Macking 118

RIP, ComputerBits
Last month's column, submitted for the March issue, was never printed. (Neither was the April issue.) Finally the word came down: ComputerBits magazine is no more. I started writing my Mac column for them in 1995, taking over for Neil Wolf, past president of PMUG, who was killed in a train accident. Bits had been publishing since 1991 so the last issue, February 2005, ended a 14 year run. The economy just could not support a free, advertiser-supported magazine distributed mainly in Portland.
The magazine's focus was mostly on Microsoft computers, although they had a Linux columnist and many of the articles were not platform-specific. But the dot-com crash and the tight margins earned by computer dealers left little money for advertising. The number of PC dealers and builders in town dropped from 43 to 20 and may be fewer still. The Mac community was no help; try as I might I could not get any of the local Mac-oriented companies to advertise even though my column was the longest-running of the lot.
Naturally, this is going to change the focus of my column. With no monthly deadline to meet any more, I can publish it whenever I have anything to say. It will be limited to my own mailing list as well as my web site, where my entire run is archived. I can now quote more extensively from my reading because the purpose of the column is to pass on useful information, not just generate my own exclusively. However, I will still stick to the monthly format if for no other reason is to enforce a little discipline on myself. The publication date will now reflect the actual month of release instead of the month of publication when the print version came out. That is why you have two April issues.

G5 iMacs Showing Problems
An inordinate number of G5 iMacs are turning up with backplane (motherboard) problems. The problem has been traced to a bunch of bad capacitors, a problem that plagued the PC industry in 2003. Apple is reluctant to issue a wholesale recall so you should keep on top of this yourself. Follow reports on MacFixIt and Macintouch and take apart your own G5 and check yourself.
The problem is that the capacitors were manufactured using a pirated formula. (See Macking 96 for the initial report.) Entire companies went out of business because of this. To check for yourself to see if you have an impending problem do this:
Lay your computer out on a flat surface with a towel to protect the screen. Remove the screws holding the back in place. Remove the back and put it aside. You will see most of the logic board. Capacitors are little tin-can-shaped objects about a quarter to a half-inch in diameter and length. Notice if any of them appear to be bulging, much as a can of food contaminated with botulism bulges. If you see nothing, take a picture of the board, as close as possible, with your digital camera and save it for future reference. Reassemble your Mac and cross your fingers. You might want to print the picture.
If you have any bulging capacitors (it will be obvious, not subtle) then call your dealer and schedule a fix. MacShopNW has the ability to replace individual capacitors, but this is warranty work so plan on having Apple replace your iMac. Do a backup of all your files (which you should be doing anyway) and get it fixed. If you do not yet have the AppleCare extended warranty, buy it now! It is extremely important that you have this with any Mac that has a TFT display which, nowadays, is all of them but the eMac (which has its own problems).

AOL Owns Everything You Say
"AOL has posted new terms of service for AIM, that include the right for AOL to use anything and everything you send through AIM in any way they see fit, without informing you. A sample passage: '...by posting Content on an AIM Product, you grant AOL, its parent, affiliates, subsidiaries, assigns, agents and licensees the irrevocable, perpetual, worldwide right to reproduce, display, perform, distribute, adapt and promote this Content in any medium. You waive any right to privacy.' The source for this information was the March 12, 2005 RISKS Digest.
AOL, of course, has since claimed that this applies only to their message boards but if that were true, they would reword their terms of service from the above.

Quark Causes Serious Security Problems
(from Macintouch) Readers report an insanely irresponsible action apparently programmed into the QuarkXpress installer:
[Fred Moore] Braindead software installers can leave your Mac open to all sorts of outside attacks or user screw ups. I recently had to recover and reinstall a client's G5 because of a problem unrelated to permissions, but narrowed down a persistant perms error after reinstalling software.
An installer for one of the major Mac graphics apps changed the 'others' permissions on EVERY (as far as I can tell) system file from read-only (r--) to open access (rwx)! The system was wide open; several thousand file perms had to be reset. I had seen this same problem several times before, but this was the first time I was able to narrow down the culprit. I won't name names because I still don't know exactly which major graphics app it was.
[Kalani Patterson] Our tech dept has verified the following: Installing Quark 6.1 on a 10.3.x system (I can't speak for other versions) results in thousands of changed permissions. We captured a logfile from such a repair, which weighed in as a whopping 9.9MB plain text file... opening the file in Word resulted in over 4,000 pages of corrections!
It seems the idiotic Quark installer manages to reset every single program on the drive to world read-write-executable (chmod 777). Ditto after installing the 6.5 updater. Lesson learned: With Quark, repair your permissions before and after each installation and update!

Medical Software for Macs
MacAttorney.com has started a database of links to all of the companies providing Mac software of interest to doctors and medical offices.

Fun With Photoshop: "Transparent" desktops
From Slashdot: "Looks like the amusement factor of 'transparent' screen background is getting bigger and bigger. The French Mac fan site Mac Bidouille opened up a dedicated part of their web site where fans can post shots of their transparent backgrounds."
All you need is a digital camera and a good imagination.

Spam.gov
Spam messages advertise U.S. Military Web site
From Matterform's Web Site: March 22, 2005 - Matterform Media, makers of spam filtering and tracking software, has identified spam messages apparently being sent by the United States Department of Defense to advertise a Web site used to market military careers to young Americans.
The spam messages were collected as part of Matterform's spam collecting and analysis services.
The spam messages hawk scholarships, tax-exempt pay and training and invite young people to "See it for what it really is." The spams advertise a Web site at todaysmilitary.com.
The spam claims to be sent in compliance with the CAN-SPAM Act of 2003, the U.S. law that regulates the sending of unsolicited spam email. The Department of Defense Web site maintains an "Unsubscribe" page that allows spam victims to opt-out of future spam attacks. The spams Matterform has received, however, seem to belie the assertion made on the Department of Defense Web site. The Web site suggests that the spam victim has requested a mailing from a "reputable" spam vendor. However, Matterform has spam samples that have been sent to private email addresses that have never been "opted-in" and whose owners have never agreed to receive spam.

Free Virus Detector
ClamXav is the OSX front-end (the part you interact with) to ClamAV, an open-source virus fighter that is platform-independent. Since ClamAV runs from the command line, most Mac users are not interested.
The developer of the X version is offering this as donationware (free, but wouldn't reject a missive from PayPal) basis. I have not tried this myself, but you can find it at ClamXav's site and give it a shot. Be sure you are someone who keeps good backups when trying strange software. Read the page for more info and a link to download an installer.

Letter: HP's Worse Than I Thought
Ed Brekke writes, "It isn't clear if HP did this through worker incompetence or managerial incompetence, but customers are not stupid when it comes to determining their best interests - which clearly are not with HP products:
"An attempt to refill their color cartridges reveals no problems except one: The color sections are mislabeled -meaning that when refilled, all the user will get is a uniform grayish brown, regardless of the color indicated...
"If somebody on the supervisory level thought they had really scored a coup on the customer, all they achieved was a further tarnishing of HP's already declining reputation. The ink cartridge manufacturers are already regarded with about as much trust as the oil producing cartels, but for any manufacturer to make a 'mistake' like this reveals no more credibility than Janet Jackson's agent."

No Microsoft products were used in the production of this column.

email mp at moonmac dot com. (I took out the mailto link because that's how the spammers find me.)