Heads up to anyone who might be on limited-bandwidth connections – the current XCode update is nearly 5GB. Might want to hit a Starbucks, have a coffee, and use their wireless for the duration of the download.
I’d told Software Update to just update everything last night before I went to bed. It was a full 12.5GB worth of updates later over my Verizon Jetpack before I realized just how big all of those updates were.
Okay, here’s one of the technical ones that I’ve been threatening: had a problem with my Mac’s USB Superdrive some months ago. Straight away, I’d thought the drive had failed (it was in a bag, had been bumped around, etc., etc.). It was of course the Apple-marketed, slot-load, USB Superdrive. So, without much testing, I dropped it in the waste bin then moved on.
Last week, I had need again for an optical drive, so I ordered a new one and Prime delivered it in about 36 hours.
Plug it in and hear it click while powering up.
Put in a disc and… nothing. It won’t ingest it. Won’t draw it in.
Fiddled with it for a few minutes then just did an Amazon return as it seemed DOA.
The replacement got here today.
Plug it in… clicks… try to insert a disc and… nothing again.
It’s astonishingly unlikely this drive is dead.
So, here’s what I wound up doing:
Insert a disc as far as the drive will allow it – it won’t draw it in, but you can push it and leave it so it’s about an inch or so from fully inserted.
Open Terminal and run ‘dsutil eject’. The drive will eject the disc. Good.
Now, remove the disc, and shut down your Mac. Leave the empty drive connected.
While pressing and holding the Shift + Control + Option keys on the left side of the keyboard, press and hold the power button for a few seconds.
Release the keys then press the power button.
Wait.
Log in.
Insert disc and everything’s back to normal.
Who’d have thought that an SMC reset would need to be done?
So, the security organization says, “We need you to give us your root passwords so we scan your systems to see if they’re vulnerable to root exploits.”
“Just so I understand: you want the root passwords, so you can log in as root, to see if you can find exploits that would allow you to log in as root without a password.”
“Yes.”
“If your goal is to get root without a password, then, by all means, start your attack. But I can’t give you the root password.“
“You’re not a team player and you’re not cooperating with our efforts! We’re going to HR!”
“Here, let me get you their phone number…”
25 years in the industry and, so far, not one detected security incident.
We reported the other day that Verizon pulled the plug Omnilynx unlimited wireless project.
Obviously, we’re a bit bummed about that – $50/month for unlimited data at LTE speeds was an incredible deal.
The next offerings from the big players – AT&T, Verizon, Sprint, T-mobile – come nowhere close to unlimited. Very much the opposite of unlimited. In fact, most of them are capped at about 30-40GB/moth and can get obscenely expensive ($400/mo). With some of them, when you reach the cap, they’ll throttle you back to effectively-unusable speeds.
Maybe the days of unlimited data are gone.
Or are they?
Here’s Karma, for ya:
Karma’s another player billing themselves with unlimited data. And for only $50/mo.
It’s not the fastest thing in the world – 5Mbps. But for telecommuters – we full-time, working RVers! – 5Mbps is loads better than 0Mbps. That’s certainly enough for email, browsing, Hipchat, Skype, Google Hangouts and all of the other video-conferencing platforms on which we depend.
We’ve ordered ours and we’ll do a quick unboxing/setup/performance video when it arrives.
Oh, and if you want to sign up for Karma and get your own portable, unlimited (or even one of their less-expensive limited but still quite generous) hotspots, here’s $10 to get you started.
Back in Washington in our home.
We are, of course, South Dakota residents, and my office is still in Colorado, but seeing that home is where your rump rests, home is, once again, Washington.
As an aside, either the climb up from the Columbia was astoundingly steep, or that last fill-up of bulk, unwashed hippie tears–uh, I mean diesel in Oregon had some sort of power-robbing properties in it. UPGRAYEDD did not like the drive up that ridge at all.
the rest of me 