Sugar on a Stick

Sugar? It's a learning platform that reinvents how computers are used for education for needy kids around the world. David Passell got involved in December 2007. He invested in a program called "Give One, Get One. " Hatched by MIT Guru, Nicholas Negroponte, the goal was to mass produce a small computer called the XO for $100.00 and distribute to classrooms.

Kids in Peru are pictured here using the computer, thanks to "Sugar," the free and open source software from OLPC (One Laptop Per Child).


They welcome donation of used USB sticks. Here you can read about Sugar Labs. Originally to run on almost any PC, it is now packaged as part of most major GNU/Linux distributions and is compatible with recent Macs.

FLOSS Manuals are responsible for the graphic design, editing, etc. More about OLPC is here. Activities the developers are working on are listed on this site. They welcome contributions, volunteers for designing, developing, fixing bugs, etc. Here's more.
David has actively participated in writing of FLOSS Manuals, and updating his own XOs. (Here it gets complicated with Python, Opera browser vs. Firefox, and tax deductible info.) For a summary of the project see this Wired Magazine article (6-19-09).
Want to know more? Corner David at a PMUG meeting; there's a lot more to tell.

A Serious Scam

Scammers did some serious stuff, running ads on the website of The New York Times. Jim Hamm sends us this link, and comments, "The scammers are getting ever more creative in getting into your computer. This article doesn't mention whether it affects only PCs or also Macs." Scroll down the page to read comments on this problem and how it has affected some users.

A Google search just now turns up this info specifically about Macs. Brian Krebs writes "Patches for Macs, and Advice for Mac Users." He advises, "In short, if you're a Mac user and you see one of these rogue anti-virus pop-ups, remain calm, close out your browser, and restart it. If the attacking site manages to download a '.exe' file to your Mac, just toss it in the trash." Read his whole article from The Washington Post here.
Now we have additional input from Jim Hamm. In tidbits.com see the article, "New York Times Web Site Compromised: How to Stay Safe." Then go to this link for "Should Mac Users Run Antivirus Software."
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Pictures Show How

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Here's a mind-boggling (to me) site recommended by David Passell. He writes this "might be of interest to anyone that wants to read. write, publish, edit, or comment on free-source software manuals. See the site for Floss Manuals Foundation of the Netherlands here.

"Those who are interested in Video might like to peruse the Theora Cookbook. I haven't done it thoroughly yet; not that much time on my hands. I am registered with them (as you or anyone else with something to offer can. I got into it through wanting to find out more about my One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) XO computers. They do much of the documentation (a lot is incomplete) on it."

David closes with, "I might warn you that the site, links, and such seem rather complex. Once you get registered though it kind of falls into place."

Elaine's comment: "I scrolled through, enjoyed all the photos , but this photo from the Floss Manuals site is what I liked best!"

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Downgrading from Snow Leopard?

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John Carter has been plagued with several problems with Snow Leopard. He says, "The interesting part is that the problems are isolated to my login and the problems did not show up in another login. However, in the process of trying to resolve the problems with my login, my iMac no longer allows me to login as any user. These problems are quite unique to my computer and may not happen to anyone else."

As a result, John needs to downgrade his computer back to Leopard and then restore all his applications and data from his Time Machine backup to the date prior to upgrading to Snow Leopard.

He warns, "If you are not keeping frequent backups of your computer, you may not be so lucky as to restore to a known good snapshot."

Need a New Boot Disk?

"If your boot disk for your Mac ever gets damaged or lost and you need to replace it, Apple will send you an exact replacement for your Mac for a nominal cost," John Carter reports. "If you have an active Apple Care contract, the cost will be $16.00 plus tax. It may cost more if you don't have an active Apple Care contract. They will ship the new disk overnight, so if you order before 4 PM California time you'll get it the next morning. Call the Apple technical support for details if you need this service.

"Keep in mind that should you need to replace your original boot disk, only an exact replacement is guaranteed to work. The local Apple dealer may be able to create something that might work, but it is not something you want to depend on and only Apple can prepare an exact replacement disk."

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How Do YOU Backup?

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"Hi all," begins Jim Hamm. "Here is an article, from Mac Tips and Tricks Newsletter, on creating a bootable backup for your Mac. We've had some other backup comments recently, and I'm interested in feedback on this process from anyone that would want to comment on a couple of questions I have:

1) do you have a bootable backup for your Mac?
2) did you purchase a separate external hard drive to do this on?
3) do you use Carbon Copy Cloner or some other program to do this?
4) how important do you consider doing this?

I've been using a Mac for 2 1/2 years or so, and haven't done this yet. I guess I'm at risk of losing all my bookmarks, addresses, RSS feeds, third-party programs, etc., if I should have a hard drive failure. A real pain--impossible?--to resurrect all this. I'm torn, in my mind, on whether to go to the expense of doing this or not. Comments appreciated."

Click to drop Jim a line here.
First up to reply is Art Gorski. He writes, "Hi, Jim.
1) I create one right before installing a major OS update.
2) Yes, but I've only got one drive and 3 Macs.
3) I used CCC years ago, but SuperDuper is free (for this purpose) and slicker.
4) I have both Chronosync backups and Time Machine backups on my network ReadyNAS, although not the System and not bootable. That's close enough for me."

Tracking Down the Trouble-Maker

With his latest investigation to find what was taking a large portion of CPU time, David Passell gives us his findings here. "I located it thanks to the Activity Report. It appears to be related to the iAntiVirus freebee. The actual process running is iAVD and it "belongs to root".

David concludes, "When I clicked on it and Quit Processor I received a request to enter my administrator password. After I did that iavd quit and the processor usage went back to a few percent. I think, if possible, I will delete iAntivirus.

Any other suggestions?"
(Click on image to enlarge the view.)

iStat Proves to be Useful

"After reading some of Jim Hamm's comments on iStat I located the widget and added it to my dashboard." David Passell continues, "Yesterday I ran it after noticing the fan on my Mini seemed to be working rather hard. I found that something, I still don't know what, was continuously consuming 95% of processor time. Both processors were being involved. I decided I had better give the machine a rest and shut it down for the night. This morning when I started the Mini I looked at iStat and found more reasonable numbers." Above is the first screen shot. (Double click on it to enlarge the view.)

"As I write this email here is a screen shot of current usage.
I noticed earlier that when the Time Machine backup was running, usage went up to 47%. I just thought it interesting to note and it may have saved my computer to shut it down when it was whirring away.

"Now I keep the CPU Monitor on the screen out of the way so I can spot anything like happened yesterday. The Mini is now nearly silent, as usual." David adds, "Any ideas, anyone?"

Now, Art Gorski has some suggestions: "I've used iStat for years now, and it's occasionally useful as a Dashboard Widget, but can be unnecessarily distracting. Usually, the first sign of a runaway process will be the cooling fans spooling up. iStat won't tell you anything useful, it just confirms what's going on.

"Restarting the computer is unnecessary. Just launch Activity Monitor (in your /Applications/Utilities folder), select all processes from the pull-down menu, and then click on the column header to sort by CPU usage. This will tell you what application is the culprit. If it's not a critical application, use Activity Monitor to quit or force quit the offending process."

Cocoa-Java on Snow Leopard

Applications relying on Cocoa-Java won't work on Snow Leopard. John Carter finds out why. Without warning Apple has completely removed these components from Snow Leopard. He sends us this website from a developer, Fabien Conus, who says, "Since developing software applications is a hobby . . . I cannot make any promise for a new release date, but I will do my best." The applications in question are CocoaBooklet, PDFLab, and Smallimage. We hope these conditions will soon be addressed by Apple, and we hope such creative programmers will hang in!

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Using Those Function Keys

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Jim Hamm starts out with, "I was 'messing' (technical term) around with Snow Leopard and came across a feature that might be helpful. Say you've got four windows open (or any number, for that matter) and you click Function 9 (fn+9) on your laptop, to open all windows in a miniature version. Put your cursor on any minimized window, then tap the spacebar. That window will pop open to full size. Then start moving your mouse and cursor around. Each small window will pop open in full size. Keep moving your mouse around and around and each window will pop open. When you find the one you want, click it. It will stabilize then in a normal window. You can almost make yourself dizzy as you mouse the cursor around the screen and the windows pop open."

He says on Zee's iMac the key combination in fn + F8.
Trying to do this myself turns up a different scenario. Different Macs have different Function keys. On his G4 PowerBook running Mac 10.5.8 Don's favorite is F12 to bring up his Widgets. On my MacBookPro running Snow Leopard, it's F4 for Widgets, and F3 for that nifty feature Jim describes to play Hide and Peek with your open pages. Yes, it's fun!
Now for a summary of Function Keys, a list of key combinations, and 20+ links to additional info on modifier keys assignments go to this Apple Support page. No need to memorize the whole thing, just click on the tiny Plus sign on the left of the page's address at the top. Click to add it to your Safari Bookmarks. Function keys are very useful.
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What's Going On Inside Your Mac?

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Jim Hamm files this report today, "If you've installed Snow Leopard, Menu Meter (iStat Menus) is now compatible with this new OS. The new version has been completely revised, and is much better. It sits in the menu bar, and you can click on one of the icons to get a variety of information about your Mac. You can also customize which icons you want to show in the menu bar: open System Preferences, then click iStat Menus. Drag the items from the 'Available Box' into the 'Active Box.' I use the app occasionally just to see what's going on in my Mac, and which app is consuming so much memory. Usually it's Safari. Closing and reopening Safari gets the memory usage back to a much smaller number. If you've not tried this app, it might be worth a look. It also works with Leopard, as well (OS X 10.5 or higher)."

The iStat Nano is a widget: read about it here. The iStat Pro is described on this page. Which do you use?

Watch Out for This

"Tagged.com promises photos but delivers headaches," warns John Carter. "Have you been 'Tagged' lately? Don’t become a victim of this annoying e-mail ploy that automatically signs you up for an expensive voicemail service.

"A radio and TV personality and his wife recently had lunch with another show host and his significant other. After the meal, the first couple received an e-mail from Tagged that said his friend had some pictures available online. They naturally assumed the pictures were taken during their meal together and wanted to see them.

"The catch was that they had to register at Tagged.com in order to view the supposed pictures, according to the e-mail. Once they completed the registration, they received another e-mail saying they had been signed up for a voicemail service. The cost? $14.95/month automatically billed to their home phone number! They immediately called to cancel the service and got a real runaround before they were able to do so.

"Several days later, they received an e-mail from his friend explaining that Tagged is a virus-like program that goes through your address book and falsely blasts out notifications about photos online.

"Snopes.com has a lengthy explanation about the dangers of Tagged. Don't fall for it if you receive an e-mail asking you to register for Tagged. Be sure to let the sender know you received the message, and then direct them to read the Snopes briefing." You can also see what wikipedia reveals about them.

Two More Problems

Another problem, or as we call it, a challenge! John Carter steps up with some enlightenment. "Another program that doesn't work is Smallimage2. It will not launch in Snow Leopard. So if you need to resize an image or lower the compression of a JPG file, use Preview. There are two kinds of Preview applications: the one that comes with the OS and the one that comes with PathFinder. Either one gets the same results. What you don't get is the ability to batch process a bunch of images unless you know how to write a script.

"If anyone knows of an application that will batch process images to resize them and that works in Snow Leopard, please post."

Then, in another email John tells us, "I just updated to OpenOffice 3.1.1. It has a major problem in Snow Leopard (reported by me). In Finder or PathFinder, right click on a document (any type, it seems) and open with OpenOffice. Crash!

"However, if I first launch OpenOffice and then start a blank text document, then close it without making any entries, I can then open any type document in OpenOffice. There is no other way to open an existing document with OpenOffice that I know of. This problem does not exist with NeoOffice!"

Have You Seen the PMUG Library?

Let's take a look at how to make a PMUG book checkout. Roger Lakner has added about 15 books this year, and updates the website. Take a look and consider the possibilities!

See something you’d like to read? Contact Randy Calvert, PMUG librarian and he’ll bring the book to the next meeting, or make other arrangements for you to borrow it. Do you know of a book not listed that you’d like PMUG to buy? Contact Roger Lakner, Ambassador.

Some Difficulties with Snow Leopard

"After upgrading to Snow Leopard, on many occasions, several programs have crashed during a save operation," so begins a report just received from John Carter. He goes on, "The save does not complete and any changes not already saved are lost. The programs in question are: NeoOffice, GraphicConverter, and Screenflick. All programs are the latest version available.

"The only thing that seems to help is to do frequent saves on small changes and not wait to save at the end of all changes/additions. Screenfick is the one program that does not lose the intermediate file during a save operation, but may require several attempts to save before one of them is successful.

"If you have a Canon MP830 printer and you want to do a scan using MP Navigator, forget it. It never seems to finish 'Processing calibration data from a scanner.' But if you scan the document from the front panel of the MP830 using the platen, it works just fine even though it takes a minute or two to warm up the scanner. The application that launches to grab the files from the printer is Image Capture. I have been unable to use the printer's ADF from either the front panel or from MP Navigator.

"Image Capture crashed once setting up for a scan operation (when clicking on the 'Show Details' button). Image Capture also seems to hang occasionally when changing resolution between scans and starting a new scan (message: Scanner is warming up). 'Force Quit' does not show the application as not responding, and pressing 'Cancel' during this time does not abort the process. Using 'Force Quit' caused the printer to hang and had to be powered off only by pulling the plug."

Trying Other Browsers

Do you use other browsers besides Safari? David Passell briefly shares some experience here. "I have been trying other browsers lately: Firefox 3 is now out; I don't like it too well because of the way 'manage bookmarks' is presented. Can't see them all at the same time so I can eliminate duplications (which in my case are many). See it here.

"Opera 10 so far is very good in that regard. See it here. It also has the total visibility of menu bar bookmarks and open tabs. Also, in addition to giving me a way to set up an Operamail.com address, Opera also picks up all mail from my ISP server and displays it as a menu item. It is a great all-in-one browser (a little like the old Netscape). I guess those long days and nights in Norway give the developers lots of time."

Earlier, David was writing about Cookies and Security Preferences. Now he comments, "The largest number of Tracking Cookies came when I first ran Safari.Before that I hadn't had any for a long time. If you eliminate the cookies as you describe it gets them all from Safari, but if you have other browsers they may be waiting if you use them."

Does It Work Now?

David Passell writes, "I have been using MacScan, the possible subject of a future meeting, for over a year and it has detected and removed 50 tracking cookies. Here are the latest for August 31, and September 4. (Double click on images to enlarge them.)

"Tracking Cookies are considered harmless as far as security is concerned, but they may spawn a junk E-mail. Some of you fearless pioneers using Snow Leopard might try downloading the trial version, see if it finds anything, and report back. Here is their address and more info. MacScan - Mac OS X Anti-Spyware Security and Privacy Protection ...
Isolates, detects and removes spyware, keystroke loggers, and trojan horses for Mac OS and Mac OS X."