I believe someone asked about Flash today-- Apple, of course, said "nothing to announce", but also reminded devs that MobileSafari handles MP4/H.264 just fine, and that's an option for Internet video. With higher quality and such.
Not the same as embeddable Flash, 'course, but I don't think it's fair to say that Flash is "absolutely necessary" for Internet video.
I thought the same thing you did, until I thought a little bit more about why those door locks work the way they do.
No car company can really stop people from locking their keys in their cars without fancy solutions like RFID fingers or Bluetooth or some-such. I don't think the people at Isuzu who designed your car door thought that they could. Instead, they were trying to solve the problem of unintentionally closing the locked door. It seems like something that doesn't happen often, but what if you had locked the door, then went for something you had tossed on the roof, etc., then bumped the door shut? Maybe the wind blew? Holding the door handle isn't supposed to make you think about your keys, it's only supposed to confirm that it's a human performing the action. Wind doesn't hold door handles open.
Of course, this doesn't really relate to your UAC analogy. Sorry.
CIPA applies to school Internet connections, not school computers (if I remember correctly). This means porn filters on school gateways, etc., but not necessarily school/computers/.
Besides, as I mentioned above, schools failing to comply with CIPA will lose their prorated Internet access and equipment, but not necessarily face actual penalties.
While that's a pleasant sentiment, it's entirely untrue that school computers cannot have content-filtering software or restrictions on them. In fact, federal law strips school districts that do NOT perform this filtering of their reduced-price Internet access, effectively making it a financial impossibility to give public-school students free access to the Internet.
I don't believe that particular law applies to computers-- just school Internet connections-- but the Constitution is not the law. Law of the land, yes. Law that is followed, not always.
I've been watching this over the past few years, as I act as tech support for friends and family-- as well as professionally at times-- and use OS X, Ubuntu, XP, and FreeBSD.
Linux on the desktop is a fantastic goal, but Windows is entrenched and that's not going to REALLY change in under a generation. People who learn to use computers running Windows-- especially older users and the less technical who might lean more towards memorization than understanding-- will stick with Windows because that's what they know, and there's very little Windows can do to fight that. People put up extraordinary resistance to change on their desktop "mouse, keyboard, monitor, chair" setups, and I haven't found a way around this.
Where I think Linux (and I say "Linux" meaning the kernel, not necessarily a distro) can really shine, and is shining, is embedded devices and new user interaction paradigms. Here's where people are really used to change. Look at your average American cell-phone owner. They upgrade faithfully every two years, and while Verizon has done some to standardize its phones' UIs, they still re-learn menus, key sequences, address book formats, EVERYTHING every time they get a new phone. The same with PDAs, smartphones, etc. When people aren't under the impression that they will stick with a UI for the rest of their life, when they KNOW they have to change and they're used to it, they can accept whatever that change is. Linux, being free, easily slimmed down, and extensible, can be that change. It already is. Look at the new generations of smartphones coming out-- more and more, phones are more computer than appliance. As these devices demand more and more power, the space will open up for Linux to move in.
Ubuntu? It's usable, it's great, but even after using it for a year-- even after customizing it much more than I could ever have customized my Mac-- I missed OS X. The same with my grandmother and XP, the same with my friends and pick-your-OS. But I transitioned from a Treo 650 to a 700wx to an iPhone in a month apiece, and didn't feel lost on any of them. My friends can do the same easily. That's where the weak point is in MS entrenchment, or any vendor's entrenchment, which means that Linux can really compete on level ground.
Just so you know, the MacBook Pro has a keyboard integrated into the top case, along with the trackpad assembly and speakers. Putting that through the dishwasher is *not* a good idea, although it might get some interesting reactions at the Apple Store when you try to redeem your warranty.
Correct. Apple has switched hard-drive vendors many times since the G4s, but the Sawtooth through Mirrored Door lines used primarily Maxtor drives, if I recall correctly. Same with the G4 iMacs. Laptops got Seagate (sometimes) or Toshiba.
The drives *are* branded with the Apple logo on the top sticker-- that's how you know a drive is stock-- but they're certainly not manufactured by Apple. That G4 is probably still ticking more out of luck than anything else (although the Pro/tower lines do tend to tick stronger than most of their other machines.)
I'm a Mac tech, not an engineer, but that's what I've seen.
As far as I can tell, the coffeemaker *doesn't* run Windows-- the exploit is in the "connection kit", which is software that runs on a PC, which plugs into the coffeemaker, which lets coffee-people fix your coffeemaker from afar.
So this wouldn't have much in the way of applicability unless you knew someone with this particular $2000 coffeemaker, which was already experiencing problems, who had purchased the $100+ coffeemaker diagnostic kit and had the coffeemaker plugged in, through the diagnostic kit, to their PC at the time.
Seems like there are better ways to get into Windows.
Ah. I think you went a bit more in-depth than I did. I suppose that's good-- it gives me the reassurance that if I had tried just a little bit longer, I still would have failed.:]
If you ever attack it again, I'd look at WinClone for some insight. It's a piece of Mac software ostensibly dedicated to cloning NTFS partitions, but it includes a lot of helpful output on exactly which bits it's setting to make the durn thing bootable. Maybe you've already gone through that-- and maybe it's not applicable at all-- but I remember seeing it and thinking "oh, hey, that's a good place to learn about Windows boot sectors". Pretty good FAQ on the site, too.
From my limited experience trying to do what you're talking about, it's a royal PITA and not fun to attempt. For me, though, the PITA was trying to get XP to work with USB *and* the EFI on my MacBook Pro-- it was just so much work that I eventually gave up and did it a different way.
You're talking about writing an ISO filesystem with free-software tools, though-- that shouldn't be too hard to do. Assuming that you're OK with using Microsoft's cabextract tools to get inside the install files you need to modify, you can use makeisofs (or mkisofs, something along those lines) and roll it up that way. That's not the hard part.
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How about the size of the "com.apple.Safari" folder *inside* the -Caches- folder? Other applications may be allowed to keep things there.
I believe someone asked about Flash today-- Apple, of course, said "nothing to announce", but also reminded devs that MobileSafari handles MP4/H.264 just fine, and that's an option for Internet video. With higher quality and such.
Not the same as embeddable Flash, 'course, but I don't think it's fair to say that Flash is "absolutely necessary" for Internet video.
I thought the same thing you did, until I thought a little bit more about why those door locks work the way they do.
No car company can really stop people from locking their keys in their cars without fancy solutions like RFID fingers or Bluetooth or some-such. I don't think the people at Isuzu who designed your car door thought that they could. Instead, they were trying to solve the problem of unintentionally closing the locked door. It seems like something that doesn't happen often, but what if you had locked the door, then went for something you had tossed on the roof, etc., then bumped the door shut? Maybe the wind blew? Holding the door handle isn't supposed to make you think about your keys, it's only supposed to confirm that it's a human performing the action. Wind doesn't hold door handles open.
Of course, this doesn't really relate to your UAC analogy. Sorry.
CIPA applies to school Internet connections, not school computers (if I remember correctly). This means porn filters on school gateways, etc., but not necessarily school /computers/.
Besides, as I mentioned above, schools failing to comply with CIPA will lose their prorated Internet access and equipment, but not necessarily face actual penalties.
While that's a pleasant sentiment, it's entirely untrue that school computers cannot have content-filtering software or restrictions on them. In fact, federal law strips school districts that do NOT perform this filtering of their reduced-price Internet access, effectively making it a financial impossibility to give public-school students free access to the Internet.
I don't believe that particular law applies to computers-- just school Internet connections-- but the Constitution is not the law. Law of the land, yes. Law that is followed, not always.
-a
And when you drop a pen or some little godforsaken motherboard screw? Hold your breath, scrounge around in CO2 fog, surface, curse, repeat...
Posting to negate my fat-fingered moderation. Disregard.
I've been watching this over the past few years, as I act as tech support for friends and family-- as well as professionally at times-- and use OS X, Ubuntu, XP, and FreeBSD.
Linux on the desktop is a fantastic goal, but Windows is entrenched and that's not going to REALLY change in under a generation. People who learn to use computers running Windows-- especially older users and the less technical who might lean more towards memorization than understanding-- will stick with Windows because that's what they know, and there's very little Windows can do to fight that. People put up extraordinary resistance to change on their desktop "mouse, keyboard, monitor, chair" setups, and I haven't found a way around this.
Where I think Linux (and I say "Linux" meaning the kernel, not necessarily a distro) can really shine, and is shining, is embedded devices and new user interaction paradigms. Here's where people are really used to change. Look at your average American cell-phone owner. They upgrade faithfully every two years, and while Verizon has done some to standardize its phones' UIs, they still re-learn menus, key sequences, address book formats, EVERYTHING every time they get a new phone. The same with PDAs, smartphones, etc. When people aren't under the impression that they will stick with a UI for the rest of their life, when they KNOW they have to change and they're used to it, they can accept whatever that change is. Linux, being free, easily slimmed down, and extensible, can be that change. It already is. Look at the new generations of smartphones coming out-- more and more, phones are more computer than appliance. As these devices demand more and more power, the space will open up for Linux to move in.
Ubuntu? It's usable, it's great, but even after using it for a year-- even after customizing it much more than I could ever have customized my Mac-- I missed OS X. The same with my grandmother and XP, the same with my friends and pick-your-OS. But I transitioned from a Treo 650 to a 700wx to an iPhone in a month apiece, and didn't feel lost on any of them. My friends can do the same easily. That's where the weak point is in MS entrenchment, or any vendor's entrenchment, which means that Linux can really compete on level ground.
Just so you know, the MacBook Pro has a keyboard integrated into the top case, along with the trackpad assembly and speakers. Putting that through the dishwasher is *not* a good idea, although it might get some interesting reactions at the Apple Store when you try to redeem your warranty.
"You did *what* to the keyboard?"
Correct. Apple has switched hard-drive vendors many times since the G4s, but the Sawtooth through Mirrored Door lines used primarily Maxtor drives, if I recall correctly. Same with the G4 iMacs. Laptops got Seagate (sometimes) or Toshiba.
The drives *are* branded with the Apple logo on the top sticker-- that's how you know a drive is stock-- but they're certainly not manufactured by Apple. That G4 is probably still ticking more out of luck than anything else (although the Pro/tower lines do tend to tick stronger than most of their other machines.)
I'm a Mac tech, not an engineer, but that's what I've seen.
As far as I can tell, the coffeemaker *doesn't* run Windows-- the exploit is in the "connection kit", which is software that runs on a PC, which plugs into the coffeemaker, which lets coffee-people fix your coffeemaker from afar.
So this wouldn't have much in the way of applicability unless you knew someone with this particular $2000 coffeemaker, which was already experiencing problems, who had purchased the $100+ coffeemaker diagnostic kit and had the coffeemaker plugged in, through the diagnostic kit, to their PC at the time.
Seems like there are better ways to get into Windows.
Ah. I think you went a bit more in-depth than I did. I suppose that's good-- it gives me the reassurance that if I had tried just a little bit longer, I still would have failed. :]
If you ever attack it again, I'd look at WinClone for some insight. It's a piece of Mac software ostensibly dedicated to cloning NTFS partitions, but it includes a lot of helpful output on exactly which bits it's setting to make the durn thing bootable. Maybe you've already gone through that-- and maybe it's not applicable at all-- but I remember seeing it and thinking "oh, hey, that's a good place to learn about Windows boot sectors". Pretty good FAQ on the site, too.
From my limited experience trying to do what you're talking about, it's a royal PITA and not fun to attempt. For me, though, the PITA was trying to get XP to work with USB *and* the EFI on my MacBook Pro-- it was just so much work that I eventually gave up and did it a different way.
You're talking about writing an ISO filesystem with free-software tools, though-- that shouldn't be too hard to do. Assuming that you're OK with using Microsoft's cabextract tools to get inside the install files you need to modify, you can use makeisofs (or mkisofs, something along those lines) and roll it up that way. That's not the hard part.
Good luck to you.
If you considered it "painful" to burn the CD, maybe Linux wasn't the best choice in the first place.