pa href="/article/news/145125-coldplay-plan-ep-for-christmas-hint-at-next-album" target="_blank"strong"Too sexy"/strong/a for a href="/article/record_review/51286-coldplay-viva-la-vida-or-death-and-all-his-friends" target="_blank"strongemViva la Vida/em/strong/a, but just right to combat AIDS, Coldplay and a href="http://kylie.com/home" target="_blank"strongKylie Minogue/strong/a's recent collaboration "Lhuna" is available as of today (aka World AIDS Day) via the stronga href="http://www.joinred.com/" target="_blank"(RED)/a/strong movement's new a href="http://www.redwire.com" target="_blank"strong(RED)WIRE/strong/astrong /stronga href="/article/news/147732-coldplay-rem-dylan-u2-fight-aids-with-songs" target="_blank"strongmusic subscription service/e-zine/strong/a. Proceeds from the track, laid down by the Aussie siren and the bombastic Brits during the latter's sessions for this year's emViva la Vida or Death and All His Friends/em LP, go to providing medicine for Africans with HIV/AIDS-- so when your girlfriend catches you listening to it later tonight with the lights down, you can pull the old "good cause" card.br /br /Speaking of Kylie's encounters with big names, there are plenty to be found on emBoombox/em, her forthcoming remix LP, due January 5 in the UK from a href="http://www.parlophone.co.uk/" target="_blank"strongParlophone/strong/a. The Chemical Brothers, Fischerspooner, Mylo, Riton, and Whitey are among those who turn in remixes on the set, which also includes a Kylie/New Order "bootleg" mashup. Shucks, seems like every big name there is wants a piece of Ms. Minogue these days; a href="http://www.nme.com/news/various-artists/41386" target="_blank"strongNME.com/strong/a reports that Paris Hilton's second album is, by the socialite's own admission, "very dance, like Kylie Minogue." Fingers crossed for a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EevbQoXzGgA" target="_blank"strongthe "Locomotion" cover/strong/a, eh?br /br /Kylie's out on the road a bit this month, with dates in Asia and her native Australia. As for her partners in palpitation Coldplay, they're currently a href="/article/news/147692-jay-z-to-join-coldplay-on-tour" target="_blank"strongenjoying their victory lap/strong/a in the wake of the un-sexy but highly successful emViva la Vida/em.br //ppa href="http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/node/147811" target="_blank"read more/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/z25UJWRmTxsj1rh8ZNesGrZ79sE/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/z25UJWRmTxsj1rh8ZNesGrZ79sE/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/8gYqw0QNTlE" height="1" width="1"/

p"A high-concept album gets a high-concept video," we a href="/article/download/49661-the-acorn-flood-pt-1"strongwrote/strong/a when posting the video for "a href="/article/download/44278-the-acorn-flood-pt-1-mp3stream"strongFlood Pt. 1/strong/a", from Ottawa six-piece a href="http://www.myspace.com/theacorn"strongthe Acorn/strong/a's a href="/article/record_review/48751-glory-hope-mountain"strongemGlory Hope Mountain/em/strong/a. The same could be said about the Acorn's new video for "Crooked Legs", again directed/animated by a href="http://www.curiouspictures.com/commercials/directors_mills.html"strongChristopher Mills/strong/a (Modest Mouse, Broken Social Scene, Interpol). As Mills' impressive vision shifts from outer space to the path of a firefly-- "I'm guided by fireflies," head Acorn member span Rolf Klausener sings-- we hear plangent folk guitar arpeggios at the center of an increasingly expansive arrangement. Percussion abounds, and eventually Mills follows a bird to a house where the Acorn play their song, bathed in warm, yellowish light./span/p p object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="515" height="405" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" / param name="flashvars" value="file=http://pitchfork.tv/node/2542/embed.xml" / param name="src" value="http://video.pitchfork.tv/mediaplayer.swf" /embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="515" height="405" src="http://video.pitchfork.tv/mediaplayer.swf" flashvars="file=http://pitchfork.tv/node/2542/embed.xml" allowfullscreen="true"/embed /object /p pPitchfork.tv page with embed code is a href="http://pitchfork.tv/videos/the-acorn-crooked-legs" target="_blank"stronghere/strong/a./p p[fromem Glory Hope Mountain/em; out now on a href="http://paperbagrecords.com/"strongPaper Bag/strong/a]/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/8oyJkkQbhRAKqdMoSfAD3ZtKve8/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/8oyJkkQbhRAKqdMoSfAD3ZtKve8/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/tLuhKhYTLn8" height="1" width="1"/

pemsmallPhoto by stronga href="http://www.informationleafblower.com/blog/" target="_blank"Kyle Gustafson/a/strong/small/embr /br /stronga href="/article/news/50918-dan-deacon-spills-the-beans-about-new-album" target="_blank"'Twas a sunny afternoon in May/a/strong when stronga href="http://www.dandeacon.com/" target="_blank"Dan Deacon/a/strong told us that his new record and stronga href="/article/record_review/42811-spiderman-of-the-rings" target="_blank"emSpiderman of the Rings/em/a/strong follow-up, emBromst/em, would see the light of day in late 2008. Well now it's drab, wintry late 2008, and there's no new Dan Deacon record in sight to aurally splatterpaint our surroundings in spazzy neon sound-colors. What gives?br /br /Turns out emBromst/em just needed to marinate a little bit longer. The set will arrive on March 24 from stronga href="http://www.carparkrecords.com/" target="_blank"Carpark/a/strong, however contrary to a note on the label's website, emBromst/em will not be a double-disc affair; PR tells us that the emBronst/em companion record Deacon stronga href="/article/news/50918-dan-deacon-spills-the-beans-about-new-album" target="_blank"also mentioned way back when/a/strong has been scrapped.br /br /Not like Dan will have time to weep about it: the idea-man has kept busy in recent weeks putting together a new 15-piece ensemble, with which he'll debut selections from emBromst/em on December 11 at Brooklyn's Masonic Temple. The live band includes plenty of Deacon's B-town homeboys, including folks from Ponytail, Ecstatic Sunshine, Videohippos, Adventure, Double Dagger, and Future Islands, plus all four members of Brooklyn's So Percussion (who will also open the show, as will Dirty Projectors). "I'm both very excited and really nervous," Deacon writes of the event on his stronga href="http://www.myspace.com/dandeacon" target="_blank"MySpace/a/strong. And, elsewhere: "I also made a tent."br /br /Mr. Deacon will bide his time between the ensemble gig and emBromst/em's release with a smattering of other live appearances, including one more hometown go at his stronga href="/article/news/143776-dan-deacons-zany-round-robin-concept-tour-revealed" target="_blank"Round Robin thing/a/strong, a date with Girl Talk, and a trip to Australia.br //ppa href="http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/node/147814" target="_blank"read more/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/vOLfopTnKJealh7RLXtUBZJZFuk/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/vOLfopTnKJealh7RLXtUBZJZFuk/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/5UFegxzYL6Q" height="1" width="1"/

pemsmallGrizzly Bear photo by a href="http://www.noahm.com/"strongAhmed Klink/strong/a/small/embr /br /It was a week ago today that we posted stronga href="/article/news/147695-grizzly-bear-apologize-to-animal-collective-for-leak"stronga story/strong/a/strong about some trouble in the animal kingdom. It seems a href="http://www.grizzly-bear.net/"strongGrizzly Bear/strong/a posted "Brothersport", a track from a href="http://www.myanimalhome.net/"strongAnimal Collective/strong/a's forthcoming a href="/article/news/146944-first-listen-animal-collectives-merriweather-post-pavilion"strongemMerriweather Post Pavilion/em/strong/a, well in advance of the album's release. This was a no-no, according to the copyright-enforcin' a href="http://www.websheriff.com/"strongWeb Sheriff/strong/a, who put the e-smackdown on the Grizz./p pOver the Thanksgiving break, Grizzly Bear's Ed Droste a href="http://grizzly-bear.net/blog/?p=325"stronghopped on the band's blog/strong/a to call the whole thing "overblown and rather silly," and offer an explanation of exactly what happened. [Via ema href="http://www.exclaim.ca/articles/generalarticlesynopsfullart.aspx?csid1=115amp;csid2=844amp;fid1=35143"strongExclaim/strong/a/em/a href="http://www.thedailyswarm.com/headlines/grizzly-bear-leaks-animal-collective-track/"strongthe Daily Swarm/strong/a]:br /em blockquote1. The song was played on a French podcast or radio program.br /2. Someone (not me) ripped the song.br /3. Many blogs posted the track.br /4. I was one of those blogs.br /5. The weekend hit, and the Web Sheriff went on patrol.br /6. His email to us went into our Spam folder along with Penis Enlargement emails.br /7. His email to others that work with us were in the process of being addressed, but most likely were going to wait until Monday morning, after the weekend.br /8. Suddenly it was Sunday and note two made its way to us, and the tone had become more harsh.br /9. Web Sheriff believed we were ignoring him, but it was an honest misunderstanding.br /10. The song was taken down and the Web Sheriff's pre-written apology letter was put up, along with his letter, which I found funny. The posting of his letter was a mistake and was the only reason the issue came to any else's attention.br /11. People took note and blogged about it.br /12. I decided to take down Mr. Sheriff's letter and do this quick-and-easy twelve-step explanation./blockquote /em/p pDroste adds, "If I've offended anyone in the Animal Collective family with my excited post, I apologize. It was meant to generate even more excitement for what will surely be a great album, and yes the Web Sheriff is just doing his job. I hope this makes everyone happy! If Animal Collective would like to blog a song of ours in the future, Irsquo;d be more than happy to give it to them. In fact I'd be honored." That's very cute!/p pSpeaking of the Web Sheriff, a href="http://twitter.com/THEWEBSHERIFF"strongthis is great/strong/a./p pemMerriweather Post Pavilion/em, "Brothersport" and all, is due January 12 in the UK and January 20 Stateside from a href="http://www.dominorecordco.com/"strongDomino/strong/a. Grizzly Bear, meanwhile, aren't really due anywhere a href="/article/news/147379-new-grizzly-bear-album-coming-along-nicely"strongbut the studio/strong/a and the a href="/article/news/146497-grizzly-bear-final-fantasy-team-with-orchestra-for-gig"strongBrooklyn Academy of Music/strong/a for a while./ppa href="http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/node/147799" target="_blank"read more/a/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/8O5jpivd7AKukd7IWP8YmHXYAqw/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/8O5jpivd7AKukd7IWP8YmHXYAqw/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/EC06fiyYx04" height="1" width="1"/

pAn iffy economy, a war in Iraq, and a Democrat returning to the White House aren't all the late 2000s have in common with the early 1990s. a href="http://www.myspace.com/thepainsofbeingpureatheart"strongThe Pains of Being Pure at Heart/strong/a's "Everything With You" is the type of melodic, love-blissed noise-pop single that could have come out on a href="http://www.slumberlandrecords.com"strongSlumberland/strong/a years ago, but instead it's taken from the New York four-piece's forthcoming full-length debut for the label. The video, too, recalls an era when handheld camcorders rather than cell phones and digital cameras were the most convenient way of making home videos. Directed by Art Boonparn, it follows two likable young women goofing around and having adventures. In indie pop, it's always OK to have a best friend./p p object classid="clsid:d27cdb6e-ae6d-11cf-96b8-444553540000" width="515" height="405" codebase="http://download.macromedia.com/pub/shockwave/cabs/flash/swflash.cab#version=6,0,40,0" param name="allowfullscreen" value="true" / param name="flashvars" value="file=http://pitchfork.tv/node/2547/embed.xml" / param name="src" value="http://video.pitchfork.tv/mediaplayer.swf" /embed type="application/x-shockwave-flash" width="515" height="405" src="http://video.pitchfork.tv/mediaplayer.swf" flashvars="file=http://pitchfork.tv/node/2547/embed.xml" allowfullscreen="true"/embed /object /p pPitchfork.tv page with embed code is a href="http://pitchfork.tv/videos/the-pains-of-being-pure-at-heart-everything-with-you" target="_blank"stronghere/strong/a./p p[from the "Everything With You" 7"; out now; also from emThe Pains of Being Pure at Heart/em; due February 2009; both on a href="http://www.slumberlandrecords.com"strongSlumberland/strong/a]/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/vK3PgB0--S7yRsOISFAiN-nTmdg/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/vK3PgB0--S7yRsOISFAiN-nTmdg/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/faQTevvY3eM" height="1" width="1"/

pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/checkvistlogo.png" width="258" height="203" align="right" align="right" hspace="4" vspace="2" The problem with many online to-do list managers is that they don't support sub-lists for tasks that involve several stepsmdash;but outliner webapp Checkvist does just that, and with a clean interface that supports tons of keyboard shortcuts. Sign up for a free account at Checkvist to make your first list (hit Enter to add a task). Each list node can have a note attached to it, and any number of sub-nodes (Shift+Enter to enter one). Reorder your list items (Ctrl+arrow) and mark an item complete by selecting it and hitting the Spacebar. Export your lists from Checkvist to plain text, HTML, or OPML formats, and invite others to collaborate on the list with you. Here's what the Checkvist intro list (with some additions) looks like./p pimg src="http://cache.gawker.com/assets/images/lifehacker/2008/12/checkvistfullscreenie.png" class="center" width="847" height="686" style="display:block;float:none;" //p pAfter playing with Checkvist for just a short while, what struck me is just how damn fun and easy it is to do a brain dump in list format without ever taking your hands off the keyboard. If you're a regular list maker and keyboard shortcut lover, make sure you take a look./p div class="related"a href="http://checkvist.com/"Checkvist/a/div br style="clear: both;"/ a href="http://www.pheedo.com/click.phdo?s=b935365a47c4afa26aac19d913d7cf2bp=1"img alt="" style="border: 0;" border="0" src="http://www.pheedo.com/img.phdo?s=b935365a47c4afa26aac19d913d7cf2bp=1"//a img src="http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/tracker.php?i=b935365a47c4afa26aac19d913d7cf2b" style="display: none;" border="0" height="1" width="1" alt=""/div class="feedflare" a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=Ru2rfozN"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=120" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=HBrLhWeK"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?d=41" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=JcVkUOs5"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=JcVkUOs5" border="0"/img/a a href="http://feeds.gawker.com/~f/lifehacker/full?a=ewtIbVL6"img src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~f/lifehacker/full?i=ewtIbVL6" border="0"/img/a /divimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~4/942obVeliI8" height="1" width="1"/

img class=face src=http://planet.ubuntu.com/heads/spacey.png alt= pThe first report about the NN-Open #8220;Open-IT#8221; congress last week is available on the website of NOiV (Nederland Open in Verbinding). a href=http://noiv.nl/node/65487Read it here in Dutch/a. a href=http://translate.google.com/translate?u=http%3A%2F%2Fnoiv.nl%2Fnode%2F65487amp;hl=nlamp;ie=UTF-8amp;sl=nlamp;tl=enRead it here translated to English/a./p

pRarely have I seen such a delightful mix of precision puzzle-solving and musical craftsmanship. /p pa href=http://playauditorium.com/ class=bb-urlspan style=font-weight:boldAuditorium/span/a starts you off in the deep end of things. There's little in the way of an introduction and absolutely nothing resembling a tutorial to help you make sense of the goal. But that's part of the beauty of the experience: no hand-holding is required. As with most well-crafted time wasters, the basics are easy to grasp but mastery is a more demanding pursuit. Don't sweat it. You're guaranteed to have some fun along the way./p pTo say too much of the game would spoil the sense of discovery brought about by simply experimenting with the objects presented in each puzzle. Suffice to say that the musical reward for completing (or even exploring) a level is more than enough to motivate a player to put on his thinking cap and put the ol' gray matter to the test. It's almost Pavlovian in its elegance. For the visually inclined, there's a certain serenity to the swirling rays of colors that is equally fulfilling. /p pSpecial thanks to span style=font-weight:boldweswilson/span for dropping a link to today's featured game. Have a mesmerizing little melody you'd like featured on an upcoming a href=http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/taxonomy/term/464 class=bb-urlspan style=font-weight:boldAct Casual/span/a? Send us the chord structure and a few notes about it through our perfectly tuned a href=http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/contact class=bb-urlspan style=font-weight:boldContact Form/span/a/ppa href=http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/42453read more/a/p

pstronga href="http://www.jay-z.com/"strongJay-Z/strong/a/strong and a href="http://www.myspace.com/santogold "strongSantogold/strong/a put on for their borough with triumphantly brassy production by a href="http://www.kanyeuniversecity.com/"strongKanye West/strong/a on a track reportedly intended for the soundtrack to upcoming Notorious B.I.G. biopic a href="http://www.foxsearchlight.com/notorious/"strongemNotorious/em/strong/a. What "Brooklyn Go Hard" boasts in bloggability, though, it mostly lacks in originality. Jay's "Hello Brooklyn" was one of the weaker songs on a href="/article/record_review/46899-american-gangster"strongemAmerican Gangster/em/strong/a, and not just because of a lazy Lil Wayne guest verse; West already has a "Go Hard" song out there with T-Pain off of DJ Khaled's a href="/node/145613"emstrongWe Global/strong/em/a; and there's kind of been a a href="/article/download/144896-new-music-ti-ft-kanye-west-jay-z-and-lil-wayne-swagger-like-us-stream"strongrash/strong/a a href="/article/download/146379-new-music-mia-ft-jay-z-and-wale-boyz-remixes-mp3s"strongof/strong/a a href="/article/download/147624-new-music-jim-jones-ft-lil-wayne-noe-and-twista-jackin-swagga-from-us-mp3"strongsongs/strong/a built around looped M.I.A.-style vocal snippets (though usually by M.I.A.) herself), as well as looped vocal snippets a href="/node/141811"strongmore/strong/a a href="/article/download/144582-new-music-jay-z-prod-by-kanye-west-jockin-jay-z-mp3-stream"stronggenerally/strong/a./p pSo there's all that, and then, despite the booming horns, none of the swaggering live-band looseness of, say, emAmerican Gangster/em's "a href="/article/download/46926-jay-z-roc-boys-and-the-winner-is"strongRoc Boys/strong/a". "This is black hoodie rap," Jay begins, not "black superhero music". Still, West has crafted a percussive, slickly cinematic backing track, and Jay sounds awesomely slippery, raising his voice to the squeaking point at times and even playing with a Caribbean accent en route to an emAnnie/em reference. Santogold mostly just does the one-note hook, but she finds time for a rap-cadenced sing-song verse repping Bed-Stuy. Where Brooklyn at? It's here if you listen, but not quite in all of its glory (such as it is). (via a href="http://2dopeboyz.com/2008/11/30/jay-z-brooklyn-go-hard/"strong2dopeboyz/strong/a)/p pstrongMP3:gt;/strong a href="http://2dopeboyz.com/2008/11/30/jay-z-brooklyn-go-hard/" target="_blank"span style="text-decoration: underline;"Jay-Z [ft. Santogold; prod. by Kanye West]: "Brooklyn Go Hard/span/abr /[apparently from the emNotorious/em OST; film due in theaters 01/16/09]/p pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/QNBIOliye14GLkP4gPv0PB0JMZQ/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/QNBIOliye14GLkP4gPv0PB0JMZQ/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/pitchfork/today/~4/KfEICN5PFSI" height="1" width="1"/

pBefore we launch into our weekly exploits of the new, a well deserved Respeck Knuckles go to forum member Parallax Abstraction and his PC repair company Digital Lifeline that saved me from the evils of online miscreants and their sorcerers ways. He was able to remotely diagnose and do a deep clean to smoke out a nasty little rootkit that had torpedoed my system. And, to answer his question: yes that's a span style=font-style:italicStar Wars Galaxies/span icon on my desktop; I've just not gotten around to uninstalling it yet. In two hours he was able to do what I was not with a full day, thirteen incense burners, a Necronomicon and the blood or four cloven hooved ruminants./p pAs for the release list for this first week of December, the choice for game of the week is a fairly easy one. Ubisoft Montreal's span style=font-style:italicPrince of Persia/span is apparently a reboot of a reboot, a new take on among the oldest franchises. Artistically the previews and pre-release footage is stellar, and like every other game on the market these days the attention has shifted to an open world structure, though honestly that could mean anything. Early buzz has been fairly positive and there's not much else going on this week unless you've always longed to be part of a Swedish 70s Super Group./p pSo, as we continue to wind down into the impending doldrums of mid-to-late winter, Game of the Week goes to Prince./ppa href=http://www.gamerswithjobs.com/node/42452read more/a/p

img src="http://c.fsdn.com/fm/screenshots/68218_thumb.jpg" align="right" alt="Screenshot" hspace="10" vspace="10" Word War vi is a side-scrolling shoot 'em up '80s style arcade game. You pilot your "vi"per craft through core memory, rescuing lost .swp files, avoiding OS defenses, and wiping out those memory hogging emacs processes. When all the lost .swp files are rescued, head for the socket which will take you to the next node in the cluster. hr / strongLicense:/strong GNU General Public License v2 hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / "xmas mode" was added in which you not only get to blow stuff up and rescue your buddies, as usual, but you get to do so while piloting Santa's sleigh and delivering presents. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/SPWVIzgzpKdIUWOjupjxwYmPDvI/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/SPWVIzgzpKdIUWOjupjxwYmPDvI/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-unix/~4/7zv9OU4kzTU" height="1" width="1"/

img src="http://c.fsdn.com/fm/screenshots/68218_thumb.jpg" align="right" alt="Screenshot" hspace="10" vspace="10" Word War vi is a side-scrolling shoot 'em up '80s style arcade game. You pilot your "vi"per craft through core memory, rescuing lost .swp files, avoiding OS defenses, and wiping out those memory hogging emacs processes. When all the lost .swp files are rescued, head for the socket which will take you to the next node in the cluster. hr / strongLicense:/strong GNU General Public License v2 hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / "xmas mode" was added in which you not only get to blow stuff up and rescue your buddies, as usual, but you get to do so while piloting Santa's sleigh and delivering presents. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/8459LAwZDEkc9chsdsEfExfzBV8/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/8459LAwZDEkc9chsdsEfExfzBV8/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-global/~4/7zv9OU4kzTU" height="1" width="1"/

div class="rxbodyfield"p page="1" class="ArticleBody"As a target="_blank" href="http://www.computerworld.com/action/inform.do?command=searchamp;searchTerms=Barack+Obama"President-elect Barack Obama/a prepares to take office, the task of upgrading the security of federal computer systems continues to be a work in progress./pp align="right"a href="http://ad.doubleclick.net/jump/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" target="_blank" /img src="http://ad.doubleclick.net/ad/idg.us.info.rss/news;pos=imu;tile=6;sz=336x280;skey=patch_management;pkey=security;ord=123456789?" width="336" height="280" border="0" alt="" align="right"//a/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Several cybersecurity initiatives launched during the Bush administration are still years away from being completed. Others are closer to completion but don#39;t do enough by themselves to defend networks and systems against increasingly sophisticated attacks, according to IT security analysts./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"b[ Learn how to secure your systems with Roger Grimes#39; a href="http://weblog.infoworld.com/securityadviser/?source=fssr"Security Adviser blog/a and a href="http://www.infoworld.com/newsletter/subscribe.html?source=fssr"newsletter/a, both from InfoWorld. ]/b/pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"And, they said, resolving the security issues will require Obama to focus on more than just finishing the ongoing initiatives./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"For starters, he needs to end the policy of tying federal cybersecurity efforts so closely to the post-9/11 war on terror, said a target="_blank" href="http://www.computerworld.com/action/inform.do?command=searchamp;searchTerms=Gartner+Inc."Gartner/a analyst a target="_blank" href="http://www.computerworld.com/action/inform.do?command=searchamp;searchTerms=John+Pescatore"John Pescatore/a . quot;The terrorist attacks sent the Bush administration in the wrong directionquot; on cybersecurity, Pescatore said, adding that more immediate threats to federal systems have been overlooked./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Progress has been made, claimed a target="_blank" href="http://www.computerworld.com/action/inform.do?command=searchamp;searchTerms=Karen+Evans"Karen Evans/a , administrator of e-government and IT at the White House Office of Management and Budget (OMB). Evans said several security initiatives launched over the past few years are already making, or will soon make, a difference./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"At the top of her list is a 2004 mandate by a target="_blank" href="http://www.computerworld.com/action/inform.do?command=searchamp;searchTerms=George+W.+Bush"President Bush/a that required federal agencies to issue new smart-card identity credentials to all employees and contractors. But even that program hasn#39;t been fully implemented. Agencies were supposed to finish issuing the new ID cards in late October, but most will need at least two more years to do so./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Other projects that Evans pointed to include a recent upgrade of federal networks to the more secure IPv6 protocol and the Trusted Internet Connections program, under which agencies are working to reduce their external network connections./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Evans also cited the Federal Desktop Core Configuration (FDCC) project, which is aimed at cutting costs and boosting security by requiring agencies to employ standard security settings on all Windows PCs./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Earlier this year, President Bush also put in motion a highly classified, multiagency program called the Cyber Initiative, with a goal of bolstering the nation#39;s ability to detect and respond to cyberthreats against critical infrastructure targets./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Tom Kellerman, vice president of security awareness at Core Security Technologies in Boston, said the Cyber Initiative marked an quot;awakeningquot; in Washington about the need for stronger cybersecurity efforts./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"But Kellerman, who is a member of a commission that#39;s developing cybersecurity recommendations for Obama, said much remains to be done. quot;The existing administration has only just begun to pay attention to cybersecurityquot; as a national security issue, he said./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Many of the ongoing initiatives are helping to improve security in bits and pieces, Pescatore said. But, he added, they were the result of quot;random edictsquot; from the OMB, not broad cybersecurity objectives./pp page="1" class="ArticleBody"Increasingly, new funding has been moving toward surveillance and monitoring initiatives related to fighting terrorism. While such efforts are needed, Pescatore said, they do little to protect federal agencies from cybercriminals./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"Franklin Reeder, an independent consultant and former chief of information policy at the OMB, said the most important step for Obama is to use the government#39;s purchasing clout to compel IT vendors to build more security capabilities into products. The FDCC program has shown that such an approach can be successful, Reeder said./pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"More spending is needed on security training, he added. He also thinks the feds must change how they work with the private sector on security. Existing programs, Reeder contended, quot;have just been convened by the government for the government.quot;/pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"emThis version of the story originally appeared in Computerworld#39;s print edition. a target="_blank" href="http://www.computerworld.com/index.jsp"emComputerworld/em/a emis an InfoWorld affiliate./em/em/pp page="2" class="ArticleBody"emGot something to add? Let us know in the/em a target="_blank" href="http://www.computerworld.com/comments/node/330264"emarticle comments/em/a em./em/p/divbr style=clear: both;/ a href=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=camp;i=3f04188ad5e445616759adaec22ac451amp;p=1img style=border:0; src=http://www.pheedo.com/feeds/ht.php?t=vamp;i=3f04188ad5e445616759adaec22ac451amp;p=1 border=0 //a

I inadvertently went afoul of Apple's submission policy by submitting the contents of a bug report to the forums (apparently you can't do that).

I've reposted the full post here (I'm hopeful it might be useful to other with similar issues).

My personal opinion is that much of the "preparing to backup" issues are related to 2 things.

1) Very slow transfer speeds between computers and the TC. Specifically wireless network transfer is very slow. There is something seriously wrong here. It doesn't appear to be universal (in fact I myself had it working fairly well for over a month). I wonder if we can't figure out the combination of factors that lead to poor performance. I tried a number of things (see below), but I wasn't able to get at a root cause. restarting (physically taking power from the TC) seems to help for a while.

2) A backup algorithm that reads enormous amounts of data over the wireless network (from TC to Computer). (for example in one case I read 2.5 gigabytes of data in order to determine we needed to back up 18 megabytes)

Eventually I gave up on wireless, and ran a 1000baseT network cable to my iMac -- Time machine seems to be working just fine now.

The combination of these things leads many users to hours of frustration.

If anyone out there with a bit more network savvy than me can confirm theses findings (and perhaps indicate what the heck time machine is doing while it is preparing to backup), maybe we can file a few more reports for the engineering team to look at.

(While writing this, I noticed my 18 megabyte backup had "finished" -- That is, had gotten to 18 out of 18 megabytes, but is still processing. While "still processing" it has transferred another 300 megabytes of data from the TC to the computer)

One other interesting fact -- I did all the testing of time machine with spotlight turned off (that is the main hard drive excluded from spotlight). After I got it working directly connected to the mac (not over wireless), I re-enabled spotlight.

While it was re-building it's index, I noticed a rather significant amount of network traffic. I don't believe spotlight indexes network drives (at least you can't exclude them in the privacy pane).

I'm thinking that spotlight and time machine are somehow related. I've seen cases where when time machine is running, spotlight is re-indexing. If this drives significant network traffic then the wireless network performance will introduce long delays into the backup (and likely expose other defects -- I doubt apple engineers thought that backups would end up taking 10's of hours just to do the prepare stage.

Mike

---


I've had increasing difficulties getting the time capsule to work with time machine.

I see failures

1) preparing to backup takes forever.
a) Deep node traversal that never ends
b) Waiting for index that never ends.

2) Very very slow wireless networking speeds. I'm seeing speeds of about 2Mbits per second over wireless. That seems quite slow.

I've done an "archive and install" and wiped my time capsule clean to start over. The initial backup went fine, but subsequent updates got me back into this state.

I've tried disabling spotlight (as well as re-doing the spotlight index) but to no avail.

I've also "fixed" any permissions problems that might exist.

Regarding the wireless bandwidth, I've checked my Signal to Noise ratio (I'm about 30DB, which is in a reasonable range), I've tried G, N and B, 5ghz, as well as 2.4 ghz. Performance was always the same. I've disabled WDS.

I believe that some of the "preparing to backup" problems are related to the amount of data that has to be transferred (or that is being transferred) between the TC and the Mac. For example, I've been "preparing to backup" for about 30 minutes and I'm seeing sustained incoming rates of around 800 KBytes per second (I'm on 1000 base T, no longer wireless), and outgoing rates of about 100KBytes per second.

Note I haven't actually gotten to the part where it copies files to the time machine yet. In the course of "preparing" to back up, it has copied over 1.6 gigabytes of data from the TC.

(brief update, while writing this, I transitioned to backup up data (I have 18.7 MB to back up, and it ultimately transferred 2.5 gigabytes over the network. That's seriously messed up)

I'm not sure what exactly it is doing, but either it is caught in an infinite loop, or it is copying too much data to determine what to back up. (Note: Not an infinite loop, it did finish).

Current logs are:

11/30/08 9:04:11 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2306 Backup requested by user
11/30/08 9:04:11 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2306 Starting standard backup
11/30/08 9:04:26 PM kernel AFP_VFS afpfs_mount: /Volumes/mpkirby's Time Capsule, pid 2307
11/30/08 9:04:26 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2306 Network volume mounted at: /Volumes/mpkirby's Time Capsule
11/30/08 9:04:33 PM hdiejectd2347 running

11/30/08 9:04:34 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2306 Disk image /Volumes/mpkirby's Time Capsule/mpkirby’s Computer_0016cb9a995c.sparsebundle mounted at: /Volumes/Backup of mpkirby’s Computer
11/30/08 9:04:34 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2306 Backing up to: /Volumes/Backup of mpkirby’s Computer/Backups.backupdb
11/30/08 9:04:40 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2306 Event store UUIDs don't match for volume: Macintosh HD
11/30/08 9:04:40 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2306 Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
11/30/08 9:04:42 PM SyncServer2363 SyncServer: Truth vacuumed. Next vacuum date 2008-12-14 21:04:42 -0500
11/30/08 9:04:45 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2306 Waiting for index to be ready (906 > 0)
11/30/08 9:05:05 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2306 Node requires deep traversal:/ reason:kFSEDBEventFlagMustScanSubDirs|kFSEDBEventFlagReasonEventDBUntrustable|
11/30/08 9:06:26 PM com.apple.launchd[1] (com.apple.netauth.sysagent2307) Stray process with PGID equal to this dead job: PID 2326 PPID 1 check_afp
11/30/08 9:51:40 PM /System/Library/CoreServices/backupd2306 No pre-backup thinning needed: 100.0 MB requested (including padding), 783.52 GB available

Thanks,
Mike

img src="http://c.fsdn.com/fm/screenshots/36796_70390_thumb.png" align="right" alt="Screenshot" hspace="10" vspace="10" NoMachine NX is a fast terminal server and desktop virtualization system based on the X11 protocol. NX is an order of magnitude faster than VNC or X11 and can run on bandwidth as narrow as 10 kBit/sec. In addition, NX translates and embeds the MS Windows Terminal Server and VNC protocols into X/NX, enabling users to compress and accelerate remote Windows and VNC sessions. The NX project provides a suite of libraries and X11 proxying agents implementing efficient compression and optimized transport of X11, SMB, IPP, HTTP, and arbitrary protocols like audio and video over the Internet. hr / strongLicense:/strong GNU General Public License (GPL) hr / strongChanges:/strongbr / This version solves some issues which may prevent printing from working correctly when multi-node support is enabled. The package also includes solutions for problems affecting the NX Core. For example, the NX session could fail during the reconnection procedure when a font is missing; NX agent could handle resize at reconnection in an incorrect way; and painting errors may occur when screen areas beyond the current viewport become viewable in NX Client for Windows. pa href="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/FORommzCQtTnUlzEASQYu9a0Fm4/a"img src="http://feedads.googleadservices.com/~a/FORommzCQtTnUlzEASQYu9a0Fm4/i" border="0" ismap="true"/img/a/pimg src="http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/freshmeat/feeds/fm-releases-global/~4/40EqR_ENTtw" height="1" width="1"/

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