USB 3 and Gigabit ethernet: two articles on the gap between marketing and reality

Vendors lie. It's the nature of things.

Ski resorts lie about their snow coverage, and tech vendors lie about performance. Marketing, for example, convinced most geeks that USB 2 was as fast as Firewire, but that's certainly not true under OS X.

In the same vein, here are two articles that contrast real world performance with marketing claims:

Coding Horror Gigabit Ethernet and Back of the Envelope Calculations: A 2005 article that showed Gigabit ethernet is about 3 times faster than 100 mbps ethernet -- not 10 times as fast. Great discussion.

Dans Data review: USB 3 drive box and controller card kit (Jan 2010): In most available machines USB 3 is 3 times faster than USB 2. (So it's probably faster than Firewire 400 and maybe comparable to Firewire 800).

Threefold improvements are nothing to sneeze at, especially in the post-Moore's Law era. It's just not quite what marketing promises.

Mac users need not feel USB 3 envy -- we get Firewire 800.

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Relational database 101: A Microsoft gem hidden in plain sight

Colleagues sometimes ask me about where to get a basic introduction to databases. My informatics students should be asking that, but they usually don’t.

I’ve not had a very good response. It’s been eons since my first encounter with data models, ER diagrams, keys and the like. I dimly recalled the monstrous Microsoft Access manuals of old, which often included quite good tutorials.

That’s what led me to crack open the Table of Contents of Microsoft Access 2007. It took me a while to figure out that how to do that. You can either click on a tiny blue circle/question mark in the far right of the app bar, or you can type old F1. You can then click the wee blue book icon to see a Table of Contents or you can look at “Browse Access Help”. From either location you’ll see “Database design” as shown here in the Table of Contents:

Microsoft has put a lot of material behind that little Database design link:

Starting with Database design basics:

Wow. I feel like I’ve entered a dusty old library frozen in time, and opened a book untouched for decades (I did that once in rural Bangladesh – quite memorable). Microsoft’s tech writers are terribly underappreciated.

The materials include demonstrations, references to sample databases, etc. The vast majority of this material is applicable to any relational database, from poor little Access to Oracle.

Many students and tech workers have an unused copy of Microsoft Access near at hand. Even if you never intend to do anything with Microsoft Access, you might as well take advantage of the excellent interactive textbook that comes with it.

Google talk IM clients: Adium for OS and Trillian for XP – the good and the ugly

I only became interested in instant messaging after I had a portable platform that supported it – namely the iPhone OS 3 update (prior that release there were no message notifications) and BeejiveIM.

IM still doesn’t work terribly well on an iPhone, but that technology change tipped the balance enough to make IM interesting on my desktop.

So I’m late to the game, but catching up. I did make one mistake in the catch-up process. Since my peers are all old and wrinkly like me, they don’t know this stuff. I should have asked younger geeks what they did.

That’s why I only now realized there was a solution to two problems I have had:

1. There’s no Google Talk client for OS X.
2. The XP Google Talk client only supports one Google identity – I want it to support my corporate and personal GT identities.

The solution for both problems on OS X is Adium. It supports multiple identities. I even have a sneaky suspicion iChat would work too (sigh, I’ve been so disgusted with iChat Video that I’ve dismissed all aspects of it).

On XP I was hearing good things about Trillian Astra. I figured I’d install it and, if it worked, pay for Pro.

Mistake.

During the install Trillian tried to change my search service and it installed the Ask.com toolbar – without notification or permission. This isn’t a new problem …

Does Trillian have a crapware problem- - Zero Day - ZDNet.com

StopBadware.org researcher Liana Leahy has taken Cerulean Studios to task for bundling two third-party applications into the popular free Trillian IM client, arguing that users who are not careful during the Trillian installation process could end up with a crapware problem.

During the installation process, the default setting is for Trillian to bundle the Weather Channel Desktop and the Ask Toolbar, two products that could introduce security risks to PC users.

I uninstalled the ask.com toolbar and Trillian immediately after the installation completed.

So I’m still looking for an XP IM solution.

This isn’t the first time I’ve run into quality issues with the XP marketplace. XP is a very large market, but it’s a very undiscriminating market with a lot of vulnerable users. The quality of the software is often very low.

Update: A trusted (younger geek) colleague recommended Pidgin for XP – libpurple based open source like Adium. See also:

• Pidgin, the universal chat client (not to be confused with ePigeon)
• Pidgin (software) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• Five Best Instant Messengers - Instant Messaging – Lifehacker: they were gamed by Trillian, but Pidgin showed up there too.
• Configuring Pidgin for Google Talk (it's not as polished as Adium)

Update 1/13/2010: Pidgin's window didn't locate itself correctly in my two monitor setup and the app itself is pretty crude. Adium is far more polished. So I'm still looking!

Update 1/13/2010: I’d read somewhere that Windows Live Messenger would provide some interoperability with XMPP, so I tried installing it. Nope – it’s still pure Microsoft. Big install and uninstall. Surprisingly, it’s ad supported as well. First time I’ve seen Microsoft do that. I looked into AOL IM as well, but no federation there either. There’s far less interoperability that I’d expected, and the interoperable clients are disappearing. I wonder if a combination of SMS, Twitter and lack of a revenue model has killed Instant Messaging.

Update 1/14/10: Another colleague recommended meebo, but that web app doesn't support Oauth with Google -- it wants my Google credentials! I don't even give those to my mother. In any event, it only supports a single Google XMPP account.

Google Voice quality issue report form

Google seems to revise their customer feedback and problem reporting schemes monthly.

As of Jan 2010 we're to use: Contact Us - Google Voice Help to report voice quality issues.

Two weeks ago I had to stop using Google Voice to Montreal due to severe echoing, but the echoes are mild now.

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CrashPlan (or JungleDisk) instead of Retrospect 8?

I've been hoping to retire my XP machine running Retrospect Professional and switch to Retrospect 8 for OS X.

Then I discovered EMC hasn't been able to produce a manual / user guide for Retrospect 8 in the year since it was first released.

I just can't get my head past that. How can I trust a company that can't put a manual together? I mean, I know manuals are hard work, but surely in the midst of the Great Recession EMC could have found some tech writers? The simplest explanation for the lack of a manual is that EMC didn't finish the software and has since abandoned the product.

So I'm looking for alternatives to Retrospect - in addition to Time Machine. (I believe in at least two, completely unrelated, fully automated, backup systems).

Two years ago I considered CrashPlan. Back then it was designed to backup to a friend's machine, but now they offer free local backup and an offsite service. Today we'd need the family plan, which costs $100 per year.

TidBITS is fond of CrashPlan, they all use it ...

• TidBITS Home Macs: CrashPlan Central Slashes Hosted Backup Pricing
• TidBITS Safe Computing: CrashPlan Adds Direct-to-Disk Backups

Searches on "retrospect" and "crashplan" or "retrsopect vs. CrashPlan", found some good articles ...

• CrashPlan Pro vs. Retrospect 8.1 « Seek Nuance
• CrashPlan and CrashPlan Pro, Revisited « Seek Nuance
• Review: CrashPlan Backup - macosx.com
• Forget Computers :: Backup Software - Why we are leaving Retrospect for CrashPlan PRO
• CrashPlan Review – A flexible multi-platform backup solution | Blackbeagle (I like the 1 year update!)
• Online backup services (Fleishman, MacWorld, Sept 2009 - per recommendation of Seek Nuance)
• Crashplan - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• CrashPlan Does Local, Remote, and Friend-Based Backup - Backup utilities - Lifehacker

The reviews are positive, but of course CrashPlan has the Cloud risk. If Code 42 dies, everyone's backups are toast. Since I will be doing local Time Machine backups this is less of a risk for me.

I'm persuaded to uninstall my trial version of Retrospect 8 and give CrashPlan a try. I'll report back on my test results starting with my new i5 (which has very little data on it so far).

Update 1/4/10: Through comments here and on Seek Nuance I'm hearing Mac geeks settling into a mixture of TimeMachine, SuperDuper (intermittent clone) and CrashPlan/JungleDisk. Seek Nuance also recommends a Sept 2009 MacWorld review.

JungleDisk is blocked by some corporate filters, perhaps because it can be used for file sharing as well as backup - it provides a standard WebDav interface and thus resembles MobileMe's costly backup service. JD can currently be used with Amazon's S3 storage service but was purchased by RackSpace - so it's unclear how long that will work well. Good JD references include:

• Jungle Disk - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
• The Savvy Technologist - Getting serious about backing up (Part II)
• Online backup services Review | Glenn Fleishman | Macworld

The big thing we've lost with the demise of Retrospect/Mac is a Mac server hosted cross-platform SOHO backup solution. Not surprisingly, this turned out to be a very small market! The home side of the Retrospect market is made up of about 10 geeks like me. On the other hand small businesses with a mixture of Macs and Windows machines are overwhelmingly likely to use a cheap Windows backup server -- or to drop the Windows machines altogether. It's easy to see why EMC effectively gave up on Retrospect 8.

My gut sense is that CrashPlan is more of a consumer/geek business devoted to backup, whereas JungleDisk is a geek-only business providing general cloud storage and more options (some of them shady). JD is a one-stop alternative to CrashPlan + DropBox. The big kahuna would be a Google file/backup store, but that's been on the horizon for about 8 years. It may never come.

Update 1/4/10b: Glen Fleishman was using Retrospect 8 as recently as a few months ago - and he's a pretty reputable Mac geek. Glen recommends Joe Kissell's "Mac OS X Backups" eBook (TidBITS team). That lists at $15 with a 10% off coupon for CrashPlan (discount is for CrashPlan+ for business, not for the online backup service) -- so if you're planning to get CrashPlan (online) it's only $5. In fact, however, when I clicked order it was only $7.50 because of a mysterious "coupon". So if I do pay for CrashPlan it's essentially free.

I won't regurgitate Joe's eBook, but I will update this post with what I finally decide to do after having read it.

Update 1/25/2010: I'm still evaluating CrashPlan. I did buy Joe's book and it's a bargain! Highly recommended.

Update 2/4/2010: I reject CrashPlan in the Cloud because of the security risks of their password reset policy. I may still use the free version as a complement to Time Machine backups.

Update 2/21/2010: I was having lockups on startup with my MacBook. The Console showed several errors, but none clearly pointing to CrashPlan (lots of VMWare activity seen though -- and quite a few warnings about issues with OS X itself). Since CrashPlan does have deep OS hooks and is a recent install, and since I'd given up on its Cloud function, I uninstalled it. The uninstaller is a very user-unfriendly shell script.

I feel I gave CrashPlan a good test, and it failed. At the moment I'm entirely reliant on Time Machine, which is not a lovely feeling.

Update 2/24/2010: After uninstalling CrashPlan I found bits of it remaining. There are two empty folders in the System Library that require root privileges to delete. They're not causing any trouble, but I prefer to avoid software that installs in the system Library.

Update 4/26/10: I went to the CrashPlan site to completely remove my account information. Can't figure out who to do it. Nothing like this in the FAQ. More badness.

Apple Discussions - The User Tips Library

The Apple - Support - Discussions - User Tips Library is an impressive albeit idiosyncratic collection of tips on OS X.

For example: Changes in DNS resolution in Mac OS X ... explained a few things that puzzled me (and reminded me that Apple's OS X engineers seem a bit overwhelmed these days).

I've subscribed to the feed for this library:

feed://discussions.apple.com/rss/rssthreads.jspa?forumID=599
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Choosing a DNS: What namebench showed me

I use OpenDNS for its domain blocking properties and I switch OS X Location to GoogleDNS when I want to bypass the filters [1]. I used to use my ISP's (Qwest) DNS servers.

So what did Google's free cross-platform Namebench DNS Server testing utility show me?

OpenDNS was my fastest option at 72 ms. [2]However OpenDNS is "hijacking" "google.com" and "www.thepiratebay.org". Google didn't have any good explanations of this, but (interestingly) Bing did (first time I've had Google fail and Bing succeed).

The hit Google omitted, but Bing showed, explained that OpenDNS proxies Google because of an evil trick Dell and Google have played on Dell customers for two years. Funny how Google missed that one.

I couldn't find any explanation of OpenDNS hijacking of "thepiratebay.org".

After OpenDNS came UltraDNS then General Mills-MG1 US and Google Public DNS. Google was 50% slower for us than OpenDNS.

[1] Even in Snow Leopard every machine user gets the same Location settings and, except for Simple Finder, any user can change it. Sooner or later the kids will figure out how we are getting around OpenDNS blocks and we'll have to do something else.

[2] There's a meaningless 1ms overhead because the LAN DNS is my AirPort which in turn goes through my Qwest modem.

Update 1/24/10: When I revised some DNS information at Dreamhost, OpenDNS updated quickly but Google didn't.