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Weblog • Archive • Cutedge

by: Bernard Teo

Fri 28 Nov 2003

If we build it, will they come?

Category : Commentary/FCPCourse.txt

We completed our very first Final Cut Pro course at Roadstead. Thanks to Adeline Soh and Edward Saw, and to Ian Beattie, the trainer.

Did the trainees enjoy the course? Look at the pictures below. Looks like Ian did a great job and we have two very satisfied customers.

Posted at 11:00AM UTC | permalink

The Joy of Discovery

Category : Commentary/patternsofs.txt

Yet another discovery brought about by a PayPal notification. The Enablers, Postfix and Sendmail, may not have brought in much in terms of remuneration but I think I've been rewarded in other ways.

I received a payment from Richard Gabriel and I followed the link back to his website, Dreamsongs.com.

I discovered an essay that he has written, called "Patterns of Software", and I've been making my way through the ideas he expressed there ever since, in between snatches at my "real" work.

It's very interesting reading, if you've ever spent any time thinking about why software development is hard, how to make it easier, and how to build things of beauty that also really work (and will continue to work).

I've come to accept that requests for changes to software never ends. Business strategy changes, the competition changes, the rules change - so the software has to change. Constantly.

Putting aside the hard problem of how to arrange to be paid for making all these changes, the conscientious developer is always grappling with the problem of design. How do you arrange things so that you can make changes, without bringing the whole edifice down.

I like the analogy he makes with architecture because building software is like building a house that will be used by normal human beings (though there are notable differences).

I don't have a summary to make, because reading it has stirred up a few thoughts and they will take some time to land. I just want to recommend "Patterns of Software" to others. Read it, please. It may be the best book ever written about the nature of software development, in ages.

Posted at 9:33AM UTC | permalink

Sun 23 Nov 2003

The Woz uses Postfix Enabler

Category : Commentary/woz.txt

One particular PayPal notification came in last week that made me do a double-take.

"Dear Cutedge,

This email confirms that you have received a Payment from Steve Wozniak (steve@woz.org)".

How about that for a collector's item?

I took a look at woz.org and in it he writes :

Dear Woz,

When you call Apple to order stuff and you give them your name, do people recognize you and say "Hey, your that dude that created Apple!"

Woz: I order Apple stuff online. I doubt that any human ever sees the names. But once I ordered a gigabit ethernet option. Apple noticed two months later that only two of these had been ordered, both by me! I do get noticed every time I buy shareware, and that brings me a lot of T-shirts that I get good use out of.

We would love to send over a tee-shirt one day.

But that just proves how you'll never know who's going to be using your software, one day. And I was just talking about how there's a lot of responsibility putting out a piece of software that a lot of people will use. I really, really hope it worked for him.

Posted at 8:39AM UTC | permalink

Sun 16 Nov 2003

Released Postfix Enabler 1.0.4

Category : Technology/postfixenabler104released.txt

Released version 1.0.4, the one with UW-IMAP and POP3 capability. Hope there are no bugs. The code's getting messier. May need a re-write before I add in more features.

I'm trying to make as little change to a stock OS X installation as I can to get each feature working. It's the ecological approach. I hate to have my system messed up by an application. And I try not to do it to others'.

There's a lot of responsibility putting out a piece of software for other people to use. It's five times harder to build a system that will be used by many people, than one that will be used only by ourselves, internally. And it's really hard to find good developers. There's so much to do and so little time to do it. It really helps to be working on a Mac.

Posted at 9:11AM UTC | permalink

Fri 14 Nov 2003

PacNet blocks ports 995 and 993

Category : Technology/PacNetSSL.txt

Following on the previous posting, I think I was wrong about the Airport Extreme Base Station. It was my ISP that was blocking ports 995 and 993, for whatever reason they had, and that was why POP and IMAP over SSL didn't work.

I took the Airport Extreme Base Station out of the equation by connecting the server directly to the broadband line and SSL still didn't work for POP and IMAP. So I can't blame the base station, though I guess I've still got to do a test that will prove conclusively that the Airport Extreme Base Station will channel the SSL ports in correctly. So, the situation is, if I don't have a bug in the latest version of Postfix Enabler (1.0.4), POP and IMAP over SSL will work most of its users.

Posted at 1:07PM UTC | permalink

Airport Extreme and IMAPS and POPS

Category : Commentary/IMAPSPOPS.txt

I've discovered that the Airport Extreme Base Station does not pass ports 993 (for IMAP over SSL) and 995 (for POP over SSL) through even though I've set port mapping on.

I've noticed this before when I got POPS and IMAPS working on a home machine that had the old Airport Base Station, but not at the office where we have an Airport Extreme.

But, then again, it be could be due to the different networks I am on - one on PacNet and one on SingNet. But I don't think so. It's probably the base station. I need to do a test again tonight to prove this conclusively.

Which brings me to the point of this whole weblog. Even when you try to make everything work smoothly (a click here and a click there), you're still going to get hit by blocks like these. A lot of the opposition to the Mac from the IS perspective comes from the belief that the Mac would eliminate IS department headcount. How do you spend your days when you're not going to be busy troubleshooting system failures?

My point is that there is a whole lot of stuff we can spend our time better on - like how do you organise the business workflows, how do you account for things so that you know if you're making money or not? All these use IT but you're working on things at a higher level. The whole point of driving your way quickly past all the low-level SMTP, sudo, /etc/xinetd stuff is to get to this top-level view fast - before the business gets eaten away by the competition.

In case this is overstating things, we need to remember that a programmer or graphics artist in China (or India) is happy making S$400 a month (that's like $250-plus in US dollars). That's why a friend of mine can do a pretty nice business bringing work out to China. You can be sloppy sizing a project, and let it overshoot by three months and still make money. It's a tremdendous cost difference. That's why we want things to just work. That's why we use the Mac. It's not because we love Apple. It's because there's no way out but to compete - but we've got to choose our tools well.

Posted at 3:59AM UTC | permalink

Thu 13 Nov 2003

Postfix Enabler 1.0.4

Category : Technology/postfixenabler104.txt

I've got a version of Postfix Enabler with POP and IMAP (with SSL) support built-in. If anyone wants to test it, just write to me. I've also written to the University of Washington for permission to bundle the ipop3d and imapd binaries and they've said they've got no problems with that, so long as I point people to the disclaimers in the UW Free-Fork license, which I'm trying to work into the Postfix Enabler interface. But, if you're going to use this un-released version of Postfix Enabler, please read the UW-IMAP license on :

http://www.washington.edu/imap/legal.html

Further information on the free-fork license :

http://www.washington.edu/imap/IMAP-FAQs/index.html#license

I've no doubt that the qpopper license works the same way. So when someone asked, "Aren't you violating qpopper's license agreements by distributing the popper binary in a shareware package?", I think I can now answer, no, quite truthfully. I had a lot of problems with that "violating" word, but you learn something new everyday.

PS : If this works, I may be inclined to include a button that the user can click to create the SSL cert, if that's possible to do. (Also, to put in a button that will solve that stupid bug that's still in Apple's eFax solution so that the PDF file containing the fax image will appear correctly in Mail.app. I've applied a patch and the Panther shared fax solution works really great now. It's got nothing to do with Postfix, but why not throw in the kitchen sink?)

Posted at 2:52PM UTC | permalink

Wed 12 Nov 2003

POP, IMAP, and SSL

Category : Technology/popIMAPssl.txt

I realise, from the mail that I'm getting, that there are people out there monitoring the progress of all these experimentation (on Panther).

So here's an update. I've got both POP and IMAP working and they also work over SSL. We just tried this out and it's so fun. The word that comes to mind is - magical.

On Mail.app, we can now give users a have a choice of going to the server via POP or IMAP. So you can explain the pros and cons of doing either and let them decide. Then, if they are wary about people snooping over their passwords or the content of their messages, they can turn on SSL.

If you're using a self-signed certificate, you'll get a message on Mail.app warning that the cert is not verified by a known root certification authority. But that's OK - it'll still do its job of encrypting the two-way communication. But this warning will appear each time you restart Mail.app and it starts accessing the server. So, you may decide to turn off SSL mode and go back to normal unencrypted mode until you really feel you need it. The key word is Choice.

But, of course, if you want, you can always buy a real cert from places like Verisign and it'll all work very well.

So, it's on to SMTP-AUTH. If that works, everything will be just splendid.

Posted at 3:32AM UTC | permalink

Sun 09 Nov 2003

Qpopper

Category : Technology/qpopper.txt

I was determined not to use qpopper. I think I did it. I went back to trying UW-IMAP which has a Panther-friendly release. It's the power of adversity, really. Now I've got POP and IMAP, instead of just POP. I'll let it run for a day or two and then I'll take out qpopper from Postfix Enabler. It's much ado about nothing really. But it's no fun having a "License Breached" headline screaming out over your product, even though that doesn't seem to be the case, here.

It's nice and quiet now. My kid's sick but I'm enjoying this book I found yesterday about life in old Shanghai. I don't think we'll get back on versiontracker. It's too quarrelsome. I've taken out the 10 bucks price that some people had trouble with. We've just made it donation-ware. Guess what? We're now getting more than ten bucks. We should have done it all along. If you're looking for Mac software, try MacShareware.net. It looks a saner place, there.

Posted at 11:51AM UTC | permalink

QPopper License Agreement

Category : Commentary/free.txt

I've been told that I may be in breach of the qpopper license agreement. I've read it.

It says, "If a party agrees to these terms and conditions, such party may copy and use Qpopper for any purpose, and distribute unmodified complete copies of Qpopper to any third party provided that such third party must agree to these terms and conditions prior to any use of Qpopper."

I haven't modified any part of the qpopper source. In the spirit of the letter, I feel that this does not preclude anyone from bundling an unmodifed binary into their product, shareware or otherwise.

If there is any breach, I think it would be in not knowing where and how to place the reqiured notices. I'll try to improve on this. But if anyone has any input, I would be willing to work on it.

In any case, I've taken Postfix Enabler off versiontracker. It's too much bother. I'm surprised that anybody would take issue with pricing it at 10 bucks. Only 0.3 % of the people who used Sendmail Enabler ever paid. That's about the kind of return Postfix Enabler is following. That's human nature. It's a fully functional working version whether you pay or not. So the overwhelming majority of people just don't pay.

But I felt that it was better to say upfront that it's shareware. You're paying for the convenience and the design and the idea, not (my goodness) Postfix or sendmail. It's better to say it's shareware, rather than free and then ask for people to send over gifts. Nothing is ever free. Somebody pays something at the end, even if it's not the direct beneficiary. But if this is so contentious, I've left it for people to decide what it's worth.

But over and above all these hot air, people have been remarkably nice and encouraging on the whole. Look, Mac users, don't keep fighting each other if you want the platform to grow. Don't look at the immediate needs. Look at the bigger picture.

Posted at 5:43AM UTC | permalink

Version Tracker

Category : Commentary/vt.txt

It's always a harrowing experience releasing stuff on Version Tracker. It's like standing for an election. Some people will love you, but you can always count on some haranguing from the crowd.

I think a lot of the people who contribute opinions miss the point. This wasn't done for them. This was done for the people who want stuff done the Mac way. The value is in the design.

Postfix Enabler arose out of Sendmail Enabler, which arose out of a tutorial I wrote outlining the steps needed to set up a fully-functioning mail server. I took the steps further and wrote a Unix shell script, and then a whole Mac-way interface because I can see why fiddling with the command line won't work for the majority of end users.

But you need to see further. Postfix Enabler is designed as a vehicle to send over even more capabilities to an average user.

For example, Apple's stock Postfix binaries don't support SMTP-AUTH. Why is SMTP-AUTH good? For one thing, it'll give the server the capability to authenticate an in-coming connection before agreeing to relay the mail out, even though the in-coming connection is outside the local network and would otherwise be blocked from relaying.

Now why do we need this when we can send mail out our PowerBooks anyway, bypassing any central server? This is because we need to see a bigger picture.

If our objective is to see more Macs used in businesses, we need to prepare for the objections. The roving SMTP solution, while fine for the Mac crowd, cuts no ice with the IT Manager mind set. If fact, it's even more proof of the madness and naivety of Mac users, calling into mind the associations with free love and flower power.

Just one word - SECURITY - to the ear of the business owner, and it will cut the Mac initiative at the knee.

XServe, I hear you say. But if you're fighting the Mac-PC war, the last thing you want is to start the fight, openly, at the server-end. The IS mindset knows that losing the server is the beginning of the end. They've used this tactic often enough to hobble the Mac and then get rid of it.

I believe running a full-fletched Internet server on a low-end, throw away machine, like the old iMacs, is the new Trojan horse. It costs next to nothing, which makes it appealing for small businesses. And you make so simple, even a business owner can hit one button and have it running. And it's a first-class server, equal to anything the IT manager can set up on a PC. Just see the PC guy set up SMTP-AUTH, or IMAP, or everything over SSL.

Actually, all these goodies are just a couple of steps of experimentation away. I think Panther has a better foundation to make all these work, as compared to Jaguar. Now how do you deliver the capability? Writing the steps, and asking people to edit config files using tools like pico - it doesn't scale.

Postfix Enabler has been constructed as a delivery vehicle, so that we can replace only the Apple binaries that we need and put them them back again when we don't. And it will orchestrate the whole series of configurations. Plus, give out visual cues about which services are on and which are not.

Actually I don't think it's worth doing this just to sell it for 10 bucks. But it'll be worth real money for us in terms of competitive advantage. I think we'll still press on.

Posted at 3:36AM UTC | permalink

Thu 06 Nov 2003

Favourite Panther Killer Feature

Category : Technology/pantherFax.txt

Built-in Fax. That's my favourite. Do you know you can hook one Mac running Panther to a phone line and share the Fax modem you've turned on there with other Macs on the network?

Now, everybody on our network can fax stuff out their Mac, without needing to mess around with the phone line.

I remember how much pain our client had with their PC solution for group fax. That was an unholy mess. Apple's solution is even better than Page Sender. Definitely more elegant. But, of course, Apple's engineers have the advantage of controlling the whole widget.

On Panther, scanners can also be shared. We'll set this up next when we have the time. It'll really form the basis of a very productive workflow for an office environment. Isn't this The Ultimate Business Machine, or what?

Posted at 4:56PM UTC | permalink