Blogcritics Author: Bruce Kratofil

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Adobe, Microsoft, and Apple -- The BugBlog Report

Bruce Kratofil — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 10:44:55 EDT

Here are some of the most significant bugs from the past week in the BugBlog:According to the Adobe Dreamweaver CS3 for Windows Read Me, if you create a CSS file in Dreamweaver that is exactly 8192 bytes, or some multiple of 8192 bytes, in size, Dreamweaver will crash. It also won't restart until you change the size of that stylesheet. Luckily, you don't have to use Dreamweaver -- any text editor, including Windows Notepad, will do. Open the file there, and add or subtract a few characters or comments.Connect a USB telephony device to a Windows Vista computer, and Vista may decide to make it the default audio device. That should play havoc with audio/visual applications. Microsoft says this is because Vista sees that the device has audio capabilities, but doesn't determine the correct kind. There is a hotfix for this, which will be in a future service pack. If you need it right away, see the MS KnowledgeBase. Just to point out the obvious -- the recently-released Apple Safari for Windows is still a beta product. Beta products are supposed to have bugs. In this case, Symantec (and others) point out that Safari for Windows is vulnerable to a number of well-known browser exploits, including denial of service and remote code exploits. Read more at Symantec.

Bruce Kratofil blogs on bugs and other things that can go wrong with your computer at The BugBlog, and writes about computers and economics at BJK Research

Can A PC Guy Become a Mac Guy? - Episode 5

Bruce Kratofil — Thu, 17 May 2007 06:08:44 EDT

We've been through the whole shopping experience, and the reason for switching to the Mac, in Episodes 1 through 3. Episode 4 was a review of the MacBook from a hardware standpoint. Now, after a little more than two months of use, comes a review of Mac OS X 10.4 itself.Pipe Down, Fanboys!This review will be a success, I think, if I can manage to annoy the fanboys on each side at some point during the review. No, Mac OS X 10.4 isn't perfect; however, it sure seems to be a lot simpler, and more stable, than Windows. Independent research by others has already shown it to be safer (although it's not absolutely safe, either.) It's tough to come up with a judgment of whether it is better, yet. After all, I have almost 12 years of Windows 95/2000/XP knowledge, shortcuts, and tips to rely on. When it comes to Mac OS X, I've got two month's worth of knowledge; in fact, I'm not even sure of the real name of the Apple-Squiggly key. So I'm not as efficient working on the Mac yet. Part of the inefficiency comes from the fact that things aren't in the same places. The controls to close or minimize a window are in the upper left of the window, not the upper right. One location doesn't seem to be any better than the other, I just need to remember where they are. Copying and pasting use Apple-Squiggly C and V, rather than Control-C and V. I still find myself halfway through a cut and paste and wondering why it isn't working. Given the location of the Control and Apple-Squiggly keys, using the latter is an easier thumb movement. Maybe the biggest difference, and one that I definitely think isn't as good as Windows, is that the menus for each program share a bar at the top of the screen, rather than in the top of each program's windows. Depending on how you've got windows set up, it means some extra travel time for mouse movements. What I Don't Need to KnowSome of my specialized Windows knowledge isn't needed in OS X. For instance, I know how to edit the Registry in Windows. That's something I won't need to know on the Mac, for there isn't a Registry. Since it seems that mostly bad things happen in the Registry, which seems to double in size every couple of months on my Windows machines, I won't miss it. Ways to maneuver out of DLL Hell aren't needed either, for it appears that most applications keep their files to themselves, instead of planting components all over the place. Want to get rid of an application? Instead of going to the Control Panel, Add/Remove Programs, and selecting it off the list, you just need to find the file and drag it to the Trash. (I've read that in some situations you'll need to go back and delete other files, too.)Stuff I don't Know YetEvery Windows computer I've owned started out as a fast machine (for its time) especially at start-up. As time went on, however, the machine got slower and slower as it picked up all kinds of start-up programs, Systray applications, and the already-mentioned Registry bloat. I refer to this as barnacles, sort of like how a ship gets slowed down because of all the barnacles and seaweed that clings to the hull. This doesn't seem to have happened yet with the Mac, but then again I haven't had it that long. Looking at the Activity Monitor, which is the OS X equivalent of the Task Manager, I see a number of things running in the background. Some I recognize, including the various widgets I have set to appear. There are a couple of things familiar from Windows, such as the iTunes Helper. And there's quite a few processes (or maybe I should call them daemons) running too. It's not quite evident what they do, but a quick Google search tells me that mdimport has something to do with the Spotlight Search utility, and distnoted is the distributed notification server. One nice thing is that, although there are a number of processes running, they aren't all named svchost.One hint I've been looking for, and can't seem to find, is how to arrange files and folders in the Finder windows, and in applications such as Dreamweaver. What I'd like is to have the display cluster all the subfolders at the top of the list, and then the files below it. The only real reason for that is that's the way I'm used to it -- especially when working with a couple of large websites I manage. If there's a way of doing it, I haven't managed to find it yet.What I LikeMany of the built-in features of OS X are really good. I've come up with a useful set of widgets, such as the calculator, dictionary, weather report and calendar, at the press of the F12 key. Spotlight seems to do searches a lot faster than the Windows XP search function, although to be fair I probably only have less than 25 percent of the files here on the Macbook to search. And the Exposé keys make it easy to sort out the various windows that may be open on your screen.The thing I like the most is the stability. The Macbook has only crashed twice on me. Once was when I had Windows XP running on Parallels, and I was trying to work with a large database in Microsoft Access. The crash happened in Windows, but it took OS X with it; however, I think we can chalk that one up to Microsoft. The second one seemed more random -- no MS stuff was running, but I had a number of other applications running, and about four browser tabs when OS X just crashed. And as mentioned in an earlier article, GarageBand refuses to run when I have my generic three-button USB mouse connected.Not to say there's no bugs or problems; there was one major security update, fixing 25 different bugs, during my time in Mac Land; that update also had to be re-issued due to some problems with it. There was also a major bug fix for a zero-day QuickTime bug during this time frame. But that record looks pretty good next to Microsoft's zero-day misadventures during this same period. What I Don't LikeOther than the position of the menus, my other dislikes are rather minor and probably are just things that I'm not used to yet. I should probably mention that I discarded Safari pretty early and stuck with Firefox.OverallOverall, the good for OS X outweighs the bad, and I have no regrets over making the switch. In about a year or so, when it's time to replace my desktop, I'll have to decide whether to make the whole switch. (The next review will look at the iLife applications that come bundled with Mac OS X.)

Bruce Kratofil blogs on bugs and other things that can go wrong with your computer at The BugBlog, and writes about computers and economics at BJK Research

Microsoft, Adobe, and Apple - The BugBlog Report 4/18/07

Bruce Kratofil — Wed, 18 Apr 2007 21:15:26 EDT

Code that attacks an unpatched hole in Microsoft Windows DNS (Domain Name System) is now being circulated over the Internet. This code means that you won't need to be particularly skilled to exploit the bug, which may allow attackers to completely take over your system. Read more at ZD Net. Microsoft's official response is "We're working on it" but they do have some temporary fixes here that include turning off some services and firewall tweaks.Adobe says that the Zone Labs ZoneAlarm security program may interfere with the installation of Adobe Photoshop CS3 for Windows. That's because the installation needs to modify the Registry, and ZoneAlarm prevents that. There are two possible workarounds from Adobe (three if you count checking with ZoneAlarm for help.) Either disable ZoneAlarm while you install the product, or turn on ZoneAlarm's Control Program Access. See Adobe for details. Remote attackers may be able to gain access to users of an Apple AirPort Extreme Base Station with 802.11n. According to Apple, this is because the Base Station default configuration allows incoming IPv6 connections. Apple has changed this configuration in the Firmware Update 7.1. Only local network traffic will be allowed to use IPv6. Get the update details here.

Bruce Kratofil blogs on bugs and other things that can go wrong with your computer at The BugBlog, and writes about computers and economics at BJK Research

Microsoft and AOL - The BugBlog Report 4/10/07

Bruce Kratofil — Tue, 10 Apr 2007 16:18:27 EDT

Here are some of the most significant bugs from the past week in the BugBlog:Microsoft released a patch for the Windows animated cursor bug (see the 3/30 entry below) that affects Windows Vista, XP, and 2000. This patch was released a week earlier than Microsoft's normal Patch Tuesday, an indication of how serious the bug is. Get the patch here. According to Paul Thurott of Windows IT Pro Magazine, there is not going to be a Windows XP Service Pack 3. The last service pack was in 2004, and SP3 was scheduled for 2005, and later 2006. Now it appears Microsoft is saying to millions of XP users, in the voice of the Soup Nazi "No Service Pack for you!" Read his take here. There is a bug in the America Online 9.0 Revision 4156.910 SuperBuddy ActiveX control. A malicious user may be able to use this bug to run hostile code on the victim's computer. This control is in the sb.dll file. AOL is automatically sending out updates for this. You can also set the kill bit for the ActiveX control. The TippingPoint Security Research Team discovered this bug. Read the details.

Bruce Kratofil blogs on bugs and other things that can go wrong with your computer at The BugBlog, and writes about computers and economics at BJK Research

Apple and Microsoft: The BugBlog Report 3/19/07

Bruce Kratofil — Mon, 19 Mar 2007 18:21:53 EDT

Here are some of the most significant bugs from the past week in the BugBlog:There are a number of bugs in the Mac OS X 10.3.9 and 10.4.x Disk Images application. A number of these bugs can be exploited to either crash the application or run hostile code on the Mac. These have been fixed in Mac OS X 10.4.9 and Security Update 2007-003.The updates are available through Apple's Software Update. Some of these bugs were first reported on the Month of Apple Bugs website.Microsoft says that there are incompatibilities between unspecified USB audio devices and USB audio TV tuners on Windows Vista computers. They won't work if you try to use them. Microsoft has a hotfix for this, so if you have one of these audio devices or TV tuners giving you trouble, see this article about getting the hotfix.If you publish a calendar in Microsoft Office Outlook 2007, it may stop updating. When publishing it, you may also get an error message: Access to the resource was denied. If you have signed in to and saved your Windows Live ID with a Web site, sign out of that Web site, and then try this operation again. Microsoft says that you won't have any success signing out at that page, because it won't recognize you as signing in. The problem is that Internet Explorer stores cookies in two different locations. Windows Live may be looking for its cookie in one place, and won't know enough to look at the other. Microsoft has some workarounds.

Bruce Kratofil blogs on bugs and other things that can go wrong with your computer at The BugBlog, and writes about computers and economics at BJK Research

Episode 4: Can a PC Guy Become a Mac Guy?

Bruce Kratofil — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 16:41:04 EDT

I've been a Mac guy for about two weeks now, including a road trip. It's time to start doing some reviews of the Macbook.Without a doubt, using a Mac is different than using a PC. Since I'm going to be using both Macs and PCs, I'm going to have to be bilingual. That's actually a skill I haven't mastered in the real world. I took three years of high school French, but with almost no real reason to use it, I've forgotten all but some guidebook phrases. (Actually, the choice of French rather than Spanish was a bad demographic forecast by me back in the early 70s. There's a lot more call for Spanish these days.) My goal is to be able to think like a Mac guy when using the MacBook, and think like a PC guy when using the desktop. What I don't want to do is continue some sort of translation process. This translation process is what I still do when I use the metric system. Living in the U.S., and not being a scientist, I don't have many reasons to work in the metric, or International, system. One of the few times I do is when I work on my car. If I'm looking at a bolt, and trying to decide what size socket to use, I find myself thinking "Hmm, that looks like a half-inch bolt; since there's roughly 25 millimeters to an inch, this must be a 12mm or 13 mm socket." I have to make that intermediate step -- I haven't yet gotten the knack of looking at something and saying "That's 12 millimeters" or "That's a centimeter". If I hear a temperature forecast of 20 degrees Celsius, I think "20 is equal to 68 -- it's gonna be nice!" I don't think "20 Celsius - it's gonna be nice!" I don't want to be doing that with the Mac -- thinking "Hmm, here's how I'd do that in XP; this is the equivalent in OS X; so that's what I'll do." So far, it seems to be working. After I got over the initial confusion of no longer having a Start button, I learned to use Finder and the Dock. As soon as I learned that the F12 key popped up the Dashboard, I was off searching for widgets.Rather than just doing some random observations, it may be better to impose some structure to these reviews. This article will be about the hardware. After this, there will be a review of OS X 10.4, and then a review of the iLife programs. The MacBook is small and light, exactly what I was looking for, not only for road trips, but also for carrying around the house and flopping in front of the TV. It is three pounds lighter than my old laptop computer; that's the equivalent of three cans of soup that aren't in my briefcase; there's even more weight savings, since the charger is also lighter than my old charger. It was a difference well-appreciated on my first road trip with the Mac. While it is small, there's enough of a wrist rest that typing is comfortable. I wasn't going to spend an extra $200 to get the black model, so I'll let you know if I run into the discoloration problem that the white models are prone to. The keyboard has a slightly different feel than my desktop keyboard, but I haven't had any problems touch-typing. There are a few differences to get used to. There's a Delete key, but no backspace key, which I mentioned earlier. The built-in touchpad only has one button - if you want to do a right click, you have to remember to hold down the Control key. Also, after years and years of doing a Ctrl-C or Ctrl-V for copying and pasting, I know have to remember to use that Apple-squiggly key instead.The one-button touchpad isn't a problem when I'm using the MacBook on a desk. I have a generic Windows three-button USB mouse with a scrollwheel which works the same as it does in Windows, even the scroll wheel. The only problem came when I tried to start GarageBand, the sound-editing program, while the mouse was plugged in. I fell into a loop getting an error message about a bad MIDI driver. Although I could dismiss the error message, I couldn't get GarageBand to either start or stop, and the error message kept on coming back. Luckily, I had already learned about the Activity Monitor, the equivalent of the Task List in Windows, so I knew how to kill off GarageBand. GarageBand works fine without the mouse. (That's also the only crash or lock-up that I've had yet.) So far, I'm getting over three hours on a battery charge, although I haven't really tried to measure battery life when watching a DVD. The computer also goes into and out of sleep quickly, which can help with power conservation. The power cord is nicely designed. The connection to the laptop itself is magnetic, and should break off before someone trips over the power cord and drags the computer off the desk. The power cord is also two piece. A two-prong plug folds out of the power-brick (which is really closer in size to a fat deck of cards) if you don't have a long distance to the power outlet. If you have a longer distance, you can pull the plug off the brick, and attach a second, longer cord that has a three-prong plug. The computer runs a little hot, but not as hot as many laptops I've used. The fan rarely comes on. The screen, with its high-def aspect ratio, also makes for some adjustment. There's a lot more width than I'm used to, so I'm learning to re-arrange my normal window layout to take advantage of it. It made sense to me to move the Dock over to the side to gain some vertical screen space. I wonder why that isn't the default spot for the Dock to begin with? The screen is also very bright - in fact, any time I take my picture with the built-in camera, I end up with the screen reflection in my glasses. The MacBook comes with an integrated graphics card and shared video memory, so I eventually want to try it with some graphics-intensive programs to see how it performs. For now, under regular use, I haven't run into any performance issues. Of course, I also splurged on 2 GB of RAM, which is going to help the performance. There are two USB ports and a Firewire port, lined up on the side along with the Ethernet port and the power connection. One thing it doesn't have is a VGA port. Instead, it has a mini-DVI port. If you are taking your MacBook to a conference and plan on connecting it to a projector to run a slideshow, you'll probably need to be prepared with a mini-DVI to VGA adapter. (Apple sells them.) At the conference I just attended, I didn't need to hook up to a projector, but I asked the hotel's AV guy if he could have helped me out if needed. His reply was that while he probably could have found something that worked, it wouldn't be the kind of equipment to ask for at the last minute. The next episode of "Can A PC Guy Become a Mac Guy?" will be a review of Mac OS X 10.4. In this case, it will be OS X 10.4.9, the upgrade that just came out. If you are new to this series, you can go back and read Episodes 1, 2, and 3.

Bruce Kratofil blogs on bugs and other things that can go wrong with your computer at The BugBlog, and writes about computers and economics at BJK Research

Apple, Microsoft, and WordPress - The BugBlog Report 3/11/07

Bruce Kratofil — Sat, 10 Mar 2007 18:19:17 EST

Here are some of the most significant bugs from the past week in the BugBlog:Apple iTunes 7.1 for Windows clears up some, but not all, of the incompatibilities with Microsoft Windows Vista. According to Apple, when using iTunes 7.1 and with your iPod connected to the Vista computer, you don't want to use the "Safely Remove Hardware" feature in your System Tray. You may end up with a corrupted iPod. If that happens, reconnect it to the computer, and in iTunes go to the iPod panel and click Restore. Then, only disconnect the iPod using the Eject button within iTunes.According to discussions in a Microsoft forum, and in news reports, it appears that Microsoft Windows Live OneCare thinks that Microsoft Outlook and Outlook Express data files may be malware, and quarantines them. Older versions of Outlook, including Outlook 97 and 2000, seem to be targets, as well as Outlook Express. See more horror stories here. It appears an outside attacker managed to add hostile code to WordPress 2.1.1 on the WordPress servers. While not everyone who installed WordPress 2.1.1 may be affected, WordPress is urging all its customers to upgrade to version 2.1.2 right away. You may also want to change passwords, too, if you use WordPress. See the full story .

Bruce Kratofil blogs on bugs and other things that can go wrong with your computer at The BugBlog, and writes about computers and economics at BJK Research

Congress Wins the Bug of the Month Award

Bruce Kratofil — Sat, 3 Mar 2007 23:31:44 EST

Every month the BugBlog picks its Bug of the Month, the most significant bug found in the past month. Sometimes the bug will be the one which could potentially cause the most damage; sometimes it will be the bug which affects the most users. And sometimes, it will be the bug that is just the most interesting bug. This bug will be selected either from the free Bug of the Day, or from the subscription-only BugBlog Plus. This month the Bug of the Month award goes to the U.S. Congress. While there may be ample reasons to criticize Congress, in this particular case it was for the relatively rapid change-over to new dates for Daylight Savings Time. That has meant that software manufacturers have had to hustle out fixes for software that tracks the "Spring Ahead, Fall Back" days. Some of the items in the BugBlog or BugBlog Plus this month that covered these patches include: Apple says that most of the Daylight Savings Time rule changes for the US and Canada are already in Mac OS X 10.4.5 and later. If you have questions about earlier versions of Mac OS X, go here.Apple says that if you are using Mac OS X 10.0.x through 10.2.8, you will need to adjust your computer's clock manually when Daylight Savings Time comes. These older versions of OS X apparently won't get a patch to adjust for the "spring ahead" dates. If you administer an IBM WebSphere Portal Mail and World Clock server, and you aren't sure yet what you need to do for the new Daylight Savings Time switchover, see this document.If you are running IBM Lotus Notes or Domino, you will need to make some adjustments due to the change in Daylight Savings Time implementation. Do nothing, and your appointments from March 12 through March 31 may be an hour late. See this page for links to fix information.Daylight Saving Time starts earlier this year. Any software, such as your operating system, that automatically does the "spring ahead, fall back" may not be able to handle the change. Microsoft has a February 2007 cumulative time zone update for Microsoft Windows that will make the adjustment. Follow the link to the patch for your version of Windows.Microsoft has a Time Zone Data Update Tool for Microsoft Office Outlook that will configure Outlook for the changes in Daylight Savings Time. Read the extensive discussion of this tool, as well as some Windows Registry edits that need to be made.If you apply the Time Zone Data Update Tool for Microsoft Office Outlook, it will not change any recurring calendar items in Outlook Web Access. Microsoft says that creators of those repeating items will have to manually update them.If you maintain any Java applications that may be affected by the change in Daylight Savings Time in the US and Canada, Sun Microsystems has a paper discussing some of the ramifications. Read it here.So for triggering these patches (and for making me revert to getting up in the morning in pitch darkness for another couple of weeks) the U.S. Congress wins their first Bug of the Month award.

Bruce Kratofil blogs on bugs and other things that can go wrong with your computer at The BugBlog, and writes about computers and economics at BJK Research

Episode 3 - Can a PC Guy Become a Mac Guy?

Bruce Kratofil — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 19:27:35 EST

I'm finally a Mac guy. It took an extra week, and because of the delay, I've used the computer for about two hours when I started this story. That means there's not a whole lot of being a Mac guy I can talk about yet.The reason for the delay - I wanted more RAM. Due to the way I planned to use the MacBook, I decided on 2 GB of RAM, but only the 80 GB hard drive. (Actually, I'm old enough that there is a certain amount of irony in typing "only 80 GB".) With a business trip rapidly approaching, I headed to the Apple Store last Wednesday, ready to spend. This time, I even dressed as the Mac guy -- cargo pants and a black turtleneck, my homage to Steve Jobs.That meant, of course, that I looked almost identical to the sales guys working in the store - except most of them had black t-shirts rather than turtlenecks. As I went up to the pristine, glass-topped table that held the MacBooks, one of the younger ones approached me. Since this whole process had already taken longer than I expected, I went straight to the point. "I'd like to buy a MacBook today -- white, 80 gig hard drive, and 2 gigs of RAM."At the last spec, his face fell. He explained that all the MacBooks they had came with 1 GB of RAM, configured as two 512 MB chips in the two available slots. The only way that the store could sell me the machine I wanted was by selling me the RAM in two additional 1 GB chips. I would have to take out, and keep, the RAM that came with the machine. In other words, I would have to buy 3 gigs of RAM in order to have 2. (As he said this, I began to think that Apple's small market share was no accident.) However, he went on, if I went back home and ordered online, I would get the machine configured the way I want, without the additional expense. He consulted a price list and told me that I would save over $300 by ordering online, and shipping would be free. While they are giving an estimate of one to three days before shipping, he said, it's probably going to be closer to one day. I guess Apple wants you to "Think Different" but "Order the Same".For that amount of savings, I gave up on instant gratification. Not wanting to make the trip to the store a total waste, I decided to ask a few technical questions about networking, firewalls, and the like. That's when I discovered this sales person was a Clueless Fanboy. He knew next to nothing about networking or security, and anyway, you don't need security because "No one targets the Mac."So I went home and ordered the MacBook online. It was Wednesday, around noon, when I hit the Submit button. I sprung for an extra $18 for two-day shipping. The confirmation email gave me a link to check my order status, and I began checking every four hours or so. It began to feel like waiting for Christmas, only you don't know what day Christmas would actually come.Some time between going to sleep on Friday night and waking up on Saturday morning, the email arrived to say my MacBook had left the factory, and the estimated delivery date would be Monday. There was a link to FedEx that would let me know exactly where my order was. I clicked, looked at the details, and saw that yes, my computer had just left the factory. And the factory was in Suzhou, China.China! Well, that made the estimated delivery date of Monday unrealistic. Then again, if the computer was already in the belly of a FedEx 747 winging its way across the Pacific, maybe they will be right. All it has to do is make it to Memphis by Sunday night ("Memphis By Sunday Night" almost sounds like it could be an Elvis song) so that it could be sorted onto the Cleveland plane, and maybe it could make it here by Monday.More checking on Saturday and Sunday showed no progress - my computer was still in Suzhou. Google Earth located Suzhou as a suburb of Shanghai, although it may be a suburb of about a million people. I pictured it in a truck, stuck in a massive Chinese traffic jam. Monday morning finally showed progress. FedEx showed that the MacBook had been in and out of Anchorage, Alaska overnight and the projected delivery date was now Wednesday by 10:30 am. Well, that would be a week after ordering, but I was going to be working from home all day Wednesday, so I would be there to sign for the shipment. By this time, I had settled on a name for the computer. We don't go for the commonplace here - the computer network does not go by Microsoft's suggested name of "My Network". Instead, the computer network is called Deadrock, and the computers, instead of being called Desktop1 or Laptop2, are all named after dead rock stars. The new MacBook was going to replace Morrison, and an even older laptop was called Janis. My current desktop computer is Otis, and my last desktop, now used by my daughter, is called Elvis. (I've already told her she can take Elvis to college next year.) There's also a Garcia, but he's temporarily offline. Since Apple the computer company and Apple the music company had recently kissed and made up, I figured the new computer should be called George.By Monday afternoon George was in Indianapolis, and two hours later he was bound for Cleveland. That meant he may be here a day early. And Tuesday I was scheduled to work at a client's. First thing Tuesday morning I checked FedEx, and George had left the Cleveland airport for the FedEx facility. By 7:30 he was on the truck and out for delivery by 10:30. I told the client I would be running a little late, and at 9:30 in the morning, dressed as a PC guy, I was on the front porch signing for George. I only had time to take the white Apple box (almost like the White Album) out of the packing case before I had to leave.When I got back later that afternoon, I unpacked George, plugged him into Deadrock and turned him on. After registration, he immediately called back home and downloaded seven updates, including the two security updates of 2007 and the Daylight Savings Time update. After one more reboot, I was finally ready to be a Mac guy. After an hour or two of exploring, I finally started looking for something that would let me write this story. Skipping the Microsoft Office trial for now (I didn't want my first real task on a MacBook to be done using Microsoft software), I found an application called TextEdit that was actually more like a mini word processor than a text editor, since it can check spelling and format text. So that's what I used to write this story - it even lets you save the file as HTML.To keep this story entirely on an "eating your own dogfood" level, I'll use Safari to log onto the Blogcritics site to upload it too. Beginning next week, start looking for a review of the MacBook itself, along with the apps that come with it. Actually, here's the first review - there doesn't seem to be a backspace key, only a delete key. And the delete key acts as a backspace. (Sigh) I guess I'm going to have to think different.

Bruce Kratofil blogs on bugs and other things that can go wrong with your computer at The BugBlog, and writes about computers and economics at BJK Research

Microsoft and Mozilla -- The BugBlog Report 2/26/07

Bruce Kratofil — Tue, 27 Feb 2007 16:41:07 EST

Here are some of the most significant bugs from the past week in the BugBlog:eEye Digital Security says they have found a bug in Microsoft Office Publisher 2007 that can be used by remote attackers. As a result, the attackers may be able to run their code on your computer, at the security level of the logged-in user. eEye sent the details on to Microsoft on 2/16. Keep an eye on their bulletin for updates. Until a fix is ready, be wary of Publisher files that you don't create yourself.Try to install Windows Vista, and you may get this error report: Error 0xC004F02A - The Software Licensing Service reported that the license is invalid. What Microsoft says might be the case, however, is that the BIOS for this computer is incompatible with Vista, or is outdated. That means you may need a BIOS update. Microsoft has the details here. Mozilla has released Firefox 2.0.0.2, along with Firefox 1.5.0.10 and SeaMonkey 1.0.8. This is a bugfix release that takes care of a number of bugs that could cause a crash and corrupt memory. Malicious websites may be able to take advantage of this bug to run hostile code. Get the updates either at their website or through the Firefox automatic update.

Bruce Kratofil blogs on bugs and other things that can go wrong with your computer at The BugBlog, and writes about computers and economics at BJK Research