- Circus Ponies
- Mark/Space, Inc.
- Bare Bones Software
- MacSpeech
- VMware
- CS Odessa
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- Microsoft
We're at Macworld Expo 2009 in San Francisco with the latest news about the show. Check back often this week for updates!
- Phil Schiller Delivers Lackluster Keynote
- iPhoto '09 Adds Faces and Places
- iMovie '09 Seems to Fix Everything from iMovie '08
- GarageBand '09 Adds Music Lessons
- iWork Turns '09
- Apple Moves to Unprotected Music, Tiered Prices
- Apple Pioneers New Battery Tech with 17-inch MacBook Pro
- Jobs Clears the Air on Health Issue
- Welcome to Macintosh Movie to Screen at Macworld Expo
- MacHEADS Movie to Premiere at Macworld Expo
- TidBITS Events at Macworld SF 2009
Syslogd Overwhelming Your Computer?
If your Leopard (Mac OS X 10.5) system is unexpectedly sluggish, logging might be the culprit. Run Activity Monitor (Applications/Utilities/ folder), and click the CPU column twice to get it to show most to least activity. If syslogd is at the top of the list, there's a fix. Syslogd tracks informational messages produced by software and writes them to the asl.db, a file in your Unix /var/log/ directory. It's a known problem that syslogd can run amok. There's a fix: deleting the asl.db file.
Launch Terminal (from the same Utilities folder), and enter these commands exactly as written, entering your administrative password when prompted:
sudo launchctl stop com.apple.syslogd
sudo rm /var/log/asl.db
sudo launchctl start com.apple.syslogd
Your system should settle down to normal. For more information, follow the link.
Visit Discussion of syslogd problem at Smarticus
Written by Glenn Fleishman
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Published in TidBITS 914. Subscribe today to receive TidBITS in email every Monday.
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QuickTime 7.4.1 Fixes Zero-Day Vulnerability
by Rich Mogull 
Apple has released QuickTime 7.4.1, a critical security update all users should apply immediately. It is available via Software Update and as a direct download for Leopard, Tiger, Panther, and Windows systems.
This update patches a month-old zero-day vulnerability in the QuickTime streaming protocol (RTSP) that could allow an attacker to take over your computer if you visit a malicious Web site or receive an email with a malicious link. In security parlance, we call this "remote execution of arbitrary code," using a vulnerability for which no patch exists (the "zero-day" part). This is similar to a previous vulnerability in RTSP that Apple patched in the QuickTime 7.3.1 update (see "QuickTime 7.3.1 Fixes RTSP Vulnerability," 2007-12-14).
As usual, release notes are a sparse "addresses security issues and improves compatibility with third-party applications." A separate security note provides more details, but the security information isn't even referenced by the release notes on the download page, although they do appear on the security updates page.
Since this vulnerability has been in the wild with sample exploits for nearly a month, it is absolutely critical to apply the patch as quickly as possible.
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