Here’s the updated instruction from this post specific to Magic Mouse owners:

1. Go into “System Preferences”
2. Click on “Mouse”
3. Go to “Point and Click”
4. Untick “Scroll Direction“

Did that work for you? Please comment below if it did!

WARNING: Mild rant ahead.

I’m writing this post to out a particular behavior that I am seeing more and more often lately.

Example 1:

Whilst activating a prepaid SIM I was asked to provide my drivers license number. Already knowing the answer, I asked the operator why they needed this information.

Their response?

It’s for your safety.

Ultimately this is sort of true. The AMCA passed an act in 2008 which meant that sufficient ID was required to purchase a prepaid SIM or phone. This act was designed to help government authorities or mobile operators to eliminate ‘anonymous’ users. For supporters of mandatory registration, anonymity is a condition that threatens public safety and security. Without opening up the debate of whether or not this is ethical/effective/true, it should be pointed out that prepaid anonymous “burner” phones are a communication tool of choice for everything from drug dealing to remote controlled explosives. Making it difficult to access these phones anonymously is meant to provide a level of deterrence for these sort of uses, or at a bare minimum provide investigators with a place to start should something bad ever happen.

So, regardless of your/my position on the legislation, you can understand why it’s there.

But that’s not my point.

The response “It’s for your safety” is meant to evoke a reaction of “Oh, Ok. The phone company knows better, I trust decisions about my safety to them because they are a large corporate with my best interests at heart”. The idea of the nice telco man “looking after my safety” is more palatable the idea of my phone company making sure that I’m not a terrorist or a drug dealer.

This type of response has been specifically designed to leverage the general publics trust and willingness to outsource their privacy and personal security to whichever big business will volunteer to look after it for them. The operator could have just as easily used a higher authority close and said “it’s required by law” – no further explanation required.

Example 2:

I had a recruiter contact me recently. She’d found me through LinkedIn, or Twitter, or something like that – I’m hardly anonymous on the interwebs. In my field I work in this is very common. After her pitch of her available roles she asked I send her my CV in Word format. Already knowing the answer, I asked why she wanted it in Word format.

Her response?

It’s so I can redact your details for your confidentiality.

Again, sort of true – but bollocks at the same time.

I am perfectly capable of redacting my own CV…. The real reason was for HER confidentiality. If a recruiter puts forward a candidate CV with their details still on it, their client can simply say “we know the candidate already and will deal with them directly”. They don’t even need to actually know the candidate… At this point the recruiter has lost the ability to “sell” the candidate to that client. Worse still, the client is now aware that the candidate is willing to give their CV to a recruiter and is quite likely approachable about a role.

Bad business for the recruiter…

But, again, that’s not the point.

Rather than being transparent about how she was planning to use my information, this particular recruiter opted to use the idea of “looking after my best interests” as a path of least resistance to get the information she wanted. The idea of her making sure my “confidentiality is protected” is much more palatable then the idea of her getting she gets her cut should I change jobs.

Do you see what I mean? It’s not a whole lie… but it ain’t a whole truth either.

The odd part about all of this is that in both cases I’d give over the required information if the occasion called for it. I accept that the telco is bound by the rules of the ACMA. I understand that recruiters need to commercially protect themselves from the threat of direct selling.

Whilst the motives were fairly benign, the two examples above are stories of people who purposefully used misplaced trust to obtain confidential information. In the security industry we call it “social engineering”, more specifically “pretexting”. Perhaps these two examples, and the countless others I’m sure are out there, are a contributor to why the easiest way to break in to a company is though its people.

I realize that I may be over-reacting and more than a tad bit idealistic here – I understand that it’s “good business” to choose the path of least resistance wherever possible – but at the core of this little rant is a belief that, if not an ethical duty, it’s at least basic courtesy to be upfront and honest about matters that affect privacy and confidentiality.

The alternative only serves to foster the warm fluffy cloud of permissiveness and apathy that causes so many of the issues I see day-to-day.

Very interested to hear any thoughts or feedback on this.

I’ve gone ahead and installed OS X Lion on my mid-2010 Macbook Pro.

Most (maybe all…?) versions of OS X have multi-touch gesturing for trackpads and the Magic Mouse. Multi-touch gesturing let’s you scroll up and down a page by swiping up or down with two fingers.

Under previous version of OS X the direction of the scroll was the SAME as the direction of the swipe. Under Lion though Apple decided to reverse it for up/down gesturing (left and right is the same). I can see how this would appeal to gamers who are used to this type of approach, but I’m used to it the old way.

Here’s how I put it back to normal (i.e. the way it used to be):

then…

Voila! Fixed.

Did this work for you?

I’m interested to hear from anyone with a Magic Mouse – The instructions may be a little different, although I imagine the “Scroll direction: natural” checkbox part will be the same. (UPDATE: Information in the Magic Mouse here.)

Here are the results of the hard disk upgrade I did to my 2.4GHz i5 mid-2010 Macbook Pro.

It wasn’t THE most scientific of tests – The Vertex was done with a fresh and fully updated install of OS X, whereas the Hitachi was done on an installation that was a few months old so logic would suggest that this may give the Vertex a slight advantage (although likely to be statistically insignificant compared to the results). Also, both tests were run with no other applications running and all non-essential (read: non-Apple OS) background processes stopped (as best I could). The SSD test was run shortly after installation so there hadn’t been much time for the drive to accumulate Garbage Files.

Enough of that – onto the results!

As you can see there are some pretty impressive increases.

Test 1.

Xbench Version        1.3
System Version        10.6.7 (10J869)
Physical RAM        4096 MB
Model        MacBookPro6,2
Drive Type        Hitachi HTS545032B9SA02

Test 2.

Xbench Version        1.3
System Version        10.6.7 (10J869)
Physical RAM        4096 MB
Model        MacBookPro6,2
Drive Type        OCZ-VERTEX2

8022 8351

(02) 8022 8351
02 8022 8351
0(2) 8022 8351

+61 2 8022 8351
+61 (02) 8022 8351
+61 02 8022 8351
+61 0(2) 8022 8351

+1 8022 8351

0011 02 8022 8251
0011 (02) 8022 8351
0011 0(2) 8022 8351

A lot of people have written in after this post asking how to remove The Friend Fighting Quiz.

Here’s the steps:

1. Log in to Facebook.
2. Click on “Account” in the right hand corner and go down to “Privacy Settings”.
3. Find “Apps and Websites” and click on the “Edit your settings” link.
4. Click on “Remove unwanted or spammy apps.”
5. This will bring up a list of ALL of the apps that are authorized to your Facebook profile. Delete The Friend Fighting Quiz by clicking on the X.
6. While you’re there – mayyyybe it’s time to do some spring cleaning

In my opinion this is WAY MORE COMPLICATED then it should be – what do you think?

Little update on my Applecare experience – After taking my laptop home, backing it up, secure deleting the hard disk and reloading it with a basic install of OS X (I recommend that anyone do this before the check their laptop in to the doctors overnight… I am contractually bound to) I checked it in with the Apple Store in Sydney.

I’d noticed the night before that dent in the case had also affected the bottom casing (Unibody Mac’s come in 2 parts, the case itself and a cover which goes on the bottom). I asked the guy on checkin what the cost wold be to get the bottom replaced as well – His response was “Don’t worry about it mate, we’ll just add it to the order.”

Win!

It seems that the whole “I’d like to know how much this repair will be to see if I think it’s worth it” approach is a winner for getting free stuff out of Applecare.