Omnia Mutantur

Thunderbird kept crashing on me on Leopard, at least three out of four times that I launched it. At first I thought it was Enigmail, because it seemed that the crash was if I attempted to view an encrypted message while it was still loading mail from the servers, but testing that hypothesis revealed it to be false. Much mucking around OS X got me to the ~/Library/Cache/Thunderbird/Profiles, which contains some files supposed to help with a fast launch. I deleted the whole thing (Cache directories are expected to be regenerated by the application), and that has Thunderbird working back to normal.

This might be related to the other Leopard problem I’d mentioned. If you’re having Thunderbird problems, I suggest you start by killing the cache.

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VMware server has been in beta since November, 2007, and you can try it out for free by going to their site. Don’t. It’s unstable and has performance problems – I had to manually reboot our machine at least twice a week because the virtual servers became unresponsive. I originally thought that the problems were caused by the CentOS kernel I was using, but while the problems were lessened after changing it, they persisted.

After downgrading to (the also free) VMware server 1.0.4, the virtual servers have been working like a swiss watch for a couple weeks.

Ricardo Programming, Science and Technology

If you’re using CentOS hosts on a VMWare server, you should read this.

Ricardo Programming, Science and Technology

I’m reading Matt Mason’s The Pirate’s Dilemma, one of those hip this-changes-everything books, this time detailing how remix culture and digital technology is forcing the market to either adapt and compete with those it labels as pirates for modifying their intellecutual property, or die attempting to fight a distributed, faceless enemy that in many cases does nothing but promote their products.

It’s very readable, and I’m all for anything that promotes adapting quickly to changing times, but at least on the technical side of things it all too often gets the details dead wrong. The errors go from saying Half-Life is a mod of Warcraft, to confusing Stallman’s free-as-in-beer with free-as-in-freedom in an analogy (and ignoring the more important one), to saying that Linus Torvalds founded a company named Linux (ironically ignoring the fact that great things can and do come from outside corporate structure). It gets so many things wrong on the areas I have good knowledge of, that I have to wonder how many of the stories on graffiti or hip-hop are wrong too.

I was suspicious that a book with a title closer to Who Moved My Cheese or The monk who sold his Ferrari would be more style than substance, and it’s unfortunate to have those suspicions confirmed. You’re better off reading Larry Lessig’s Free Culture. On a good example of practicing what you preach, Lessig’s book is available for you to read and distribute online.

Mason’s answer? He lets you remix his logo.

Ricardo Books, music and film, Freedom, Science and Technology

I’ve just received my copy of the Leopard upgrade, and while it has significant improvements (the storage format for FileVault is more compact and easier to backup, Time Machine), it’s given me significant grief. Here are some tips:

• Back up everything first. Use an external disk, DVD or something equally accessible.
• If you’re using FileVault, turn it off before the upgrade – it’ll save you at least a couple hours. You can turn it back on after the upgrade so that its format is updated.
• If you’re using PHP or MySQL, read this page. You’ll also need to execute the instructions I outlined some time back if you’re using FileVault.
• Get OpaqueMenuBar to remove the annoying menu transparency that makes it unreadable. Why did Apple decided people would just love it and did not include a configuration option is beyond me.
• Be prepared for random applications to stop working.

In my case Thunderbird died. These were the symptoms:

• An IMAP account wouldn’t list any folders but the inbox, and wouldn’t display its contents.
• Thunderbird was continually into “accessing messages” mode, and the Stop button did not work.
• The application had to be closed via Force Quit on the Activity Monitor.

I removed Thunderbird, reinstalled, opened the application. It worked. Restored the configuration and messages from backup, it died again. Tested several approaches. At first I thought the problem was IMAP, because usually the moment I added that account things froze. In the end, the approach that worked is akin to voodoo, so I’ll just list the explicit order in which I did things.

1. Remove the ~/Library/Thunderbird directory
2. Start Thunderbird
3. Restore the Local Folders to directory ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xyz.default/Mail/Local Folders
4. Create your first account, in my case strangevistas.net
5. Close Thunderbird
6. Find the profile directory for the account, for example ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xyz.default/Mail/strangevistas.net
7. Copy the files you had backed up for that specific directory
8. Start Thunderbird, test. If it works, backup your current ~/Library/Thunderbird and repeat for the next account.
9. For IMAP accounts you won’t need to copy the folders, only the file msgFilterRules.dat from the account’s directory
10. Install and configure enigmal.
11. Restore the ~/Library/Thunderbird/Profiles/xyz.default/pgprules.xml file if you had any custom rules.

I don’t recommend upgrading to Leopard unless you have some time to kill, literally need one of its new features (like BootCamp), or really, truly hate yourself. I strongly advise against leaving your Random Inexperienced User alone with it. Apple came pretty close to pulling a Vista with this one.

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I was reading up about Amazon’s e-book reader Kindle (how could I not, with it being both a new toy and book related!) and ran on an interesting bit on a review:

Kindle gives you access to an experimental and free service called Kindle NowNow, which is a search engine powered by actual humans. You send any question, and a human being will research it for you, then send the best three answers, usually, Amazon says, within five minutes.

Couldn’t help but think of A Deepness in the Sky and the Focused humans working behind the scenes to add human interpretations to things as mundane as searching for a topic.

Here’s the MacWorld article.

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It seems that somebody has finally met the criteria necessary to win the notMac challenge, which was meant to create a free and open source replacement for Apple’s .mac service. According to the SourceForge page the server is OS neutral, but I’ve yet to find instructions on how to set it up on anything but OS X. More details once The notmacchallenge site is back up (apparently it got pounded into oblivion).

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Ars Technica reports that a new law going into effect today make it a criminal offense to refuse an order to decrypt your own data.

Individuals who are believed to have the cryptographic keys necessary for such decryption will face up to 5 years in prison for failing to comply with police or military orders to hand over either the cryptographic keys, or the data in a decrypted form.

Part 3, Section 49 of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act (RIPA) includes provisions for the decryption requirements, which are applied differently based on the kind of investigation underway. As we reported last year, the five-year imprisonment penalty is reserved for cases involving anti-terrorism efforts. All other failures to comply can be met with a maximum two-year sentence.

The article itself points out that part of the idiocy is that this gives criminals an easy way out.

Yet the law, in a strange way, almost gives criminals an “out,” in that those caught potentially committing serious crimes may opt to refuse to decrypt incriminating data. A pedophile with a 2GB collection of encrypted kiddie porn may find it easier to do two years in the slammer than expose what he’s been up to.

Wrong country to live in if you care about your privacy.

Ricardo Freedom, News and politics, Science and Technology

There’s an article on the L.A. Times detailing how putting all your communication eggs in the basket of a single unscrupulous provider can have serious privacy implications. For example:

There are red flags to be found in each telecom provider’s privacy policy. A close reading of Time Warner’s policy reveals:

* Along with knowing juicy details of your calling and viewing habits — those 900 numbers, say, or that subscription to the Playboy Channel — the company keeps track of “Internet addresses you contact and the duration of your visits to such addresses.”

* Time Warner not only compiles “information about how often and how long” you’re online, but also “purchases that you have made” via the company’s Road Runner portal, which provides access to thousands of goods.

* On top of that, the company may monitor “information you publish” via the Road Runner portal, which should send a chill through anyone who accesses his or her e-mail through Time Warner’s servers.

The disregard for privacy at companies like Time Warner go beyond merely their current customers, apparently.

At least you don’t have to worry about these companies knowing things about you after you take your business elsewhere, right?

Wrong.

Near the very bottom of Time Warner’s privacy policy, the company discloses that it maintains personally identifiable info about people “as long as you are a subscriber and up to 15 additional years.” This, it says, is for tax and accounting purposes.

The aptly titled Your Loss of privacy is a package deal is particularly timely, given today’s publication by a German operator of a Tor node (a network designed to give its users privacy while accessing the Internet) which details his arrest by the police a few months ago. Both the arrest and other privacy concerns are discussed in a CNet article.

What does this mean? That if you don’t protect your privacy now, not only nobody else will do it for you but there are several parties actively interested in taking it from you. On the online front, a good starting point is the Tor network, of which you can read more about here. If you require more reliable access, you can also consider commercial services such as Xerobank.

It takes barely any work, and if you have any interested in safeguarding your information, you should start now.

Ricardo Freedom, News and politics, Science and Technology

Not the movies, but the Strategic Defense Initiative proposed under Reagan.

Fifty-year-old Alistair Beckham was a successful British aerospace- projects engineer. His specialty was designing computer software for sophisticated naval defense systems. Like hundreds of other British scientists, he was working on a pilot program for America’s Strategic Defense Initiative–better known as Star Wars. And like at least 21 of his colleagues, he died a bizarre, violent death.

It was a lazy, sunny Sunday afternoon in August 1988. After driving his wife to work, Beckham walked through his garden to a musty backyard toolshed and sat down on a box next to the door. He wrapped bare wires around his chest, attached the to an electrical outlet and put a handkerchief in his mouth. Then he pulled the switch.

With his death, Beckham’s name was added to a growing list of British scientists who’ve died or disappeared under mysterious circumstances since 1982. Each was a skilled expert in computers, and each was working on a highly classified project for the American Star Wars program. None had any apparent motive for killing himself.

Each death was apparently under suspicious circumstances, and things have gotten even more so since people started asking questions:

“My solicitor instructed an accident specialist to examine the automobile,” Mrs. Bowden explains. “Somebody had taken the wheels off and put others on that were old and worn. At the inquest this was not allowed to be brought up. Someone asked if the car was in a sound condition, and the answer was yes.”

Hillary, in a state of shock, never protested the published verdict. Yet, she remains convinced that someone tampered with her husband’s car. “It certainly looked like foul play,” Hillary maintains.

And

Investigating journalists found discrepancies in other evidence. “A police report noted a puncture mark on Dijabhai’s left buttock after his fall from the bridge,” explains Tony Collins, who covered the story for Britain’s COMPUTER NEWS magazine. “Apparently, this was the reason his funeral was halted seconds before the cremation was to take place.

[...]

“It’s been almost impossible to get to information about deaths that should be in the public domain,” Tony Collins laments. “I’ve been given false names or incorrect spellings, or I’ve not been told where inquests have taken place. It’s made it very difficult for me to try to track down the details of these cases.”

Here’s the full article. A very interesting read, particularly for those with paranoid inclinations.

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