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Macworld Keynote Live Text Feed Coverage
by Doug Hamilton 08 Jan '07

08 Jan '07

If you're looking for live video coverage of the keynote from MacWorld regrettably there isn't any. However, there are several web sites providing live text feeds of the keynote. This webpage should help you find a live text feed of the keynote: http://uneasysilence.com/archive/2007/01/9115/ Regards, Doug ------------- Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, APP Senior Computer Consultant Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba 204-474-6196 (Ph.) 204-474-7556 (Fax) http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/

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Happy New Year ...and a rather tongue-in-cheek look at Windows Vista
by billing 07 Jan '07

07 Jan '07

Happy New Year, all. I hope you all had an enjoyable holiday season. ...on the note of "fun things", here's a link to a video done by David Pogue, technology correspondent for the New York Times. It is his quick over view of Microsoft VISTA: http://video.on.nytimes.com/ifr_main.jsp? nsid=a28ed9693:10fee2765a0:372&rf=bm&st=1167932755448&mp=FLV&cpf=false&f vn=8&fr=051106_050849_3b99bbc2x10b250417a7x6442&rdm=100605.38635174709 (sorry for the long URL. Some of you may need to copy and paste it in bits if it gets split across lines.) Welcome back, Wayne

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"Month of Apple Bugs" - fixes
by Doug Hamilton 04 Jan '07

04 Jan '07

While Apple has yet to officially responded with fixes for any of the bugs exposed by this group: http://projects.info-pull.com/moab/ An enterprising open-source developer has already begun the task of fixing the bugs: http://landonf.bikemonkey.org/code/macosx As with any third-party software be sure to read and understand what the software is going to potentially do to your system before you install any of the "fixes" — particularly on a work system. Regards, Doug ------------- Doug Hamilton, BA, MA, APP Senior Computer Consultant Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba 204-474-6196 (Ph.) 204-474-7556 (Fax) http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/

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INTEREST: Sony settles in U.S. over spyware glitch; Skype virus steals passwords
by billing 03 Jan '07

03 Jan '07

...from: http://www.cbc.ca/arts/story/2006/12/19/sony-rootkit.html Last Updated: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 | 4:27 PM ET CBC News Sony BMG has settled two more lawsuits over CDs sold by the company that included a hidden copy-protection program that opened their computers to hackers and viruses. The company announced on Tuesday it will pay $1.5 million US and pay thousands more in customer refunds after settling lawsuits in California and Texas. The settlements come months after Sony settled with Canadian consumers over the CDs containing one of two types of copyright protection software — MediaMax or XCP. The copy protection software, called Extended Copy Protection or XCP, is installed when the CD is put into a computer. The program uses a technique called a rootkit to hide the fact that it is running, making it more difficult to disable. Security experts say the Sony program wasn't itself harmful. However, the program remains active on the computer even when the CD isn't being played and at least one computer virus has been written to hide behind the same cloak. The technology was also able to read and transmit IP addresses, thereby identifying the user and sending personal information back to Sony BMG. Continue Article Philippa Lawson, executive director of the Canadian Internet Policy and Public Interest Clinic (CIPPIC), said in September the music company could then use that information to go after illegal file- sharers in Canada. Three separate suits were filed in Canada. The first lawsuit, affecting customers in every province except British Columbia and Quebec, was settled in September. The other two provinces reached settlements later in the year. Under terms of the separate U.S. settlements, Sony will pay $750,000 to each of the states in civil penalties and costs and reimburse customers whose computers were damaged during attempts to uninstall the software. "Companies that want to load their CDs with software that limits the ability to copy music should fully inform consumers about it, not hide it, and make sure it doesn't inflict security vulnerabilities on computers," California Attorney General Bill Lockyer said in a statement. --------------------------------- ...from: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2006/12/19/tech- skypetrojanvirus-061219.html Last Updated: Tuesday, December 19, 2006 | 12:40 PM ET CBC News Internet security company Websense Inc. on Tuesday said it had found a password-stealing computer virus that spreads through the popular Skype voice-over-internet protocol (VoIP) communications software. The Trojan horse sends a message through the Skype Chat text-based instant messaging tool and asks the recipient to download a file named sp.exe. If a user complies, the virus downloads Skype programming code and new versions of itself from the internet and tries to steal passwords, Websense's security alert said. A Trojan horse is a program that appears to perform one function in order to hide a malicious one. Like the mythological Trojan horse such programs are named after, the deception tricks people into granting them access. But the risk posed by the Trojan does not stem from any security flaw in Skype, Websense said, noting that the VoIP program properly forces any attempts to gain access to it to be authorized by the user. "There is no vulnerability in Skype at this time that has been uncovered," Websense's security alert said. Websense said the sites that the Trojan uses to download the Skype code and new versions of itself were offline on Tuesday. The security firm first reported the threat on its security blog on Monday but mistook the Trojan for a worm. A worm is a type of virus that copies and spreads itself. The initial infections appeared to be in the Asia-Pacific region, particularly in South Korea, Websense said. At the end of September, Skype had 136 million registered users around the world.

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FYI: LMH and Kevin Finisterre announce the "Month of Apple Bugs"
by billing 03 Jan '07

03 Jan '07

Two security researchers (known as LMH and Kevin Finisterre) have created a web site (http://projects.info-pull.com/moab/) where they intend to publish "security flaws in different Apple software and third-party applications designed for [the OS X] operating system". Published so far are: - for January 1, 2007: Apple's QuickTiime - A vulnerability exists in the handling of the rtsp:// URL handler. This issue reportedly affects QuickTime™ Version 7.1.3, Player Version 7.1.3. Previous versions should be vulnerable as well. Both Microsoft Windows and Mac OS X versions are affected. - for January 2, 2007: VideoLAN's VLC Media Player: A format string vulnerability exists in the handling of the udp:// URL handler. This issue reportedly affects VLC for Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows. - for January 3, 2007: so far no report has appeared on the site The authors of the website describe their efforts this way: "This initiative aims to serve as an effort to improve Mac OS X, uncovering and finding security flaws in different Apple software and third-party applications designed for this operating system. A positive side-effect, probably, will be a more concerned (security- wise) user-base and better practices from the management side of Apple. Also, we want to develop and provide tools and documented techniques to aid security research in this platform. If nothing else, we had fun working on it and hope people-with-a-brain out there will enjoy the results. " Their FAQ page answers concerns about if the issues are being reported to the vendor before public disclosure? "Rarely, the point is releasing them without vendor notification. Although, sometimes we may decide to pass an issue through the appropriate people. The problem with so-called 'responsible disclosure' is that for some people, it means keeping others on hold for insane amounts of time, even when the fix should be trivial. And the reward (automated responses and euphemism-heavy advisories) doesn't pay off in the end." Finally, also on the FAQ page, they indicate they are not very concerned about criticism of their efforts. In answer to the question "John Doe has written a 'post' in his blog, saying he debunks the XXX bug, what's that?", they reply, "No worries. It's probably someone begging for attention or PR-brainwashed." Apple's response so far? Apple spokesman Anuj Nayar said the company always welcomes feedback on how to improve security on the Mac.

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FOLLOW-UP; demo of Adobe PhotoChop CS3 beta
by billing 18 Dec '06

18 Dec '06

...from: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Mcye_SAh0o&eurl= The first half of this video is with the PhotoShop's Senior Product Manager John Nack. The second half is a demo of some of the interesting features mentioned during the interview. Wayne

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FYI: Adobe makes Photoshop 3 available for preview
by billing 18 Dec '06

18 Dec '06

..from: http://labs.adobe.com/technologies/photoshopcs3/ For the first time ever, Adobe is delivering a widely available Photoshop CS3 beta to enable customers to more easily transition to the latest hardware platforms, particularly Apple's new Intel based systems. The beta is available as a Universal Binary for the Macintosh platform as well for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista computers, with the final shipping release of Adobe Photoshop CS3 planned for spring 2007. [...] The Photoshop CS3 beta is available in English only but to Photoshop CS2 users worldwide. It is available to licensed users of either the Photoshop CS2 (full, upgrade, and education), Adobe Creative Suite 2 Standard or Premium (full, upgrade, and education), Adobe Production Studio Standard and Premium (full, upgrade, and education), Adobe Video Bundle (full, upgrade, and education) or Adobe Web Bundle (full, upgrade, and education). You will need to provide your Photoshop CS2, Creative Suite, Production Studio or Bundle serial number in order to get a Photoshop CS3 beta serial number, enabling you to activate the Photoshop beta and use it beyond the two-day grace period. --------------------------- ....and from a "Welcome Letter" from the Photoshop Group Product Manager: December 15, 2006 Dear Adobe Photoshop Customer, Welcome to the Adobe Labs site, a place where you might not have expected to go to find the latest version of Adobe Photoshop! We’re taking the unprecedented step of making a beta version of Photoshop CS3 available today, primarily because we know that our Macintosh customers will appreciate the opportunity to start running Photoshop natively on the latest Intel based Macintosh systems, months before the final shipping version of the product is ready. Of course, we know that it wouldn’t be fair to our Windows customers to exclude them from this advance preview, so we’re releasing the beta for you as well. Our final Photoshop CS3 feature set is already largely determined, based on input from thousands of customers like you. Note that the beta version that we are releasing today might not look exactly like the final shipping version. There are still a few planned features not yet implemented, and of course some polishing and bug fixing we still need to work on. You’ll however find a wealth of new features to explore in the beta. I encourage you to take a look at our new feature list for some ideas of what to expect. Ultimately, though, this beta release is less about showing off our new features than it is about getting native software to our customers as soon as we can. I hope you like what you see, and that you decide the upgrade is a great value when we release it later in 2007! And as always, my team and I thrive on your feedback, and it will certainly influence our plans for Photoshop CS4 and beyond. Regards, Maria Yap Group Product Manager -------------------------- Adobe Labs Beta download site: http://labs.adobe.com/

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ooops, sorry. "Dell" should have read "NativeAMD machine". My apologies.
by billing 16 Dec '06

16 Dec '06

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INTEREST: Micorosoft Vista on a Dell and Vista on MacBook with BootCamp v1.1.2
by billing 16 Dec '06

16 Dec '06

...from: http://blog.smalldog.com/article/482/windows-vista-on-a-pc-vs-an-apple Windows Vista on a PC vs. an Apple By Jimmy(a)Smalldog.com I’ve been playing with the RTM of Windows Vista for a couple weeks now (available to businesses and MSDN users) and I’ve actually enjoyed it quite a lot. The install process is quick and most of my drivers were installed. I think I had to install the latest NVIDIA drivers on my PC but other then that it caught everything else. It even worked when I plugged the computer into my HDTV. There was one major issue I came across though. It was my sound. I have on-board nForce4 audio and it works really nice for the first 20 minutes or so. When I am in the middle of watching a movie or listening to music it will start to sound really funky and crackles. I’ve looked all over the internet for a fix and asked all my friends who might know something about the issue. Apparently it was a known issue and that NVIDIA would release some Vista compatible drivers. Mind you Vista hasn’t been released to consumers yet. I am not really sure what drivers were auto-installed when I initially installed Vista but they weren’t very good. I then tried to use my Sound Blaster Live! 5.1 PCI card and that was a complete failure. I read multiple threads on the Creative message boards that talked about installing some other driver called kX and supposedly that would fix the issue but I couldn’t get it to work whatsoever. I then read on another website about how the Realtek drivers might work, and without actually checking to see if my board was using the Realtek chip I downloaded and installed the Realtek software and installed it. It didn’t work at all so I was about to give up. My last attempt was downloading the Vista RC1 drivers from NVIDIAs website. I un-installed my current drivers and re-installed with the RC1 drivers. I’ve been watching a movie in Media Center for 30 minutes or so now and I haven’t had any major issues. I did notice that the sound got distorted when I was moving the volume up or down. That was all on a PC. AMD Athlon64 3500+, 2GBs RAM, DFI LanParty UT nF4, SATA Drives. I would have thought that it would have worked with no hitches. Guess not. I had to go through ALL of that just to get my sound working. I don’t think it would be proper to blame this on Microsoft/Windows though. I think it’s the fact that NVIDIA hasn’t provided me or other NVIDIA audio users with the appropriate drivers for my sound card. Windows Vista is final, it’s ready to go out to customers and NVIDIA isn’t keeping up with their drivers. So where does Apple come in here… I have Vista installed on 2 machines, the one in the previous paragraph and this one; an Apple MacBook 2.0GHz Core Duo, 2GBs RAM, 80GB HDD. My first attempt to install Windows Vista on a Macintosh was through Parallels. It work perfectly fine minus the fact that I didn’t get the Aero (glassy windows) effects. Other then that it worked great and I had no issues with it. I really wanted the pretty eye-candy so I installed Boot Camp (v1.1.2) and popped in the Vista installation DVD. Rebooted and installed Vista, no issues at all. I had made a drivers CD from the Boot Camp application, so after the Vista install I stuck that in and went through the drivers installation. No problem there either. Those drivers are also meant for Windows XP not Vista, yet they worked great for the most of it. There’s only a couple things I know that aren’t working. These things I didn’t even expect to work and seem more like “extras”. The iSight, Bluetooth, double finger scrolling, screen brightness and volume control via the F keys. It’s not like major things aren’t working. Sound, airport, some Apple keyboard functions, Aero glass, Ethernet, and battery functions are all working. How is it that my Apple computer works 100x better with Windows Vista then my PC?! I do hope that Apple releases some Windows Vista compatible drivers for their computers. I see no reason why they won’t although it may not be until January 30th, 2007 or later since that’s when Microsoft will release Vista to consumers. I am sure NVIDIA will be releasing an update for Vista soon enough.

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INTEREST: Microsoft suit in Iowa for antitrust violations
by billing 16 Dec '06

16 Dec '06

...from: http://www.computerworld.com/action/article.do? command=viewArticleBasic&taxonomyName=macintosh&articleId=9005873&taxono myId=123 [...] The case, filed in February 2000, charges that Microsoft used its monopoly position to overcharge Iowans for its software. Held in the Polk County District Court in Des Moines, it is one of two remaining antitrust cases -- the state of Mississippi's case is the other -- brought by the U.S. government and multiple states against Microsoft starting in the late 1990s. In 2004, Microsoft settled a class-action lawsuit accusing it of overcharging customers in California for $1.1 billion. That same year, it was also hit by a $613 million fine by the European Commission for monopolistic behavior for its free bundling of Windows Media Player with Windows. Microsoft, which has appealed the ruling, was hit by a further $356 million fine in October for failing to comply with the ruling. ....As in past antitrust trials against Microsoft, much of the evidence came in the form of e-mails from [James] Allchin [- Microsoft's chief of development and other Microsoft executives..... Longtime Windows development chief James Allchin wrote in a January 2004 e-mail to Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer and company co-founder Bill Gates that the software vendor had "lost sight" of customers' needs and said he would buy a Mac if he wasn't working for Microsoft. "In my view, we lost our way," Allchin, the co-president of Microsoft's platform and services division, wrote in an e-mail dated Jan. 7, 2004. The e-mail was presented as evidence late last week in the Iowa antitrust trial, Comes v. Microsoft Corp. .....As in past antitrust trials against Microsoft, much of the evidence came in the form of e-mails from Allchin and other Microsoft executives. Ironically, Allchin himself is quoted in two internal memos directing employees to get rid of all e-mails after 30 days. "This is not something you get to decide," he wrote on Jan. 23, 2000. "This is company policy. Do not think this is something that only applies to a few people. Do not think it will be okay if I do this, it hasn't caused any problems so far. Do not archive your mail. Do not be foolish. 30 days." [...]

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