A Geek With Guns

Since I was beating my head against the wall for several hours last night trying to figure this out I’m going to give a piece of advice to everybody working with OS X Lion Server in a virtual environment.

You can not set your virtual server to be an Open Directory Master unless there are at least two CPUs attached to the virtual machine. No errors indicating as such will be given, apparently you’re just supposed to know this intuitively. It’s a very strange bug and thankfully somebody figured it out.

I knew I’d be writing this article sooner or later but I was hoping it would be later… much later. Unless you’ve been living under one of the world’s largest rocks you’ve likely heard that Steve Jobs died last night. It’s strange to see the passing of a business man garner so much publicity but I believe that speaks for the impact he had on the world. Along with Steve Wozniak, Steve Jobs literally changed the world.

If it wasn’t for Steve Jobs I can honestly say I wouldn’t be where I am today. I say this not because Steve Jobs was a man of inspiration for me in my youth, but because the invention he helped nurture into fruition kicked off the personal computer revolution. People will rightfully point out that Steve Wozniak was the man who invented the first marketed personal computer but it would be an act of absolute ignorance to say Steve Jobs had no part in its success. Of the two I’m obviously closer to Wozniak, I’m an engineer who loves to invent and tinker but I have no clue how to market or sell. Jobs’s genius was in his ability to sell the product. Through my career I’ve worked with numerous sales people and I can say without any uncertainty that I truly understand why they’re as important as they are. Without Wozniak there would have been no personal computer as we know it today and without Jobs we would have never heard of the computer Wozniak built.

Whether you love or hate Apple you have to admit Jobs did something few can lay claim to; he changed the world. But the personal computer wasn’t the only thing Jobs could lay claim to, he also revolutionized the music market and the mobile device market. After his return to Apple Jobs took the failing computer and turned it into one of the most successful companies in the world. A major part of that turn around involved the iPod. Although the iPod wasn’t the first MP3 player on the market it was the one that moved MP3 players from a device known only by geeks to a device owned by a great number of people.

Another success under Jobs’s belt was the iPhone. When the first iPhone was released I was still on the Palm Treo 755p so I didn’t see what all the fuss was about. Yes the iPhone looked nice but it couldn’t run any applications and had limited functionality compared to my phone running ancient Palm OS. Like most things Apple introduced though, the iPhone slowly evolved into an incredibly powerful tool. When the news of Jobs’s death arrived one of my fellow computer science graduates called me to talk about it. During this conversation we got on the topic of all the things Jobs accomplished and I remember saying, “Hell, I’m talking on his legacy right now.”

Technology has become so pervasive in our lives that we rarely stop to think about all of the blood, sweat, and tears that went into getting our devices from the prototype stage to a completed product. When you sit down in front of your computer you barely ever think about the efforts of Alan Turning who came up with the theory modern computing is based on. When you pick up your phone you probably never stop to consider the great amount of effort it took to make the device function as well as it does.

Part of what made helped rocket Jobs into success was his attention to detail. If there was one thing Jobs brought to the table, above all others, it was his extreme attention to detail. This is pervasive in all of Apple’s current product lines. The MacBook Pro I’m typing this story on is a beautiful piece of technology that is not only insanely powerful but a work of art in of itself. My phone is a very powerful and complicated piece of machinery that remains simple to operate. This page you’re now reading was uploaded to your computer by a tiny Mac Mini sitting underneath my television.

Many who knew Jobs said he was arrogant and often very difficult to work for. I didn’t know the man personally so I can’t comment on his personal life but there is something to be said for a man who is seen as arrogant yet able to attract some of the greatest talent in the world to his employ. Jobs was a visionary who helped change computers from giant room-sized devices that only large businesses and laboratories had to small device that many households hold many of. He was never one to back down and always followed what he thought was right. To sum the man up it would be easier to say he had balls. It’s rare to find a man who is so incredibly talented that he changed the entire world. What’s even rarer is to find a man who changed the entire world in a positive way.

So long Steve Jobs and thanks for everything. Life on this planet would be far different had you and Wozniak not come together to revolutionize the world. We’ll miss you and I can honestly say the world is diminished without your presence.

There have been several stories floating around the web about a recent security flaw in OS X 10.7 that allows a user to change the password of another user without knowing that user’s current password. Although there is a security flaw related to passwords on OS X 10.7 it’s not nearly as severe as many websites are making it out to be.

An overview of the flaw can be found here. In summary the flaw is related to the Director Services command for reading and changing passwords. By entering the following command you can get the shadow hash of any user’s password:

dscl localhost -read /Search/Users/[user]

The value [user] should be replaced with the short name of a user who’s shadow hash you want to obtain. This is a rather serious flaw as there are scripts that can crack shadow has password (in fact one is available on the linked site for OS X 10.7). The other part of this flaw involves changing users’ passwords using the following command:

$ dscl localhost -passwd /Search/Users/[user]

Once again you replace the value of [user] with the system short name of the user whose password you want to change. What most articles I’ve seen regarding this flaw have claimed is that this command allows you to change another user’s password without knowing their current one. This is incorrect as the command requires you to enter the user’s current password before changing it. What this command does allow you to do is change the currently logged in user’s password without knowing their current one. Once again this is a rather serious security flaw but not nearly as severe as many are making it out to be.

I’m not trying to defend Apple here as they royally fucked up by allowing users to grab other users’ shadow hashes. They also fucked up be allowing somebody besides a directory administrator to change a currently logged in user’s password without entering their current one. But this flaw requires one major thing, access to a currently logged in user account. In most cases this means you must have physical access to the machine in which case all bets are off as far as security is concerned (it’s generally accepted that once an attacker has physical access to a target machine it’s game over).

The important question you should be asking right now is how can you defend against this? It’s simple, don’t leave you machine logged in when you’re not around. You should have a password set on your account (if you don’t you have no means of preventing unauthorized access anyways) and the account should be set to require a password immediately after locking the screen. When you walk away from you machine lock the screen (the keyboard shortcut on OS X is control + shift + eject). Remote access shouldn’t be a concern as it requires a remote user to know the user name and password of somebody on the system already (in which point this flaw matters not as they could change the password for the account they known the credential for).

Finally this flaw allows an unauthorized user to change the password of a currently logged in user without knowing that user’s current password but it does not allow that unauthorized user to change the currently logged in user’s keychain password. This means the password, certificates, and notes stored in the keychain will remain encrypted and out of reach unless the unauthorized user is able to crack the user’s shadow hash (in which case they have the password to unlock the user’s keychain).

If you need to give other users access to use your machine it would be smart to create a separate account for them and use the parental controls to prevent access to all applications they do not need (especially Terminal in this case). This isn’t bulletproof by any means but it’s an extra layer of security that should be done anyways.

A lot of Windows 8 news has been circulating as Microsoft finally unveiled the next version of their operating system. I will note that Windows 8 is looking pretty impressive and I need to set aside some time to play with the freely available developer preview. One piece of news that I found rather interesting through was the fact that the Metro browser won’t support plugins:

One of the first things a lot of folks will try after installing the developer preview of Windows 8 will be the IE10 browser—the most used tool in Windows. IE 10 in the preview is Platform Preview 3 of IE 10. You can read on the IE blog about the HTML 5 engine work we’re doing. This post is about a big change in Metro style IE, which is the plug-in free experience. In Windows 8, IE 10 is available as a Metro style app and as a desktop app. The desktop app continues to fully support all plug-ins and extensions.

Although this isn’t the end of plugins like Flash it is a death knell. Users who wish to use Flash will still be able to open a legacy Internet Explorer window but if you wish to use the new Metro interface you’ll be living the plugin-free lifestyle (it’s like the pants-free lifestyle but with browsers).

Honestly I want to congratulate Microsoft on this move because I can’t describe my hatred of Flash in words. As it sits right now I’ve been running Chrome as my primary browser for the last month (Firefox’s OS X 10.7 support is lacking to say the least) and Flash has been disabled for the last two of weeks. There are a few instances where I find myself opening Firefox to load something requiring Flash but overall you can get by on the web very easily without needing the Flash plugin. We can probably thank Apple for that as there was a strong move by many sites to eliminate their dependency on Flash when it was announced iOS wouldn’t be supporting it.

The less support browser developers give to Flash the faster web developers will completely dump it. I can’t wait until the entire web is completely Flash-free.

Apparently today is the day for resignations; first Steve Jobs resigns as Apple CEO and now CmdrTaco resigning from Slashdot:

After 14 years and over 15,000 stories posted, it’s finally time for me to say Good-Bye to Slashdot. I created this place with my best friends in a run down house while still in college. Since then it has grown to be read by more than a million people, and has served Billions and Billions of Pages (yes, in my head I hear the voice). During my tenure I have done my best to keep Slashdot firmly grounded in its origins, but now it’s time for someone else to come aboard and find the *future*.

I’ve been reading Slashdot almost daily for just under a decade. That’s quite a long span of time now that I think about it. Although I have some complaints about Slashdot I still enjoy going there to see the daily (or last week’s) tech news and the comments can still be rather entertaining.

So long CmdrTaco and thanks for all of your hard work.

Although I knew this was going to happen eventually I wasn’t expecting it so soon, Steve Jobs has officially resigned as the CEO of Apple. In typical Steve fashion his resignation letter was short and to the point:

I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.

I hereby resign as CEO of Apple. I would like to serve, if the Board sees fit, as Chairman of the Board, director and Apple employee.

As far as my successor goes, I strongly recommend that we execute our succession plan and name Tim Cook as CEO of Apple.
I believe Apple’s brightest and most innovative days are ahead of it. And I look forward to watching and contributing to its success in a new role.

I have made some of the best friends of my life at Apple, and I thank you all for the many years of being able to work alongside you.

Steve

Steve will retain his role as chairman of the board and Tim Cook has already been announced as the new CEO.

Although I’ve often referred to Steve as a prick and an asshole I still had a great deal of respect for his business ability. He basically came back to Apple when it was nearing bankruptcy and turned it into one of the highest valued companies on the planet. This turn around wasn’t due to a government bailout or legislation to “even the field” for Apple, it was done by offering products people wanted.

Sadly my money is on Steve’s resignation being due to his continually deteriorating health. Although I personally believe Steve Wozniak was the true genius behind the starting of Apple I can’t deny the value of Job’s business ability in jumpstarting the personal computer revolution. It’ll be a sad day when we begin to lose some of the iconic individuals who helped change computers from something only the most wealthy companies could afford into devices so many people now have multiple of. Here’s hoping that Steve stays with us for many years to come.

Many people have been stating concern over the future of the company as Apple nearly went bankrupt the last time Steve departed. This time is a bit different though as last time Steve was forced out by the Board of Directors due to his rivalry with John Sculley who had been hired for his success at marketing for Pepsi. Sculley didn’t have an engineering background or any idea how to manage Apple’s product line which is what lead to their near bankruptcy. Tim Cook on the other hand was the COO and has been personally groomed by Steve to be his successor. It would surprise me if Steve’s recommended man wouldn’t follow well in the steps of his predecessor.

It was almost five years ago that the former CEO of Palm said is horribly inaccurate remark about Apple potentially entering the smartphone market:

Responding to questions from New York Times correspondent John Markoff at a Churchill Club breakfast gathering Thursday morning, Colligan laughed off the idea that any company — including the wildly popular Apple Computer — could easily win customers in the finicky smart-phone sector.

“We’ve learned and struggled for a few years here figuring out how to make a decent phone,” he said. “PC guys are not going to just figure this out. They’re not going to just walk in.’”

On January 9, 2007 Apple unveiled the iPhone. Between then and now, just under four years, the iPhone jumped to dominate the smartphone market while Palm was purchased by Hewlett-Packard who ultimately killed Palm’s legacy. That’s quite the roller coaster ride considering the short span of time that’s transpired.

When I said things weren’t looking good for WebOS I didn’t think they were quite this bad. Hewlett-Packard (HP) announced that they will be discontinuing WebOS device operations:

In addition, HP reported that it plans to announce that it will discontinue operations for webOS devices, specifically the TouchPad and webOS phones. HP will continue to explore options to optimize the value of webOS software going forward.

And just like that Palm’s legacy is effectively dead. I guess there is always the possibility that HP will find somebody to license and utilize their fledgeling operating system but I’m doubtful. As it sits right now any manufacturer can use Android which is already incredibly popular, is being rapidly developed, and has a good application ecosystem. There seems little reason, in my opinion, for a manufacturer to license WebOS.

Although WebOS is an operating system with great potential the execution by those who’ve had it has been lackluster at best. When HP acquired Palm they continued executing the ill-fated plan Palm had started, which was to offer phones (and a tablets) nobody wanted. The Palm Pre and Palm Pre Plus performed poorly and the Palm Pre 2 fared even worse. Most companies would have decided to release a radically different device but HP instead decided to manufacture two new devices that were effectively Palm Pres; one in a smaller form factor and another in a larger form factor. The TouchPad was nothing more than an expensive iPad wannabe with buggy software and no available applications.

So long WebOS, you contained innumerable interesting ideas but interesting ideas alone are seldom enough to save a product from extinction.

Things keep looking more and more glum for Hewlett-Packard’s (HP) TouchPad. Best Buy has had such a hard time selling the poor devices that they’re apparently requesting that HP take them back:

According to one source who has seen internal HP reports, Best Buy has taken delivery of 270,000 TouchPads and has so far managed to sell only 25,000, or less than 10 percent of the units in its inventory.

[...]

Best Buy, sources tell us, is so unhappy that it has told HP it is unwilling to pay for all the TouchPads taking up expensive space in its stores and warehouses, and wants HP to take them back. HP, for its part, is pleading with Best Buy to be patient. We’re also told that a senior HP executive, possibly executive VP Todd Bradley, is slated to travel to Minneapolis soon to discuss the matter with Best Buy executives.

Sadly, I’m not surprised. WebOS seems destined to be the operating system that has many great features but is doomed to failure by poor hardware and lack of polish. I managed to handle a TouchPad some time back at Best Buy and I wasn’t impressed. HP is coming into the tablet game late meaning they need to find some way of persuading customers into buying their new tablet instead of the already established devices released by their competitors.

The TouchPad was originally released with the same price tag as the iPad, a move which I said was rather stupid. Apple is able to sell their iPad at that price because they already have market recognition (people want them) and their devices generally are very well built and polished to an almost mirror shine. Companies releasing Android tablets are able to sell their devices because many people dislike iOS and/or Apple causing them to look elsewhere. On top of that Android has a lot of great features that separate it from iOS (it’s open source nature being a big boon for those who like to tinker and hack). As Android is free manufacturers can also create some very reasonably priced devices.

The TouchPad on the other hand lacks polish in many regards. First the device feels cheaply built with everything being made of plastic. Second WebOS 3.0 is buggy and includes some rather glaring problems that any quality assurance team should have caught before release. Battery life on the TouchPad isn’t great, coming in at roughly half the battery life of the iPad. Another problem is WebOS isn’t open which doesn’t help attract attention to the hacker crowd who are always looking for an OS they can add functionality to and improve (although there is a strong hacker community around WebOS, it’s not nearly as strong as Android’s). Thus the only other factor HP could hope to compete on is price, which they failed miserably at by setting the price at the same level as the iPad.

HP flubbed the TouchPad in every way, shape, and form so it’s not surprising to see that it’s not selling well. I would go so far as to say the TouchPad is a great lesson for other manufacturers to learn from, how not to release a new device.

When I woke up this morning I wasn’t expecting to see a story about Google acquiring Motorola Mobility but that’s exactly what they’ve done:

Since its launch in November 2007, Android has not only dramatically increased consumer choice but also improved the entire mobile experience for users. Today, more than 150 million Android devices have been activated worldwide—with over 550,000 devices now lit up every day—through a network of about 39 manufacturers and 231 carriers in 123 countries. Given Android’s phenomenal success, we are always looking for new ways to supercharge the Android ecosystem. That is why I am so excited today to announce that we have agreed to acquire Motorola.

I think this was a very smart move on behalf of Google. Motorola has been producing some great phones as of late and Google really needs to start manufacturing their own line of mobile handsets. The biggest problem with Android in my opinion is carrier and handset manufacturer customizations to the operating system. These customizations make the user experience different from handset to handset but more importantly they require additional work when a new version of Android is released. In order to update their phones manufacturers have to waste time customizing the new version of Android to their likings. I would be more willing to purchase a handset made by Google as it would likely come installed with vanilla Android and updates would be released frequently.