Explaining Input Lag

Bit-Tech.net has an excellent explainer on input lag on a modern LCD monitor. A good monitor will techncially have some input lag, but at a tiny delay imperceptible to anyone. Poor-qualitiy displays are a diffrent beast entirely. Probably the best part of the article is explaining a methodology for detecting input lag. They're able to illustrate the problems clearly in video and pictures.

Windows Vulnerabilities - 92% mitigated by not being administrator

I'm going to step aside from my normal patching discussions and talk about what happens when you do get attacked with malware that exploits a vulnerability. When a nasty program exploits an unpatched vulnerability, there are always mitigating factors that can help limit the impact. One of the big ones is that the exploit usually runs in the security context of the account which it attacks/is run against. Security vendor BeyondTrust looked at the 154 Microsoft vulnerabilities published in 2008. They found that 92% of all vulnerabilities had their impact mitigated or were rendered completely harmless when the user was running with no elevated privilege (normal user rights). Obviously this is a report from a security vendor selling software that helps manage user rights... but the breakdown for 2008 is striking, indicating that running as non-administrator at least mitigates:

• 94% of Microsoft Office vulnerabilities reported in 2008
• 89% of Internet Explorer vulnerabilities reported in 2008
• 53% of Microsoft Windows vulnerabilities reported in 2008

That makes sense when you realize that the first two categories are just applications. They're very specialized, widespread and extensible applications, hence the risk. Ultimately, however, they're running at the user's privilege level. Even though the OS itself is somewhat less protected-- many of the juicier exploits will run at the System context or elevate privileges-- 53% mitigation is still pretty good.

Here's my beef with Microsoft in this regard. We all know that running in the least level of privilege is the safest and these numbers add good ammunition to that argument. While Microsoft has made great strides in allowing the user to elevate their privilege on some actions in the "XP era" and later, getting the ability to universally change security context on the fly eludes them. *nix with sudo and the standard GUI security elevation method of OS X both have serious problems, but they're a lot closer to right. Windows 7 will certainly continue the slow progress in this area, but at some point Microsoft ought to do better.

Apple: MacBook/Pro teardowns

iFixit has a great page showing a teardown of the new MacBook and MacBook Pro for those of us who actually and unfortunately know what the inside of a notebook should look like.

The big win? Hard drive replacement is MUCH easier on the new MacBooks Pros!

The WTF moment? Neither a DisplayPort to VGA or DisplayPort to DVI adapter is included with your $2000+ computer. It's a $29 option from Apple. I have yet to see 3rd party alternatives, but no doubt they're coming, and for a fraction of that price. (Yeah, I know DisplayPort is the New Hotness, but there aren't any monitors for it yet...)

Apple: In praise of XQuartz

As with many things Apple, The Jobs and crew like to bless a lot of common projects before distributing versions on the Mac. Recently, however, I came across some problems with the Apple distribution of X11 (an optional component on the OS disk) on 10.5.4. When launched, the App would appear in the dock, then disappear, then reappear again a few times. Checking the running processes, it started then entered a zombie state almost immediately-- before any logs get written.

The first system was a fairly modern MacBook Pro, but had a user profile that was migrated from a PPC Powerbook. Thinking this may be the problem, I uninstalled and then reinstalled X11 to no avail from the OS disk. I stepped through all kinds of diagnosis, running updates, clearing caches, checking all the config and shell profile files with no luck. I finally stumbled on a suggestion to try the XQuartz version of X11. Apple uses the XQuartz project as a basis for building their X11 distribution, but apparently don't do a good job all the time. The XQuartz version dropped right in and works great. The only downdside was that it requires a logoff.

The problem occurred the very next day for me on a PPC Mac running 10.5.4, so the problem may be something in the OS or configs we use. It doesn't appear to be platform-based. The same fix worked like a charm.

As some further notes, Apple may overwrite X11 with their point-releases of their OS, so reinstallation may be necessary at a later date. The X11 version, however, was last changed at 10.5.2, and was unchanged with the 10.5.3 and 10.5.4 releases.