Saturday, February 9, 2008

INTEL MACS AND EXTERNAL DRIVES The past two months I have learned to appreciate the new things on my new Intel iMac and Leopard. However, there is one thing that bothers me. The newer Macs don't shut down any connected external drives when the computer is shut down. That was different with my old G4 iMac (the cute globe). This one still shuts down all my external drives when these are connected. Everything works like a whistle. I have asked LaCie about this and they told me it was an Apple hardware matter. The newer Macs continue to provide bus power to the firewire cables even when the Macs are shut down. So whenever you want to shut down your computer you have to shut down the external drives manually. And you will have to do so as the thermoregulated fans in the latest LaCie drives are set to continue running at, well maybe 18°C, which will keep them running and running all day long. There is no reason to have the firewire bus powered when the computer is shut down. Keeping the external drives powered with fans running is not good for durability and reliability. My LaCie drives have their own power source, so they don't need power from my iMac. MacInTouch: "It is anecdotal, but one reason I heard for keeping bus power active is so that connected iPod batteries would not discharge while sleeping or shutdown." It would be silly to patch a fault in the iPod with something that has an unwanted effect on other external drives. The batteries are the weak point of the iPods and that is something Apple should do something about. This is in fact a step down from earlier practice. Apple hasn't responded at all so far. A tiny bit of arrogance there, Steve? 1:00:15 PM

THAT LAPTOP IS A DANGER, SIR WashingtonPost: "Nabila Mango, a therapist and a U.S. citizen who has lived in the country since 1965, had just flown in from Jordan last December when, she said, she was detained at customs and her cellphone was taken from her purse. Her daughter, waiting outside San Francisco International Airport, tried repeatedly to call her during the hour and a half she was questioned. But after her phone was returned, Mango saw that records of her daughter's calls had been erased. A few months earlier in the same airport, a tech engineer returning from a business trip to London objected when a federal agent asked him to type his password into his laptop computer. 'This laptop doesn't belong to me,' he remembers protesting. 'It belongs to my company.' Eventually, he agreed to log on and stood by as the officer copied the Web sites he had visited, said the engineer, a U.S. citizen who spoke on the condition of anonymity for fear of calling attention to himself. Maria Udy, a marketing executive with a global travel management firm in Bethesda, said her company laptop was seized by a federal agent as she was flying from Dulles International Airport to London in December 2006. Udy, a British citizen, said the agent told her he had 'a security concern' with her. 'I was basically given the option of handing over my laptop or not getting on that flight,' she said. The seizure of electronics at U.S. borders has prompted protests from travelers who say they now weigh the risk of traveling with sensitive or personal information on their laptops, cameras or cellphones. In some cases, companies have altered their policies to require employees to safeguard corporate secrets by clearing laptop hard drives before international travel." The weird answer from those Heimat guys: "RUMOR ALERT! LAPTOPS We have received several questions, comments and links to other blogs about a Washington Post article on confiscating laptops and other electronic devices at airports. As the article correctly states, this is a customs issue and not one TSA is involved in. TSA does not and will not confiscate laptops or other electronic devices at our checkpoints. Our officers are solely focused on the safety of the traveling public and are looking for explosives and other prohibited items. Should one of our officers find something suspicious, we will immediately contact local law enforcement and potentially the local bomb squad. We will not ask for any password, access to any files or take the laptop from you for longer than it takes to determine if it contains a threat. Should anyone at a TSA checkpoint attempt to confiscate your laptop or gain your passwords or other information, please ask to see a supervisor or screening manager immediately." But the truth is different: "So... we checked with our security operations team to figure out what was going on. After some calls to our airports, we learned that this exercise was set up by local TSA offices and was not part of any grand plan across the country. These practices were stopped on Monday afternoon and blackberrys, cords and iPods began to flow through checkpoints like the booze was flowing on Bourbon Street Tuesday night." Some authorities are working out their wildest fantasies under the cloak of fighting terrorism. 10:33:14 AM

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