So the big news in the Wonderful World of Apple is that they’ve finally released Mac OS X – Snow Leopard.

Apple Mac OS X - Snow Leopard

What is it?  Well, it’s … umm … Leopard.  Only … better?

In theory it’s better.  It is faster after all.  That much is true.

But other than that, how much better is it really?

Well, the speed comes with a price.  Snow Leopard is now officially on the X86 CPU architecture.  No more support for Apple’s old basis, the PowerPC CPU.  So you guessed it, that’s right, if you have an older Mac, Snow Leopard is beyond your grasp.

It goes deeper than that however.  It’s not just whether or not your hardware can run Snow Leopard.  There also seems to be some compatibility issues.  For a list of what software works and what doesn’t, check out the Snow Leopard Compatibility List at Wikidot.  You’ll find applications that don’t quite run correctly on Snow Leopard include Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Dreamweaver, AirPort Admin Utility for Graphite and Snow, Apple Server Admin Tools, CheckPoint SecureClient, Cisco Clean Access Agent, Control360 (for you gamers out there),  Divx, practically anything and everything from Extensis, Fallout II (that’s a real shame), some Filemaker issues, Leopard Cache Cleaner, Norton Anti-Virus, Paragon NTFS for Mac OS X, SafariBlock, TivoDesktop, Toontown Online (darn?), Vectorworks, Vonage Companion, and many many more … including some drivers.

If you plan on upgrading to Snow Leopard, I’d really suggest checking out your compatibility first.

But that’s not all.  For all Snow Leopard is supposed to deliver on, one thing, sadly is still very lacking.  That would be full ASLR (Address Space Layout Randomization).  What is ASLR? Key parts of memory used by the operating system used to always be located at the same place in memory.  This makes it really easy for hackers to do naughty things.  ASLR randomizes the locations in memory for key parts of the operating system, thereby making some hacking much more challenging.  And while Apple has implemented some randomization of the memory space layout even in good old Leopard, it still hasn’t done a full ASLR as of Snow Leopard.  Why Apple doesn’t take your computer security seriously is a mystery.

So there you have it.  Snow Leopard is released, it’s faster, but it’s still not quite everything you’d want it to be.

That’s it?  I’m afraid so.

For reasons that I won’t bother explaining, we’re collecting a pile of these Panasonic SH-PD10 Universal iPod Docks.  ( Part No. TNM2AX0011 / Part No. RGN2935 )  And the question becomes, what to do with them?

Panasonic SH-PD10 Universal Dock For iPod

Well I don’t have an iPod (nor do I want one as my cellphone plays music just fine), but it seems like everyone else does, including a few coworkers.  So the question became … can we do anything with these docks?

The answer is … probably!

Okay, so the connector on the end of the cable looks to be some kind of proprietary Panasonic thing.  Unless you want to order repair parts for a TV or stereo from them to get the slot for this connector, I just say cut it off at the head and splice what you need into place.  For that reason, I’m not even going to bother trying to figure out the pin numbers for the cables.  Sorry.  Though if someone else has them, I’d be happy if you left a comment with that information.

So wires, wires, wires.  I took the dock apart.  There’s really not much to it.  It feels heavy only because of a metal plate in the bottom that makes it heavy.  Actually, the device is pretty devoid of anything interesting.  It’s just a small PCB with the iPod dock port and a bunch of little resistors.  Unfortunately none of the wires lead directly to the iPod dock port, nor does the PCB lend itself well to tracing.  It was most disappointing really.  So I’m left more guessing what the wires are based on color and position.  Though if one of my coworkers decides to test things, a blog update may provide more definitive answers.  Likewise, if you decide to test things, please give your feedback on what I got right and anything I got wrong.

(That said though, if you really want to unlock the power of your iPod in a custom-made dock, this thing would come in pretty handy.  It wouldn’t be hard at all to solder your own wires to the iPod port on this dock and do whatever you like.  Taking the dock itself apart is very easy.  Just remove the rubber feet, unscrew the phillips-heads under each, and then pry apart as it also snaps together.)

Now, on to the cables:

Yellow – Composite Video

Violet – Component Video Y

Blue – Component Video U (Pb)

Green – Component Video V (Pr)

Black (the small one) – Video Ground

White (the small one) – Left Out

Red – Right Out

White (the large one) – 3.3V or 5V Power (500 mA MAX)  (And yes, it supposedly can be either as the iPod will accept both voltages.)

Black (the large one) – 3.3V or 5V Ground (Also looks to be the audio ground, but looks could be deceiving.  My guess would be use the video ground if this doesn’t work.)

Orange – Serial Rx

Gray – Serial Tx

Brown – Serial Ground

Yes, there are two white cables and two black cables.  (In fact on the inside of the device there are three black cables, one of which connects to the cable’s ground.)  The thicker two cables are the device’s power.

Now, what can you do with this?  Well, likely, not much with the serial communication lines.  That’s intended for devices that actually connect to the iPod to do cool things.  If you’re splicing up one of these cables, chances are you haven’t programmed whatever you’re using it for to communicate to your iPod.  So you can probably skip those.

The video and audio cables however would be quite handy to connect to a TV, a stereo, a car, whatever.  Goodness knows what wicked little things you’ll do with them. 

And the power I’d imagine you can skip if you don’t mind the iPod using up its battery.  Otherwise it shouldn’t be hard to find a cheap cell phone charger that puts out 5v DC.  Connect that up and your iPod should not only be powered by the dock, but even be recharged when sitting in it.

We often wonder about how lovely it would be to skip all of the traffic in our grinding commutes.  We ponder the delightful potential of a flying car that could take us above the gridlocks and fly us to our destinations in record time.  And while there have been a number of impractical solutions to this, there was one that was, perhaps, at least a reasonable alternative.

The problem with a flying car, you see, is that people are stupid.  Let’s face it, not everyone is a phenomenally skilled and safe driver.  An accident on the ground is bad enough, but an accident in the air?  That alone makes one reconsider the “joys” if having a flying car.

But then you add in all of the other little problems that on the ground are relatively little, but in the air would be truly deadly.  Running out of gas, having engine trouble, traffic congestion, “rules of the road”.  It gets to be a positively gruesome nightmare when the flying car faces reality.

Not to mention, how many people even know what an “air traffic controller” is or does, not to mention how to talk to one?

No, the more you face the legitimate prospect of a flying car, the more you realize the only way it would actually work is by turning it on its head.  You consider not the “flying car”, but the “backyard airplane”.  Because, ultimately, that’s the only way it is ever going to work in today’s world.  You have the safety regulations of an airplane, and the requisite training, licensing, and usage.

That was where Michael Robert Dacre of Avcen was a revolutionary.  He didn’t try to invent the highly impractical “flying car”.  No.  He invented something useful:  the Jetpod.

Intentionally he avoided the car nomenclature.  The closest he would let anyone come is to call it a “flying taxi”.  His idea was simple:  To make a relatively quiet airplane with modest fuel consumption that only needed a very short takeoff and landing space.

The Avcen Jetpod

And it was an absolutely brilliant take on the concept.

But, unfortunately, even then, it still had that impractical darker side.  A point proved when Michael Robert Dacre crashed his own invention, a prototype Avcen Jetpod, in Malaysia on the 16th of August, 2009.  Sadly, he died.  Taiping deputy police chief Supt Syed Abdul Wahab Abdul Majid said that Dacre suffered severe burns and injuries before ultimately dying at the scene.

The 16th of August 2009 crash of Michael Robert Dacre in his invention, a prototype Avcen Jetpod.

Even a brilliant invention isn’t necessarily a “safe” invention.  Lightweight aircraft are tricky at best if caught in bad weather.  Even a stray gust of wind can become extremely dangerous.  And that’s where thinking in terms of a “flying car” will get people killed.  Dacre knew better, and treated his invention as an airplane, not a car, but even still it was a dangerous game.  One that he paid for with his life.  It’s a great concept, if all works well.  But reality is full of Bad Things Happening, and for a flying taxi to work, it has to be safe, safe every day, every time, even in the worst conditions.

Avcen was to have launched their eight-seater “flying taxi” Jetpod in 2010.  Faced with such a harsh dose of reality now though, that future is in question.  Is treating it as an airplane even safe enough for an attempt at mass use?  Can enough safety measures be built into the design?  And what position is the company even in without Dacre?

Perhaps the simple truth is, we’re just not ready for this kind of flying.

Briefly running amok on the Sears website were various and sundry advertisements for things such as “Grills to Cook  Babies and More”.  I’m no sure why one would need a Kenmore “Body Part Roaster” over any normal grill, but there it was:  An object lesson in internet security, or a lack thereof.

A defaced Sears website sells "Grills to Cook Babies and More".

Sometimes we almost forget that not only are there serious hackers to worry about, but there are also fledgling hackers in training, dabbling, and doing naughty things.  While they might not rank up there in criminal activity such as stealing credit card information and running identity theft rings, they still cause their own brand of damage.  In some ways they’re worse, because many who dabble in hacking often give it up before turning serious, so there are far more defacers out there, looking for a good laugh than there are the professional criminal minds that we actually worry about.  It’s enough even to maybe make us stop for a moment and wonder if we should worry about twose who are just tinkering as well.

It’s easy to get lazy on security.  Especially in these times when everyone is strapped for cash and IT is so easy to cut back on.  But when you  have a public face, “How much is your good name worth to you?”, becomes an important question.  It’s a question that Sears may at this very moment be discussing anew as they ponder the public effect of advertising human cooking.  And maybe, just perhaps, you should to.

Security doesn’t just happen.  You have to make it happen.

The VB100 Award is a free logo accreditation awarded by Virus Bulletin, an impartial anti-virus (and other such security software) testing group.  The award has been given out since 1998 and the rules are pretty simple:  Submit your AV software.  You get one and only one shot per round.  (Every couple of months is a new round.)  If it detects actual viruses taken from the wild, and runs through a clean system without generating false positives, then you get to proudly show off the VB100 Award logo because your antivirus software works as it is supposed to.  If not, well Lucy, you got some splainin’ to do.

Not surprisingly, the likes of Microsoft and McAfee passed the August 09 testing.  Even the software from the slightly-less-known-but-still-great companies like Sophos, Kaspersky, and Grisoft AVG did wonderfully.

One name not up on that pass list however, that really should be, was Norton.

Gasp!

To be honest, this really isn’t the surprise that it should be.  Symantec’s Norton and McAfee’s self-titled security software might be the biggies, but the question remains:  Why?  They are simply because they are.  They made a name for themselves.  Now they live happily off that hog, regardless of their actual quality.

I think all of my life I’ve been unhappy with McAfee.  They’re always doing something wrong, even if it’s just consuming too many resources.

Symantec’s Norton however, while not my cup of tea, was at least fairly respectable in my opinion.  Overpriced, annoying, and maybe a little resource heavy, but more or less sound.

And yet, they failed to win the August 09 VB100 Award for failing to catch not one, but two viruses that are out in the wild.  And this is the software millions of people trust their PCs to?

Okay, so failing to catch two isn’t quite the epic fail of products like PC Tools, who botched over a thousand and caught false positives.  Symantec didn’t screw up that badly.  But then Symantec has recent virus definitions.  So they shouldn’t fail.  At all.

But they did.

And that is bad.