04.13.04
Posted in Macintosh, Security at 1:43 pm by Lisa Spangenberg
According to Oren Sreebny Dr. Gregory Jackson has resigned from Apple’s University Executive Forum, because of remarks he made in the Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Colloquy.” You can see my original post here and a followup here. I note that Oren’s post and his followup have already been picked up at Paul Thurott’s Internet Nexus. Oren, who describes Dr. Jackson as a “friendly critic” of Apple, writes that Dr. Jackson, “notes in an email that he’s been asked to publicly correct inaccuracies in his response, and that ‘I don’t believe there are any inaccuracies, although there are many points in the interchange open to elaboration and debate.’”
There were a number of inaccuracies in Dr. Jackson’s response; I detail some of them here, though not all of them.
When I posed the question to Dr. Jackson in the Chronicle’s “Colloquoy,” I asked because I really wanted an answer, and I expected a genuine response from someone of Dr. Jackson’s caliber. I was less than impressed with his response. He was inaccurate, and somewhat condescending. Moreover, he did not actually answer my question, since his response relies on a series of inaccurate assertions. I really am curious—why don’t more institutions adopt Macs and encourage faculty to use them? I would at least expect to see more Xserve G5 servers, and Xserve RAID whether running Mac OS X or another OS. I would expect to see more Macs used for streaming than I am seeing, and a lot more used for multimedia development and individual use. More often than not, I don’t see Macs even offered as a choice, and they are not considered for server-side implementation by academic IT departments as often as they should be. I am particularly mystified when RealAudio is the automatic choice for streaming, when it strikes me as obscenely expensive, cumbersome to administer, and the agility of the Real protocol pales when compared to the flexibility and potential of QuickTime, with its multiple tracks and annotations. Plus, the QuickTime Streaming Server is free, the open source version Darwin runs on a variety of platforms, and is dead easy to set up and administer— a medievalist can do it. Even Broadcaster is free. But over and over again, I find I have to point out to IT folk that there are alternatives to Microsoft, that Solaris, and Linux and Unix and Mac OS X are viable options, and worth considering. Particularly when the institution doesn’t have to spend large sums of money on cleaning up after security holes, patching software and purchasing elaborate server-based systems to “push” updates out to end users because there are thousands of viruses and Trojans, taking advantages of numerous design flaws in Windows.
Permalink
Comments off
04.11.04
Posted in Blogging, Pedagogy and Scholarship at 12:59 pm by Lisa Spangenberg
I wanted to point to a few resources for blogging among teachers and scholars in literature, composition and rhetoric that have emerged since the CCCCs conference. First, a list of blogs by teachers and scholars in composition, literature, and rhetoric hosted by Kairosnews.org. Second, a listserve growing out of the CCCC SIG for “comp/rhet/lit folk devoted to exploring the personal and professional applications of weblogs and wikis in teaching, writing, and research.”
Permalink
Comments off
04.09.04
Posted in Macintosh, Security at 11:46 am by Lisa Spangenberg
Intego, makers of a Macintosh OS X anti-virus product called Virus Barrier, yesterday announced that they’d “discovered” a Mac Trojan horse. I, like Dori, am a little suspicious. For one thing, the language of the announcement was odd; for another, no other anti virus company has reported it even today, and for a third, I work at a large very wired campus, with thousands of MP3 loving undergraduates and haven’t seen a sign of MP3Concept. Neither have any of my peers who work in IT at other campuses, and I’ve now emailed and heard back from 38 support and network administration sorts of people from all over the world, none of whom have seen MP3Concept in the wild. Since a large number of campus and institutional networks deliberately block MP3 transfer by email, I would have expected at least one to have seen it.
The idea of exploiting ID3 tags, or other sorts of meta data for less than honorable purposes is not new. I remember hearing people talk about it two years ago at QuickTime Live. There’s an explanation of the method behind MP3Concept here. Thanks to Derek, and MacNet Journal, I now remember reading this UseNet post describing just such a vulnerability. But given that no one seems to have seen the “Trojan horse” in the wild, I suspect that this Intego’s announcement reflects a vulnerability, rather than an actual Trojan. That said, I would like to remind people that an evil application masquerading as data is a Trojan horse, and not a virus, though a Trojan horse may also carry a virus payload. This thing, if it exists, would be a Trojan horse.
Update: MacCentral has a response from Apple that “We are aware of the potential issue identified by Intego and are working proactively to investigate it,” which is pretty much what I’d expect. I have no doubt that there are other vulnerabilities in OS X; such is the nature of operating systems, and of users. But I also suspect Apple will respond to them. I think Intego’s defense for inappropriately releasing the vulnerability to the press reflects poorly on their ethics. I will certainly continue to suggest that institutional purchasers I advise stay away from Intego.
This Wired (12:44 PM Apr. 09, 2004 PT) article has useful updated information about Intego’s claims; the Trojan does not exist in the wild, and the test version did not have a viral payload. I am astonished, and disgusted by Intego’s inappropriate and unprofessional behavior.
Permalink
Comments off
04.02.04
Posted in Macintosh, Books at 6:44 pm by Lisa Spangenberg
The ninth edition of The Macintosh Bible is out. It’s the third edition Michael has contributed to. I’m completely unbiased, as usual, but it’s a pretty good book. The
Spouse describes his contribution thusly:
In the 9th Macintosh Bible I romp gaily through the fields of audio, video, and interactive media in what previous editions of the Macintosh Bible called the Multimedia chapter
but in this edition is the Digital Lifestyle chapter (hmmm…I thought it was the Sims who lived a digital lifestyle). Extended descriptions of Apple’s new iLife programs are woven into the rich tapestry that covers the workings of digital audio and video technology and the various applications that handle them. And there are even pictures! Woohoo!
Permalink
Comments off
04.01.04
Posted in Macintosh, Conferences at 5:58 pm by Lisa Spangenberg
Like Justin Williams, I have a Student Scholarship from Apple to attend this year’s WWDC. I’m still not quite sure how I’ll get there, but I’m working on it.
I note, via Brent Simmons, that Buzz Andersen has proposed a web-logger get together. I’m game, though it needs to be near Moscone since I can’t drive.
Permalink
Comments off
Posted in Macintosh at 5:29 pm by Lisa Spangenberg
Hic jacet HyperCard. Apple has finally removed the HyperCard directory from its servers, and delisted the HyperCard from the Apple Store. It’s really the end for HyperCard.
You can read Tim Oren’s eulogy, but I suppose I really wrote mine back in 2002. I can’t help but be a little sad. I’m still using HyperCard fairly regularly, in Classic. Voyager’s Macbeth, which my husband produced, still works fine, and I used the Hypertext Handlist of Rhetorical Terms in teaching this quarter. My bibliography database is still largely in HyperCard, in a stack that’s now about 300 MB of text, a stack that generates HTML formatted MLA bibliographies, as well as .RTF formatted bibliographies with a few clicks of a button, and which fully exploits HyperCard’s search functions, still one of the best “search” feautures I’ve ever seen.
Requiescat in pace
.
Permalink
Comments off
