Here, documented, is my prediction for the we-have-no-information-at-all-but-“know”-it’s-coming Apple “tablet”.

Prediction

The new “tablet” computer from Apple will replace the MacBook.

Fine Print

Please keep in mind that this prediction is as accurate as, if not more accurate than, all other predictions regarding the Apple “tablet.” That is, entirely made up out of thin air.

Over the last few weeks I’ve been re-working my DVD-to-AppleTV procedure.

For getting the material off the DVD, I use RipIt. For encoding, I use HandBrake. Then, I tag using AtomicParsley through Lostify.

I do this two-step process, instead of using HandBrake to read directly from the DVD, for two reasons. First, RipIt gets the movie off the DVD and onto my HDD much more quickly. I can load several DVDs in sequence, instead of doing one at a time. Second, I’ve come to realise that HandBrake isn’t really that good of an encoder, but I trust other encoders I’ve come across even less than I trust HandBrake.

Ripping

RipIt is a great little app: super simple, mostly reliable. Mostly. Yeah. Well, its a very young product and totally worth the buy. Yes, its a for-pay app and yes I paid. I don’t regret it. It did produce some trouble when HandBrake refused to encode from it. The problem was a minor metadata error in the RipIt output. HandBrake, however, flat-out refused to encode due to that metadata error. I filed a bug with HandBrake; They said fuck off. RipIt has recently fixed the bug on their end, so everything works again.

Encoding

For the encode, I use HandBrake’s Universal preset, but then I turn on “detelecine” and then mess with the audio tracks.

I have no idea why detelecine isn’t always on. It is non-destructive, and always results in better video. Any good video player will detelecine as part of its rendering process (part of “up converting”), so there is no purpose to leaving it telecined. Telecine only exists to begin with because of the limits of early television technology. If I ever forget to modify the preset settings before clicking start, I have to go back and encode again.

HandBrake often over-crops the video with its “autocrop” feature, so I’ll often have to go back and re-encode with manual cropping. However, more than half the time (three quarters?) HandBrake autocrops correctly, so its better to leave it on and re-encode when it gets it wrong.

HandBrake’s Universal preset is also set to encode the main audio track twice. That’s intentional. The reason given is that the AppleTV can use the original AC3 encoding used on the original DVD, so in addition to re-encoding the audio as AAC for the iPod and Mac, they include an extra copy of the full, original audio encoding in the file for the AppleTV to use and pipe out over the digital optical audio out port to then be decoded by your high-end digital surround sound home theatre system. If I cared about my “home theatre experience,” I wouldn’t be encoding using HandBrake and even if I were, I wouldn’t be using the Universal preset. Besides, the AAC audio is actually fantastic, so I’d really have to spend some serious cash to even be able to tell the difference. In many cases, I wouldn’t be able to anyway.

Since DVDs can support up to 8 audio tracks, some for foreign language dubs and some for commentary (i.e. director’s commentary), I tell HandBrake to drop the AC3 pass-thru and instead encode the english main audio track and the english director’s commentary track. Sadly, this runs into problems where the original language of the film isn’t english, and fails completely if there is no english track. So, in the end, I just tell it to encode all the audio tracks. Unfortunately for me, this results in having to manually check boxes for every encode, since HandBrake can’t be told to do “all” audio tracks. It has to be told each audio track. If you try to trick it by finding a disc with 8 tracks and then saving those settings as a preset, then on a disc with, for example, 3 tracks, HandBrake will encode track 1, track 2, and track 3, but will encode track 3 six times. Ok…

I filed a bug report on that one. They said fuck off.

Good customer support, guys.

Tagging

I have a little shell script which checks the DVD name for a pattern, and tags it with any known info. This is useful exclusively for TV Shows such as LOST, Battlestar Galactica, Family Guy, &c. This script also adds album artwork, if known.

Finally, I fire up Lostify and add the last few details.

The Bount

I love Bleach. I first discovered this Anime while attending Genius training in Cupertino. One of my roommates was watching it on Cartoon Network. I immediately added it to my NetFlix to catch up. Last week, I started watching the Bount arc (season 4).

If I had seen an episode from the Bount arc that day on Cartoon Network, I never would have considered Bleach. I wouldn’t have NetFlix’d the DVDs. I wouldn’t have looked up the AMVs. And, were someone to recommend it to me later, I would have ignored the recommendation. Season 4, the Bount arc, sucks enormous, hairy, sweaty donkey balls. It’s an embarrassment. It’s a fucking joke.

So far, I’ve made it through episode 73. Its slow going, because I can’t stand the pain of watching such a great show go through such contortions. Episode 72 stood out as just plain stupid, along with a few scenes from 73 (such as the giggling in the final scene). Not to mention, that it just doesn’t hold my attention.

Content Creation

This is what happens when content is authored by committee. The author of the Bleach manga had not completed anything further in the story line by the time the anime studio finished season 3 (the Rescue arc). Instead of wait for more original content, they just wrote filler. The result: shit.

Content is a creative endeavour, not a capitalist endeavour. Content must be created by a visionary, an author. Someone who is not driven merely by greed. Take for example the Walt Disney Company. Look at Sleeping Beauty 3, The Little Mermaid 2, &c. Inane drivel.

This is an outgrowth of our business-oriented culture. We pay our businessmen, the ones who create nothing, more than we pay our artisans. The businessman who strikes a deal with an artisan to distribute a new something becomes wildly rich beyond any of our craziest dreams, and the artisan usually comes out quite well off too, but never at the same level as the businessman. Disney is, again, a perfect example. Walt, the man, although severely mentally off-kilter, was a visionary. He led, and in some cases built himself, a creative empire. His successors, the businessmen, have done nothing of the sort. They merely run the business, and get stinking rich because of it. The last Disney, Roy if I remember, resigned from the board in protest against the ridiculousness that has become this once-great enterprise.

All of the greatest films to come out of Disney in a long time did not actually come out of Disney. They came out of Pixar, which Disney then purchased.

Copyright

This can all be fixed.

Our constitution creates a monopoly on the legal right to distribute elements of content. Today, this right is lumped in with property, and is often colloquialised as “Intellectual Property.” We forget, though, that there is no property, real or personal, in this monopoly. This is an invented concept, with the express purpose of promoting the useful arts and science.

Well, instead of allowing colloquial usage to dictate our social constructs. I’ll repeat it again: copyright is a social construct. So, since modern copyright is obviously a faulty concept (for more reasons than just Snow White 2), lets change it.

Lets keep copyright, but make it explicitly less like property. Lets make the right to distribute content originate with the author or inventor, just as it does now, but lets make it stay there. Lets reward the creator of the stories we love so much, instead of the first businessman to scam him out of his creation. We can keep the corporations of distribution. Let them make piles of cash too. But, the key here is that the control of the copyright rests with the visionary, not the businessman. If the author wants to go one direction, then let him. If the businessman wants to go another, then fuck him. The businessman is already rich.

Lots of people are complaining that the Google Books Settlement is really just an end-run around existing copyright law and Congress’ power to set copyright policy. It is. That’s a good thing.

Congress’ copyright policy from 1976 has flaws. Congress addressed those flaws by completely fucking up the whole thing with the DMCA. Now, the cracks in the original system are showing, and the fuck ups of the DMCA are pissing off the very people who create the things which we say copyright is here to protect.

Google’s book-scanning protect is not about making books available online. Its about making out-of-print books available online. The only books that Google is trying to scan are books that you can’t get at the book store because nobody is printing new ones. That’s a good thing! If the copyright owner cared about making money off of these books, then the copyright owner should print more and sell them!

Google is only scanning the books that the copyright owners have abandoned!

I, for one, fully support Google’s project.

FileVault was introduced in Mac OS X v10.3, if I recall correctly. Basically, it replaces one’s home folder with a disk image, which is mounted during login and unmounted at log out. The idea is that the disk image is encrypted, and so therefore your home is encrypted. At first, this sounds like a fantastic idea: real data security. However, there are often misunderstandings about what this does and how it works.

A fundamental requirement of any encryption system is that it fails closed. What does “fails closed” mean? When something fails, what happens? If a door lock fails, then its either stuck open or stuck closed. If stuck open, then you can’t lock your door. If it fails closed, then you can’t unlock your door. The goal of all encryption systems is to fail closed. If anything is tampered with, then the contents are inaccessible. Only a working lock (disk image) with a working key (password) can be unlocked. If it ever failed open, then anyone could just come along, smash the lock with a hammer, and walk in.

So, you’ve probably already realised why this is a problem for users of a consumer operating system on a consumer computer. If you drop your laptop, then your hard drive is damaged, then your lock is damaged, then it doesn’t matter if you still have your key. Worse, what if you lose your key? Worse, what if your lock breaks by itself during one of the myriad occasions when a consumer operating system or a consumer computer fails by itself? (I’m not talking hardware failure, but simple application crashes, kernel panics, unexpected sudden power loss, &c.)

The result is that, unless you have some reason to be significantly concerned about data theft, your concern for data loss ought to outweigh all possible motivation for turning FileVault on.

Sadly, we are talking about consumers here. These people don’t backup. Their fear of windows viruses produces an unreasonable desire to turn on anything labelled “security”.

Therefore, FileVault is often a cause of complete, catastrophic data loss.

Well, if you do backups, for example using Time Machine (properly), and you don’t forget your password, and you understand that encryption systems are designed to fail closed, then there aren’t really any down sides, even though FileVault is admittedly often a cause of catastrophic data loss.

I turned on FileVault because I don’t want anyone to get my data if they steal my computer. I don’t want my login details (even though the passwords are encrypted) recovered from my keychain. I don’t want my financial details recovered. I don’t want my personal files recovered (not just pr0n, but also personal e-mails &c.). I recognise that I must now log out in order for my backups to happen. I recognise that I must be more careful about where I save enormous files (such as my iMovie Events folder or disk images of any software I purchase). I recognise that even if I’m extremely careful, my home might be corrupted anyway and I’ll have to restore from backup.

OK. It’s worth it. I don’t want anyone to be able to report what brand of pr0n I like. Not just because of the embarrassment it may cause, but because of the misguided social constructs which govern any sort of public behaviour and which have been enshrined in the ethics requirements of my profession. (I have a whole other essay on why “ethics” requirements are anything but.)

Postscript: Of course, Apple has taken steps to ensure that FileVault is less troublesome. Starting in Mac OS X v10.5, Apple introduced a type of disk image called a “sparse bundle” which breaks the disk image itself into hundreds of tiny files so that the chance of file corruption causing complete data loss is much lower. The sparse bundle format also serves to separate some of the metadata from the file data to improve fault tolerance.

MobileMail CVE-ID: CVE-2009-2207 Available for: iPhone OS 1.0 through 3.0.1, iPhone OS for iPod touch 1.1 through 3.0 Impact: Deleted email messages may still be visible through a Spotlight search Description: Spotlight finds and allows access to deleted messages in Mail folders on the device. This would allow a person with access to the device to view the deleted messages. This update addresses the issue by not including the deleted email in the Spotlight search result. This issue only affects iPhone OS 3.0, iPhone OS 3.0.1, and iPhone OS for iPod touch 3.0. Credit to Clickwise Software and Tony Kavadias for reporting this issue.

So, a few weeks ago the interwebs erupted with news of a new security vulnerability in the iPhone OS. Today, Apple fixed this in iPhone OS 3.1. If you’re not as stupid as the webtards who thought this was a vulnerability to begin with, then you might notice that Apple didn’t fix anything. They just made the deleted message not appear in Spotlight. The deleted messages aren’t actually any gone-er than before.

Now, if you’ve been hiding under a rock for a while, then you’ll be curious why Deleted Messages are not, well, deleted. The answer is Trash. On your Mac you “delete” things by moving them to the Trash. Microsoft calls this the “Recycle [sic] Bin.” Although things are conceptually deleted or removed, the user is still able to recover those “deleted” things. So, from the computer’s point of view, they’re not really deleted at all, are they?

In my years at Apple’s Genius Bar, I ran across several customer who actually rely on this. They stored important files in their trash. Things that they explicitly did not want to delete.

Welcome to iPhone. iPhone’s Mail app uses a trash folder named “Deleted Messages.” The messages in this folder ARE NOT DELETED. If you were on your Mac (or Windoze- or Linux-box) and you deleted a message, IT WOULD ALSO NOT BE DELETED but instead moved to this special folder just like on your iPhone.

Perhaps it was a bug in Spotlight to show you items from your trash. Spotlight on my Mac does not show me items from my trash. I’ll assume it was a bug. Was it a security bug? No. Was it a security vulnerability? (Vulnerability means that someone could take advantage of it to break into your data.) No.

So, Apple fixed it. As you might have noticed in the quote above, Apple labelled the fix a security fix. Why? So that the webtards would at least say that Apple fixed it.

Fucking stupid.

ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY Message sent - 9/8/2009 Boil Water Alert Campus Community: Bristol County Water Authority has issued a Boil Water Alert for Bristol, Warren and Barrington, which includes Roger Williams University. DO NOT USE TAP WATER FOR ANY REASON unless it has been boiled for at least one minute and then cooled. This includes drinking, brushing teeth, making ice, cooking or bathing of infants. Dining Services is aware of the problem and is taking measures to ensure that all water used in RWU dining venues is safe for consumption. Further information will follow as soon as it becomes available. More detail is available via the following news article available on the Bristol Phoenix website at http://www.eastbayri.com/detail/131158.html. Modify alert notification settings: This e-mail has been sent to you by ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY as part of our alert notification system. To learn more about the system or if you do not wish to receive further notifications, please visit http://www.rwu.edu/. Thank you. Copyright © 2008 Blackboard Connect Inc. This e-mail has been sent from ROGER WILLIAMS UNIVERSITY through the Connect-ED service. Connect-ED is a service of Blackboard Connect Inc. All Rights Reserved Worldwide.

I remember when HFS+ was released in MacOS 8.1. They recommended that one does not use it as one’s boot system, since it was still new and, more importantly, since one wouldn’t have a bootable floppy(!) or CD which could read HFS+.

I dutifully reformatted by boot system to use HFS+, without a bootable floppy or CD. Some time later, I found that this was not such a great idea, but whatever.


Now, HFS+ is the only file system. UFS was removed, ZFS evaporated, and now HFS is gone too.

Trivia: the Hierarchal Filing System was so named because its predecessor (Macintosh Filing System) was not hierarchal. That is, you couldn’t have any folders. The entire system software lived inside the System suitcase. All your files just lived at the root of the drive.

—
Sent (in-part) from John’s iPhone2,1

In short: go buy it now.

1. Grand Central Dispatch has just guaranteed that Macs are the most powerful machines in the consumer, workstation, non-HPC, and maybe even HPC market segments. Period. All Snow Leopard apps for Mac will, quite simply, beat the shit out of all comparable Windows or *nix apps in terms of performance and flexibility. Hands down.

   Update: I told you so.

2. OpenCL will nicely complement [GCD][Grand Central Dispatch].

3. Blocks will make apps less buggy and more flexible.

4. The 32-bit kernel was the reason that Apple hasn’t gone anywhere near 64GB RAM yet. Fixed.

5. Hardware drivers (in KEXTs) will be less buggy once updated for 64-bit. This is because they will have to do much less memory management themselves.

6. Whenever Digi gets around to updating ProTools for Snow Leopard (2015?), its kernel extensions will ACTUALLY WORK AND WON’T BREAK WITH EVERY NEW POINT RELEASE. Why? Because Apple no longer allows the unsupported entry points that Digi lazily relies upon.

7. Shutdown is faster because Mac OS X cheats. However, it is very careful to make sure that the result is non-destructive. It still cheats.

8. The new Services re-work will make Power Users, and Grandma, very very happy. This will make you faster on the computer, without regard for the actual performance (see #1 above).

9. Aliases have been replaced. The replacements are called Bookmarks. They work the same way. Also, the end user will probably never see this change. In fact, the word “alias” is still used in the UI.

10. OpenCL will easily make Mac OS X the platform for high performance media manipulation. IF Adobe were to port Photoshop et al to OpenCL, then Photoshop on Mac would, quite simply, blast the shit out of Photoshop for Windows. On the same hardware. Without using GCD. Multiply by GCD for a mindfuck.

11. Font management is getting better and better.

12. Apple gave up on getting web “developers” on Windows to create proper images. Pick your battles and all that …mumble mumble…