Switch to Linux: Blue Screen of Death (BSoD) in Apple Mac OS X

Apple seems to be going the way of Microsoft and the rest of the crowd of pedestrian software vendors. First their iPhone 3G failed to deliver the goods. Then there were security issues galore. Then the Mobile Me fiasco. And now the last bastion has also developed chinks in its hitherto impregnable armour. The famed and fabled Apple Mac OS X has been greeting its users with the Blue Screen of Death that has always been associated to Microsoft Windows. Windows, a victim of vicious derision from the Mac fan boys, probably had the last laugh.

With the OS X 10.5.6 update Apple has left many of its loyal customers with unusable machines. Some complain that the only thing they are able to see after start up is a blue screen like the one with which Microsoft Windows users are all too familiar. Many others have complained about an infinite reboot loop, while others have seen their spanking new and expensive systems freeze up. One business customer actually had the misfortune of suffering from seven of his Apple computers freezing up with the update. When he contacted the customer service he was told that the reason for the freeze up may have been due to the number of third party applications that have been installed. WHAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This comes from a customer service that is supposedly the best in the business? So does Apple expect us to only install applications that it has “approved” ? Are we going to see an App Store concept for the computers soon? Imagine Microsoft selling its Office suite for the Mac OS X through Apple’s App Store. That would be a day to remember. )

This is yet another blow to the bloated up egos of the Apple fan boys ? Is Apple’s bubble about to burst? I sure hope so.

To all the people who have been blind loyalists to Apple, WAKE UP!!! Embrace the power of open source. Switch to  Linux.

Kubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex: Kvpnc broken

Kubuntu 8.10 Intrepid Ibex has been out for some time now. This version of Kubuntu sports the brand new KDE 4.1 Plasma theme that introduces a Mac OS like dashboard. The analogy with the Mac OS is just to make sure that people who are less aware of Kubuntu understand what I am talking about. Here’s a screen shot of my dashboard:

Nevertheless, since I run Kubuntu at my home it was very important for me to get my company VPN connection working. In the previous version, Hardy Heron, I had installed Kvpnc for this. Kvpnc is a GUI client for KDE that uses vpnc to connect to VPNs. In Hardy, all I had to do was import the Cisco (my company runs Cisco VPN servers) .pcf file provided by my company. And voila! I was in.

Keeping that experience in mind I tried the same thing in Intrepid. Disappointingly, it did not work. I kept getting an irritating “Authorization failed(Group password)” error. There was an even more cryptic “tun0: Disabled Privacy Extensions” message in the system logs. Initially I thought there must have been some change to the .pcf file. My IT department confirmed that there weren’t any. Puzzled I sat down to get this thing to work.

My previous Hardy installation was a 32-bit one whereas the Intrepid is a 64-bit one. Was that at fault? A bit of Googling did reveal that I might be right. Still not convinced and unready to give up I kept at it. But no matter what I tried I could not get it to work.

Finally when I was on the verge of giving up, I came across an article that mentioned decoding the group password. A bit of digging and I got to a web site that offered to decode the encoded group password that is specified in the .pcf file. Using that web site I retrieved the group password, fired up Kvpnc and specified the decoded value as the new group password and hit Ok. It worked!!!

Wow. So apparently the Kvpnc client does not do a very good job of decoding the encrypted group passwords that are present in the Cisco VPN .pcf files. Here’s the web site that helped me with the decoding.

Apple violates antitrust laws

The ongoing battle between Psystar and Apple doesn’t seem to be headed towards a closure anytime soon. Psystar, a company operating out of Florida, was sued by Apple for copyright infringement. Psystar sells off-the-shelf Intel microprocessor based computers running Apple’s Mac OS operating system.

Apple’s EULA for Mac OS prohibits running the operating system on any hardware other than Apple-branded ones. Psystar claims this to be a violation of antitrust laws.  According to Psystar, Apple employs stealthware to stop OS X from running on hardware other than Apple approved ones.  Furthermore, Psystar claims that Apple’s Mac OS X is perfectly capable of running on  hardware that is less expensive than what is included in Apple’s machines.  This control over hardware that Apple enforces, is, according to Psystar, out of the scope of the copyright. (Psystar’s complaints are very similar to the ones about Apple bricking iPhones running unapproved applications)

Psystar was an unknown vendor before it stirred up this controversy. It is not clear how they are sustaining this legal wrangle with Apple by employing high profile law firms given that they were a little known shop till recently. Maybe there is someone else who is backing Psystar. Ever since the Microsoft Windows Vista fiasco, the major PC manufacturers have been unhappy with Microsoft. Maybe one of them is betting on being able to release the Mac OS X on its own PC platform. That would be a real slap in the face of Microsoft which has been arm twisting vendors and by extension consumers for a really long time. Apple’s Mac OS X on the PC would be a great alternative to Windows bloatware. Sounds like wishful thinking? Could very well be true if Psystar wins.

Linux is illegal

Thats what a school teacher in a school teacher thinks. When this poorly informed lady found one of her students distributing free copies of the HeliOS Linux distribution she went ballistic. Not only did she claim that it was illegal she even went ahead and confiscated all the copies and put the student on detention.

This incompetent lady then contacted the vendor of the Linux distribution and wrote to the vendor:

I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful.

I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods. I admire your attempts in getting computers in the hands of disadvantaged people but putting Linux on these machines is holding our kids back.

Putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all. I am sure if you contacted Microsoft, they would be more than happy to supply you with copies of an older verison [sic] of Windows and that way, your computers would actually be of service to those receiving them…

Well nothing could be further away from the truth than these preposterous claims of her’s. This Miss/Mrs Know-Nothing-At-All is probably the worst influence on the children she is supposedly “teaching”. Her thoughts seem to be bounded and as for operating systems that only thing that apparently exists for her is Microsoft Windows. Not even the famous and enormously popular Apple Mac OS?

Such stupid and incompetent people are one of the reasons why our younger generation are more enslaved to the bindware that comes of the Microsoft’s stables. Teachers are supposed to set the minds of those they teach free. Instead this lady was actually trying to covert them to vassals of one large corporation.

On another note, this incident should appear alarming to the Linux and by extension the entire open source software community. It is this exact mindset that we have to overcome to be successful. Microsoft with its billions of dollars was, is and will continue to brainwash people into believing that Windows is the only truth and nothing else exists.

Mac OS is vulnerable to virus: Apple says yes and then no

The Mac zealots’ pride was recently dealt a hard blow when Apple published in an article that the Mac OS was also prone to virus and other malware attacks. In fact, in the article Apple advised its loyal fanbase to use popular antivirus tools from Symantec and McAfee.

So does that mean that the aura of the Mac OS has been destroyed and it has been brought down to the same level of mundaneness as Microsoft’s Windows family of operating systems? Well, not really. The fact of the matter is that the number of viruses in the wild for the Windows platform outnumber the ones for the Mac OS by quite a large factor. Also the ones that can potentially affect the Mac OS platform are relatively less damaging. Moreover the malware exploits on the Mac OS are not as popular as compared to the ones on the Windows platform. But does that make Mac OS immune to viruses? Of course not. No operating system is totally invulnerable. Nothing like that exists. But the level of vulnerability varies. The Mac OS was never immune to threats but less vulnerable. Those are two totally different things.

Nevertheless, Apple’s recent admittance dealt a serious blow to the bubble in which Mac fanboys usually prefer to exist. And Apple realized that. So what does it do? Simple, it deletes the line from the post and defends itself saying that it was from an old post. So that means the notion that the Mac OS was never vulnerable to virus attacks was wrong. It was very much threatened like the ordinary Windows operating system.

Kind of confusing I say. Can Apple come clean on this?