Bugs & Fixes: Troubleshooting Apple's malware protection

What happens when new malware attacks appear on the scene? That’s part of the beauty of Apple’s approach. Apple can automatically update the malware definitions on your drive, without requiring any action on your part. That way, there’s no need to download a new Security Update each time. To enable this feature (assuming that giving Apple this authority doesn’t make you more nervous than the threat of malware), turn on the “Automatically update safe downloads list” option in the General tab of the Security System Preferences pane.

This updating is a great convenience—except when it doesn’t work. In theory, after Apple releases a definitions update, the changes should be pushed to your Mac within the next 24 hours. Additionally, if you restart your Mac at any time, this should force an install of the latest update. In practice, things have not always gone so smoothly.

When I checked with a group of colleagues, only about 50 percent of us had gotten an update within the expected 24 hours. For those of us who did not get the update (which included me), the reason was not related to whether our Macs were asleep at the “wrong” time. Even when a Mac was set to never go to sleep, the update did not arrive. Similarly, if we restarted our Macs, supposedly forcing an update, nothing happened.

In most cases, if we simply waited long enough (48 or even 72 hours), the update would eventually arrive. On at least one occasion, however, I had not received an update that had been out for four days.

I am convinced that there is a bug in play here, apparently one that affects only a subset of users.

What can you do about this bug? You can force an update by unchecking and rechecking the above-mentioned option in the Security System Preferences pane, as detailed in a Macworld article from last week . When I tested this out, it worked. However, it is not a permanent fix. The next time a definitions update is released, you still won’t get it within the expected 24 hour time frame. At least that’s the way it has worked for me.

A more convenient alternative (although also not a permanent fix) is to use Safe Download Version , a free app developed by Adam Christianson at the Mac Observer . With this app, simply click its Update Definitions button and the most recent update is installed. Done.

Apple has been a busy beaver with these definitions. As of this writing, they are already up to version 10, with a new update seemingly released every couple of days.

Split PDF for Unix Aix (Workstation/Developer License) by Tourmal ...

Split PDF is the first of many server tools from Traction Software for Windows PC, Unix Aix, Linux & Macintosh OSX NOTE: This Software does NOT require Acrobat, Split PDF is designed for server usage. Split PDF software automates the process of splitting multiple PDF files, you can split an existing pdf file or a list of files, the result file is optimized for space, PDF Size optimization is over 50% better than splitting files in Acrobat and using other tools that use Acrobat to split. In our tests the splitting speed is up to 70 times quicker than Acrobat 7 split + save! simple command line parameters: e.g. SplitPdf in1.pdf -ooutput.pdf -s1-5 e.g. SplitPdf in1.pdf -ooutput-singles-files -s1s e.g. SplitPdf list.txt -fout list.txt file contains:- in1.pdf in2.pdf in3.pdf All licenses include free updates to 1.xx and free 24/7 email support.

UNIX, the complete reference

The UNIX philosophy

UNIX

Learning the UNIX operating system

Unix for dummies