Quick hint: if you’re having trouble getting wireless backups on Time Machine and an Airport Extreme working, then try this - I had the same problem and fixed it for me. Plug the USB drive in to your Mac and using disk utility, veryify and repair the disk not the actual partition. Alternatively, remove all existing partitions from your drive, and then recreate the necessary partitions for your backup scenario. It seems that if you only verify / repair the partitions then the Airport Extreme won’t necessarily mount the drive properly (meaning you can’t use it as an Airdisk, and you can’t use it with Time Machine.)
No guarantee this will work for you and also note: wireless backups create sparsebundles (as opposed to real actual files) so it’s more of a headache to restore from a backup. But wireless backups are far less of a headache than having to periodically plug my Macbook Pro in to the drive, so for me, it’s worth it.
You may find you get the following problem when trying to stream music to multiple speakers. Streaming to either local computer OR your airport express works, but when you try to stream both, you get an error message that looks like this:
“An error occurred while connecting to the remote speaker ’speaker_name’. An unknown error occurred (-3256).”
This is most likely caused by a firewall issue. If you’re running Tiger, then there’s a fix here. If, however, you’re running Leopard, then it’s a little different:
1. Open System Preferences
2. Click Security
3. Click Firewall
4. Either:
a. “Allow all incoming connections” - but I don’t recommend this, so
b. “Set access for specific services and applications”. Click the + symbol, then find iTunes in your Applications folder. Then set its permission to Allow incoming connections.
You should now be able to stream to multiple sets of speakers. Whilst you’re playing about in the firewall settings, click Advanced and enable the stealth mode, which seems to be off by default. You should also check that logging is enabled, as it’s possible that the change to your firewall settings will interfere with other applications you have installed.
Are you safe? A virulent and effective new “virus” is sweeping the Internet that attempts to exploit vulnerabilities on unsuspecting web users visiting legitimate websites. It’s proving effective, since the attack vector is SQL injection on genuine, reputable websites that do not properly enforce good security practices, and so, many users would not reasonably expect to get a problem from such sites. It attempts to exploit 8 known vulnerabilities in Windows software, although these vulnerabilities have now been closed if you have used Windows Update recently. High profile victims include the USA’s Department of Homeland Security and parts of the UK’s Civil Service website. A Google search for the attack code returns over 100,000 results.
Webmasters should check through their website (using an eg ’site:’ search on Google) for the existence of the attack code, which has proven most successful on websites running IIS and MS SQL Server, whilst ensuring that all user-submitted content is properly sanitised to limit the risk of being susceptible to SQL Injection.
More info here.
I recently posted a rather flippant attack (for want of a better word) about Yahoo! Answers. In it, I linked to a chap named Doug who is one of the more prolific answerers. I accused him of taking himself a little too seriously, given his rather staggering point count. Well, bless his li’l cotton socks, within a couple of hours of posting it (must have been a slow work day), he responded with a rather scathing full-scale rebuttal. Now, I’m not one to make random “enemies” for no apparent reason, but the only purpose it serves is to validate my original point.
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OMG lOlz, like its totaly teh suxx0r. Ahem. Sorry. How bad is Yahoo! Answers? I found myself on the site a few days ago after a Google search led me there and then ended up answering a few questions. It took me back to my Sitepoint Forums days, where I cut my teeth as a web designer. I spent nearly two years at SPF, where over time I learnt the art of question answering in a community atmosphere. The forums at Sitepoint were a remarkable place, as an oft heavy-handed approach to moderation generally ensured that the quality of answers stayed high. Not to mention that it was frequented by recognised experts in a variety of fields. Over the time, I moved up through the ranks to one of the senior moderators and although I spent far too much time there, and at the detriment of most parts of the rest of my life, it was a good time.
Enter Yahoo! Answers and a (not such a-)shock reminder that, frankly, the web is a dank, musty place, where information is freely available, but there are zero guarantees that the information is accurate or correct in any way, shape or form. (Wikipedia being a shining example.) Y!A is far worse than the Wiki, however.
The theory with Y!A is anyone can ask a question and anyone can answer the question. There is a category for moreorless any question you may want to ask and naturally I gravitated towards the Computers and Internet section.
My gripe is twofold and is directed 1) At the question askers, and 2), at the question answerers.
If you need your home computer to be fixed don’t go to PC World’s repair centre, a new report has warned.
Diagnosis of the faults at PC World ranged from reinstalling Windows to advising the “customer” to replace their computer. In some instances the reinstallation led to personal data being lost as work had not been backed up.
Repair costs also varied wildly at PC World between £69.99 and a staggering £350.
Loosely translated, that means that people who work in PC World’s repair stations are spotty little oiks with about as much computer knowhow as the chewing gum stuck to the bottom of my shoe.
Before I start, I know that Mac’s are not completely immune to the problem, but they are certainly a lot more secure. I’ve just spent more time than I had to spare disinfecting, checking and repairing all my Windows computers and connected network shares after I discovered that a virus had got in. It had managed to attach itself to the computer that I use only as a downloader - and therefore expect it to get hit by virus nastiness - but unfortunately the virus had got around all the defences I had in place. It was a variant of the Poebot virus that spreads itself across network connections. Whilst doing all this, I also found another nasty piece of spyware - Live which had distributed itself all over the registry.
I’ve now hopefully closed up the holes that allowed these little nasties in, but it’s been time consuming running virus and spyware scans on all network drives and so on to see just how far it spread itself.