Firewall not enabled by default in Mac OS X Leopard
August 30th, 2008Whoa. I have been helping a friend of mine set up her new Mac laptop, so another one of my friends, as self-professed Mac enthusiast, gave me his list of what he does to set up a fresh Mac. I skimmed over it, and relished this glaring block of text:
TURN THE FIREWALL ON. It’s in the Security pane. Turn it on, and leave it that way. That it ships turned off is just arrogant and stupid.
If you don’t know, firewalls are one of the most basic forms of security, and for it to be OFF by default is just ridiculous! I even had to confirm with the author of this list, and do research to confirm that this is the case, because it is simply crazy for the firewall to be off by default. (Note: the firewall is on my default in both Windows XP and Vista.) This really annoys me. If the firewall was off by default on Windows and on by default in OS X people on the Internet would throw shit. This is clearly a double-standard in how people judge Windows and OS X.
Clearly opinion: Being an avid Windows user myself, it has been a very enlightening learning experience working with this Mac. My conclusions so far have been that things that are important to me are simply easier in Windows and/or that Windows has more complete implementations of features. But more on that in later posts.
View any video format in Windows Media Player
August 28th, 2008I used to use the Combined Community Codec Pack to get a support for a host of codecs on my Windows XP and Windows Vista (32-bit) machines. It seems that development of the pack has fallen behind, and I have noticed that it does not work as well in Vista x64. After some research I cam across the Vista Codec Pack, which supports just about every codec, including MOV (QuickTime). VLC is a good alternative, if you don’t mind (or prefer) a bare-bones media player, but I’m glad to have support for everything that I would want to view right in Windows Media Player.
People Don’t Seem to Like Windows Vista
August 27th, 2008One of my professors gave an off-handed remark about how Vista works sometimes, and sometimes not. He also had a weird problem with his Windows XP computer during class. There was also another occurrence where a professor didn’t know how to change the display resolution of his Vista-based Tablet PC, and proceeded to take a poll of who "decided" to stick with XP. (I put "decided" in quotation marks, because the default operating system on the default Tablet PC made available to Virginia Tech engineers has Windows XP on it.) Bashing Vista seems to be a common occurrence as well. That made me think of this flow chart, which I created. 
All in good fun, people…
I hit the VT Upload Cap!
August 24th, 2008Virginia Tech has an upload cap of 650MB per day. If you exceed the limit, you get slower internet for a day. I’m posting the email, because it is the most-informative source of information about VT’s network policy that I have found. (Bits that I find particularly useful to know will be in bold, and information that I don’t want publicized will be replaced with something in brackets.)
The following notice is addressed to
[my name, my roommate's name, our dorm, and room number]
A computer in your room using IP address 198.82.96.147 and connected to the Ethernet outlet identified as [our room number]TP02B has sent more than 650MB of information into the network during the past 24 hours. As a result, the network capacity available to this computer has been restricted. To determine if this is your IP address, connect to http://www.software.ais.vt.edu/yourip/yourip.php while connected to the outlet in your room.
Outbound traffic from your (or your roommate’s) computer must remain below 650MB for a 24-hour period for these limits to be reduced or removed.
This action has been taken since network services are a shared resource, critical to the university’s mission. In instances where individuals consume an excessive amount of network resources, they are in conflict with Virginia Tech’s Acceptable Use Guidelines. More information is available at: http://www.cns.vt.edu/html/data/bandwidth.html.
The most common reason for this occurrence is computers serving peer-to-peer (p2p) or file-sharing applications, such as Morpheus, KaZaA, Gnutella or Limewire. In addition to generating a large volume of network traffic, these programs potentially put you in the position of illegally distributing copyrighted music, movies or software. For instructions on deleting a program of this type, please read Virginia Tech 4Help Knowledge Base article http://www.answers.vt.edu/ask4help/thirdparty/vtkb1386.htm
The second most common reason is your computer has been infected with a virus or trojan. Follow all 4 steps under the "CLEAN IT UP" section at http://antivirus.vt.edu to clean up your computer.
The next most common reasons are on-line game playing and video/audio chatting.
You may engage in any legal activity but your connection speed will be limited if more than 650MB of information a day is uploaded.
REMEMBER, unauthorized sharing of copyrighted files MUST BE immediately eliminated.
If you require technical assistance with removing the file-sharing client or removing a virus, it is STRONGLY RECOMMENDED that you contact the Virginia Tech Computing Consultants at 4Help (540/231-4357 or http://4help.vt.edu/).
It is still unclear to me if the upload limit is per port (and thus per person), or per room. The evidence suggests that the limit is per room.
Why I don’t mind those stupid Facebook Applications
August 23rd, 2008There are many great useful and fun Facebook applications. Unfortunately, there are magnitudes more useless, annoying ones. It also seems that the more useless the app, the more aggressively it tries to get users to invite their friends to use it. Take my invite queue for example:
