Some people disagree with me on this, but I've been saying for a long time that software in the computer gets corupted over time without our knowing it.
What kind of voodoo is this? I mean, if the user does not make abusive use of its admin rights, how could the system be corrupted by just installing and removing applications with the traditional "drag and drop" Mac method? Or you mean that the updates coming from Apple, and which require admin access to the system, can often write files in the wrong way or place, with consequences not showing up immediately under normal use but in the long term capable to mess up with another system update? Is this kind of issue you have in mind?
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
People do strange things. despite being told not to by Apple, I've found people moving files that shouldn't be moved. Re-naming others that shouldn't be re-named, etc. This will get people in trouble.
OK, this is something I understand. But please try to explain the previous point (about the system being corrupted over time without user intervention).
Apple fixed the Airport issue on my iMac. For the first time ever I do not lose the signal from my router. I unplugged the ethernet cable and Airport found and locked on the router 4 feet away and no fade out all day from Airport. Good job Apple.
My install this morning went nice and smooth and no issues. It took a hour on the satellite internet to do.
Yeah, that's EXACTLY what I'm getting. I finally thought I was being impatient so I gave it two hours and it still showed about 2% on the progress bar and stuck in "Configuring Installation."
Is there a way I can erase the original 190MB update and try to downloading it again? Perhaps the file was somehow corrupted? i've tried about 8 times now and it's always the same stall.
What gives?
Ok, as someone else noted, you need to trash what's in (actually probably can just trash the directory):
/Library/Updates/Mac OS X Update
I have a new data point, I updated my MacBook, and that went fine. One perhaps critical difference is that on my MacBook I did not have "Download important updates automatically" checked whereas on my MacBook Pro I did. After digging around, I found the downloaded package on my MBP and saw that it was only 41MB (not 190MB). I'm betting that unbeknownst to me, it was in the process of downloading the update when I closed my MBP.
There must be a bug in the download software where it can't properly resume a download, and doesn't recognize incomplete packages.
HDD do flip bits on their own, so to speak. The oxides break down, all by themselves.
In an atmospherically sealed environment with the head actually "flying" above the platter? Magnetic storage is still proven to outlast optical in longevity for archival storage. This even comes from our supplier that archives our records in a data escrow service.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
Cosmic rays do flip bits in RAM, or on HDD (and Flash).
Cosmic rays??? You've got to be kidding! Next, you might be talking about stray neutrinos. If the cosmic rays at your location are severe enough to alter the state of magnetic or flash memory, they will certainly have corrupted the synaptic activity in your brain. Perhaps you might actually have a tinfoil hat for yourself.
Quote:
Originally Posted by melgross
In fact, a HDD put away for five years only has a 50/50 chance of being readable.
Where do you find this bullshit?
In 20+ years of trading, our office has used computers with hard drives and other magnetic storage media. In particular, we keep historical analysis data, client account information and the results of our derivatives pricing models and other research on them. We've had hot-swap drive bays in our machines for as long as I can remember. In our experience, we have often reinstalled drives after years (usually more than 5 yrs because shorter periods are live on our network) of sitting on a shelf to retrieve old pricing models with no problems whatsoever. Ever.
There is a new bug in Safari from installing OS X 10.5.6. Yahoo business email account users are no longer able to access their Yahoo business email accounts through Safari after installing the Mac OS X 10.5.6 update. Yahoo biz mail can still be accessed through Firefox and on Macs (through Safari) that have not yet been updated. Hope there is a fix soon.
What kind of voodoo is this? I mean, if the user does not make abusive use of its admin rights, how could the system be corrupted by just installing and removing applications with the traditional "drag and drop" Mac method? Or you mean that the updates coming from Apple, and which require admin access to the system, can often write files in the wrong way or place, with consequences not showing up immediately under normal use but in the long term capable to mess up with another system update? Is this kind of issue you have in mind?
OK, this is something I understand. But please try to explain the previous point (about the system being corrupted over time without user intervention).
Simple. Power interruption, computer freezing, files not being written to the disk properly. All are examples that can cause corruption.
Well, I disagree. Software does get corrupted "all by itself". HDD do flip bits on their own, so to speak. The oxides break down, all by themselves. Cosmic rays do flip bits in RAM, or on HDD (and Flash). If you think that when people use maintainance programs to check and fix peoblems that that's causing all the problems, think again.
You do know that all storage media loses bits from software on a regular basis? In fact, a HDD put away for five years only has a 50/50 chance of being readable.
Wrong again! Smart guys like you who read silly articles about this tell people things that are wrong headed at best.
If everything on your drive is just dandy, then nothing you do will improve that before an update. But, if it's not, then running disk utility could save you some grief.
Wrong again.
Boy, there sure are a lot of myths going around. I guess it's that time of year.
It seems you are the one spreading these bullshit myths. Where is your evidence to support your made-up beliefs? I have old floppy disks that are from the early 90's and all the data is intact and readable, and floppies are the least reliable media. I just acquired an old LC 575 and PoiwerBook 540c (both from 1994) and their hard drives still contain all the readable data from that era, and they both have their original Apple drives. "Cosmic Rays" did not penetrate them.
Since I downloaded the update my video has been all kinds of screwy. When I scroll on the screen and when I'm watching videos online I get black squares in the picture. Anyone else?
Since I updated yesterday I've been having issues with my screen. When I scroll its not always smooth and sometimes black squares appear. And when I watch a video black squares appear around the video. Anyone else had issues since the update?
I've often read people strongly recommending the use of the Combo Updater over relying on Software Update. I have always relied on Software Update and can't recall ever running into any problems, including with the 10.5.6 update today.
I run Drive Genius 2 every couple weeks (defragging every couple months or so) along with regular Permissions Repair with Disk Utility, so hopefully any of my apps which may have behavioral issues are kept well enough in check. I don't do any of the "strange things" you described either, which also probably helps keep my update experience problem-free.
I didn't time the length of the update process; I clicked to download it (walked away, came back), clicked to install it (walked away, heard two startup chimes from the other room, came back) and beheld the snappiness!
In recent weeks, MobileMe syncing has been very frustrating as seemingly every time I sat down at my iBook G4 syncing would commence, crippling the system for a few minutes. Thus far, this problem (not sure if it was widespread or just me) seems to have thankfully gone away.
Naturally, most people DO use Software Update, and most have no problems.
I don't like to tell the average person to go look for the Combo for an update, because it just makes them think that updating is more work than they want to do, and may not update at all. Considering that security updates and bug quashing is important, I'd rather they just updated, and took their chances.
But, for those who do understand more, and I always hope that those who post to forums do, the extra work can pay off.
But if you are doing the work to maintain your system as you are, then the Combo MAY be less important.
What kind of voodoo is this? I mean, if the user does not make abusive use of its admin rights, how could the system be corrupted by just installing and removing applications with the traditional "drag and drop" Mac method? Or you mean that the updates coming from Apple, and which require admin access to the system, can often write files in the wrong way or place, with consequences not showing up immediately under normal use but in the long term capable to mess up with another system update? Is this kind of issue you have in mind?
The second issue.
We all should know that nothing is perfect. Even Apple releases their product with plenty of bugs.
Quote:
OK, this is something I understand. But please try to explain the previous point (about the system being corrupted over time without user intervention).
I already explained some of that. Drives deteriorate without being used. A study showed that drives being used for, I think it was, three years, were about as likely to fail as those never used, and still in the box, for the same amount of time. Deteriorating drives can corrupt date if that date resides in an area of the disk where the oxide has gone bad. You know that disks have more area than reported, so that they can lock out bad areas as time goes by.
We should all know about "soft" errors caused by cosmic rays. This isn't something tat those with "tinfoil hats" think about, but is well documented, and has become a bigger problem as chip features get smaller.
In an ideal world, we wouldn't need disk utility other than to reformat, and do other housekeeping functions other than to repair a disk. We wouldn't need Diskwarrior, or recovery programs. we wouldn't need Time Machine to recover individual files that go bad, or an entire disk that crapped out. We wouldn't have to re-instal individual programs, or the entire OS. We wouldn't need Archive and Install, rather than a simple overwrite, etc. Permissions repaid wouldn't be there if Permissions didn't occasionally go haywire.
No point in going into too much detail, but I'm sure you know what I mean.
Dang, Apple removed a pretty usefull feature with this update.
When on battery, if you click the battery icon, you can no longer switch between normal, speed or battery saver modes, you HAVE to go to the prefpane. I didn't use it THAT much but I can imagine a lot of people miss this and I see no reason why they removed it.\
In an atmospherically sealed environment with the head actually "flying" above the platter? Magnetic storage is still proven to outlast optical in longevity for archival storage. This even comes from our supplier that archives our records in a data escrow service.
Cosmic rays??? You've got to be kidding! Next, you might be talking about stray neutrinos. If the cosmic rays at your location are severe enough to alter the state of magnetic or flash memory, they will certainly have corrupted the synaptic activity in your brain. Perhaps you might actually have a tinfoil hat for yourself.
Your ignorance is quite amazing! You are lazy as well. You could have done a quick Google search first, but no, you WANT to look ridiculous! Fine, I have no problem with that.
In 20+ years of trading, our office has used computers with hard drives and other magnetic storage media. In particular, we keep historical analysis data, client account information and the results of our derivatives pricing models and other research on them. We've had hot-swap drive bays in our machines for as long as I can remember. In our experience, we have often reinstalled drives after years (usually more than 5 yrs because shorter periods are live on our network) of sitting on a shelf to retrieve old pricing models with no problems whatsoever. Ever.
So far, I can't find the one article I'm looking for, but this is an example.
It seems you are the one spreading these bullshit myths. Where is your evidence to support your made-up beliefs? I have old floppy disks that are from the early 90's and all the data is intact and readable, and floppies are the least reliable media. I just acquired an old LC 575 and PoiwerBook 540c (both from 1994) and their hard drives still contain all the readable data from that era, and they both have their original Apple drives. "Cosmic Rays" did not penetrate them.
Read some of the articles my Google search turned up for my response to Optiontrader.
I had a really good paper on floppy disk life expectations, unfortunately, this is all thats left:
So far, this is the only one that even mentions floppies relating to storage limits. I'll quote, then link:
"You should avoid using standard floppy disks for long-term backups of important information. Floppies are less reliable than hard disks and are best for short-term storage of small files."
So far, this is the only one that even mentions floppies relating to storage limits. I'll quote, then link:
"You should avoid using standard floppy disks for long-term backups of important information. Floppies are less reliable than hard disks and are best for short-term storage of small files."
But then I've got some anecdotal evidence that floppies are quite reliable.
I recently dug up the ol' Mac 512k Fat Mac and the ol' Mac SE from my parent's basement. I had in my old bedroom a bunch of old 800k diskettes. Interestingly enough, not only did both computers work, the Mac SE's internal 20MB HDD was working beautifully, *and* all my old games on 800k floppies were working beautifully. Dark Castle, Beyond Dark Castle, Deja Vu 1 and 2, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.
I don't think there was a single diskette thrown at these two machines that didn't work.
But then, I've had an HDD in my Quicksilver G4 die within the span of 2 years.
Comments
I bet you truly believe the shite you write. You almost had me reaching for my tinfoil hat.
So you're admitting that you DO indeed own a tinfoil hat?
Some people disagree with me on this, but I've been saying for a long time that software in the computer gets corupted over time without our knowing it.
What kind of voodoo is this? I mean, if the user does not make abusive use of its admin rights, how could the system be corrupted by just installing and removing applications with the traditional "drag and drop" Mac method? Or you mean that the updates coming from Apple, and which require admin access to the system, can often write files in the wrong way or place, with consequences not showing up immediately under normal use but in the long term capable to mess up with another system update? Is this kind of issue you have in mind?
People do strange things. despite being told not to by Apple, I've found people moving files that shouldn't be moved. Re-naming others that shouldn't be re-named, etc. This will get people in trouble.
OK, this is something I understand. But please try to explain the previous point (about the system being corrupted over time without user intervention).
My install this morning went nice and smooth and no issues. It took a hour on the satellite internet to do.
The mail just appears. Boom! No polling.
C.
Yeah, that's EXACTLY what I'm getting. I finally thought I was being impatient so I gave it two hours and it still showed about 2% on the progress bar and stuck in "Configuring Installation."
Is there a way I can erase the original 190MB update and try to downloading it again? Perhaps the file was somehow corrupted? i've tried about 8 times now and it's always the same stall.
What gives?
Ok, as someone else noted, you need to trash what's in (actually probably can just trash the directory):
/Library/Updates/Mac OS X Update
I have a new data point, I updated my MacBook, and that went fine. One perhaps critical difference is that on my MacBook I did not have "Download important updates automatically" checked whereas on my MacBook Pro I did. After digging around, I found the downloaded package on my MBP and saw that it was only 41MB (not 190MB). I'm betting that unbeknownst to me, it was in the process of downloading the update when I closed my MBP.
There must be a bug in the download software where it can't properly resume a download, and doesn't recognize incomplete packages.
And I suppose you believe yours?
...but you better be right!
Or else what?!?
HDD do flip bits on their own, so to speak. The oxides break down, all by themselves.
In an atmospherically sealed environment with the head actually "flying" above the platter? Magnetic storage is still proven to outlast optical in longevity for archival storage. This even comes from our supplier that archives our records in a data escrow service.
Cosmic rays do flip bits in RAM, or on HDD (and Flash).
Cosmic rays??? You've got to be kidding! Next, you might be talking about stray neutrinos. If the cosmic rays at your location are severe enough to alter the state of magnetic or flash memory, they will certainly have corrupted the synaptic activity in your brain. Perhaps you might actually have a tinfoil hat for yourself.
In fact, a HDD put away for five years only has a 50/50 chance of being readable.
Where do you find this bullshit?
In 20+ years of trading, our office has used computers with hard drives and other magnetic storage media. In particular, we keep historical analysis data, client account information and the results of our derivatives pricing models and other research on them. We've had hot-swap drive bays in our machines for as long as I can remember. In our experience, we have often reinstalled drives after years (usually more than 5 yrs because shorter periods are live on our network) of sitting on a shelf to retrieve old pricing models with no problems whatsoever. Ever.
So you're admitting that you DO indeed own a tinfoil hat?
After reading a lot of what is on internet forums, I felt I needed one.
What kind of voodoo is this? I mean, if the user does not make abusive use of its admin rights, how could the system be corrupted by just installing and removing applications with the traditional "drag and drop" Mac method? Or you mean that the updates coming from Apple, and which require admin access to the system, can often write files in the wrong way or place, with consequences not showing up immediately under normal use but in the long term capable to mess up with another system update? Is this kind of issue you have in mind?
OK, this is something I understand. But please try to explain the previous point (about the system being corrupted over time without user intervention).
Simple. Power interruption, computer freezing, files not being written to the disk properly. All are examples that can cause corruption.
Well, I disagree. Software does get corrupted "all by itself". HDD do flip bits on their own, so to speak. The oxides break down, all by themselves. Cosmic rays do flip bits in RAM, or on HDD (and Flash). If you think that when people use maintainance programs to check and fix peoblems that that's causing all the problems, think again.
You do know that all storage media loses bits from software on a regular basis? In fact, a HDD put away for five years only has a 50/50 chance of being readable.
Wrong again! Smart guys like you who read silly articles about this tell people things that are wrong headed at best.
If everything on your drive is just dandy, then nothing you do will improve that before an update. But, if it's not, then running disk utility could save you some grief.
Wrong again.
Boy, there sure are a lot of myths going around. I guess it's that time of year.
It seems you are the one spreading these bullshit myths. Where is your evidence to support your made-up beliefs? I have old floppy disks that are from the early 90's and all the data is intact and readable, and floppies are the least reliable media. I just acquired an old LC 575 and PoiwerBook 540c (both from 1994) and their hard drives still contain all the readable data from that era, and they both have their original Apple drives. "Cosmic Rays" did not penetrate them.
I've often read people strongly recommending the use of the Combo Updater over relying on Software Update. I have always relied on Software Update and can't recall ever running into any problems, including with the 10.5.6 update today.
I run Drive Genius 2 every couple weeks (defragging every couple months or so) along with regular Permissions Repair with Disk Utility, so hopefully any of my apps which may have behavioral issues are kept well enough in check. I don't do any of the "strange things" you described either, which also probably helps keep my update experience problem-free.
I didn't time the length of the update process; I clicked to download it (walked away, came back), clicked to install it (walked away, heard two startup chimes from the other room, came back) and beheld the snappiness!
In recent weeks, MobileMe syncing has been very frustrating as seemingly every time I sat down at my iBook G4 syncing would commence, crippling the system for a few minutes. Thus far, this problem (not sure if it was widespread or just me) seems to have thankfully gone away.
Naturally, most people DO use Software Update, and most have no problems.
I don't like to tell the average person to go look for the Combo for an update, because it just makes them think that updating is more work than they want to do, and may not update at all. Considering that security updates and bug quashing is important, I'd rather they just updated, and took their chances.
But, for those who do understand more, and I always hope that those who post to forums do, the extra work can pay off.
But if you are doing the work to maintain your system as you are, then the Combo MAY be less important.
What kind of voodoo is this? I mean, if the user does not make abusive use of its admin rights, how could the system be corrupted by just installing and removing applications with the traditional "drag and drop" Mac method? Or you mean that the updates coming from Apple, and which require admin access to the system, can often write files in the wrong way or place, with consequences not showing up immediately under normal use but in the long term capable to mess up with another system update? Is this kind of issue you have in mind?
The second issue.
We all should know that nothing is perfect. Even Apple releases their product with plenty of bugs.
OK, this is something I understand. But please try to explain the previous point (about the system being corrupted over time without user intervention).
I already explained some of that. Drives deteriorate without being used. A study showed that drives being used for, I think it was, three years, were about as likely to fail as those never used, and still in the box, for the same amount of time. Deteriorating drives can corrupt date if that date resides in an area of the disk where the oxide has gone bad. You know that disks have more area than reported, so that they can lock out bad areas as time goes by.
We should all know about "soft" errors caused by cosmic rays. This isn't something tat those with "tinfoil hats" think about, but is well documented, and has become a bigger problem as chip features get smaller.
In an ideal world, we wouldn't need disk utility other than to reformat, and do other housekeeping functions other than to repair a disk. We wouldn't need Diskwarrior, or recovery programs. we wouldn't need Time Machine to recover individual files that go bad, or an entire disk that crapped out. We wouldn't have to re-instal individual programs, or the entire OS. We wouldn't need Archive and Install, rather than a simple overwrite, etc. Permissions repaid wouldn't be there if Permissions didn't occasionally go haywire.
No point in going into too much detail, but I'm sure you know what I mean.
When on battery, if you click the battery icon, you can no longer switch between normal, speed or battery saver modes, you HAVE to go to the prefpane. I didn't use it THAT much but I can imagine a lot of people miss this and I see no reason why they removed it.
'Pinch Open & Close' no longer controls the size of the icons in the finder!
I would use this function all the time to maintain having small-sized icons, but then quickly pinching the finder window open to see and sort images.
Now I'm left to open up View Options every time i want to re-size icons?
Or else what?!?
Or else you'll look like a fool.
In an atmospherically sealed environment with the head actually "flying" above the platter? Magnetic storage is still proven to outlast optical in longevity for archival storage. This even comes from our supplier that archives our records in a data escrow service.
Try any of these articles;
http://www.google.com/search?client=...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Just one part of an article talking about latent drive defects, which you are denying:
http://www.acmqueue.org/modules.php?...pid=506&page=4
Cosmic rays??? You've got to be kidding! Next, you might be talking about stray neutrinos. If the cosmic rays at your location are severe enough to alter the state of magnetic or flash memory, they will certainly have corrupted the synaptic activity in your brain. Perhaps you might actually have a tinfoil hat for yourself.
Your ignorance is quite amazing! You are lazy as well. You could have done a quick Google search first, but no, you WANT to look ridiculous! Fine, I have no problem with that.
http://www.google.com/search?client=...UTF-8&oe=UTF-8
Where do you find this bullshit?
In 20+ years of trading, our office has used computers with hard drives and other magnetic storage media. In particular, we keep historical analysis data, client account information and the results of our derivatives pricing models and other research on them. We've had hot-swap drive bays in our machines for as long as I can remember. In our experience, we have often reinstalled drives after years (usually more than 5 yrs because shorter periods are live on our network) of sitting on a shelf to retrieve old pricing models with no problems whatsoever. Ever.
So far, I can't find the one article I'm looking for, but this is an example.
http://etbe.coker.com.au/2008/06/01/...e-of-hardware/
It seems you are the one spreading these bullshit myths. Where is your evidence to support your made-up beliefs? I have old floppy disks that are from the early 90's and all the data is intact and readable, and floppies are the least reliable media. I just acquired an old LC 575 and PoiwerBook 540c (both from 1994) and their hard drives still contain all the readable data from that era, and they both have their original Apple drives. "Cosmic Rays" did not penetrate them.
Read some of the articles my Google search turned up for my response to Optiontrader.
I had a really good paper on floppy disk life expectations, unfortunately, this is all thats left:
https://www.thedacs.com/techs/abstract/314064
I'm looking for more.
So far, this is the only one that even mentions floppies relating to storage limits. I'll quote, then link:
"You should avoid using standard floppy disks for long-term backups of important information. Floppies are less reliable than hard disks and are best for short-term storage of small files."
http://www.bytesbits.com/backup.htm
This is pretty good article about floppies in general, though it discusses reliability as well. It's from 2004:
http://worldcat.org/arcviewer/1/OCC/.../file3008.html
So far, this is the only one that even mentions floppies relating to storage limits. I'll quote, then link:
"You should avoid using standard floppy disks for long-term backups of important information. Floppies are less reliable than hard disks and are best for short-term storage of small files."
http://www.bytesbits.com/backup.htm
This is pretty good article about floppies in general, though it discusses reliability as well. It's from 2004:
http://worldcat.org/arcviewer/1/OCC/.../file3008.html
But then I've got some anecdotal evidence that floppies are quite reliable.
I recently dug up the ol' Mac 512k Fat Mac and the ol' Mac SE from my parent's basement. I had in my old bedroom a bunch of old 800k diskettes. Interestingly enough, not only did both computers work, the Mac SE's internal 20MB HDD was working beautifully, *and* all my old games on 800k floppies were working beautifully. Dark Castle, Beyond Dark Castle, Deja Vu 1 and 2, Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego.
I don't think there was a single diskette thrown at these two machines that didn't work.
But then, I've had an HDD in my Quicksilver G4 die within the span of 2 years.