- apple-list - University of Manitoba Mailing Lists

INTEREST: Polo Park's Apple store opens Sept 19, 2009
by billing 16 Sep '09

16 Sep '09

The original date that was rumoured for this opening was October some time. Surprise, I guess. ::-) Come to the new Apple Store, Polo Park, and bring your curiosity. It's the best place to learn all about the Mac, check out an iPod, and see all the amazing things an iPhone can do. And if you find something you like, take it home that day. When you get to the store, find our Concierge in the orange shirt. The Concierge is your guide to everything from checking in for an appointment to instant checkout. If you're one of the first 1000 visitors, you'll get a free Apple T-shirt.* Genius Bar Get all the advice you need for your Mac, iPod, and iPhone. One to One There's no better way to get set up, get trained, and get going on your new Mac. Personal Shopping Reserve a time to shop with an expert at the Apple Retail Store. Workshops Free hands-on workshops for beginners and pros alike. *No purchase necessary. While supplies last. Space for workshops and presentations is limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. Apple Canada Inc. 7495 Birchmount Road, Markham, ON L3R 5G2 All Rights Reserved / Privacy Policy / My Info Si vous ne recevez pas les courriels d'Apple dans la langue de votre choix, cliquez ici. If you prefer not to receive commercial email from Apple, or if you've changed your email address, please click here. TM and copyright © 2009 Apple Inc.

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FYI: Bugs & Fixes: iTunes 9 and Safari mix it up
by billing 14 Sep '09

14 Sep '09

...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/142752/2009/09/itunes9_safari.html Bugs & Fixes: iTunes 9 and Safari mix it up by Ted Landau, Macworld.com After installing iTunes 9, you may find that the updated version refuses to connect to the iTunes Store. However, at least based on my testing, you don’t need the actual Safari application for iTunes Store access. For example, I deleted the application from my drive and the iTunes Store worked just fine. My guess is that there is some installed component of Safari, located in a Library folder (WebKit framework?), that is the true requirement. It is this that needs to be the proper version. Unfortunately, I have not yet determined anything more specific.The cause turns out to be a direct link between the iTunes Store and Safari. Specifically, you need to be running Safari 4.0.3 or later to access the Store within iTunes 9. If not, you’ll be greeted with a message informing you that you cannot “use the iTunes Store within iTunes.” You heard correctly: you may need Safari installed on your Mac, in order to use the iTunes Store, even if you otherwise never use Safari. Reinstall Snow Leopard? For some users, the news was even worse. They were getting the Safari warning message even though they had Safari 4.0.3 already installed. Based on threads posted in Apple Discussions, most of these users appear to have been running pre-release versions of Snow Leopard (Mac OS X 10.6). The solution turns out to be to install the release (golden master) version of 10.6. Even those that claimed they had previously installed the golden master version generally found that re-installing the OS from a release version DVD eliminated the error. If, despite following all of this advice, you still have this symptom, I have no solution to offer at this time. No Genius Mixes? Although more subtle, a second iTunes Store problem also turns out to have Safari files as its root cause. The specific symptom is an inability to get the new Genius Mixes feature to appear in iTunes listings. The first potential fix for this omission is to go to iTunes’ Store menu and select Update Genius. If that does not work, return to the same menu and select Turn Off Genius followed by Turn On Genius. If things go well, your work is done. However, in some cases (including my own), things may not go so well. Turning on Genius may get bogged down in Step 2: Sending this information to Apple. If so, a message politely informs you that “This seems to be taking longer than usual…” In fact, left alone, it will likely never complete. The solution here is to delete the relevant Apple cookies from Safari. To do so, quit iTunes, go to Safari and select Preferences -> Security -> Show Cookies. In the search text box enterapple.com. To be extra sure of getting the job done, you can select all of these files and click to Remove. Otherwise, you can start by removing only the .phobos.apple.com items(s), as well as any other items that contain the word “itunes,” and hope that is sufficient. After doing so, return to iTunes and once again select to Update Genius. With just a bit of luck, all should now proceed smoothly and Genius Mixes will appear within a minute or two. Updated at 9:16 a.m. to clarify a potential fix for the Genius Mixes bug.

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FYI: JAVA 1.6 only with Snow Leopard
by billing 02 Sep '09

02 Sep '09

...from: http://developer.apple.com/mac/library/releasenotes/Java/JavaSnowLeopardRN/… /apple_ref/doc/uid/TP40007737-CH3-SW1 - Description: Since Java SE 6 is the only Java version shipped with Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, any application that requests an older version of Java will only launch in Java SE 6. No dialog is presented, since there is only one choice, and the app will either work correctly or it won't. Workaround: Ensure your application will run correctly on Java SE 6... - Description: Due to backwards compatibility constraints, older Java applications which are bundled with a PPC-only JavaApplicationStub will only launch in 32-bit Intel. Workaround: Rebundle the application with a JavaApplicationStub that contains an x86_64 slice in its mach-o binary. - Description: Applications that use Cocoa Java will fail on Snow Leopard. Resolution: Contact the application's developer for an updated version that does not use Cocoa Java. Cocoa Java has been deprecated since Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger in 2005, was only supported on Mac OS X 10.5 Leopard for 32-bit applications, and this support has been removed as of Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard. Wayne Billing Classroom Technology Support Audio Visual and Classroom Technology Support 123 Fletcher Argue Building 474-6649 474-7598 (fax) Wayne_Billing(a)umanitoba.ca

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INTEREST: Apple’s Sleek Upgrade: OS X Snow Leopard
by billing 27 Aug '09

27 Aug '09

http://video.nytimes.com/video/playlist/technology/david-pogue/119481162227… and ...from: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/27/technology/personaltech/27pogue.html?ref=… STATE OF THE ART Apple’s Sleek Upgrade Stuart Goldenberg SIGN IN TO RECOMMEND COMMENTS(153) E-MAIL SEND TO PHONE PRINT SINGLE PAGE REPRINTS SHARE By DAVID POGUE Published: August 26, 2009 Buying software is not like buying a vase or a comb or a lawnmower where you pay, you take it home, and the transaction is complete. Pogue's Posts The latest in technology from the Times's David Pogue. Go to Pogue's Posts » Related Times Topics: Apple Inc. Enlarge This Image A laptop screen demonstrating the Snow Leopard; movies can be viewed in a frameless playback window. No, buying software is more like joining a club with annual dues. Every year, there’s a new version, and if you don’t upgrade, you feel like a behind-the-curve loser. There’s a time bomb ticking in that business model, however. To keep you upgrading, the software company has to pile on more features each time. Sooner or later, you wind up with a huge, sloshing, incoherent mess of a program; a pile of spaghetti code that doesn’t run well and makes nobody happy. You’re in even worse shape if that bloatware is your operating system — the software you run all day. Just ask anyone with Windows Vista. This year, though, Apple and Microsoft both realized that the pile-on- features model is unsustainable. Both are releasing new versions of their operating systems that are unapologetically billed as cleaned- up, slimmed-down versions of what came before. Microsoft’s, called Windows 7, comes out in October. Apple’s, called Mac OS X 10.6 Snow Leopard, arrives on Friday, a month earlier than announced. (Apple to Microsoft: “Surprise!”) Apple’s release strategy is highly unorthodox: “Leopard, a k a Mac OS X 10.5, was already a great OS-virus-free, nag-free and not copy- protected. So instead of adding features for their own sake, let’s just make what we’ve got smaller, faster and more refined.” What? No new features? That’s not how the industry works! Doesn’t Apple know anything? And then there’s the price of Snow Leopard: $30. Have they lost their minds? Operating-system upgrades always cost a hundred-something dollars! ($30 is the price if you already have Leopard. If not, the price is $170 for a Mac Box Set that also includes two suites of Apple software: iLife (iPhoto, iMovie, iDVD, iWeb and the GarageBand music studio), and iWork (the Numbers spreadsheet, Pages word processor and Keynote presentation software). In any case, Snow Leopard truly is an optimized version of Leopard. It starts up faster (72 seconds on a MacBook Air, versus 100 seconds in Leopard). It opens programs faster (Web browser, 3 seconds; calendar, 5 seconds; iTunes, 7 seconds), and the second time you open the same program, the time is halved. “Optimized” doesn’t just mean faster; it also means smaller. Incredibly, Snow Leopard is only half the size of its predecessor; following the speedy installation (15 minutes), you wind up with 7 gigabytes more free space on your hard drive. That, ladies and gents, is a first. Unfortunately, Snow Leopard runs only on Macs with Intel chips — that is, Macs sold since 2006. If you have an older Mac, you’re stuck with Leopard forever. (Techie note: Popular conception has it that the space savings comes from removing all the code required by those earlier chips. But that’s not true, according to Apple. Yes, that code is gone, but new 64-bit code, described below, easily replaces it. No, Apple says that the savings comes from “tightening up the screws,” compressing chunks of the system software and eliminating a huge stash of printer drivers. Now the system downloads printer drivers as needed, on demand.) As it turns out, Apple programmers could not leave well enough alone. They disobeyed the original “no new features” mantra. As they pored through all the bits of Mac OS X, they kept stopping and fixing little things that had always bugged them, or coming up with neat little ways to make things better. So: The Mac now adjusts its own clock when you travel, just like a cellphone. The menu bar can now show the date, not just the day of the week. The menu of nearby wireless hot spots now shows the signal strength for each. When you’re running Windows on your Mac, you can now open the files on the Macintosh “side” without having to restart. Icons can now be 512 pixels (several inches) square, turning any desktop window into a light table for photos. There’s now a Put Back command in the Trash, just as in Windows’ Recycle Bin. You can page through a PDF document or watch a movie right on a file’s icon. When you click a folder icon on the Dock, you can scroll through the pop-up window of its contents, turning a worthless feature into a useful one. Buggy plug-ins (Flash and so on) no longer crash the Safari Web browser; you just get an empty rectangle where they would have appeared. There’s an impressive trove of tools for blind Mac users, including one that turns a Mac laptop’s trackpad into a touchable map of the screen; the Mac speaks each onscreen element as you touch it. There are some bigger-ticket items, too. Movies open up into a gorgeous, frameless playback window with built-in trim handles and a “Send to YouTube” command built right in. You can now record your screen activity as a movie — fantastic for tutorials. The old Services feature has been reborn as powerful commands that appear only when relevant — and you can modify, make up or assign keystrokes to them. Once a system administrator provides setup details, your company’s Microsoft Exchange address book, e-mail and calendar can show up in the Mac’s own address book, e-mail and calendar programs, right alongside your own personal information. That’s irony for you: the Mac now has Exchange compatibility built in, but Windows itself does not. There are hundreds more little tweaks. In all, Apple says that more than 90 percent of Leopard’s 1,000 software chunks were revised or polished. Many are listed on Apple's site, but I kept finding more undocumented surprises until the deadline for this column. Just little stuff. Like: When you rename an icon on an alphabetically sorted desktop, it visibly slides into its new alphabetic position so you can see where it went. Despite all of this, the haters online deride Snow Leopard as a “service pack” — nothing more than a bug-fix/security-patch update like the ones Microsoft periodically releases for Windows. That’s a pretty uninformed wisecrack. Especially because the biggest changes in Snow Leopard are under the hood, completely invisible, but responsible for some big speed and stability advances. A big one: Mac OS X and most of its included programs (the desktop, Web browser, calendar and so on) are 64-bit software, a geeky term that, for now, pretty much means “faster.” Other new underlying technologies, called OpenCL and Grand Central Dispatch, are features that software companies can exploit for even greater speed in their new or rewritten programs. That Snow Leopard’s looks haven’t changed at all, in other words, betrays the enormous changes under its pretty skin. Unfortunately, that fact also explains the number of non-Apple programs that “break” after the installation. I experienced frustrating glitches in various programs, including Microsoft Word, Flip4Mac, Photoshop CS3, CyberDuck and TextExpander, an abbreviation expander. (Interestingly, Snow Leopard offers its own typing-expander feature, but it works primarily in Apple programs, like TextEdit, Mail, Safari and iChat.) The compatibility list at snowleopard.wikidot.com lists other programs that may have trouble. Most of these hiccups will go away when software companies update their wares (although Adobe says, “Just upgrade to Photoshop CS4”). Let’s hope that Apple hurries up with its inevitable 10.6.0.1 update, too, to address the occasional Safari crash and cosmetic glitch I experienced, too. Otherwise, if you’re already running Leopard, paying the $30 for Snow Leopard is a no-brainer. You’ll feel the leap forward in speed polish, and you’ll keep experiencing those “oh, that’s nice” moments for weeks to come. If you’re running something earlier, the decision isn’t as clear cut; you’ll have to pay $170 and get Snow Leopard with Apple’s creative- software suites — whether you want them or not. Either way, the big story here isn’t really Snow Leopard. It’s the radical concept of a software update that’s smaller, faster and better — instead of bigger, slower and more bloated. May the rest of the industry take the hint. Wayne Billing Classroom Technology Support Audio Visual and Classroom Technology Support 123 Fletcher Argue Building 474-6649 474-7598 (fax) Wayne_Billing(a)umanitoba.ca

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Snow Leopard (10.6) and Adobe Creative Suites (CS3/4)
by Doug Hamilton 26 Aug '09

26 Aug '09

Hello All: For those of you wondering about the level of support Adobe will be providing for their existing CS-3 & CS-4 suites of software, they've published a PDF document, "Adobe Creative Suite 4 Solutions and Mac OS X Snow Leopard" (see link below). http://blogs.adobe.com/jnack/files/Adobe-SnowLeopard_FAQ.pdf 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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Snow Leopard release on Aug 28 confirmed
by Tom Dubinski 24 Aug '09

24 Aug '09

Greetings, all: Apple to release Snow Leopard [Mac OS X 10.6] on August 28 http://www.macworld.com/article/142383/2009/08/snow_leopard.html And from Apple Canada "hot news": Apple to Ship Mac OS X Snow Leopard on August 28 August 24, 2009 Apple today announced that Mac OS X v10.6 Snow Leopard will go on sale Friday, August 28 at Apple's retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, and that Apple's online store is now accepting pre-orders. Snow Leopard builds on a decade of OS X innovation and success with hundreds of refinements, new core technologies and out of the box support for Microsoft Exchange. Snow Leopard will be available as an upgrade for Mac OS X Leopard users for $35 [CAD]. http://apple.ca/macosx/ * Remember, Snow Leopard is for Intel-based Macs only! -- Tom Dubinski Phone: +1.204.474-8841 Fax: 474-7609 Computer Science, E2-596 EITC CompSci General Office: E2-445 EITC University of Manitoba E-Mail: tom_dubinski(a)umanitoba.ca Winnipeg, MB R3T 2N2, Canada http://www.cs.umanitoba.ca/~tdubins/

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10.6 is coming soon, so pick up your 10.5 ...
by Doug Hamilton 19 Aug '09

19 Aug '09

Hello Everyone: A couple of things to keep in mind as Apple heads towards the release of the next major update to Mac OS X, version 10.6 aka "Snow Leopard". Firstly, please note that Mac OS X 10.6 only operates on Macintosh systems with Intel processors. If you are unsure as to which processor your system(s) has, here is how you can find out. Click on the Apple Menu in the upper left hand corner of your screen, choose "About This Mac". In the window that opens you should see the processor listed. Secondly, the behaviour of software manufacturers is to make previous versions of their programs unavailable for purchase. Therefore, once Mac OS X 10.6 begins shipping sometime in September, Mac OS X 10.5 will in all probability become unavailable for purchase. Should you have a system which meets the minimum hardware specifications for Mac OS X 10.5, I would recommend you purchase before it's no longer available. Here are the minimum basic system requirements for Mac OS X 10.5, as specified by Apple Inc. Processor: Intel, G5 or G4 (867MHz or faster); Memory: 512MB of physical RAM; DVD drive for installation. While Mac OS X 10.5 will operate in less, based upon experience I would say the minimum processor is a G4 1.0GHz (ideally higher), and the minimum amount of memory is 1GB of physical RAM. 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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FYI: Outlook for Mac to Ship With Next Version
by Doug Hamilton 13 Aug '09

13 Aug '09

Microsoft Corp.’s Macintosh Business Unit (MacBU) today shared details about the next version of Microsoft Office for Mac, announcing that a new application, Outlook for Mac, will replace Entourage for Mac. http://www.microsoft.com/presspass/press/2009/aug09/08-13MacOutlookPR.mspx 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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FYI - Apple reintroduces antiglare screen for 15-inch MBP
by Doug Hamilton 11 Aug '09

11 Aug '09

Hello Everyone: For those of you who dislike the industry wide trend for computer manufacturers to use only high-gloss screens (including Apple Inc.), today Apple reintroduced the 15-inch MacBook Pro build-to-order option for an antiglare screen. Like the 17-inch MacBook Pro which has had this option for sometime now, this option doesn't come free, it will set you back a maximum of $57. http://canadaedu.apple.com/routing/index.php?lang=eng 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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ATTN - VMWare Fusion & 10.5.7 Update
by Doug Hamilton 06 Aug '09

06 Aug '09

Just a word of caution, VMWare is reporting a problem between their "Fusion" product and the recently released Mac OS X 10.5.7 Update, specifically for Macintosh systems with ATI graphics chips. http://blogs.vmware.com/teamfusion/2009/05/a-message-to-mac-users-with-atib… Apple and VMWare are working together to correct the problem. 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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FYI: iPhoto '09 and Aperture 2 seminar from Apple
by billing 21 Jul '09

21 Jul '09

Begin forwarded message: > Resent-From: Randy Kokesch - Prairies Region, Apple Canada > Subject: An invitation to a free photography solution seminar from > Apple. > > > > > > Attend this free session and discover how Apple photography > solutions can help you make your best shots even better. > > > Exploring Apple Photography Solutions > Wednesday, August 5, 1:30 p.m. – 4:30 p.m. > Learn to do amazing things with your photos using the new iPhoto '09 > and Aperture 2. No matter what your level of expertise, Apple has a > photo editing and management solution for you. Attend this session > to discover how you can integrate both applications and make your > best shots even better. > Tell a friend > > > > > Dates, times, locations, speakers, and content may change without > notice. Apple and the seminar sponsors accept no responsibility in > connection with such changes. > Apple Canada Inc. 7495 Birchmount Road, Markham, ON L3R 5G2 > All Rights Reserved / Privacy Policy / My Info > Si vous ne recevez pas les courriels d'Apple dans la langue de votre > choix, cliquez ici. > If you prefer not to receive commercial email from Apple, or if > you've changed your email address, please click here. > TM and copyright © 2009 Apple Inc. > > > > > iPhoto '09 and Aperture 2 - exploring Apple's photography solutions > > August 5, 2009, 01:30 PM - 04:30 PM (Central Standard Time) > Event Number: 86329 > Event Type: Seminar > Event Language: English > > Description: > > iLife '09 introduces the new iPhoto '09 with Facial Recognition, > organizing by GPS location, great new slideshows, output, editing > and travel maps. See how you can take advantage of these new > features and discover how to integrate your photography with the > rest of your life. > > And for more advanced photo editing and management, Apple's ground- > breaking professional photo application, Aperture 2, can take your > photography to the next level. We'll also show you how to integrate > iPhoto '09 and Aperture together. > > Aperture 2 delivers over 100 dramatic new features, including > advanced image processing, > a streamlined interface, faster performance, and unprecedented Mac > integration. > > With its simplified user interface, Aperture 2 is easy enough for > any photographer to pick up and use. Intuitive and accessible, it > brings a variety of new interface features that members of Apple's > pro photo marketing team will demonstrate including: > > A new All-in-one Inspector > Viewer Only mode > Quick Preview mode > Project skimming in All Projects view > Apple experts will also demonstrate the expanded suite of adjustment > tools including Recovery, Vibrancy, Vignette and a soft-edged > Retouch brush, as well as how effectively Aperture integrates with > the rest of the Mac platform, showing you how easily you can: > > •Instantly publish photos to a .Mac Web Gallery > •Design and order beautiful custom books > •Use third-party plug-ins to export photos to service bureaus, photo- > sharing sites, and commercial sites > •Access your Aperture library from within iLife, iWork, and Leopard > Mail > •Sync photos to iPhone, iPod, and Apple TV > > Who should attend: > • Professional Photographers > • Advanced Amateur Photographers > • Photo Enthusiasts > • iPhoto users wanting to gain more control of their photography > • Windows users considering a switch to the Mac for photography > > > > Sponsors: > > Apple Canada, Inc. > > > Location: > > The Park Theatre and Movie Café > 698 Osborne Street > Winnipeg, Manitoba R3L 2B9 > Canada > Venue Directions > Map > Travel >

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INTEREST: Google announces open-source operating system (LINUX based)
by billing 08 Jul '09

08 Jul '09

...from: http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2009/07/introducing-google-chrome-os.html Introducing the Google Chrome OS 7/07/2009 09:37:00 PM It's been an exciting nine months since we launched the Google Chrome browser. Already, over 30 million people use it regularly. We designed Google Chrome for people who live on the web — searching for information, checking email, catching up on the news, shopping or just staying in touch with friends. However, the operating systems that browsers run on were designed in an era where there was no web. So today, we're announcing a new project that's a natural extension of Google Chrome — the Google Chrome Operating System. It's our attempt to re-think what operating systems should be. Google Chrome OS is an open source, lightweight operating system that will initially be targeted at netbooks. Later this year we will open- source its code, and netbooks running Google Chrome OS will be available for consumers in the second half of 2010. Because we're already talking to partners about the project, and we'll soon be working with the open source community, we wanted to share our vision now so everyone understands what we are trying to achieve. Speed, simplicity and security are the key aspects of Google Chrome OS. We're designing the OS to be fast and lightweight, to start up and get you onto the web in a few seconds. The user interface is minimal to stay out of your way, and most of the user experience takes place on the web. And as we did for the Google Chrome browser, we are going back to the basics and completely redesigning the underlying security architecture of the OS so that users don't have to deal with viruses, malware and security updates. It should just work. Google Chrome OS will run on both x86 as well as ARM chips and we are working with multiple OEMs to bring a number of netbooks to market next year. The software architecture is simple — Google Chrome running within a new windowing system on top of a Linux kernel. For application developers, the web is the platform. All web-based applications will automatically work and new applications can be written using your favorite web technologies. And of course, these apps will run not only on Google Chrome OS, but on any standards-based browser on Windows, Mac and Linux thereby giving developers the largest user base of any platform. Google Chrome OS is a new project, separate from Android. Android was designed from the beginning to work across a variety of devices from phones to set-top boxes to netbooks. Google Chrome OS is being created for people who spend most of their time on the web, and is being designed to power computers ranging from small netbooks to full-size desktop systems. While there are areas where Google Chrome OS and Android overlap, we believe choice will drive innovation for the benefit of everyone, including Google. We hear a lot from our users and their message is clear — computers need to get better. People want to get to their email instantly, without wasting time waiting for their computers to boot and browsers to start up. They want their computers to always run as fast as when they first bought them. They want their data to be accessible to them wherever they are and not have to worry about losing their computer or forgetting to back up files. Even more importantly, they don't want to spend hours configuring their computers to work with every new piece of hardware, or have to worry about constant software updates. And any time our users have a better computing experience, Google benefits as well by having happier users who are more likely to spend time on the Internet. We have a lot of work to do, and we're definitely going to need a lot of help from the open source community to accomplish this vision. We're excited for what's to come and we hope you are too. Stay tuned for more updates in the fall and have a great summer. Posted by Sundar Pichai, VP Product Management and Linus Upson, Engineering Director

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Fwd: Apple hiring "Genius"es for new Polo Park Store
by billing 06 Jul '09

06 Jul '09

You may not have heard but Apple is gearing up to open an Apple store at Polo Park in Winnipeg. While no official opening date has been announced, there are postings on Apple's web site indicating they are beginning to hire "Genius"es (and other positions) for the store. To see a listing, follow the link below and click on the position of interest then click "Find Locations", select "Manitoba" and click "Find". You'll need to register to continue the submission process. Wayne Begin forwarded message: > From: ATWong <atwong(a)cc.umanitoba.ca> > Date: July 6, 2009 5:15:30 PM CDT (CA) > Subject: Apple hiring Genius for Polo Park Store > > Apple is hiring so if you know of any recent grads who are Mac > experts check out http://www.apple.com/jobs/ca/store/ or contact > > Tim Esse > Apple Inc. > Field Recruiter > 651-490-3229 > tesse(a)apple.com > > > Tony > > > =========================== > > As a Genius, they would: > > - Provide frontline customer support at the Genius Bar, including > hardware and software troubleshooting and diagnosis and basic > customer product training. > > - Repair Apple hardware and software products. > - Manage all aspects of repair workflow, including open repairs > prioritization, case management, and service part order management. > > > Are you ready to join the retail revolution? > > > This is a full-time position that includes a full benefits package > and paid training. > ( We welcome people with Windows / Intel backgrounds ) > > This position does require Hands-On Repair experience. > > I welcome the chance to speak with anyone that you know about Apple > and the opportunities available so please feel free to call or email > me. > >

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FYI: Macs in Science (E2-165) Friday June 26th, 2009 @ 9AM
by Doug Hamilton 19 Jun '09

19 Jun '09

Hello Everyone: Apple Canada and the BookStore are pleased to be providing a FREE seminar on campus entitled, "Macs in Science". Please see the end of this message for the details of this presentation. If you would be so kind as to forward this information to the researchers in your respective departments, it would be greatly appreciated. Regards, Doug ------------- Doug Hamilton Computers-on-Campus; Univ. of Manitoba 204-474-6196 (Ph.) 204-474-7556 (Fax) http://www.umanitoba.ca/bookstore/ ### Macs in Science You're invited to a FREE seminar exploring Apple's solutions for scientific computing. The Macs ease of use, stability and superior performance help scientists achieve faster, more insightful results. Find out how the Mac integrates with other platforms, what other scientists have accomplished with their Macs and why the Mac is the ideal platform for scientific research and day-to-day activities. Presenter, Willi Powell is the Strategic Development Manager at Apple Canada specializing in science and high performance computing solutions. What you’ll learn about in this seminar: • One system for all your work • Running multiple operating systems (Mac OS X, Windows and Linux) • Publishing and presentation tools • Podcasting your science • Science and productivity applications on the Mac • Collaboration services • iPhone and iPod Touch for mobile science applications • Compute in any language: C/C++, Fortran, Java, Perl, Python • High Performance Computing and 64-bit multicore computing • General purpose Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) computing (OpenCL) Date & Times: • Date – Friday, June 26th, 2009 • Time – 9:00 a.m. -to- Noon • Location – Fort Garry Campus, Engineering 2, Lecture Theatre Rm165 (E2-165) Who Should Attend? Research and teaching faculty, undergraduate & graduate students, deans and department chairs, researchers, distance learning providers, lab managers, medical and scientific professionals, and prospective Mac users. Although not required, it would however be greatly appreciated if you could please RVSP to Doug Hamilton (doug_hamilton(a)umanitoba.ca). Some links of interest: http://www.apple.com/science/ http://www.apple.com/science/solutions/ http://www.apple.com/science/whitepaper/ ###

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INTEREST: EU - "Microsoft seems to have chosen to provide less [choice in Windows 7]"
by billing 14 Jun '09

14 Jun '09

...from: http://www.cbc.ca/technology/story/2009/06/12/microsoft-windows.html No browsers in European version of Windows 7, Microsoft says Last Updated: Friday, June 12, 2009 | 5:07 PM ET The Associated Press European Union regulators said Microsoft Corp. was offering less choice, not more, by vowing to sell the next version of Windows without any web browsers at all. Microsoft said Thursday that it would remove its Internet Explorer browser — and not include any alternatives — in the Windows 7 software it will sell from Oct. 22 in Europe to soothe EU antitrust concerns. The company is trying to avoid new EU fines, on top of a previous €1.7 billion fine, after being earlier charged with unfairly using its operating system monopoly to squeeze into other software markets. But the European Commission said it preferred to see consumers offered a choice of browser, "not that Windows would be supplied without a browser at all." "Rather than more choice, Microsoft seems to have chosen to provide less," it said in a statement late Thursday. Several browsers better option, EU says The EU will soon decide whether Microsoft had violated EU antitrust law since 1996 by tying the browser to its ubiquitous Windows operating system that is installed on most of the world's desktop computers. A "must carry" option that would offer several browsers was a better option, the EU executive suggested, because "consumers should be provided with a genuine choice of browsers" on the software that manufacturers install on computers. It said Microsoft's solution would give no choice to the five per cent of consumers who buy Windows software in a stand-alone pack, as opposed to pre-installed on a computer. Microsoft claims the opposite, saying consumers would be free to choose whether or not to install Internet Explorer on Windows 7 and "will also be free, as they are today, to install other web browsers." It said it will give PC users who want the browser a way to obtain it. But regulators were more positive about the larger market — which sells software to computer makers — saying Microsoft's decision meant manufacturers such as Dell could choose to install Internet Explorer or one or more other browsers. The European Commission said it would have to weigh up whether this would actually create genuine consumer choice. It warned that it would still have to look at "the longstanding nature of Microsoft's conduct" and whether the removal of Internet Explorer "could be negated by other actions by Microsoft," such as prompts in the system urging users to install the browser. Microsoft accused of squeezing competitors The EU charged Microsoft with monopoly abuse in January, following a complaint from Norway's mobile internet browser maker Opera Software ASA, which said Microsoft was unfairly using its power as the dominant supplier of operating system software to squeeze out competitors. Opera lawyer Thomas Vinje said the decision to strip out Internet Explorer was "an acknowledgment from Microsoft that it has been breaking the law." He said Opera would keep asking the EU to press for a "ballot screen" for new users worldwide to choose one or several browsers when they install Windows because it was the only way to restore competition. Opera's chief technology officer, Hakon Wium Lie, also claimed Microsoft has held back other browsers and innovation on the internet by purposefully ignoring web standards since websites are often designed for the world's most used browser — Internet Explorer — and sometimes cannot be viewed on rival browsers. Microsoft says it is fully compliant with web standards. Mozilla Corp., which makes the Firefox browser, and Google Inc. have signed on as third parties against Microsoft in the case. Microsoft's browser is the most widely used worldwide, but Firefox is gaining in popularity and Google, the top web search provider, has released its own web browser, Chrome.

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FYI: HP battery recall
by billing 26 May '09

26 May '09

...from: http://bpr.hpordercenter.com/hbpr/ - HP http://www.cpsc.gov/cpscpub/prerel/prhtml09/09221.html - U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission NEWS from CPSC U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission Office of Information and Public Affairs Washington, DC 20207 FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE May 14, 2009 Release # 09-221 Firm’s Recall Hotline: (800) 889-2031 CPSC Recall Hotline: (800) 638-2772 CPSC Media Contact: (301) 504-7908 HP Recalls Notebook Computer Batteries Due to Fire Hazard WASHINGTON, D.C. - The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission, in cooperation with the firm named below, today announced a voluntary recall of the following consumer product. Consumers should stop using recalled products immediately unless otherwise instructed. Name of Product: Lithium-Ion batteries used in Hewlett-Packard and Compaq notebook computers Units: About 70,000 Importer: Hewlett-Packard Co., of Palo Alto, Calif. Hazard: The recalled lithium-ion batteries can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to consumers. Incidents/Injuries: The firm and CPSC are aware of two reports of batteries that overheated and ruptured, resulting in flames/fire that caused minor property damage. No injuries have been reported. Description: The recalled lithium-ion rechargeable batteries are used with various HP and Compaq notebook computers. Models that can contain a recalled battery include: HP Pavilion Compaq Presario HP HP Compaq dv2000 dv2500 dv2700 dv6000 dv6500 dv6700 dv9000 dv9500 dv9700 A900 C700 F700 V3000 V3500 V3700 V6000 V6500 V6700 G6000 G7000 6720s The notebook model is located at the top of the service label on the bottom of the notebook. Batteries that can be subject to the recall will have one of the following bar code labels (^ in the code can be any letter or number): 62940^^AXV^^^^ 65033^^B7U^^^^ 65033^^B7V^^^^ 65033^^BGU^^^^ 65035^^B7U^^^^ 65035^^B7V^^^^ 65035^^BGU^^^^ 65035^^BGV^^^^ 67059^^V8U^^^^ 67059^^V8V^^^^ Sold at: Computer and electronics stores nationwide, hp.com and hpshopping.com from August 2007 through March 2008 for between $500 and $3000. The battery packs were also sold separately for between $100 and $160. Manufactured in: China Remedy: Consumers should immediately remove the recalled battery from their notebook computer and contact HP to determine if their battery is included in the recall and to request a free replacement battery. After removing the recalled battery from their notebook computer, consumers may use the AC adapter to power the computer until a replacement battery arrives. Consumers should only use batteries obtained from HP or an authorized reseller. Consumer Contact: For additional information, visit the HP Battery Replacement Program Web site at http://www.hp.com/support/BatteryReplacement or call (800) 889-2031 between 7 a.m. and 7 p.m. CT Monday through Friday. Media Contact: Sheila Watson at (281) 514-6552 or sheila.watson(a)hp.com Photos of recalled batteries CPSC is still interested in receiving incident or injury reports that are either directly related to this product recall or involve a different hazard with the same product. Please tell us about it by visiting https://www.cpsc.gov/cgibin/incident.aspx --- Send the link for this page to a friend! The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission is charged with protecting the public from unreasonable risks of serious injury or death from thousands of types of consumer products under the agency's jurisdiction. The CPSC is committed to protecting consumers and families from products that pose a fire, electrical, chemical, or mechanical hazard. The CPSC's work to ensure the safety of consumer products - such as toys, cribs, power tools, cigarette lighters, and household chemicals - contributed significantly to the decline in the rate of deaths and injuries associated with consumer products over the past 30 years. To report a dangerous product or a product-related injury, call CPSC's Hotline at (800) 638-2772 or CPSC's teletypewriter at (800) 638-8270. To join a CPSC e-mail subscription list, please go to https://www.cpsc.gov/cpsclist.aspx . Consumers can obtain recall and general safety information by logging on to CPSC's Web site at www.cpsc.gov.

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FYI: doncha hate online stores which force you...
by billing 18 May '09

18 May '09

...to put an item into the "shopping cart" to get the price? Here's the coming wrinkle: they'll spam you until you purchase. [NOTE: the "track you" software is free to online retailers: http://www.seewhy.com/atfree ] ...from: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/17/business/17digi.html?th&emc=th Just Browsing? A Web Store May Follow You Out the Door By RANDALL STROSS Published: May 16, 2009 IF you try on a sweater in a department store dressing room, but choose not to buy it, a persistent sales clerk won’t pursue you into the street yelling, “Hey, are you sure?” Nor will you receive a call at your home the next day to check again if you want to complete the purchase. But in the online world, visitors to Web stores who touch the goods but leave without buying may be subjected instantaneously to “remarketing,” in the form of nagging e-mail messages or phone calls. A new Web service, called Abandonment Tracker Pro, is in beta testing and scheduled for formal release next month. Developed by SeeWhy in Andover, Mass., the service will alert a subscribing Web store when a visitor places an item in a shopping cart or begins an application and does not complete the final step. What distinguishes Abandonment Tracker Pro from other services is its enabling of remarketing “in real time,” SeeWhy says. The idea that a visitor isn’t entitled to leave an online store empty- handed without being pestered sounds distasteful enough. But having that contact start immediately seems a new form of marketing brazenness. Abandonment Tracker’s remarketing depends upon knowing the e-mail address of the wayward prospect; knowing the phone number will make follow-up phone calls possible, too. (And if you’ve signed in, a store would be able to find you with the e-mail address you provided when you registered.) Charles Nicholls, SeeWhy’s founder, says he advises Web sites to have visitors “put their e-mail address in at the first step,” to increase the likelihood that it will be captured. When asked about possibly alienating prospective customers with overzealous remarketing, Mr. Nicholls said: “Tone and manner are important. The message should be something like, ‘Oops, was there a problem? Can we help?,’ versus an out-and-out hard sell, which will just wind everyone up.” Technically, as soon as an address is typed into a box on a Web page, it can be dispatched to a store’s server without even waiting for the visitor to hit the “submit” button. Widely used Web scripting technology makes it easy to send to a remote server every letter pressed on the keyboard. Google, for example, uses this technology for a good purpose: when one begins typing in a search term, each letter is zipped to the server, which, without perceptible delay, returns suggestions that begin with the same sequence of letters. The same technology, set off with each press of a key, could be used for other purposes, however, like recording the e-mail address at a site one visits for the first time and then leaves without formally submitting the information. Asked whether Abandonment Tracker Pro uses that technique, Mr. Nicholls said the basic version did not. “We can write a script that will capture the e-mail address immediately,” he added, if the client paid a separate charge. I asked John Squire, chief strategy officer of Coremetrics, a Web analytics and marketing firm about the idea of capturing e-mail addresses while they were typed. Mr. Squire expressed revulsion at the suggestion that a Web site would collect a visitor’s information without the press of a “submit” button. He was not even comfortable with remarketing in real time. “There’s a Big Brother factor that retailers are going to have to look at,” he said. Better to wait one or two days, as his clients typically do, he added. Mr. Nicholls says online vendors make a mistake by waiting even a single day, as remarketing immediately produces a follow-up sale three times as often as remarketing a day later. Coremetrics’ clients report that their best remarketing results have been obtained not by sending annoying follow-up e-mail messages, but by using special ad networks to display to the customer on other Web sites ads that are related to whatever the customer left in the shopping cart, Mr. Squire said. “They’re seeing great returns on investment and they’re not seeing a backlash from the ads,” he reported. Abandonment Tracker Pro addresses a longstanding fear of lost business represented by the supposedly grave problem of “shopping cart abandonment.” “Up to 70 percent of shopping carts, registrations, quotes and online forms are abandoned before they’re complete,” SeeWhy said in a recent press release. SeeWhy relies on Coremetrics’s data to substantiate the problem, but Mr. Squire of Coremetrics dismisses shopping cart abandonment as a meaningless metric. He said there were many reasons that customers might not complete a purchase. And the rate of cart abandonment rose substantially from 2005 to 2008, he said, a reflection of intensified comparative shopping that visitors carry on with many sites simultaneously. KEVIN HILLSTROM, president of MineThatData, a consulting firm, also looks askance at worries about shopping cart abandonment. “Today, people are shopping at six sites at once, dropping items into carts at each one and reading reviews,” he said. Instantaneous e-mail remarketing might appear to produce an increase in sales, which are easily measured, he said, but “you can’t see the negative effects on customers who are irritated and will never come back again.” Online stores should emulate the self-restraint of retailers in physical stores. When a visitor leaves without buying, don’t give chase down the street. Randall Stross is an author based in Silicon Valley and a professor of business at San Jose State University. E-mail: stross(a)nytimes.com.

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INTEREST: "What Price Cool?" too cool toward facts
by billing 13 Apr '09

13 Apr '09

...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/139937/2009/04/what_price_cool.html?lsrc=mw… Microsoft's 'Apple tax' needs a refund Posted on Apr 9, 2009 3:29 pm by Dan Moren Category | Mac Some people look at numbers and think “Ah, thank goodness: cold hard facts.” Me, I’ve been a bit distrustful of numbers ever since that whole "7 ate 9" business. You see, numbers purport to be all objective and straightforward, but just like words, their meanings can be twisted and turned, interpreted to suit the agenda of whoever's holding their leash. Take, for example, this recent report (PDF link) by frequently-quoted analyst Roger L. Kay, the President of Endpoint Technologies Associates. “What Price Cool?” sets out to discover the “hidden costs” of owning Macs versus owning Windows PCs—but you don’t need to flip to the end of the 10-page report to tell how it’s going to end. Spoiler: Windows PCs are cheaper! It’s right there on page one, where it reads “Sponsor: Microsoft.” The Redmond-based software giant has recently gone to great lengths to point out Windows machines' inherent superiority, attempting to dispell the perceived "coolness" of Macs anddenigrate their performance. So it’s hardly shocking to find that this report retreads the same ground whilst applying a thin patina of carefully selected “facts.” The meat of the piece is the last three pages which feature the “realistic point of view” of a hypothetical family of four, including two charts that line up the prices of building what are supposedly comparable Windows PC and Mac systems. The hypothetical dad's spreadsheet examines the differences in cost over five years and— amazingly—concludes that buying Macs will be a mind-boggling $3,330 more expensive. There are a few flaws here—okay, there are several flaws here, and to pick them apart one-by-one would only be redundant, repetitive, and redundant, but let’s take a look at just a few of them to get the idea. For one thing, the report repeats the age-old fallacy that once you buy into a Mac you have to buy into the whole Apple ecosystem, despite the fact that we largely left that world behind around the time that people were wondering who precisely had let the dogs out. For example, Kay budgets $150 per year for Apple’s MobileMe service— that being the price of the MobileMe family pack, which supports up to five users. But you don’t need MobileMe—Kay says it’s for backup and file sync, both of which can be accomplished with free technologies provided by Apple and others. Heck, the Windows Live Mesh that Kay touts even runs on a Mac. But similar third-party syncing services like Dropbox work well too. And, for backup, every Mac comes with Time Machine built-in. Look, I just saved the hypothetical family a hypothetical $750—hypothetically, of course. Kay also insists, for some reason, that the family buy an AirPort Extreme router for $180 instead of the $150 Linksys Wireless N router that he budgeted for the PCs, despite the fact that the Mac and Linksys routers are interoperable. You could save another $30 (or—and I know this is going out on a limb—you could spend the extra $30 to buy the AirPort Extreme for the PC side because it's a better product. Hey, it's an option). Here’s another wacky choice: Kay suggests the family will want add Blu- ray capability (which, it’s true, is not currently supported by OS X) to the desktop system in year four. He budgets $95 for a Lite-On internal drive for the PC and $300 for an external Sony Blu-ray drive for the Mac. Never mind that, as they've chosen the extremely expandable Mac Pro, they could easily upgrade the computer with that same internal Blu-ray drive (presuming, of course, that four years from now, Apple’s added Blu-ray support to OS X—if not, that Sony player won't be much more useful anyway). Knock off another $205. But let’s look at this from the other side for a moment: what’s been left out of the costs of owning a PC? Well, how about security? Malware is a pretty common sight on Windows PCs and you won’t find any expert recommending you run your machine without virus protection. But most virus protection costs a certain amount per year: HP, for example, includes 15 months of Norton Internet Security for free, but that’ll leave the family out in the cold just over a year in—they’ll have to spend another $60 to $80 to cover them for the whole five year period. And that’s just for one of the two computers. Not much, but it adds up. The report also makes a big deal out of having to re-buy existing Windows software for OS X, but it barely touches upon the immense value of all the software included with every Mac. iLife is referred to only by the cost of upgrading it, and Kay doesn’t bother to enumerate what similar capabilities—music creation, video editing, DVD authoring—would cost on Windows. And then there’s Windows itself. Kay says in his report how great Microsoft’s forthcoming Windows 7 will be: “This gap [in user experience] will likely close up when Microsoft introduces Windows 7 late this year.” And yet, mysteriously, no mention is made anywhere of the price it’ll cost this family to upgrade to Windows 7, if it doesn’t ship by the time they want to buy their new computers. In truth, that’s because nobody knows, but Vista’s cheapest software costs $200 a pop, suggesting our hypothetical family will have to shell out around $400 if they want to get all the improvements to help close that "user experience gap." Apple’s forthcoming Snow Leopard update, by comparison, will run $200 for the whole family, if the company sticks to the pricing scheme it's been using for years. Add up all those tweaks and you’ll find the price difference has almost been halved—and that’s just with the no-brainer changes. But it’s like I said up top: despite looking all serious and factual, numbers can be massaged and carefully selected to tell any story. And as much as figures and charts might tell you about cost, they speak very little to the idea of what you get for that money—of value beyond specifications and technologies. What about the time saved not dealing with viruses and annoying security software? What about those hard-to- quantify benefits of what Kay admits is a superior user experience? Kay would have you believe that everything can be reduced to quantitative measurements, and that’s emblematic of the way Microsoft operates. But there are plenty of important qualitativedifferences as well. The report bandies about the term “cool” like a four-letter word, but it mistakes the trappings of "cool" for its substance. True coolness is never really about appearance and only those who just don't get it claim that it is. Apple’s computers are fantastically designed and aesthetically attractive, but that's not what makes them cool—what makes them cool is what they allow their users to do. And for many, that's worth a few extra bucks.

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INTEREST: Malicious Computer Virus Is Revised
by billing 12 Apr '09

12 Apr '09

...from: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/10/technology/10virus.html?th&emc=th Malicious Software Is Revised By JOHN MARKOFF Published: April 9, 2009 The riddle of a malicious software program that has spread throughout the Internet deepened Thursday as security researchers examined a new version of the software that they said made it more difficult to eradicate the program. The program, known as Conficker, targets versions of Microsoft’s Windows operating system and has now been distributed in four versions, computer security specialists said. Several of the groups monitoring the program said the most recent version, which began to appear Tuesday, appeared to be targeted at improving a peer-to-peer communications system between computers that are infected and hardening the system by making infected machines more resistant to anti-virus software. Several researchers also said there might be a connection between the authors of Conficker and of another program known as Waladec, a malware program that has been used to distribute fraudulent advertisements through e-mail spam. They also noted that the Conficker authors have switched strategies and are using the program’s peer-to- peer mechanism to update the system. Originally, they had appeared to plan to download instructions to Conficker by generating new Internet addresses that infected machines could download instructions from. An earlier version of the program had been set to begin contacting servers on April 1, raising widespread concern about the authors’ intent. Now, however, the system for programming Conficker uses a peer- to-peer mechanism that can be initiated from any one of millions of infected systems. The consensus within the computer security industry is that although there are now some indications that Conficker’s authors are intent on building a giant spam system, there is no hard evidence. “This is just Step 5 in a thousand-step chess match,” said Vincent Weafer, vice president of the security response division at Symantec.

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INTEREST: new MacPros: when slower is actually faster
by billing 30 Mar '09

30 Mar '09

...from: http://www.macworld.com/article/139507/2009/03/macpro2009.html?lsrc=mwweek Quad-Core and Eight-Core Mac Pros (2009 editions) New Mac tower boosts performance despite speed drop by James Galbraith, Macworld.com Though you wouldn’t know by looking at it, Apple’s new tower, the Mac Pro, has just received a major overhaul. The two tower models pack a brand-new processor and video system, and feature a reorganized internal design. However, they have lower clock speeds than their predecessors. PRODUCT: Mac Pro Quad-Core/2.66GHz RATING PROS New Nehalem microprocessor; easier to upgrade internal components; lower price. CONS None significant. COMPANY Apple PRICE AS RATED $2,499 BEST CURRENT PRICE $2,388.00 PRODUCT: Mac Pro Eight-Core/2.26GHz RATING PROS New Nehalem microprocessor; easier to upgrade internal components; lower price. CONS Most routine apps perform better with fewer, faster processors. COMPANY Apple PRICE AS RATED $3,299 PEOPLE WHO READ THIS ALSO READ: Avoiding Mac buyer's remorse Six things Apple needs to do right now Why even IT pros are demanding Macs Review: Wolfram Mathematica 7 Psystar rolls out new, compact Mac clone The five most underused Finder tools Last year’s standard Mac Pro () featured a 2.8GHz eight-core Intel Xeon processor based on the Harpertown/Penryn architecture. This year, there are two models: a quad-core system with a 2.66GHz Nehalem Xeon processor, and an eight-core model running two quad-core Xeon processors at 2.26GHz. Also new to the Mac Pros are Nvidia GeForce GT 120 graphics cards and a revamped interior designed to ease user access for upgrading internal components. Similar but different Aside from the second optical-drive slot on the front, the Mac Pro continues to use the same big-handled, aluminum case as the Power Mac G5, introduced nearly five years ago. There are some minor changes to the exterior, though—specifically in the type and number of connections. First, the two FireWire 400 connectors from previous generations have been replaced with backward-compatible FireWire 800 ports, bringing the number of FireWire ports to four—two on the front and two on the back. The five USB 2.0 ports, two on the front and three on the back, remain. On the graphics card, one of the two dual- link DVI connectors at the rear of the system has been replaced with a Mini DisplayPort connector, which lets you connect either to Apple’s 24-inch LED Cinema Display () or, with adapters (not included), to a second DVI display. The new Mac Pros have been remodeled on the inside to provide for easier access to components. Upon opening the case, you immediately notice major changes in the layout of the components. The memory modules are no longer installed on two sliding trays—instead, the memory and processor all rest on a sled at the bottom of the case, which you remove by releasing two latches. The quad-core Mac Pro has four memory slots that ship with 3GB, 6GB, or 8GB of 1,066MHz DDR3 SDRAM modules; the eight-core Mac Pro has eight DIMM slots for a maximum of 32GB of RAM. The memory design no longer requires the large heat sinks. The Mac Pro still has four internal cable-free hard-drive slots, using a sliding tray to attach the drives directly to the motherboard. Now, though, the large plastic piece holding the fan near the front of the Mac Pro is much smaller, giving your fingers more room to grip the hard-drive sleds. This is a small but welcome change. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve struggled over the years to remove that first drive. Another nice design change helps ease the removal of PCI cards from the four full-size PCI Express 2.0 card slots. In the past, to remove a card, you’d first need to turn two large thumbscrews that held a small plate keeping the cards in place. Then you had to feel around behind the card, searching for a little plastic tab mounted on the motherboard, which you needed to lift up in order to release the card. With the new Mac Pro, that second step is much easier. You now simply push a single thin bar that extends across all the PCI Express 2.0 slots to release any or all cards. Apple has also made installation of its add-on Apple RAID card much easier: you just put it into the clearly marked top slot, and you’re ready to go. Installed in the first PCI Express 2.0 slot is the new Nvidia GeForce GT 120 graphics card with 512MB of video RAM; the last generation of Mac Pros came standard with an ATI Radeon HD 2600 XT graphics card with 256MB of memory. 2.66GHz Quad-Core/2.26GHz Eight-Core Mac Pro Speedmark Scores Longer bars are better. Blue bars in italics represent reference systems. Macworld Lab testing by James Galbraith, Chris Holt, and Helen Williamson. New processor The new Mac Pro uses Intel’s Xeon 3500 or 5500 quad-core processors, part of the new Nehalem family of microprocessors. Several major architectural innovations have the new processors featuring all four cores on a single die, making its 8MB of L3 cache available to any and all processing cores. The memory controller is now on-chip, giving the processor faster access to the main memory, and eliminating memory latency by up to 40 percent. Previously, the Mac Pro had 12MB of L2 cache per processor, with 6MB shared between pairs of processing cores. Each processor now has full access to 8MB of L3 as well as a small amount of dedicated L2 cache, whereas the previous Mac Pro had no L3 cache. A technology called Hyper-Threading creates two virtual cores per each physical core, allowing each physical core to run two processes at once, which helps use the available processing power more efficiently. Also new to the Nehalem processors is a technology Intel calls Turbo Boost. Turbo Boost helps speed up the majority of applications that haven’t been written to take full advantage of multicore processors by allowing the system to spin down idle processing cores while increasing the speed of the processors in use. This lets a 2.93GHz Xeon, for example, run at speeds as high as 3.33GHz, Apple says. Performance So do all of these innovations translate to better performance? The 2.66GHz quad-core Mac Pro posted faster speeds in Photoshop, Compressor, iMovie, iTunes, and 3-D game benchmarks than the previous standard eight-core Mac Pro. That’s pretty impressive considering that the new Mac Pro is using only half the number of processing cores as last year’s standard configuration—and at a slower speed. The new quad- core’s score in our overall system performance suite, Speedmark 5, was 16 percent faster than that of the previous 2.8GHz eight-core Mac Pro. It was also 27 percent faster in our Photoshop tests, and 20 percent faster at Compressor than the older system. 2.66GHz Quad-Core/2.26GHz Eight-Core Mac Pro benchmarks Speedmark 5 Adobe Photoshop CS3 Cinema 4D XL 10.5 Compressor iMovie HD iTunes 7.5 Quake 4 Finder OVERALL SCORE SUITE RENDER MPEG ENCODE AGED EFFECT MP3 ENCODE FRAME RATE ZIP ARCHIVE Mac Pro 2.66GHz Quad-Core (Nehalem) 348 0:35 0:18 0:47 0:29 0:46 81.2 3:27 Mac Pro 2.26GHz 8-Core (Nehalem) 343 0:36 0:13 0:57 0:34 0:47 70.8 3:55 Mac Pro 2.8GHz 8-Core (Harpertown, 3GB RAM) 301 0:48 0:16 0:59 0:34 0:49 74.5 3:49 Mac Pro 2.8GHz 8-Core (Harpertown, 6GB RAM) 319 0:39 0:16 0:59 0:33 0:49 75.0 3:47 Mac Pro 2.66GHz Quad-Core (Woodcrest) 262 0:44 0:28 1:19 0:40 0:54 54.7 4:01 24-inch iMac Core 2 Duo/3.06GHz (March 2009) 308 0:39 0:41 1:25 0:37 0:50 85.6 3:24 Power Macintosh 2.5GHz Quad-Core G5 226 1:10 0:32 1:30 0:39 0:48 41.6 4:40 >Better <Better <Better <Better <Better <Better >Better <Better Best results in bold. Reference systems in italics. Speedmark 5 scores are relative to those of a 1.5GHz Core Solo Mac mini, which is assigned a score of 100. Adobe Photoshop, Cinema 4D XL, iMovie, iTunes, and Finder scores are in minutes:seconds. All systems were running Mac OS X 10.5.6 with the Mac Pro 2.66GHz Quad Core outfitted with 3GB of RAM, and the Mac Pro 2.26GHz 8-Core with 6GB of RAM. The Photoshop Suite test is a set of 14 scripted tasks using a 50MB file. Photoshop’s memory was set to 70 percent and History was set to Minimum. We recorded how long it took to render a scene in Cinema 4D XL. We used Compressor to encode a 6minute:26second DV file using the DVD: Fastest Encode 120 minutes - 4:3 setting. In iMovie, we applied the Aged Film Effect from the Video FX menu to a one minute movie. We converted 45 minutes of AAC audio files to MP3 using iTunes’ High Quality setting. We used Quake's average-frames-per-second score; we tested at a resolution of 1,024x768 pixels at the Maximum setting with both audio and graphics enabled. We created a Zip archive in the Finder from two 1GB files.To compare Speedmark 5 scores for various Mac systems, visit our Mac Hardware Guide.—MACWORLD LAB TESTING BY JAMES GALBRAITH, CHRIS HOLT, AND HELEN WILLIAMSON. 2.66GHz Quad-Core/2.26GHz Eight-Core Mac Pro benchmarks Quake 4 Quake 4 Call of Duty 4 Call of Duty 4 Call of Duty 4 Mathematica Compressor 1,024x768 1,600x1,200 1,024x768 1,344x880 1,920x1,200 MathematicaMark 7 ProRez 422 to H.264 Mac Pro 2.66GHz Quad-Core (Nehalem) 81.2 41.6 68.1 39.6 24.3 10.1 9:38 Mac Pro 2.26GHz 8-Core (Nehalem) 74.5 41.1 77.7 38.1 24.1 16.8 8:14 Mac Pro 2.8GHz 8-Core (Harpertown, 3GB RAM) 75.0 21.5 77.8 28.7 16.9 9.7 9:02 Mac Pro 2.66GHz Quad-Core (Woodcrest) 54.7 19.8 26.1 10.5 6.1 6.9 12:52 24-inch iMac Core 2 Duo/3.06GHz (March 2009) 85.6 73.2 73.7 58.1 42.2 4.1 28:32 >Better >Better >Better >Better >Better >Better <Better Best results in bold. Reference systems in italics. We used Quake 4's timedemo run at 1,024x768 at high quality settings and antialialsing off, we then ran it again at 1,600x1,200 at Ultimate quality settings with 2X antialialsing enabled. For Call of Duty 4, we ran a self-recorded timedemo at 1,024x768 and antialiasing and shadows turned off, we then ran it again at both 1,344x880 and 1,920x1,200 with Shadows on and 4X antilaliasing enabled. We ran Mathematica 7's built-in benchmark, MathematicaMark. We used Compressor to encode a 6minute:26second ProRes file to the application's H.264 for iPod/ iPhone 640x480 preset with QMaster set to create a cluster comprised of the maximum number of instances per system.—MACWORLD LAB TESTING BY JAMES GALBRAITH, CHRIS HOLT AND HELEN WILLIAMSON. The new 2.26GHz eight-core Mac Pro has twice as many processing cores as the 2.66GHz quad-core model, but each core runs 15 percent slower than the cores in that 2.66GHz quad-core Mac Pro. Because many applications have a difficult time using even four processors efficiently, the advantage of having eight was not apparent in most of the application tests that make up our Speedmark benchmark test suite. In fact, the new eight-core system posted a lower Speedmark score than the quad-core system, and bested it in just one test—Cinema 4D, where it posted a 28 percent faster time. Pro app testing We run Speedmark on all Mac systems, so the suite is light on the few industrial-strength professional applications that take full advantage of multicore processors. Speedmark tests are also run one at a time, which can mask the advantage of increased RAM. For those reasons, we decided to add a couple of tests to the suite to better test the Mac Pro, namely Mathematica() and a ProRes Compressor test. In these tests, the applications recognized and used all 16 virtual cores of the new eight-core Mac Pro. In MathematicaMark 7, the new quad-core Mac Pro received a score of 10.1, nearly identical to the 9.7 score of last year’s eight-core 2.8GHz Mac Pro. The new 2.26GHz Mac Pro scored 16.8, or 73 percent higher than last year’s eight-core Mac Pro. In our ProRes encode test to Compressor’s H.264 iPod/iPhone 640 by 480 preset, the new 2.66GHz Mac Pro took 9 minutes and 38 seconds to convert our 6 minute and 41 second clip, about 6.6 percent longer than the older eight-core 2.8GHz system did. The new 2.26GHz Mac Pro was about 8.9 percent faster than last year’s model. The new Mac Pro’s graphics performance showed much improvement when running 3- D games at high resolution. With the Nvidia GeForce GT 120 graphics, the new Mac Pros were able to push through 44 percent more frames per second than last year’s standard 2.8GHz eight-core Mac Pro when running Call of Duty 4 at 1,920 by 1,200 pixels, and nearly twice as many frames per second when running Quake 4 at high resolution. The new 3.06GHz 24-inch iMac (), with its Nvidia GeForce 130 graphics chip, beat both Mac Pros in our most of our graphics tests. Macworld’s buying advice The new Mac Pros, with their cutting-edge Nehalem processor technology, are able to execute more tasks at a faster clip, despite lower processor speeds. And their new internal design makes adding hard drives, memory cards, and PCI Express 2.0 cards easier than ever. Apple’s most expandable Mac is the pro platform for power users. With its improved graphics, memory bandwidth, and reduced memory latency, the 2.66GHz quad-core Mac Pro was faster than the 2.8GHz eight-core Mac Pro, and at $2,499 costs $300 less. It would be a fine purchase for anyone replacing an older Mac or buying a new one for the first time. That is especially true for people who work with processorintensive apps such as video or graphics. It’s harder to recommend that people spend $800 more for the new $3,299 2.26GHz eight-core Mac Pro if they don’t run software written for the top-of-the-line Mac Pro’s eight processor cores. Though the 2.26GHz model was faster at most individual tasks than the previous eightcore 2.8GHz Mac Pro, and very fast in a few of our professional applications tests, it was slower than the new quad-core model at the majority of our application tests.

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INTEREST: Canadian/UK research firms find sophisticated "social malware" at work
by billing 29 Mar '09

29 Mar '09

...from: http://www.cl.cam.ac.uk/techreports/UCAM-CL-TR-746.html The snooping dragon: social-malware surveillance of the Tibetan movement Shishir Nagaraja, Ross Anderson University of Cambridge March 2009, 12 pages Abstract In this note we document a case of malware-based electronic surveillance of a political organisation by the agents of a nation state. While malware attacks are not new, two aspects of this case make it worth serious study. First, it was a targeted surveillance attack designed to collect actionable intelligence for use by the police and security services of a repressive state, with potentially fatal consequences for those exposed. Second, the modus operandi combined social phishing with high-grade malware. This combination of well-written malware with well-designed email lures, which we call social malware, is devastatingly effective. Few organisations outside the defence and intelligence sector could withstand such an attack, and although this particular case involved the agents of a major power, the attack could in fact have been mounted by a capable motivated individual. This report is therefore of importance not just to companies who may attract the attention of government agencies, but to all organisations. As social-malware attacks spread, they are bound to target people such as accounts-payable and payroll staff who use computers to make payments. Prevention will be hard. The traditional defence against social malware in government agencies involves expensive and intrusive measures that range from mandatory access controls to tiresome operational security procedures. These will not be sustainable in the economy as a whole. Evolving practical low-cost defences against social-malware attacks will be a real challenge. ...and from the full text: "We monitored the network traﬃc on its mail service in California and immediately observed that gaining access to emails would have been straightforward for anyone who could monitor this circuit, since the traﬃc was unencrypted. The email server could be contacted via POP, IMAP and HTTP in insecure modes, with passwords and mail passing in plain text. We also noted that some passwords chosen by [the users] were easily broken with a dictionary attack[...] in about 15 minutes [3]. The ‘standard’ security-consultant advice might therefore have been that [users] turn on TLS encryption to their mail server, and adopt a password policy. However such a superﬁcial diagnosis and prescription would not have given much of a defence. It turned out that the attackers used a diﬀerent route. 2.1 The attack vector Email attachments appear to have been the favoured strategy to deliver malicious pay-loads. This worked because the attackers took the trouble to write emails that appeared to come from fellow Tibetans and indeed from co-workers. The use of carefully-written email lures based on social context to get people to visit bogus websites has been called ‘social phishing’; in this incident, such email was used to spread malware and we therefore call this strategy social malware. [...] We then examined samples of email attachments from the local ﬁle systems them with the expert help of Mikko Hypponen at F-Secure Corporation, who determined that they could support ﬁle search and retrieval operations and also function as keyloggers. This conﬁrms that the attackers had pretty much full access to the data on the infected computers. (In fact, one monk claimed that he actually ‘saw’ the bot open his Outlook Express and send infected attachments to others without any action on his part!) [...] ... there is nothing in the modus operandi that prevents [these attacks] from being carried out by a smaller opponent. For example, we saw no evidence that the initial break involved wiretapping the backbone traﬃc from Dharamsala to California [...]. There was no need, given the tools and methods they actually employed. In fact, even a capable motivated individual could have carried out the attacks we describe here. Until recently, one might have assumed that it would take a ‘geek’ to write good malware, and someone with interpersonal skills to do the social manipulation. But the industrialisation of online crime over the past ﬁve years means that capably-written malware, which will not be detected by anti-virus programs, is now available on the market. All an attacker needs is the social skill and patience to work the malware from one person to another until enough machines have been compromised to complete the mission. What’s more, the ‘best practice’ advice that one sees in the corporate sector comes nowhere even close to preventing such an attack. Thus social malware is unlikely to remain a tool of governments. Certainly organisations of interest to governments should take proper precautions now, but other ﬁrms had better start to think about what it will mean for them when social malware attacks become widespread. [...] So what are the broader implications? How can social malware be dealt with? [...] One thing we predict, though, is that the social response to the threat of social malware will be slow and ineﬀective. This is because of elementary security economics. Banks will try to shift the blame to accounting system providers, and vice versa. The accounting vendors will advise customers to lock down user PCs, without being too explicit about how. Companies seeking redress will ﬁnd themselves up against standard terms and conditions whereby both banks and vendors disclaim liability; in many markets they are oligopolistic suppliers, so may be able to defend these contract terms for some time. The banking regulators have shown that they believe whatever the banks tell them, that they are uninterested in protecting bank customers, and in any case they have no expertise in information security. The initial attacks will aﬀect only a minority of ﬁrms, so the rest will prefer to blame the attacks on the victims’ negligence rather than acknowledging that their own policies need to change. Many companies will rely for advice on their auditors, and big audit ﬁrms, being ponderous and bureaucratic, give the same advice year-in year- out until litigation or regulation forces change. In short, we predict that the criminals who adapt social malware to fraud will enjoy many years of rich pickings. Indeed, if either of us were inclined to crime, this would be what we’d go for. [...] 4 Conclusions [The attackers] used social phishing to install rootkits on a number of machines and then downloaded sensitive data. People in Tibet may have died as a result. The compromise was detected and dealt with, but its implications are sobering. It shows how diﬃcult it is to defend sensitive information against an opponent who uses social engineering techniques to install malware. We have described this social malware attack here and considered its consequences. [...] the techniques used are available even to private individuals and are quite shockingly eﬀective. In fact, neither of the two authors is conﬁdent that we could keep secrets on a network- connected machine that we used for our daily work in the face of determined interest from a capable motivated opponent. The necessary restrictions on online activity would not be consistent with eﬀective academic work. Organisations that maintain sensitive information on network-attached computers and that may have such opponents had better think long and hard. The implications are serious already for people and groups who may become the target of hostile state surveillance. In the medium term we predict that social malware will be used for fraud, and the typical company has really no defence against it. We expect that many crooks will get rich before eﬀective countermeasures are widely deployed. = - = - = - = ...from: http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/29/technology/29spy.html?_r=1&th&emc=th Vast Spy System Loots Computers in 103 Countries By JOHN MARKOFF Published: March 28, 2009 TORONTO — A vast electronic spying operation has infiltrated computers and has stolen documents from hundreds of government and private offices around the world, including those of the Dalai Lama, Canadian researchers have concluded. Tim Leyes for The New York Times The Toronto academic researchers who are reporting on the spying operation dubbed GhostNet include, from left, Ronald J. Deibert, Greg Walton, Nart Villeneuve and Rafal A. Rohozinski. Vast Reach of ‘GhostNet’ In a report to be issued this weekend, the researchers said that the system was being controlled from computers based almost exclusively in China, but that they could not say conclusively that the Chinese government was involved. The researchers, who are based at the Munk Center for International Studies at the University of Toronto, had been asked by the office of the Dalai Lama, the exiled Tibetan leader whom China regularly denounces, to examine its computers for signs of malicious software, or malware. Their sleuthing opened a window into a broader operation that, in less than two years, has infiltrated at least 1,295 computers in 103 countries, including many belonging to embassies, foreign ministries and other government offices, as well as the Dalai Lama’s Tibetan exile centers in India, Brussels, London and New York. The researchers, who have a record of detecting computer espionage, said they believed that in addition to the spying on the Dalai Lama, the system, which they called GhostNet, was focused on the governments of South Asian and Southeast Asian countries. Intelligence analysts say many governments, including those of China, Russia and the United States, and other parties use sophisticated computer programs to covertly gather information. The newly reported spying operation is by far the largest to come to light in terms of countries affected. This is also believed to be the first time researchers have been able to expose the workings of a computer system used in an intrusion of this magnitude. Still going strong, the operation continues to invade and monitor more than a dozen new computers a week, the researchers said in their report, “Tracking ‘GhostNet’: Investigating a Cyber Espionage Network.” They said they had found no evidence that United States government offices had been infiltrated, although a NATO computer was monitored by the spies for half a day and computers of the Indian Embassy in Washington were infiltrated. The malware is remarkable both for its sweep — in computer jargon, it has not been merely “phishing” for random consumers’ information, but “whaling” for particular important targets — and for its Big Brother-style capacities. It can, for example, turn on the camera and audio-recording functions of an infected computer, enabling monitors to see and hear what goes on in a room. The investigators say they do not know if this facet has been employed. The researchers were able to monitor the commands given to infected computers and to see the names of documents retrieved by the spies, but in most cases the contents of the stolen files have not been determined. Working with the Tibetans, however, the researchers found that specific correspondence had been stolen and that the intruders had gained control of the electronic mail server computers of the Dalai Lama’s organization. The electronic spy game has had at least some real-world impact, they said. For example, they said, after an e-mail invitation was sent by the Dalai Lama’s office to a foreign diplomat, the Chinese government made a call to the diplomat discouraging a visit. And a woman working for a group making Internet contacts between Tibetan exiles and Chinese citizens was stopped by Chinese intelligence officers on her way back to Tibet, shown transcripts of her online conversations and warned to stop her political activities. The Toronto researchers said they had notified international law enforcement agencies of the spying operation, which in their view exposed basic shortcomings in the legal structure of cyberspace. The F.B.I. declined to comment on the operation. Although the Canadian researchers said that most of the computers behind the spying were in China, they cautioned against concluding that China’s government was involved. The spying could be a nonstate, for-profit operation, for example, or one run by private citizens in China known as “patriotic hackers.” “We’re a bit more careful about it, knowing the nuance of what happens in the subterranean realms,” said Ronald J. Deibert, a member of the research group and an associate professor of political science at Munk. “This could well be the C.I.A. or the Russians. It’s a murky realm that we’re lifting the lid on.” A spokesman for the Chinese Consulate in New York dismissed the idea that China was involved. “These are old stories and they are nonsense,” the spokesman, Wenqi Gao, said. “The Chinese government is opposed to and strictly forbids any cybercrime.” The Toronto researchers, who allowed a reporter for The New York Times to review the spies’ digital tracks, are publishing their findings in Information Warfare Monitor, an online publication associated with the Munk Center. [...] In any case, it was suspicions of Chinese interference that led to the discovery of the spy operation. Last summer, the office of the Dalai Lama invited two specialists to India to audit computers used by the Dalai Lama’s organization. The specialists, Greg Walton, the editor of Information Warfare Monitor, and Mr. Nagaraja, a network security expert, found that the computers had indeed been infected and that intruders had stolen files from personal computers serving several Tibetan exile groups. Back in Toronto, Mr. Walton shared data with colleagues at the Munk Center’s computer lab. One of them was Nart Villeneuve, 34, a graduate student and self- taught “white hat” hacker with dazzling technical skills. Last year, Mr. Villeneuve linked the Chinese version of the Skype communications service to a Chinese government operation that was systematically eavesdropping on users’ instant-messaging sessions. Early this month, Mr. Villeneuve noticed an odd string of 22 characters embedded in files created by the malicious software and searched for it with Google. It led him to a group of computers on Hainan Island, off China, and to a Web site that would prove to be critically important. In a puzzling security lapse, the Web page that Mr. Villeneuve found was not protected by a password, while much of the rest of the system uses encryption. Mr. Villeneuve and his colleagues figured out how the operation worked by commanding it to infect a system in their computer lab in Toronto. On March 12, the spies took their own bait. Mr. Villeneuve watched a brief series of commands flicker on his computer screen as someone — presumably in China — rummaged through the files. Finding nothing of interest, the intruder soon disappeared. Through trial and error, the researchers learned to use the system’s Chinese-language “dashboard” — a control panel reachable with a standard Web browser — by which one could manipulate the more than 1,200 computers worldwide that had by then been infected. Infection happens two ways. In one method, a user’s clicking on a document attached to an e-mail message lets the system covertly install software deep in the target operating system. Alternatively, a user clicks on a Web link in an e-mail message and is taken directly to a “poisoned” Web site. The researchers said they avoided breaking any laws during three weeks of monitoring and extensively experimenting with the system’s unprotected software control panel. They provided, among other information, a log of compromised computers dating to May 22, 2007. They found that three of the four control servers were in different provinces in China — Hainan, Guangdong and Sichuan — while the fourth was discovered to be at a Web-hosting company based in Southern California. Beyond that, said Rafal A. Rohozinski, one of the investigators, “attribution is difficult because there is no agreed upon international legal framework for being able to pursue investigations down to their logical conclusion, which is highly local.”

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INTEREST: SuSe LINUX 11 Release Candidate available for download
by billing 26 Feb '09

26 Feb '09

The next version of both the SusE LINUX Enterprise Server (SLES) and Desktop (SLED) - version 11 - is being made available in the Release Candidate for downloads. A registration is required to complete the download process. Here's the write-up about SLES/SLED 11: Novell Downloads Disclaimer ATTENTION! By downloading the above ISO images provided for the SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 Sneak Preview, you are accessing pre-release versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11. You are using these pre-release versions at your own risk! These pre-release versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise 11 are made available exclusively via download as a preview. Novell recommends to use them solely for evaluation purposes. Do not use the pre-release versions to run any system in production. Also, there is no upgrade path available from the Sneak Preview versions to the final General Availability versions of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 11 and SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 11, or to later versions. Novell does NOT provide any bug-tracking channel, support, services, or warranty for the use of these pre-release versions, no matter if you update from a previous version of SUSE Linux Enterprise or if you perform a completely new installation. Thanks http://download.novell.com/protected/Summary.jsp?buildid=_skp4YryXVs~

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FYI: Adobe Acrobat and Reader Vulnerability exploits PDF files
by billing 21 Feb '09

21 Feb '09

Begin forwarded message: > From: Ken De Cruyenaere <kdc(a)cc.umanitoba.ca> > Date: February 20, 2009 9:43:00 PM CST (CA) > To: um-compureps(a)cc.umanitoba.ca > Subject: [C-REPS] Heads up ! - Adobe Acrobat and Reader Vulnerability > > > There is an exploit in the wild and a patch is not expected until > March 11th. > > See below for suggested (temporary) solutions. > > ----- Forwarded message from CERT Advisory <cert-advisory(a)cert.org> > ----- > > > Systems Affected > > * Adobe Reader version 9 and earlier > * Adobe Acrobat (Professional, 3D, and Standard) version 9 and > earlier > > > Overview > > Adobe has released Security Bulletin APSB09-01, which describes a > vulnerability that affects Adobe Reader and Acrobat. This > vulnerability could allow a remote attacker to execute arbitrary > code. > > > I. Description > > Adobe Security Bulletin APSB09-01 describes a memory-corruption > vulnerability that affects Adobe Reader and Acrobat. Further > details are available in Vulnerability Note VU#905281. An attacker > could exploit these vulnerabilities by convincing a user to load a > specially crafted Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) file. > Acrobat integrates with popular web browsers, and visiting a > website is usually sufficient to cause Acrobat to load PDF content. > > > II. Impact > > An attacker may be able to execute arbitrary code. > > > III. Solution > > Disable JavaScript in Adobe Reader and Acrobat > > Disabling Javascript may prevent some exploits from resulting in > code execution. Acrobat JavaScript can be disabled using the > Preferences menu (Edit -> Preferences -> JavaScript and un-check > Enable Acrobat JavaScript). > > > Prevent Internet Explorer from automatically opening PDF documents > > The installer for Adobe Reader and Acrobat configures Internet > Explorer to automatically open PDF files without any user > interaction. This behavior can be reverted to the safer option of > prompting the user by importing the following as a .REG file: > > Windows Registry Editor Version 5.00 > > [HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\AcroExch.Document.7] > "EditFlags"=hex:00,00,00,00 > > > Disable the display of PDF documents in the web browser > > Preventing PDF documents from opening inside a web browser will > partially mitigate this vulnerability. If this workaround is > applied it may also mitigate future vulnerabilities. To prevent PDF > documents from automatically being opened in a web browser, do the > following: > 1. Open Adobe Acrobat Reader. > 2. Open the Edit menu. > 3. Choose the preferences option. > 4. Choose the Internet section. > 5. Un-check the "Display PDF in browser" check box. > > > Do not access PDF documents from untrusted sources > > Do not open unfamiliar or unexpected PDF documents, particularly > those hosted on web sites or delivered as email attachments. Please > see Cyber Security Tip ST04-010. > > > IV. References > > * Adobe Security Bulletin apsa09-01 - > <http://www.adobe.com/support/security/advisories/apsa09-01.html> > > * Securing Your Web Browser - > <http://www.us-cert.gov/reading_room/securing_browser/> > > <snip> > ----- End forwarded message ----- > > > --- > Ken De Cruyenaere Computer Security Coordinator > kdc(a)cc.umanitoba.ca Information Services & Technology > (204) 474-8340 University of Manitoba > > > > ----- End forwarded message ----- > > _______________________________________ > um-compureps mailing list > um-compureps(a)lists.umanitoba.ca > http://lists.umanitoba.ca/mailman/listinfo/um-compureps >

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FYI: if you share, make sure you have a termination clause...
by billing 20 Feb '09

20 Feb '09

....or... All your content are belong to us.... forever. As you may already have heard, the online "social networking" service FACEBOOK briefly changed their "Terms of Service" this month... and then changed them back. The initial change allowed FACEBOOK to retain anything you'd put into your FACEBOOK account (pictures, text, poems, songs, etc.), even if you had closed your account. The online video-blog Rocketboom (www.rocketboom.com) has a video that examines some of the issues surrounding this event: http://www.rocketboom.com/rb_09_feb_19/

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FYI: ECODISC DVD stuck in Mac slot drive...
by billing 18 Feb '09

18 Feb '09

...from: http://www.ecodiscdvd.net/ "EcoDisc is the revolutionary, eco-friendly DVD with all the optical properties, playability and quality of traditional DVDs at a third less of the cost. They use 50% less polycarbonate and produce 52% less CO2 emissions. You can easily convert your existing CD line to a more profitable EcoDisc line. They’re thinner, lighter, more flexible, more durable and environmentally friendly. Go green, save green, make green. Go EcoDisc." Sounds great, right? Thinner, lighter, use less material, creates less pollution, flexible.... what could be the problem? They are "too thin" for slot-loading drives..... They've already been used in magazine give-away's in the UK. They're coming to North America... ...from: http://www.digitaltoast.co.uk/ecodisc-cover-dvd-stuck-in-mac-slot-drive ECODISC DVD STUCK IN MAC SLOT DRIVE The problem of unwanted freebie coverdiscs has been growing for a while now. So, someone invented EcoDiscs, which are half the thickness of a normal DVD. Except they’ll bugger your Mac up and leave you with a bill for £65+VAT. The Independent and The Daily Mail amongst others gave away some ecodisc cover DVDs this weekend, and on Monday, a distressed relative called to say the mac was making strange noises. After a couple of hours, I began searching on the internet, and found the answer: http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/01/17/slot_load_pc_pro_drive_mayhem/comme… http://www.pcpro.co.uk/news/155010/mail-on-sunday-angers-mac-users-with-dvd… http://qompute.wordpress.com/2008/01/18/ecodisc-becoming-ecodisaster-for-ma… http://www.reghardware.co.uk/2008/01/17/slot_load_pc_pro_drive_mayhem/ http://digg.com/apple/Environmental_DVD_Wrecks_Apple_Drives http://www.kizo.com/2008/environmental-dvd-wrecks-apple-drives/ http://apple.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=08/01/17/1747254 I phoned The Independent who took no responsibility at all, but said they’d send out a standard form reply by email (which never came) disclaiming all responsibility. So, there’s a warning on the disc (click for full size: hint, you're looking for this symbol ) Yes, it’s 4mm high, in fuzzy print. As if anyone is going to see that! It needs to be the LARGEST thing on the disc. I then called the manufacturer, ODS, who sent me the document below - yes, the solution is to turn the Mac upside down while ejecting the disc. In fact, as this didn’t work at first, I followed further guidelines on the net suggesting I bang it while ejecting and upside down! This finally freed the disc, but does anyone have any idea how bad that can be for a hard drive?! It could cause a head-crash and data loss at the least. Another surprising thing is that according to one of the articles above, Ecodisc have had “less than 12 calls about it”. Makes you wonder why they need a standard document like this, doesn’t it... Everything below is quoted: EcoDisc – argument guideline to get EcoDisc out of Apple computer If customers face the unlikely incident that the EcoDisc is not ejected out of a computer slot-in drive (even after several trials) our recommendation is: To try with 1. turn laptop/PC upside down, 2. press manual “eject” button To restart the computer once again and try with the eject button If accessible: to take the disc-drive out of the computer, open the disc-drive with a screw driver and then take the disc out. A technically versed person can accomplish this within ten minutes To take the computer to the next Apple shop for fixing; cost approx. 25-50€. Not to insert a second EcoDisc afterwards, because we cannot guarantee that this measure works with all slot-in drive constructions existing world wide Not to use tools like tweezers or other, because these tools might really damage the drive, but the EcoDisc itself does not damage the drive or destroy it, just might block the ejection mechanism ....sounds like the best thing is to just not insert them in the first place.... thanks, wayne

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