While teaching a class on debugging your Macintosh, we ran into an issue on Elizabeth’s machine we could not fix! Activity Monitor refused to run, due to permissions.
We checked Activity Monitor and it had the proper permissions, except that the Finder claimed that there were two ‘everyone’ Access Control List Permissions. oh oh.
With a little googling I found the culprit: The pmtool in Activity Monitor.app/Contents/Resources/pmTool.
pmTool had lost it’s ’setuid’ permissions, which allows the tool to become super user in order to change permissions.
Upon more investigation and comparing to other machines, the entire Activity Monitor application is out of date.
The solution will be to delete Activity Monitor and install the 10.5.5 combo update to check for any other issues the machine may be having. After a full backup of course
Update:
Combo updates do not contain complete applications. If you delete an application such as Activity Monitor and run a combo updater, you’ll be a broken, partially installed application.
This makes sense; It was just not known how partial updates were. The solution, to cure this and any other gotchas, was to do an archive & install, then delete the previous system folder.
All applications now have proper permissions and function as expected.
Apple has released a trackpad firmware update. It does appear that the missed clicks issue has been resolved after several days of use.
While I find myself pinch/zooming email and web pages less, this remains an issue for when I am dragging/moving the mouse, typically a release the click but thumb still too close to the pad issue.
I find my thumb rests near or on the pad, as I have been used to doing for 7 years of using tibooks and later. What happens while I mouse around is:
Clicks are missed, because two fingers are down
The cursor stops moving, because the Mac is confused that I might be meaning to do a scroll
Safari text zooms in and out, as it implements pinch for page zoom, and if the thumb is anywhere near the pad, it registers as a second finger.
I’d like an option to dedicate a certain portion of the bottom of the pad as a button only.
Udpate:
Removing some input managers helped a little, I thought, but I guess not. I still get thumb/index locks into two finger gestures.
I have determined that the missed clicks are due to the fact that two fingers on the pad + click = right click, and the “missed” clicks are apps ignoring the right click. You can remove this for now by turning off “secondary clicks” in the two button section of the trackpad preferences.
I picked up a new MacBook Pro today! The thing is super fast and only has an issue with the new trackpad (not wholly unexpected, more later)
I have a USB drive attached to a airport extreme as a time machine volume. This has been working fine for months.
I tried to restore from the time machine, but after 90 minutes, the disk was still being checked. Left only with a beach ball, I turned off the laptop, disconnected the usb drive from the airport and connected it locally to the laptop.
The MacBook Pro cannot see a remote time machine when mounted locally. Crud.
I then logged in and tried to mount the sparse bundle. 4 hours later the sparse bundle is still being checked.
Seeing as this is my data, I don’t want to skip the check. Just know that the sparse bundle has hundreds of millions of files and this verification step is slow.
What I do not know is if a time capsule would have this same issue. I doubt it, as the time capsule should know something about time machine, but I cannot verify this.
Do any of you have a time capsule? If you were to initiate a restore, how long is it before you can choose what you want to restore via migration assistant?
1) McCain says we need to fix the system. I agree!
2) McCain says we need a President who will veto bills like this with pork in it. I agree!
3) McCain says “well I voted for this bill because of the economic disaster and had to ignore the pork, this time around”
so in other words:
1) McCain fails to pass his own test for President
2) Do as I say, not as I do.
in summary:
“You need a President that will do what I would not do”
Now Obama was no better. Both had to vote for this bill or it would have been a political disaster for whomever had voted for it.
However, McCain would have impressed me much more had he actually been a Maverick and showed some political cajones instead of passing the buck to Bush, whom he knows will sign this bill, even with NASCAR race track support in it.
More of the same. There will be no change in Washington.
Do facts, figures and policies matter to you? When electing someone do you want someone with answers, any answers, or a master in the non-answer?
Over the last few days, I’ve been pointing out examples of non-answers. I’ve had to because my jaw drops each and every time one of these pops up on the internet. The bit of information I found today is an article by an Alaskan Republican who has debated Gov. Palin over two dozen times.
“Andrew, I watch you at these debates with no notes, no papers, and yet when asked questions, you spout off facts, figures, and policies, and I’m amazed. But then I look out into the audience and I ask myself, ‘Does any of this really matter?’ ” Palin said.
Really. She questions whether any of you are interested in facts, figures or policies. Really.
When you watch the debate tonight, listen for answers. I know I will be.
Gov. Sarah Palin drew a blank when asked by Katie Couric to name any decisions by the United States Supreme Court that she disagreed with, beyond Roe v. Wade.
“Hmmm,” she said after a brief silence. “Well, let’s see. There’s, of course in the great history of America there have been rulings, that’s never going to be absolute consensus by every American. And there are those issues, again, like Roe v. Wade, where I believe are best held on a state level and addressed there. So you know, going through the history of America, there would be others but …”
In other words, Gov. Palin has no clue. No idea of one other judgement she might be against. Not a one.
Shouldn’t someone who is running for Vice President be versed in our court’s history?
I guess not when it comes to Gov. Palin. She is only versed in her religion, forcing her religious views onto others (hence the strong opposition to RvW, and insisting teaching abstinence only. We know how well that worked out) and not the great history of this country.
“There would be others but…” What? Any jackass can make that statement.
Gov. Palin’s pagentry skills have taught her well the art of political double speak.
How about if she just answers a question for a change?
Put your country first – Listen to what candidates have to say and if you still like Gov. Palin, write her and tell her to start answering questions. The rest of us are listening.
Any development endeavor is a risk. Will I choose the right feature sets? Will the design be appealing? Will I deliver it to market on time? How will I find customers? How will I secure my software? How will I do billing?
Every developer has these and a thousand other questions. Apple’s iPhone App store presents a wonderful marketplace for developers. Write your application and Apple takes care of getting eyeballs onto your application. They take care of the distribution. They take care of reviews management. They take care of billing. They only take 30% which I find very fair.
But then Apple also has the Big Stick of Rejection. Apple has wielded the BSOR several times. Once for a thousand dollar scam. Once for a application that didn’t follow the AT&T contractual obligations. Then Apple started getting unfair.
Apple rejected a comic book application due to content. Really? Censorship? What if the contents of my application do not appeal to some reviewer at Apple? Am I supposed to put the sweat, blood and tears into a product only after the fact to learn I’d been banned from the library?
Apple rejected an application because it duplicated functionality. Many applications duplicate functionality, but maybe Apple saw Podcaster as duplicating potentially revenue generating functionality. The reason does not matter, Apple told someone who had baked the pie that their cake was not welcome. Apple already had some Lemon Merengue.
The App Store is as much a library as it is a market place. There are free applications as well as for sale applications. There is content masked as applications simply because that is the delivery medium.
The most bothersome issue as a developer is trying to figure out how to limit the risks imposed by Apple.
Should I submit a slide-show application which merely shows some screenshots of what I’d like to do? I can submit applications without pushing them live to the store, so should I submit a plan before I develop?
If I do this, is my intellectual property at risk? Will Apple just become pissed off at me and reject everything I submit?
I have decided that if Apple is going to wield a Big Stick of Rejection, then Apple should institute a formal submission process for allowing developers to determine if developing an application is even worthwhile. Sure this will mean more work for Apple, much slower time to market for applications and likely fewer applications, especially the thousands of free applications.
Or Apple could just accept applications, put the stick away and separate the Apple business model from the App Store business model.
Let the market decide if the developer did something worthy of income. Then everyone wins.
