chxo internets

Up-to-the-Now

Thu, 17 May 2012 07:52:10 -0400

Ars Technica has a feature on the latest developments in real-time applications on the web. Filed for near-future development…

Cringely, IBM, and Late-Stage Capitalism

Wed, 25 Apr 2012 08:55:50 -0400

Bob Cringely outs IBMs plan to slash its North American workforce by 85 percent… and no one cares. Or at least, his series hasn’t generated any interest from the business press, who are probably waiting for IBM to hand them a release rather than waste valuable time going in to dig up internal memos and such.

Why does it matter? Because for the last two decades (and more, of course!) IBM has been selling multi-million-dollar business systems to anyone who can afford them. Including your local government, hospitals, police, firefighters, utility companies, and so on. Really big, expensive, complex systems that have changed the way that cities do things. (Or so we’re told in the ads.)

Those systems are big and complex for a reason. They didn’t have to be, but you don’t get million dollar contracts by proposing simple solutions. You also don’t get decades of guaranteed support revenue by building something the client can manage themselves. Like it or not (and I hate it!) administrators have spent countless amounts of tax dollars wedding their operations to IBM systems.

So when memos leak that promise to completely gut the company, wouldn’t you think that was news? Are we going to wake up in two years to a crumbling software infrastructure, with no money left in the budget for new construction and no vendor left to honor the warranty? Probably.

Fortunately, if Cringely is right, there will be a lot of IBM-trained programming talent looking for work by next year.

How to Seed a Crashplan Backup to Another Computer

Sun, 18 Mar 2012 12:57:00 -0400

CrashPlan is a neat bit of freemium-ware that allows you to easily and securely backup files on one computer to another.

If the destination computer is on the other side of the internet or a slow wi-fi connection, it makes sense to seed that backup by first backing up locally, and then transferring that archive to the remote computer by hand (aka sneakernet).

I tried to set this up using the instructions here, but I kept getting the error “incorrect archive: belongs to another computer”. Perhaps they apply to an older version of CrashPlan, I don’t know.

The following assumes you have CrashPlan client installed and logged into the same account on both local and remote computers, and that remote is accepting inbound backups.

Step 1: Create a local archive using the local computer.

Create a local folder destination and perform your backup. Within the local folder there will be a folder with a long numeric name (like 517753233945951089). This is the archive folder.

Step 2: Create a remote archive using local computer.

On the local computer, go to Destinations > Computers, select the remote computer and click Start Backup.

After a few seconds, pause the backup so you don’t waste bandwidth copying files. All you’re doing is getting the connection set up.

Step 3: Take/copy the local archive (henceforth the copied archive) to the remote computer.

Step 4: On the remote computer, switch the inbound backup archive location to the copied archive.

Go to Backup then click on the inbound computer name to see the Inbound backup settings.

Click the folder icon to the right of the Location to change it from the default location to the location of the copied archive

CrashPlan will ask you if you want to delete the incomplete archive from the default location, and you probably do.

Step 5: Unpause the backup on the local computer and verify that it is now magically complete! Congratulations, you have seeded the backup successfully.

Step 6: You can now delete the original local folder destination on the local computer, since you are now backing up to the remote computer.

The Azure Leap Day Bug

Thu, 15 Mar 2012 08:53:00 -0400

This will be famous every four years:

When the GA creates the transfer certificate, it gives it a one year validity range. It uses midnight UST of the current day as the valid-from date and one year from that date as the valid-to date. The leap day bug is that the GA calculated the valid-to date by simply taking the current date and adding one to its year. That meant that any GA that tried to create a transfer certificate on leap day set a valid-to date of February 29, 2013, an invalid date that caused the certificate creation to fail.

From Summary of Windows Azure Service Disruption on Feb 29, 2012.

First half of a 1982 interview with Rear Admiral Grace Hopper,...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 18:56:00 -0500

First half of a 1982 interview with Rear Admiral Grace Hopper, inventor of COBOL and free radical behind the computerization of the Navy. Greatest explanation of a nanosecond, ever.

Second half: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVMhPVInxoE

Sync Multiple Google Calendars on WP7

Wed, 25 Jan 2012 14:51:59 -0500

Google sync on Windows Phone 7.5 works great, with one notable exception: your shared calendars aren’t automatically recognized.

Fortunately this problem is solvable on Google’s end, as detailed in this post. Basically, you tell Google to sync specific shared calendars with your WP7 device, and you’ll be all set. Worked for me.

Best Slashdot comment of 2012, so far...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:59:00 -0500

Re:Part of a money conflict within the King family (Score:5, Insightful)

by Solandri (704621) writes on Tue 17 Jan 11:26PM ( #38730852)

The bitter family feud that has divided the children of Martin Luther King Jr. isn’t much different than other fights between brothers and sisters — except that this one has spilled into the courts and publicly tarnished the legacy of an American icon of peace and harmony.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

So that dream came true, just not the way he expected.

How to fix copyright in the digital age

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 09:27:45 -0500

The President recently asked us to come up with a better system for enforcing copyright online.

Here’s my proposal:

Exempt linking to, copying, and redistributing digital information, while leaving all other copyright protections in place.

This radical but progressive move acknowledges the fact that digital copying and redistribution is fundamental to the way networked computers operate. It protects all manner of fair use sharing and derivative works as long as they happen online. And it frees up resources for enforcement of copyright on physical media and the sale of licenses, which is where media companies make their money.

In short, everybody wins. And yes, people will still buy books, movies, and music when copying them is free. We are willing to pay for convenience and authenticity, and of course we want to own nicely packaged copies of the works that we treasure.

The Windows error haiku

Mon, 28 Nov 2011 17:33:00 -0500

A file that big?
It might be very useful!
But now it is gone.

In 1998, Salon Magazine ran a challenge to readers to convert Window’s style error messages into haiku. The above, by David J. Liszewski, is a favorite. But the winner in my opinion, was this gem by Nick Sweeney:

wind catches lily
scatt’ring petals to the wind:
segmentation fault

Data Migration Pattern

Sun, 02 Oct 2011 11:31:28 -0400

Facebook-er Kent Beck’s Software Design Glossary includes an entry on Succession, “the art of taking a single conceptual change, breaking it into safe steps, and then finding an order for those steps that optimizes safety, feedback, and efficiency.”

As an example, he gives us (for free!) this pattern for migrating from one datastore to another:

Convert data fetching and mutating to a DataType, an abstraction that hides where the data is stored.

Modify the DataType to begin writing the data to the new store as well as the old store.

Bulk migrate existing data.

Modify the DataType to read from both stores, checking that the same data is fetched and logging any differences.

When the results match closely enough, return data from the new store and eliminate the old store.

Beats shutting everything down for hours while you wait for the data to get copied over the wire.

Oauth, brilliantly explained, on a napkin. (via Matthew Story)

Thu, 15 Sep 2011 08:47:00 -0400

Oauth, brilliantly explained, on a napkin. (via Matthew Story)

Sync mSecure using Dropbox

Thu, 08 Sep 2011 09:01:00 -0400

The authors of the (otherwise excellent) mSecure password database for iOS and OS X do not let you chose where to save the password database. This makes it difficult to use Dropbox or a USB key to share the same database between, say, a home and a work computer.

Yes, you can manually sync via and iPhone or via the new “Dropbox sync” feature in v3.0. But manual syncing falls down the first time you get home and realize that you forgot to sync at work, and now you don’t have the password you really need. F**k that.

In the case of Dropbox sync, there is a workaround: move the mSecure folder from “~/Library/Application Support” into your Dropbox, then create a symlink to the moved folder in Application Support. Create the same symlink on your other computers.

You can’t just symlink the password db file, as mSecure will overwrite the symlink with an actual file.

Here’s how you do it, in Terminal, on the first computer:

cd ~/Library/Application\ Support mv mSecure ~/Desktop/Dropbox/ ln -s ~/Desktop/Dropbox/mSecure ./

On the second through nth computers, just create the symlink after deleting the existing mSecure folder:

cd ~/Library/Application\ Support mv mSecure ~/.Trash/ ln -s ~/Desktop/Dropbox/mSecure ./

You will still need to sync your iOS devices manually, but at least you’ll have an always-synced desktop version to use when you do that.

For users who want to put their mSecure db on a USB key or in a TrueCrypt archive: well, you’re out of luck. You could use the symlink trick, but I suspect that if you launch mSecure and the symlink is broken (because you don’t have the USB key in place) it will happily create a new folder with a blank db. Haven’t tested it, feel free to comment.

Java 1.5 in OS X Lion

Thu, 21 Jul 2011 14:12:00 -0400

Update: Ben Morin has improved on the Snow Leopard method to get Java 1.5 working on OS X Lion. Great news!

Why would anyone want to go through all that just to get Java 1.5? There are plenty of applications out there (my beloved Zend Studio 5.5 is one of them) that are stuck at 1.5 because vendors have either disappeared or have moved on in incompatible directions.

One of these days I’m going to write an essay about the long-tail downside of the software lifecycle, which is a secret productivity killer. Open source your old applications and old builds — don’t just abandon them. I’d much rather fix the display bugs in Zend Studio than keep having to use Java 1.5 from Leopard.

Difference between i5 and i7 processors in Macbook Air

Wed, 20 Jul 2011 23:24:00 -0400

According to this page, the major difference between the Mobile Core i5 and i7 processors shipping in the latest generation of Macbook Air is that the i7 line has hyperthreading enabled, which doubles the apparent number of cores.

Since OS X Lion is an aggressively multithreaded and multiprocess OS, that will probably make a big difference. Benchmarks anyone?

IEEE Series on the Social Web

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 21:54:06 -0400

IEEE Spectrum just published a special report on “The Social Web”, which does a great job of summing up where we are and what the landscape looks like.

Some of it is the same old (and tired) Google vs Facebook PR schmaltz, but they are the major players circa 2011, at least in population and business valuation.

The pieces I was really drawn toward are the ones that survey the state of social privacy (as in, is it an oxymoron?) and the excellent article about Facebook’s lack of social context. Do your family and work colleagues see you the same way your friends do? Should they?

You call it a Cloud, but it looks like a Silo

Tue, 07 Jun 2011 08:27:00 -0400

I predict that Apple’s iCloud will have the same problems inherent to every other mass “cloud” effort to date: no awareness of family.

If you share a computer or device with others, you know what I’m talking about. It’s not just my photos, music, and books. It’s OUR photos, music, and books. And yet, they are always tied to just one user account in these services, with any sharing happening manually or through clunky workaround interfaces like iTunes Library sharing (ugh!).

Businesses are in a similar situation, of course, but employees get paid to transfer data between silos.

What am I asking for? Give me (us) a way to set up groups and sync information and files across multiple user accounts. Based on recent history, I fear that this is not even on the radar at Apple (or Google) (or Amazon). But we’ll see.

Photo

Sun, 22 May 2011 10:53:26 -0400

Why hasn't Amazon ditched their Comodo Certificates?

Sun, 22 May 2011 10:53:08 -0400

On April 14, 2011, OS X and iOS were updated to blacklist a group of certificates that were infamously cloned by attackers using a compromised Comodo affiliate Registration Authority.

This isn’t the first time Comodo has been compromised.

So why does Amazon still use Comodo? Parts of their ordering pipeline are broken (no images) due to the now untrusted certificate shown above.

Photo

Wed, 04 May 2011 07:56:18 -0400

When Inline Attachments Get Scary

Wed, 04 May 2011 07:55:00 -0400

I just got an interesting 419 letter purporting to be from the Lagos office of the FBI. Unlike most such, it came as a PDF (screenshot above).

It’s obviously not credible on several levels, but what gave me pause was this: Apple mail automatically rendered the attached PDF.

We have been hearing about PDF attacks for years, where a maliciously crafted PDF can lead to arbitrary code execution when opened. Most of these have been in Adobe’s abominable Reader, but there have been necessary patches to Apple’s PDF code, too. Some day, an enlightened 419 scammer will realize that a maliciously crafted advance letter may be all they need to get your bank account details the easy way, via keylogger. It won’t matter that the email looks bogus; Core Graphics has already opened the PDF.

There needs to be a setting in Mail Preferences to prevent this, just like the setting to prevent downloading of remote images. Until there is, or they disable this sketchy practice by default, you can use the following Terminal command.

How to turn off inline attachments in Mail.app

defaults write com.apple.mail DisableInlineAttachmentViewing -bool yes

Thanks to Micah Gilman for the tip.