Posted on 08/17/2009 9:15:12 AM PDT by ozaukeemom
Sorry for the vanity, but I think this is the one place I can find some reasonable opinions on the pros and cons of Mac versus PC.
When people are dealing with (today) a lot of music files that they have purchased, home video files from digital video recorders, and/or picture files from digital cameras, you’re talking about a lot of data and it’s very sensitive data. It can accumulate *really fast*, too...
So, *long term backup* — or your permanent *archive* — should be a real consideration, not just keeping them on your computer and some “backup” like Time Machine. I think, these days, *bare hard drives* are the best backup system that you can have, for the cost and effectiveness of the whole thing.
I spotted this article from a discussion having to do with storage and backup methodologies...
Re: Backup strategy for your SAN ?
by Eric Hansen on Jul 9, 2009 at 5:26:17 pm
Neil wrote: “With LTOs, my observation is they’re not like hard drives. You need to have the software that wrote it, just to read them. So, a Bru backup, needs Bru to restore. Retrospect needs retrospect and so on. Windows Backup (its a software built in to Windows) seems to be common across Windows systems.”
you can look back through my post history in the various COW forums and see that i have talked a lot about SDLT and LTO based archive (not backup) systems. i personally don’t believe in backing up a RAID-5 array such as Xsan. that’s why its RAID-5. have a few spare drives around to hot-swap if a drive fails. i’ve never lost media on a RAID-5 because someone was always around to hot-swap when needed. be sure to show your staff how to do this procedure.
at a former facility, we used the SDLT-600a, an ethernet-based SDLT drive. it was slow, but it worked great for archiving projects and was accessible to all computers on the office network. it used FTP and all the employees knew how to use FTP. i had researched LTO options using BRU and Retrospect with an attached LTO4 drive, but what stopped me from getting it is that it wasnt as easy as FTP (everyone needs to know how to use this system and there were definitely a few people that would never be able to learn a Retrospect or BRU-based system), and it was only available on one computer. another thing that became a huge concern was whenever the SDLT drive went down, we would lose access to our entire archive. the few times the drive broke were very critical. i would only recommend a tape-based system if you can afford 2 decks to minimize downtime. that former facility ended up getting an LTO4 system for archiving their RED footage and its been working great for them. but i know that my counterpart over there is the only one that knows the system, and personally that would drive me mad. my goal has always been to make it as easy as possible for an editor to access old footage when needed as quickly and easily as possible.
i now recommend to my clients a bare hard drive based system, where you archive your projects to 3 different drives - 2 in-house and 1 out of house that you rotate on a regular basis. a tape library should be done in the same way. hard drives are extremely cheap and getting cheaper at a faster rate than tape. then get a hard drive bay like Bob suggested above. i have been using eSATA “toasters” at a few facilities and they have been awesome. you load 2 hard drives in the top like a toaster, copy what you need, and eject.
regarding the “30 year shelf life” that Bob pointed out, i’m sure its true. but you need to keep those old decks around. tape companies advance their technology by creating new tape systems. when hard drives advance, they usually keep the same interface. look at the last 20 years and compare the different tape formats against the different hard drive interfaces. its definitely easier to hook up an old hard drive than an old tape. but you have to remember that hard drives don’t have the shelf life, so i recommend to my clients that they test their drives every 6 months and replace them when needed. thats why there are 3.
i’ve been talking about archive and not backup. for backup, i recommend that you have daily backups for your computer’s boot drive, which in many cases contains all your current projects. i would go with a cloning system like Carbon Copy Cloner (Mac) because you can get back running right away. in my experience, i have never needed an incremental backup system because no one every says to me “hey, i need a file i accidentally deleted 3 weeks ago.” its always been “crap, my hard drive died and i have to print this tape today and make FedEx.”
as for the SAN, since its RAID-5, i wouldnt worry about backing it up regularly. its more important to create a workflow for dealing with your media before loading to the SAN, and archiving after the edit is done.
e
Eric Hansen, The Audio Visual Plumber - http://www.avplumber.com/
Note these particular paragraphs...
i now recommend to my clients a bare hard drive based system, where you archive your projects to 3 different drives - 2 in-house and 1 out of house that you rotate on a regular basis. a tape library should be done in the same way. hard drives are extremely cheap and getting cheaper at a faster rate than tape. then get a hard drive bay like Bob suggested above.
[ ... ]
regarding the “30 year shelf life” that Bob pointed out, i’m sure its true. but you need to keep those old decks around. tape companies advance their technology by creating new tape systems. when hard drives advance, they usually keep the same interface. look at the last 20 years and compare the different tape formats against the different hard drive interfaces. its definitely easier to hook up an old hard drive than an old tape. but you have to remember that hard drives don’t have the shelf life, so i recommend to my clients that they test their drives every 6 months and replace them when needed. thats why there are 3.
[ ... ]
i’ve been talking about archive and not backup. for backup, i recommend that you have daily backups for your computer’s boot drive, which in many cases contains all your current projects. i would go with a cloning system like Carbon Copy Cloner (Mac) because you can get back running right away. in my experience, i have never needed an incremental backup system because no one every says to me “hey, i need a file i accidentally deleted 3 weeks ago.” its always been “crap, my hard drive died and i have to print this tape today and make FedEx.”
—
Of course, I’ve already mentioned the “SuperDuper” [Macintosh] program for super-ease-of-use for doing the job of what he refers to here... “Carbon Copy Cloner” (you could use that, too... but I prefer SuperDuper).
:-)
They’re very cute...
The reason it seems there is a 3X difference is because you’re comparing a bargain shovel bought on sale at Wally World to a Caterpillar earthmover. There are significant differences in central processors, disk speeds, I/O hardware, displays and graphics processors between an inexpensive PC and any Mac. You would be wasting your money buying a cheap PC for animation work or photographic manipulation. They’re fine for web browsing and emails and word-processing, but you’d be straitjacketing your son’s productivity in his field.
I really have no dog in the fight. I use Windows XP, Windows 7, Linux and Mac daily. I’m on XP right now. Sitting across from me is my Sun workstation, running Sun’s flavor of Unix. So I’m reasonably objective and non-partisan about these things, although I usually end up on these threads advocating the Mac because of:
o Performance. Macs tend to be better than Windows at multitasking and really heavy-duty processing like animation and image manipulation.
o Stability. OS X is simply less crashy than any version of Windows I’ve used. And I use it hard, usually running at least one virtual machine and several apps at once. And Macs don’t come festooned with crapware and trialware and crashware.
o Quality. Even the cheapest models (such as the $600 Mac Mini desktop model) are beautifully designed and assembled, using premium components, connectors, etc. The inexpensive PCs you mention tend to be bendy and squeaky, use low-end processors and graphics chips and slow disk drives, etc.
o Security. Macs don’t need antivirus, firewalls, anti-malware or other utilities, which is a significant hidden cost. They just work. They even have a fantastic automatic-backup utility built-in as standard... the sort of thing you’d spend $100 or more on for Windows, and it still wouldn’t be as good.
o Low maintenance. Macs don’t need to have their disk defragged like all versions of Windows (including the upcoming Win7, I’m sad to say), and their OS doesn’t tend to get corrupted over time like Windows XP. The machine I’m typing on right now is about to suffer its third Windows wipe-and-reinstall in two years due to heaven only knows what. Gad that frosts me— all programs need to be reinstalled afterwards, too. It’s going to cost me a full day. And, it’s typical of our household experience with Windows. My wife’s XP laptop, for example, seems to get infected when she just connects to her school network, despite all my precautions. I have to spend hours each month disinfecting that thing. And, it’s falling apart after three years, whereas the Mac laptops my sons have been using for five or six years still look and run like new.
o Support. No one ever mentions the Apple Stores and their wonderful Genius bars, but they’re a real reason for preference in my book. As one who has spent countless hours on hold with “support desks” in central Bangalore waiting to be connected to an incomprehensible troll who can only read from a script, it is just incredibly refreshing to make an appointment online at the Genius Bar, then walk up and have a crisp, effective discussion with a trained, English-speaking technician who knows what they’re talking about.
Given what you’re probably paying for your son’s college education, don’t toss money away thinking you’re economizing on the computer. You will regret it. But not as much as your son will.
One bit of advice: for most products, extended warranties are a waste of money. But if you buy a Lenovo or Apple computer, the three-year extended warranty is quite a good buy. Recommended. Also, if you can, make your purchase on a credit card with a loss protection feature, in case your son’s laptop gets ripped off the first few weeks of college. It happens.
Dittos on Flip4Mac. Works great. And I like the price! It’s from Microsoft, too, believe it or not. http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windowsmedia/player/wmcomponents.mspx
There was an excellent discussion on the photography forum regarding that. Triple backup is recommended, one off site in case of fire or other calamity. But they all kind of put their own twist on the exact methodology.
For now, I have the one extra hard drive, the Passports (most critical files are on two of them) and bought some very high quality dvd's (which I haven't gotten around to yet). You have to split up a lot of your files to fit on those. The Passport life span and reliability over time are rather iffy but fine in the short run. I think there are other better brands of external devices like Passports now in terms of reliability even in the short run but these were cost effective for me at the time.
Now 50 years, my stuff nobody is going to care, but I do worry about all the valuable genealogy information I put together, should have one hard copy of all that. Hard copies of my photos is not an option really, just a few albums of my best ones, will fade over time.
So your post, while complex, is timely, and I'll consider that. Glad I didn't jump right on the Time Machine, may end up with it, may not, usually take my time when I'm not sure which often pays off rather than jumping right onto something just because that's what other people are doing.
There are online storage "tanks" as well, but those can go out of business over time and subject to events out of our control. Some businesses use them, but it's not very practical for home users.
Also we need to think how much of our music and some of the photos will really matter over time and cull some of those down to the best ones.
Thank you for all that great info. I saved it so I can read it and try to comprehend it all thoroughly.
You said — “Dittos on Flip4Mac. Works great. And I like the price! It’s from Microsoft, too, believe it or not.”
—
Actually — no — it’s from Telestream. Microsoft stopped supporting Macintosh with their own media player, so another company came in there and supported it — instead.
Telestream
Flip4Mac® WMV Components for QuickTime™
http://www.telestream.net/flip4mac-wmv/overview.htm
I believe it was Microsoft’s reaction against Apple for Apple’s continued development of QuickTime, which Microsoft tried to *kill* many times in the past, because it’s much better than what Microsoft has to offer. And so, this is sort of Microsoft’s hit back at Apple... LOL...
Microsoft Stops Developing Windows Media Player For The Mac
By Antone Gonsalves, ChannelWeb
3:26 PM EST Thu. Jan. 12, 2006
Microsoft (NSDQ:MSFT) Corp. has stopped developing Windows Media Player for Apple (NSDQ:AAPL) Computer Inc.’s Mac OS X, choosing instead to direct people to a third party that offers components for playing Windows Media files in Apple’s QuickTime player.
Media encoding specialist Telestream said in a statement released this week that Microsoft had agreed to distribute Windows Media components for QuickTime through the Nevada City, Calif., company’s Flip4Mac technology. Flip4Mac enables Mac OS X users to play Windows Media video and audio directly within QuickTime.
Instead of providing a player, Microsoft, based in Redmond, Wash., directs Web site visitors to a page where they can download a free version of Flip4Mac. While not providing Windows Media Player 10 for the Mac, Microsoft still offers version 9 for Mac OS X and version 7.1 for the older Mac.
Microsoft officials were unavailable for comment, but Joe Wilcox, analyst for JupiterResearch, said the company decided to stop development in order to redirect resources to other areas. In addition, Microsoft claimed it didn’t have access to enough of Apple’s operating system to provide all the capabilities and copyright protection in Windows Media Player that the company wanted.
“I think it’s too bad in a way,” Wilcox said. “I would have liked to see a new Windows Media version for the Mac, and have Microsoft take the media battle to Apple’s home court.”
Both companies sell operating systems for portable media players, as well as computers. Currently, however, Apple has a strong lead with the iPod, which commands about three fourths of the market. To date, Microsoft’s hardware manufacturing partners have been out-marketed by Apple, analysts say.
In addition, both companies are fighting for a prominent position in people’s living rooms by offering their operating systems as an entertainment hub capable of distributing video, audio and photos to consumer electronic devices attached to a home network.
In announcing the deal with Telestream, Microsoft indicated there was still a demand for playing Windows Media files on the Mac.
“Consumers and content professionals are demanding great ways to view Windows Media content on the Macintosh using the platform and tools they know,” Kevin Unangst, director of the Windows Digital Media Division at Microsoft, said in a statement. “The Windows Media Components for QuickTime, powered by Telestream’s Flip4Mac technology, provide this important capability and live up to Telestream’s reputation for outstanding media solutions.”
A Telestream spokeswoman, however, confirmed on Thursday that Flip4Mac was unstable with the latest QuickTime, version 7.0.4, causing the player to crash when closing Apple’s Web browser Safari. The company learned of the flaw late Tuesday or early Wednesday, and published a fix on the company’s Web site Thursday.
The joint announcement by Telestream and Microsoft came the same day the latter company said it would keep developing its Office suite for the Mac for at least five more years.
The announcement was important for enterprises that use the Mac OS X. About 21 percent of companies with 10,000 employees or more use the operating system on the desktop, and all of them use Office for the Mac, according to JupiterResearch.
http://www.crn.com/software/175804069;jsessionid=HTB5GYHPWZ3ODQE1GHOSKH4ATMY32JVN
No kudos to Microsoft... sorry....
Telestream Lets Windows Media Flow Into Mac Platform
By John P. Mello Jr.
MacNewsWorld
06/29/09 4:00 AM PT
For some Mac users, the letters “WMV” translate into “don’t even bother downloading this video from our site; it’s just not going to work.” Telestream, however, may offer those users some relief. The company offers Flip4Mac, which allows Mac mavens to import, export and play Windows media video files on their preferred platform.
It took Telestream six years after its founding in 1998 to cook up an Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) Apple Store Discount on Office 2008 for Mac - Home and Student Edition . Click here. More about Apple application, but some 15 million Mac owners are glad it did.
That first product, Flip4Mac, which allowed Mac users to import, export and play Windows media video (WMV) files on their Apple machines, not only made Nevada City, Calif.-based Telestream a shining star in Apple’s constellation, but it also marked a new area of business for the company.
Prior to the introduction of Fip4Mac, Telestream concentrated on moving media files over the Internet. It targeted media workflow for broadcasters, advertising agencies and production houses. They had to share content, and the way they were doing it was through shipping tapes to each other.
“We became pioneers of shipping high-quality content over the Internet,” Telestream CEO and Cofounder Dan Castles told MacNewsWorld.
Top-to-Bottom Market
The high-end professional market still accounts for two-thirds of Telestream’s customer base, but since it started beefing up its desktop line four years ago, its broadened its reach to the point where one-third of its customers are desktop users — users like Marshall Clow, a programmer in San Diego, Calif.
Telestream Screenflow
A common problem facing online video viewers drew Clow to Flip4Mac.
“There were a bunch of videos out there, including some of my niece, that were put out on Web pages in Windows media, and I wanted to watch them,” he told MacNewsWorld.
“I have a niece that plays basketball and some online news sites showed some of her games and interviewed her a couple of times,” he explained.
“This was an easy solution,” he added. “The only hassle was every now and then when I tried to use it, I’d get a little pop-up saying, ‘Your copy of Flip4Mac is out of date. Go here to update it.’”
Microsoft Builds Good Will
As the company’s market matured, it became apparent that there was a crying need for compatibility of Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT) More about Microsoft technologies directly on the Mac platform, according to Telestream CTO and co-founder Shawn Carnahan.
“The Mac has always been very relevant in the creative and video production space,” he told MacNewsWorld, “and at the time, there was a lot of usage of Windows media for things like digital dailies. A lot of people consuming that media were on Mac platforms, but they didn’t have good support for Windows media.”
Microsoft, too, recognized the value of Telestream’s Mac application, and in 2006, it began distributing Flip4Mac Windows Media Components for QuickTime More about QuickTime. That quickly grew the user base for the program into the millions, and to date, downloads of the application have exceeded 15 million.
Microsoft’s move appears to have kindled some good will among Apple stalwarts who ordinarily have nothing but the opposite for the folks in Redmond.
“Since Microsoft is depending on a third party product to provide Windows Media functionality to the Mac, it reduces the likelihood of Microsoft doing funky proprietary things with their file formats,” Flip4Mac user Jon Gardner, a consultant in Bryan, Texas, told MacNewsWorld.
Microsoft is “more likely to stick with ‘open’ formats, or at least published formats — which is a good thing,” he reasoned.
“Microsoft’s need for Flip4Mac also underscores the fact that QuickTime provides the better cross-platform media solution — it works the same on Mac or Windows,” he added. “As an Apple professional, I appreciate that.”
Adding Apps Through Acquisition
Telestream has expanded its Mac presence through both home-grown applications and by buying other companies.
In 2006, it bought Popwire. That firm’s technology was leveraged to create Telestream’s Episode line of applications. They permit a user to import and export a wide range of file formats and repurpose them for viewing on the Web, DVDs and on mobile and portable devices.
In 2008, it bought Vara Software. That added to the Telestream lineup three new products—Wirecast, ScreenFlow and VideoCue—which support webcasting, screencasting and rich media presentations.
“As our last two acquisitions show, the Mac community is very important to us, and we’re investing a lot of development dollars on products that address Mac-centric workflows and will continue to do so,” CEO Castles observed.
The company, he maintained, will continue to be important to Macophiles because it provides them with important tools for dealing with heterogeneous content.
“We provide all the tools to make the creative work that Mac users do reach a wider audience,” he added. “So much of the audience that they’re trying to reach is in Windows and other environments and we help bridge that gap.”
http://www.macnewsworld.com/rsstory/67409.html
Maybe my schematic wasn't clear, but if you browse my hd (I didn't want to post a screen capture of the tree structure), you would see that they all fall in chronological order and always will so long as I don't make a mistake.
It might be a little labor intensive, but I just add the new years, months and days as they occur which only takes a minute or two. I'll make sure I understand your system, basically I do, and can convert to that easily enough but a little labor intensive to make the change initially. I always retain the photo numbers assigned by the camera(s).
My first camera I could instantly tell the dates and year from the photo number. The 20D (and others in that series) just assigns IMG_xxxx.CR2 (or .jpg when I was not shooting in RAW), and builds on it numerically. In my work files, I usually but not always try to assign unique mnemonic names to my finished output so I can find them a little more easily.
So many learn the hard way after losing something important, even business people.
Thank you all for your time and energy in pointing things out I never really thought about to that extent.
Microsoft does make Flip4Mac available from its download sites... I was under the impression that MS was in negotiations to buy Flip4Mac.
You said — Microsoft does make Flip4Mac available from its download sites... I was under the impression that MS was in negotiations to buy Flip4Mac.
—
Yes, they do make it available, as I’ve seen it there, but it’s not theirs. They do it, because they were getting hammered for not having a version of their own program for Macintosh. So, they put Telestream’s program up, instead (of course, with an agreement from Telestream).
As far as Microsoft buying Flip4Mac, now that would *definitely* be bad news. All Microsoft does is *cripple* products and they sure don’t make them better. Telestream is doing a fine job now, and they don’t need Microsoft’s “cripple-ware” attitude to infect them by buying the company.
And besides that, if Microsoft did buy Telestream, eventually Microsoft would eventually be going down the same road and say that they were discontinuing Flip4Mac, too.... LOL...
But, I really haven’t read anything about Microsoft thinking or negotiating about buying Telestream, but I could have missed something... :-)
This has been amazing! I am heading to the Apple store in a bit to look at them. And, maybe get some info. But, I think the most valuable info is in this thread!
Thank you to everyone!
You can download a Mac version of Windows Media Player. That is what I did and now there are no problems running wmv files.
Well, before you go down there, you might just do some “familiarization” with the computer “lineup” that Apple has.
Laptops...
http://www.apple.com/macbook/
[average consumer model]
http://www.apple.com/macbookpro/
[best for graphics and a workhorse]
http://www.apple.com/macbookair/
[lightweight and limited]
Desktops...
http://www.apple.com/imac/
[the amazing desktop one...]
http://www.apple.com/macmini/
[the tiny one, for those who have their own monitor and keyboard]
http://www.apple.com/macpro/
[beauty and the *beast* and it’s a beast all right in computing power... :-) ...]
First of all, while there are commercial keystroke logger software apps available for OSX, they all require at least administrator access and passwords to install on a Mac. They do not install into any flash memory firmware.
To install any firmware patches to any Flash memory or writable ROMS on the computer itself would certainly require ROOT access, which is not activated on a default install Mac. The very few successful direct hacks of Macs did not achieve ROOT access, they merely got access at the level of the current user... and so far there have been no successful ROOT user access upgrade hacks.
Such hardware keyloggers would have to have their data stored and read on the physical machine... unless there were also malicious software installed on the computer to phone home over the internet to the hacker. That requires a more sophisticated attack. The only known firmware keylogger for Macs resides in the firmware of the keyboard. That one requires physical access to the computer or the keyboard to install. It is easily fixed by replacing the keyboard... or rewriting the firmware to factory specs, not replacing the computer. While the keyboard could be hacked, the code on the keyboard is not large enough or sophisticated enough to open a port to the external world through the internet and phone its data home. The hacker would have to harvest the data either through physical access of the computer, or by re-hacking into the computer to pick up the file. That's why it is not much of a risk.
I assure you if there were a hardware keystroke logger for OSX for the Mac that can install itself into the hardware itself I would have heard about it and it would be all over the blogosphere. This would be screaming headline news in the Computer punditry. The FUD spreaders would be all over it. It simply has not happened, Kirkwood.
Hardware keyloggers are USB dongles that plug into any USB port available. One installed on a Mac would be obvious and easy to remove. Some Macs have an internal USB port... but installing it would require opening the Mac, physical access. Removing it would be the same. Open the computer, remove the USB dongle. Again, not requirement to replace the computer. This sounds like urban legend stuff to me. . . and it doesn't even rise to that because urban legends would be being spread much farther than your claim.
Kirkwood said — “Mac users have no protection at all and don’t bother scanning for security threats.”
Then you said — “True. So what can I install to avoid something like that happening to me? That would be a living nightmare what happened to your wife. I do try to be careful, but it would be better if I did no finanancial transactions or logging into various accounts whatsoever online.”
—
Well.., the fact of the matter is that Macintosh Users have all the protection that they could want, but just about all Macintosh users find that they really don’t need hardly any additional, because of how secure the Macintosh is, as it comes out of the box, already.
BUT, if you do want additional security, there are ways of dealing with it, for those who are “security conscious”... :-) And, just for your information, I use every one of those I’ve listed below...
1Password
http://agilewebsolutions.com/products/1Password
Little Snitch
http://www.obdev.at/products/littlesnitch/index.html
IPNetMonitorX
http://www.sustworks.com/site/prod_ipmx_overview.html
DoorStop X Firewall
http://www.opendoor.com/DoorStop/
Intego Virus Barrier
http://www.intego.com/VirusBarrier/
MacScan
http://macscan.securemac.com/
FileVault
http://www.apple.com/macosx/what-is-macosx/security.html
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=Mac/10.4/en/mh1877.html
PGP Desktop Home
http://www.pgp.com/products/desktop_home/
About PGP (Pretty Good Privacy)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pretty_Good_Privacy
—
I’ll give you a rundown on how you might use each one and how they are useful.
“1Password” allows you to keep all your passwords and other information (i.e., bank accounts, card numbers, other confidential information, passwords, and whatever else you want to keep secure — “locked up tight” so that no one can access it. BUT, the *really convenient* aspect of this piece of software is that it allows you to create *strong passwords* for all the different websites you access (stronger than you can ever remember yourself) and will even create them for you (making them stronger still). The problem people have with strong passwords on banking sites and other confidential websites is that they can’t remember them... LOL... Well, this program remembers them for you, and you just have to basically “click” on the website, and it will enter your name and password and log on for you, without you typing in either one. So, you can create *super strong* passwords that no one is going to crack, and be assured that the information is as safe (at least) as the company who is keeping it for you (if it’s a bank, of course they’re going to keep their own information pretty secure).
“Little Snitch” will monitor all outgoing Internet connections and alert you when any program (or even any *hidden process* running in the background on the computer) wants to “go out” and contact another place on the internet — namely, send “out” information from your computer to another location elsewhere. You can set up rules and procedures for every access that whatever program you have wants to use, or just allow or disallow in “real time” as it’s happening. In any case, if someone manages to implant some hidden software that sends out information from your computer to another location on the Internet, this program will intercept if and ask if you want it to go out. If you don’t know about it (i.e., some hidden program that someone just installed), you’re gonna find out this way... :-)
“IPNetMonitor X” is a program that monitors all aspects of your Internet connection and does all kinds of other cool stuff. BUT, if you’re wondering if anything is “going out” on your Internet connection, especially when nothing is supposed to be going out (i.e., you’re not using the computer but “info” is leaving your computer and going out onto the Internet) — then IPNetMonitor will *show it to you* — that it’s happening. And it will show you the process, the port number, the connecting end (out on the Internet that is receiving it) and so on. If you want to get right down to analyzing *exactly* what data its sending, right down to each bit and byte, you can do a “dump” of the data and look at it precisely and see what is going out (if you want to go that far). At the very least, it shows you in graph form, how much data is being transmitted over your Internet connection (how much out and how much in) and it tracks it over a period of time, so you can see your upload and download figures.
“DoorStop X Firewall” is an addition to the firewall that’s already built into your Mac OS X right now. But, it’s difficult to use and confusing (on the Mac OS X itself) and isn’t necessarily as fully featured as one might want. Thus, “DoorStopX Firewall” will supplement the built-in firewall and make it real easy to shut off ports and particular programs that may operate in the background, but you don’t want them too and it will alert you to dangerous connections that you might not want to have open. You can use its other features to analyze and track connections that are being made and see whether they are legitimate or not. There is a lot of stuff going on there, that you might not know about, so it pays to know what’s going on.
“Intego Virus Barrier” is an anti-virus program. I wouldn’t use Norton on the Macintosh, so I use this one, instead. It seems to be good and full featured and capable. So, that’s all there is to say about that one... :-)
“MacScan” comes from a company that has been around for a while and it’s not necessarily the most requested type of program that Mac Users want to have, but it’s there for those who want it. They programmer (at least to me, in the past) has seemed to be a bit flaky at times, but he seems to have gotten his act together and has finally put out this program to scan for hidden spyware and keylogger programs on the Macintosh. If there is one that is not known by this software, people can submit information and he will add it to the scan. So, it operates on the principle that there are certain files that will exist with certain programs and if they are there, then that spyware has been there or is there now. So, you can get a clue as to whether someone has been trying to “spy” on you or not.
“FileVault” is the Mac OS X’s security safe for your home directory. If you activate this (and it’s built into the system), you will automatically lock up and encrypt your home directory every time you sign out, log off or shut down. If someone else steals your computer, there’s no way they’re going to find anything in your home directory, because everything is encrypted and locked up tight.
“PGP Desktop Home” is a program that started a while back from Phil Zimmerman and the U.S. government tried everything they could to prevent this encryption software from coming out..., but they failed. Zimmerman got it out, nonetheless and now it’s the “gold standard” for encryption software. It’s supposed to be so good that *no one* can crack it, no matter what. You might want to use it for your personal files (if you’re even more paranoid than what is provided up above).
Phil Zimmermann
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phil_Zimmermann
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And so..., that’s a pretty good collection of security and “paranoia software” for anyone who is concerned about security on the Macintosh... :-)
I should also mention a program that is on the Mac OS X already...
“Activity Monitor”
It will show you the processes running on the computer and show you disk accessing that is going on and several other things you can do with it, too. You should become familiar with processes that normally go on with your computer so you can spot any new process that maybe should not be there.
You might also become familiar with some of your computer’s log files that the system makes use of, too...
“Console”
That’s the utility provided by Apple to use for accessing those log files.
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