Toby Atkin-Wright

A while ago I installed Cisco AnyConnect on my Mac, in order to VPN in to work. Recently I noticed that a process acwebsecagent was logging multiple failures every minute to my system log; with a bit of investigation it appears that the AnyConnect installer defaults also installs Cisco Web Security, unless one chooses to uncheck it.

As far as I can tell Web Security appears not to be related to AnyConnect’s VPN functionality; it is a separately licensed Cisco service, and if it isn’t configured it appears to have a performance impact on one’s Mac.

If it is installed, you can remove it with:
sudo /opt/cisco/anyconnect/bin/websecurity_uninstall.sh

More info at:
http://www.thebitguru.com/blog/view/394-Random%20Slowdown%20of%20Browsers%20in%20OS%20X%20Mountain%20Lion

There has been furore this week after Mozilla removed the 64-bit version of Firefox for Windows from their nightly builds. They said that the 64-bit version for Windows wasn’t a priority for their development team, and that compatibility and performance problems meant that the 32-bit version of Firefox worked better for users. This is despite their Mac OS X of Firefox being a “universal” application, containing both 32-bit and 64-bit code, and apparently not suffering from compatibility or performance problems. (I understand that their Linux versions of Firefox are also 64-bit.)

There have been strong views expressed about this in some parts of the technology media, although I suppose one should take a step back and accept that Mozilla can and should make their own decisions about the priorities of the Firefox developers.

http://arstechnica.com/information-technology/2012/11/64-bit-firefox-for-windows-should-be-prioritized-not-suspended/

On my Mac, the majority of applications are “universal”, and run as 64-bit applications. Apple has made the move to 64-bit reasonably painless, and I would imagine that most users are unaware that the architecture of their applications has changed as the operating system and applications have been updated.

Microsoft, however, seems to have made more of a song and dance over 64-bit, with separate installations of Windows for 32-bit and 64-bit architectures, and different versions of applications available. I wonder why they didn’t go for a universal approach? It seems to have made life unnecessarily awkward for their developers.

Currently installing Skype 5.1. It has to be better than Skype 5.0, right?

Currently installing Skype 5.1. It has to be better than Skype 5.0, right?

Yesterday evening I started something that I've been meaning to for some time - a reinstallation of the OS and apps on my MacBook Pro. I find it a useful thing to do every couple of years; to have a fresh and clean machine, and an opportunity to assess exactly which apps I actually use. When Snow Leopard came out last year I took the opportunity to do a clean install (rather than an upgrade) on the two Mac Minis, but the MacBook Pro is my main machine, and has a lot more software installed on it, so it is a more time consuming task.

So far the biggest installation has been Logic Studio - shuffling the DVDs seemed to go on forever. I won't be installing MS Office; I uninstalled it last year and have managed very well with a combination of iWork and Google Docs. I keep most of my documents in Dropbox nowadays, so they are easy to copy back onto the machine. I still have to retrieve photos and media from the Drobo - I'll be rsyncing this evening.

Yesterday evening I started something that I've been meaning to for some time - a reinstallation of the OS and apps on my MacBook Pro. I find it a useful thing to do every couple of years; to have a fresh and clean machine, and an opportunity to assess exactly which apps I actually use. When Snow Leopard came out last year I took the opportunity to do a clean install (rather than an upgrade) on the two Mac Minis, but the MacBook Pro is my main machine, and has a lot more software installed on it, so it is a more time consuming task.

So far the biggest installation has been Logic Studio - shuffling the DVDs seemed to go on forever. I won't be installing MS Office; I uninstalled it last year and have managed very well with a combination of iWork and Google Docs. I keep most of my documents in Dropbox nowadays, so they are easy to copy back onto the machine. I still have to retrieve photos and media from the Drobo - I'll be rsyncing this evening.

More to aid my memory than for anything else.

curl -O http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.5.5.tar.gz
tar -xf git-1.5.5.tar.gz 
cd git-1.5.5
make configure
./configure --prefix=/usr
make all
sudo make install

More to aid my memory than for anything else.

curl -O http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/git-1.5.5.tar.gz
tar -xf git-1.5.5.tar.gz 
cd git-1.5.5
make configure
./configure --prefix=/usr
make all
sudo make install