Macking 144
by Michael Pearce
Macking 144
Macking 144
by Michael Pearce
Also published in Computer Chips, September, 2007
FreeGeek Now Handles Macs
FreeGeek, the computer recycler on SE 10th, has long handled PCs, stripping them, rebuilding them and releasing them with Linux installed. They give them away to non-profits and other qualified people, and sell some in their thrift shop.
Now they do the same thing for Macs. Today I was in there and saw a couple of 500 MHz G4 towers with 256Mb RAM for $100, and a couple of G3 iMacs, FireWire models, for $80.
If you want to just unload your older model, they are a 401c3 corporation so you can deduct to your heart's content.
Them Wacky Russians
After much wailing and gnashing of teeth, Putin finally ordered the semi-legal music download site AllOfMP3 shut down. No sooner did they drop off the web a couple of months ago, then up popped MP3Sparks.com, looking surprisingly like the previous site, but with the same selection, same layout, and, amazingly, the same username and password that worked with AllOfMP3.
Should you use a site that gives no money to the artist and more important (from the viewpoint of the RIAA) to the record company that Pwns the artist? Depends on what you do. Me, I am using the site as a way of getting digital tracks of old vinyl records I already own. It's worth it to me to spend a couple of bucks (usually less) instead of spending an entire afternoon recording, cleaning up, separating out tracks and typing in the titles by hand.
Pron Sites Pwn Windoze
An article in RISKS Digest quotes the BBC Radio 4 program "Yu and Yours" on the unethical business practices of a couple of sex sites (mysexworld and sexpassport) which have a novel way of enforcing payment. They give a three day free trial, but if you don't cancel by the end, a 3 month contract at 40 quid comes into force. In the user agreement, the "subscriber" agrees to inconvenience up to and including the complete disruption of their use of their computer. Quoting the article:
"Having inadvertently walked into this "agreement", the hapless victims then found that they had downloaded software which flashed popup windows onto their screens, demanding payment. The popups cannot be disabled, moved, closed or sent to background, and persist for increasingly long periods of up to 10 minutes. Since they appear every few seconds, they render the computer unusable.
"This charming "business model" is the brainchild of a certain MBS, who lease the software to the porn site operators. The CEO of MBS quite brazenly stated that this is fair practice since the victims had knowingly agreed in
advance to the disruption in the event of them not paying for their subscriptions. He denied that he was anything to do with the porn "industry" and that his software was available for hire by any outfit wanting to sell any type of web services.
"The UK Trading Standards Authority has received 200 complaints so far and are apparently "in discussion" with MBS to modify their practices. The equivalent authority in the US has adopted a less limp-wristed attitude and has enforced on a similar firm in the US a maximum duration of 40 seconds for the popups, and are considering slapping an injunction on them to ban the practice."
Do I need even mention that this little mousetrap works only on Windows? I thought not.
A Lesson In Hard Drives
At the meeting of my consultants' club recently a movie was shown that detailed how data-recovery services can suck files off of damaged drives, including an explanation of why some seemingly obvious tricks won't work at all.
If, for instance, the drive motor burns out, you can't just pull it out and slap in a new one, especially with a multi-platter drive. The motor assembly is what holds the platters in alignment with each other, and if you break that link and misalign the platters by even a couple of microns, they can never align correctly again and nothing can be read from them at all. This is because the platter areas are like virtual cylinders, and it isn't enough that the sectors be loaded, they are written in tandem with the sectors above and below them in a 3D array. There is no special area on the disk that tells the heads what it is seeing and what it should be seeing.
Other segments of the presentation show how the notorious "perp drives," which use perpendicular technology to store the magnetized bits, actually work and why it's so difficult to recover data from them.
To see these interesting but choppy YouTube videos, visit this site. The presentations are choppy (voice dropouts lasting half a second scattered throughout) because they were recorded initially on a slow laptop drive, around 4200 rpm, which any engineer will tell you is completely unsuitable for capturing streaming video. All Macs use at least 5400rpm drives, with an option for 7200. Older ones used the slow format. Another cause of dropouts: recording to the internal drive, which is fragmented and causes gaps in the stream. While it makes the movies a bit annoying to watch, they are worth it and you will not forget some of the lessons learned. Whether you are a longtime user or a newbie, this is worth a look. Requires high speed Internet, of course, or infinite patience while the video downloads.
Software Updates: Where Should You Be?
Apple has been releasing problematic updates lately. You may be getting lost and not know which ones are okay and which are not. Here's a partial list of what you should be running. All items cover both PPC and Intel Macs, except where noted. If you really want to protect yourself, make a backup before running any update. That backup should cover your entire drive, not just Documents. You could lose Mail, Bookmarks, Downloads, anything on the Desktop, and all current versions of your Applications otherwise.
OSX 10.4.9 - skip the .10 version that followed, and if 10.4.11 appears by the time this hits print, avoid it as well until proven innocent.
OSX 10.3.9 - End of the line for Panther. Get if you don't have it.
QuickTime 7.1.6 and its accompanying Security Update. Avoid 7.2.
iTunes 7.1.1 - Skip the later versions unless you have MacTV or iPhone.
Security Updates: All the recent ones have caused problems.
Firmware Update - If you get a notice that you need this, you do.
Java: Get all Java updates.
AirPort Update: Maybe. I have not had problems with it. Sometimes it fixes problems you don't have, such as VPN. If you don't use it, skip the update.
You can find the correct updates by going to Apple and clicking on Downloads. Search for the particular version. Most are available, except for iTunes. Apple pulls all older versions as soon as they issue an update. Choose the Combo Update when looking for the OSX 10.4.9 updater because more people report failures with the Delta (simplified) version.
No Microsoft products were used in the production of this column.
Go to My Mac Articles
Go to Pearce's Perch
Go to My Consultant Services
email mp at moonmac dot com. (I took out the mailto link because that's how the spammers find me.)