IT departments and Macs

Personally, I'm sick and tired of the constant security problems that computer worms and viruses cause. Well, yeah, who isn't? What I mean is I'm sick and tired of the fact that MS seems to leave so many security holes open for hackers to exploit. Because of this, I'm inclined to write the following.

It's obvious from the things i've written or links on this page that I use Macintosh computers, at work and at home. I'm a molecular biologist/microbiologist, and besides regular use of common software of science and business (MS Office, web browsers), much of the specialized software I use for molecular biology is either available only for the Mac or runs better on the Mac. (OK, this has change some over the past few years, but it's my argument and I'm sticking to it.) Seriously, it's been easier to run my lab with the Mac platform...I and members of my group can more easily troubleshoot problems, there are fewer problems to troubleshoot, and the actual computers have a much longer time of life (making them much easier to afford in a lab environment where every dollar counts). I think Mac OS X (and in particular the latest Jaguar 10.2.x) is an absolutely stellar OS, and for me has been a rock solid and extensible OS. I can run software written for Mac OS X, I can still run older Mac software under OS 9 (Classic), I can run programs written for UNIX with GUIs under X-Windows, and I can compile and run programs with command line interfaces. More importantly, it's secure!! Besides the several computers I use daily (PowerMac G4 dual 450 Mhz, a 1 Ghz Powerbook, and a 1 Ghz flat screen iMac (the latter two both recently upgraded from their G3 400 Mhz counterparts), I also administer a 1 Ghz G4 XServe server (running naturally Mac OS X Server) at work. This computer runs a forums web site, as well as serves many Filemaker Pro databases for two groups, and is a file server for about 20 users.

So why am I writing this?

Mostly because of an interesting take on corporate IT groups recently published by Robert X. Cringely under the title "May the Source Be With You: IT Productivity Doesn't Have to Be an Oxymoron, but Outsourcing Isn't the Way to Achieve It". The topic was also touched on by John Gruber on his Daring Fireball blog. The part from Cringley's column that strikes a chord is where he discusses the Mac and wonders why IT doesn't employ it more instead of Linux if an alternative to MS products is desired. First he uses the argument that many IT departments deploy MS servers and clients because that's what they know, yet still fail at keeping those servers and clients secure. The true "geek" IT members migrate to Linux--it's cheaper, fast, and extensible. Yet it takes the same number of IT staff to keep them deployed (the geek factor?). Why not instead set up Mac XServes. They're relatively cheap, powerful, fast, and reliable. All important services (web, file sharing for all platforms, print serving, DNS, DHCP server, etc) can be set up through easy to configure GUI interfaces (the geeks can still use the command line). They are easy to configure and once set up just run. So why doesn't the generic IT use them more? Simple--it can threaten people's jobs. An entire network, support for hundreds to to thousands of users, will literally take fewer support staff than similarly configured network/servers running other OSs.

I've become convinced that this is the "culture" that is pervasive at my own institute. I've been staying out of it lately but we've had some major IT decisions made recently that to me don't make much sense from a financial or intellectual sense. Instead it's "standards" and "requirements" and what headquarters "wants". "We're going to run MS products and why would you want to use a Mac?" What I don't see is someone taking a stand and saying, "you know there is a better, cheaper, and more productive way." I'm fed up enough with this last worm dustup (and watching our IT scramble to install the patches on all the windows machines--a patch availabe for over a month), that I'm going to start making some noise. I've just got to figure a way to not make it sound like the old Mac evangelism. That doesn't seem to work with them.

Today's health report

The seizures pretty much continue as they have been. Last Thursday I started a medication called lamotrigine, which is an anti-seizure (and anti-depressant) medication. Can't tell if anything is happening with it. I think I'm having a few headaches from it, and sometimes the seizures seem to be not as intense. But the frequency stays the same, 4-6 per day. This Friday I have another MRI scheduled, this time with a galladium dye injected first. This is supposed to give better contrast to blood vessels on the scan. Can't wait.

Tonight I had planned to talk about an article I read in Scientific American regarding the lack of public access to on-line science journals--but I'll save that for another time. Instead, I decided to post something I've been entering in a private blog--mostly because I've been able (or better, had to) avail myself of some pretty amazing medical diagnostic technology due to an usual problem I've been experiencing.

Sunday, Aug. 17
I started experiencing periodic episodes of numbness combined with a weakness and muscle spasm in my right arm this week. It's a hard feeling to describe but it stops me in my tracks until it passes. A few times it was so severe that I couldn't even move my arm--it felt paralyzed for a few seconds. Finally it alarmed my wife (and me) enough to go to my doc about it. X-rays (looking for some skeletal abnormality in my neck that might pinch a nerve) were inconclusive. However, there's enough worry that I have to get a CT scan tomorrow--and we are supposed to leave on our vacation to Chelan. It's going to turn out to be nothing (I hope) and we can get out of here for a week's relaxation with my family. I've had fewer "spells" today so I'm hopeful I just inflamed or pinched a nerve. Maybe I shouldn't be typing!

Monday, Aug. 18
A somewhat disappointing day. We are unable to go on our planned vacation because I need more tests. The CT scan I had today was inconclusive as to the cause of these muscle "siezures" in my arm. The initial read by the radiologist had him suggesting I had had a mild stroke-like event in the left capsular lobe of my brain. I then had a followup appointment with a neurologist who showed us the CT scan and and told us he was not convinced that the spot pointed to by the radiologist was anything. However, he insisted we postpone our trip and tomorrow I go in for an EEG (electroencephalogram) and an MRI (magnetic resonance imaging) on my head. He is thinking these may be a type of seizure. While writing this I had another one, only my third of the day, but it seemed a little more intense than the ones I've been having the last couple of days and this time I felt it on my side below my arm. Time to put away the laptop and get some rest.

Tueday, Aug. 19
Tonight I was finally able to talk with my neurologist (never thought I'd have one of my own) about the results of the EEG and MRI tests I had today. The EEG is the test where you have 20 electrodes stuck to your scalp (the tech was appreciative of the fact that I had thinned my hair for the test); 8 on each side, 3 down the middle and a ground. In all things electrical, the ground is always important! The EEG results were normal (I have brain waves!!), with no evidence of stroke or major seizure disorders. The CT scan from Monday (which is like entering a small Stargate on "Stargate") and the MRI today do not reveal anything major, no tumors, no evidence of stroke, etc. However the MRI did appear to show that I have what's called a "venous angioma" on the left side of my brain, which is a disordered clump of veins that drain the blood supply there. It's possible I've always had this but just now focal seizures have started because of it, possibly because of some scar tissue there (and my seizures just happen to be localize to my right arm, which is better than headaches, blurred vision, etc). Evidently venous angiomas are fairly common, and in general do not represent an increased risk of bleeding, aneurysms, etc., nor is surgery indicated. The radiologist and neurologist want to schedule another MRI, this time with a dye to get better contrast in those blood vessels. MRIs of your head are not that much fun--there's a reason why they ask you if you're at all claustrophobic or jackhammerophobic. But in the meantime, I meet with my neurologist (I'm sounding a bit possessive about him aren't I?) on Thursday to discuss some possible mild antiseizure medications.

In the meantime the incidence of these "spells" or focal seizures has decreased from ~6 a day for three days down to 2 yesterday and today. While the diagnosis of the cause appears to be somewhat benign, with a fairly good prognosis, overall the episode does make one think about the other possibilities. I was a bit thrown today when the EEG specialist asked me if I was related to someone he had seen 12 years earlier with the same last name. When I replied the person was my uncle, he stopped and said he remembered him well and the fact that my uncle had died of an aggressive glioblastoma (very malignant brain tumor). He quickly went on to say that my test results so far did not indicate any tumor of any kind but it was something one can't help but think about. Just a year ago a neighbor friend of ours died of the same thing, less than 6 months after the initial diagnosis. Our mortality becomes more and more real as we get older, that's for sure.

Where has IT been?

Is the MSBlast worm slowing down? CNet reports it is but that it may not be done [CNET News.com]. I can understand home users not necessarily keeping up to date on all the patches their systems might need to prevent problems like this. But I was floored by the fact that it wasn't until Friday that my parent organization (at the national as well as local level) didn't act to ensure all Windows computers were patched until late Friday (Aug. 15). When I checked work voice and email Saturday morning, there was a flood of messages regarding this--basically all machines had to be pulled from the network until the patches were applied. Come on! This patch was available for over a month. Where has the NOT GOOD ENOUGH FOR GOVERNMENT IT team been?

Oh, and how did MS protect itself from the SYN flood scheduled for Saturday by the worm? They pulled the server (windowsupdate.com) off the network! Now that's a patch.

Pods Unite

This has been out for awhile, but there's a great television commercial out that I wanted to mention here. Volkswagen and Apple have announced a joint product pairing with the VW Beetle and the Apple iPod. I love our Passat, but this would be a fun combo.

I just finished reading a series of BusinessWeek articles that discusses Apple and their changng business strategy towards becoming more of a consumer electronics and services company. The articles talk about the success of the iPod, iTunes and the iTunes on-line music store, Apple's ability to innovate, the XServe server, and so on. All in all, fairly positive, with few really glaring mistakes. The one semi-whopper that stands out was the statement (in "Picking Apple as a Server Solution") that the XServe would suffer in competition with Linux because it uses proprietary software. Gee, it seems pretty open to me--the XServe/Mac OS X Server 10.2.x I run at work (Apache/MySql/PHP, file sharing services, etc) is certainly based on the open source model with GUI OS X interfaces slapped on top.

W32/Blaster update

I paid a bit more attention to various news articles about the W32/Blaster worm. It turns out that besides trying to infect other computers in the local network, it also initiates a CP SYN flood denial-of-service attack against windowsupdate.com. Like I referenced earlier, although I may be using a computer/OS that only has a small share of the market, I can get my work done while remaining fairly confident that computer and internet security are taken seriously.

The Apple site has a wonderful tribute to the late Gregory Hines today. It probably won't stay up for long but it features Hines tap dancing in a white tux, black background, with a small Apple logo and the slogan "Think Different" in the upper right hand corner.

LooooveSan!

This is funny but not funny. As I sit here doing a little work, on the local TV news comes a story about local businesses who's computers cannot boot because of this new LovSan or Blaster worm that exploits weaknesses in the RPC (remote procedure call) service in Windows NT, 2000, and XP. I didn't follow it completely but evidently the worm is somehow preventing many people from even booting their computers that they need to do to download the patch. CNET has a complete story here.

I'm not trying to be smug, but it is nice to sit here working on my TiBook, and simply reflect on these problems without having to scramble to download all those patches!!

new iMac

We sort of bit the bullet today and purchased a new 17 in flat screen iMac. The old iMac was getting a bit slow, particularly with the digital video and in its ability to display large collections of digital still photos. We put an Airport card in the old one and put it up in S's room, with the new one down in the office. Sweet computer. Even the little HK round speakers sound great for their size. More later.

For kicks I've added a couple of things to the molecular biology forums site that make it more fun. First was a couple of different ways to get an RSS feed from the site that allows newsreaders (like NetNewsWire for Mac OS X). Check out the molbio forums RSS info at this link

The second was a way to create a portable list of recent posts from the same forums. This used a PHP add-on from the phpbb forums web site called Topics Anywhere. It generates a javascript that calls the info from the server forum database using PHP scripting commands. It's what I'm using in the right hand menu of this blog.

Gotta like this. Comcast is testing 3 Mbps service in various parts of the country, as "the cable giant plans to expand consumer trials for a high-speed Internet service, the latest step in the Comcast's effort to double the speed of its standard cable-modem product" [CNET News.com]. Tonight I got 1.6 Mbps, not bad and better than what we were getting for awhile with attbi. Of course, I think the neighbor kid who's really into p2p music downloading is on vacation!

Just when I start to try to get my head around all the various blogging tools and the use of RSS, there's this report about a coming fight about the RSS specs. Evidently, a power struggle over RSS technology has developed, which "pits blog pioneer Dave Winer against opponents at IBM, Google and others clamoring for a different format" [CNET News.com].

I'm still working on understanding the simple parts of blogging and RSS. For example, I'd love to be able to include a list of my favorite news sites in the right side column, and have the current top 3-5 stories on those sites automatically listed every time this page is opened. More importantly (depending on whether I ever develop this particular blog into something interesting for others and not just myself), I'd like to syndicate this particular blog. This is not something that's available with the free version of Blogger that I'm using. Moveable Type looks like a great blogging tool, but the requirements are such that I'm not in the position to use it. I did read last week that the group who puts this out is starting a blogging hosting service, called TypePad, ranging in price from $4.95 to $14.95 per month. I'll keep an eye on this.

ARS Technica has a pretty decent article on the state of the Mac, Mac OS X, and the upcoming Panther release (OS X 10.3). It's the initial column of Mac.Ars, written by Eric Bangeman. It's a balanced, well thought out article on Apple's software and hardware directions, third party software developers for the Mac, and the future for Panther Server.

In a CNet report today, federal government says there is new evidence that an attack is being planned on computers using Microsoft's Windows. [CNET News.com]. Yep, it's another in a long series of vulnerabilities in Windows. It was handled on our network by blocking TCP and UDP ports 135, 139, and 445 for all inbound connections at the firewall. Easier I guess than trying to patch all the desktop machines. At least this time we weren't completely shut down--the last time something like this happened, there was this very knee-jerk reaction. It didn't matter that almost half the computers on our network are Macs.

Sequencing quest....

To follow up on our quest to settle once and for all our choice for contractor for our genome sequencing project, today we found out that it's official that our first choice is getting out of the sequencing business but staying in the bioinformatics business. This means we either allow the company to subcontract out our sequencing or we split the job as I alluded to in a previous post. I'd like to keep it close at hand, but I want to be fair with my collaborator. Of course, with the internet, neither of us is more than a few seconds away from the data.