I was trying to set up Web Sharing (apache) to try out Coda, Panic’s pretty cool editor.

After enabling Web Sharing, I tried to access:

http://localhost/~USER/

(where USER is my user name), however I was greeted with “You don’t have permission to access this page”

I checked all of my permissions on /Users/USER/Sites/ etc, everything was fine.

Then I made a new user, which worked. I kept hunting around and finally found the problem.

When I used Migration Assistant to copy data from my old Mac to this one, Migration Assistant did not copy the apache configuration file. Oops. In order to fix this, you’ll need terminal and Text Edit.

1. Make a new user
2. Enable Web sharing (to force creation of a template configuration file)
3. Open /Applications/Utilties/Terminal.app
4. Enter ’sudo ls /etc/apache2/users/’ without the quotes and press RETURN. Enter your admin password to continue.
5. Note the <NEWUSER>.conf file listed there
6. Enter ’sudo cp /etc/apache2/users/<NEWUSER>.conf <USER>.conf’ replacing <NEWUSER> with the name of the new user you created, and <USER> with the name of the broken user. Press return.
7. Open Text Exit.app
8. Press CMD-O to open the choose file box
9. Press the / key to open a “go to folder” dialog
10. Type in ‘/etc/apache2/users’ without the quotes.
11. Open your <USER>.conf file
12. In the first line, change <Directory "/Users/<NEWUSER>/Sites/"> to <Directory "/Users/<USER>/Sites/">
13. Save your document
14. Turn Web Sharing off, then back on

Whew! Things should work now.

Time to file a bug with Apple.

In a somewhat ironic situation, Microsoft has done what Apple could not - Bring Netflix streaming to the Mac.

Netflix has had unlimited streaming since January, even for the 1 DVD a month plan.

Now, you can opt in into a beta for NetFlix.

The quality seems ok. The movie I sampled this morning, Grindhouse, was from a Starz cable tv print it seemed. Didn’t matter, that movie was meant to look bad

I noticed some tearing in scenes with horizontal pans. It is a bummer that even today on a brand new Mac Book Pro, we still have tearing issues.

The quality was perfectly acceptable however. The video frame was large. When silverlight detects that bandwidth is reduced, it will pause the movie and downgrade the video quality. I do not know if it automatically upgrades quality if the bandwidth improves.

A forced Time Machine backup during playback didn’t affect the movie whatsoever.

Apple should consider opening up QuickTime more, because now with Silverlight making a strong charge, Apple finally has a decent competitor in the field.

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.

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?

Pretty good read.

Read/Watch

Barry tipped me off about a couple of RSS feeds people are generating.

Since the iTunes App Store has removed lists of new applications, etc, these guys are generating the data for you.

Price Drops

148 apps gives us:

http://www.148apps.com/includes/itms_pricedrops.rss

This feed will tell you about apps whose prices have dropped.

Free Applications

Pinch Media gives us:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/RecentlyAddedFreeIphoneApplications-PinchMedia?format=xml

This feed will show you new applications that are free.

Use these feeds in Safari or the most excellent and free NetNewsWire

Ok so let’s recap:

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.

I’ll paraphrase from the debate I am watching now:

Palin: “Barack obama voted to raise taxes on the middle class”

Binden: “No, that is a lie, both McCain and Obama voted for that bill and it was not a tax increase”

Palin: “I’d like to still answer about taxes, but not in the way Joe or the moderator might want, I’d like to talk about when I was a mayor”

What. The. Hell.

Isn’t anyone else insulted?

Then she makes a joke about how the govt has been running things lately.

Meanwhile Biden is answering questions with facts, policies and confidence.

Meanwhile Palin smirks as if this is a game.

This is our country at stake.

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.

From What It’s Like To Debate Sarah Palin in the Christian Science Monitor.

Really, elect someone who can’t handle an interview with Katie Curic to Vice President? Really?

Watch CBS Videos Online

When asked directly and specifically, which newspapers or other news sources Gov. Palin reads, she could not name one. Not a one.

Watch

You can’t make this stuff up.

Regardless of what party you affiliate with, there is one person running who is not qualified for the position they seek - Gov. Sarah Palin.

She is running for the number two position in the country. One tragic event from being the President.

When interviewed by katie couric:

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.

From The NY Times in Oct/2007 Republican Debate, McCain talking about Mitt Romney:

“I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training.

I wasn’t a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn’t a governor for a short period of time. For 20-some years, including leading the largest squadron in the United States Navy, I led. I didn’t manage for profit, I led for patriotism.”

Well gee, Senator, it is nice that you picked someone with those exact qualifications to fill your shoes should something disastrous happen to you.

Good for the masses!

I guess EA’s long anticipated Spore has such an awful DRM that it has earned a 1 star Amazon rating in over 1226 reviews.

Read the reviews

I’m really happy to see this. I’m happy to pay for my games. I hate supporting DRM in games.

Tonight marked a great milestone in our guild, the Bloodhoof Brigands. We’re a casual raiding guild and our Group One Raiding group downed Netherspite for the first time!

This was a big step for us as while the fight is not hard from a gear standpoint, it does require a lot of team coordination. Two tanks have to swap beam duty, four others have to share blue beam duty, all the while we damage Netherspite, avoid her breath of doom™ and keep everyone healed and alive.

Well done Group One!

Here is a kill photo. I’m the orc on the far right

ok guys, want to know how fast Chrome is?

Google’s Javascript benchmarks

Higher numbers are better:

Firefox 3 Mac	177
Safari 3	199
Chrome on Windows XP under VMWARE	1779

So Chrome in Windows running on top of OS X is ten times faster.

Nice.

Google announced a new open-source browser, Chrome

The introduction is done as a comic - Well worth anyone’s read, and understandable too.

First off, I just switched to Firefox to try it out, and I am a Safari fan as well. The first “ah-ha!” with Chrome is that it is multi-processed. This means for each document, there is a separate OS process. A process is akin to an Application, but you (probably) won’t see a new dock icon for each document, aka Windows.

What this means is that when a web page locks up or slows down, the rest of your pages won’t. Even better, should one of the web pages cause the “browser” to crash, you won’t lose every page, only the offending one!

I know people at PMUG have heard me complain about this for years.

I hear Chrome is Windows only at the moment, but also that it is a based on WebKit (Safari’s engine). Interesting

I’m still reading the comic - you should too.

As my friends know, I am a big Safari fan. Safari 3 is fine and 4 promises even faster performance.

I like that Safari keeps all of my web passwords in the keychain, and those keychains and bookmarks can be synced by Mobile Me.

However, the bookmark syncing sometimes fails, and Mobile Me costs $99 a year.

Firefox is massively popular and with version 3 now looks more like a Mac OS X application.

1passwd

However it still stores passwords in it’s own format.

Enter 1passwd. This $35 gem is something every Mac user should own.

1Passwd does the following things for you:

• Generates secure passwords
• Saves those passwords in your keychain (either your default or a specified keychain)
• Saves off identities (like who you are) for easy form filling (more accurate than saving forms)
• Saves off credit card info (also encrypted in the keychain)
• Remembers forms

Ok that is fine, but I have that already, you might thing. But check this out:

• 1Passwd works in Safari
• 1Passwd works in Firefox
• 1Passwd syncs and works with your iPhone (via their own Webkit browser)

Hold the presses here! I can use safari, generate a password, store the login form, then switch to Firefox and use the same forms and passwords there!

This one fantastic little application has allowed me to finally try out Firefox.

Initial Impressions

Firefox does seem very fast and stable. I’ve had one crash and the crash reporter popped up to let me give more data about what happened. I believe it was a 1passwd issue, but in 4 days of browsing that is not bad.

I kept trying to press the space bar to pop up menus in forms, but you have to use control-down arrow. Not a big deal.

Extensions

Firefox supports some awesome extensions, which don’t need to be hacked in like with Safari. Adblock is awesome, as is Firebug for developers.

Bookmarks

For bookmark syncing, there is a free site called Foxmarks. Foxmarks will sync your bookmarks between all of your firefox browsers. You do have to trust them with your bookmarks, but I never bookmark anything serious anyway. Install the Foxmarks extension, create an account, and off you go. The syncing is very fast, unlike Mobile Me syncing.

The Firefox 3 bookmark editor is much nicer than it was in previous versions. I think it is actually usable.

Also nice are the smart bookmarks, which track things such as your most visited sites, or recently bookmarked.

You can also add tags to Firefox bookmarks, then make smart bookmark folder or search on those tags. Why hasn’t Apple done this? This smacks of Spotlight searching.

Zooming

Hold down the control key and mouse wheel scroll, the web page will zoom in and out. I wonder if I can disable this, because I use control as my key for Ventrilo voice chat, and while chatting and scrolling pages, Firefox zooms. Oops.

Themes

Firefox has themes which allows you to choose how the browser controls look. I don’t find myself using this but obviously many people love it!

Summary

Regardless of which browser you use, check out 1passwd. It will help you generate much more secure passwords for every site you visit. They even have a service to back up your passwords, if you trust them.

Give Firefox + Foxmarks a try. You might like what you see.