Author: Dave December 5, 2007

It goes without saying that with new software comes new bugs. I like to write about some of these bugs, having written a few good ones myself. In fact, I consider myself somewhat of a Digital Entomologist in a manner of speaking. While out hunting some rare, or not so rare species to give me ideas on what a new bug should NOT look like, I ran across this one…

This Leopard bug beats anything Vista has to offer by ZDNet‘s Adrian Kingsley-Hughes — In this blog I’ve highlighted a number of Vista related bugs, some of which are trivial, others pretty serious, but today I’ve come across a bug in Leopard that beats anything Microsoft has to offer in Vista hands down – this bug is serious because it causes widespread data loss, and it’s easy to replicate.

I’m thinking that this may not be a bug however. This could be a whole new way of combating attacks to your personal, or company data via the internet. The theory, in short, would be that if one has no data what to speak of, or their data is deleted on a regular basis should they try to create new data, how then would one be in danger of compromising their important data? Brilliant!

Well I guess that would actually cause problems for some. But it definitely would be one way of defeating a would-be hacker. Imagine if a thief spent so many hours trying to cleverly devise a plan to force an entry to your home (or in Leopard’s case, just knock down the dilapidated screen door) only to get in and find no furniture, no valuables, no television…not so much as a noodling champion of 2007 trophy. Expect more on noodling on this blog by the way, as this is my second reference to the sport, and I seem to be caught on it.

I have friends and family who recently purchased and installed OSX Leopard, and with the news of this article I’ll have to notify them that my original theory their data loss having all the earmarks of being caused by none other than the notorious Green Java Stick Insect is incorrect. It’s just some really ugly programming. By the way, with the holiday season upon us, if you were looking for some last minute gift ideas, namely some dried insects, I highly recommend BugsDirectUK.com for two reasons: 1. Prior to today, I wouldn’t know where you’d actually purchase dried insects, and 2. You could pick up your own Green Java Stick Insect (already dead and displayed in a frame – safe for your Mac) for only £38.00, I think that’s about $400 USD now, something like that. You could even mix and match your stick insects, they come in different colors apparently.

Aside from the gift ideas and new sports, I think it’s scary enough that Quicktime is exposing so many holes. A good starting point would be to patch up the data loss issue first, we could always uninstall Quicktime.