Schneier on Security

Macs are used extensively in the sciences. Not just for writing research papers and creating presentation graphics but also for instrument control, data acquisition and analysis, and scientific simulation. There are many scientific applications available on the Macintosh – commercial, free and custom-built – and scientists all over the world are taking advantage of them.

The Mac is also commonly used in the sciences as a front end to high-end workstations. Data collected and numbers crunched on workstations are often brought over to the Mac for final manipulation and presentation…

A computer platform is only as good as the software developed to run on it. To create good software, programmers need flexible development tools that take advantage of evolving hardware and operating systems.

Apple’s interests lie in keeping development tools current so programmers will continue to develop for its Mac, Newton and PowerPC platforms. It has often received criticism from developers for delays and outdated tools.

Mac tools are keeping pace with those on other platforms with help from companies, such as Symantec Corp., that are releasing new languages, environments and class libraries for in-house developers…

Automatic disk compression programs promise to effectively transparently double the storage space on your hard drive. Although most can live up to this claim, several factors, including performance and reliability problems, have sullied the images of these products.

Given the prevalence of cheap disk drives, some doubt the wisdom of using these products at all. Many users report no problems, however, and have come to rely on automatic disk compression to squeeze every last byte out of their storage devices.

There are two types of background compression products: file-level and driver-level. File-level compression programs compress files during idle periods and uncompress previously compressed files as they are read from disk. Driver-level compression programs replace or supplement a drive’s SCSI controller and automatically compress all files as they are written and uncompress them as they are read…

Any user who has suffered a disk failure can attest to the importance of regular backups. No matter how vigilant a backup program you implement, however, a disk crash between backups can still destroy valuable data.

“You stress backups, but in most cases people don’t do them,” said Mark Goldenberg, senior development engineer at Hughes Aircraft Co. of Fullerton, Calif. “Or the file they destroyed or deleted is one they created that day.” In situations such as this, emergency disk recovery tools can prove invaluable.

Several Macintosh utility bundles include tools that can resurrect lost data and take measures to keep catastrophic crashes at bay. Symantec Corp.’s Norton Utilities for Macintosh, Central Point Software Inc.’s MacTools Deluxe, Fifth Generation Systems Inc.’s Public Utilities and Datawatch Corp.’s 911 Utilities (sold in a package called SuperSet Utilities) all include tools to diagnose and repair crashed hard drives, recover deleted files, and optimize drive performance. The differences among the optimization and recovery tools in these packages are subtle, and each contains other utilities, so choosing among them can often be a matter of personal taste…

For many years, the only way for distant computers to communicate over the public telephone system was via a voice-quality link, either a dialup line or a point-to-point leased line. Big companies needed better connections, and several data communications standards, such as X.25, were developed to provide them on these lines. As networks expanded and applications required speedier transmission rates, time-division multiplexing (TDM) technologies stepped in to provide cheaper and faster data transfers on large-bandwidth circuits, often making it cheaper to lease a dedicated T1 line than to run several low-speed lines…

Originally a nonvolatile storage standard, PCMCIA has grown to be a much more versatile interface. With its small size and low power draw, it has gotten a lot of attention from computer developers looking to reduce both bulk and power on their portable products.

Apple is evaluating PCMCIA for its PowerBook line, and Newton will ship with a PCMCIA slot; the slot also will support an Apple-proprietary 32-bit bus called TrimBus. Using PCMCIA, users can plug in cards containing everything from interactive maps to network connectors.

A PCMCIA card is a removable device about the size of a credit card (2.126 by 3.37 inches). It has a 68-pin interface along the short edge that works with eight- and 16-bit computer buses and supports physical access of up to 64 Mbytes of memory. (Apple’s 32-bit TrimBus can address up to 256 Mbytes on a single card.)…

While many types of removable media are good for long-term storage, they are often too bulky and expensive for compact devices such as printers, palm-size computers and network hardware.

That’s why a growing number of vendors are swinging over to flash memory, also known as flash ROM, a form of nonvolatile memory that blends the rewrite flexibility of dynamic RAM with the permanence of ROM.

Though not a silver-bullet solution for all memory requirements, flash memory currently works well for storing a few megabytes of printer fonts, software or configuration data and has the potential to store much more…