Monthly Archives: October 2006

What happens when technology fails?

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The other day when I was in Los Gatos for work, I stayed in a nice hotel that had electronic locks on all the rooms with what looked like no manual bypass. I went back to my room one of the days I was there and my key didn’t work. I went to the front desk and asked to get a new key; the system wasn’t working to generate a new key, so I had to be let in the room by the front desk clerk. He used an electronic master key. What would have happened if the master key didn’t work? Would all the rooms unlock (I’d hope not)? How would people get in? Later when I went to get a new key, the system was working again, but I wonder how my card key got deactivated. Hmmm.

What’s that growing out of your ear?

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More and more I see people with Bluetooth headsets hanging on their ears when they’re walking around and even when they’re eating. I think that this is extremely rude and completely unnecessary. However, people feel the need to talk on the phone wherever they happen to be. Bluetooth headsets are fine for the car and when you need to be handsfree, but it doesn’t have to be a permanent fixture on your ear.

OS X server – deceptively simple

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The more I play with OS X server, the more I realize how much Apple tried to slap a GUI on open source stuff and was only moderately successful. Take for instance the WebDAV support. I can give access to a realm to various users and various groups. In my case, users have multiple short names, such as scottgruby and sgruby (I didn’t set this server up). If I give my user access to a DAV realm by dragging it over, OS X server only gives access to the first short name assigned to the user and then even lets me edit the name which makes no sense because if I change the name, I no longer have access to it. I had a user have trouble with this, because she was using the second short name and not the first. Furthermore, OS X server does weird things with the DAV permissions such that even if you have read only access to various parts of a DAV volume, you can’t browse it with a DAV client, i.e. the Finder or Transmit. Apple says this isn’t a bug, but I disagree. Clearly they setup the Apache access permissions incorrectly making it a pain for users to access parts of a DAV volume. So unlike an AFP volume where a user can mount the top level and navigate to directories that he/she has permissions to view, the DAV implementation requires users to mount the particular folder they want access.

I’m not a huge fan of AFP as it doesn’t appear to be the most efficient protocol, allows clients to hang around (using process load) and by default, isn’t secure. You can do AFP over SSH, but you still have to turn on AFP and explicitly tell it to use SSH.

There are some aspects of OS X server that are nice such as turning on the firewall and controlling access, but in my short time using it, I’ve run into a number of bugs (that I need to report) that I’m sure won’t get fixed.

When isn’t a gallon sized bag better than a quart sized bag?

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That’s really a stupid question, but it has an answer and that is at the airport. With the new TSA regulations, all gels and liquids (3 oz or less mind you, but they didn’t say there was a limit, so go hog wild and split your stuff up into a bunch of little containers) must be in a clear plastic Ziploc type bag. I put my stuff in a gallon sized bag (that’s all we had at home) and when I got to the airport, I had to transfer my stuff to a quart sized bag they provided. Why? I have no idea. I put the bag in the bin with my shoes to go through X-Ray; if it was a gallon sized bag, would it have made a difference? Absolutely not, but it is pointless to argue with the TSA. Mind you the X-Ray screeners didn’t care about the 10 patch cables I had in my bag, the digital camera, computer, portable scanner, PSP, iPod, etc., but they do care that my 2 oz container of hand sanitizer was in a quart sized bag.