Windows Vista Employee Timekeeping:

The first bad idea comes to light as a series of lawsuits against employers.  Their bad idea?  Tying in a time-keeping system for logging hourly employee hours into the startup and shutdown of an employee’s Windows Vista PC.  At first glance the idea sounds reasonable enough.  You identify how many hours an employee has worked by how many hours their computer has been on.  Simple and efficient.  Way better than some error-prone clock and paper stub system, right?

Well.

…Err…

Wrong.

Hence the lawsuits.  Now you’d think Microsoft might be to blame in this one, because everyone loves to blame Microsoft and it is Windows Vista.  And in a way Microsoft is to blame… just not legally.  The problem, you see, is that in some cases Windows Vista is taking over 15 minutes to start up or shut down.  And so employees on this computer-driven clock are sitting there for fifteen minutes at startup before being “clocked in” and likewise again at shutdown before being “clocked out”.  In these really bad cases, that’s a half of an hour a day that the employee is not being payed.  At five days a week that’s two and a half hours of unpayed time.  It adds up fast.  Even the employees who suffer less because they have faster PCs are still accumulating hours and hours of unpaid time over the course of their employment.  And obviously, to them, that stinks.

Clearly the idea of using the computer for timekeeping is in need of some adjustment.

US Army USB Sticks:

So you’re a soldier in the Army.  You don’t always have access to a nice handy network for delivering files.  So you have your handy-dandy military issued USB stick.  It’s a simple solution to data mobility.  Which is great.  Until some schmuck brings in a virus.  Uh oh!

Yeah.

The Agent-BTZ worm, a modification of the SillyFDC worm, has been thrashing the US Army so badly that until they get it nailed down, no one is allowed to use any portable media solution.  No USB sticks!

Once the infection is removed, military issued portable media will be allowed once more.  But all of those naughty naughty soldiers and civilian contractors will have to stop using their own personal devices.

It actually comes as a surprise that the US Army didn’t see this coming.  Or maybe they did but they had no solution.  It seems like Windows autorun feature would be the first hurdle to tackle.  In a high-security environment, it’s kind of bad to just automatically run executable code when you stick a device into a PC on a highly secured network.  Next would be a good idea to do the opposite: Run a security program to scan any device for viruses automatically when it’s plugged into such a computer.  (Or even on any CD/DVD/Blu Ray/etc.)  And then of course, obviously, control the use of non-issued media. There are always rules about such things, but never complete enforcement.

Because keyloggers and remote executables on highly sensitive military servers is “A Bad Thing”.

Apple MacBook DisplayPort:

So you bought a shiny new Apple MacBook, and you’re all happy.  You hook up your old monitor to it (or one you bought on discount, et cetera) using a DisplayPort to DVI or VGA connector and sit down to watch this great video you bought from iTunes to celebrate your new purchase.

Only to have your new computer tell you that you can’t play your protected content on your unprotected screen.

Doh!

Yeah.

Because Apple’s DisplayPort is basically an HDMI port, using a built in copy-protection system like HDMI’s High-bandwidth Digital Content Protection (HDCP).  Only, because it’s Apple, they made it proprietary and call it DisplayPort Content Protection (DPCP).  It’s basically the same thing.  Before it will play, the media player asks if the media displayer (the monitor or TV) can decode the encrypted signal it’s about to send to it.  If it can’t do so, it doesn’t play.  This keeps pirates from grabbing an unencrypted video mid-stream and recording it.

There’s just one problem.  Apple’s DisplayPort is basically new and basically unused, because it’s proprietary.  So there aren’t many monitors or TVs out there that support it, and certainly buying a new one is expensive.  And Apple, the micro-managing control monster that they are, don’t give you unprotected VGA or DVI ports on MacBooks.  So you can’t connect your monitor or TV up to your MacBook in a way that skips this annoying layer of DPCP copy protection.  You have to do it through the protected DisplayPort in some way.  Meaning, basically, you’re screwed.  So you either have to buy a brand new Apple monitor, or settle for watching the video on your little laptop screen.  (Is there even a TV that will support it?)

You see, this is where PCs have that awkward advantage.  Because PC manufacturers really don’t care.  They’re not there to control your ever move.  In fact, they’re quite “open”.  So even though your PC might have a similar (though much more widely used standard) HDCP copy protection over an HDMI cable connection, it will also have a DVI or VGA port (or even component, s-video, or composite video cable option) where it will let you connect up to any old TV or monitor and play your protected videos.

I don’t think Apple really appreciated the number of MacBook owners that would, you know, actually use iTunes?  Or Apple just didn’t appreciate the number of people that actually wanted to watch their videos on a screen larger than a laptop?

Hmm…

Either way, Apple is not exactly impressing customers with this.

And so long as Apple continues to ship notebooks with only a DisplayPort (no DVI or VGA port) Apple customers will continue to have this problem.

At least until some inspired hack builds a DisplayPort to DVI converter that uses the converter to respond back to the MacBook that all is secure instead of letting the monitor/TV do that.  But that would probably be illegal as it’d circumvent security measures.

Microsoft Windows 7.  The more people fail to embrace Windows Vista, the More Windows 7 gets a mention in the media.  In many ways Windows Vista has become the Windows ME of our (computer) generation.  But in some ways Windows Vista is also like Windows 2000.  This may just be the edge Microsoft needs.

Windows ME - oh how we hated it.  It was the last of the Win9x generation.  It might not have been, but in a stroke of bitness-cleansing, Microsoft tried to re-engineer the Win9x kernel from a 16-bit/ 32-bit cross-species into a purebred 32-bit kernel.  It might have even worked … had there not been so many 16-bit drivers of old still left around.  Or perhaps more accurately, had Microsoft engineered a more stable way to continue supporting such a large 16-bit world.

Microsoft knew that they had to do something.  Thanks to WinME, they had a growing wealth of unhappy Windows users.  Windows 2000 was their salvation.  It was a workstation-derived operating system, based on their Windows NT line.  The kernet was a complete rewrite, Microsoft’s transition from NT4 to NT5, Windows 2000 being their first NT5-based operating system.  It wasn’t meant to play games with.  It wasn’t meant to be pretty.  It wasn’t meant for novices.  It was meant to be a workhorse.

And it was rock solid.

It didn’t take long to see the obvious.  Home users had Win ME, a highly unstable course in anger management.  Work users had Win 2K, the most stable OS Microsoft had made to date.  Could Microsoft pretty up Win 2K and make a replacement for disgruntled home users of Win ME out of it?

The answer was yes.  The answer, was Windows XP.  It took time for drivers to catch up, but when they did, it was the miracle that Microsoft had needed.

And in a lot of ways, Microsoft made the same mistake all over again, but in all new ways.  Windows Vista was itself a complete rewrite.  Only not the NT kind of rewrite.  It had been the ME kind of rewrite.  It used more resources, but ended up less stable.  It gave better eye candy, but it also gave far more headaches.

Yet, strangely, Vista is also its own possible salvation.  Like tweaks and additions to the kernel turned Windows 2000 into Windows XP, the same can be done with Windows Vista to make it Windows 7.  With enough effort put into stability, and with enough polishing of the user interface, Vista just might become the next XP. And bring to Windows 7 all of the much needed drivers and applications needed at launch, because they weren’t written for the new Windows 7, they were written for the old Windows Vista.

At the latest Professional Developers Conference (PDC), Microsoft revealed yet more of Microsoft Windows 7 and the future of Microsoft Windows.  Admittedly, mostly to get people to stop thinking about how bad Vista is, to give people hope for the future.  But it’s a future that may be less far off than we fear, and a future that’s starting to look like it actually may be brighter.

The interface for example is being cleaned up.  Now it is more resembling something that works, that people enjoy, namely Apple’s Mac OS X.  The taskbar is becoming more, well, usable again.  Annoying pop-ups are being made more managable.  And let us not forget docking.

Multiple networks will be supported better, which will no doubt please anyone using a portable system.  As will the simple fact that Windows 7 should run noticably faster and cleaner on the same hardware.  And should even, finally, run well on, again, a portable system.  I don’t think that the actual hardware requirements will go down, so much as you’ll just actually finally be capable of doing something on a system that hovers around those dreaded minimums.

And, of course, at its heart it’s related to the same kernel as Windows Vista.  So when it comes out, Windows 7 will have much better driver support, because it’ll use the same drivers as Windows Vista.  And when it comes out, Windows 7 will have more applications designed to work specifically with the new features introduced since Windows Vista.

So all around, Windows 7 will have better 3rd party support in both apps and drivers, will run faster, will run better on low-end hardware, will network better, and will have a more refined and usable user interface.  What’s not to love?

Microsoft is learning.  From their own mistakes.  From Apple.  And from Linux.

It might be years after its release before Windows 7 is actually refined enough to no longer make Windows XP lovers pine for XP, but then, look how long it really took Windows XP to become that refined itself.  We’ve had it for so long, and seen it grow to such stability, that it’s no wonder that we’ve grown jaded to any new Microsoft OS.  But if anything is going to make Windows XP users forget the follies of Vista, Microsoft is actually doing a good job of making sure that it will be Windows 7.  It has to be.  They can’t really afford anything less.  Both Apple and Linux are all too happy to take in those weary of the battle.

Well, yeah.

It’s been hacked before.  And it still can be.  But it’s getting even easier.

Keep in mind, this is still quasi-legal.  It breaks the terms and conditions of Mac OS X for one.  And for two, if you’re downloading a cracked disk image of Mac OS X in order to do so, you’re pirating software.  Let me make that very clear.  You.  Are.  Pirating.  Software.

Which I wholeheartedly don’t condone.

Now, that said, from a technical standpoint, actually, it’s almost a no-brainer.

Apple is using PC hardware these days.  Mac OS X runs on PC hardware.  The only difference between your Mac box and your PC box then is the firmware, which OS X is intentionally designed to find the Apple Extensible Firmware Interface (EFI) in order to run, while PCs just have good ol’ BIOS. That would pretty much be the one missing link to installing Mac OS X on a PC.  A limitation which projects like the Kalyway DVD have removed.

Again, I do not condone using this software.

But I have to say, it’s technically interesting.

The only other hurdle is that you still have to wory about drivers.  Apple is notorious for keeping their Macs closed systems.  They do not support the wide range of hardware like PCs do.  So if you want to do this, you pretty much have to copy Apple’s choices in hardware if you want absolute certainty that you’re going to have the Mac OS X drivers your hardware needs.

There is, of course, more information at the OSx86 Wiki.

But as I do not condone piracy or related activities, I am intentionally leaving out any direct links in this entry.

From a technical standpoint it is a highly interesting field of research.  And we can only hope that one day Apple has the tenacity to release a Mac OS for the PC-using public.  But until then, this is all questionably legal at best, and illegal at worst.  I do not condone it.  But it is being done, and it is interesting.

But I still say that the best way to do this is the legal way:  Buy a Mac.  Install Linux, Windows, or whatever you like.  Apple even helps you with Boot Camp.

The title of this blog entry pretty much sums it up just so.  Apple is recalling the power adapters for their 3G iPhones.

Apparently the prongs are prone to breaking off.  Oops!  Because, you know, that’s just so hard to engineer these days.  We don’t have billions of products that can plug into wall sockets without that happening or anything…  (Do I even have to point out that’s sarcasm?)

So yeah, the quality of Apple.  The same folks that brought you the Scratch-O-Matic iPod Nano screen.

So if you own an iPhone 3G, stop using that power adapter.  Contact Apple for an exchange.  And use your computer’s USB port to recharge the bloody thing in the mean time.  Better safe than sorry.

You bought yourself an iPhone from Apple.  You decided to password protect your phone in case evil insurgents try to use it for nefarious means.  And you slept better at night, knowing You Did The Right Thing.

Until you read this.

As reported by the MacRumors: Forums, breaking into a password protected iPhone is as easy as 123.

1) Tap “Emergency Call” keypad from passcode entry screen.

2) Double-tap home button.

3) Tap blue arrow next to contact’s name.

“You now have full access to applications such as Safari, complete Contacts list, SMS, Maps, “full” Phone access, and Mail by accessing various entries on the Favorite’s page, i.e. tapping their home page brings up a full, unrestricted Safari.” says greenmymac.

Can anyone say “Oops!” over at Apple?  I sure know that we can say it here.

A workaround to prevent this horrendous security snafu is to disable the home button double-tap.  (Settings > General > Home Button > Checkmark Home)  In the mean time though, Apple sure better be working on fixing this security blunder, because never has a hack been so easy as this.  It makes Microsoft look secure!