Really Bummed Over Disk Corruption, MacBook Pro

So what I thought was my lovely MacBook Pro, is just another stinking piece of silicon.  While using Safari, noticed that when you put the cursor on the desktop, you continuous got the spinny colored wheel.  Safari stopped responding   I shut down and when I re-started, the damn thing wouldn't boot.  I got the white screen and the Apple logo, and the gray spinny thing, but no boot.

I booted in single user mode (command + S) and got a shell.  I typed in the fsck command (fsck -fy) and it blithely told me that the hard disk could not be repaired.  Reason:  Keys were out of order.  I could traverse the file directory, and my work was all there (/Volumes/Macintosh HD/ and then to the users directory and my name).

No problem, I shut down, and started the Disk Recovery Boot sector (restart while holding down command + R).  I started the disk utilities, and was quite certain that disk utilities First Aid would fix it.  I scanned the disk and sure enough, it told me that I needed to hit repair because the B-Tree was corrupt and keys were out of order.  I eagerly hit the Repair Disk button and that was the beginning of several wasted hours.  It couldn't fix the disk.  The utility does let you download a n

What to do.  I have an external hard drive, essentially doing nothing.  So, what I was going to do, is just copy the files that I wanted to an external drive.  Well, you can't mount external drives in single user mode.
 I reformatted it with same Disk Utilities and did a raw copy by dragging the Macintosh HD dead disk into the source and dragging the newly formatted disk into the target.  It copied.  Great! - now I had copy of my work (and the entire Mac hard drive -- it was a bit external drive).  The next step was open a terminal in the Disk Recovery Boot mode.  My plan was to copy the files that I need from the external disk /Volumes/nameOfExternalDisk to another disk for my archives.  The terminal could see and mount the other disk, but I couldn't mount the copy of the disk that I had just raw copied on the hard drive.

Well, I know how to force mount, so I did a df and the missing disk was /dev/disk2.  After creating a mount point, I issued a mount, and Voila -- disk utilities now saw it as a mounted disk.  Unfortunately the terminal in /Volumes/mountPoint didn't.  I ran the repair disk a few million times, all to no avail.

Then I had the bright idea of blowing back the mounted external image on the mac hard drive.  Maybe it would fix something.  It didn't.  However in single user mode, the data was all there.  The disconcerting factor was that I had blown it back from a 3 TB external hard drive, and now Disk Utilities thought that there was three terabytes on my Mac hard drive.  There isn't.  Single User mode still lets me explore and look at my data from the terminal, but like a super autistic kid, the data won't come out.

Someone suggested Disk Warrior.  They say it works magic.  This was my first foray into Mac and initially I was very very pleased with the experience.  I am totally soured on it now.  My mistake was thinking that I wouldn't have to back up my dev on the Mac until I was finished.  It was a new Mac, and they don't go kaput in the first few months.  The real piss-off, is that the Mac engineers aren't as smart as the Disk Warrior guys, and that the inbred Mac Disk Utilities aren't as smart as Disk Warrior.  If Steve Jobs were alive, I could taunt him and it would be fixed.  Now I just rant in my blog.

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Western Digital SmartWare Review

My very first 1 Terrabyte External Storage disk drive was a Western Digital.  That was many moons ago.  I was pleased with the price, the performance and even the ruggedness.  It is a bit clunky in design, but when I accidentally dropped it and cracked a bit of the plastic, my heart sank.  That was several years ago.  I plugged it back in, and it works fine to this day.

So I go to my local Future Shop and see a Western Digital 3 Terabyte drive for $129.  I snap it up.  It still has the same clunky design, but hey three terabytes for just over a hundred bucks -- such a deal!  I love Moores Law.

I unpacked it and it said that there was automagic backup software called SmartWare.  It would take all of the work of backups out of my hands.  I thought "what the heck" and installed it.  I was impressed that it started classifying my half terabyte laptop disk, and five hours later, it was all classified and backed up.  No big whoop.  I started the backup before going to bed at the crack of dawn.

Well sir or madam, when I next rebooted the computer, it was excruciating slow to boot. It was excruciating slow to kick Skype (I manage a coding team remotely).  Opening a spreadsheet was slow.  I thought WTF - the only thing that changed was the addition of the SmartWare.  I checked to make sure that I hadn't picked up a virus or bot.  I was clean so it had to be the backup software.

I uninstalled and my computer returned to normal speed.  I haven't decided whether to do the backups manually from now or, or to install and uninstall it after backups.  I am inclined to go manual, because another weird thing happened after the uninstall, but that is a different blog entry.  Later.

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When Yahoo is in doubt, it copies Google

 (Doesn't Yahoo Mail look suspiciously like Google's Gmail below?)

When Marissa Mayer was hired to turn around Yahoo, one of the first things that she did (other than whelping some progeny) was to bring in all of the remote workers.  That was supposed to be a big turnaround move.

Apparently the next step is to re-face Yahoo mail which happened recently.  So they copied the highly successful Gmail.  If it wasn't for the branding, you couldn't tell the difference, other than the colors are reversed - white for messages and light blue for background and vice versa.

So how much are they paying Ms. Mayer.  I am sure that I could have done the same with half of her salary.  All right you Yahoos, get yer fat-ass derrieres back in the office and lets copy Google.  Hey, I could be an extremely high paid tech exec.

Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery, but it also could be the final form of desperation.  You can quote me on that.

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Pithy Bits: What is Traffic Faking?

Pithy Bits: What is Traffic Faking?: Question:  What is Traffic Faking? Answer:  Traffic Faking is the newest form of spamming.  It is very clever, because it is indirect.  Traffic fakes use software to make fake hits on your website.  No particular articles are called, just the domain name of your website.  Almost anyone can get a website these days and if it is from Google or another company that provides analytics, you can see the traffic fakers URL.  Out of curiosity, you click on it.  And bingo, you have just created more traffic for the spam website and made it work.

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Message To Samsung

Attention Samsung.  You make a great Galaxy tablet.  Your products are good.  Your accessories SUCK!  I visited 6 stores trying to get a replacement USB cable (30 pin proprietary) for the Galaxy Tablet.  Wasted almost a whole day and still no cable.  Have to buy it online.

That begs the question -- why are your cables so flimsy.  Mine broke where the wire connects to the connector and it shorted and melted.  I was talking to a store clerk and his did the same on his cell phone.  Surely if we can put a man on the moon 40 years ago, you can make a cable that lasts for more than 2 years.

There are very few stores that carry your proprietary cable and it is really pissing me off.  If you seriously want to challenge Apple and the iPad you would make the things ubiquitous.

Rant over.

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Samsung Galaxy ~ usb device not recognized

Normally, I just plug in a Samsung Galaxy tablet into the USB port and it pops open an Explorer Window and I have my way with it.  Then something changed.  I plugged in the old tablet, and it gave me an error - usb device not recognized.  It opened a system window showing me all of the possible USB ports, etc, and the top entry was the unrecognized device.

I plugged and unplugged, and tried it again.  Same deal.  Finally, I just clicked on the device in the USB system window, and it opened and I could do stuff again.

Hope this helps someone.

(BTW - its a laptop with Windows 7.  Can't say what would happen with Windows 8.)

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Is Android Safer Than iOS for Mobile Banking?

First of all, total disclosure:  I am a registered Apple, Android and Nokia developer.  I have no real preferences.  There are good and bad points for all platforms.  This article is my opinion only.

The Android OS is developed using Java, an interpreted language that runs on a virtual machine within the mobile device.  In spite of the wide array of Android devices they all run Java Virtual Machines with their standard Java runtimes.  They are far more vulnerable for exploits for several reasons.  Here are a few.

A Java exploit could be used that is intrinsic to the development libraries.  (Libraries are mini-programs that execute functions like creating an encrypted tunnel to the banking server, and another is used to connect to the account database.)  Exploits utilizing the core libraries are easier to surreptitiously embed on Android, because Android can load programs from email, attachments or pernicious websites without the convoluted encryption process that Apple uses through iTunes.  iOS like iPad and iPhone will not accept binary executables unless they come from iTunes or a corporate server having an encryption certificate certified by Apple that is iTunes compatible.  Unless an iPhone is "jail broke" (illegally altered), you cannot just load any old program on it.

It is technically much harder to get an exploit to be seen and executed by the iOS than by Android.

Many development frameworks are cross-platform that work on iPhone, Android and Blackberry.  They are actually kludges (the deus ex machina of programming if you will), in the fact that each of these devices has a browser widget.   All browser widgets will execute javascript code, so they use that to emulate a native running app (ie with the intervention of a browser widget).  Browser widgets (a browser widget is a window that behaves and operates like a web browser, but doesn't look like one) can do a lot of things including uploading and downloading dangerous files.  The Apple browser widget is more crippled than the Android ones ( because of Apple's operating system is akin deranged control freak marital partner that watches everything that you do and doesn't permit basic functions like using the browser to upload pictures through the browser to a web page.  You need Apple's intermediate app to do that which they vent.

So, all in all, Apple is still safer than Android. Using their native Objective C language with the XCode development environment, it is the rocket science of app design, and coding exploits is an incredible difficult thing to do with Apple.  Whereas with the Android development system, it is fairly easy to find java keylogger libraries on the internet and deploy them on an Android mobile device in a surreptitious manner.

Having said all of this, I am a firm believer that mobile banking can be quite safe.  What has not flown, is the NFC or Near Field Communications (tap 'n go chips) which is being taken off many mobile devices because they are very easy to exploit.

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