AFP548 is reporting a bug with Firefox 3 where apparently it doesn’t work with Macs that are set up to use a networked home directory.

When I updated to Firefox 3, I immediately noticed that Bookmarks were not visible under bookmarks menu. The Search engine field had a generic icon and when I selected ‘Manage Search Engines’, the dialog box was frozen and I couldn’t get out of it without quitting Firefox. When I tried to enter a URL into the URL field and press ‘enter’, nothing happens. However, when double-click on a URL in an e-mail message, that appears to work. […] When I switched to a local admin account (i.e., Firefox profile on the local hard drive), it seems to work fine. However, when I switch back to my network home account (on our XServe), it still displays the problems described above. I tried other user accounts on our XServe with the same problems.

This is kind of unbelievable to me that Firefox 3 was released with such a show-stopping bug on the Mac side. I’m pretty sure that most companies that use Macs use them with networked home directories (at least in the Academic world). It’s good to know though before I start adding Firefox to the images for fall semester.

Apparently this is a documented bug and as a commenter suggested, will be fixed in the future. You can read the bug track in Bugzilla to see how the fix is progressing.

I wrote a short AppleScript yesterday to allow you to automatically add the current tab in Safari to your bookmarks in Del.icio.us with a specified tag or tags. The default tag is “toPost.” Add the script into Quicksilver as a trigger and you’ve got an über convenient post later (or never) script.

Here is the script (or download it here):

-- To change the tags, edit text inside quotes below
-- Use spaces to seperate multiple tags (ex: "tagOne tagTwo")
set tags to "toPost"

-- build delicious URL for current tab in frontmost window of Safari
tell application "Safari"
    set u to (name of current tab of front window) & ¬
        "&url=" & (URL of current tab of front window) & ¬
        "&tags=" & tags
end tell

-- Add URL to Delicious
tell application "Safari"
    do JavaScript "javascript:void(open('https://api.del.icio.us/v1/posts/add?description=" & u & "','delicious','toolbar=no,width=150,height=100'));" in document 1
    delay 0.5
    close current tab of front window

end tell

This is basically a simple modification of the script written by Andrew Faden which does pretty much the same except from NetNewsWire instead of Safari. Be sure to check out his original script and also the much improved version submitted by Larry from http://scriptingforlawyers.com/.

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.

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Changes is a new file modification application. Looks to be really nice. It’s Leopard only, so I’m going to have to wait until I upgrade to try it out.

I’ve been looking for a good application like this ever since I found my self writing a diff-based app in Automator to check for differences between my iTunes libraries. This one looks like it will do that and a lot more. It also integrates with my favorite text editor, TextMate. For the old school folks, it works with BBEdit as well.

There is a command for Terminal in OS X which allows you to take screenshots from the command line. Creepy creepy. Here is the format:

screencapture -x FileToSaveAs

The -x option tells it not to make the shutter click sound. There is also an -i option which triggers an interactive mode, although I’m not sure why you would use the Terminal to do that.

There is also a cute little tidbit in the man page for screencapture: