Continued

Nov/Dec ‘05 /Jan ‘06 Edition
Articles
•Apple Unleahes an
Onslaught of October
Announcements
Cover
by Monte
F
Apple Unleashes an
Onslaught of Ocotber
Announcements
Ferguson
ALL HAS BEEN A BUSY SEASON
for Apple this year. They’ve recently
announced the iPod
•GRAMUG Meeting
nano and Motorola’s
Highlights
ROKR, an iTunes
Page 2
enabled phone. But
they weren’t finished
•Product Review
with announcements
Take Control eBooks
just yet. No, Apple
Page 3
released a slew of new
products in October,
•Reality and Digital Pictures both hardware and
Page 5
software. There were so
many product updates,
•For Your Eyes Only: Virtual and new product
Private Networks
announcements you
Page 7
would have thought a
MacWorld Expo was
•Cleaning House in iTunes going on in October.
Page 9
The day after its latest financial announce•Why DRM Offends the
ments, Apple had
Sensibilities
sent out notices to the
Page 14
media of a Special
Event, with the image
Specials and Deals
of a red theater curtains and the words
Back Cover
“One More Thing” emblazoned on the
invite. All kinds of rumors began to fly as
to what would be revealed. In true Apple
fashion some things long rumored came to
pass and some surprises were shown.
Get Info is a publication of
iPod
the Grand Rapids Area
There had been a lot of talk regarding what
Microcomputer Users
Apple would do to differentiate the iPod
Group.
from the iPod nano. The biggest single
feature request was video support. Apple’s
official response had been
that no one would want to
watch a video on an iPod’s
screen and besides there was
no legal content to watch on
the iPod anyway. To many
that sounded like a “not now
but we’re working on it”
type of statement.
Those folks were proven
right when Apple introduced
the iPod with video, aka 5th
Generation iPod, on October
12th. The new models sport
a gorgeous 2.5 inch color
screen. They can display
album artwork and photos,
and play video including
music videos, video podcasts, home movies and television shows.
These new iPods come in
either 30GB or 60Gb storage
capacities. Which allows you to hold 15,000
songs-25,000 photos, or over 150 hours
of video. You can also choose between
one of two color chassis, white or black.
The 30GB model sports a 14 hour battery
life, for music playback, while the 60GB
model’s battery can play up to 20 hours of
music.(Max battery life for playing video is
3 hours.) You can also purchase a separate
video out cable to
Continued on Page 4
GRAMUG Meeting Highlights
by Monte
M
Ferguson
any folks think that user group meetings are for
computer wizards and geeks. That the conversation will
be way over their heads. While others have no idea what
such meetings have to offer. I have showcased several
recent gatherings below. As you can tell from these excerpts, a user group has something to offer nearly everyone no matter what their skill level.
April Meeting
April’s meeting was another lively one. We had a really
good turn out. In fact we had to find chairs for everyone.
(That’s a great “problem” to have in my opinion.) We
opened the meeting with questions and comments. With
Tiger being released the day after our meeting there were
a lot of questions regarding it. Several good points were
brought up. Then Duane offered a Treasurer’s report. The
group’s finances are in great shape. Membership is up by
over 11%. Terry shared the latest rumors and gossip. Then
we went to break.
After the break we got down to our main topic: Backing
Up Your Mac. The topic was inspired by an eBook from
the Take Control series. <http://www.tidbits.com/takecontrol/> I started out the presentation asking how many
people at the meeting backed up their system in one way
or another. The simple fact is not many people do back up
their Macs. (Attendees of our meeting being an exception
as most of them indicated they do back up their Mac.) So
when trouble happens their information is at risk.
Just as
important
as deciding to
back up
data is
coming
up with a
back up
plan. You
need to
figure out
which files
you need
to back
up, what
you are
going to
back them
up to, and
how often
do you
need
grand prize giveaway winNordquist, is shown with his to perform a
Our February
ner, Mr. Dave
prize. A 512mb iPod Shuffle.
back up.
Whatever
plan you
come up
with it
has to be
one that
you will
adhere to.
Because
you will
need
to back
up on a
regular
basis. Just
as there
are many
differOur March grand prize giveaway winent ways
ner, Mr. Paul Roese, is shown with his
to back
up your
prize, iWork.
information, there are just as many opinions on how you should
go about your back up. I passed out a couple of hand outs
that broke down some back up strategies in terms of cost,
ease of use, pros vs cons. It was a lively discussion to say
the least.
Giveaways
To conclude the meeting we had several items to giveaway. Julie Wolf won Toast Titanium 6. Stanley Ward won
Allume’s Stuffit Deluxe 8. Last, but not least, Robert xxx
won Blue Pixel Personal Photo Coach? from peach Pit.
May Meeting
Our May meeting was another full house. We had several
good topics brought up during the meeting’s Q&A session.
We discussed how to find the GRAMUG meeting dates
(via our web site, the forums and by subscribing to our
meeting calendar using iCal, Entourage or other iCalendar
compatible program.) Duane presented a treasurers report.
Our paid memberships on the rise, up to 37 members.
We had a lively discussion about MacOS X maintenance. Primarily the question was about letting certain
background housekeeping tasks that MacOS X needs to
do. These tasks usually occur in the wee morning hours if
the computer is left on. Folks wondered what to do, and if
it harmed anything, if they put their computer to sleep or
shut it off overnight. The consensus is that their are several
GRAMUG meets monthly, throughout the school year,
at CompUSA. Meetings are held on the Thursday of the
fourth full week. Meetings begin at 7pm.
You can also learn more about the group by going to our
web site: http://www.gramug.org/
2
Product Review:
Take Control eBooks
by Monte
Ferguson
within 30 days after a major MacOS release.)
ORMALLY WE REVIEW A PARTICULAR appliOne of the main problems with a printed book is it
cation or piece of hardware. But with this review
becomes obsolete so quickly. However the Take Control
we’re looking at not just a product but an idea.
books are updated free. The book prices are easy on the
This idea spawned a new look at publishing computer
wallet too, $5-10. You can even review a sample chapter,
related help books.
sort of try it before you buy it, at their web site <http://
The idea, like all good ones, is relatively simple. There
www.takecontrolbooks.com/>.
are people out there who want a tightly focused What you get:
And lastly, the publisher backs
A well written eBook, in PDF format.
title, that stays current, and does not cost
up their titles with a money
Chock full of tips and how to’s.
much. Better yet all of these titles are written
back guarantee.
Prices range from $5-15
by accomplished journalists. With the proceeds
System Requirements
from the sale going directly back to the folks
Cons
Any computer with a PDF viewer
who created the titles.
I really can’t find any fault
This type of project was not the brainchild of installed.
with these books. The main
a large publishing house. It was the collaboraproblem with most eBooks is
tive effort of a small group of professional writ- (Titles cover a wide variety of top- the publisher has put many
ics. You can view a full list of titles restrictions, such as not allowers. Now in it’s second year the Take Control
series has spawned a large assortment of titles. by going to <http://www.takecon- ing you to print the book, that
trolbooks.com/catalog.html>.)
What makes these books stand out is that
it is less useful than a printed
they are very focused. If you want a title just
book (in my honest opinion.)
on airport networking you can find it. You
Not so with the Take Control
won’t have to wade through a thousand pages
books.
just to find that one chapter on Airport networking. This
focus on narrowly focused topics results in easy to read
Conclusion
texts. They are quick to read through and are formatIf you’re looking for a well written technical book.
ted to be as good looking if you print them out, as they
Especially one that is not obsolete by the time you finish
look on screen. Since they are published in the Portable
reading it, give one of the Take Control titles a chance.
Document Format, aka PDF, you can use any PDF reader,
They’re inexpensive. A quick read. Yet full of useful inforsay Preview, to read them. Better yet you can search the
mation. It’s like having that friend who “really knows
entire eBook for the one item you’re looking for. The pubcomputers” on hand to answer your questions.
lisher has gone through great pains to make the books
easy to navigate by including bookmarks, and clickable
links. Better yet you get free updates, via Check for
o stretch a genetic analUpdates button, for the life of the title. (I.E. If the eBook in
ogy about species diversity:
question is about file sharing in Tiger you can receive free
you can visualize the Mac marupdates that cover all Tiger updates.) Another big advanket as a southern reef full of
tage is timing. By that I mean to say that these eBooks are
usually out months ahead of printed books.
brightly colored varieties and
N
“T
Pros
Frankly, I’ve usually been critical of the idea of eBooks.
The Take Control eBooks have shown that this format
can provide a unique and valuable service. This series of
books offers focused titles chock full of expert advice and
how to’s. You can download them immediately, no need to
drive anywhere or wait for the delivery truck. The titles
themselves are available in a very timely manner. (Easily
the Wintel market as an Arctic
deep populated almost entirely
by nearly invisible plankton and
”
a few whales.
Paul Murphy
LinuxInsider
3
Cover Story Continued connect your 5th generation iPod to your tv or entertainment system.
From Page 1
FileMaker 8 Adds Features, Retains
File Format
FileMaker, Inc. today took the wraps off
FileMaker 8, the latest version of its flagship desktop database product. Long-time
FileMaker users will be happy to learn
FileMaker 8 files are backward compatible
with FileMaker 7, the company’s recent
major overhaul of the venerable product
(see William Porter’s review in TidBITS721_). They may also be happy to see
FileMaker 8 offers built-in PDF and Excel
spreadsheet export capabilities, making it
simpler to exchange data with Excel and
other applications and product electronic
versions of documents with FileMaker data.
Other new features include auto-complete data entry, a visual spell-checker, a
built-in email mail merge feature for sending customized email messages, calendar
drop-downs for entering date information,
mouse wheel support, a visual graph of
database relationships,
and built-in tools for managing tabbed
panels within layouts. FileMaker Pro 8 is
available today for $300; FileMaker 6 and 7
users can upgrade for $180.
<http://www.filemaker.com/products/fmp/>
FileMaker Pro 8 also marks a change
for FileMaker Developer Edition, which has
been renamed FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced
to appeal to users who are sophisticated
enough to create their own database
solutions but who don’t necessarily see
themselves as developers. FileMaker Pro
8 Advanced enables database builders
to customize menus, as well as create
standalone applications and kiosks. New
features include flexible tool tips, an
enhanced script debugger which includes
a data viewer and can disable individual
script steps for testing, and an expanded
database design report providing an
overview of database and field setups.
FileMaker Pro 8 Advanced costs $500, and
FileMaker Developer 6 or 7 users can
upgrade for $300. Additional FileMaker 8
products - FileMaker Mobile 8, Server 8,
and Server Advanced 8 - should be available by the end of the year. [GD]
<http://www.filemaker.com/products/
fmpa/>
Continued on Page 5
All iPod models include earbud headphones, USB
2.0 cable, case, dock insert and a CD with iTunes for Mac and Windows computers. Both will begin shipping this week. Prices for the new iPods are: 30GB
model for US$299 and the 60GB model for US$399.
The one thing that is missing from these models is FireWire support. You
can no longer synch over FireWire. I’m sure this is due to the fact that most
iPods these days are sold to PC users. But it is a big disappointment to me.
FireWire is a superior way to get files into and out of the computer, ie faster.
Those folks who have computers that don’t have, and can not upgrade to, USB
2.0, older iMacs and iBooks, will find that they can only synch at the much
slower USB 1.1 rate.
These iPods are gorgeous to look at. They are so thin. They make my original iPod look like a brick.
It’s Cool But What About The Quality?
Watching your favorite video on your iPod has a certain appeal. What you
get for your money is a trade off in quality. Due to the limitations of people’s
internet connections, and no doubt concern of piracy by the movie studios, the
size and quality of the video you download from the ITMS is not DVD quality.
DVD quality video is formatted for 720x480. Video from the ITMS is formatted
at 320x240. However numbers don’t tell the whole story. I’ve seen video on the
iPod and it’s remarkably clear and shows little if any artifacts from compression. That’s thanks in large part to a new video compression standard called
H.264, part of the MPEG-4 standard. That quality even stands up reasonably
well when you hook up a tv to your iPod. Reports from folks who have done
so compare the video quality from the iPod to VHS tape quality. Not excellent
but certainly nothing to sneeze at either. Be prepared to download for a bit.
Apple estimates that each 1 hour video is the equivalent of 5 music albums.
(Approximately 200 MB.)
I was initially not impressed with the idea of watching video on the iPod.
But I have to admit that having seen one close up I have completely changed
my tune. And you don’t have to watch all of the video on the iPod’s screen.
You can hook up cables to connect the iPod to your TV so you can view it on a
larger screen.
iTunes 6
Of course Apple wants to give all of those new iPod owners a place to pur-
Continued on Page 6
4
Reality and Digital Pictures
by Charles
Continued
Security Update 2005-007 v1.1 Works
with 64-Bit Apps
Apple has released version 1.1 of its Security
Update 2005-007 for Tiger users. The only
change in v1.1 is that it provides a combined 32and 64-bit version of the operating system component LibSystem; the initial release of Security
Update 2005-007 omitted the 64- bit version,
breaking 64-bit-savvy programs like Mathematica
on systems with G5 processors.
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.
html?artnum=302163>
The 64-bit change for Security Update
2005-007 applies only to the client and server
versions of Mac OS X 10.4.2 Tiger - folks using
Mac OS X 10.3.9 Panther don’t need to worry
about downloading a new version of the update.
Apple is recommending that all Tiger users install
the new version of the update, although -in
theory - users of G4-based machines have nothing to gain if they’ve already installed the first
version of the security update. (Except, perhaps,
to prevent Software Update from nagging them
about it.) The update sizes remain unchanged:
approximately 18.5 MB for the client version of
Mac OS X 10.4.2, and 20.6 MB for the server
version. [GD]
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/
securityupdate2005007v11macosx1042client.
html>
Apple Creates Rev-1 iMac G5 Repair
Program
Four months after my iMac G5 went “Up In
Smoke” (see TidBITS-777_), along with those of
untold numbers of other users, Apple has finally
admitted publicly that there’s a problem, instituting an official repair program for revision-1 iMac
G5s. According to Apple, symptoms eligible for
free repair include scrambled, distorted, or missing video (caused, I believe, by blown capacitors
on the midplane) or no power (the problem I
had - there is, of course, no mention on Apple’s
page of smoke and an evil smell emanating from
the computer). Apple lists the range of serial
numbers of affected machines. These are all revision-1 17-inch and 20-inc iMac G5s; the revision2 faster machines released starting in May 2005
are apparently unaffected.
<http://www.apple.com/support/imac/repairextensionprogram/>
Continued on Page 6
P
Maurer
EOPLE OFTEN ASK ME IF I
think digital photography is
as good as film or will ever
become as good as film. I reply that
for all but a few special purposes,
digital is better already. Technically,
my digital photographs are at least
as good as the best conventional
photographs I ever took with 21/4” x 3-1/4” (6 cm x 9 cm) film,
and pictorially they are better.
With my digital camera I can take
pictures in the street that used to
require a studio.
In this article I shall explain
what digital technology can do
that conventional photography
cannot - how computers can produce more naturalistic pictures,
not how they can produce special
effects. To do this I’m going to start
with perception, pass through art,
and enter computers by the back
door. Although this is an unusual
route, it approximates the way I
think when taking a photograph
and it provides the only way I
know for negotiating the maze of
manipulations offered by photo
editors. Although I shall mention some specific products (all of
them available for the Mac as well
as Windows), I shall not describe
any in depth. The difficult part
of digital photography is figuring out what must be done in the
computer and which application
can do it. Knowing that, it is rarely
difficult to figure out how to make
the application do its job.
This article is illustrated with
a number of pictures. To see them
appropriately, your monitor ought
to be in rough calibration. If you
have never calibrated your monitor, I suggest that you do it now. It
takes about two minutes. Open the
Displays preference pane, click the
Color tab, click Calibrate to launch
the Display Calibrator Assistant,
select the Expert Mode checkbox,
and then follow the instructions.
When you come to the screen asking you to set the gamma, select
2.2.
For one reason that will become
clear, I find some version of
Photoshop to be necessary. For this
reason I shall assume its use as a
photo editor, although you need
not own it to understand the article. Along the way I shall mention
the differences among the last three
versions (CS, CS2 and Elements)
that matter for my approach.
Eye vs. Camera
To begin with, let’s dispel the
notion that a camera records what
the eye can see. It does not and it
cannot because a camera functions
nothing like the eye. With a lens of
normal focal length, a camera
records an image with a diameter
of approximately 45 degrees. It
records the entire image at once
and the image ends up as a print
with a range of intensity from
black to white of approximately
one hundred to one. In contrast,
the eye sees an area about 180
degrees across but it sees most of
this with acuity that ranges from
bad to dreadful. It sees sharply just
in the central 1 to 3 degrees. To see
a scene clearly, the eye must scan
it and the brain must assemble
the accumulated information.
However, the eye rarely has time
to sample more than small portions
of a scene with its spot of clear
vision so most of what you see has
no optical source, it is an inference. Your brain infers information
largely by generalizing from what
it has encountered before. In doing
this the eye and brain have to handle contrasts of light that exceed
one million to one.
In short, when you look at a
snapshot you took at the beach, the
limitations of the camera mean
that three-quarters of the scene
will have been lopped off, the
range of tones will be compressed
tenthousandfold, and the information that remains will never be
what you saw. Any appearance
of realism will be an inference
Continued on Page 17
5
Cover Story Cont’d chase some
content .
from Page 4
Continued
The good news is that Apple will repair
affected machines for free, even if they are
no longer under warranty. The initial program
is for two years from the date of purchase,
but Apple may extend this at its option.
The bad news is that in order to qualify, it
appears that you must place your machine
physically before the eyeballs of an Apple
representative or service provider. It will
be interesting to learn whether this means
that repairs like mine, where Apple simply
shipped the needed parts directly to my
home, will no longer be available. [MAN]
Apple Releases Security Update 2005007
Apple Computer today released Security
Update 2005-007 for both client and server
versions of Mac OS X 10.3.9 Panther and
Mac OS X 10.4.2 Tiger. The update includes a
number of patches to Apple software (such
as Mail, Safari, under-the-hood technologies
like the Quartz and CoreFoundation frameworks, and, in Mac OS X Server 10.4.2, the
Server Admin tool used to create firewall
policies). Apple also
patched components of Mac OS X’s Unix
underpinnings, including OpenSSL, the
X11 windowing system, Apache 2, CUPS,
Kerberos, and zlib. Apple recommends all
Mac users install this update since it addresses several security problems which could, in
theory, enable a remote attacker to access
data on the computer, create user accounts,
execute arbitrary programs, or let URLs
bypass Mac OS X’s built-in security check
when clicked. The update is
available from Apple via Software Update
and at the first URL below; the download
ranges from 13.3 MB to 29.9 MB, depending which version of Mac OS X you need to
update. Apple details the changes included
in Security Update 2005-007 at the second
URL below. [GD]
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.
html?artnum=61798>
Continued on Page 7
That’s where
the next product announcement
comes in. The iTunes 6 release comes
almost on the heels of the last major
release. So what makes this update
deserve a full version number?
Video.
Complimenting it’s iPod with
video, Apple announced that the
iTunes Music Store would now also
feature over 2,000 music videos, and
six short films from Pixar Animation
Studios. But that’s not all. Apple
teamed up with Disney to offer current and past episodes of hit ABC tv
shows ‘Desperate Housewives’ and
‘Lost’, as well as episodes of a new
drama ‘Night Stalker’ and two of
the Disney Channel’s most popular
shows ‘That’s So Raven’ and ‘The
Suite Life of Zack & Cody’. The videos cost $1.99 per episode. You’ll be
able to buy current episodes the day
after they’ve been shown on national
tv.
Other New Features
There are always those features that
do not get much attention but they
come in handy. Such is the case with:
Expanded online gift options, which
allow the customer to give specific
songs, albums, music videos or their
own iTunes playlists to anyone with
an email address; “Just for You” personalized music recommendations
and online customer reviews.
October Announcements
Part II
Apple let the iPod buzz settle down
a bit before announcing their next
round of product announcements.
This time the focus was on hardware.
iMac
These days a lot of the attention
focused on Apple is due to the iPod.
But Apple is still putting out great
computers. In October Apple updated it’s flagship consumer model,
the iMac. Jobs dubbed the previous
iMac G5 ss
version 3.0.
This new
version
builds on
the success
of the previous iteration. It’s
slimmer
than the
previous
version by
a 1/2 inch.
They’re
also 15 percent lighter
than previously.
It sports
slightly
faster processors, 1.9
or 2.1Ghz.
They all
come with 8X SuperDrives with
Dual Layer support. You also get
a much beefier video card built in.
Either an ATI X600 Pro or XT with
128mb DDR memory using the new
PCI Express for faster performance.
Both models come with 512mb of
memory, expandable to 2.5Gb. The
entry level model sports a 160GB
hard drive while the higher end has
a 250GB unit, expandable to 500GB.
Airport Extreme and Bluetooth
is included. Also included is
Continued on Page 13
6
For Your Eyes Only: Virtual
Private Networks
Continued
PowerBook Graphics Update Solves
Narrow Issue
Last week, Apple released PowerBook G4
Graphics Update 1.0, a 2.1 MB patch that
improves graphic stability for some 15-inch and
17-inch PowerBook G4 models running the 1.67
GHz PowerPC processor;
apparently the installer performs a hardware
check to determine if the update is required. The
update requires Mac OS X 10.4.2. [JLC]
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/powe
rbookg4graphicsupdate10.html>
SaveScreenie Switches File Formats
A few weeks back, I mentioned that you could
enter a particular command into Terminal to
change the format Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger uses
for screen captures made with CommandShift-3 and Command-Shift-4 (see “How to
Change Screen Capture Formats” in TidBITS785_). Needless to say, it’s not hard to copy
and paste such a command, but it’s about as
elegant as a waltzing kangaroo, so Christian
Franz of cf/x decided to embed the functionality into a small utility as a way of getting to
know Apple’s Xcode better. The result is the
free SaveScreenie 1.2, which presents you
with a few radio buttons corresponding to
the available formats (PNG, PDF, JPG, TIFF, BMP,
PSD, and PICT); select one, click the Set button, and log out or restart your Mac to have
it change the screen capture format. After
Christian showed me the initial version, I made a
few wording suggestions (once an editor, always
an editor) and recommended that he include a
Web page link for each format that would tell
the user more about that format. He whipped
up a new version with my changes, and if you’ve
been wanting to fiddle with your screen capture formats, SaveScreenie is now ready to help.
[ACE]
<http://www.imovieplugins.com/
other%20products/savescreenie.html>
iTMS Opens in Japan, Rolls Some Stones
Apple Computer got some satisfaction for its
iTunes Music Store, announcing not only
the debut of the Japanese version of iTMS but
also the worldwide availability of early Abkco
catalog recordings, which includes early rock ‘n
Continued on Page 8
by Kevin
R
van Haaren
ECENT ARTICLES IN
TIDBITS and discussions in
TidBITS Talk have mentioned
virtual private network (VPN) technologies. VPNs are usually brought
up as a tool for securing communications across insecure networks.
Glenn Fleishman used a VPN to hide
all his network traffic while connected to public wireless hotspots during
the South by Southwest Interactive
conference, and I mentioned VPN
technology in TidBITS Talk as a way
to enable Apple’s Remote Desktop to
control computers behind a firewall.
But what exactly is a VPN? This
article is intended to explain some of
the concepts and terminology behind
VPN.
A VPN is a way of securely
connecting computers across insecure networks such as the Internet.
Although this might sound straightforward, building a secure network
involves several subtleties beyond
simple encryption. Security requires
authentication - each communicator
must prove its identity to the other
end. Even the encryption component can be difficult - how do you
exchange encryption keys on a network that’s insecure?
Why VPN?
Why would you want a virtual private network? Most people use them
to connect with corporate networks
while traveling or working at home,
but they have other uses as well. The
primary reason I installed a VPN
was so I could travel with my laptop,
but still access home resources like
my iTunes library and email server,
resources that are normally protected
from other computers on the Internet
by a firewall. I also used it at home
initially to protect wireless connections that were “secured” by the easily breakable WEP. When I upgraded
to an AirPort Express and a Mac
mini using the far-more-secure WPA
security instead of WEP, I decided to
keep using my VPN as a paranoid
defense against the possibility that
someone figures out how to break
WPA. A VPN can also provide a
secure connection for programs such
as Apple’s Remote Desktop 2, which
has weak security on its own.
Do you perform tech support
for your extended family, or for
home users at a business? Ever run
into problems trying to help them
remotely because they are behind
a firewall? Upgrading to a firewall
that provides a VPN can solve this
situation by bypassing all the firewall rules, letting you connect and
troubleshoot problems remotely.
Firewalls for Security
Broadband users are often wisely
advised to install a DSL or cable
router with a built-in firewall to protect their home networks, and most
use Network Address Translation
(NAT) to share the single public IP
address that their Internet service
provider allocates among several
computers. The firewalls in these
low-cost routers are usually enabled
by default. Or, if you only have one
computer, you can activate the firewall built into Mac OS X with the
click of a button in the Sharing preference pane.
Firewalls restrict access from the
Internet to the local network. If my
father has a firewall protecting his
home network and I want to provide
tech support for him, I can’t just
fire up Apple Remote Desktop or a
VNC (virtual network computing)
program and connect to his computer. There are two reasons for this
problem: first, to which IP address
do I connect? The public IP address
is just the address for the router, not
for his computer. Even if he can tell
me the IP address that appears in his
Network preference pane, that IP is a
private address assigned by his NAT
firewall and not directly accessible
from the Internet.
Continued on Page 8
7
Virtual Private Network Cont’d based on the port number. If you
need to use the same application
from Page 7
Continued
roll classics from The Animals, Sam Cooke, Herman’s
Hermits, Marianne Faithful, and the Rolling Stones.
The iTunes
Music Store is now the only online music service
with the complete catalog of the Rolling Stones.
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/aug/04itms.
html>
The Japanese version of the iTunes Music Store
reportedly features more than 1 million tracks,
including songs from popular Japanese acts such as
Little Creatures, Chara, and Crazy Ken Band, alongside Japanese radio shows and podcasts. Over a
dozen Japanese companies are providing music for
the Japanese version of iTMS, along with international distributors, and Apple plans to offer more
Japanese content in the months ahead. Songs on
the Japanese version of iTMS sell for 150 or 200
yen (roughly US$1.35 / $1.80). Apple announced
this week that the new store sold more than 1 million songs in its first four days of operation. Apple
hopes the introduction of the Japanese version of
iTMS will spur sales of iPod music players, particularly the iPod shuffle. Unlike the rest of the world
- where the iPod is the utterly dominant portable
music player - it merely leads the pack in Japan,
accounting for about 36 percent of the market
while rival Sony has managed to secure about 27
percent of the market for flash-based music players.
[GD]
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/aug/08itms.
html>
HP Dropping the iPod
Only one month after adding the iPod shuffle to its
product lineup, Hewlett-Packard reportedly plans
to stop reselling Apple’s iPod digital music players by the end of September 2005. The reselling
arrangement between Apple and HP was launched
in January 2004 to much fanfare and, at the time,
seemed like a good way for Apple to get the notyet utterly iconic
digital music player into new retail and marketing
channels. But that’s not quite how things worked
out: HP apparently never made much money selling iPods, and its versions often fell behind Apple’s
product offerings and were sold as discounted
also-rans. HP’s portion of the iPod phenomenon
reportedly amounted to less than 5 percent of iPod
units sold. And HP has bigger problems to solve: it’s
currently in the process of jettisoning about 10 pe
Continued on Page 9
The second reason is that most
firewalls employ a “speak only
when spoken to” philosophy.
Examples of this idea in action
include the Web and the iTunes
Music Store: I can view pages
from a Web server, but not until
my browser makes the initial connection to the server; similarly,
the iTunes Music Store can display within iTunes, but only after
my computer has sent it a request
to send me the info. To extend the
analogy, the request for a remote
control connection would have to
come from the remote computer
first to get through the firewall,
and since the remote computer
won’t necessary have a person
in front of it, it’s hard to generate that initial request. (See
Chris Pepper’s article, “What’s
a Firewall, and Why Should You
Care?” in TidBITS-468_, for more
detailed information on firewalls.)
Open the Ports
One frequently recommended
solution to getting through a firewall is to open the port (or ports)
an application uses to communicate. Network applications talk
using ports. Stealing an analogy
from Chris’s firewall article, ports
are like apartment numbers in
regular mail addresses. If you
send a letter to a friend in an
apartment building, the building
address is not enough: an apartment number is needed to get
the letter to the right apartment.
Similarly, a computer’s IP address
is not enough to get network data
to the correct application. The
port number is used to direct the
data to the correct program such
as the Web or mail server. Most
popular Internet services have a
default “well known” port number.
<http://www.iana.org/assignments/port-numbers>
NAT-based firewalls can redirect incoming traffic to a specific
computer on the internal network
to connect to multiple computers
on the internal network there are
two options available: configure
the firewall to listen on additional
non-standard ports and redirect
those ports to the standard port
on the destination computer (not
all firewalls support this capability), or connect to one of the
internal computers, then use that
computer to access the other computers on the network.
With simple firewalls, opening
a port opens it to everyone on the
Internet. More complex firewalls
can limit access to a port based on
things such as source IP address
and time of day.
Mac OS X has a full-featured
firewall built-in, but Apple’s
preference pane limits your
options to the simplest configurations - opening a port opens it to
everyone on the Internet. Third
party tools such as Brian Hill’s
BrickHouse can provide GUI
access to a much broader range
of functionality, or you can use
even more full-featured tools
like DoorStop X from Open Door
Networks or IPNetSentry from
Sustainable Softworks.
<http://personalpages.tds.net/
~brian_hill/brickhouse.html>
<http://www.opendoor.com/
doorstop/>
<http://www.sustworks.com/
site/prod_ipns_overview.html>
Even with the more advanced
configuration options that
BrickHouse or your cable or
DSL router offers, building these
exceptions can be time consuming and error prone (IPNetSentry
takes a different approach for this
reason, looking for suspicious
activity and, when triggered, banning the intruder). Some simple
facts of Internet use can make
maintaining these rules difficult.
For example, adjusting access for
someone with an ever-changing
dynamic IP address can be frustrating, or even impossible if you
are trying to make the change
from a dynamic address not
Continued on Page 10
8
Cleaning House in iTunes
Continued
cent of its workforce in order to make its bottom
line roughly $2 billion fatter. [GD]
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2004/jan/08hp.
html>
iPhoto 5.0.4 Flips Photos Properly
Apple has released iPhoto 5.0.4, a minor update
that “addresses an issue with browsing photos that
have been auto-rotated by a camera.” Honestly, I’ve
not seen the problem (it seems to relate to editing photos that were auto-rotated by your camera
and that appear in the wrong orientation), but
the speed with which 5.0.4 followed 5.0.3 means
that it’s probably bugging a bunch of people. The
update is roughly 40 MB via Software Update or
as a standalone download. [ACE]
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/
iphoto504update.html>
Simon 2 Says: Monitor Your Server
Dejal Software has released Simon 2, a major
update to their server monitoring utility. Simon
performs repetitive checks on a remote Internet
service and reports back if the test fails and, if
so, when the service comes back online. Simon
can also watch Web pages for changes. The most
important new feature is a Port service that provides the capability to check virtually any server
type; that’s key for keeping tabs on POP, IMAP,
SMTP, AFP, DHCP, and
other servers that weren’t previous supported.
Simon can notify you of problems with a variety
of local actions, via email (which can enable text
messages to cell phones), by launching an application (which extends Simon’s reach even further),
by playing a sound, or by speaking pre-defined text.
Simon 2 also features a more flexible interface that
better lends itself to the creation and maintenance
of many tests and multiple notifiers. Simon 2 costs
$30 (Basic License: 7 tests), $60 (Standard License:
20 tests), or $200 (Enterprise: unlimited number of
tests). It’s a 3.4 MB download. [ACE]
<http://www.dejal.com/simon/>
OmniWeb 5.1.1 Released
The Omni Group has released OmniWeb
5.1.1 to fix a variety of minor bugs and improve
compatibility with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. You can
read the full change list on the OmniWeb Release
Notes page linked below; suffice to say that if you
use OmniWeb, particularly with Tiger, you’ll want
to download the 6 MB update to eliminate some
Continued on Page 10
by
Adam C. Engst
L
EAVING ASIDE ALL THE
legal and ethical considerations of downloading unauthorized music from the Internet, one
of the things that’s always bothered me is the horrible metadata
that most shared tracks seem to
have. It’s entirely common to end
up with files with barely descriptive names and completely blank
ID3 tags for the artist and album.
I hate that. I also dislike the
duplicates that can results from
accidentally importing tracks
multiple times, which is all too
easy with multiple people sharing the same library, as Tonya and
I do. Call me a neat freak, but I
can’t stand a messy database, and
the iTunes Library is essentially a
database of track information.
It was time to clean house.
Clearing Duplicates
I started with a new feature in
iTunes 4.7: the Show Duplicate
Songs command in the Edit
menu. It’s a little brain-dead,
in that it appears to match only
on track name, but it’s better
than nothing. iTunes identified
over 200 duplicate songs, most
of which were legitimate duplicates stemming from greatest hits
albums, covers by other artists,
or poor song names. Ideally, the
Show Duplicate Songs feature
would evolve to give the user
additional control, so I could, for
instance see only songs with the
same name, artist, and album,
and only then if they were the
same length. Nonetheless, it was
useful for clearing out a few complete duplicates.
Identifying Unknowns
After removing the duplicates, I
was still left with 121 tracks that
had incomplete metadata and
thus offended my sense of order.
Some were authorized tracks
I’d downloaded from artist Web
sites, others were tracks I’d downloaded because I own the record
albums, a few were samples from
various venues, and a number
were entirely unidentifiable (even
when I listened to them).
I didn’t want to put the effort
into listening to each track with
incomplete metadata and manually updating the tags. Instead,
I downloaded Jay Tuley’s free
iEatBrainz utility (1 MB download), which attempts to match
the musical fingerprint of a
track in iTunes with one in the
MusicBrainz database, a Webbased database of fingerprints
and metadata for over 2.5 million
songs. It’s a clever idea and I was
curious about how well it would
work.
<http://www.indyjt.
com/software/
?show=ieatbrainz#ieatbrainz>
<http://www.musicbrainz.org/>
I selected the 121 tracks in
my library that lacked artist or
album tags, and then I fed them
to iEatBrainz to see if it could find
a match. It wasn’t exactly speedy,
and its fingerprint matching algorithm wasn’t terribly accurate, but
in the end, iEatBrainz managed to
present me with what seemed like
correct metadata for 54 of the 121
tracks. Many of the rest it couldn’t
find at all, and for some it
guessed completely wrong. But
hey, 54 out of 121 is way better
than nothing.
Filling in the Blanks
I was still left with a nagging
feeling that the metadata in my
iTunes Library wasn’t as complete
as it could be. iTunes ships with
a sample smart playlist called
“60’s Music” that looks for tracks
whose year is between 1960 and
1969. But although I have a lot
of music from the Beatles,
Continued on Page 11
9
Virtual Private Network Cont’d
from Page 8
Continued
annoying page drawing problems on
certain sites and crashes in specific
situations. Despite Safari’s new features in Tiger, I still find myself relying
on OmniWeb for most of my Web
browsing thanks to features like
reopening pages on relaunch, workspaces, separate window editing of
textarea fields, find/replace in textarea
fields, and more. [ACE]
<http://www.omnigroup.com/applications/omniweb/releasenotes/>
Apple Discloses, Limits .Mac
Bandwidth Transfers
Apple’s ..Mac service has played it
coy for years about how much bandwidth transfer (bytes to and from
your Web pages and other parts of
your account) are included with your
annual $100 fee. I’ve asked Apple
directly about it before and some
folks have tested it, and it appears to
be... well, it varies based on velocity of
downloads, kind of material, etc.
No more. Now the bandwidth limits
are officially 3 GB per month with
a regular subscription and 9 GB a
month if you pay the extra $50 per
year for a full 1 GB of online storage.
[GF]
<http://news.yahoo.com/
news?tmpl=story&u=/mc/20050720/
tc_mc/
macaddshigherbandwidthoption>
<http://mac.com/>
DoorStop X 1.0 Enhances Mac
OS X’s Firewall
Back in 1998, Open Door Networks
shipped DoorStop, the first firewall
for the Mac. The program was subsequently licensed to Symantec for
Norton Personal Firewall, and now
Open Door has released DoorStop
X, a new version for Mac OS X 10.3
Panther and 10.4 Tiger. Although Mac
OS X has had a built-in firewall since
Mac OS X 10.2 Jaguar, and the version in Tiger finally offers rudimentary
logging of denied access attempts,
Continued on Page 11
already configured in the firewall rules.
Another issue that opening firewall
ports cannot solve is unencrypted data
streams. Anybody on the network path
between the source and destination can
use simple tools to extract the traffic.
If you use VNC software for remote
control, others on the Internet can view
exactly what you are seeing/typing.
VNC does encrypt the initial authentication made to a remote computer, but
if you use it to change a password or
unlock a remote screen saver, the password is sent unencrypted. Both FTP
and telnet also send your password as
plain text.
The ideal solution is to make your
local computer connect over the
Internet, through the remote firewall,
bypassing all the rules, to any number
of computers or devices behind the
firewall. Additionally we want to keep
those communications secret from prying eyes, and we want to ensure the
connecting computer is really the one it
is claiming to be.
Virtual private networks were
designed to provide this solution by
creating a secure tunnel through which
all traffic flows from you - wherever
you may be on the Internet - to your
network. Several types of VPN are
available: a group of open protocols
referred to as IPsec; Point-to-Point
Tunneling Protocol (PPTP); Layer 2
Tunneling Protocol (L2TP), frequently
used with IPsec; SSH tunnels; and SSL
VPN.
<http://www.freebsd.org/doc/en_
US.ISO8859-1/books/handbook/ipsec.
html>
IPsec
Originally, IPsec was used on corporate
enterprise networks as a way to connect
remote offices over cheaper Internet
connections instead of more expensive
dedicated lines. Large dedicated VPN
firewalls would be placed in each office
and connected together. Fortunately,
the costs of implementing these systems has dropped considerably over
the years, with many inexpensive home
routers including VPN capabilities for
only a slightly increased cost.
IPsec uses a two-phase system to
establish the VPN. In phase one
the identity of each participant is
authenticated. Phase two is the actual
exchange of encrypted data. Each phase
negotiates the various methods to be
used for authentication and encryption
key exchange. To increase the security
of the tunnel the two phases re-negotiate, re-authenticate, and exchange new
encryption keys at periodic intervals.
PPTP & L2TP
PPTP is an older and less secure VPN
technology developed by Microsoft.
PPTP is still quite popular (especially
in Europe) because it is built into
Windows. L2TP is a combination of
Microsoft’s PPTP and Cisco’s L2F
(Layer Two Forwarding) technology.
L2TP over IPsec encapsulates the L2TP
traffic in IPsec packets. The use of IPsec
allows the authentication phase of the
VPN to be encrypted, something PPTP
does not support otherwise. Mac OS
X supports both PPTP and L2TP over
IPsec, both configured via Apple’s
Internet Connect application.
SSH
SSH tunnels are a popular method of
encrypting and authenticating communications between computers. An SSH
tunnel uses a port forwarding model
where ssh on the client side gathers all
data packets sent to a particular port
and sends them through an encrypted
tunnel. The server on the far end (running sshd) decrypts the packets and
forwards them to the appropriate destination.
Unfortunately, an SSH tunnel is
a computer-to-computer system. If I
want to use SSH to multiple computers
behind a NAT firewall, I must either
open additional ports on the firewall,
one for each system, or tunnel to one
machine, then connect from that computer to other machines. Both methods
can be complex to set up. An additional
limitation of SSH tunnels is that they
support only TCP connections, and
not UDP. As a result, ssh tunneling is
insufficient for applications like Apple
Remote Desktop.
SSL VPN
SSL VPNs are the current hot items in
networking. An SSL VPN uses
Continued on Page 12
10
Cleaning House in iTunes Cont’d
from Page 9
Continued
DoorStop X provides far better logging (particularly in concert with Open
Door’s Who’s There? Firewall Advisor
utility) of both allowed and denied
access attempts.
DoorStop also features a more graphical interface that makes it easier to
understand your configuration at a
glance, and most important, the program
enables you to open up a particular
port to a specific IP address or range of
IP addresses, thus eliminating the all-ornothing approach of Mac OS X’s built-in
firewall. Through 15-Aug-05, DoorStop
X costs $40, or $60 when bundled with
Who’s There. Educational discounts are
available for multiple license packs. A fully
functional trial version (2.2. MB download) works for 30 days; Who’s There
has a fully functional, 10-day trial version
(also 2.2. MB). [ACE]
<http://www.opendoor.com/doorstop/>
<http://www.opendoor.com/whosthere/>
Yahoo Gets With a New Konfab
Yahoo announced today that it has
purchased Konfabulator, an application
(for both Mac OS X and Windows)
which enables users to run small custom
applications - called Widgets - right on
their desktop. (In case you’re wondering,
Konfabulator came substantially earlier
than Apple’s Dashboard and its widgets:
see Adam’s review back in TidBITS-717_.)
Konfabulator has inspired an enthusiastic
developer community that created widgets to report on everything from traffic
and mosquito conditions to metronomes
and add-ons for Apple’s iChat and iTunes.
But not only is Yahoo buying Konfabulator,
it’s giving the program away for free!
Anyone who purchased Konfabulator in
the last two months will receive a refund.
Yahoo sees Konfabulator as a core
technology behind the Yahoo Developer
Network: Konfabulator - likely to be
renamed Yahoo Widgets - will be a
means by which Yahoo promotes its new
XML-based content distribution schemes.
By making Konfabulator free, Yahoo
hopes developers will create Widgets for
Continued on Page 16
Doors,
and Simon & Garfunkel, that smart
playlist contained only 41 tracks. For
whatever reason, when I’d ripped
my CDs years ago, the CDDB didn’t
give me the year information. And, of
course, I was lacking artwork for most
of my albums, the ripping of which
predated the appearance of that feature in iTunes.
I’d come across LairWare’s $20
MPFreaker, and decided to give it a
spin. MPFreaker promises to fill in
the blanks in your iTunes metadata,
downloading better information from
online databases. MPFreaker can fix
nearly everything related to a song,
including title, album, artwork, genre,
year, and track number. You can feed
MPFreaker a few songs manually,
point it at a playlist, or give it your
entire iTunes Library. I was unsure of
what it would do, so I started with
a few songs, tested a small playlist,
and then I finally bit the bullet and
ran it against my library. In each case,
MPFreaker worked fine, although I
was careful not to check the Overwrite
checkbox for each of the pieces of
metadata that MPFreaker can update,
figuring that any data I already had
was fine.
<http://www.lairware.com/mpfreaker/>
MPFreaker performed wonders,
adding year and artwork information
to many - though not all - of my
songs. It wasn’t particularly fast, but
considering I had handed it 4,100
songs to check, I was neither surprised nor bothered. One slight oddity did present itself; after the first
run, my 60’s Music smart playlist had
grown to over 200 songs. But when I
created another smart playlist to see
how many tracks still lacked year
information, there were nearly 900.
A second run of MPFreaker picked
up year information for a number of
additional songs; I’m not entirely sure
why.
As long as you’re careful not to
overwrite data mistakenly, and you
don’t mind the occasional low-resolution artwork, MPFreaker is a fabulous
utility for cleaning, regularizing, and
filling in the blanks in your iTunes
Library. You can try the demo on three
songs per launch; otherwise it’s a 2.4
MB download.
Now, if you don’t mind, I need to go
listen to my database.
This article orginally appeared in
Tidbits Magazine issue #768, published 2/28/05. It is reprinted with
the permission of the Author.
“There are varied
opinions among the
financial analysts as to
whether Apple will ever
return to its former
glory of the 1980s (yes
it was that long a time
ago). The most recent
evidence suggests that
it has already done so,
and I welcome it. The
IT industry and the PC
industry, in particular,
needs Apple to succeed.
”
Robin Bloor
IT-Analysis
the Register
11
Virtual Private Network Cont’d
from Page 10
standard Web protocols for authentication and encryption. This approach
enables the VPN to work through
restrictive firewalls that block the
ports of other VPN protocols. SSL
VPN technology offers a range of
capabilities. At its simplest, the VPN
may be a reverse Web proxy, providing authenticated Internet users access
to intranet Web servers behind the
remote firewall.
SSL VPNs can also provide Webbased file browsers that enable users
to access Windows and NFS file
shares on the remote network. No
special client is needed for this, as the
VPN hardware handles the translation
from network shares to Web pages.
More advanced SSL VPN units
offer functionality similar to SSH tunnels. The user logs in to a Web application and launches a Java or ActiveX
client that configures all port forwarding options. In this configuration, just
ports needed for an application are
tunneled, so the chance of infection
from viruses and Trojans is greatly
reduced. This limited access enables
many corporations to use an SSL VPN
to provide network access to untrusted computers, such as employees’
home computers and vendor systems
for supporting internal applications.
Additionally, many handhelds with
wireless networking and Java support
can tunnel in via an SSL VPN too.
High-end SSL VPN products
offer a complete TCP/IP stack that
encrypts packets across an SSL link,
an approach called “IPsec replacement” mode because it provides the
security of a full IPsec VPN while still
being able to work through restrictive
firewalls.
<http://www.nwfusion.com/
reviews/2004/0112revmain.html>
SSL VPNs are popular in enterprise networks, but the current highcost of entry keeps them out of the
reach of most home and small business users. Because of their flexibility
and low cost, I focus on IPsec VPNs
for the remainder of this article.
VPN to What?
Once you select a VPN protocol, you
need to decide the type of connection
you want to make: computer-to-computer, computer-to-network, or network-to-network. The computer-tocomputer connection enables access
only to the individual remote computer. Computer-to-network enables one
computer access to all devices on a
remote network. And a network-tonetwork connection enables entire
offices of computers to communicate,
without the need to configure each
machine. Most people are interested
in connecting a laptop or small home
office machine to a remote network
(computer-to-network), so I focus on
this scenario.
First, you need to pick a VPN
client. Mac OS X includes an IPsec
implementation based on Racoon
from the KAME Project. As with
many Unix applications, you configure the software via a text-based
config file. “Simple” configuration
examples are available online.
<http://www.kame.net/racoon/>
After examining the available
documentation, I decided there must
be a better way. Fortunately I was not
the only one with this idea. A quick
Internet search turned up several
graphical configuration tools. VPN
Tracker ($90 for a personal license,
$200 for a professional license) from
Equinux, and IPSecuritas (free) from
Lobotomo are two of the most popular.
<http://www.equinux.com/us/products/vpntracker/>
Additionally, many VPN firewall
makers have produced Mac OS X versions of their client software. Check
Point and Cisco both offer Mac OS
X clients for their VPN products. Be
sure to check the supported configurations and versions of the software.
Cisco only recently added support for
dual-processor Macs and Mac OS X
10.4 Tiger, although there are reports
it doesn’t completely work even with
10.4.2. MacInTouch has a lengthy list
of reader reports on the Cisco VPN
client.
<http://www.checkpoint.com/
press/2004/mac120704.html>
Next, to connect your Mac to an
entire network via VPN, your network needs a VPN router. Mac OS
X 10.4 Tiger Server has many nice
VPN configuration options builtin. Academic versions of Mac OS X
Server are typically available starting
at $250; retail is $500 or $1,000. If you
have not yet upgraded, going from
Jaguar to Tiger Server is about $370
more than going to non-Server Tiger
(non-academic).
In theory, a Mac running the client
version of Mac OS X should be able
to act as a VPN router too, but most
of the documentation I’ve found is
for Mac OS X Server. Instructions for
setting up a FreeBSD box as a VPN
router are available, and they may
translate over to Mac OS X.
<http://www.lugbe.ch/lostfound/
contrib/freebsd_router/>
I don’t have a spare Mac capable
of running Mac OS X lying around, so
I began looking for a small dedicated
VPN router. Most manufacturers of
broadband routers offer VPN versions
of their products for $10 to $20 more
than the non-VPN versions (see below
for links to a number of common
devices). When looking for a VPN
router, watch out for products labeled
“IPsec Pass-Thru” - these are not what
you want. IPsec Pass-Thru enables a
VPN connection to work through the
device, but does not mean the router
can act as a VPN endpoint. The specifications for a true VPN router should
list the number of VPN tunnels the
device supports.
<http://www.dlink.com/products/
?sec=0&pid=274>
<http://www.netgear.com/products/
details/FVM318.php>
<http://www.linksys.com/servlet/Sa
tellite?childpagename=US%2FLayout
&packedargs=c%3DL_Product_C2%2
6cid%3D1115416832406&pagename=
Linksys%2FCommon%2FVisitorWra
pper>
Some routers have third-party
firmware upgrades available that add
VPN server support. The Linksys
WRT54G is the most commonly
upgraded router, with the Sveasoft
firmware upgrade providing a variety of sophisticated features to what
Continued on Page 13
12
Virtual Private Networks Cont’d
from Page 12
Linksys provides.
<http://www.sveasoft.com/>
Quick Tiger Update
When Tiger shipped, it introduced a
VPN bug that slowed down certain
VPN connections. After I upgraded to
Tiger, a ping to my server through a
VPN connection took around a thousand milliseconds. Normal ping times
with my VPN are about 4 milliseconds.
This problem has been resolved
but requires upgrading to at least
Mac OS X 10.4.1 plus upgrading your
IPsec front-end. IPSecuritas version
2.1 and VPN Tracker 4.0.1 both work
properly Mac OS X 10.4.1 and later. At
the time of this writing, Check Point
had not updated their IPsec clients
to work with any version of Mac OS
X 10.4. Cisco’s latest release seems to
work fine for me. Again, verify the
software’s documentation show your
particular configuration is supported
before installing.
Cont’d from Page
Cover Story Con’td
from Page 6
The Double-edged Sword of
VPN
After selling you on the concept of
using VPN to bypass firewall rules,
I’m going to reveal that this is also
one of the biggest dangers in using a
VPN. Firewall rules exist to increase
security; bypassing that security in
any way creates very real risks. Many
companies are surprised to find themselves infected with Trojan horses and
viruses even though they had firewalls in place. It turns out that many
laptop users would go home, connect
to their unprotected home Internet
connections, get infected, then connect
via a VPN (bypassing all the firewall
rules) and spread the infection all over
the internal network. Of course, such
problems are less likely for Mac users,
but we still cannot become complacent.
Some VPN clients include a client
firewall, similar to the firewall built
into Mac OS X, to protect against these
types of vulnerabilities. Other clients
check a list of rules before a VPN connection is allowed. Some examples of
Apple’s Mighty Mouse. Brand new with this model is the
inclusion of an iSight camera. It is built into the bezel of
the iMac itself. It even has a built in LED to let you know
when the camera is in use.
Wait There’s More
A decent feature update to be sure. But the iMac update
also sports some unique features in software to take
advantage of the new hardware. Of course iChat AV is a
snap since the camera is already connected. But you can
use a new app called Photobooth to take pictures with the
iSight camera built into the unit. In low light situations the
screen of the computer will act as a flash. Jobs had a lot of
fun demoing the Photobooth app. You can take your pics
and e-mail them, use them for iChat icon, or say your user
icon for MacOS X. Photobooth also comes with some fun
filters and distortion effects.
There is one more software feature added with these models. Apple calls it Front Row. It’s for those who want to
browse their media files; music, video, dvd’s, and photo’s
from the sofa. Apple includes a really slimmed down
remote control, only 6 buttons, to run the program. With
the remote you can switch to Front Row. “Front Row
gives users a simple, intuitive and powerful way to play
their music, enjoy their photo slideshows, and watch their
DVDs and iMovies, as well as popular movie trailers from
apple.com and music videos and television shows pur-
rules include ensuring an up-to-date
anti-virus product is running, certain
security patches are installed, and the
computer’s firewall is running.
Even with these protections, you
shouldn’t allow any computer to connect to your network if you don’t
explicitly trust its maintenance and
security. The reverse is true too; you
shouldn’t connect your computer to
any networks that you don’t implicitly
trust; you may be opening yourself to
attackers on their network.
[Kevin van Haaren works for a
large corporation primarily supporting Windows computers, with
the occasional Mac call thrown in
to make the week more interesting.
This has prepared him well for the
job of herding his two cats.]
This article orginally appeared in
Tidbits Magazine issue #792, published 8/15/05. It is reprinted with
the permission of the Author.
chased from the iTunes Music Store, on their iMac from
up to 30 feet away using the new bundled Apple Remote”
(Apple)
Although he didn’t say it this is really an Media PC
interface. The idea of incorporating the computer into the
center of the home. So far the Wintel crowd hasn’t exactly
bowled anyone over with their offerings. Apple might be
poised to really transform this nascent market. This feature
alone makes me excited. This might just be Apple’s beginning movement into a new market, the living room of the
home. Personally I think the new iMacs are winners. They
offer the right combination of features and price to make
them attractive. This is going to be my next Mac.
October also saw a refresh of Apple’s entire Pro hardware lineup. Just in time for the busy holiday shopping
season.
The updates are welcome but are an exercise in balance. Apple is trying to make compelling PowerPC based
Macs to keep current sales strong. Yet it wants to postpone
enough new features so that the Intel based Macs have an
irresistible appeal to buyers.
PowerBooks
Apple needed to give the PowerBook a bit of a boost.
It had been over six months since the pro portable line
up had seen a refresh. The biggest features of the new
PowerBooks are battery life, higher resolution displays, and SuperDrives Continued on Page 16
13
Why DRM Offends the Sensibilities
by Adam C. Engst
T
HERE ARE MANY THINGS
in the world that you feel to be
true, but you’re not exactly sure
why. So if you’re a thinking person,
you’re left with this nagging suspicion
that you should be better able to come
up with a better explanation than “But
it’s just wrong!”
For many people, myself included,
digital rights management (DRM)
technologies fall into this category.
Even if we have no intention of breaking copyright law by downloading
music or movies willy-nilly, and even
though many of us earn our livings
through the production and sale
of copyrighted material, we’re still
offended that the entertainment and
media conglomerates of the world
- the Content Cartel, as one commentator has labeled them - are pushing
so hard to ensure that every song,
every movie, every television show,
is wrapped up tight in some form of
DRM that controls access to the content and use of it.
Thanks to a talk by Professor Dan
Burk of the University of Minnesota
Law School that was organized by
Cornell University’s Information
Science Department, I have a significantly better sense of just why DRM
makes my skin crawl. If you’re generally interested in the topic of DRM
and the law, I encourage you to read
the draft paper on which Professor
Burk based his talk.
<http://www.infosci.cornell.edu/
about/Feb02.html>
<http://www.infosci.cornell.edu/
about/burk.pdf>
Legal Rules versus Legal
Standards
As Professor Burk explained, the law
is broken down into two basic aspects:
rules and standards. A legal rule is a
specific imperative in which all the
thought surrounding the details of
the law takes place ahead of time. In
theory, at least, with a legal rule, the
body establishing the rule deliberates on specifics such as boundaries,
exceptions, penalties, and so on, and
for violators of the resulting law, there
is no leeway for interpretation. For
instance, consider a drug possession
law that states that offenders caught
with more than 5 grams of marijuana
must serve a 3 year prison term. If
some stupid pothead kid falls into
that category, regardless of any other
circumstances, it’s off to prison for 3
years.
Contrast that with a legal standard,
which essentially posits a goal and
lays down some guidelines for defining illegal behavior, but which leaves
significant room for interpretation. So,
instead of a rigid law stating exactly
what behavior is considered illegal
and mandating specific punishment, a
law based on a legal standard would
declare that drug possession was illegal, but would leave discretion in the
hands of the judge as to whether the
crime warrants a lesser punishment
(in the case of the pothead kid) or
greater punishment (in the case of a
known drug dealer caught with a kilo
of heroin).
I’m no legal scholar, but from a
common sense standpoint, I think
most people would prefer legal standards to legal rules. After all, laws are
created by politicians; would you trust
a politician - even one of the honorable ones - working with hypothetical
“what if” scenarios to define a crime
and a punishment? Or would you prefer that cases be decided by a judge
with the actual facts of a specific case
at her fingertips? Consider a law that
most of you have probably broken
in the last few days - the law against
speeding. Would you prefer a law
that said being caught driving over
the speed limit was grounds for an
automatic $200 fine, or one that gave
the police officer and the traffic court
leeway to see that driving a seriously
injured person to the emergency room
was grounds for dismissal?
As Professor Burk pointed out
to me in email subsequently, some
people do prefer rules to standards
for the simple reason that the rules
are predictable, so you know what to
expect beforehand. He also noted that
some people also become concerned
about judges having too much power,
although it seems to me that most of
the people who complain about “judicial activism” are politicians, and are
bent out of shape about having competition.
DRM: Them’s the Rules
Let’s step back a moment. Creating
a law is only one of many ways that
societally acceptable behaviors can be
encouraged. If society’s overall goal is
for people to drive more slowly and
cautiously, putting speed bumps in
the road would have the same effect,
as would keeping the road and shoulders narrow. Of course, those strategies have other downsides, such as
slowing down ambulances or making
it difficult for fire trucks to maneuver,
and they don’t absolutely prevent
the unwanted behavior, they just discourage it. You can still drive quickly
over speed bumps or along narrow
roads. In this respect, such extra-legal
strategies are akin to legal standards
- they leave some wiggle room in the
system.
DRM technologies fall roughly
into this category of extra-legal
methods of encouraging behavior,
but there’s at least one important difference: DRM, like all technology, is
an embodiment of a legal rule, not a
legal standard. It’s simply impossible
to create a DRM technology that can
evaluate and approve exceptions, no
matter how reasonable or legal they
may be. If you want to play a song
purchased from the iTunes Music
Store without stripping the DRM,
you must use an iPod or iTunes on an
authorized machine; there’s no wiggle
room at all.
This is a big deal because the law
that DRM instantiates is copyright
law, and copyright law is distinctly
a case of a legal standard. Copyright
law allows all sorts of exceptions,
including fair use, reproduction by
libraries and archives, and musical
performances at agricultural or horticultural fairs (I wonder how much
that last exemption cost?). Plus, in any
copyright infringement case, the judge
would have to take into account what
was copied, how it was copied, what
the intent was in copying, and the
harm done to the copyright owner in
the marketplace. No matter how hard
the Content Cartel tries to conflate
the two under the rubric of “piracy,”
there’s a big difference between the
downloading of a song from Kazaa
and the burning and reselling of thousands of DVDs of the latest Harry
Potter movie.
Cont’d on Page 15
14
Why DRM Offends Cont’d
from Page 14
<http://www.copyright.gov/title17/
92chap1.html>
So now you can see why DRM
rubs so many people the wrong way.
It’s turning copyright law, which is at
its heart a reasonable legal standard,
into a legal rule with no ifs, ands, or
buts.
Permission and Forgiveness
There’s another aspect to the way
DRM stands in for laws. No matter
whether we’re talking about legal
rules or legal standards, you’re still
free to do whatever you want and
then ask for forgiveness if you’re
caught. As a result, many violations of
the law are never noticed, and many
others never make it to court because
the cost to society of enforcing them
is higher than the benefit (a police
officer can make the decision that it’s
more important to get that injured
person to the hospital than it is to
enforce the speed limit).
However, the corollary to this
fact is that our laws thus reach further than we intend. Exceeding the
speed limit at any time is technically
a violation of the traffic laws, but no
one really believes that enforcing the
speed limit is so important that cars
should automatically inform the
police whenever you are speeding.
Similarly, every unauthorized copy
of a digital media file is technically
an infringement of copyright law, but
few people outside the RIAA probably
believe that every iPod owner should
be hauled into court to justify copying
music from a Mac to an iPod under
fair use.
So in the real world, we’re used
to asking for forgiveness after committing actions that are technically in
violation of a law (and frankly, we’re
used to getting away with a lot of
violations that are too trivial to justify enforcing). In the digital world,
however, DRM inverts this system,
forcing us instead to ask for permission rather than forgiveness. Anyone
who has ever been a teenager knows
just how problematic that is - parents
seldom agree to the cool stuff. When
it comes to technology, the end result
of being forced to ask for permission
is that experimentation and innovation are stifled. If the original Napster
and the other peer-to-peer file sharing
networks hadn’t scared the hidebound
music industry silly, do you think
they would ever have agreed to Apple
creating the iTunes Music Store?
Because most DRM systems start
from the written copyright law and
prevent any behavior that would technically be an infringement, they not
only fail to account for the exceptions
in copyright law, they also ignore our
societal expectations about how laws
should work in practice. It would
be like car manufacturers outfitting all cars with limiters that could
determine the posted speed limit on
any stretch of road and prevent the
car from driving faster than that, for
any reason. Talk about grounds for a
revolt!
Room to Move?
In fact, there is a little wiggle room
with DRM-protected content like
songs from the iTunes Music Store,
and that’s the fact that pretty much
every piece of DRM technology has
been broken. According to Professor
Burk, the peer-to-peer tracking company BigChampagne has found that
it takes about 4 minutes after release
for a song using copy-prevention technologies to appear on the file sharing
networks. So you could purchase a
song from the iTunes Music Store,
remove the FairPlay DRM in any one
of a variety of ways, and use it in
some way that would otherwise be
impossible.
But there’s a problem with creating
your own wiggle room by breaking a
DRM technology: our old friend the
DMCA (Digital Millennium Copyright
Act); see “The Evil That Is the
DMCA” in TidBITS-656_. The DMCA
distinguishes between _access_ of content and _usage_ of content (though
it’s a relatively fuzzy distinction), and
forbids any circumvention of access
control technologies. However, the
DMCA does not forbid the circumvention of usage control technologies; the thought is that this was the
loophole Congress left to allow fair
use of material that you had legally
purchased. However, the problem is
that the DMCA also bans the supplying of tools to circumvent _either_
access or usage control technologies.
In short, you can legally break any
usage control technologies you want,
but you can’t get any help doing it,
nor can you create tools for anyone
else to do it. Needless to say, this is a
barrier which essentially no one can
cross legally.
There is some hope that the courts
have recently seen the danger behind
the DMCA. In his talk, Professor Burk
called out a pair of cases where appellate courts had ruled against plaintiffs
brandishing the DMCA. In one case,
Chamberlain v. Skylink, Chamberlain
sued to prevent Skylink from reverse
engineering the codes necessary to
make Chamberlain’s garage doors
open; Skylink was reverse engineering the codes for use in a universal
garage door opener. The court ruled
that Congress had no such anti-competitive behavior in mind with the
DMCA. And in Lexmark v. Static
Control, the court ruled that Lexmark
could not use the DMCA to prevent
Static Control from reverse engineering the chips necessary to create offbrand toner cartridges for Lexmark
printers.
<http://www.eff.org/legal/cases/
Chamberlain_v_Skylink/>
The moral of this story, if there
is one, is that DRM technologies are
more subtly pernicious in their effect
than may be apparent from first
glance, due to the way in which they
embody legal rules and eliminate the
human effect in determining how
copyright law should be interpreted
and enforced. That realization does
little to assuage the annoyance many
people feel when their lives are unnecessarily complicated by DRM, but at
least it puts into words why DRM
is so often annoying, not to mention
concerning for the future of technological experimentation and innovation.
This artice originally appeared in
Tidbits Magazine #769, 3/7/2005,
and is reprinted with permission of
the Author.
15
Cover Story
Continued from Page 13
Continued
Mac and Windows that do all sorts of cool and useful
things, many of which will be tied directly to Yahoo’s
online content offerings. Developers will appreciate
not having to “scrape” Web sites to extract data for
their Widgets; users will appreciate cool, new crossplatform tools; and Yahoo will see their content (and
associated advertising efforts) reach new people in
new ways. Konfabulator is now available as a free 5.2
MB download, and requires Mac OS X 10.2 or later.
[GD]
<http://www.konfabulator.com/>
<http://widget.yahoo.com/>
<http://developer.yahoo.net/>
Apple Revenue Balloons to $3.5 Billion in
Third Quarter
Apple released its financial results for its last fiscal
quarter, recording a staggering $3.52 billion in revenue with $320 million in earnings. Both numbers
were substantially higher than analyst expectations.
The same quarter a year ago produced $2.01 billion
in revenue and $61 million in earnings. The company
reported selling over 6.1 million iPods last fiscal quarter, which ended 25-Jun-05. Apple also sold nearly 1.2
million Macintosh computers, a 35-percent increase
over a year ago.
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/jul/13results.
html>
Two interesting side facts: gross margins are up
from around 28 percent to nearly 30 percent, which
is magnificent in a commodity market in which all
competitors are seeing shrinking margins. The second
is that international sales were 39 percent of revenue. In its SEC filings, Apple broke out sales, showing
495,000 laptops sold and 687,000 desktops. Retail
sales accounted for 144,000 computers and $555
million in computer sales (not including other items).
The company expects to produce similar revenue and
earnings next quarter. Apple now has $7.5 billion in
cash and short-term investments on hand, and about
$7 billion in assets when considering all assets less all
liabilities. [GF]
iPhoto 5.0.3 Fixes Bugs
Apple last week released iPhoto 5.0.3, fixing a few
issues in the photo management program. Two improvements involve books: layouts no longer change
when moving an image, and a problem that caused
some book orders to be cancelled has been fixed.
Smart albums also now appear correctly in other iLife
programs.
Continued on Page 17
across the whole lineup.
Apple says that with the new
PowerBooks you can get up to
one more hour of battery life, at
least in the 15 &17 inch models.
The new higher resolution
displays,1680-by-1050 pixel resolution for the 17 inch and 1440by-960 pixel resolution for the 15
inch, represent a boost in screen
real estate of 36 and 26 percent
respectively. The screens are also
reportedly brighter than the previous PowerBook screens, up to
46% brighter.
All PowerBooks now feature
a slot loading SuperDrive, compatible with DVD =/- RW/CDRW. that can run up to 8x. You
also get Airport Extreme and
Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR with these
newer models.
A silent new feature is the
inclusion of 512MB of RAM
with the PowerBooks. Quietly
Apple has been upgrading the
installed memory in all Macs as
their respective line is refreshed.
Previously the installed memory
was not really enough to effectively use MacOS X let alone the
iLife apps.
The one feature that these
PowerBooks lack is an updated
processor. They still use the G4
processor running at the same
speeds as the last models, 1.51.67Ghz.
Power Mac
The Power Mac has been the
hardest hit by the failure of IBM
to produce faster processors.
Apple has managed to keep the
Power Mac relevant by including
dual processors in it’s models.
This month Apple released a new
line of Power Macs that feature
dual core G5 processors.
What’s the Difference Between
Dual Core and Dual Processors?
Dual processors meant that a
Power Mac had two separate
cpus. Think of them as two separate engines. A dual core Power
Mac has two engines mounted
on one cpu. The advantage is that
the dual core arrangement takes
up less space, and generates less
heat. So the machine is more
power efficient and runs cooler.
All of the new Power Mac’s
come with dual core processors.
They run 2.0-2.3Ghz per core for
the entry level to midrange. The
high end Power Mac sports a
dual processor, dual core arrangement. In effect that makes it a
quad core processor Mac running
at 2.5Ghz per core.
Processors aren’t the only new
features of these Power Macs.
These new models feature a new
expansion technology called PCI
Express. This faster connection
technology ushers in a new level
in graphics cards, NVIDIA’s
Quadro FX 4500. If you were to
fill up all four PCI Express slots
you could drive up to 8 displays.
You can also stock up these Macs
with lots of memory. The new
Power Macs can hold up to 16GB
of 533 MHz DDR2 SDRAM. Two
Gigabit Ethernet ports now come
standard. Airport Extreme and
Bluetooth 2.0 +EDR come built
in. Like the PowerBooks Apple
has quietly increased the installed
memory to 512MB. Also included
are a 16x SuperDrive with double-layer support (DVD+R DL/
DVD±RW/CD-RW); and ships
with Mighty Mouse and Apple
Keyboard.
Conclusion
This flurry of updates certainly
shows a vibrant Apple poised
to make 2006 a banner year. The
refreshed Macs are compelling
and offer enough features to lure
in current buyers. Very important
as Apple is gearing up to transition over to Intel processors.
Equally important is that Apple
keep innovating in the portable
music player space. The combination of video, the ITMS, iTunes 6,
and the stunning new iPod push
Apple even further out in front of
potential rivals.
16
Reality and Digital Pictures
Cont’d from Page 5
Continued
And lastly, with Mac OS X 10.4.2 installed,
editing an image no longer shifts its colors,
a bug that had caused significant consternation. The iPhoto 5.0.3 Update is available from Software Update as a 41 MB
download, or as a stand-alone 39.2 MB
download. [JLC]
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/iphoto503update.html>
Final Cut Studio Updates Available
Apple’s professional line of video editing applications saw updates last week to
fix bugs and improve performance. Final
Cut Pro 5.0.2, DVD Studio Pro 4.0.1, and
Soundtrack Pro 1.0.1 are each available as
separate downloads. If you own the entire
Final Cut Studio (which also includes
Motion 2), you can download a 46 MB
updater that applies the fixes to each
affected program. [JLC]
<http://www.apple.com/support/downloads/finalcutpro502update.html>
Apple Sells Its 500 Millionth Track
Apple announced that it sold the 500 millionth track via its iTunes Music Store on
17-Jul-05: the song was “Mississippi Girl” by
Faith Hill, and Apple’s giveaway winner is
Amy Greer from Lafayette, Indiana. She’ll
receive 10 iPods of her choosing, an iTMS
gift card for 10,000 songs, and a free trip
for four to see the band Coldplay perform. For the interminably curious, Apple
launched the iTunes Music Store over
two years ago in late April 2003, but just
crossed the 300-million-downloads mark in
March of this year. If iTMS’s sales remained
flat, Apple could expect to sell its one-billionth track in about a year; however, the
iPod’s still-growing sales and popularity will
probably bring that date much closer. [GD]
<http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2005/
jul/18itms.html>
Acrobat Vulnerabilities Fixed
Adobe has released Adobe Reader 7.0.2
and Adobe Acrobat Standard/Professional
7.0.2 for the Macintosh, in part to fix
a pair of security vulnerabilities and to
improve form handling. In one vulnerability, a malicious JavaScript embedded
Cont’d on Page 20
informed by learning and shaped by
convention. It is not realism but verisimilitude.
Photographs may seem realistic
but the technology of film prevents
escaping photographic conventions,
which are actually quite limiting.
Less limiting is a paintbrush. A brush
can produce every effect a camera
can plus a great many more. Before
photography, skilful and observant
artists spent millennia working out
how to represent reality on flat surfaces using this superior tool. Their
work forms the most complete guide
available on realistic ways to put pictures onto paper.
Most artistic techniques cope with
two basic problems, problems that
reflect the architecture of the visual
tissue of the brain: how to imply
something about form and space
using (1) areas of brightness and (2)
lines. These problems are not discrete
and isolated any more than the tissue
of the brain is, they are two sides of
the same coin, but it will simplify our
thinking to make a fuzzy distinction
between them.
Contrast
The eye does not see light per se,
it sees changes in light - contrast.
If two objects do not contrast with
one another, to the eye they meld
into one. This fact makes controlling
the contrast of adjacent details to be
paramount in importance. However,
the real contrast of any scene can
rarely be reproduced. As I said, the
range of reflectance from the lightest
to the darkest objects in a scene is
rarely less
than one thousand to one and often
exceeds one million to one, yet the
range of reflectance of pigment
against paper or canvas is approximately one hundred to one. On the
other hand, even within a contrasty
scene, small areas can have very little
contrast indeed.
From contrasting tones the brain
infers three-dimensional objects. It
does this through association, by
matching patterns it has encountered
before: a bright spot is a source of
light, brilliant yellow may be fire and
hot, areas that are darker tend to be
removed from you or from light,
bright areas tend to be near you or
near light, tiny highlights on a face
indicate sweat and heat, etc. To paint
realistically, painters use associations
like these to create optical illusions.
This is easy because the eye scrutinizes only tiny areas at a time, so the
brain cannot easily compare colours
and tones across broad distances.
As long as adjacent tones vary naturally, distant tones can be impossible
optically yet still look right. You can
see this in Rembrandt’s painting of
Belshazzar’s Feast, linked below.
The main source of light on the faces
appears to be the writing on the wall,
yet it is no brighter than the faces. It
is not white but fiery gold, yet it is so
far away from his face that nobody
notices the optical absurdity. Also,
with writing on the wall as the main
light, the secondary light reflected off
the invisible wall on the left ought
logically to be much dimmer than it
is.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/809/BelshazzarsFeast.jpg>
In other parts of the painting
Rembrandt increased contrast where
he had to maneuver within too limited a range to limit himself to variations in brightness. Look at the woman’s red dress to see an example. Not
only do the folds look three-dimensional overall, each tiny portion of
every fold looks three-dimensional,
even if you restrict your eye to small
areas, areas where there is little difference in brightness from highlight
to shadow. Every tiny part of the
dress contrasts with the part adjacent to it. Rembrandt could do this
because he did not vary brightness
alone, he varied hue and saturation
as well - independently. If you open
the picture in Photoshop and set the
Info window to HSB, you can move
the mouse around and see some of
this variation that has survived the
miniaturization of the painting. (The
real thing, which somebody long ago
trimmed to a smaller size and different angle, is 66” by 82” or 167 cm by
209 cm.)
Filmmakers and commercial
Cont’d on Page 19
17
GRAMUG News Continued from Page 2
ways that you can get around the issue. (Using one of a
number of programs designed to invoke those housekeeping chores manually.) While it’s not a critical issue running
those housekeeping chores does help insure that your Mac
runs smoothly.
There was a question asked if anyone was interested
in getting together for a picnic/social event this summer?
If you are please either reply directly to me, and I’ll forward the feedback along, or post to the Forums. Terry has
offered to organize the event but we need to know if there
is enough interest to get the ball rolling.
Our featured presentation was on MacOS X 10.4, aka
Tiger. There was so much to cover it took two presenters to
do the job. Terry Johnston focused his talk on the new feature Dashboard and Dashboard Widgets. Dashboard widgets are mini programs that perform a particular function.
You can find a bunch of them at Apple’s web site and Terry
also suggested checking out this site: <http://www.dashboardwidgets.com/>. Terry showed us some of his favorite widgets. They’re fun, cool, and useful little programs.
Next up was Kevin Woltjer who wanted to focus on a new
feature that isn’t getting as much press, Parental Controls,
as well as Spotlight and Smart Folders. Apple has quietly
added some pretty darn nice Parental controls to MacOS
X, if you use Apple’s applications like Mail and iChat. You
can restrict who can talk to your child in a chat session and
who can email them, among other things. If you’re concerned about your child’s computing, such as what they
can get into on the computer and on the Web, you should
give this feature a look. It is quite slick. Kevin then went
over Spotlight, the new fast searching technology built into
MacOS X Tiger. Although you can see demonstrations on
Apple’s web site as to Spotlight’s power it really is neat to
see it in person, ie a regular system. It is quick and handy.
I wouldn’t say, at this point that Folders are outdated, but
if Spotlight is developed farther I can see a day when you
won’t
have to
keep track
of which
folder
you put
something
in. Smart
folders are
a spin off
feature of
Spotlight.
In essence
they are
saved
searches
that look
like folders. You
can use
Shown abovie is Ms. Julie Wolf
them to
holding her prize, Toast 6. (April winner) help you
find things
again and
again. (Say
files for a
particular
project.)
Smart
folders
are being
adopted
into all of
Apple’s
apps. Look
for them
in Mail
and iPhoto
particularly.
During Shown abovie is Mr. Bob Koroknay Palicz
the pre- holding his prize, the Photo Coach. (Åpril
sentation
winner)
several good
questions were raised. Spotlight questions included: How
it worked (Answer: by indexing your entire hard drive
when you first install Tiger and thereafter it adds files
and folders to an index in real time.) How long it took to
index and if it took much time to index after the first run.
(Answer: First time that Spotlight runs plan on it taking
45-60 minutes. More if you have a really large hard drive
with lots of files. After that indexing takes practically no
time.) Any problems with applications running under
Tiger? (Answer: For the most part no. However some programs do have to be updated for Tiger. You can check sites
like www.macintouch.com or macfixit.com for lists of programs that require updating.)
We conluded the meeting by holding a raffle. Our winners included Jim Fawcett (A new member who loudly
said he’d never win this time around.) who won iLife ‘04.
Cynthia
was our
grand
prize winner. She
won Tiger.
(There
was a
third winner, but
darn it I
didn’t get
the name
down
and it has
slipped
my mind.
Apologies
on that.) Shown abovie is Mr. Jim Fawcett holding
his prize. A copy of iLife ‘04. (May winner)
18
Reality Cont’d from Page 17
photographers create realistic photos
similarly, by “cheating” lamps that are
put on the set as props, lighting the
set so that the light seems to be coming from those props. An example is
the picture of the blacksmith at the
link
below. A logical analysis shows that
no illumination can have come from
the fire, but the eye is not a logical
analyser. However, cheating like this
takes more time than cheating on your
taxes, especially in a still photograph
where the illusion does not flit past
your eye. That photograph took me
a day to plan and a day to execute.
(Among other things, I needed to
wrap the entire workshop in aluminum foil, to prevent light from coming
through chinks in the walls.)
On the other hand, equivalent
results can often be obtained without
cheating by using a good digital camera and re-balancing the light digitally.
An example is the dyer in the picture
linked below. The version on the
right shows the scene as film would
have caught it; the version on the left
shows it as it felt and as I remember it
to be. It is probable that before I took
the picture, I noticed that the room
light was bluer than the firelight - I
do tend to notice such things - but my
overwhelming perception was overwhelming heat and that heat is what
I wanted to portray. To the visual system, so many cues to heat are present
that the firelight in his face looks natural although it’s logically absurd.
The next example shows a more
ordinary picture. The image on top
shows what the scene looked like: a
brightly lit bush in the foreground
with a jungle of trees in the hills
behind, gradually diminishing in size
and clarity. However, although my
brain perceived the bush to be bright,
it was actually dark compared to the
sky and the jungle was even darker.
The scene presented a range of tones
that nothing man-made can come
close to reproducing. My camera’s
sensor “mechanically” compressed
those tones into the image on the bottom. Slide film would have done the
same. To make the picture look more
realistic, I brightened the bush in the
foreground and painted contrast into
the jungle by varying saturation and
brightness independently from each
other and from hue.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/809/Jungle.jpg>
To manipulate contrast in this way
requires three things:
* Capturing the information that you
want to bring out.
* Making that information visible by
lightening shadows and/or
darkening highlights.
* Adjusting colour not to make it look
accurate - that is
impossible - but to bring out whatever contrasts are necessary
to make it look right
To meet the first requirement, you
need a raw, unprocessed image (not a
JPEG) from a camera that can record
a broad range of contrasts. In today’s
market this means a single-lens reflex
camera. (For more information, see the
“Image Quality” section of my article
“Picking a Point-and-Shoot Camera:
Panasonic DMC-FX7” in TidBITS-783_
.) When I convert the file to a standard
format (I prefer the generic TIFF to
Adobe’s PSD), I set its levels of tonality to run the full extreme from black
to white, with the middle set to look
as good as possible.
for the full Photoshop. The other reason is that Elements has limited facilities to handle 16-bit colour. Although
8-bit colour is usually sufficient, pulling apart tonality often requires finer
intermediate colours to be present.)
Now look at the Rembrandt picture
again, at the detail on Belshazaar’s
cape. The detail stands out because
it is formed by brush-strokes with
extremely high contrast from one to
the next, extremely high local contrast. I make detail stand out in a
photograph the same way by using
an incidental feature of PictureCode’s
Noise Ninja, which is primarily a
noise-reduction package (and one of
the best). This feature is a slider that
enhances local contrast. I often use it
by itself without any noise reduction
at all.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/809/BelshazzarsFeast.jpg>
<http://www.picturecode.com/>
Now comes the paint. If an artist wants to adjust a colour on his
canvas, he may change its hue, or he
may daub on spots of complementary
colours to reduce its saturation, or he
may add some black or white touches
to reduce or increase its brightness.
With digital photographs I want to do
the same. The product that enables me
to do this is Asiva Shift+Gain.
<http://www.asiva.com/>
Shift+Gain is a Photoshop plugin
that lets you select areas or lines
Lightening shadows and dark(useful
to remove colour fringing)
ening highlights comes next, with
by
any
combination
of hue, saturaAdobe’s Shadows/Highlights contion,
and
brightness,
and then alter
trol. Photoshop defines shadows and
those
parameters
individually.
No
highlights as dark or light areas larger
other
product
can
do
this,
except
for a
than a certain number of pixels across.
standalone
package
from
Asiva
that
CS, CS2 and Elements all enable
is too slow to use. Indeed, incredible
adjusting the amount of lightening or
darkening but CS and CS2 also enable as it may sound, Asiva has a U.S. patent on this approach to manipulating
adjusting the size of what Photoshop
pictures.
sees as a shadow or highlight. I find
Shift+Gain works differently
that adjustment to be very important,
from
any other application and took
and I use it for maybe one photo in
some
time to understand. However,
three.
although it was confusing at first, it
soon came to seem simple. To accom(Most of what Adobe left out of
plish
in Photoshop most of what I do
Photoshop Elements I do not care
in
Shift+Gain
would require far more
about - Elements is already more comskill
and
patience
than I can supply.
plex than it needs to be - but I found
I
find
Shift+Gain
to be an indisthis one adjustment almost reason
pensenough by itself to forgo Elements
Cont’d on Page 22
able
19
News Cont’d from Page 17
within a PDF file could launch an arbitrary
application on your Mac, at least as long
as the exact application and path name is
known in advance by the attacker. In the
second vulnerability, the updater for Adobe
Reader and Acrobat could either elevate
the permissions of a pre-existing Safari
Frameworks folder or create such a folder
with elevated permissions.
<http://www.adobe.com/support/techdocs/331709.html>
The free 7.0.2 updaters work only
on version 7.0.1; if you haven’t already
updated from 7.0 to 7.0.1, you must do
so before updating to 7.0.2. You can either
download the updates manually from the
URLs below or use the Check for Updates
Now command in the Help menu of each
program, after which the Adobe Update
Manager application will download and
install the update automatically. The Adobe
Reader update is an 11.2 MB download;
the Acrobat Standard/Professional downloads check in at 99.6 MB. [ACE]
<http://www.adobe.com/support/downloads/product.jsp?product=10&
platform=Macintosh>
QuicKeys X3 3.1 Supports
Automator, Adds Toolbars
Startly Technologies has released QuicKeys
X3 version 3.1, adding support for incorporating Automator workflows into
QuicKeys shortcuts and bringing back
SoftKeys, which provides a translucent
toolbar with 10 slots for holding shortcuts. Smaller improvements include a new
option for the Open Items action that lets
you specify on the fly which application to
use, the Action Palette for providing faster
access to shortcuts within QuicKeys Editor,
and the capability to trigger shortcuts
based on the mounting or dismounting
of specific drives or network volumes. For
more about QuicKeys X3, see “QuicKeys
X3 at the Crossroads” in TidBITS-767_.
QuicKeys X3 3.1 requires Mac OS X
10.3.9 or later and is a 14.1 MB download.
It’s a free update for users of QuicKeys X3;
updates from previous
versions run between $30 and $70, and
new copies cost $100. [ACE]
<http://www.quickeys.com/products/qkx.
html>
Virtual PC 7.0.2 Gains Full Tiger
Date & Contact 5.0 will feature a new Take
Compatibility
Control user manual written by Joe Kissell;
Microsoft has released Virtual PC 7.0.2,
it should be available in the relatively near
a free minor update that provides full
future. The upgrade to Now Up-to-Date
compatibility with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger.
& Contact 5.0 from version 4.x costs $50,
In particular, the update fixes problems
and there’s a 30-day free trial version available as a 13.9 MB download. [ACE]
under Tiger with Virtual Switch, Zero
<http://www.nowsoftware.com/>
Configuration Printing, and the Dock Start
Menu. The update is a 17 MB download
Eudora 6.2.3 Fixes IMAP Bug
and will update versions 7.0 and 7.0.1.
Qualcomm has released Eudora 6.2.3, a
Microsoft also announced that new copies of Virtual PC 7 purchased before 30free update designed largely to fix the
Sep-05 would be eligible for a $30 rebate.
annoying IMAP bug that could result in lost
[ACE]
messages (see “Qualcomm Acknowledges
<http://www.microsoft.com/mac/downloads. Eudora Bug” in TidBITS-781_). Along with
aspx?pid=download&location=
that bug, the new version squashes a
/mac/download/misc/vpc7_0_2.xml>
variety of other bugs, adds a few x-eudorasettings for esoteric needs, and adds a
Apple Says Goodbye to Grayscale
checkbox to send mail through the SMTP
iPods
submission port (587) in the Sending Mail
In conjunction with the release of iTunes
settings panel. Also worth noting is that
4.9, Apple merged its iPod and iPod photo
Qualcomm has relaxed their approach
product lines. Gone are the black and
to requiring payment for new Paid-mode
white screens that appear on most current updates 12 months after the last payment;
iPods - it’s all color now. The new lineup
until further notice, updates that change
includes a 20 GB iPod for $300 and a 60
only the third digit (the 3 in 6.2.3) won’t
GB iPod for $400. Apple also introduced
trigger the need to pay for a new version
a 20 GB iPod U2 edition (black body, now
even if more than 12 months have passed.
color screen) for $330. At the same time,
Eudora 6.2.3 requires Mac OS X, is compatible with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and is a
the price of the 1 GB iPod shuffle has
7.8 MB download. Finally, Qualcomm has
been reduced to $130. [JLC]
announced that the next major version of
<http://www.apple.com/ipod/>
Eudora will be a significant rewrite, which
is necessary to take advantage of new
Now Up-to-Date & Contact 5.0
Released
technologies such as Spotlight and WebKit.
Now Software has released Now Up-to[ACE]
Date & Contact 5.0, the latest version of
<http://www.eudora.com/download/>
the company’s long-standing multi-user
<http://www.eudora.com/download/eudora/mac/6.2.3/RelNotes623.txt>
calendar and contact management software. New features include a Schedule
View for seeing multiple people’s schedules Opera 8 Boasts Speed and Security
simultaneously, a single interface to manage Opera Software has released the latest
version of its Web browser, Opera 8 for
multiple calendar and contact servers, the
Macintosh. This version brings to the Mac
capability to subscribe to iCal calendars,
vCard and iCalendar support, a redesigned the features available on Opera’s Windows
and Linux browsers, including faster page
interface for a more modern look and
loading, native Scalable Vector Graphic
improved ease-of-use, and customizable
toolbars. The update also provides compat- support (SVG 1.1 Tiny), enhanced privacy
ibility with Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger, and Now
features, and Opera’s Extensible Rendering
Software plans a free update for later in
Architecture (ERA) to adjust page appearance based on the size of the browser
the year to add support for Tiger-specific
window. Opera 8 requires Mac OS X 10.2
features like Dashboard, Spotlight, and
or later and is a 5.5 MB download. A limitmost importantly, SyncServices, enabling
ed version can be used for free, or you can
Now Up-to-Date & Contact to share
purchase the full version for $40. [JLC]
data with any other SyncServices-aware
<http://www.opera.com/>
application or device. (Roughly speaking,
SyncServices is the system-level version of
Security Update 2005-006 Released
iSync that promises to provide more generalized synchronization capabilities.) And
Apple released Security Update
last, but certainly not least, Now Up-toCont’d on Page 21
20
News Cont’d from Page 20
2005-006 last week, fixing the usual miscellany of possible security holes in services such as the AFP Server, Bluetooth,
CoreGraphics, folder permissions, launchd,
LaunchServices, MCX Client, NFS, PHP,
and the VPN server. All of the holes apply
to Mac OS 10.4 Tiger (both client and
server versions), but only the Bluetooth
and PHP fixes are relevant for those still
running Panther, and the VPN fix was
already rolled into Mac OS 10.3.9 by a
previous security update. For full details,
see Apple’s description; the download
ranges from 3.9 MB to
6.4 MB, depending on the version you
need and whether you get it via Software
Update or as a stand-alone download.
[ACE]
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.
html?artnum=301742>
Snapz Pro X 2.0.2 Provides Tiger
Compatibility
Ambrosia Software has released Snapz Pro
X 2.0.2, a minor upgrade to the company’s
essential screen capture software. The
upgrade provides full Tiger compatibility,
fixes a few bugs, is localized for Traditional
Chinese, and includes an uninstaller. Every
author I know relies on Snapz Pro X for
screenshots, and although this is clearly
not a major upgrade, it’s worth keeping
up with the latest version. The upgrade is
free to registered customers; Snapz Pro X
normally costs $30 for still screen captures,
or $70 for the version that can capture
actions as movies.
<http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/
snapzprox/>
(Interestingly, in Tiger Apple changed
the file format for screenshots captured
with Command-Shift-3/4 from PDF to
PNG, perhaps because PNG files can be
used in Web pages more easily than PDF
files (PNG support is widespread in modern programs). Although everyone I know
who’s serious about screenshots uses
Snapz Pro X, in which you can choose the
file format, you can also use Apple’s Grab
utility to take screenshots in TIFF format,
and you can even use File > Grab in Tiger’s
version of Preview to capture a screenshot directly into Preview, at which point
you can use Save As to save it to PDF or
another supported format.) [ACE]
QuickTime 7.0.1 Fixes Security
Hole
Apple has released QuickTime 7.0.1, a 26.6
MB download via Software Update. This
update replaces the Quartz Composer
plug-in, which was found to be capable
of sending local data to an arbitrary Web
location using an encoded URL. The new
component prevents this from happening. QuickTime 7.0.1 supports Mac OS X
10.3.9 or later.
<http://docs.info.apple.com/article.
html?artnum=301714>
QuickTime 7.0.1 also includes unspecified bug fixes and allegedly improves
compatibility with Apple’s Final Cut Studio.
TidBITS Technical Editor Geoff Duncan
discovered fixes for a couple of annoying
QuickTime 7 problems on multi-channel audio interfaces: QuickTime 7.0.1
respects the user’s default stereo output
pair (where version 7.0 sent stereo audio
only to channels 1 and 2 - bummer if your
speakers are connected to outputs 3 and
4!), and version 7.0.1 plays monophonic
audio correctly. [JLC]
Apple Recalls Laptop Batteries
Apple has announced a voluntary recall
of certain rechargeable laptop batteries
sold with, or sold separately for use with,
its 12-inch iBook G4, 12-inch PowerBook
G4, and 15-inch PowerBook G4 models
from Oct-04 through May-05. The company, which acted in cooperation with the
United States Consumer Product Safety
Commission and international authorities,
says the affected batteries could overheat,
posing a potential fire hazard. The batteries
will be replaced at no cost to the owner.
<http://www.apple.com/support/batteryexchange/>
today released Fetch 5, a sleek new version of the earliest FTP client still in active
development for the Macintosh. With
Fetch 5, Jim focused on simplifying the
user interface to improve ease of use and
adding support for low-level technologies like SFTP. Fetch now sports a new
toolbar for quick access to commonly
used functions, Back and Recent buttons
for easier navigation to previously viewed
folders, a more Finder-like list view, and a
status pane at the bottom of each transfer
window. Other interface niceties include
a file transfer progress indicator in Fetch’s
Dock icon, context- sensitive help, and a
recent connections pop-up menu in the
New Connection dialog. Under the hood,
along with SFTP support, Fetch 5 now
offers resuming of binary uploads, automatic detection of FTP and SFTP servers
on your local network if they advertise
their presence via Bonjour (formerly called
Rendezvous), importing of Interarchy and
Transmit bookmarks, support for using
StuffIt to compress files automatically on
upload and expand automatically on download, improved handling of non-ASCII and
Unicode file names, and “Automatic Passive
Mode” for automatic detection of proper
connection modes for reliable transfers
through firewalls and NAT gateways. Fetch
5 works with Mac OS X 10.2.4 or later
(including Tiger), and it costs $25, with
upgrades from Fetch 4 priced at $15. New
copies of Fetch and upgrades may both
be purchased directly from within Fetch
5; choose Purchase or Purchase Upgrade
from the Fetch application menu. Users
at educational and non-profit charitable
organizations may apply for a free license.
[ACE]
<http://www.fetchsoftworks.com/>
The recalled batteries include those
with model numbers A1061, A1078, and
A1079, and have serial numbers that begin
with HQ441 through HQ507, and 3X446
through 3X510. There are unaffected batteries with the same model numbers but
different serial numbers, so check both.
After verifying the battery is from the
affected batches, Apple will ship a replacement battery at no charge to the user,
who will then return the original battery
using the same packaging and an included
pre-paid shipping label. [MHA]
Fetch 5 Ready for a Walk
Proving that you can teach an old dog new
tricks, Jim Matthews and Fetch Softworks
21
Reality and Digital Pictures tool
for
Cont’d from Page 19
digital photography - the only indispensable tool, the only tool for which I do
not know of any functional equivalent. Unfortunately,
it will not work in any application
other than Photoshop, not even applications like GraphicConverter that can
run most other Photoshop plug-ins. It
is compatible with any recent version
of Photoshop, but it does require
Photoshop, which is why I am ignoring possible alternatives to Photoshop
in this article.
Those three sets of tools can handle
nearly all the manipulations of contrast and colour that I have had any
need for: (1) the controls in Photoshop
CS/CS2 for levels, shadows and highlights, (2) the local-contrast control in
Noise Ninja, and (3) Asiva Shift+Gain.
Occasionally I also use one of Asiva’s
other plug-ins, which work similarly
but do slightly different things. I have
found that Asiva’s plug-ins, combined
with Photoshop’s basic selection
tools, obviate the need for masking to
achieve ordinary pictorial effects.
Only one of Photoshop’s colour
adjustments do I find to be particularly useful. Sometimes, after I have
adjusted the colours to bring out contrasts, the picture shows an overall
tint. Now, no tint exists on its own,
a tint is merely an offset from a standard of comparison. In a photograph,
the eye’s standard is usually a pure
white highlight or the paper’s margin. If a neutral white or grey looks
coloured in comparison, then we see
a tint. Removing a tint is usually a
simple matter of shading the picture
just enough to neutralize that white
or grey. Every other colour changes a
bit, but the contrasts among them will
remain. It’s difficult to remove a tint
manually because the brain adapts so
readily to changes in colour that a
wide range of adjustments seems
okay until you print out the picture.
Photoshop can remove a tint mechanically; the mechanism is hidden in the
Match Color command.
One final consideration about
colour comes with dim light. In sunlight we see in colour; in moonlight
we see in monochrome; in transitional
“mesopic” levels of dim light we see
partially in monochrome and partially in colour. When painters want
to represent dim light, they portray it
mesopically. You can see this with the
musician at the back of the Rembrandt
and you can see it even better in the
Gross Clinic by Thomas Eakins,
the picture on the left at the link
below. The students in the shadows
are nearly monochromatic but the
monochrome contains hints of colour,
often quasi-random streaks and
blotches. (Note that the original painting is 96” by 78” or 243 cm by 198
cm.)
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/809/GrossAbattoirFlowers.jpg>
Film does not portray dim light
in this way, nor do most digital sensors, but the Foveon sensor does.
(See “Sense & Sensors in Digital
Photography” in TidBITS-751_ and
my followup for a discussion of sensor types.) Film and digital sensors
generate low levels of granular noise.
When a normal amount of light
strikes the film or sensor, the noise is
usually hidden within the image, but
when little light strikes it, the noise
becomes more evident. At some dim
exposure to light the image disappears within the noise: that defines
the limit of sensitivity. The random
dots of this noise can be smoothed
over but detail becomes smoothed
over with them and at the limit of sensitivity, all detail disappears. However
the Foveon image sensor works differently so its granularity looks different. The Foveon shows fewer specks
but replaces them with intrusions of
incorrect colour. At first this reduces
saturation then, at the lowest levels of
sensitivity, it causes random streaks
and blotches.
Reduced saturation and random
streaks and blotches of colour are
exactly the techniques that artists
use to represent dim light, and the
Foveon’s noise can be used to do the
same. I smooth out the granular noise
with Noise Ninja - there is rarely so
much of this that Noise Ninja loses
any detail - then I use Shift+Gain on
selected areas to control the discolouration. My goal is sufficient discolouration to add contrast for the eye but
not so much as to be noticed. You can
see the effect in the Chinese abattoir to
the right of the Gross Clinic painting
you just loaded.
Do note, though, that desaturation and blotchiness are not the norm
in Foveon photos. They are normally
hidden in depths of black and become
evident only if you bring them out
by pushing the sensor to its limits.
More normal is the picture of the
flower market - the third one on the
page. I took both pictures indoors and
exposed them at ISO 1600.
Perspective
So far we have been talking about
how to represent space using tonality,
now let’s shift to representing space
using lines. This is the problem of perspective.
During the Italian Renaissance, artists worked out a geometry of linear
perspective, geometry that appears
superficially to fit perceptual norms.
In fact, however, it does not. The
“laws” of linear perspective need usually to be broken, else the picture will
look wrong.
The laws of perspective dictate that
parallel receding lines converge. They
converge if they are receding horizontally like railway tracks and they converge if they are receding vertically
like skyscrapers seen from the street.
But consider vertical perspective. If
the angle of view portrayed is only a
little bit upward, then your brain may
not infer that objects are converging at
a distance above you, your brain may
infer that the objects are not plumb.
Of course, if those objects are walls of
buildings, then your brain concludes
that they are not falling inwards, for
just as you assume that boards are
straight, so do you assume that walls
are plumb. However, for the same
reason - because you assume that
walls are plumb - buildings look more
natural when all the vertical lines are
upright and parallel. You can see an
example of this issue in the two images of the temple pictured at the link
below. A correction like the top image
with film would have required the
careful adjustment of a view camera
on a tripod but it took me two minutes in Photoshop. (Elements or CS
can fix perspective but CS2 makes it
easier through a new Lens Correction
item in the Filter > Distort submenu.)
Cont’d on Page 23
22
Reality and Digital Pictures
Cont’d from Page 22
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/809/VerticalLines.jpg>
The same adjustment is useful for
horizontal lines. When horizontal
lines converge, buildings can appear
to be constructed on a hill and roofs
can seem to have unusual inclines.
To minimize ambiguity, vertical lines
ought to be plumb and horizontal
lines ought to be level unless the
reason for them not to be is obvious. Clear verticals and horizontals
provide a frame of reference that lets
oblique lines stand out.
Pictures of buildings obviously
benefit from this approach, but often
pictures of people do too, although
more subtly. You can see an example
in these two pictures of children,
linked below. The picture on the top
is stronger because the children are
sitting on a level platform, not a tilted
one.
<http://www.tidbits.com/resources/809/Children.jpg>
In fact, the laws of linear perspective need to be violated even when
photographing something straight on.
If you look straight at a picket fence
or a wall of bookshelves, an optically correct perspective would have
the lines of the fence or bookshelves
converging both to the left and to the
right. This would look so silly that
nobody would paint them this wayFor the same reason, camera lenses are
corrected to distort linear perspective
so that a rectilinear object casts a rectilinear image.
This presents an interesting problem that can be solved with a brush
or computer but not with film. The
farther out from the centre an object
extends, the farther its lines will be
pulled apart and thus the more it will
be enlarged, yet objects in the centre
will never be enlarged, distorting relative sizes. The wider the lens’s angle
of view, the greater the distortion.
This distortion can be seen with any
wide-angle lens and becomes disproportionately more severe the wider
the angle of view. When straight lines
are not involved - in many landscapes
- it often looks more natural when
relative sizes are maintained at the
expense of convergence. This can be
approximated in Photoshop CS2 by
adding convex “barrel” distortion, a
distortion that reduces the rectilinear
correction of the lens.
(Note that only CS2 offers that
control. CS2 also makes it significantly
easier than CS or Elements to correct converging and tilting lines, once
you find the new controls. In CS2,
all of the lens corrections are buried
under Filters > Distort, although File
> Render still shows the subset of corrections that is shared with CS and
Elements.)
Of course, adding convex distortion is unacceptable if straight lines
are involved. A certain amount of
convex distortion may not be noticed
in landscapes, but curvature stands
out absurdly in pictures containing
buildings. An alternative fudge is to
squeeze the picture from the sides. To
do this I use a $20 Photoshop plug-in
called Squeeze.
<http://www.theimagingfactory.
com/>
I also ought to mention the portrayal of depth through having only
one plane of the picture in focus. This
effect can be achieved with a brush,
but it rarely is, because it does not
mirror what the eye sees or the brain
perceives. The eye sees only tiny spots
sharply, and it sees tiny spots wherever it looks: from these the brain
perceives infinite depth of field. To
control attention and suggest different
qualities, a painter will vary the softness of edges across a picture, but this
variation is much more subtle than a
mis-focussed lens.
To vary hardness and softness
within a picture, I used to use a view
camera that allowed me to tilt and
swivel the lens, and I varied the character of the light. A digital camera
makes this a lot easier. My digital
camera usually provides infinite depth
of field with no special measures and
I can use digital techniques to control
softness like a painter, as I did in the
flower market example previously
shown. The flowers just behind the
smiling girl are soft, but the ferns
behind them are sharp, as is every
other object in the picture except for
the woman moving into it.
This was possible for two reasons,
both tied to the camera’s image sensor. First, the ISO speed of negative
film is based on the least exposure
necessary for acceptable snapshots. To
extract high quality usually requires
doubling the metered exposure. In
contrast, to extract the best quality
from my digital SLR, I usually halve
the exposure. That is two f-stops’
difference, which represents a lot of
depth of field. On top of that, the
sensor in my camera is smaller than
35mm film, which means the same
f-stop gives more depth of field. The
difference is 1-2/3 stops. Thus, for any
given amount of light, I obtain nearly
four f-stops’ more depth of field than
I would get were I shooting 35mm
negative film.
When everything is sharp within a
photograph, photographic compositions open up. People don’t just look
at my pictures, they look inside them,
combing them for detail - and they
find it, because I have controlled the
details’ contrast. With so much information to look at, my 8” x 10” (A4)
printer seemed too small. Next week
you can read a discussion of printers
and my search for a larger one.
Finally, to finish up my comparison
of the various versions of Photoshop,
I ought to mention two new features
of CS2 that are useful for preparing enlargements, a “spot healing
brush” and “smart sharpening.” The
former I find to be a modest but significant convenience, but the latter is
an important feature. It tightens up a
lens’s inescapable spreading of points
into blurry circles, and it reduces blur
from movement. In my mind, this feature combined with CS2’s improved
distortion controls makes the upgrade
from CS worth the purchase. I detest a
Windows-like copy-protection scheme
that Adobe have begun to employ - it
prohibits the fair use of your purchase
if you work in different locations - but
I swear at CS2 less often than I did at
its predecessors because it permits me
to hide from sight the vast number
of menus that I never use and to edit
or remove keyboard shortcuts. With
CS2, no longer do windows fly about
the screen and change their colour
because one of my fingers inadvertently touched a key.
This article orginally appeared in
Tidbits Magazine #809, 12/12/05,
and is reprinted with permission of
the Author.
23
Grand Rapids Area Microcomputer Users Group
Our meetings are held monthly. We meet on the fourth full week’s
Thursday of each month. We gather at the Grand Rapids CompUSA.
Meetings start at 7pm and are concluded at 9pm. Meetings are open
to the public, and are free. Membership is only $25 for one year.
Membership entitles you to user group discounts, entry in drawings
(must be present to win), our periodic email list, and our newsletter. Our
web page can be found at: http://www.gramug.org
For further information you can contact our president at:
[email protected]
$pecial$ & Deal$
We would like to give
special thanks to the following organizations who
contributed to this publication
The following deals or specials are provided as a courtesy to our readers. The specials outlined
below may no longer be available by the time you read this. For more timely information stop by
a GRAMUG meeting.
Special Member Discount Offer on Internet Service
GRAMUG has teamed up with Iserv, the largest independent ISP in West Michigan, to
offer our members a great deal on Internet access.†
www.iserv.net
The offer consists of the following:
Unlimited dialup Internet access for only $16.95/mo FREE activation (a $20 savings)
Up to 10 email addresses, 7 megabytes of personal webspace. Customer support 7 days
a week Local access numbers across all of lower Michigan (and parts of the UP)
To take advantage of this special offer, call Iserv locally at 493-3740 or toll-free at 1888-64-ISERV. Be sure to mention that you are a member of the GR Apple Macintosh
Users Group in order to receive the discount. (Please say the group name like that, it
will make the process go faster;) If you would like to sign up via the online sign up
form, found at <http://www.iserv.net/> contact our President for the code. There is a
special code you must enter in order to get the special rate. This offer is valid ONLY for
User Group Members.
(†Offer valid only on new accounts.)
onOne Software: 20 Percent Discount on Photoshop Plug-Ins
onOne Software provides solutions for digital photographers using Adobe Photoshop or
Photoshop Elements. Solutions include Genuine Fractals 4.1 for high-quality image scaling and large format printing, PhotoFrame 2.5 for creating unique, high-quality image
borders and effects, Mask Pro 3 for masking images for composites and Intellihance Pro
for enhancing digital photographs.
*Further information provided
to GRAMUG
members. Stop
by and join
today.
This special user group offer will take 20 percent off your entire purchase.
http://www.ononesoftware.com
Other World Computing: Selected Discounts
Other World Computing (OWC) has sold and supported quality Apple hardware products at competitive prices since 1998. OWC has partnered with Newer Technology, Inc.,
to provide high-capacity batteries for iPods and PowerBooks and launched http://
www.FasterMac.net to get Mac users surfing faster.
With this offer, user group members can take 5 percent off any NewerTech miniStack
FireWire kit/solution, and 10 percent off any NewerTech Battery (iBook, PowerBook or
iPod). This offer carries a limit of one coupon per item and one discount per customer
per order.
See these great products.
http://www.macsales.com
*Further information provided to GRAMUG members. Stop by and
join today.