I spent a frustrating couple of weeks with my Mac recently. I noticed that when I pointed my web browser (either Safari or Firefox) to certain websites, my computer when into a tailspin, sending the kernel_task process through the roof (massive CPU utilization) and dumping my ability to connect to a network (“network unavailable” errors). After digging around my computer for a while, I stumbled on the problem — Norton Privacy Control.

Now Symantec claims that the current version of NPC works with OS X 10.3.5, but I can tell you it doesn’t. When visiting www.news.com, Safari chokes and I discovered that the NPC daemon crashes. That essentially kills your network connectivity and nothing short of a restart seems to work. I searched the web and Symantec’s website, but found nothing but a note from Symantec to run LiveUpdate to fix the problem. I had already done that and confirmed that I was running the latest code.

So the fix for this problem (if you have it also) is to remove Norton Privacy Control from your StartupItems. I did that by going into /Library/StartupItems and just moving the “NortonPrivacyControl” folder elsewhere, followed by a reboot. That has cleared up the problem and I’m back to normal.

Now here’s my real beef. After spending the time debugging their product, I went to the Symantec website to let them know about the problem so that they could fix it. Unfortunately, it appears that there’s no mechanism to submit bugs to them — no product support forum or anything. I finally went to the feedback page and submitted something under “product suggestions”, but I suspect that’s going to go right into the little trash can that we all have on our computers these days. Seems like they ought to have some sort of bug alert system when there’s a problem like this. You know, everyone and their mother has a user forum for product stuff that the staff reviews from time to time. Wouldn’t that be a great idea for Symantec?

Hopefully there will be enough keywords in this entry that anyone else who has this problem will find this posting. Google, do your stuff.

I haven’t really said much of the recent P2P software ruling, which roughly says that P2P companies aren’t really liable for the content they move around on their networks. I guess at this stage, I’ve said it a million times already that I believed that to be true and the reason that the obvious ruling hadn’t been made was because of poor lawyers on the P2P side. But finally, there was some success and now maybe the P2P software companies will get a break. If only the individual users could now get a break.

But this story caught my eye. Essentially, Scott MacLean wrote a piece of software called TimeTrax to digitally record content from XM onto his computer and organize it into MP3 files. Of course the RIAA and XM both freaked with the possibility that those MP3 files might be redistributed over the P2P networks. XM came down hard on Mr. MacLean, but frankly I believe that they have landed on the wrong side of this issue. While I realize that their content providers may have some concern about redistribution of content, I think that it’s more likely that XM benefits from this. This capability alone might encourage an other non-subscriber to sign up. (I should ‘fess up here that I own a few shares of XM.) While this would force XM into a more tenuous set of relationships with their content providers, the long run outlook is that this would be good for business.

However, if they become the bad guys, then maybe it’s time to start selling. A black eye like this with the consumer would be harmful to their long term business; maybe it would even give Sirius a boost. Today’s content reality is clear — people copy and share digital content. The best bet is to figure out how to leverage that into a clear business proposition. Seems like Mr. MacLean has figured part of that out for XM; maybe now XM will figure it out for themselves.

I’ve been running for some time now (3 miles a day) and when my treadmill broke, I decided to run outside with my iPod (3G). At first, I clipped it to my running shorts, but I found that it was heavy enough to tug at the waist. Not wanting to expose myself, I put the iPod on a lanyard and carried on my neck. That was okay, but it bounced around a lot, so I next tried a fanny pack. The fanny pack I used worked pretty well, but it still bounced the iPod around quite a bit and the device started skipping. At first it was only on a song or two, where I would get a bit of dead space in the music, but eventually, it became a serious epidemic. Some of the files on the iPod were even damaged in the process (I’m still not sure how that could happen since the files were being read, not written — perhaps the iPod records the last time played in an MP3 header?). I ended up wiping the iPod and reloading everything after this happened.

I did a little searching on the web for iPod armbands, intending on strapping the thing to my upper arm, when I found the following post on USENET:

Subject: Re: bought an ipod! From: Lawson Stone  Newsgroups: rec.music.makers.guitar.jazz Date: Thu, 10 Jul 2003 01:28:17 GMT  > Be careful with your ipod when running, Apple no longer has running as a > recommended activity when using it.  The Hard Drive is very small and is > fragile, especially with the bigger models.  I have my last gen Ipod 10GB and > its great!!  I run with mine all the time. The best way to carry it is on an arm-band. I got a velcro armband used for dealing with forearm pain--it's very tough and can be wrapped very tight. I clip the ipod on it via the included "belt pouch" and it doesn't skip at all.  Now, if I fell and landed on it, that'd be a catastrophe, but as far as normal use, it's really fine on a tight, sturdy arm-band

What a great idea. I happened to have one of these to deal with tendonitis from racquetball, so I gave it a try. This is by far the best, and least expensive, solution I’ve found. It works great — the iPod stopped skipping since the bouncing from running is significantly dampened by the time it gets to your forearm. I highly recommend this solution to any iPod runners out there.