A couple of weeks ago I finally got around to actually upgrading to Leopard on my laptop. One of the things I was interested in trying out once I got upgraded was Apple Mail’s new Note feature.

I fired up Mail and clicked on the note icon and…nothing happened. Hmmm, check the Menu bar. Go to File → New Note…nothing again. Well okay, I thought to myself, somethings wrong here. Maybe I should do a Google search. Hmmm, what to search. Mail Notes Error. Umm, okay too generic, I’ll try being more specific. Apple Mail error opening new note. Grrr. Try several other search strings. #@$%*! ¹

Okay, so it’s become clear to me at this point that Googling the problem is just not going to work. I decide to fire up Console to see if there are any enlightening error codes. Console does at least offer me something, in the form of “Mail[471] font-family cannot be nil”.

Hmm, that looks like gibberish to me. I do some more unsuccessful Google searches. Finally, I decide to attempt to decode that error again. That error means that somewhere a font family is not selected or unavailable. We know it’s happening when a new note is being created. I opened up Mail again and started pursuing the preferences. Low and behold, under the tab for Fonts & Colors, I found this:

The field for the Note font is completely blank. I selected a font and attempted to open a new note. Success!

As it turned out, this happened to be a very simple solution for a very silly problem. That solution took me over an hour to figure out. Unfortunately, I’ve never been able to figure out why that field was blank in the first place. I wonder how many other people have had this exact same problem and just given up on trying to figure it out.

1. Side Rant: What exactly was Apple thinking when they named their email client “Mail.” Could they have thought of a worse name? It is impossible to search for information about a problem with the program because “mail” could refer to so many things. It’s kind of like buying a computer, that has the model name of “computer.” Then say said computer one day won’t start up. You find another computer and start doing a search for the problem. Your query string is going to look something like this: [brand name] computer won’t start. Completely useless.↩

You know all of those emails that you get from companies that say “DO NOT REPLY”? As it turns out, some genius programmers really like to go the extra mile to make sure that their users do not reply…to them. These geniuses program the emails they send to have a reply-to address in the form of something@donotreply.com. You know, so they don’t get the replies (or bounce-backs).

Trouble is, donotreply.com is actually a real domain. And, any email sent to that domain, will be received by someone. In fact, Chet Faliszek will probably get the email, because he owns the domain donotreply.com. He also likes to post the best of the embarrassing mistakes.

Via Coding Horror.

Preface and Disclaimer

This paper presents an overview of the security situation of Mac OS X. The purpose of this paper is to present security in a very easy-to-understand fashion. I firmly believe that there is an absurd amount of FUD about computer security in general, mostly propagated by vendors of antivirus software and their partners. In the case of Mac OS X in specific, it is very difficult to get accurate, non-sensational information about what the real security threats are. This paper began as a genuine effort to figure out, and then convey, what the real status of Mac OS X security is.

Please be aware that I am no security expert (nor am I a hacker), but simply a normal computer nerd with a passion for most things relating to computers and design. I have made every effort to consult the writings of security experts and convey accurate information. If any security ninjas out there find any inaccuracies, please let me know.

With the exception of the section “Out Of The Box Security and Additional Hardening Measures”, the entire report refers to Mac OS X 10.4 and prior versions. Where possible, I state specific versions of the operating system that I am referring to.

I’ve broken up this report into several pages because it is quite long. You can also download the report in its entirety in PDF format.

(more…)

There is an interesting article on ARS Technica about Comcast’s FCC filing regarding its practices of secretly filtering network traffic. For those of you not up on the latest news, the FCC has been investigating Comcast’s network management practices after Vuze objected to Comcast’s practices of degrading P2P connections.

The article gives a really nice explanation of what is actually going on. It’s also some good reading for people who don’t know how Comcast actually structures its network (ie. what your neighbors are doing makes a big difference on your network speed).

The basic problem here is that Comcast oversells its network on the premise that nobody will use all of it. When a few customers actually attempt to use all of the bandwidth, the whole thing chokes. So instead of actually upgrading its network, Comcast filters out the traffic using lots of bandwidth (read P2P traffic).

While overselling is nothing new, what Comcast does strikes me detrimental to everyone. The main problem is that when the internet became popular, networks were designed for mostly downloading content. Most people were consumers, a few were providers. Todays internet, is different. P2P networks are more prevalent. YouTube is huge. The dynamic has shifted. More people are now providers, and more importantly, this trend will continue. Eventually, internet providers will have to restructure their networks to account for this change. Filtering content is only a stopgap.

I don’t necessarily disagree with the idea that Comcast should limit the amount of bandwidth that individuals can use. But if this is to be the rule, there needs to be a lot more transparency in the matter. Consumers need to be informed of what is the bandwidth cap for each service plan is. There also needs to be an easily accessible method for consumers to track their bandwidth usage. Most importantly, Comcast should notify consumers when they are filtering their packets, instead of just sending TCP reset packets.

If consumers have the actual information to make informed decisions, the market will decide whether or not this strategy is okay. This is of course, assuming that consumers do actually have alternative providers and that the ISP market is actually a fair market. Yeah right. Score one for corporate welfare.

Update: Upon further consideration, I’d like to clarify my point about it being okay for Comcast (or anyone) to filter internet content. What I actually meant, was that I think it is okay for an ISP to filter or lessen high-volume traffic from individual sources, provided that there is sufficient transparency in the matter. ISP’s certainly need to start selling what they can actually provide, but they also should be able to keep some users from adversely affecting others.

I do not under any circumstances support the filtering of traffic based on content. This is not the job or role that ISPs should be in the business of playing.

I finally got around to trying out Netflix’s (no longer) new Watch Instantly feature. It’s a pretty cool setup considering I’ve already had Netflix for several years. With my current plan of three DVDs at a time for $16.99 a month, I get an unlimited number of hours of Watch Instantly movies. That’s a pretty sweet deal.

The only problem…It’s Windows only. Even worse, It’s IE only. That has pretty much been a deal breaker for me so far. I have a PC at home, but I don’t ever want to sit at my desk to watch a movie. My laptop is a MacBook Pro. I do have Boot Camp, but the whole rebooting thing has kind of turned me off in the past.

Earlier this week I installed VMware Fusion, which works with my previously installed Boot Camp Windows partition. I finally decided to try out the Netflix Watch Instantly. After spending about 15 minutes jumping through an unbelievable number on installations, run anyway dialogues, yes I really do want to do that thing I just told you to do, one restart, and one unexpected Internet Explorer error later, I was up and running.

I have to say, it looks really good. The interface is very nice (very Mac-lke actually) and the quality is excellent. I was able to put the show into fullscreen and it still looked good. One concern that I do have though is that I’m actually at work running this over their ridiculously fast internet connection. So, good quality with no buffering issues isn’t saying much. I’ll have to reserve further judgement to see how it works on the wireless connection to my DSL modem I have at home.

One niggling criticism I have is over this somewhat disconcerting dialogue:

The dialogue shows up at the beginning of every single movie or show you watch. Considering I’m using an entirely legal and paid for service, I kind of resent being presented with a dialogue box that starts with the sentence “You do not have the rights to play this file.”