Apple solutions consultant Clark Schroeder will be presenting iLife with some tips and tricks and the straight scoop on how to get the most out of your digital media, with special attention to the new iWeb, a program to help build a personal web site. This is a reschedule of last months presentation.
Future Meetings:
17 May 2006
Christine Chaya and Nancy Ruff will make a presentation on searching the internet with Google and other search engines.
The newbie session started at 4:00 pm and the regular meeting was called to order by prez Robert at 4:30. The treasurer, Carol Parks, stated that we have $543.41 in our account. A discussion of a proposed club projector loan policy ensued, and the following policy was voted upon by the membership and approved. The projector will be loaned to MAGIC members only for a $10 donation. Such member will be responsible for any damage/breakage to the projector. Daryl Thomas accepted an action item to determine insurance costs for the club's computer and projector which are kept in Davison Stivers' office.
The scheduled speaker, Clark Schroeder, was unable to attend due to bad health and has been rescheduled for the April meeting. Instead of the scheduled presentation many problems and questions were raised and answered in a very constructive meeting. In addition Daryl Thomas entertained the members with a short slide show of hurricane katrina.
The club was pleased to welcome back Tom Johnson after an absence of several months.
The meeting ended at 6 pm
Daryl Thomas Secretary & Vice President, MAGIC (Mac Appreciation Group of Island County)
If you're new to computers or simply need a refresher course on how to get the most out of your Mac, then you need Mac 101: your guide to using a Mac effectively and efficiently. Whether you want to learn how to get around your Mac desktop (or find out what a desktop is, for that matter); figure out how to connect your printer, iPod, digital camera, or other device; discover email and the internet; learn how to do various tasks; learn how to use the software that came with your Mac; or even find out what to do when things don't go as planned; this is the place with the the answers. Click on the image below to go to Mac 101 at the Apple site.
Apple has released an updated version of a security patch the company issued on monday [3/13/06] . The update addresses a problem that some users had been experiencing with their safari web browser after installing the original patch.
The bug affects users who moved safari out of their applications folder before installing the update, Apple said on its web site. "After you install security update 2006-002 v1.0, Safari might have a blank icon that won't launch Safari."
The new version of the security update, numbered 2006-002 v1.1, Allows these users to launch Safari without difficulties, an Apple spokesman said Friday. Users who have already installed the earlier 2006-002 v1.0 Version of the update without difficulties do not need to upgrade to the 1.1 patch, he said.
Security experts recommend that Mac OS X users install the patch immediately, as it addresses a number of known security problems in the operating system. "For home users: apply the patch as soon as you can," wrote Johannes Ullrich, chief research officer for the SANS Institute, in a note published Friday.
While OS X may be pretty well tuned for performance, individual applications aren't. You can tweak your apps in plenty of ways to make sure they're operating at top speed. Here are a few of our favorite tricks.
Use default thumbnail sizes
iPhoto automatically creates thumbnails of each of your images in several standard sizes. If you use the size slider at the bottom of the window to choose a nonstandard size, iPhoto has to rescale all the images on-the-fly-which can slow the program down slightly when you're opening a photo library or scrolling. To choose one of the preset sizes in browse mode, press 0 for small thumbnails, 2 for medium, or 1 for large (and yes, you read those numbers correctly, even though they seem to be out of order).
Collapse the rolls if you view your photos by roll (view: sort photos: by film roll), you can help iPhoto open more quickly by collapsing each roll so that only the title and date show. To do so, click on the disclosure triangle next to a roll title to collapse or expand just that one roll; then option-click on the triangle to collapse or expand all your film rolls at once. If you leave them that way when you quit iPhoto, it will open and scroll more quickly next time.
onguardonline.gov provides practical tips from the federal government and the technology industry to help you be on guard against internet fraud, secure your computer, and protect your personal information.
Access to information and entertainment, credit and financial services, products from every corner of the world - even to your work - is greater than earlier generations could ever have imagined. thanks to the internet, you can order books, clothes, or appliances online; reserve a hotel room across the ocean; download music and games; check your bank balance 24 hours a day; or access your workplace from thousands of miles away.
The flip-side, however, is that the internet - and the anonymity it affords - also can give online scammers, hackers, and identity thieves access to your computer, personal information, finances, and more.
But with awareness as your safety net, you can minimize the chance of an internet mishap. Being on guard online helps you protect your information, your computer, even yourself. To be safer and more secure online, adopt these seven practices.
Stop • Think • Click
7 practices for safer computing
Protect your personal information. it's valuable.
Know who you're dealing with.
Use anti-virus software and a firewall, and update both regularly.
Be sure to set up your operating system and web browser software properly, and update them regularly.
Protect your passwords.
Back up important files.
Learn who to contact if something goes wrong online.
Claims of Mac OS X being hacked in under 30 minutes are not quite what they seem, according to Dave Schroeder, senior systems engineer at the University of Wisconsin - Madison.
A recent ZDNet article told the story of a Swedish man who setup his Mac mini as a server and invited people to try to break into the system and gain root control. Having root control of a computer allows you do install applications, move or delete files.
Within hours of the challenge going live, it was over as a hacker gained root control of the Mac Mini. However, Schroeder says there are some facts that were not made clear in the article that contributed to the hacker being able to gain access to the computer.
Anyone that wanted to hack the Machine was given access to the Machine through a local account (which could be accessed via ssh), so the Mac mini wasn't hacked from outside - root access was actually gained from a local user account.
"That is a huge distinction," said Schroeder.
Schroeder points out that, by default, Mac OS X Machines will not give any external entities local account access; not have any ports open; and most consumer Machines will also be behind personal router/firewall devices, further reducing exposure.
"Mac OS X is not invulnerable," said Schroeder. It, like any other operating system, has security deficiencies in various aspects of the software. Some are technical in nature, and others lend themselves to social engineering trickery. however, the general architecture and design philosophy of Mac OS X, in addition to usage of open source components for most network-accessible services that receive intense peer scrutiny from the community, make Mac OS X a very secure operating system."
Schroeder is so sure of the Macs security if setup properly that he is having his own security challenge. According to his web site, the challenge is as follows: simply alter the web page on this Machine, test.doit.wisc.edu. the Machine is a Mac Mini (PowerPC) running Mac OS X 10.4.5 with security update 2006-001, has two local accounts, and has ssh and http open - a lot more than most Mac OS X Machines will ever have open. email das@doit.wisc.edu if you feel you have met the requirements, along with the mechanism used. The mechanism will then be reported to Apple and/or the entities responsible for the component(s). going after other hosts/devices on the network is out of bounds.
Schroeder told MacWorld by email that the challenge will be open until Friday, March 10, 2006.
As we get closer to Apple's 30th anniversary, speculation is running rampant of how Apple will mark the occasion. EnGadget reports that Morgan Stanley told Barron's online that Apple will soon introduce a "an ipod with phone functions." (N.B. Image is a clever mock-up)
This still seems like the least-likely of all possible Apple introductions, unless Apple is involved in the product in software and name only. The company has never been interested in devoting its resources to a product that will mainly make money for someone else -- a mobile carrier, in this case. Having worked with Cingular already, it could happen, but it might just be an Apple logo on a phone with the 100-song cap removed.
Apple insider also quotes a PiperJaffrey analyst saying an iPhone is 75 percent for the next 12 months. We'll see.
Also on the rumor-mongering front, AI further claims Apple has put the 60-gig video iPod on its 60-day "at-risk list." It's not as clear a sign as an end-of-life notice, but it means Apple could pull the product for a new model at any time. More full-screen video ipod mock-ups are being generated now at the very thought of it.
Meanwhile, no firm date of an Apple event by April 1. let's hope this doesn't turn out like the 25th anniversary, when Apple didn't do anything...
Apple today introduced Boot Camp, new public-beta software for Mac OS X that lets users of intel Macs boot directly into microsoft Windows XP. while the move may contradict previous statements by Apple, the company said they still have no intention of fully supporting Windows on the Mac.
"After we released the intel-based Macs we had a lot of customer requests asking if it's possible to run Windows on those Machines," Brian Croll, Apple's senior director of software product marketing, told MacWorld. "We decided we would help it along by creating Boot Camp."
The software, available today as a public preview version of a feature from the forthcoming Mac OS X leopard, includes an assistant application to aid with drive partitioning and the installation of Windows drivers for Mac hardware.
The partitioning process is done in Mac OS X and features a slider to let users determine the amount of space to give to Windows. Partitioning is dynamic, meaning that users don't need to erase their drives in order to create a new Windows partition. For added safety and flexibility, Boot Camp automatically leaves 5 GB of free space surrounding the Mac and Windows partitions.
Changing the size of the partition later, or removing it altogether, is also supported directly within the Boot Camp Assistant.
"If you want to go back to one partition for the Mac, you just rerun Boot Camp and that comes up as an option - we make it very simple," said Croll.
One complication for users may come when trying to share files between their Windows XP and Mac OS X installations. Mac OS X can read and write to Windows' fat32 volume format, but fat32 only supports file sizes up to 4 GB. Windows' newer NTFS format supports larger volumes, but Mac OS X can only read those volumes, not write to them. And Windows XP cannot natively read Macintosh formatted HFS drives, although third-party utilities such as Mediafour's MacDrive, can enable HFS compatibility.
As a part of the installation procedure, the Boot Camp Assistant prompts you to burn a cd containing all of the necessary drivers to run networking, bluetooth, graphics and other functions in Windows. After the Windows installation is complete, users insert the CD, which automatically installs the drivers. The iSight video camera and Apple remote included with intel-based Macs won't work under Windows XP, however.
The CD created by Boot Camp Assistant also installs a small Windows utility, similar to the Mac's startup disk preference pane, that lets you choose a Windows or Mac startup volume. In addition, users can choose which volume to boot from at startup by holding down the option key and picking from a list of available volumes which now lists both Windows and Mac installations.
Previously Apple executives had suggested that the company "wouldn't stop" owners of intel-based Macs from booting into Windows XP. Boot Camp somewhat changes that: now Apple is giving users a leg up on the process. however, Apple made it very clear that Windows would not be made available on future Macs and the company would not support the operating system.
"We are not going to sell or support Windows," said Apple's vice president of worldwide product marketing David Moody. "You have to bring your own Windows."
Apple officials said that adding Windows compatibility to Mac hardware should make it easier for Windows users to switch to the Mac.
"This will really help a lot of folks make up their mind whether to move over to the Mac," said Croll. "We think this makes the Mac even more appealing for all those Windows users who are considering the switch."
In addition to Windows XP SP2 (home or professional editions), Boot Camp requires Mac OS X 10.4.6 or later, the latest firmware update (available from Apple via software update), and a blank recordable CD.
In Japan, they have replaced the impersonal and unhelpful microsoft error
messages with their own Japanese haiku poetry. Here are some common examples:
your file was so big.
it might be very useful.
but now it is gone.
chaos reigns within.
reflect, repent, and reboot.
order shall return.
the web site you seek
can not be located, but
countless more exist.
aborted effort.
close all that you have worked on.
you ask far too much.
windows nt crashed.
i am the blue screen of death.
no one hears your screams.
yesterday it worked.
today it is not working.
windows is like that.
stay the patient course.
of little worth is anger.
the network is down.
a crash reduces
your expensive computer
to a simple stone.
three things are certain:
death, taxes, and lost data.
guess which has occurred.
you step in the stream,
but the water has moved on.
this page is not here.
out of memory.
we wish to hold the whole sky,
but we never will.
having been erased,
the document you're seeking
must now be retyped.
Use Finder's Info window, third-party tools to set permissions
By Brian Tanaka
Note: The following article is an excerpt from take control of permissions in Mac OS X, a $10 electronic book available for download from tidbits electronic publishing. The 90-page ebook contains complete details on working with permissions from the command line, an explanation of ownership on external disks, information on what repair permissions does, and fixes for common permissions problems. This excerpt focuses on a brief overview of permissions followed by instructions on setting permissions through either the finder's info window or third-party tools.
Every item on your computer-be it a file, folder, or disk-belongs to, or is owned by, an account. For instance, when you create a new file, that new file is owned by your user account. If another user, logged into her own account, creates a file, that file will be owned by her user account. In addition to being owned by a particular user account, every item on your computer carries with it a set of permissions that control which user accounts can access it and what kind of access they have.
That, in a nutshell, is the purpose of permissions: they control who can do what to which files, folders, and disks.
Permissions, combined with accounts and ownership, are exceedingly useful for a number of reasons, including:
Security: Permissions are a critical component in the security model of all unix-based operating systems, including Mac OS X. For instance, if a standard user account is compromised in some way by a malicious attacker, the attacker should not be able to alter critical system files because the permissions on those files disallow tampering by non-administrator accounts.
Privacy: Permissions on your private files and folders can be set so that user accounts other than your own have limited access or no access at all.
Controlled sharing: Because permissions are powerful and flexible, you can exercise a significant degree of control over which users can access items you choose to share and what those users can do with the shared items.
System integrity: Permissions prevent non-administrator accounts from damaging the system by altering important system items, and they prevent users from tampering with other users' items.
The anatomy of permissions
Every item on your computer is owned by an account and carries a set of permissions. these permissions control the access that each of three classes-owner, group, and other-has to an item.
Here's a quick explanation of what I mean by owner, group, and other:
Owner: The owner is the user account that owns an item, such as a file, folder, or disk. every item is owned by an account. (traditionally in unix, this is known as the user class, and unix commands abbreviate it with a u.)
Group: in addition to being owned by a user account, every item is also owned by a group. A group is a set of user accounts conceptually clumped together so permissions can apply to its members collectively. Mac OS X provides a number of default groups, and you can create additional groups.
Other: Everyone else! other refers to all user accounts on the system other than the owner and members of the group. you will see this type referred to as "others" (in the finder's Info window) and "world" (by other tools).
Permissions for an item say whether owner, group, and other have three possible permissions:
Read: view the contents of the item.
Write: change the item.
Execute: execute the item.
So, if you mix owner, group, and other with read, write, and execute, you can see that permissions answer the following three sets of questions:
Can the owner read this item? Write to this item? Execute this item?
Can members of the group read this item? Write to this item? Execute this item?
Can all other user accounts read this item? Write to this item? Execute this item?
The following example looks more deeply at permissions and explains how to use terminal to check the permissions on a file. I go into a fair amount of detail so you can apply the principles just discussed in a real-world example. In this example, I use the ls command on a file called "foo"
Launch Terminal. (Terminal is in /Applications/Utilities.)
Create a new file by entering: touch foo the touch command changes an item's access and modification times, but if the file you touch doesn't exist, touch will create it. Because of this convenient side effect, touch is a fast way of creating a new file if you happen to be at the unix prompt in Terminal.
Enter: ls -l foo - this reveals the ownership and permissions of our new file.
The output of ls -l foo is:
-rw-r--r-- 1 btanaka staff 0 2 Apr 08:25 foo.
Here's an explanation of the individual parts of the output:
-rw-r--r--: These characters are the permissions (or, more technically, the file mode) section of the ls output. The permissions appear in three groups of three corresponding to the three owner classes (just as I discussed earlier). the first set, rw-, specifies that the owner can read and write, but not execute. If the owner were allowed to execute, then the permissions would read rwx not rw-. (x is the symbol for execute.) The second set, r--, applies to the group, and specifies that the group can only read. The third set, r--, specifies that all other accounts have read-only permission.
btanaka: The owner. In this example, my user account, btanaka, owns the file. On your computer, your account will be the owner. Again, the permissions that apply to this user are rw-, meaning my account can read and write, but not execute.
staff: The group. In this example, the group staff owns the file. Again, permissions for the group owner are r--, meaning group members can read only.
0: The file's size in bytes.
2 Apr 08:25: the date and time of last modification.
foo: the file's name.
Any individual permission can be changed. For instance, you can allow everyone on the system to alter the file simply by granting write permission to other. (this is known as making the file world writeable. Files can, obviously, also be world-readable.)
It's not only arguably the coolest feature in panther, it's probably the best thing that happened to any os since icons. It's called exposé, and when you invoke it, it instantly (and i mean instantly) shows you miniature versions (thumbnails) of every open window in the finder and all open applications. That way you can instantly click and go right to the window you want. Honestly, there's no way to adequately describe this feature, so go try it once and it will instantly (and i mean instantly) make sense. Here's how: Open a few finder Windows, then open a couple documents in an application. Then press the F9 key, and every window temporarily miniaturizes. Click on the window you want - it comes to the front, and everything else returns to normal. Is that slick or what?
Trying to understand pixels per inch is easier than spit-roasting jellyfish - but only marginally. When you've read this article, maybe you still won't fully understand ppi, but at least you'll feel confident that nobody else understands it either.
JPEGs and GIFS are the two main graphics formats used on the web. It's important when thinking about these web graphics to forget most of the rules that apply to print graphics, such as tiffs and epss. Unfortunately, rules that may have some relevance to the print world have mistakenly slipped into the web graphics world, where they're out of place and cause nothing but confusion.
Web graphics.
Web graphics (and screengrabs) are pixel-based images, each individual pixel being a single dot of colour, including black and white. The size of the graphic is measured in pixels rather than inches or centimeters. A typical web graphic might be 125 pixels wide and 125 pixels high. That's 15,625 pixels in total.
Web graphics files don't contain information about their physical size in inches or centimeters. If you see physical size information when a web graphics file is viewed in photoshop or other graphics program, it's an implied size that photoshop has worked out. It hasn't read the information directly from the file, it's calculated it.
What the file usually does contain (there are exceptions) is a pixels per inch (ppi) resolution. This is usually 72 ppi for files on the web.
The ppi figure held in a web graphics file doesn't have any influence on the pixels that make up the content. It's just a number held in the header of the file. If you change the number, the pixels and the bytesize of the file will stay the same.
You can have two files of the same picture, one at 200 ppi and one at 2000 ppi, and they'll display the same in a browser. They'll also be the same bytesize.
Here's a demonstration. The graphic on top is 200 ppi, the one below is 2000 ppi. Both are 6172 bytes.
A commonly held misconception is that web graphics files with a high ppi contain more information than files with a lower ppi. This is simply not true. If it were true, the 2000 ppi file above would have more bytes than the 200 ppi file, and it doesn't. The amount of information is the same.
the misconception arises because it's true for print graphics files. they generally contain physical size attributes, and for a given physical size, a print graphics file with a high resolution will contain more information than a file with lower resolution.
To print:
Our two web graphics files with different resolutions will also print the same size when printed through a browser - which roughly attempts to copy in print what you see on screen.
Where they start to diverge is when you try to print them using other software such as quarkxpress or microsoft word. These programs have their feet firmly printed in the print world, and what they do is interpret the web graphics files and turn them into print graphics files before printing. Here's an example using word.
The 2000 ppi file prints at one tenth the size of the 200 ppi file. Please note that the relative sizes of each of these files is correct, but their absolute physical sizes on your screen probably aren't the same as they were on the piece of paper i printed out, so don't take the absolute sizes too seriously. We'll cover the many complications of computer displays in a moment, but first, why the different relative sizes above?
Let's take the biggest image. The graphic is 250 pixels wide, and it has a 72 ppi resolution, which is the most common on the web. Well, 250 pixels divided by 72 pixels per inch is 3.47 Inches, so the graphic (in a print environment) turns out about three and a half inches wide when it's printed.
The graphic with 2000 ppi resolution is also 250 pixels wide. 250 Divided by 2000 is 0.125 Inches, and the picture is tiny. The 200 ppi version comes somewhere in the middle, at 1.25 inches wide.
Each graphic only contains a limited amount of information - its pixels - and when you turn the graphic into a print version, if you decide you're going to squeeze the pixels together with a high density ppi/dpi, it becomes a very small graphic in terms of physical size. If you spread them out with a low ppi/dpi, it's physically larger...
Professor Jaymour, inventor of a new baseball-sized form of energy called the Macroton, has gone missing. as her faithful laboratory assistant, it's up to you to find her by carefully reconstructing her experiments. The result is TubeTwist, an excellent and challenging new puzzle game by GarageGames.
To solve the mystery, you'll need to build elaborate machines that guide Macrotons into a reactor tube, where their energy can be extracted and stored. Collect enough quantum energy, and you can travel through time-there are five eras to explore. In each era, the professor has left behind partial schematics of her experiments....
In order to keep your operating system running smoothly, MAGIC recommends that a set of proscribed steps should be performed at various intervals. These steps will go a long way to preventing "unpredictable behavior". The steps are described in detail on the MAGIC website at https://www.whidbey.com/magicmug/tricks/maintain.html
Although the page was first produced a couple of years ago - It was fully updated on St Patrick's day (17 March 2006) and has some new information. We strongly recommend that you go to this page and print it out - use it every month!
MAGIC, the Macintosh Appreciation Group of Island County, serves people who use Macintosh computers, software and peripherals. Our goal is to share information and get answers to questions to make us more productive with our use of technology. Our monthly meetings give us a chance to discuss computer problems and share ideas with other Mac users, feature speakers on specific topics, and to keep apprised of Apple news.
