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Weblog • Archive • Cutedge

by: Bernard Teo

Tue 17 May 2005

Mac OS X 10.4.1 Spells Trouble

Category : Technology/1041OSXTiger.txt

I've quickly upgraded one machine to Mac OS X 10.4.1 - such system updates usually spell trouble. I was a bit concerned with the fiirst line I read, something like "may cause problems with 3rd party system configuration".

True enough, POP and IMAP services don't start up on their own after a system reboot. If you have Postfix Enabler, you'll need to do a Stop and then Start IMAP or POP again. But it's not consistent. Sometimes one or the other would start up fine on its own after rebooting. But after another restart, they'll both stop and need to be restarted manually.

I updated another system to Tiger 10.4.1 and get this same behaviour.

This is really troubling. I've checked a couple of the systems that have not yet been updated to 10.4.1 and they both work flawlessly, with all services resuming on their own after a reboot.

If you're running Postfix Enabler for Tiger, try not to update your system to 10.4.1 until I can understand what is happening - otherwise you have to manually stop and start POP and IMAP after each reboot.

Posted at 12:18PM UTC | permalink

Sun 15 May 2005

Solved it !

Category : Commentary/passwordMysterySolved.txt

Okay, I've solved the password mystery, proving the axiom that once you know what the problem is, you're more than half-way towards solving it.

Version 1.1.4 of Postfix Enabler works with diacriticals in the password. It's just been released.

Posted at 1:21PM UTC | permalink

The Mystery of the Invalid Password

Category : Commentary/InvalidPassword.txt

I'm getting a little bit closer to solving the mystery of the invalid password. I've got an example of a password which couldn't work - it's one that contains a diacritical mark. That means that passwords containing umlauts and Chinese characters, say, will not work.

Now why does the same password work in Postfix Enabler for Panther and not Postfix Enabler for Tiger?

Postfix Enabler for Panther was built using AppleScript Studio. It is clear now that AppleScript's "do shell script with administrator privileges and password" command handles diacriticals the correct way.

"do shell script" changed in Tiger and I re-wrote Postfix Enabler for Tiger using Objective-C to avoid doing major surgery to my shell scripts. It's clear now that I hadn't emulated "do shell script"'s old behaviour quite far enough.

There must be a way to do it, though exactly how "do shell script" did it is not clear to me. But, at least, I have a lead to work on now.

Posted at 3:33AM UTC | permalink

Sat 14 May 2005

Thunderbolts from Mount Olympus

Category : Commentary/wynn.txt

Let's talk about another Steve - Steve Wynn, creator of well-known casino resorts, expressing his frustration with too much micro-management by "bureaucrats" overseeing the submission of bids for the integrated resorts to be built at Marina Bayfront and Sentosa, as reported in Saturday's Business Times. He says,

"There's an awful lot of control and direction in the documents ... It's control and direction by people who've never done this before ..."

If, instead of integrated resorts you read information systems, he could be talking about "systems architects" in IT departments.

I really like the following quotes :

"Everybody will make big promises and have fancy drawings. But you can't tell from a drawing or a rendering what moves the human spirit. You have to be in it to understand it."

"It took more than three years to create shows such as the sellout O show ... The creation of such shows involves intricate choreography, music and lighting effects and is often an organic process over a period of time and perfected after audience feedback."

And my favourite :

"Don't issue thunderbolts of wisdom from the top of Mount Olympus. You're talking about the people of the world and what makes them go ..."

For fancy drawings, read design methodology ("Is it Use-Case or Waterfall or Rational Rose?) For thunderbolts of wisdom, read "We only allow Wintel or Oracle". In contrast to "organic process", read "We want complete systems documentation with flow charts and decision trees".

"... the people of the world and what makes them go ..."

Steve Wynn sounds like someone out of Ayn Rand. He could have snuggled up to the bureaucrats. But saying what he did is just what we need to push the human race forward.

Posted at 5:02PM UTC | permalink

Steve Jobs Buys a Washing Machine

Category : Commentary/washingmachine.txt

Wired News has an excerpt from the book, "iCon" by William L. Simon and Jeffrey S. Young.

Jeffrey Young wrote "The Journey is The Reward", in 1987. And how I love that phrase.

The excerpt references an interview Steve Jobs did with Wired (issue 4.02 Feb 96) where he talked about what good design means, using his selection of a washing machine for his family as an example. Therefore it's called "Steve Jobs Buys a Washing Machine".

This particular interview may one day become a cult classic. So here's the link. (It's titled "The Next Insanely Great Thing".)

If people are wondering how Apple (which of course contains Jobs' DNA, even through the years he was away) could have such a disproportionate impact on their industry (one that's wholly at odds with their market share), they only need to read this interview and compare that with Bill Gates' disinterested ramblings in Digerati.

But with Apple being the soap opera that it is, you get the good as well as the bad. When I was in Shanghai, looking out across to the Bund, I kept thinking about what someone once said about the Bund being a great facade - fitting for a great country - but that was what it was, only a facade, because there was no real country behind it. That was, of course, talking about the China of the Opium Wars. In present times, you could say the same about Apple. And that was, I think, what Michael Malone kept plugging at, in his book "Infinite Loop" - that Apple has the facade of a great company, but there's no real company behind it, or at least one with a soul.

So to balance things up, here's a link to Applepeels : "Keeping the record straight on Apple". Among the things : "1. At the highest level Apple doesn't actually value customers enough to really listen to them." and "2. Apple uses their partners, and then abuses them when it suits Apple's needs." Gotta say, I totally agree.

Posted at 4:21PM UTC | permalink

Fri 13 May 2005

Postfix Enabler 1.1.3 for Case-sensitive Systems

Category : Commentary/PFE113Announce.txt

Okay, I think I've solved it. We now have a system that will work also on systems that have been formatted case-sensitive - i.e., as Mac OS X Extended Journaled (case sensitive).

This will be version 1.1.3. This is probably the last of the compatibility fixes for people moving over to Tiger. I hope that after that it'll all settle down and then we can move to something new.

Posted at 6:45AM UTC | permalink

Case-Sensitive File System

Category : Technology/case-sensitiveSystems.txt

I've just formatted a Mac with a case-sensitive file system. Mac OS X is case-insensitive by default (because that's what Mac users are used to) but I've had a couple of cases where the users had formatted it as Mac OS X Journaled Extended (case sensitive). A Linux user coming back to the Mac may want to keep the file system the way it was in Linux, which is case sensitive, like in most Unix systems. Unfortunately Postfix Enabler breaks when faced with that.

It'll be interesting to see how a Mac works under this format, and to see if I can get Postfix Enabler to run properly on case-sensitive systems. We'll see how it goes.

It took me some time to get a Mac free that I can use for this experiment. To test Postfix Enabler, I've had a machine running on 10.3.8, one on 10.3.9, a couple on Tiger (one of which I don't touch so that I can see what files came with the original install), and now one with this new variation. All sacrificed on the altar of Quality Control.

Posted at 2:57AM UTC | permalink

Thu 12 May 2005

Version Tracker

Category : Commentary/versionTracker.txt

I've just updated Version Tracker and MacUpdate. I hadn't updated them for a while but they seem to be able to pick up the Postfix Enabler for Tiger releases all on their own. But they had the links wrong. So I had to go update them.

I saw a comment on Version Tracker just now about the password or serial number not working on the login screen.

This is puzzling because I never had a single e-mail about this. One would have thought that a person in this situation would have first contacted the author, having paid good money for something that didn't work.

So, this is another MBA moment. How do you handle this?

In times like this, I think we need to go back to first principles - with the acceptance that people are not actually buying, say, Postfix Enabler. They have a problem they think Postfix Enabler can solve. So they're buying a solution to their problem.

Following this, I've made a refund to a person living in a dorm who did get his SMTP server to send mail, but he realised that he still had to go through the Smart Host, so there wasn't any point in using his own SMTP server. The software worked, but he didn't get what he was looking for - so I returned the money. That's sort of working according to the principle.

You know when Postfix Enabler works, it works beautifully. But there were a couple of cases where I couldn't tell why Postfix Enabler wouldn't work on those users' machines. It's quite difficult to debug these remotely. So many things can go wrong in the system (the network settings, the network itself, no available DNS server, a case-sensitive file system, a machine without a host name, manual modifications to the config files that Postfix Enabler is too stupid to work around, plus a zillion other things). But I think people appreciate it when I do give it a go anyway because it's really not worth the 10 bucks. So I'm actually relieved to be able to refund the money when things don't work out. There's a limit to what I can do a few thousand miles away.

So, I try my best to do the right thing but I am still disappointed with that comment on Version Tracker. I'll be glad to be shown where the login screen doesn't work and fix it. Until then, the evidence from all these downloads is that it does work. But it does leave a trace of fear, uncertainty and doubt, doesn't it?

Posted at 3:35PM UTC | permalink

Postfix Enabler for Tiger Release 1.1.2 is out

Category : Technology/PFEforT112Released.txt

I've released version 1.1.2 of Postfix Enabler for Tiger. It fixes SMTP Authentication via the SASLDB method, which broke in Tiger.

I had wanted to drop support for this, thinking that SMTP authentication via the built-in OS X accounts should be sufficient, but it seems like there were quite a few people using it. So, here it is, fixed and usable again. There's a probably a better way to do this in Tiger, with some of the new mechanisms in place. But this will do for now. I've fixed this in all three iterations, from Jaguar to Panther to Tiger, proving that everything you know yesterday is obsolete by tomorrow.

This version also contains an updated French translation from Michel Pansanel of Carpo.org. Thanks, Michel, I really appreciate it.

Posted at 7:05AM UTC | permalink

About PayPal and Automated Workflows

Category : Technology/PayPal.txt

It's been a week since we've had this system going which allows us to process credit card payments from almost anywhere around the world.

Well, almost everywhere. I've learnt that it doesn't work in Panama, Indonesia, and Slovenia (plus a few other places I've yet to encounter).

But using PayPal is probably the easiest way to go. Technically, it's relatively easy to set up and you get to test the system before going live. From the business end of things, it's easy on the pocket because there's no signing-on fee, no set-up fees, and no monthly fees. You do have to pay 6 cents off each dollar of the transaction to PayPal. And there's a sizeable exchange-rate conversion charge when you transfer the money to a local bank. But the pay-as-you-go approach makes it bearable.

Oops. It should read "6 cents off each dollar" rather than "60 cents off each dollar".

One significant factor that has made life easier for me is PayPal's policy on refund. When you make a refund, PayPal also refunds its transaction charge. What I understand, from a traditional credit card arrangement, is that the merchant has to pay a fee to the credit card company for processing a refund. If this were so, every time I offer to make a refund (because I can't figure out why Postfix Enabler isn't working for a customer), I'm doubly punished by the system.

If you've ever tried to build a credit card processing system using the other (brain-dead) companies' systems, you'll understand what I mean when I say here's a breakthrough - on top of the fees after fees, you'll meet obstacles after obstacles just to get to test the other systems.

Of course, you could out-source all these to people like Kagi. But, if you have an accounting system at the end of the process, you could get a lot of productivity and efficiency advantages just by tying everything together. It's the ultimate business machine that I'm trying to build.

I think, then, that this could grow into something big. PayPal says that it has over 63 million accounts - which should make it a big enough ecosystem for people to trade with each other.

We've started off collecting donations from people happy to use our software. That gave us some time to think about what we need to do to make the transition towards actually selling things on the 'Net - which involves collecting money before we turn over the goods, in this case a serial number that will open our software.

The complications here are : 1) Timing issues. Sometimes, when PayPal is too busy, we get the notification that the transaction has completed very late, making the customer wait too long for his serial number. 2) E-mail issues. For any number of reasons, sometimes the e-mail with the serial number doesn't reach the customer (because he supplied an invalid e-mail address, or he has a picky mail server that bounced our message, etc...)

And there's a major technical issue concerning synchronising the transactions (keeping all the concurrent sessions apart), and avoiding deadlocks because they're all going thru a single serial number generator.

These can break and they're disastrous when they do. These are the things that really matter. They're invisible but they matter more than knowing how to say cold-start or warm-start, three-tier or n-tier systems, etc. Building systems is fun. Dealing with buzzword-compliant systems architects is not.

It's been a week and there's a lot to be learnt just from doing these - not only the technical issues but also the business issues - like how we can reduce the number of support calls - by either improving the user interface or simply improving the documentation?

So, in terms of the range of experience gained, I think doing a stint as a would-be on-line entrepreneur may be almost as good as enrolling for an MBA course. The Journey is The Reward ? ...

Posted at 6:27AM UTC | permalink

Mon 09 May 2005

What has Escher got to do with this?

Category : Commentary/Escher.txt

There's a self-referential nature to this weblog, like in an MC Escher print:

On one hand, I write about the ideas that I have - about how a business could use technology to create the ultimate business machine. By the ultimate business machine, I mean a business whose processes have been so systematised - through the (judicious) use of technology - that its owners could spend their waking hours improving their products, and their sleeping hours collecting the money that flows back into it.

I've felt so strongly about these ideas that the only way I could express myself was to come out and do something about it.

Over the two years of writing this weblog, I've tried to show how the technology has become cheap, powerful, and flexible enough for even a small business to exploit them in a simple, un-cluttered, and business-centric way. And where I could, I have tried to build the tools that will hopefully, one day, work in concert to make such scenarios a reality - tools like a mail server enabler, a web server log monitor and an accounting system, etc...

Now that one of these tools (Postfix Enabler) has become good enough to be sold commercially, I've taken the opportunity to bring in the other elements (credit card processing, work flow and database integration) to show how even a home-based business could use consumer-level tools to achieve a degree of technical sophistication - one that will allow it to trade with the whole wide world.

So, while you're downloading and paying for Postfix Enabler, you should also get the notion that all these ideas can work. After all, you're seeing it in action. It's a demo. Yet it's also real.

Think Different may be more than a mantra. It could also make good business sense.

OK, so I'm re-writing this. I wasn't comfortable with the previous version. It was too self-congratulatory. That's tempting fate. A heartbreak's always round the corner. Blog writing is a performance art.

Posted at 2:18AM UTC | permalink

Sun 08 May 2005

Postfix Enabler for Tiger (1.1.2) - to be released

Category : Commentary/PFETigger1.1.2ToBeReleased.txt

SMTP authentication on the server, through the SASLDB database, broke in Tiger. I have a fix I will release in version 1.1.2, next week.

This is, I think, the last remaining service that needs to be restored to our Postfix Enabled-mail server, in our migration to Tiger.

I've concentrated, up to now, on getting the migration done - to help people get their old functionality back as soon as I can.

It's instructive to watch how Mac users jump towards new operating system upgrades with such cheerful willingness. A couple of falls, and off they go, even on their "live" business systems. What explains this optimism? ...

Tiger has new ways of doing the old things. I've got the old functionality back, sometimes using the old ways. The next few updates, I will try to conform to the new ways of doing things, as soon as I can understand how they work. Plus, a few new features that I had been wanting to do.

Postfix Enabler helps you set up the ultimate buzzword-compliant mail server. I've also learnt that there is another thing that it needs to be compliant with - case-sensitivity. There are a couple of people who had formatted their Mac using OS X Extended Journaled, with case-sensitivity on, like on Linux systems. The Mac, of course, is by default case-insensitive ... /etc/postfix is the same as /etc/Postfix. Postfix Enabler currently breaks on case-sensitive systems.

Posted at 6:00AM UTC | permalink