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OS X has used sudo since the beginning. It's long been suggested practice not to setup your day to day user with Admin rights. There's no real problem there because anything you need admin rights to do prompts and you can put in the admin username/password, basically GUI sudo.

Example of the long standing suggestion to not use accounts with admin access dating back to 2006. I could probably find older ones if I felt like going past the first result on google:

http://www.macgeekery.com/tips/security/basic_mac_os_x_security

On other operating systems, installers are not harmless little fuzzy creatures.

I don't think they always have been on Macs either. For example, at one point they could run code as root without prompting for the user's password (if you were logged into an admin account, which most Mac users are because that's what's created by default at install time).

how to set up ipfw in leopard:

see here and here:

http://www.netmojo.ca/2007/10/31/fixing-leopards-firewall/

http://securosis.com/blog/help-build-the-best-ipfw-firewall-rules-sets-ever

or use the GUI tool wateroof to configure the firewall.

add the rules decribed here:
http://www.macgeekery.com/hacks/software/traffic_shaping_in_mac_os_x

then turn it on at boot like this:

http://lists.macosforge.org/pipermail/macports-users/2008-May/010337.html

and then turn off the application firewall in system preferences.

IN Leopard Apple went from ipfw to an application firewall. But ipfw is still there and can be run. you can configure ipfw to limit the bandwidth to specific IP addresses. Your problem is exactly what this is for.

http://www.macgeekery.com/hacks/software/traffic_shaping_in_mac_os_x

THere is probably some way to do this with the application firewall too but I don't know how.

Just use traffic shaping, on the workstation itself

I hate that people keep repeating this, it's utter bullshit. Sure they put on too much extra paste, but it really does not affect the temperature very much at all. I tried this with my brother's machine (reapplying the thermal paste thinly and evenly, using the "good" stuff), and the difference was negligible, 2-4 degrees in our case. I'm not the only one to have the same experience.

Does anyone know of a good Mac usenet/email group for learning all I can about the Mac?

Yes, I run that site, and email list. Mac Geekery is about such nitty-gritty. We also have a mailing list going for general suport and further geekery.

Slate? Where did you get slate from?

I could very well be wrong, but I remember hearing it called Slate. This link correlates with that, though it appears to one of very few so it could be wrong.

Have you looked at launchd, the new all-purpose task control daemon? Don't be put off by the fact that it's from Apple--it's open source, licensed under the APSL, which I believe is GPL-compatible, if you care about that kind of thing. It seems to offer many of the features you want, including task scheduling, preemption control, etc.

Here's the manpage; here's a tutorial (geared towards OS X developers, unfortunately), and here's John Siracusa's overview of launchd from Ars Technica.