This post is about my complaints on Twitter last week concerning recent changes to Neustar's DNS Advantage and a query I have as a result from Vincent Lee, a product manager at Neustar.
It comes as a surprise to me that I get more responses micro-blogging from companies than I have ever had by regular blogging. When I recently commented on the Plaxo acquisition a senior marketing executive sent me a tweet to belay my fears, he failed. When I noted concern about the future of Six Apart Anil, their senior marketing exec, was prompted to reassure me. He failed too. Six Apart are so dead IMHO.
This morning I received a note from Vincent Lee, via LinkedIn, asking me about the problems I had with DNS Advantage last week and I sent the response that I have attached at the end here.
We are AT&T customers using a fast Business DSL connection in Sunnyvale. We moved to DNS Advantage because we had experienced severe delays in DNS resolution on our AT&T DSL connection using their DNS and frequently work had been interrupted because the DNS is poisoned by Oversee. As I note in my response, whether this poisoning is the product of a legitimate agreement with AT&T or the result of Oversee hacking is not clear to me.
This mostly effects web browsing, especially introducing delays when you move between domains, but as you will see in my response to Neustar there are other problems that can occur.
What happens exactly? Well, when a domain cannot be resolved the poisoned DNS returns a bogus address effectively redirecting your web navigation to an Oversee page which contains advertising links. This is bad enough, but the real problem is that the poisoning frequently hijacks legitimate domains claiming to be a page generated by that domain.
I suspect this occurs because they circumvent the DNS caching and the primary DNS is temporarily unresponsive so they think, wrongly, that you have entered a false address. I have personally experienced this even in the middle of a site in which the page was working perfectly fine and then miraculously changes to an Oversee spam page that hijacks the domain (it claims to be served from the same address). The way to fix this problem temporarily, BTW, is to clear your local DNS cache and force a new query.
This occasional latency in the DNS network is a problem that you are usually protected from by the DNS caching architecture which is not sensitive to first level latencies.
This has been a problem for long while, I had researched the problem quite extensively - even tracking down the Oversee office in LA from which this all occurs, and I finally saw DNS Advantage as a potential solution.
How can you detect the problem on your own network. Well, simply type into your browser a domain name that is unlikely to exist in the DNS. Try this : http://iam.foobar.com If you get a bogus search page that pretends to be from this domain, then your DNS is poisoned. Just in case they start filtering this domain, try one or two names of your own invention.
I'll leave the rest to my response to Vincent Lee.
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Hi Vinny,
I will be happy to talk with you. Essentially what happened is two fold.
First, DNS Avantage broke all internal domain resolutions of the form machine.local on Apple networks. We rely on these domains to enable connectivity to our central database. So we noticed the problem because my writing assistant could not start her work of the day. We were compelled to move from DNS Advantage to continue our operations.
Second, we moved to Advantage DNS to avoid the DNS poisoning of Oversee. Whether Oversee do this poisoning legitimately in an agreement with ATT or not is something I am not aware of. This poisoning of the DNS has proven over time to be unreliable and frequently "hijacked" legitimate domains for periods, hindering our work.
DNS Advantage began redirecting unidentified domains to unsolicited advertising in the same way - the very thing we sought to avoid. In my mind this is an unforgivable abuse of the DNS system. The OpenDNS exploitation of its service appears less intrusive. But I am cautious about it also.
I don't know about you but I just filed my first crash report on the new Safari. Wot? It's been released about an hour or so? Yep. It locked while I was viewing a TED VID, spinning beach ball followed by a spinning HD (suggests a memory leak). POS!
For the record Mac OS X Leopard is making my life miserable.
Just because I am not writing about it here - frankly I have better things to do - does not mean that the early problems have gone away. My particular pain is the irritating failures of the suite of native applications like mail, address book and calendar.
These failures are typically failures to integrate. On a daily basis I am irritated that despite my preference setting mail insists on placing my signature below all quoted text.
I know that Apple will complain that the failure of Oxygen to integrate with Spaces (Oxygen is a Java application) is not their fault but there are multiple applications that fail to switch when you click on their icon in the dock. You end up with the application menu in the finder but the windows in some other space and you have to search.
Safari on Leopard crashes all the time. I fill out those crash reports for Apple but frankly I am becoming more and more frustrated. Crashes appear to happen mostly when I try to play video.
My intuition tells me that many of the crashes are threading issues. It feels like some arbitrary rapid click to another app will kill the thing.
I've had to reset my Mac with a hard reset many times, way too many times. I don't have the time to detail all the problems here.
None of these things happened on Tiger and honestly there is little good cause for me to stay with Leopard. I keep hoping that the next update will fix all these problems. They don't. It's just a lot of little things. I know the underlying structure is sound, but the front end has been broken in the Leopard release. So I really am seriously considering a return to Tiger. Really. Really!
Now you know how I love the Mac advertising campaign - and the new adds about Vista users downgrading to XP would be funny if only I wasn't considering downgrading to Tiger :-(
I want you to know first that Apple have really impressed me this year. Tiger has been the most robust implementation of Unix that I may have worked with in my entire career. This is what makes Leopard so much more disappointing.
Over the past year I have used sleep mode with good effect. When I have to move I simply shut the screen and relocate - sometimes leaving my Mac Book Pro in standby, on battery, in my bag, for many hours, confident that I would have a reasonable charge left when I reopened. Weeks have gone by without a need to reboot. This is very impressive.
But woe Leopard. Shut your laptop and it seems to crash while in sleep mode. Restart it by holding down the power key and after the Apple boot the screen goes black and there is high disk activity. I discovered that the black screen is simply that Leopard has dimmed the brightness right down to make the screen black. So Leopard may not actually has crashed after all. The white standby light doesn't appear to work either. Next time this happens to me I'll try just turning up the brightness and let you know.
Listen, Apple better get on top of this quick because Leopard is a disaster in the making. As time allows I am going to provide a more detailed account of the problems here - though, frankly, I'd rather be doing something else. In essence I will have to do what Apple QA should have done.
Steve, get on top of this ... quick!
1. Profile migration finds only ONE profile. If that happens, on install (assuming you get through the known problems noted previously), to be a restricted account then you cannot log in as an administrator (to complete the install) without booting from the install disk and changing the administrator password. Then you can log in as root to complete the install and create new profiles. However, the migration tool still does not help you recover old profiles (in my case, my primary profile).
2. In the finder. Dismount (eject) of mounted volumes closes (crashes) the finder window. Some volumes cannot be dismounted (happened to me with the iLike iTunes sidebar dmg from Facebook, for example). Finder hangs and cannot be forced to quit.
3. Spaces. Not all apps integrate with Spaces. So selection of the app from the dock changes the finder menu but does not switch to the app space (where the app window resides). It happens to me with Oxygen (a widely used Java app) and now happens to me with mail and Safari all the time (it did not happen initially).
4. Need a way to fix all the files with permissions belonging to "unknown" after a "Install and Archive" of Leopard and a failure to recover the user profile (per the migration bug above).
5. iDisk is broken on client and server. After install and attempt to great my iDisk locally produced a 41GB virtual disk (filling my entire disk) before I saw it and killed the sync. Subsequent attempts fail without notification.
... more to follow. I am focusing on Bugs, not design issues, I would have another list for those.
Seriously, am I the only one to notice that Leopard is flakey? The finder windows crash all the time, disks stay mounted, Spaces does not have consistent behavior - I just moved Safari to space 5 on my machine and selecting Safari from the dock does not switch to Space 5, like a lot of other apps the finder menu does change. iDisk is a disaster (I know this is partly a .Mac problem).
Look I love my Mac, I love Apple too, but it seems to me that everyone is in denial.
Everyone is waking up to the Leopard BSoD problem and beginning to wonder how extensive the problem is. I think it is more extensive than reported and the small software company Unsanity has been made the scape goat. Even if the problem is Unsanity, the responsibility for the problem lies with Apple's QA department who are supposed to catch such things. The Unsanity software is in wide enough use.
In addition, I am not buying into all the excitement and hype associated with Leopard. It seems like a flakey and premature release to me. I still have not yet been able to sync my iDisk, I've seen various font muddling and artifacts in the finder menu, Spaces does not have consistent behavior (but it takes me back to Fedora, whose implementation seemed just as good three years ago).
The migration utility is, essentially, useless. This is the source of my earlier reported problem when I first booted. It still only finds my son's profile and not my old one. As a consequence I have many files on my system now owned by an "unknown" user (no, these are not causing the other problems).
A bunch of things simply do not appear to work. For example, I have a sync conflict resolution problem but nothing happens when I attempt use the conflict resolver.
In addition, the new mail app sucks, it seems impossible to get a consistent set of fonts and the mail header bar is in some horrible fixed font that cannot maintain proportional size if you change the message font. The ALLCAPS sidebar titles - which are the same through-out finder - are grey and stay. The desktop image is way too noisy but the old Tiger desktop doesn't suit. It shouts design incompetence. Tiger was a better animal.
Including Apache 2.X was well overdue. Numerable other questions exit. Like, why is iWeb no longer placed on the dock but the other iLife apps are?
Sorry these notes are so rushed, I don't really have the time to f*** with this.
Fedex delivered my Leopard install disk at about 10:30 Friday morning.
I must have been one of the first callers yesterday to Apple about the installation problems with Leopard. I called at 3:00PM PDT, immediately as they started providing Leopard support. It really is so disappointing. I missed the Leopard party at my local (Palo Alto) Apple Store as a result.
The tech support guys were caught entirely unaware and I spent 3 HOURS on the phone Friday afternoon.
Here is a note on the problem for those that are stuck today.
The problem is that you have installed applications that are trying to start up at boot time but fail and lock up (or have some similar side effect). You will see this if you boot from the installation disk, open a terminal and look at the system log. Leopard has installed correctly, it just can't start.
So, how to fix? Here is what you do - Jo the product specialist gave me this - and IT IS A PAIN. You have to reinstall but before pressing continue select the options button (you'll find it) and select "Install and Archive User." This will install Leopard but copy out your user space - including all your application profiles (one of which is causing the problem). In my case it looked like HP software that was causing the problem. So it was not one of the esoteric genetics or molecular biology programs that I have installed, it was something that is widely distributed. I had 3 HRS but that was not enough for a full diagnostic on my part.
Of course, if you know what you are looking for, by analyzing your system log that contains a record of the boot problems, you can go in and fix it from a terminal when you boot from the install disk. But this is not for the weak at heart. Given that, I wish now that this is what I had done - Jo did not explain exactly what this would do and it may not do exactly what he expected.
So, this will boot Leopard to a login screen and ONE, and only ONE, of your profiles. Which sucks because in my case the chosen profile was one that I had made for my son that was restricted and I could not get an administrator login immediately - and of course, the install had not copied any administrator profiles.
You have to use the install disk again to boot and reset the admin password - and then reboot and log in as root.
How to boot from the install disk or get back to the install disk from the blue screen? Restart (hold down the power key if necessary) and press and keep your finger on "C." This will bring you back to the install screen. The terminal and other utilities are on the menu bar of the second or third screen (as is the "options" button mentioned above).
Your old profiles will be in a top level folder called "Previous Systems" and you will have to copy the files you want to a new profile (including your iTune Library). You will have to reinstall some of your applications too - and I hope you kept all your licenses. I had to go dig for my Oxygen license.
One other thing. I tried to sync my iDisk - it spent some time filling up my entire disk, eating ALL the disk space, before I realized the problem and had to delete the 41GB sync it had created (I only have about 600MB on my iDisk and 10GB space, to the most it should have done is create a 10GB virtual disk).
It really is unfortunate that the problems manifest in a "blue screen" - expect Microsoft to be sympathetic and say "Look, see how hard it is!"
Someone in QA will be fired. In fact all of the Leopard team QA should be fired.
My son Freedom took me to the Apple store yesterday. He's determined to spend his savings on an iPhone.
We played with it awhile. It seems that YouTube on the iPhone is not connected to the main YouTube service and none of my favorite YouTube was available. I'm not sure whether that is just a transitional thing or if they are being selective and commercial. I could not find any PJ Harvey video, for example, or my own Vids - that's simply unforgivable. I pulled up a few of my own pages - it does not do Javascript or FLASH - which probably accounts for the YouTube limitation. No doubt they are having to convert the entire YouTube base to the QuickTime format. I was left wondering about all the transcoding that must be going on back at the server - which is, I assume, the real reason there is no Javascript and no FLASH.
My only other criticism is - why is it not perfect? Jeez, I went in expecting perfection and it is something less than that - it just pretty damned cool!
Responsible not only for Fortran but also for how we proceed with formal language definition in CS - John W. Backus dies at 82:
"After Fortran, Mr. Backus developed, with Peter Naur, a Danish computer scientist, a notation for describing the structure of programming languages, much like grammar for natural languages. It became known as Backus-Naur form."
You may know that I have spent more than my fair share of time in the industry of purgatory known as "interactive television." It is a place that has consumed many fruitless careers over the past twenty years. The gateway to television technology is monopolized by the industries that dominate access. Primarily this means the cable industry, a slow and lumbering beast that rules the access to consumers with a protective and juvenile conservative attitude.
A few companies have sunk huge resources into the market potential; notably Microsoft and Paul Allen's Digeo, and Larry Ellison's Liberate (the successor to Oracle's Network Computer where my own efforts in this domain began). They have all failed dramatically and with embarrassing consistency.
In part this is the result of greed. Technology companies lust for the largeness of the television market, and even though technologists are not known for their television viewing habits they all think they have something to offer Joe and Mary Six-pack (as the industry lovingly refers to a large portion of its market). Cable companies lust to keep their cash cows by doing as little extra as possible.
Incompetence exists all around. Technology companies want to give television viewers much much more activity than they will ever accept or need. Cable companies want to keep dumbing the public down and extracting more cash. Just keep the public sitting, stupidly staring at the television watching adverts and paying subscriptions, and we'll all make a lot of money. The sad fact of the matter is, from the cold capitalism of it, it works and the general public fall for it and don't care. As a result the high technology companies, all except Apple, have been kissing the cable industry's back end.
I've seen a lot of interactive television proposals. I've made a few of my own, and I hold patents in the field (now owned by Microsoft).
So when Apple announced in September that they were going to create a "set-top box" my ears perked up and I have been keen to hear the details, that were finally revealed yesterday.
Of course, noting that this is a notoriously difficult space, with dead bodies everywhere, no industry can be handled with more caution and caveats. This said, I think Apple have got the bull by the horns and the Apple TV product looks perfect.
The reason for my optimism about Apple is the success of iTunes and the natural extension of the successful iPod franchise. Apple TV basically turns your TV into a video iPod - fully, and automatically, integrated with iTunes. IPods are now understood by all, iTunes has a growing portfolio that is now increasingly attractive to content providers and already is hitting a critical mass.
While Steve Jobs was commanding the consumer electronics limelight in San Francisco, CES - the annual consumer tech love fest in Las Vegas was a footnote. Bill Gates' bravado keynote at the event in which he lamented the difficulties Apple would face against the vastly superior efforts of Microsoft are now just hollow echos. Yesterday, Apple put Microsoft TV, Digeo and Liberate to shame with solutions, executed with sophistication, simplicity, style and embarrassing competence. Apple are now the only game in town.
Apple have leveraged the strengths that they have developed over the past five years to crack a nut that many have tried to make a dent in before. I wish them luck and I am optimistic about their chances.
It's game over for the cable companies when HBO signs up for iTunes. The absence of HBO is perhaps the one weakness in iTunes. When they join, the rest will be compelled to follow. What may compel HBO to join is that iTunes with video Podcasting offers a new and compelling route for independent content producers to get onto your television screen - something that has been impossible to do before.
Don't under estimate the cable companies, who still have a lot of leverage with mainstream content providers - they fight dirty and there is a lot at stake. The content providers will have to pick their allegiances carefully, but a rise of independent video producers would quickly compel them to favor Apple.
For the record, iTunes is currently the only way that I watch television. I subscribe to series like Law and Order, South Park, and 24. I buy single episodes of shows I am exploring: recently, Dirt, Firefly and Lost. Yes, I watch these shows on my laptop - and do it with company - so I will certainly pick up an Apple TV in March, which is when I expect to see them in stores. HBO? I wait for the DVDs.
Up front, the only real concern one might have about the iPhone is that no standby time is given in the specs and five hours just might be too little use time. The reason for this is that this is a device that people are going to love and they are going to want to use it all the time. So five hours is likely to frustrate.
Even technology weary folk like me are drooling to get one. The widescreen iPod and multi-touch screen - heralding things to come in the iPod mainstream - is enough ... but oh, no ... they had to put OS X on the thing as well to provide for an incredibly useful device - and an incredible new user interface. If you haven't done so yet, go to the Apple web site and play with the Quicktime demos ... oh, man!
Watching the CNN report today on the Zune - Microsoft's attempt to compete with the iPod - was a treat. Soleda O'Brien took out her new Apple Shuffle and cooed over the charming little device and Miles wondered why Microsoft couldn't get better designers. "It [the Zune] looks so clunky" he said, which appears to be just about everyone's impression of the device.
It is interesting, however, to note the design principles of Apple and Microsoft - and to wonder just why it is that Apple scores so highly and Microsoft scores so poorly. One force that is certain at Apple is, of course, the profound design influence of Steve Jobs, whose tech aesthetic sense is simply second to none and one that he is able to identify in others.
This influence shows in everything that they do, BTW, including Apple's presence at trade exhibitions - a place the public doesn't see them, but I can tell you that it is equally impressive.
So the bottom line about the Zune launch is that it immediately highlighted comparisons with Apple's successful product line and those comparisons simply led people to make love to Apple and dis Microsoft. There is a PR lesson in there somewhere.
I am virtually exhausted after an evening of virtual dancing with the attractive Doreen in Second Life. Phew! The attached photo shows Doreen and me dancing ... she led :-) The Furries in the background? ... don't ask ...
I've lived two days now with my new iPod Shuffle and I can report that it is the most wearable technology I've ever encountered. It is so light you will only notice the earphones and cable. Because you can clip the Shuffle nearer to your head the headphones become easier to manage than on conventional iPods, which you typically have to keep further from your head.
I put on it a few albums I like - mostly PJ Harvey and Kristin Hersh - I clip it to my shirt collar and I'm good to go. Drag a few Podcasts, Bill Maher and co., and I am set for the train. It is not the place to keep your entire collection but it is the place to put listen once transitory stuff (Podcasts) and it is quick to change the profile of the content. I maintain several play lists and put the list that most suits my needs on the Shuffle before I leave the house or put on the music I want to listen to while walking around doing other stuff where a regular iPod would just get in the way and be at risk of being dropped.
The iPod Shuffle is just a different beast to a primary iPod. It is far less bulky than a regular iPod, it just does something else and is convenient in a way that the bulkier iPod is not. I found the controls to be surprisingly easy to manage and adequate.
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