Slashdot Mirror
iWarez
asv108 writes "It seems that people are finding new uses for their iPod. According to this story in Wired, a Dallas area CompUsa employee caught a teenager transferring a fresh copy of Office for OSX to his iPod from a store demo machine."
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
According to the story, it was a computer consultant shopping in CompUSA who saw this.
It's irrelevant, I guess, since nobody actually reads the stories anymore.
Actually, no, you don't need the CD.
I've done clean MacOS installs (which replace the system folder with a fresh one) and then, the next time Office ran, it executed the "first run" routine which placed the proper files back in the System folder -- essentially replicating the process of dragging an Office installation from one machine to another without the installer app. In fact, one of the install methods that the Office CD offers (at least, my Mac Office 2001 Educational Edition, since I work in a university) is to just copy a folder from CD to hard disk.
So yes, it will work when copied from the iPod to another Mac, at least if it's Office 2001 -- I don't know for sure if Office 10 does this as well, though we also have the educational edition of that. (I've never tried.)
i am a soviet space shuttle
Unsure whether the kid was a thief or an out-of-uniform employee, Webb watched as he left the store. "I thought there's no point in getting any more involved in this imbroglio," Webb said. "Besides, this is Texas. You never know what he might have been carrying."
One entry found for imbroglio.
Main Entry: imbroglio Pronunciation: im-'brOl-(")yO Function: noun Inflected Form(s): plural -glios Etymology: Italian, from imbrogliare to entangle, from Middle French embrouiller -- more at EMBROIL Date: 1750 1 : a confused mass 2 a : an intricate or complicated situation (as in a drama or novel) b : an acutely painful or embarrassing misunderstanding c : a violently confused or bitterly complicated altercation : EMBROILMEN
Found it here.
Webb watched the teenager copy a couple of other applications. He left the kid to find a CompUSA employee. "I went over and told a CompUSA guy, but he looked at me like I was clueless," Webb said.
Unsure whether the kid was a thief or an out-of-uniform employee, Webb watched as he left the store. "I thought there's no point in getting any more involved in this imbroglio," Webb said. "Besides, this is Texas. You never know what he might have been carrying."
CompUSA representatives didn't respond to requests for comment. Neither did Apple officials.
So basically the CompUSA people had no clue what was going on. Typical.
Also note that nobody was caught as the poster claimed. The event was merely witnessed, nobody was caught.
Lasers Controlled Games!
I've never used it, but supposedly it works well.
Gentoo Linux http://gentoo.org/
Typo. (Saying OS X instead of Office for OS X.) =] Haven't had my fill of cappuccino and penguin mints for the day.
The problem with dragging the Office folder-- aren't the preferences/serial/whatnot stored elsewhere? I remember in my days of using a Mac and buying a new one I'd have to sort out the preferences files in the system folder to move my programs over to my new computer and avoid the hassle of restoring them. Microsoft programs, in particular, like to scatter things all over the place.
Who knows. Maybe OS X is different, I haven't bothered to touch it after experiencing repeated kernel panics.
-Sara
It wouldn't be so bad, but the Slashdot summary makes it sound like the CompUSA employee did something about it. The story clearly says that the employee was clueless and did nothing about it.
"...copy this folder to your hard drive"
.dmg of the Office X CD from Hotline or Carracho, and registration keys are easy to find for almost anything online.
That's what it says on the Office X CD. You copy that folder, and when you launch an Office app for the first time it checks to see if that other stuff isn't there. If it's not, it copies it there to complete the install.
From the article: When installing Office, users simply drag and drop the Office folder to their hard drive. Everything is included, including a self-repair mechanism that replaces critical files in the system folder.
Chances are, just copying the Office folder worked like a charm. If not, it's not like he can't grab a
~Philly
I'm not exactly sure why, but all you need to copy an application is the folder containing it and related files. I think that it must just create all of the preference files and such the first time you open the application (this is also why you can delete the preference file of an application at any time with no ramifcations). This works on even seemingly complicated applications, like Mathematica. Not that I would know or anything.
My dingo ate your honor student.
Apple has a program where they put Apple employees in the Apple "store within a store" at CompUSA stores. Clearly the author of the story went to a generic CompUSA employee, and not the Apple employee. The stores in Dallas keep their Apple stuff up-to-date as a result. I'm not sure what the scope of this program is, but where it's in place, it rocks!
My other sig is extremely clever...
Just a small note, the OS for the iPod is a cellphone OS that has PDA capabilities built in. Apple actually stripped those out to make the iPod so it's a product that's just waiting to be made, just add industrial design...
OK, let's take seriously the idea that Windows uninstallers usually work as advertised. If you want to kill the preferences file, you check in, ooh! two places /Library/Preferences or ~/Library/Preferences
According to the rules, those are the only things that should be outsid the application bundle except for saved files which would be normally saved in ~/Documents.
An application bundle is a folder that looks like a signle file application but is in reality a folder. Nobody puts their files inside an app bundle. That would be as asinine as trying to save everything on the root level of your hard drive in windows.
The Wired article covers this. Apparently the Office for Mac install consists of dragging the Office folder on the CD onto the hard drive icon. The kid just dragged the Office folder from the hard drive to his iPod. Thus, any installed copy of Office for Mac is also an installer: either Office is installed and you risk copying, or Office is not installed and you can't continue being a Micro$oft drone...
:-p
Now why the demo machine needed to have Office installed is another question. In my experience, CompUSA/Best Buy/etc. try to prevent customers from being able to do anything useful on the demo machines.
"It take 9 months to bear a child, no matter how many women you assign to the job."
Depends on your definition of "quickly"; it can be done, but you'll need another Mac handy....
I use Macs for work, Linux for education, and Windows for cardplaying.
Not so funny, considering that the President of the Grammies, Michael Greene, actually called .mp3 swapping a life-or-death matter at last night's Grammy Award presentation. Seriously.
There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
If you can throw a brick at Microsoft from where your at, you should know that North East 8th (about 3 miles from MS, has about a dozen computer stores on it, try Computer Stop, they have most everything in stock, although you will pay for it.