a new Safari bug. When I limit access to listed web sites, many links within the sight are unavailable. This isn't how it's supposed to work (emphases mine) ...

Mac OS X 10.5: About the Parental Controls Internet content filter

... If 'Allow access to only these websites' is selected in Parental Controls, the Internet content filter blocks any website which is not on the list. When the blocking web page is presented, a list of allowed websites is also shown. If using Safari, allowed websites are displayed as bookmarks in the bookmarks bar.

Note: For most websites, the Internet content filter considers the domain name and not the path. For example, if http://www.example.com is added to the list, then http://pictures.example.com will be allowed, as will http://www.example.com/movies....

The key word here is "most". In one site I tested it works as above. In another, only the main page is accessible. I can't find any documentation that explains why behavior varies by site. I'll try asking on Apple Discussions.

Update 11/20/09: I found a 2008 post on this topic. The user never found a fix, but later, on a different 10.5 machine, the problem resolved.

Update 11/21/09: Wikipedia has a nonstandard approach to IP addresses. I can use ping to find an IP address for simple.wikipedia.org, but I can't use that address in a URL. I suspect this is done to meet some security and confidentiality goal. However this approach may also defeat Parental Controls, which probably works from IP addresses.

Update 11/21/09b: We use OpenDNS on some kid machines, and OpenDNS supports a "shortcut" redirect like "simple" for simple.wikipedia.org. Except it doesn't work for this domain. Wikipedia is doing something unusual with IP addresses, perhaps as a side-effect of protecting user IP addresses. I think Wikipedia manages IP addresses differently for logged in users, so I'm going to explore that option next.

Update 11/21/09c. I dance the geek dance of Dilbertian triumph. What worked for me is the combination of establishing a user account and secure server access (https to wikimedia.org server). The sequence I followed is:

1. From Admin account off content controls for the child account browser.
2. In Child account create a user account on wikipedia and use their secure login: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/simple/wiki/Special:UserLogin. Create a bookmark to this page.
3. Go to main page: https://secure.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/simple/wiki/Main_Page. Create a bookmark to this page.
4. Now return to Admin account and limit access controls to the above listed bookmarks.

It now works.
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LEGO Digital Designer is pure evil on OS X

I downloaded LEGO Digital Designer : Virtual Building Software for my Lego-crazed 10 yo. It's going to be hard to tell him it doesn't work on OS X.

I got it working on one account, but on another it says there's no internet access (cannot access internet) -- then it hangs. I have to kill it.

It looks and smells like a cheap hacked port from Windows, probably outsourced to the lowest bidder.

I'm one seriously annoyed customer. Maybe it's time to try to interest Ben in the non-Lego world. Lego doesn't really need our money this holiday season.

Update: It's incompatible with parental controls. If controls are enabled in any way, even if all web access is allowed, it doesn't work. I wonder if it uses some chat protocol to communicate with the server; I know enabling parental controls blocks jabber/google talk protocols in 10.5 (bug).

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Microsoft Access 2007 – RIP

I’ve seen software die.

First the code gets crufty. Features pile on, but half of ‘em don’t work right. Old features might or might not work. There are security holes.

Then a bright new team gets the gig. Old code is hacked out, new ideas are grafted onto old models. Usually you end up with a cacophonous concatenation.

That’s how Access 2007 smells. I know the team tried hard, but it’s a train wreck.

It’s not just a few bugs, or one or two missing features, or a limited design flop. It’s all of the above and more. As a power tool for hacking relational data it’s following the FrontPage path to oblivion.

Yeah, I’ve written before about how bad Access 2007 is. Even so, I think I was in denial. It took trying to complete a significant data manipulation project to make me face facts.

Microsoft isn’t going to fix Access. They want to sell the latest iteration of SQL Server and their Sharepoint services – Access is a costly distraction that happens to work pretty well with the Great Satan (Oracle).

There will be another release or two, then it will follow the path of FrontPage - which was once part of the Office Suite.

See also:

• Access 2007- It's really bad
• Living with Access 2007- -Disabled Mode-, Trust Center, and a Bug
• Microsoft's Access 2003 to Access 2007 animated reference guide (Flash)

I add the despised comment captcha

Gordon's Notes: I add the despised comment captcha.

This blog too. I hope I can turn it off soon.
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Calling from Montreal to St. Paul using Google Voice

I've been using Google Voice for over a year to save about $1,000 on my mobile phone long distance calls from St. Paul to Montreal. I use Google's web tool on iPhone Safari.app to call a number; Google first calls my cell then it calls the remote number.

It's been working very well, especially lately, even though Apple is a greedy coward for purging all GV apps from the iPhone and forcing me to use the inferior Google Web app.

It's good stuff, but of course there are limitations. The first connection in the two connection Google Voice call must be within the US. So if I'm in Montreal, for example, I can't useGoogle Voice to call from Montreal to St. Paul.

Except ... I slowly realized ... I can, from anywhere with a web browser, setup a call from one of my GV registered numbers to any other number on earth.

It's not calling from Montreal to St Paul, it's telling Google to call St. Paul, then, when someone picks up, Google connects to Montreal.

Got that? This Google Voice screen shot might help (imagine 111-1111 were a real number in Montreal, 1660 Stanford how I label our home phone number):

I can only create these connections to numbers that I've registered with Google (and that registration is all but exclusive, no more than two GV users can share a number), so practically speaking it's only useful for me setting up a phone call from my home to wherever I happen to be.

Still, it's an example of the kind of creativity the GV platform allows. (Apple, can we trade 99,000 iPhone apps for the Google Mobile suite?)

iWeb doesn't do tables - and OS X HTML Editor alternatives

I really do need to find a web page authoring solution other than FrontPage 98.

That's not easy. Yeah, FP 98 wasn't perfect. On the other hand, there's almost nothing to compare to it today. I'd stay with it, except it's a bit silly to fire up a Win VM just to run ten year old software.

I tried seeing if I could live with one of Google's many (many) HTML editors -- such as Sites, Google Docs, or Blogger. Briefly - yech. Google's templates are terrifically ugly. I'm no artist, but Google makes Microsoft look inspired. Sites layout seems to require tables -- but you can't make borders vanish. I've been waiting years for Google to stop sucking at this, and it's past time I give up.

So on OS X that leaves only a few options. I tried an early version of Karelia Sandvox, but it didn't impress and it's $60. I'm sure it's better now, but I do own iWeb '09. So that's a logical choice, but iWeb uses a proprietary database format - hard data lock.

As is common in modern software, there are no good choices. For now I'll do throwaway stuff in iWeb while I look for alternatives.

Which brings me to the title of my post. I know iWeb can't be really serious -- because iWeb doesn't do tables. Not at all.

Wow.

Update: RapidWeaver has grown up a lot since I looked at it years ago. I was really impressed by this ...

...The RapidWeaver Sandwich file format (.rwsw) is a completely open file format. We call them "RapidWeaver Sandwiches" because it's easy to open them up and see the filling. In the Finder, they’re viewed as normal ‘bundles’ however inside it’s all developer-friendly XML...

Of course that doesn't mean I could do anything with this format, but I'm impressed they talk about it. I couldn't find out much about how Sandvox stores its data. I did get the impression that it can be tricky to move RapidWeaver work from one machine to another -- that's a serious problem.

I wish I wasn't the only person in the universe who worried about data freedom and exit strategies!

Update b: While it doesn't have tables, I have to admit that the iWeb page I did looks quite nice and it was very easy to put together.

Update 11/9/09: In my very first iWeb page I ran into a weird bug. This doesn't mean iWeb is necessarily unusually buggy -- bugs love me. I had a text field that had one URL in iWeb and another on the web. I tried lots of tricks to fix the bug, but nothing worked. Finally I deleted the text field -- and another object vanished with it! Somehow it was entangled with an image that had a link to. I had to carefully remove the text object only letter at a time, then recreate it to clear the bug.

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Google Account storage allotment bug

Google has some paid storage issues.

When I look at My Google Account Personal Settings, I see I'm using 83% of my Storage Space (8.27 GB).

However, in Gmail it says I'm using 9.9 GB of 17.2 GB (57%).

In the manage storage view It says I'm using

• Gmail: 1.6 of 8.33 GB (19%)
• Picasa: 1 GB (100%)
• Paid Storage: Picasa 8.27 GB (83%), Available 1.73 GB (17%)

So from some views I'm seeing the sum of my standard Gmail allotment plus 1 GB from Picasa, in other views I'm seeing a percentage of the sum of all my allotments, and lastly I see a view where all the storage allotments are segregated.

These are unlikely to all be correct.

Update 11/10/09: Google is redoing their storage plans, so maybe things will clear up. I don't see the new options yet.

Update 11/11/09: My primary storage now shows 80GB for $20. Here's how it's recorded across Google:

• Gmail's view: 9.9 GB (11%) of 87.2 GB
• Account Personal Settings view: 8.27GB (10%) of 80 GB

manage storage view:

Free (total is about 8.27 but Gmail grows continuously)

• Gmail: 1.6 (22%) of 7.27
• Picasa: 1.0 (100%) of 1.0

Paid (80 GB)

• Picasa: 8.27 GB (10%)
• Gmail: 0GB (0%)
• Available: 71.73 GB (90%)

Purchase storage view

• 8.27GB (10%) in use

So it's still somewhat scrambled but the Manage Storage Screen now gets things straight. I seem to have 80GB in my general storage pool, 1 GB in free Picasa storage, and 7+ GB (it increments continuously) of free Gmail storage. So I have over 88GB total. It's still not clear if I can use any of my Gmail allotment for Picasa work, but I suspect not. It looks like future Gmail overflow would go into my 80GB pool, but these days Gmail is back to growing faster than my use.

Now that my storage is north of 80GB however Google can take their time sorting out the varying reports. I have enough for now and I can go back to using Picasa Web albums freely. I'll stay with the $20 a year plan, this gives me headroom for the next few years.

So do this mean gDrive is finally coming?
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