PGP and Snow Leopard

It seems that the current versions of Pretty Good Privacy (PGP) are NOT compatible with Snow Leopard. Incompatibilty issues are are something that mostly occurs on mayor OS upgrades. The upgrades that overhauls the entire OS. But Snow Leopard is merely a fancy service/feature pack. So I have no idea why this would cripple PGP.

The blogposting is of August 27th. 1 (ONE) day before the release of Snow Leopard. And according to the post they are still in some sort of beta stage in the Snow Leopard compatibility development. This raises the following question(s);

• Why aren't they further in the development?
• Have they missed the news that Snow Leopard was on its way (announced somewhere last year)?
• Don't they have access to the developer tools (and associated beta's of the OS)?
• Were they asleep the last couple of months?

Instead of patching the 'old' v9.x of PGP they will release a new (commercial) version 10 which will be compatible with Snow Leopard. This shows the 'real' commitment of supporting the current customers. I'll try to make a list of applications which were incompatible with the release of Snow Leopard, but are pathed for FREE. Just to show that real service still exists.

I'll be keeping my eyes in the mean time on the MacGPG pages (the free implementation of the opensource part of PGP).
No more PGP for me. I'll be heading towards S/MIME and Truecrypt for the time being.

Windows Vista x64 and Fujitsu Hardware

No x64 SupportOké. I have this Fujitsu Lifebook E8310 from work (we're not allowed to use Apple hardware :( ). This piece of hardware was released with an OEM version of Vista Business, but work-related circumstances forced me to install Windows XP at first. Now about 1.5 years later I wanted to try the included Vista Business version, and since I have 4GB RAM I installed the x64 version. What's the use of the additional RAM otherwise?

B.t.w., you may see this as an addition to this posting about Windows 7.

Installing Vista Business x64 isn't the problem (so this is no rant against Microsoft), but trying to get every piece of (integrated) hardware to function properly is something completely different. Vista is on the market for ages (or so it seems), and still NO decent driver and application support for the x64 versions (example 1, 2, 3 of an endless list). What the f#ck is wrong with hardware (and software) developers? 64bit (client) computing is available since the release of Windows XP. Every new piece of WINTEL hardware released in the last two years has (multiple) 64bit cores or CPU's.

x64 Operating Systems mean that you have more memory at your disposal to do bigger (memory consuming) tasks. Windows-based 32bit systems can only address up to  3.2GB of memory.

As long as this will continue to stay this way, I'll continue to rant about this, and personally not buying (or advice) any more WinTel hardware (or software).

Snow Leopard So Far

The last couple of days have been Snow Leopard only. The Windows 7 hard disk is still gathering lots of dust in the corner.
Even though my Snow Leopard version may not be the final version, it feels solid on most fronts. Finder is even more intuitive. It starts to grow on me :).

I ordered my copy today. You can pre-order Snow Leopard in the Apple Online Store (upgrade costs around 29 euro/USD). With the free shipping it's a bargain (normally you need to spend >100 euro/USD for free shipping). This offer (free shipping) expires on August 27th 2009.

The World Will End In Chaos

Microsoft Word 2007according to Microsoft lawyers. Dell, HP, and lots of other 'partners' would feel this in their wallets. Not to mention the consumer (who now can go and discover other means of writing a letter).

This is the responds to the court ruling that Microsoft offended a XML patent. The ruling states that Microsoft can't sell MS-Word in its current form, so that means MS Office without its flagship Word.

This case proves once again that software patents are killing business. Not that I favor Microsoft in this, but basically the software patents are nothing more than a (logical) way of solving problems (how to do this, how to do that, etc). In theory someone could have filed a patent on 'breathing' (a way to solve the possible problem of dying). But there's prior art on that one :).

Anyway, should the XML capable version of Word go away, you can always use OpenOffice to open those documents. In theory (!!!) that should work, but we all know about Microsoft and (open) standards.

Upgrading to OSX Snow Leopard

I tried to upgrade to OSX Snow Leopard today. 'Tried' is the keyword here. It seems though that the current installment of OSX (Leopard) is installed on a file system supposedly UNSUPPORTED by Apple OSX Snow Leopard.

NOTE: I have no way of knowing if the release I have is the final 'Gold Master'. So it could be that my findings are irrelevant for the actual (official) Snow Leopard OS.
I will however verify my findings when I have the actual 'Gold Master' in my possession.

When you run the installer from the OS (or by booting from the DVD) I get a error message saying that I need a GUID Partitione Table disk to install the new OS on. Somehow I use a different (and unsupported) partition scheme. And I thought that I selected all the best options during the clean install a while back......

There's no way of converting (using Disk Utility and/or Terminal commands) this to the appropriate settings without formatting your hard drive. So a normal upgrade is out of the question for me (or so it seems). And for many others I guess, since I won't be the only one with the 'wrong' partition table setup.

Click to read more ...

Redelijkheid.com as a FireFox Search Engine

While the content on my website increases, it's getting (a bit) harder to find certain content. Sure, there's this search form in the top right of the website, but this means that you have to open the website first, enter the keyword and hit 'Enter'.

To speed things up I created a custom FireFox search engine. Using this I can search for content on my website directly from the browser. No matter what site I'm currently on.

The custom search engines are located in the profiles directory.

OSX: ~/Library/Application Data/Firefox/profiles/<random>/searchplugins/<searchengine>.xml

Windows: c:\Documents and Settings\<username>\Application Data\Mozilla\Firefox\Profiles\<random>\searchplugins\<searchengine>.xml

By adding the following XML file (right-click - Save As) to the directory listed above, you add the Redelijkheid.com search engine to your Firefox search engines.

Click to read more ...

Windows 7 First Impression

Am I growing a cynic, or is this a case being an Apple 'fanboy'? Even though I think I'm open-minded in the world of Operating Systems, I seem to be less and less fond of the latest Microsoft CLIENT Operating Systems. Note the all caps 'client' word. I have no problem whatsoever with the server versions (so far).

Today I installed Windows 7 Enterprise (MSDN edition) on a spare SATA disk in my work laptop (Fujitsu-Siemens Lifebook E8310). Initially installing the OS wasn't the problem. The bad things happened when I wanted to install the drivers and work-related software.

I must note that this review might not be very representative. My experience with Vista is about 8 hours total, and as you will find out later on; Windows 7 added about 4 hours today.

Anyway, back to the 'review';
The installation takes (almost) no user input whatsoever. Only things the OS needs to know are;

• clean install or upgrade
• regional settings
• username with a password

The first time Windows booted, I was already getting annoyed with the bouncing / rotating balls in the boot splash screen. They could have used the resources for creating this (either in functionality development ($$$) of the OS, or in speeding up booting the system) for booting faster instead of using CPU-cycles.

For comparison; Apple has a tiny spinning wheel to indicate that the system is booting, no splash screen, and is less expensive (probably $29 USD for an upgrade).

Click to read more ...

To Photoshop (or not)

To Google in the OSX DictionaryBrandnames turning into verbs is nothing new. Google turned 'verb' a while back officially, and can be found in several dictionaries all over the world. You could think that the brand owner would like it this when a product (or brand) becomes a commodity. Well, not every brand.....

Adobe has a section on the 'Photoshop' usage on their website [mirror]. It seems that photoshopping is a bad verb. Why? I don't know. No matter how good or bad an image or photo is altered or with what tool. The most common remark is 'PHOTOSHOPPED'. All this means is that people associate image manipulation with Adobe Photoshop. There's a reason that this piece of software is on top of the image manipulation food chain. It's simply the best (and probably the most expensive by the way :) ).

After looking for 'google' in the Apple OS X Dictionary, I also tried 'photoshop'. and guess what I found:

to Photoshop in Apple OS X Dictionary/me sits back and wonders when Apple (or even me) receives a letter from an Adobe attorney :) for the incorrect usage of the Photoshop brand.

OS X Calulator and Internet Access

This Little Snitch pop-up appeared after I launched the default Calculator application on Apple OS X.

Calculator Surfs the InterwebsWhy on earth would Calculator need Internet access? Looking for floating point error updates? Anyone else has any conspiracy ideas?

Apple Favors Own Products, or FileVaults Screws Up

Apple FileVaultSomething everyone would do I guess (the favoring part at least :) ). But Apple is doing this in a very peculiar way. When you run OSX with a ton of third-party applications you won't notice things, since everything runs as it should. But when you're going to use FileVault, things change. A lot....

FileVault is the way Apple secures your data. When turned on the OS creates a sparse iage of your userdata. So everything stored within your user directory is encrypted using AES-128.

The use of FileVault screws up certain system files. One of those is (or several for that matter) is used to store the default applications. Like FireFox for Internet instead of Safari. Every time you reboot your system the default application settings are read.
This weekend I also found out that at least one handy program also disagrees with FileVault. Little Snitch won't properly save it's registration info when you're using FileVault.

You know what the worst thing is? This BUG is present since Panther (OSX 10.3). I wonder if this is going to be fixed in Snow Leopard. To be honest, I doubt it. If they can't figure it out in 4 years, they probably never will.

As a security savvy nerd I want to use FileVault on my MacBook, but the problems with FileVault made me decide to uninstall this feature. Too bad that there are no other real alternatives. Truecrypt (or PGP) is nice, but it can't encrypt your hard disk (from which you boot) or even your user directory. Check Point seems to have software, but there's no way of buying it easily. So it seems that's it's mainly reserved for corporate environments.

UPDATE: w00t... They solved this annoying 'feature' Apple OS X 10.6 a.k.a. Snow Leopard. Way to go Apple. Although it being several OS releases/years too late!!!!