As we await the January 2009 relaunch of 24, I was digging around in the 24 Wikipedia entry, looking for a reference to an actor from one of the prior seasons. While browsing, I noticed the way time absolutely flies between 24 seasons. 24 first aired in November 2001, so that’s our starting point. At that time, Kiefer Sutherland was 35, so let’s assume that’s Jack Bauer’s age as well.

Season two is set 18 months after season one, or April of 2003. Jack is now 36.5. Season three is set three years later (April 2006, Jack is 39.5). Season four, another 18 months later (October 2007, Jack is 41). Season five, 18 months later again (April 2009, 42.5). Season six, 20 months later (December 2010, 44).

Coming this fall is a two-hour TV movie (a season seven “prequel” that bridges the end of season six to the start of season seven). I have no idea when season seven is set relative to six, but I’m guessing it’s going to be at least 18 months again.

At this rate, Jack’s going to be 65 long before he solves all of America’s crises!

As you might guess, I get a lot of email from readers of Macworld and macosxhints.com. For the most part, I love hearing from readers — even if it’s negative feedback, believe it or not. In the case of negative feedback, however, it’s nice if the writer provides enough detail so I know (a) what they’re upset about, and (b) what I might be able to do about it. I’ve actually had many useful and productive exchanges with folks who wrote to flame me for one reason or another.

However, on the opposite side of the fence, as an example of the kind of useless feedback I hate receiving, I offer up this email that arrived this morning:

Do you proof read these articles before you publish them?

That was the entire email. I have no idea which typos the author may be referring to, nor for that matter, which one of the 20 to 30 things I wrote last week that those typos may be in. It’s also somewhat ironic to note that proofread is one word, not two — if you’re going to chastise me for typos, it’s best not to make any of your own!

I really do enjoy hearing from and corresponding with readers. But if you’re going to take the time and effort to write to me, at least include enough information for me to understand what it is that’s gotten your attention, so that I have some context for your comments and can respond in a meaningful manner.

As you may know by now, a company known as Psystar has announced they’re selling Mac “clones” for $549, complete with Leopard pre-installed. From a legal perspective, these machines clearly violate Apple’s OS X 10.5 end user license agreement (EULA). If you’re so inclined, you can find a full copy of all of Apple’s EULAs on this page–the 10.5 EULA is a 2.1MB download. The relevant portion of the EULA is section two, part A:

This License allows you to install, use and run one (1) copy of the Apple Software on a single Apple-labeled computer at a time. You agree not to install, use or run the Apple Software on any non-Apple-labeled computer, or to enable others to do so.

Seems pretty black and white, doesn’t it? Use OS X in this manner, and you’re violating the EULA. So how can a company like Psystar hope to stay in business, given this legal transgression that’s key to their business model? Wired offers up some legal opinions on how they may be able to survive–basically, violating an EULA isn’t in nearly the same class of legal violation as is violating copyright or patent law. A breach of contract suit won’t prevent Psystar from selling their clones, and probably wouldn’t even serve as a financial deterrent: as one attorney notes in the Wired article, “the maximum damage Apple would be able to claim is the price of Leopard — actually, the OEM (original equipment manufacturer) price of Leopard, which might be a few dollars.” Another attorney comments that EULAs are problematic in court, as they’ve vague by nature. He says, “Companies make them as broad as possible but there’s no way to basically enforce them. It’s a scare tactic, a way to say, hey, we’re reserving all these rights.”

The Wired article is a good read, and notes that Apple’s best defense may be in technology, not the courts–future system updates may render cloned systems unusable, which will certainly cut down on Psystar’s ability to attract and retain customers. So that’s what the experts think. From where I sit, over in the “just barely passed the required business law class” section of the room, here’s my take on why I don’t think it’d be wise of Apple to bring their EULA into the court system.
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In general, I wouldn’t change a thing about the way OS X Hints has worked out over the years — I’ve learned a ton, had a ton of fun, and even managed to completely change my career. One of the first things I did right (through sheer luck, more than anything else) was to choose a content management system (Geeklog) that allowed for public story submissions. With the whole community participating, the hints collection has grown at a tremendous rate.

Lately, though, the downside of public submission queue has become apparent: spam submissions. As an example, here’s a bit of what I saw in the queue this morning:

There were well over 100 such entries, all of which were added between Friday morning and early Monday morning. Ugh. (Geeklog presently lacks any sort of captcha on story submissions, though I think there’s one in the works for the next minor update.)

So instead of spending time reviewing, editing, and posting hints, I spent the first 10 or so minutes of the morning identifying all the spam entries and deleting them from the system. Clearly these are automated scripts at work, hoping to hit sites that use unmoderated submissions. They care not if a site is moderated, obviously, though it certainly puts me in a foul mood as I clean up their detritus. Sigh.

I’ve been spending a lot of time using Firefox 3.0b5, and I’m generally thrilled with the browser (think Camino’s look and feel (mostly), plus full support for Firefox extensions and Safari’s speed). It works so well most of the time that I forget it’s a beta.

Then there are times like this morning, when I saw this screen:

That came up when I tried to report a non-functional site–one that loaded fine in Safari, but wouldn’t load at all in Firefox. It’s things like this that make me remember I’m using beta software :). (Even worse than the blank privacy policy, though, was the fact that checking the box and clicking the “Done” button didn’t then let me report the site.)

Today, while trying to register on a web site to download a public beta of some software package, I received the following very helpful error message:

Hmm…I’ll get right on that, whatever it might have been. (The eventual solution was to use a different page on the vendor’s site to complete what seemed to be an identical form. For whatever reason, it worked there, but not where I was trying to do it.)

I recently ordered a couple of new services from Verizon (distinctive ring and caller ID). In their confirmation letter, I found this reassuring paragraph (red underlines are mine):

Versizon uses a definition of “any time” that I am not familiar with!

As you may (or may not) know, Macworld editors each take a turn in front of the video camera on a rotating cycle; my number came up again last week, and this is the result - an OS X productivity tips video (the link is to a page of info about the video). The only problem with that video is that it’s 320×240, which makes the detail somewhat tough to see, especially in some of the larger screen captures. So I’ve decided to post (with Macworld’s permission) the larger version of the video here for download:

Productivity tips video: 640×480, 8mins 50 seconds, 90.5MB

I’ll do this with my future videos, too, at least until/unless my monthly bandwidth is used up. I don’t foresee that becoming a problem, though, unless there are over 10,000 of you out there downloading this thing :).

After a mostly-painless upgrade, we’re now running WordPress 2.5. About the only hiccup is that the Addicted to Live Search plug-in (which I am addicted to) doesn’t seem to work right with anything other than the default permalink style. (Permalinks are the URLs for individual stories.)

The default permalink style is ugly and doesn’t necessarily work well with search engines, but I love the search feature so much I’m using them for now…hopefully the plug-in will be patched in the near future.

Clearly this one doesn’t belong on Mac OS X Hints, but I wanted to have it documented somewhere. There’s usually a Windows box of some sort in my home, for testing and game playing. The testing role for my physical Windows box has pretty much been replaced by VMware Fusion, so it’s really now a game playing machine.

As such, I upgraded it recently (well, rebuilt it from scratch is a better summary) with a new CPU and video card. I also wanted to put Vista on it, for one reason only: to run Crysis under DirectX 10, which only works in Vista. My Vista DVD is an upgrade installation, which must be installed from within Windows XP. Windows XP, when it came out, didn’t support SATA drives, so for a fresh install of XP (it was a new install on my newly-built machine), you must set the SATA mode in the machine’s BIOS to IDE. I did that, installed XP, and upgraded to Vista.

Vista includes AHCI support, so my SATA drives can be used in native SATA mode. However, if you just switch your BIOS to ACHI mode, and you were using XP in IDE mode, then your box will fail to boot — that’s because the AHCI drivers are not installed by default in Vista if you start with XP in IDE mode. So how do you switch Vista from IDE to ACHI mode?
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