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WTVN Radio • Columbus, Ohio • Sunday morning from 8 until 9 |
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Sunday, May 16, 2004 |
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Grabbing Mac screens is easy nowI've told you about my favorite Windows screen capture program, SnagIt, and when I bought a Mac, I had to search for a similar utility that worked on OS X. Snapz Pro X is that utility.
Snapz Pro X allows you to scale or crop images and to change the color depth (with or without dithering). You also have the option of adding borders, creating thumbnails, overlaying a watermark or copyright notice. In addition to porting the application from OS 9 to OS X, Ambrosia rewrote the application to take advantage of the features available in OS X. If you own a Mac and you need to capture screen shots, this is the only application to consider. If your Mac runs anything but OS X, you'll need Snapz Pro (current version 2.0.1). For those who have upgraded to a real operating system, make sure you obtain Snapz Pro X version 2.0.0. Snapz Pro X costs $20-70 depending on whether you want the ability to capture a "movie" and whether you're buying a new license or an upgrade. See more on the Ambrosia site or download a demo version of the application (Mac only) here. Windows Updates: Worth the hassle?I recently received an interesting question about the Microsoft Windows update service: "Are we asking for trouble by *not* downloading the updates, instead relying on Norton Antivirus and Personal Firewall to catch viruses and intrusion attempts? I have them set to check for the pertinent Norton updates daily, and I also manually do a check once or twice a day." Opinions vary on this, but most of the security experts I trust say it's essential to download the patches. Occasionally a patch will break something that was previously working. Sometimes the patch may even open other security holes. In most cases, though, the security updates do what they're supposed to do. I would not depend on Norton (or anyone else's AV application). I have Grisoft's AVG Antivirus and at home everything sits behind a hardware firewall. At the office, it's behind a hardware firewall and a software firewall. The notebook has only a software firewall in addition to the AV program. But these applications will NOT deter many of the attacks against known security problems that are covered by the security updates. Analogy time: My house has a back door that has no lock, so I buy Norton AntiBurglar and install it on the door. Unfortunately, the builder of the house neglected to put a lock on the sliding door by the patio. Even worse, the manufacturer included (at no extra charge) a large neon sign that says "THIS SLIDING DOOR IS UNLOCKED!" I could replace the back door with a quarter-inch steel door with 27 deadbolt locks, and that would have no effect whatsoever on the patio door. The manufacturer needs to return, take down the neon sign, and fix the patio door so that it can be locked. That's what the security updates do. "The main reason I don't keep up with the Windows updates is that when I go to the update page, I'm greeted with pages and pages of updates I'm supposed to choose from, many to programs I don't have or don't use. Every time I choose to deselect one, I get a hysterical Are You SUUUUUUUUUUUUURE????" At windowsupdate.microsoft.com you will find updates in 3 categories:
"The one time I went through the whole bloody list and then clicked to download the mess o' patches I'd chosen, Internet Explorer immediately froze and crashed. Who has the hours, or patience, to spare for this nonsense?" Some of these must be installed individually. They are noted. Each also tells you how large the file is and how long it will take to download. My preference is to have the Windows Update download all critical updates overnight and then tell me in the morning what it has. I can decide when (or whether) to install. But, as noted, I *always* install the critical updates. "I have downloaded the one or two critical security patches that had separate links and did not force you to pick through lists of other updates; there were no compatibility problems as a result. "Should those of us disinclined to play this silly online game periodically order Service Release CDs from Microsoft instead?" If you have a DSL or cable connection, I'd just take things as they come. For one thing, the updates are more timely than CDs. But if you're on a slow dial-up (is there any other kind?) and the download is likely to take hours, obtain just the critical updates and use periodic update CDs for everything else. Nerdly NewsMac users: BewareSome Mac users like to point out, whenever Microsoft issues one of its security update warnings, that Macs aren't vulnerable. Windows users suggest that this is probably because virus writers (most of them are at least slightly more intelligent than the average rutabaga) know that they will have more success if they write a virus that might affect 95% of the computers on the Internet than if they write one that might affect the other 5%. Mac users, at least the more rabid ones, scoff at this and say that they don't have to worry because the Mac is somehow (presumably by magic) immune to all viruses and worms. Well, surprise, guys. Apple has been identifying and patching vulnerabilities in OS X. These problems are usually of the "buffer overflow" type compared to Windows vulnerabilities that are usually the "buffer overflow" type. If you own a Mac, make sure that you obtain the latest patches from Apple and take the usual precautions Windows users have been taking for years. Macs still aren't as vulnerable to attacks because virus writers (at least those that are more intelligent than the average rutabaga) will still aim at the 95% target instead of the 5% target. As worm writers learn how to make their darlings travel from one computer to another over a network, we'll start to see more Macs being infected. Cross-platform worms (ones that will affect both PCs and Macs) have been in development for a while, too. Being complacent about the threat, or the perceived lack of a threat, doesn't serve Apple users well. If you share files with your Mac, you will have enabled the Apple File Protocol (AFP), which is off by default. AFP is one of the functions that's affected by a buffer overflow problem. The attacker who knows how to exploit the problem can gain root privileges. On Unix "root" is the "super user" who can read, write, or delete any file. An attack that spreads the joy via AFP could spread almost invisibly because there would be no e-mail trail to follow. There's still the question of target size, but if you assume that 5% of all computers are Macs and that even 10% of those are un-patched OS X systems, that's still a lot of potential for doing harm. This is a security problem that Apple has patched, but not all users obtain and install all of the patches, as we know from the Sasser attack on Windows computers -- three weeks after Microsoft warned about the vulnerability, millions of computers were still damaged by Sasser. A genuine Mac hazardIf you see a message that offers a download of Office 2004 for the Mac, don't bite. The message bites back. You'll find the message on file sharing services. The icon looks legitimate, but the file size is just slightly over 100K -- just a bit too small to be the entire Office application for the Mac. Double-click it and you'll eventually notice that it's just an AppleScript application that erases the contents of the current user's Home folder. This will not be a happy event if it happens to your computer. Itunes updatedApple has updated its Itunes software for both Macs and Windows PCs. You won't see a lot of differences from the previous version, but there are some new features including the new "lossless" encoder that you can use to import music from CDs and achieve sound quality "indistinguishable from the original" (Apple's words) at about half the original file size. True. Ah, false. Um, well, maybe. Any time you reduce the file size of an audio track, you're losing some of the data. "Indistinguishable" and "lossless" are not equivalent terms. Just because you can't hear the difference doesn't mean than audio information hasn't been lost. But if you can't hear the loss, was there any loss? (Mutter. Mutter.) If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is there to hear it, was there a sound? (Mutter. Mutter.) Itunes version 4.5 (no, there were not 3 previous versions on the PC, but let's just play along with Apple) lets you find out what’s playing on more than 1000 radio stations around the US. You can also obtain music and audiobooks related to some movies, watch a music video, and (in some cases) download free music. And for music that's not free, the best on-line service is still the Apple Itunes service. They don't have everything and there are some odd restrictions and shortages, but the service is still the one that everyone else is trying to emulate. ("Odd restrictions and shortages" example: A Canadian group, the Proclaimers, is featured on Molson ads that run in Canada and make fun of US beer. I wanted the album. For the price of the full album, Itunes could sell me 13 of the 20 selections on the group's "Best Of" CD. Why would I want to pay full price for 65% of the album? That seemed like a bad deal, so I bought the full CD from CD Now. In most cases, Itunes has the full album and downloading tracks is quick and easy.) Apple offer 700,000 tracks that you can download legally (if you have $693,000, more or less.) The prices are reasonable at 99 cents per track and $9.99 for most albums. Windows security update (again and again and again)From Microsoft on Tuesday, May 5: Included in this advisory are updates for newly discovered vulnerabilities in Microsoft Windows XP (including SP1), Windows XP 64-Bit Edition Service Pack 1, Windows XP 64-Bit Edition Version 2003, Windows Server 2003, and Windows Server 2003. Technical support is available from Microsoft Product Support Services at 1-866-PC SAFETY (1-866-727-2338). There is no charge for support calls associated with security updates. International customers can get support from their local Microsoft subsidiaries. If you receive an e-mail that claims to be distributing a Microsoft security update, it is a hoax that may be distributing a virus. Microsoft does not distribute security updates via e-mail. You can learn more about Microsoft's software distribution policies here. Blinn summary: A bug in the "Help" function of several Windows operating systems could allow a remote user to execute code on your computer. To fix this problem, download and install the latest security patch from Microsoft. If you have a high-speed connection, the update will take less than 5 minutes and does not require that you reboot your computer. Virus watch: I'm currently seeing 15 to 30 virus infected messages per day, every day. The threat is real. Let us know what you think about this program! Write to: |
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Put Snapz Pro X on your Mac and you can capture anything visible on screen with a single click and Snapz Pro X offers a nice collection of file formats for output -- bmp, pict, gif, jpg, png, tiff, pdf, or psd (Photoshop). If you buy the higher priced version, you can even record screen sequences as a QuickTime movie! 
