I have a user that is getting funky errors in Entourage 2008 for some time now. He keeps saying that his settings are wrong, I keep saying that they are fine. I know for certain that it is an issue with his Entourage. I had him do the usual things, clear the cache, delete the account and re-add it(he is an exchange 2003 user) but all has the same result.

His issues? Entourage is complaining about size limits (he is not hitting size limits on the exchange server) his inbox is not completely syncing and it is slow to do anything. I remember a similar issue and it had to do with the entourage database. After some searching, I came across these directions:

You should rebuild the database if:

You have problems starting Entourage, or viewing, opening, and storing items.
Items that refuse to be deleted.
Need to reclaim disk space..
FAQ: “If I rebuild my Entourage database will I lose all my categories and links!”

[ANS] Not anymore with Entourage 2008!

It is recommended that you not rebuild your database as regular maintenance. Rebuilding should not be considered as a substitute for an adequate backup. You are encouraged to back up critical data on a regular basis.

Rebuilding should be avoided unless there is database corruption. Here’s what Jud Spencer [one of Entourage’s developers] said on the issue:

There is a small benefit to compacting regularly. Entourage maintains internal sort tables. Those sort tables are optimized on a compact.

However, you should only choose the rebuild option if your database is damaged. Many people believe that rebuilding your database will protect you from future corruption. That just isn’t the case.

Source

Tip: Emptying the cache does not reduce the database size itself. The database will be left with ‘wasted’ space in it every time you delete something. However, this is not all bad, since the wasted space is used up with new data as it is added. This way, over a period of time (assuming that you are deleting stuff as you go) the database will probably reach an optimum size, after which the stuff you delete is roughly equal to the stuff you add, and no further growth takes place.

If you need to recover the wasted space on your hard disk, you will have to do a ‘typical’ rebuild to compact the database. This will create a compacted version of the database without the wasted space. You will then have to manually delete the backup copies of the original database that the rebuild process creates AFTER you are happy the new one is OK.

Tip: Rather than compacting and keeping a small database, create a large database then delete messages in order to create a contiguous space on your hard drive for your messages.

Think about your data being in one contiguous space rather than in bits around your computer. Once your database has reached it’s size as established when you installed Entourage, the Finder will start writing your data in bits around your drive. If you establish a large Entourage database using large message files when you first set up your computer, you can then delete excess messages and Entourage will reuse that space with new messages. Think of this as creating a partition for Entourage.

How to Rebuild Your Database
As with any procedure like rebuild, it’s a good idea to make a backup prior to running. Your data should not be erased, but if something fails during this process, data could be lost. To be doubly sure, duplicate your Identity folder prior to the rebuild.
Locate your database. It should be in your Documents folder: Can’t find your database? See tip #9
Find the size of your database, use Get Info (Command + I).
Make sure you have enough hard disk space available for twice that amount. As part of the rebuilding process, Entourage creates a second database file.
Quit any applications that are running, including virus-protection applications, all Office applications, Microsoft Messenger for Mac, and Office Notifications, because they might interfere with rebuilding. How to quit Notifications.
If you can’t get to the rebuild screen, there could be a conflict with another application. Try restarting your computer with Shift key down to quit remaining processes. For example, “Quicken Scheduler” can interfere with the process.

Rebuild your database:
Entourage 2001 and Entourage X: Hold down the Option key and re-launch the application. In a few seconds, you’ll be greeted with a dialogue box asking if you want the “Typical Rebuild” or the “Advanced Rebuild.” Choose “Typical.”
Entourage 2004: Hold down the Option key and re-launch the application. In a few seconds, you’ll be greeted with the Entourage 2004 Database Utility. Select to rebuild. (Note: Compact the database (Like X’s “Typical rebuild”) Rebuild the database (Like X’s “Advanced Rebuild”)
Caution: Some of your data might be lost if you choose the Advanced Rebuild option. You should use this option only if you have already performed a typical rebuild and continue to experience problems starting Entourage or storing data.

During the rebuild process, the old files are renamed in case for some reason the rebuild was not successful and you need to revert to the original database. After you’ve rebuilt your database and checked the application’s performance, you can delete the old versions from your hard drive. Do not throw away these files unless you are satisfied with the rebuild.

Old files are named:
Entourage 2004: Main [Backed up date and time will be shown] e.g. Main [Backed up 1-21-2007 13.35]
Entourage X: “Old Database Cache” and “Old Database”
Entourage 2001: “Old Database Cache”, “Old Database”, and “Old Messages.” In addition, Database (Rebuild) Cache is retained.

http://www.entourage.mvps.org/database/rebuild.html

NOTE: If you have stolen a laptop, shame on you!  I needed to perform this procedure on a girl’s laptop who OD’d on coke and they wanted to try to find out who sold it to her.  Also, the coke was laced, so they want to make sure that no one else uses it, or so they claim.  My guess is that they just want to find the dealer.  Regardless, this is the procedure on how to reset the main password in OSX if the system does not allow you to login.

Resetting the original administrator account password

Follow these steps to reset a password when there is only one administrator account on the computer, or if the original administrator account (of several) needs a password reset. “Original” administrator account refers to the one that was created immediately after installing Mac OS X. If the original administrator password is known, the original administrator user may reset the passwords of other administrator accounts using the steps described above.

1. Start up from a Mac OS X Install CD (one whose version is closest the the version of Mac OS X installed). You should first disable Open Firmware password protection, if it is enabled. Hold the C key as the computer starts.
2. Choose Reset Password from the Installer menu (or Utilities menu in Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger). Tip: If you don’t see this menu or menu choice, you’re probably not started from the CD yet.
3. Select your Mac OS X hard disk volume.
4. Set the user name of your original administrator account.

   Important: Do not select “System Administrator (root)”. This is actually a reference to the root user. Do not confuse it with a normal administrator account.

Well, it seems that you learn something new every day. A user requested to have this program Xcode installed on her computer. After a little bit of research, it appears that Xcode allows you to develop applications on the mac and iPhone. I found the location to download the application and sent it to the user.

http://developer.apple.com/technology/xcode.html – Just in case anyone was interested.

The download includes Xcode IDE, Dashcode, Instruments, interface builder, and the “rest” of the developer tools. If I knew how to develop code, this would interest me greatly! Oh well, at least I got to research something I never heard of before!

For those not aware, there are other emulators out there for the Nintendo 64 apart from Project64, however nearly all of them have been left out in the dust. Over the years many other projects have gotten little attention. This isn’t a big tragedy apart from the fact that Project64 is closed-source, and win32-only (although it does run well in Wine).

The only F/OSS emulator for N64 had always been Mupen64, which was often criticized for being quite a bit less mature than Project64 and some others. In any case, it was in development so we all figured it would ‘get there’ eventually… Until 2005 shortly after the release of version 0.5.1 (win32), when the project just froze. Then 2006 came and went, then 2007… And seemingly no progress was being made. It was a sad state of affairs because Mupen64 was essentially the only hope for Linux users to have a native N64 emulator for their platform.

Now, finally. After a few years, a new team has come together to work on the Mupen64 codebase, they have dubbed their project “Mupen64Plus” (a little generic if you ask me), and they’re hard at work, hacking away. From the little research I’ve done, it would seem the leader (Richard42) of this new project was a long-time contributor to Mupen64, and the original head of the Mupen64 project (Hacktarux) was planning on adding some of Richard’s new work back to the original project. I’m not sure if this merge happened or not, but it seems that on the Mupen64 homepage, the last version is still 0.5.1 for Windows and 0.5 for Linux. So who knows what happened.

I’ve been hanging out in the IRC channel for the new project for a few days now, it’s more of a developer channel, so I’m a bit out of place, even so, I like hanging out, I figure maybe I’ll learn a thing or two from the masters. :)

It seems everything is well underway. Their homepage already has a release, version 1.3, which worked pretty well for me barring a few issues. This is obviously only an initial release, so don’t expect it to be light-years ahead of the original Mupen64, but with time it could evolve to be the best out there. If you have any problems with this release, make sure you file a bug report in the “Issues” section of that page (I filed one for Ogre Battle the other day), developers need info on problems to be able to fix them, and if you’re not a developer, this is the best way to help. Make sure your report is detailed, provide the md5 hash for the rom you’re using, and list which plugins you were using. Trying different settings on the plugins and seeing if there are different results, and adding this info to your bug report(s) can go a long way towards helping along with debugging.

So now we mere mortals can only wait and see how this unfolds, but it definitely looks very promising. A big thank you to all the individuals working on this fork, and keep up the good work. The N64 and Emu fans of the world are all rooting for you! (I’m such a ham…)

A note on closed-source emulators:

I must say I’ll never understand the concept behind the “closed-source emulator”. After all, the philosophy behind the emulation community at large is to make sure that old classic games do not become forgotten or die off just because a console is no longer in widespread use. After all you can only have so many game systems hooked up in your living room at once, and a lot of these old games can often be more fun then many newer titles. To me, a closed-source project is always more vulnerable for many reasons, not only does it not benefit from the open-source “with enough eyes, all bugs are shallow” philosophy, but I would imagine that a closed codebase is easier to attack if you’re a company. Think about UltraHLE and Bleem! back in the day, if they had been Open Source, it would’ve been impossible to stop the code from spreading and evolving. Neither Nintendo nor Sony would have any legal recourse to stop individuals from hacking on the code. If preserving the classics, and making sure they can run on modern platforms is your goal, then opening the code under an OSI-compliant license is the only realistic option to achieve that goal, otherwise companies do have the power to stop you if they choose.

I have to say, I really didn’t expect this kind of traffic for my humble little post about the Valve Source engine possibly coming to Linux, especially given that I reported on it a week or two after Phoronix! And seriously, 1500+ diggs, wow.

In any case, that aside, something has been bugging me, and as usual, I can’t just let it go.

Some individuals have been referencing my post, only to be shot down by people claiming my 3rd point is invalid because EA supposedly handled the PS3 port work. I have to say, nice detective work. I haven’t kept up with console release news recently, so I missed the story about EA having done the port.

However… This is completely irrelevant regarding my point. Sure, in the article I imply that Valve did it, ok, so substitute Valve for “EA”, the important point is that the code EXISTS. Somewhere, somehow, there is a version of the Source Engine out there that is powered by OpenGL. Furthermore, I would be willing to bet that the OpenGL work, at the very least, is all Valve’s, and that EA only did the PS3-specific bits.

Why do I say something so speculative? Because when the HL2 source code was leaked years ago, the engine used OpenGL as a backend. Now we all know that the HL1 engine was based on Quake1, and that the Source Engine was developed from scratch specifically for HL2, but it’s possible the general engine components were done first, and the rendering backend last, so maybe this OpenGL code from the leaked version was actually an evolution of the HL1 rendering backend, who knows?

Of course, when you factor in the Postal III port, everything more or less falls into place, and you start to get a picture of what’s going on, Valve has to have their own OpenGL somewhere, because I just can’t see a dev house like RWS or Akella writing an entire rendering backend on their own, if they were going to go through that trouble they would’ve been better off using an engine that fit their needs better.

Now I hope this settles the issue. Keep in mind that my post wasn’t designed to be authoritative on the issue, I am merely looking at the various clues, and drawing certain conclusions from them. If I am wrong, and there isn’t a Linux port, well, the points stand up on their own, in the end all it will mean is that Valve completely wasted some source code that they already had in their hands, for whatever reason.

Anyways, that’s it for me. Until next time, take care of yourselves, and each other. :)

Doing randomness over the internet I stubled along these Parody Commercials procuded by novell. A lot of my Linux friends (Like Azalyn and RJ who write for this blog) have made several jokes about including linux into the mix of these commercials. It looks like Novell beat them to the punch…

PS: Linux is HOT!

PS: Linux is hotter in the jacket…

EDIT: I respond to the ‘EA wrote the PS3 Orange Box port’ comments here.

I’ve been meaning to write this post for awhile. It’s old news by now I’m sure, Phoronix first posted their story here on May 7th. But regardless…

I’m not sure what else I can add that the Phoronix article didn’t cover. However it seems some people are dismissing this as just a baseless rumor and no one seems optimistic about the possibility of it actually happening. So I’ll list the three main points here.

1. Valve puts up a job posting asking for a “Senior Software Engineer”, with one of the responsibilities being to “Port Windows-based games to the Linux platform”.

2. An upcoming game, Postal III is slated to have Windows, Mac and Linux ports. This game is designed using the Valve Source Engine. This is probably one of the strongest points, how are they going to make a Mac and Linux port without OpenGL? Clearly something is afoot. ;)

3. The Orange Box was released on the Playstation 3, a system that isn’t known to have any viable Direct3D/DirectX API implementations, on the contrary, it uses an OpenGL ES derivative and some other libraries standardized by the Khronos Group. It also uses Nvidia’s Cg shader language, which is also cross-platform (yes, works on ATI too). This means that either Valve already ported their game engine to OpenGL, or they are using an emulation layer such as Wine. Transgaming has been known to license their Cedega (Wine derivative) backend to console game developers, they did so for The Sims on the PS2 and some others too I believe. This by the way is not mentioned on the Phoronix article, and I’m not aware of any other site that has mentioned this (which is what makes my article unique I suppose).

Bonus! :)

4. Steam represents a unique opportunity for Valve, you see many who use Linux are often known to be more technically skilled than the average user, it is possible that game companies have known for a long time that there were many potential customers on Linux, but that they figured piracy would lower sales down too far, unlike on Windows where there is a huge majority of clueless users who may not even know how to pirate something, most Linux users are adept enough to do far more. This concern if it exists, is all but completely eliminated with Steam. Valve could also make a lot of money selling download statistics and usage data to other companies.

Phoronix also suggests that the UT3 Linux client delay could be related to this given that Epic has recently started offering their games through Steam. The implication seems to be that maybe Epic wishes to launch the Linux client through Steam, if this were the case, then Ryan Gordon would definitely be correct when he said “If I told you what the specific problem is, you wouldn’t believe me” during an interview at LinuxHardware.org. Can you imagine?:

“Yeah, it’s being delayed because of Steam”
“oh.. ok… .. wait.. — WHAT?”

In any case, we’ll have to wait patiently for more news. Personally I think the three first points are probably the strongest indications that this may happen. At the very least, it seems there is already, or will be an officially-maintained OpenGL backend for the Source Engine. Whether this translates into a Linux/Mac port remains to be seen. I mention the Mac too now because if they do a Linux port, it is doubtful they will not also release a Mac version, it is essentially as simple as a recompile to take a unix/posix/opengl/sdl application between Linux and Mac. Anyways, until next time. ;)

Well, if you are like me, you have a windows lab setup with a lowly Mac tower.  Otherwise, you just like PC keyboards better and want it to work on your Mac.  Regardless, we are in the same situation, I have a Mac tower but no eject button on my keyboard.  How do I get it out?

The answer?  F12!  Hold down F12 for a few second and it should eject the CD Rom and all is well in the world.

Well as you may or may not know, I am both a Mac and a Windows IT specialist.  I favor windows but have consulted many major mac clients as well.  I got into the mac scene again during the Panther to Tiger phenomenon and now that Tiger is getting the boot to Leopard, I just wanted to look at the features that Leopard has and see if it is worth me invested in the new operating system.  I have no reason to invest in Macs anymore since I now work at my current job, but it is much better to keep up to date than to let my skillz fall behind.  With that said, here are some highlights…

 Desktop Redesign – As I look at the review of the desktop redesign, I am reminded of Vista and the Windows Flip feature…I never used it in vista, and I will never use it on the mac.  Regardless, it allows you to have a pull-down if you may of different icons so if you overflow, you can select it instead of making all the icons smaller and smaller…

Finder – They improved the finder feature (again) It now can find music with Cover Flow (whatever that means….) I didn’t use the updated finder feature in Tiger, I wouldn’t use it now either. 

Quick Look – This allows you to browse, play, and page through your files without opening them.  This is a similar feature in Vista that I love and would probably use this a lot.  So far, if anything, this would make me want to switch.  Unfortunately, my mac is not very powerful and would probably need to be replaced to move to Leopard or at least use this feature….that is for another time though

Time Machine – it is a backup program of sorts.  You can look at different restore points and if needed, restore your system.  Microsoft has had this implementation since windows XP and I am not a big fan….perhaps the mac has a better grip on it than windows does…

Mail – Getter integration, so they claim.  I never really used mail in tiger, and would probably not use it in leopard as well….but that is just me.  I know a lot of people that used and loved it.  I wonder how much better it does on exchange integration now.  I know that it was kinda lacking it (which is why I didn’t use it) in previous versions.

Parental Controls – I do not think I need to go into explanation on this one….it has it, and I have no kids to worry about….PASS

Boot Camp – I highly doubt that they changed this feature all that much so no real draw to upgrade there…

 Those are the highlights on Apple’s homepage….I would make the leap if I had a slightly newer computer or still used a mac   Maybe I will pick it up and see how it runs on my mac powerbook…supposedly it has better memory management as well which would be nice….