Macintosh Hacker Attacks Are on the Rise - Symantec

Macintosh Hacker Attacks Are on the Rise -Symantec

Apparently hackers are starting to take ai interest in the minority interest platfor.

Maybe it's because they noticed Macs run a version of Unix?

Check out this story from Reuters

New PDA comments

I got a new PDA this week

A Toshiba E830

Since we cannot officially get this machine in my mother coutry or here in America, I thought it might be useful for some to read my impressions of this machine after a full week of use. So here's some thoughts, randomly dropped in as bullet points.

• The screen is wonderful!


• MS Reader works fine in VGA mode (SE_VGA) and the amazingly tiny text is clear as could be, easy to read. I am nearly 40 and don't need reading glasses ...


• Some dialoges don't like VGA


• When I first tried to use Transcriber in VGA (first I tried to use it at all in fact) it wanted to get me to read some help. It came up on a huge dialogue that I could not move to find the text. I used Wisebar Advanced to kill the process.


• Transcriber ROCKS in VGA mode. Suddenly it can read my spidery writing


• Seem to get lots of "MS Reader can no longer find this file" errors. Not sure if this means my SD card is dodgy, or if there is something inherent with this machine.


• Need to try a different card to store my books on.


• Virtual Pool Mobile does not support VGA


• I was able to install (virtually) ALL of the software I had on my old E755 simply by hooking up the 830 and going to Add/Remove Programs in ActiveSync. This is a great 'feature' of AS ... not sure if it is meant to do this or not, but I love it.


• Pocket Artist is way better in VGA mode.


• The various Outlook programs do not like VGA ... the dialoges don't scale.


• Did I mention how great the sceen is?


• Screen is bright even at lowest setting. I'd love to be able to set it dimmer for reading in bed. Suggestions anyone?


• I was even able to install ArcSoft Photobase that came on my E755 support disc.


• Graphic performance seems poor compared to E755 - probably coz I am running in VGA mode?


• Flash files play great using the Macromedia Standalone Player, but if set to run full screen, what they do is play full screen, with a 240x360 movie in the middle of the screen. Right-click and select "Show All" then it fills the screen nicely.


• Performace slower than E755 when played as "Show All" but the same if left at default 100%.


• Advanced Explorer takes its time to catalogue each folder - a lot slower than E755 - VGA setting makes this a much more usable program though.


• Pocket Streets seems to support VGA!!


• Wi-Fi works flawlessly and connects in about half the time E755 did.


• Web browsing is SOOOO much better, but default QVGA settig has HUGE scroll bars, even though the browser window seems to run VGA. SE_VGA fixes this.


• I seem to get more crashes in Internet Explorer than ever ... machine? SE_VGA? Dodgy OS?


• Built-in IPphone software (Gphone) is great for peer-to-peer as a local walkie-talkie. Wife and I can communicate in house and garden.


• Have tried to register with Gphine but their registrstion page is goosed - the buttons you have to press to register are disabled!!!


• Battery life not too good - could be bright screen + SE_VGA setting ...


• I want a Mugen extended battery.


• Wisebar Advanced works really well! But I still have not found a decent VGA theme.


• Ulti-Planner seems to work really well in VGA - especially the calendar view.


• What's with the teeny 2002 keyboard that pops up in VGA mode. Can that be fixed?


• The speaker is a lot louder than E755 - not that that would be hard!!!


• The Toshiba voice recorder software looks cool. Not tried it yet.


• Windows Media Player is disappointing in VGA, the old tiny video problem Need to try Beta Player.


• RealPlayer dialogues don't support VGA but movies seem to fill screen as expected.


• Calculator looks funny in VGA (it stretches to fit, without scaling buttons) but seems to work.
  
• My favourite card game suite Pocket Solitaire works fine - just rescales to fill screen - unlike Microsoft's version ... which seems to have some nice new card decks.

OK that's it for now.

Dazzletech announces JavaScript in Authorware book

Dazzletech announces JavaScript in Authorware book

At last a book that should help users trying to use JavaScript in Authorware

This week, Dazzletech announced the completion of their JavaScript in Authorware book, entitled JavaScript For Macromedia® Authorware®. The published a link to the Table of Contents of the book, and you can pre-order the book here.

You should read the full thread that followed the announcement of the book on the Aware List.

The discussion included pros and cons of JavaScript in Authorware, and extended into more general discussion of the features and evolution of Authorware.

And for once there was no blood :-)

By the way - JavaScript is a great addition to Authorware, finally adding OOP code to the long-in-the-tooth development tool. My personal opinion is that this iteration of JavaScript inside Authorware 7 is too much a bolt-on with too little integration (you cannot really embed JS expressions or variables in display icons or in response properties for instance). Macromedia has idicated that they intend to extend the features and functionality of JavaScript in future versions of Authorware so I am looking forward to something special in the future.

For now, for me, JavaScript is not important in Authorware, but I know that many 'code head' sorts are using it extensively and with glee. If/when it becomes easier to employ JavaScript in Authorware (like when the Help files reflect JavaScript syntax too ...) then I am sure I will happily drop the old AW Script for JavaScript and all the OOP goodness it brings.

No Laptop? How do you cope?

No Laptop? How do you cope?

Occasionally I mention my PDA obsession. This week it saved my sanity.

With no working laptop to let me surf the web, check eMail and genarally amuse myself, I was forced to resort to my PocketPC PDA to fill in the blanks.

Fortunately mine has Wi-Fi so I can use our home wireless LAN to connect to the internet to surf and to check email. I also have a cool little Belkin foldaway keyboard that I can use if I have a lot to type, otherwise the in-built entry methods work fine.

Surfing the web on a 240x320 screen should be a terrible thing, but with the aid of PocketIE Plus from Reensoft it becomes bareable. PIE adds full-screen mode, a clever reflow mode and the ability to open multiple IE windows, as well as the ability to map your hardware buttons to things like toggle full screen, page back, page forward etc.

Pretty soon I'll have a VGA PDA (Toshiba E830 480x640 screen) and I am looking forward to seeing how that performs on the internet. Soon the only thing I will need my laptop for will be work :-)

Sick Laptop

Sick Laptop

After over 3 years of abuse, the power socket on my Dell Inspiron 8100 broke

It is a great machine, still fast and easily capable of running all the software that I use day-to-day for work. So I needed to find a quick and cheap way to fix it.

Off to eBay I went to see what I could do.

I was amazed to see that I could find a similar machine to mine for about $600. Of course it would be 3 years or so old too, so no telling what wear and tear it had suffered, although I doubt your average laptop gets the same 8 - 16 hours use 7 days a week that mine has been through for 3.5 years.

Or I could pick up a mother board for about $300. That would be fine, but most of the mother boards seem to have been pulled from dismantled laptops, so the same wear and tear issues remained, plus I would have had to contend with things like could I upgrade that 800MHz processor with my 1.2 GHz one? Would I be able to dismantle and rebuild my machine without breaking anything?

I also had a look about to see if someone local could fix the socket. I figured I could get someone to solder it or whatever, but I could not find anyone who wanted to touch it without threatening me with a long sucking inhale first ...

Then I saw the solution! A second-hand Advanced Port Replicator (APR). I found several companies selling these through eBay, and a few promising to swap any faulty devices. $81 secured me the APR, including postage. 2 (working) days later here it is and it works fine.

The downside is that my laptop footprint has now grown by about 25%, but the good news is I can stretch it's useful working life out for another year or two. Dell's reputation for support has suffered over the last couple of years since it started to outsource to India, and USA support certainly seems less than what I was used to in the UK, although they are still OK if a little slow to reach a resolution.

There is nothing wrong with the machines they build though, so I'll be on their web site regularly, building that Dream Machine until the momemt is right - either I can afford the $3000 or so that gets the top of the line machine or this laptop finally pops its little clogs.

Road Trip

Road Trip

Random thoughts of a pink-eyed road warrior

I had to drive to Texas and back this week. All part of moving home, it's a long story that I won't bore you with. But I had to drive 1300 miles in a couple of days, and my mind got to wandering a time or two ...

• Why do you never see a police speed trap when it is raining?


• Texas road kill - skunk, armadillo, hound dawg.


• There are way too many Country radio stations in Texas to be considered healthy.


• What's whith that Mexican music? It sounds like a mixture between Spanish and Bavarian ... Flamenco meets lederhosen, Spanish guitar meets oompah!


• Ohh that Cajun stuff in Louisiana is just as odd.


• So what do American road builders have against corners?


• ... and why do they make the roads out of concrete and Teflon?


• I hate cruise-control-induced synchronised driving. There is absolutely no sense in 'overtaking' another car ar the rate of 1 inch per fortnight!


• Fountain drinks in gas stations. Amazing. A 3 pint 'cup' of Coke costs about $1.20. That's less than 75p in real money. I wish they would learn how cheap these drinks are in Britain, and then install them in service stations everywhere - and stop charging £3 (about $5.40) for one pint of the stuff in the pubs!!!!


• What's with the temperature here??? 80 farenheit in February!


• Is there really any need for those heeeeeeeeuuuuuuuge trucks just to go to Walmart?


• Looks like CB radio technology here has not moved on 20 years ... they're still using Firesticks and k40s. Wow.


• Why don't the police cars get a proper paint job over here?
  
  
  
  
  
  


• MacDonald's burgers really do taste the same everywhere.


• Waffle House is the perfect on-the-road junk food!


• There may be 12000 radio stations between Mississippi and Texas, but the ones that do not play Country seem to have only 12 songs that they share between them.


• ... and about 237 adverts.


• Armadillos really are ugly - but it sure seems hard to crush them.


• You can smell a squashed skunk from about a mile away!


• The trees are budding everywhere.


• There seem to be little clumps of miniature Daffodils wherever I look.


• The City of Martindale, Polulation 691. That's not a city, it's a friggin' hamlet!


• But it has its own police force of 2 and they are hot on speeders! ... nothing else to do, and they need to earn their own pay somehow.


• If you are ever in the region of San Marcos in Texas you must try Mamacita's
  mexican restaurant. They have a machine there in the restaurant that churns out fresh tortillas all day. Yummmmm. Fresh-baked tortillas. Oh heaven.


• And the HEB store around the corner has the same. You can buy fresh hot tortillas all day.

Cold Fusion user group conference

Scotch on the Rocks

Cold Fusion user group conference, May 2005

I just got this notification about a Cold Fusion User Group in Edinburgh holding a conference in May 2005 ...

Scotch on the Rocks, May 26/27 Edinburgh University

The Scottish ColdFusion User Group is both proud and excited to announce a two day conference covering Macromedia ColdFusion MX 7.

Taking place in Edinburgh, Scotland on the 26th and 27th May, you are invited to join speakers, including representatives from Macromedia, Firstserv and InterAKT, as they present on why ColdFusion MX 7 is the fastest and easiest way to build and deploy Internet applications.

There will be a number of big prizes up for grabs, including a copy of ColdFusion MX 7 Standard, as well as an iPod. To top this off, each event attendee will go home with a gift, which will be included in their goodie bag.

As well as all the fun during the day, the Scottish ColdFusion User Group will take you on a pub crawl on both the Thursday and Friday nights, so prepare yourself for an almighty hangover.

Tickets for the event are 25(GBP), which covers both days attendance. Registration for the event will open soon.

More details including confirmed speakers, sponsors, as well as promotional documents including how to sponsor the event, can all be found at http://www.scottishcfug.com


Edinburgh is an absolutely gorgeous city. If you have not been there before you should use this conference as an excuse to go. Here's some photographs of Edinburgh that I took a couple or three years ago to help publicise EuroTAAC.

How far into your own digital navel can you gaze

"How far into your own digital navel can you gaze?"

"Each of us populates a personal tech-bubble of one. Solo-tech-travelers often are unaware that others occupy the same dimensions as them -- that's why they often bump into others, in their cars or on foot."

D. Pravaz from the Seattle Post writes about how personal technology is isolating us from the rest of the world, instead of bringing us closer together like the adverts say they do ... you didn't believe what T-mobile said did you???

The article is both entertaining and thought-provoking. If you are obsessed with your iPod, PDA and camera phone(s) take a look in Pravaz'z mirror.

Testing Post and ReadURL

Testing Post and ReadURL

I needed to test some cfm calls, so I built a little tool

Whilst working with Cold Fusion and Authorware this week I discovered the need of a simple tool to test calls to cfm pages. I also realised that this same tool could be useful for ASP, php and any other TLA server-side-scripting page.

So anyway, I built a simple tool that can be placed on your web server and used to test your calls to the database or whatever without having to build your full Authorware application. I posted the tool on my Downloads page

http://www.tomorrows-key.com/downloads.asp

It's (at the time of writing) the first question:-

---

Q. How can I easily test my calls to Cold Fusion, ASP, PHP or any other web pages that enable communications between Authorware and a server and/or database over the web?

A. I built this test application that lets you quickly test PostURL and ReadURL code in Authorware (Post and Get in HTML form terms). It displays the pure text of the return from the server, so if the server returns HTML or XML or plain text, you see the exact contents of the return without any formatting.

---

Use this page to send any comments or feedback you have about the tool. Remember, it's free and as-is, so I make no promises of perfection, but I will make changes based on feedback to fix bugs or make improvements ... time permitting of course!

You could always make changes yourself and send them back to me too :-)

Cold Fusion and Authorware PostURL

Cold Fusion and Authorware PostURL

I discovered today that Cold Fusion pages act strangely with Authorware and PostURL if no parameters are sent

I have been working with a client over the last couple of weeks, setting up a simple tracking system using Cold Fusion pages to handle the communication between the database and Authorware.

We hit an odd situation where one specific call to one specific .cfm page failed to return anything to Authorware, and instead opened a new web page containing the expected return.

After a bit of digging about I discovered that the cause of the problem was that this particular call sent no parameters to the cfm page, yet was still using PostURL. I had set up a function in Authorware that used PostURL for all the database calls, and for security and consistency I did not want to change that.

The ultimate workaround was to send the following parameter when none were actually required

true=true

So the final call to the cfm page became something like

result:=PostUrl(NetLocation^"call.cfm", "true=true", 5)

Scrolling RTF with hyperlinks

Have you ever tried to use scrolling RTF files with hyperinks?

Did you find that the RTF KO did not work as expected?

While teaching an Authorware class recently, one of my students pointed out that she had been unable to get the Insert RTF Object Hot Text Interaction to work correcly with scrolling RTF text. She asked if it were possible to get this to work using RTFObj.u32 functions.

After a little head scratching I came up with some working code that seems to do what she needed. You can try it out by downloading it from my web site

http://www.tomorrows-key.com/downloads.asp

Look for the question Q. How can I use RTFObj.u32 with scrolling rtf pages that contain hyperlinks?

Recorded Breeze presentations

Macromedia has released a number of recorded Breeze presentations

Something for everyone in this bundle of presentations

If you have never seen Breeze in action, you should take the time to look at at least one of the following presentations. Of course, you should look at them anyway if you want to get to know more about Macromedia's products.

Please note these are recordings of live presentations, lasting about an hour
each. Some of the presentations take a minute or two to get up and running.

1. Shape Tweening in Flash MX 2004


2. Cold Fusion 7


3. Cold Fusion Forms


4. Creating Raster Effects in Freehand


5. Fireworks Best Practices


6. Introducing the Flash Player Detection Kit


7. Troubleshooting FTP issues in Dreamweaver

Cold Fusion MX 7

Macromedia has released Cold Fusion MX 7

And it's the ost customer-driven version yet

Unlike most other Beta cycles, Macromedia has been pretty public with the development of Cold Fusion 7. It seems like for months, everywhere I have turned I have seen Macromedia talking about the next release of Cold Fusion, showing what they are developing with it, and getting customer feedback before the product was completed and released.

Check out the Cold Fusion 7 Product Page.

And the Cold Fusion Developers Center has links to getting-started tutorials and loads more great information.

Even the bar prices are a gamble

Here in Gulfport there are a number of Casinos

Last night we discovered even the bar prices are a gamble

Round 1, 3 drinks: Screwdriver, Bacardi and Coke, Heiniken, $4.75
Round 2, 2 drinks: Bacardi and Coke, Heiniken, $8.50
Round 3, 2 drinks: Screwdriver, Heiniken, $4.75
Round 4, 1 drink: Heiniken, $FREE!!!

I guess that's one way to get you to go to a casino more often :+)

Stress relief

Stress relief

Can you resist this?

Feeling stressed? See if you can resist coming back to this more than once in the next week ...

Controlling Flash sound

Control the sound in Flash files embedded in Authorware

Someone was asking recently on teh Macromedia forums ...

... about controlling the sound in a Flash file embedded in Authorware. I noticed that Joshua Burkholder has a sample posted on his website that controls the Flash sound volume:-

http://www.geocities.com/joshuaburkholder/


You should check his examples out for some other cool code snippets too.

Opening a running Authorware file

Have you ever saved your Authorware file running?

Isn't it annoying trying to troubleshoot a file that automatically launches itself?

There are two ways to prevent your Authorware file from automatically launching when you open it in the Authorware editor.

The first, and best known, is to locate the .rec file for the Authorware file and delete it. Before Authorware 7 you would find this in

C:\WINDOWS\AnW_DATA

Where n is the Authorware version number,3, 4, 5 or 6.

Authorware 7 uses the current user's profile directory, so on Windows XP you should find it here

C:\Documents and Settings\{UserName}\Application Data\Macromedia\Authorware 7\A7W_DATA

where {UserName} is the current logged-on user's logon ID.

But there is a simpler way. When you launch the file hold down the left mouse button. Thanks to Jamil Zainasheff from Macromedia for sharing that gem on the Aware List.

LMS testing

Local testing of LMS features with Authorware 7

Did you know Authorware 7 comes with an LMS emulator?

Use the LMS Emulator in conjunction with the LMS KOs, and access it through the Commands menu

Commands > LMS > Emulator

You see this dialogue:-



The opening screen points out, the emulator is a simulation of an LMS, not a full LMS. It uses the AICC-LAN protocol, and stores data in a local text file. Note that you can save time with the next step by loading values from a pre-defined default text file.



You can simulate your users' details and Lesson Location, Lesson Status, Score, Time and Lesson Data. These are the most fundamental fields utilised when tracking in an LMS.



When you are done setting up you can save your current settings to a default file, which can later be loaded back in via the Introduction screen shown above.

For full details on how to use this, see the technote Creating AICC and SCORM-Compliant Content with Authorware 7 on Macromedia's web site. The technote is written by Andrew Chemey who created the LMS KOs and the LMS Emulator.

Incidentally, if you like the free LMS KOs that come with Authorware 7, but find that they do not give you everything you need, you should consider purchasing the professional version of the KOs from AEC Consulting.

Memphis = rain

Memphis = rain

I went to Memphis today and all I saw was ...

rain, the inside of Burger King and the inside of the INS office.

As part of my goal of permanent residence and citizenship - make that duel British/US citizenship - I had to go to Memphis to get my fingerprints taken. 12 hours of driving for 10 minutes in the fingerprint lab .

So I can add Memphis to my list of US cities visited, but I don;t think it counts since I didn't get to visit Graceland or even Elvis Presley Boulevard.

Incidentally, apparently Elvis just racked up his 21st number 1 hit in the UK. And his third this year!

Controlling Captivate Movies

Controlling Captivate Movies

Jim Leichliter just posted the information we have all been waiting for ...

... on the Macromedia Authorware forum. I must confess that if I had taken the time to explore a Captivate movie I could have discivered this already, but ... well Jim is obviously a better man than I.

Here's what he had to say:-

In Authorware using the syntax:

CallSprite(@gotMovie, #GetVariable, "_root.rdinfoCurrentSlide")

Where "_root." can be prefixed to these listed variables:

rdinfoFrameCount
rdinfoSlidesInProject
rdinfoFPS
rdinfocurrFrame
rdinfoCurrentFrame
rdinfoCurrentSlide
rdinfoCurrentSlideInProject
rdinfoSlideCount
rdIsMainMovie
________________________
rdcmndGotoFrame
rdcmndResume
rdcmndPause
rdcmndPrevious
rdcmndNext
rdcmndRewindAndStop
rdcmndRewindAndPlay
rdcmndGotoFrameAndResume
rdcmndNextSlide
rdcmndInfo
rdcmndExit

The rdcmnd can control the Captivate movie by using the SetVariable syntax and providing a 1 (true) or 0 (false). For Example:-

CallSprite(@gotMovie, #SetVariable, "_root.rdcmdResume", 1)

will resume the Captivate movie after it has been paused.

Nice one Jim!!