Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma – which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of other’s opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.

A few years ago, I was concerned that Apple wanted to boil the planet’s oceans by including the ZFS file system in a future release of OS X.

(I know that saying “ZFS file system” is like saying “ATM machine.” Not everyone knows what ZFS stands for; get over it.)

Apple has apparently reversed that decision, and thanks to Gruber, I found some speculation as to why. Unfortunately, the Gerbarg piece is totally devoid of the Armageddon theory.

I’ve been a Dreamhost customer since 2000. In that time, I found a lot to like about the service. It’s been convenient to use, packed with all the features I could want and then some, and seemed fairly reliable.

But if you were to search Twitter today for the word “Dreamhost,” you’d have found an uprising. Hundreds, if not thousands, of DH customers lost all their incoming emails this morning due to an unspecified failure of the spam filter… because when you upgrade a spam filter for thousands of users, you definitely want to do that first thing on a Monday morning. (None of those businesses needed their email, anyway.) Support? Completely non-communicative.

Well, that wasn’t all. A Twitter search for Dreamhost this evening shows that, not only had they failed to resolve the email problem for many users, literally dozens of web servers and database servers collapsed under the strain of… well, no one seems exactly sure.

Dreamhost did not cover itself in glory this day. In fact, I can’t imagine doing more damage to one’s own business than Dreamhost did.

As for me, I expect that I’ll be moving to a new web host mighty soon. Feel free to leave me recommendations in the comments.

(Photo source: niña mala under a CC License… see also Baby Chucky)

So how come I never met this guy? He lives in Florida, is an FSU fan, a Mac user, and a Halo player. I’m sure we’d get along famously.

My Orlando friends have some ‘splainin to do.

A few months ago, Google announced that its Calendar app would be accessible by PDA-based web browsers. It worked like a dream. And for someone like me, a lawyer on the go, it was a great tool.

Suddenly, sometime last week or so, it just stopped working. Instead of the nice neat rows of my daily schedule, I now get the unhelpful message that Google Calendar doesn’t support my browser…. “Yet.”

Yet? You supported it last week! What the heck is going on, Google?

UPDATE: They changed the url, apparently without telling anyone. Now it works.

So I just went to the Apple Store to play with the demos. Some observations:

1. As one who loves to surf the web from anywhere on my Treo, I could get seriously enamored with the slick it’s-the-real-internet of the iPhone. Wow.
2. They’re flying off the shelves. This could be bigger than the iPod. Note to self: buy AT&T stock, even though they suck.
3. The demos in the store had already been activated. I’ve got two phone numbers for excellent prank-calling opportunities.

Yeah, the iPhone is another home run of Apple. Once that nasty AT&T contract expires, I’m totally down for one.

UPDATE: Ernie really likes his: Hallelujeah! Praise the Lord, Allah, and Steve Jobs. It’s now time to kill the fatted calf. The prodigal son has safely returned to his data warehouse.

Do you know the significance of this number?

13,256,278,887,989,457,651,018,865,901,401,704,640

It’s currently at the heart of a battle over First Amendment rights. Some think it’s hexed.

I Come Not to Praise Microsoft…

Paul Graham thinks that Microsoft is dead, and he gives four reasons why.

1. Widespread availability of broadband, which fueled…
2. The emergence of Google, which led to…
3. The rise of online applications and the waning importance of desktop software, coinciding with…
4. Apple’s rise from the grave

“No one who cares about computers uses Microsoft’s anyway.”

The last is perhaps one of the most interesting. Not only is Apple thrashing Microsoft in the delivery of media — do you know anyone who paid for a Zune? — but they’re also shipping computers that run on the same family of technology that fuel the web. Microsoft doesn’t. As a result, anyone who works the web has to go out of their way to develop web apps on a Microsoft machine. By contrast, almost anything you can load on a Unix or Linux based web server can run with little or no modification on even the puniest of Apple systems running OS X. Increasingly, anyone who works on computers, as opposed to working merely with computers, has been using Apple.

Ding, dong, the witch is dead. At least, it seems that way.

ZFS. Sounds innocuous, doesn’t it? But when Daring Fireball reported that Apple’s OS X 10.5, code-named Leopard, would include support the new file system, I had to do some poking around. Turns out that this method of storing your computer files will bring about Armageddon.

Don’t believe me? Just look:

ZFS is a 128-bit file system, which means it can store 18 billion billion (18.4 × 1018) times more data than current 64-bit systems. The limitations of ZFS are designed to be so large that they will never be encountered in practice. Project leader Bonwick said, “Populating 128-bit file systems would exceed the quantum limits of earth-based storage. You couldn’t fill a 128-bit storage pool without boiling the oceans.”

Boiling the oceans? Holy crap! That’s got to be hyperbole, right? Just an off the cuff remark? Nope. Turns out it’s more like a British-style understatement. Bonwick later elaborated:

Although we’d all like Moore’s Law to continue forever, quantum mechanics imposes some fundamental limits on the computation rate and information capacity of any physical device. In particular, it has been shown that 1 kilogram of matter confined to 1 liter of space can perform at most 10⁵¹ operations per second on at most 10³¹ bits of information [see Seth Lloyd, "Ultimate physical limits to computation." Nature 406, 1047-1054 (2000)]. A fully populated 128-bit storage pool would contain 2¹²⁸ blocks = 2¹³⁷ bytes = 2¹⁴⁰ bits; therefore the minimum mass required to hold the bits would be (2¹⁴⁰ bits) / (10³¹ bits/kg) = 136 billion kg.

To operate at the 10³¹ bits/kg limit, however, the entire mass of the computer must be in the form of pure energy. By E=mc², the rest energy of 136 billion kg is 1.2×10²⁸ J. The mass of the oceans is about 1.4×10²¹ kg. It takes about 4,000 J to raise the temperature of 1 kg of water by 1 degree Celsius, and thus about 400,000 J to heat 1 kg of water from freezing to boiling. The latent heat of vaporization adds another 2 million J/kg. Thus the energy required to boil the oceans is about 2.4×10⁶ J/kg * 1.4×10²¹ kg = 3.4×10²⁷ J. Thus, fully populating a 128-bit storage pool would, literally, require more energy than boiling the oceans.

Look, math is the reason I went to law school instead of doing anything that requires real brains. But this guy is saying that stuffing too much information in this file system will not only boil the oceans, it will leave us with plenty of leftover heat to spare.

Break out the marshmallows – it’s time for a great big ‘Smore!

Several months ago, I noted that the Florida Bar had decided to burn witches – urm, prohibit the mining of metadata.

Doing some metadata research today, I finally found the real reason the Bar acted so strongly – one of the members of the Board of Governors got suckered.

One Florida lawyer was quite upset when he learned his firm had been hoodwinked into e-mailing a document to opposing counsel instead of faxing it so that the metadata could be mined by opposing counsel. Apparently some client comments that were attached to the document and then deleted were recovered by opposing counsel. Well, this lawyer was on the Florida Bar’s Board of Governors…

There are few things as dangerous as a powerful person who’s been made to feel foolish.

Dear Google,

Sitting here in front of my laptop with browser windows open all over the place and hot-key access to all your features, I am completely and utterly smitten. No other search engine does for me what you do, from the quality of your results to the modifiers that let me customize my search in just about any way I can imagine. Nothing else is in your league. Google, when I embrace you through my laptop, I swoon.

So, why, Google, must you frustrate me so when I’m out and about? My Treo 650, while no longer state of the art, is a really fantastic hunk of plastic and metal and electromagnetic spectrum. While waiting in line at the store or just over lunch, I have the close to the full power of the Internet at my disposal. At least I did.

Then you changed.

Google, you stopped serving my Treo the same pages you offered me at home. Instead of full search results, I got abbreviated “mobile” results. No more “cache” links, no more “related” links, no more “view as HTML” option for PDF’s and whatnot. Just a stripped down link list. And then, as if that wasn’t bad enough, you started changing the way you gave me access to the results I wanted. No longer could I just click through to a web page you found for me. Instead, you started serving up pages that had been “modified” for my mobile. I think you were trying to be helpful, but most of the time your modified pages were much less useful than the full pages themselves. They don’t always load, they break my back button, they interfere with cookies, and they generally show me that you’re getting in the way most of the time for what I need to do.

Today was the prime example of that. Over lunch, I wanted to look up the plain text of a state law. Ordinarily, this takes me two minutes tops, especially in a case like this one, where I knew the citation. But over lunch today, Google, I couldn’t do it at all. Every promising result link turned into a dead end of server errors. Once I got home, I found the cite I needed in less than 120 seconds.

Search isn’t all. You’ve also changed the way you tell me about the news. Frames! You use frames! With nav buttons on them that’s don’t even work! And break my back button! Are you trying to be helpful? Because if you are, this isn’t the way.

The road to hell, as they say, is paved with good intentions. So I wanted to give you a chance. I wanted to tell you to turn off the special “mobile” pages and the frames and the strangely formatted results and just give me the pages. Just let me click through. Set me free.

You won’t listen to me. There is no way to set a preference or click an alternate link. When I use my phone to talk to you, Google, you make me surf in “mobile” mode, and I don’t want to.

I’m starting to think you want me to start looking for another search engine. Google, please, before it’s too late… listen to me. Give me what I want and what I need – not what you think I want and need.

I think running Windows on an Apple machine is tantamount to desecration. Andrew Kantor of USA Today thinks it’s a market-share opportunity for Microsoft. I use the word “thinks” very lightly:

But the notion put forward by some Mac folks — that Boot Camp will improve the Mac’s position in the business and gaming marketplace — is backward. Instead, it’s more likely to convince Mac users to switch to Windows once they’ve used it long enough to be deprogrammed.

MacWorld’s Jason Snell thoroughly rebuts Kantor.

Andrew Kantor is a technology writer, pundit, and know-it-all.

I can think of a few other items to add to that list, but what do I know? I’m just another crazy cultist who needs to be deprogrammed.

And Kantor is an intellect ranking even lower on the scale than Dvorak.

Oh, no. Tom’s MacBook Pro is a lemon, and the repair tools that shipped with it aren’t Intel-Book compatible.

This has got to be a real bummer for Tom, since I know how much he was looking forward to Lysander’s arrival. Things like this are inevitable with such a major shift in the product line, and a very good reason to wait until the second iteration of a new release before making a purchase.

Apple periodically likes to pay lip service to the idea that some law firms use Macs instead of Windows-based systems. Their recent highlight of an Atlanta firm underscores why more attorneys have resisted switching:

…the firm administrator at Gaslowitz Frankel (and Adam and Michael’s sister) collects attorneys’ billable hours and, without leaving her iMac G5, enters their time into a PC-based program called Time Slips running on a Dell server.

Thanks to the cross-platform file and print services built into Mac OS X Server, Cheryl can complete her work seamlessly. Using her iMac G5, Gaslowitz simply mouses over the dock at the bottom of her screen, clicks on the Remote Desktop icon, enters a password, and instantly connects to the Windows server. I open Time Slips, she says, and enter attorney time. That’s as easy as it gets.

That’s right – Apple is trumpeting the fact that this firm can easily log into a Dell server to use billing software. The stock in trade of almost every attorney is the billable hour, and the importance of collecting, tracking, and reporting those billed hours cannot be underestimated. That is why these lawyers require a Dell server to manage one functions most critical to their firm – because no one makes software that does the job the way these lawyers need it to be done. the makers of legal billing software don’t support Apple because it’s too small a market share and they don’t want to invest even the minimal effort it would require to port their software to Mac. The major companies that used to support both – such as Sage Software, makers of TimeSlips – have abandoned the platform altogether.

Even the Windows-based software isn’t great. I’ve used most of the major programs, and the usability ranges from mediocre to abominable. This is where the opportunity comes in. Apple should take some of the money it’s been making from iPod sales and buy a large interest in one of the market-leading publishers of legal billing software – Sage probably wouldn’t be a bad choice. First, they need to ensure that at least one popular legal billing software package supports the Apple platform. Second, they need to rebuild it from the ground up, with an emphasis on giving the whole thing Apple’s trademark usability – especially for Windows users.

Once that is done, it’s time to re-deploy the strategy Apple used with iTunes. By creating a high-quality user experience for Windows and Apple users alike, Apple won some converts and increased the likelihood that Windows users would at least consider Apple for their next major computer purchase. Imagine what would happen if Apple developed a clear leader for the one piece of software that every lawyer needs.

First, by making sure that Apple-using lawyers can track and bill their time with quality software, they will remove one of the biggest obstacles many lawyers face when switching. Second, by making that software available for Windows, they help reassure those users that Apple products are suitable for professional use. Third, it would ease the prospective transition for those firms that do decide to make the switch, porting their billing data from the Windows version of the software to the Mac version would be virtually seamless.

Right now, lawyers who want to use Macs can find industry-standard word processors, e-mail clients, spreadsheets, web browsers, calendar and contact management, and just about anything else they need. But industry-standard billing software is a great gaping void. If Apple ever wants to make a serious play for the legal community, instead of just a PR play, they’d make it easier for lawyers to make money.

How is it possible that someone like John Dvorak has been writing a nationally-published computer column for decades when he produces such totally indefensible intellectual fluff?

Will Apple Adopt Windows?

Bigger companies than Apple have dropped their proprietary OSs in favor of Windows—think IBM and OS/2. IBM also jumped on the Linux bandwagon over its own AIX version of Unix. Business eventually trumps sentimentality in any large company.

Has Dvorak ever met anyone who uses a Mac, or seen one, or used one himself? Running Windows on Apple hardware is like… is like… well, I’ve already said it.

Windows. Seriously. Running Windows on an Apple machine is like going to Morton’s and asking for A-1 sauce.

It’s like painting “Hello Kitty” on your Ferrari.*

It’s like drawing a feces mustache on the Mona Lisa.

It’s like mixing Coke in your 1787 Chateau Lafite.

It’s like asking John Wayne Gacy to babysit the kids.

I’ll stop now. But really… it’s a bad idea.

* (Good Lord, I didn’t know that someone had actually done that until I Googled it.)

It would be like having Dvorak write a column for your nationally published computer magazine.

I got my Florida Bar News yesterday and while flipping through it this morning I have discovered that the Bar’s Board of Governors has voted to condemn the practice of viewing metadata in electronic files even though it does not fully understand exactly what that means.

If you’re unfamiliar with metadata, you are not alone. Several board members said they hadn’t heard of it until it came up at their December meeting.

The issue of metadata has been a topic of interest for lawyers for some time now. Evan Schaeffer and Dennis Kennedy are two among the many lawyers who have focused on the issue and what it means for the legal profession.

Described most simply, “metadata” is any data in a document which describes the document itself, as opposed to the data in the document which is the content. Any document created electronically has some form of metadata attached to it. This blog post, for example, contains the time and date of the post, the web location it can be found, the author, the category, the title, the number of comments, and so on. Even a simple text file will have file name, file size, date created, and so on. None of these are really controversial.

The problem comes when document creators use more sophisticated software to create documents. If you have Microsoft Word on your computer, open a recent file. Under the “File” menu, select the “Properties” option. You are now viewing the metadata for that Word document. File type, location, size; dates of creation, modification, and access; a “file summary” that lists the author, company, and other optional information; number of revisions and even total editing time.

To make matters worse, Word and some other document creation software actually contain metadata about edits and changes made to the document – either incidentally, such as a “Fast save” that copies the clipboard to a file, or intentionally, such as when the user enables the “Track Changes” feature. Either of these could cause real problems for an attorney who unwittingly sends out a file with this information.

One such example is when an attorney drafts a letter to one party, then uses it as a template for a letter to another party. If revisions to the first letter are accidentally included in the metadata of the file, and then sent to a another party, the lawyer may be disclosing one client’s confidential information to another client. Even worse, he might be sending it to opposing counsel. This occasionally happens in the analog world as well. Many years ago, my secretary send a letter to opposing counsel that was meant for my client’s eyes only. Little harm resulted, as the letter was a perfunctory notice and the other lawyer, a stand-up guy, stopped reading as soon as he realized it wasn’t meant for him.

Ultimately, each lawyer has the responsibility to ensure the confidentiality of any confidential information in his care, whether that information is on paper or disk. This vote by the Board of Governors seems designed to protect lawyers who have failed to take the necessary measures to do that, including developing an adequate understanding of the technology they use.

The article basically says that the president-elect of the Board got burned by Word (“track changes” anyone?) and it sounds like he is freaking out over it.

The biggest problem here is that the Board of Governors has no idea what it’s just done. No serious argument can be made that it’s unethical to use metadata which is knowingly released by another lawyer – such as file dates, file names, and so on. The Board clearly means to shield unwitting lawyers from the consequences of their unknown disclosures, but have stated their case too broadly. Furthermore, attorneys who aren’t aware of the metadata in their own documents will be unaware of the possible sources of evidence in metadata from other sources that wouldn’t be protected – thereby failing in their obligation to their clients to uncover such information if they can. In the very short term, it may be common for lawyers to lack an understanding of the importance of metadata. in the long term, every lawyer must develop an understanding of metadata and its significance, both to protect their clients’ confidences but also to figure out how metadata affects their clients’ legal matters in their day to day affairs.

Others have done a much better job than I could of summing up today’s news about the new Intel-based Mac hardware, so I’ll just nod vaguely in Cupertino’s direction and go about my day.

Except for this.

It’ll run Windows. We think we’re in love.

Windows. Seriously. Running Windows on an Apple machine is like going to Morton’s and asking for A-1 sauce.

It’s like painting “Hello Kitty” on your Ferrari.*

It’s like drawing a feces mustache on the Mona Lisa.

It’s like mixing Coke in your 1787 Chateau Lafite.

It’s like asking John Wayne Gacy to babysit the kids.

I’ll stop now. But really… it’s a bad idea.

* (Good Lord, I didn’t know that someone had actually done that until I Googled it.)

The Apple Store takes a smoke break during the Steve Jobs keynote.

For those of you who just got your first Apple product – a shiny new iPod or PowerBook – for Christmas, but aren’t yet totally familiar with all that Mac culture has to offer, let Tom tell you what this week’s MacWorld Keynote is all about. As iVangelists go, there are few finer than Tom.

Having a newborn generally requires a hospital stay of at least 48 hours for basic observation. Of course, for Mommy and Daddy, cabin fever comes quickly.

For me, about the only thing preventing me from going flat-out stir crazy has been my ability to get online via my cell phone connection. Non geeks, brace yourselves: Bluetooth DUN via my Treo 650 on Sprint Vision PCS.

When there’s no other online option available, the Bluetooth connection can be a really good last resort. On the downside, the data transfer is much slower than your typical cable/DSL connection, and at least here in the hospital, the signal drops out as often as every 45 seconds. I’ve not been able to stay on for more than 5 minutes straight without reconnecting.

So, I can’t exactly listen to streaming podcasts online, but I am able to compose emails offline and shoot them out in bursts. I’m curious whether signal strength is any better outside of the hospital. I imagine there’s heavy interference here from various hospital equipment, and our window here faces a multi-story inner atrium and the building itself seems to be impervious much of the electromagnetic spectrum.

I’ll have to test it out sometime where I’ve got a known good signal.

My good friend Tom, guru of all things Apple, has left his job in the non-profit sector to set about on matters that are decidely for profit. Tom is now officially “Open For Business.”

I am available for jobs large and small at rates that are fair and affordable. My partner and I have over 20 years of experience in Mac systems administration and are glad to bring our skills to bear on your project. We are both Apple certified, and have significant experience with all of Apple’s Pro Suite, as well as the new Xserves and Xserve RAID. We are currently providing full 24/7 support for the greater DC area, and we’ll be glad to provide telephone/IM/email support for the world at large. In addition to our systems administration services, we also offer consultation on office build-out, including telephony and data circuit provisioning, as well as office wiring and wireless provisioning as well.

If you’ve got Apple products in your business, small or large, I would highly recommend Tom as the guy who can hook you up with everything you need to squeeze every last bit of productivity out of your set-up. Before he broke out on his own, he was the unofficial remote IT department for my law firm, and when I can squeeze the dimes out of the budget, we’ll be calling him to deploy a n XServe and PowerBook based law office. Drop Tom an Instant Message or email:

tom ]at[ technolutionary.com

You won’t regret it.

When I code up a new web page, I frequently rely on the world’s largest repository of CSS reference materials – tha Intarweb. This evening I was Googling for techniques on using CSS to pin a footer at the bottom of a web page, I stumbled across the following article at, of all godforsaken places, Apple’s Developer site:

Another common problem with CSS is ensuring a proper page footer. On long pages that use more space than the window height, the footer should appear directly below the navigation and content blocks. That’s very easy to code. On short pages, though—those that span only part of the window height—the footer should nonetheless appear at the bottom of the viewport, and that’s a far trickier code challenge… Ensuring that the footer works properly on both long and short pages is a common cause of CSS headache.

Tables neatly solve these two problems. Correct horizontal alignment has been the most important advantage of tables ever since Mosaic. Giving the table a height: 100% and the cell containing the footer a vertical-align: bottom makes the footer reliable in all circumstances.

(Emphasis mine).

Oh, for the love of Netscape 4.x! This may have been true back when KISS was still touring but in the modern day, if the solution to your problem involves using a table for layout, you’ve just got more problems.

Sometime last July, the Movable Type setup that powered every weblog on our various domains went belly up. All logins failed, password retrievals failed… the database appeared to be empty. But the database was still there, and still flush with all that data. Logging into the web server and running “strings” on the database files showed that all the user accounts and blog entries were still there. So my problem was not that the database was gone – it was that Movable Type somehow couldn’t access the data. I backed up the errant database and went poking around.

I tried re-installing Movable Type from scratch, using the original install files I had stashed away. Still no dice: “invalid login.” I did a new install of a blank Movable Type setup – worked like a charm. That told me I definitely had a database problem, not a problem with the install files. The Oracle of Google told me that others had suffered the same problem:

• http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/forums/lofiversion/index.php/t25580.html
• http://www.djchuang.com/b2/blog.php/2004/05/18/
• http://www.sixapart.com/movabletype/forums/index.php?showtopic=41725

One of the posts I ran across recommended the MT-Medic plugin. Sounded great – I installed it, then configured and ran it. Same result: no authors, no weblogs. But I knew, having seen the data, that it was all still there. The same post that mentioned MT-Medic also contained the following nuggets of information:

This can be fixed by converting the DB files over to the format used by the new library version; please review the Knowledge Base article on Converting Berkeley DB Files To New Version for more information.

It linked to an entry on upgrading the database version. “The easiest way to convert the DB files is to use the db_upgrade program.” Great! I could just run the “db_upgrade” command. Except… no such program existed on my server! So I then tried the burdensome “dump and reload” method at the end of the article. After laboriously typing in

$ db_dump -f author.db.data author.db
$ mv author.db author.db.old
$ db_load -f author.db.data author.db
$ chmod 666 author.db

…for more than two dozen files, I thought I was ready to go. I fired up the login window… INVALID LOGIN.

Now I was mad. But one guy, Dylan Parker seemed to be having the same types of troubles I was having, and he was equally determined. I re-read his article for clues. Ultimately, I never had to try his solution of upgrading Perl modules, because this paragraph gave me all I needed:

First off, my web hosting site didn’t appear to have db_upgrade, db_dump, db_dump185 or db_load installed. I hunted all over the directory tree and eventually found them in /usr/local/bin but they had the prefix db3_ instead of db_. Be aware your hosting company may have renamed these utilities. Remember… the locate and whereis commands are your friend.

Db3? Locate! Five seconds later, I had found the “db3_upgrade” program that had eluded me while I was searching for its little brother without the 3. Ran it, went to MT-Medic, waited with bated breath for it to load, and magic! The database spilled its guts across my screen: authors, blogs, everything. Moving to the login window, the entire Movable Type installation was back at my fingertips, fully operational.

My next item of business? Export! You’ll soon be seeing some of the old blog entries nestled in new blog homes. Hopefully no other Movable Type users have to go through what I went through, but if they do, I hope this note helps.

Remember, back up your data often.

UPDATE: I’m not the only one.

To check out when I next upgrade my iPod: handbrake. (Tip o’ the pirate’s hat to George).