Okay... if AOL keeps it's lines open to EVERYONE, this is a good thing. If they attempt to just open them up to MS, hoping that that will be enough to obtain regulatory approval... and they succeed...all hell will break loose.
Seriously... isn't this one of the signs of the coming apocalypse?
Actually, it would probably be done either via official housing tract number (you can find the one out for your property by going to the County Recorder's Office). ie, jcleaver@578.SW.TINKERBELL.SDCA.E3452.CO.SD.CA.US or, via your 9 digit zip code: House # 7320 at 92114-4613 would be: jcleaver@7320.13.46.14.921.CA.US The REALLY cool thing is that this has the potential for: a) city governments that can immediately e-mail EVERY single one if its citizens regarding important local events. ("Warning: Local Beaches shall be closed this Friday due to...", "Don't forget to vote tomorrow") b) PERMENANT email addresses, provided for the government, one for each citizen... Imagine this senario: I've got an ID number I can use to let people e-mail me, wherever I move to or am located. Say my ID is 3334521. 1) Someone tries to contact me at ID 3334521. 2) The USPS checks to see if the sender is under a restraining order preventing them from contacting me, or if they are a direct mail organization and my direct mail preference specifies no direct mail. 3) If it is approved, the USPS places the mail in my inbox. My ACTUAL e-mail address, known only to me and the USPS's computers (and protected by law just as well as census data is), might be "jcleaver@7320.13.46.14.921.ca.us". This will keep physical locations private, and allow a "buffer zone" between someone's "real address" and their e-address. You could even expand this system and have your regular ISP forward mail to your ID number at the USPS, allowing all your mail to end up at the same location easily w/o compromising your privacy or security.
Obscure Software available for the Mac
on
Power Up That iMac
·
· Score: 2
One of the cool things about the Mac Shareware community is that there's *tons* of stuff out there that a lot of people don't know about. (Try PureMac.com).
IP masquarading takes about 2 minutes to set up with a cool utility called IPNetRouter avaiable from Sustworks for pretty cheap. (Shareware).
There's a solution for pretty much everything out there on the Mac, if you just know where to look.
(Also, do a search for Virtual on the pure-mac site... you'll find virtual desktops, too!)
> The one thing that always bugged me about Macs was the lack of a terminal. OK, the GUI says the file is there, but I never believe anything till I see it in ls...
The beauty of the (Classic) Mac OS is that there is no CLI. The Mac OS and Finder are not simply shells ontop of a pre-existing substrate interface (ie, Windows Explorer, KDE/Gnome, etc...). If the Finder says it's there... it's really there! There's no way for it to get out of synch with the disk. (short of a disk error, and in that case a CLI utility would have the same problem)
This is the same issue that people seem to forget when they talk about customizability and installing/deinstalling software. (and what will be so beautiful if the "bundles" thing really takes off). On a Mac, if I don't want to run quicktime, I just (physically) drag the "Quicktime" files out of the extensions folder... Presto! Restart and Quicktime is deinstalled. Don't want Apple Guide? Do the same thing.. Built-in web sharing? Find-by-Content indexing? Automatic Time synchronization? Use the same method...
When something is designed to be used by a GUI, it will find alternate methods to do whaat You all might think can only be done efficiently by a CLI.
Sure, grep is great, but can you toss out 24 arbitrary uniquely-named documents in a 256-item folder all at once with rm ?
Don't diss the interfaces... they each have their advantages...
>Good. Just WHAT is the ALT+TAB equivalent on macs, to switch applications ?
On Mac OS 8.5+ it's Command-Tab. If you're still running OS 8.1 or earlier, there's a freeware program called "Program Switcher" you can find in about 30 seconds off of VersionTracker.
>I think they WILL be complaint about it. Want some easy ones ? Okay, the kernel is OSS, but not Cocoa, Carbon, Aqua, right ? A kernel is not everything in an OS, and it's one of the more frightening part to hack (for a beginning programmer). Will MacOS X include themability, for those who will dare not to like the Aqua interface ?
If you can show me one secretary, accountant, or other "desktop user" who will complain about not being able to hack the kernal of Mac OS X, I'll personally donate my next pay check to the MS Legal Defense Fund =)
I'm not going to respond to your last paragraph because I'm not really sure what you're trying to say....
> Do they have Lynx, Mozilla, KFM/Konqueror, whatever? It's interesting that Opera and Amaya were forgotten.
Actually, yeah... someone ported Lynx over, mozilla is there (though it reeks), dunno what KFM is, but does Linux have iCab? WebThing? Opera is coming out with a Mac rev, too...
>On the user interface side, I was surprised they say MacOS was more secure, because each virtuel desktop is protected by a password.
Well, security can mean lots of different things.. as far as Internet Security goes.. Macs have linux bet hands down. It's pretty hard to get root remotely on a machine that doesn't have a CLI! Macs don't have any ports open on a standard install... and buffer-overflow exploits almost never do anything significant on a Mac (the recent AppleShareIP exploit is the first one I think i've ever heard of). Security when someone is actually at the computer is irrelevant... anyone can boot a Mac with extensions off, and anyone can boot a linux box in single user mode... physical security is up to You.
If it's good enough security-wise for the military to switch their webservers to Macs, it's good enough for me... -jc
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Okay... if AOL keeps it's lines open to EVERYONE, this is a good thing. If they attempt to just open them up to MS, hoping that that will be enough to obtain regulatory approval... and they succeed...all hell will break loose.
Seriously... isn't this one of the signs of the coming apocalypse?
Actually, it would probably be done either via official housing tract number (you can find the one out for your property by going to the County Recorder's Office). ie, jcleaver@578.SW.TINKERBELL.SDCA.E3452.CO.SD.CA.US or, via your 9 digit zip code: House # 7320 at 92114-4613 would be: jcleaver@7320.13.46.14.921.CA.US The REALLY cool thing is that this has the potential for: a) city governments that can immediately e-mail EVERY single one if its citizens regarding important local events. ("Warning: Local Beaches shall be closed this Friday due to ...", "Don't forget to vote tomorrow") b) PERMENANT email addresses, provided for the government, one for each citizen... Imagine this senario: I've got an ID number I can use to let people e-mail me, wherever I move to or am located. Say my ID is 3334521. 1) Someone tries to contact me at ID 3334521. 2) The USPS checks to see if the sender is under a restraining order preventing them from contacting me, or if they are a direct mail organization and my direct mail preference specifies no direct mail. 3) If it is approved, the USPS places the mail in my inbox. My ACTUAL e-mail address, known only to me and the USPS's computers (and protected by law just as well as census data is), might be "jcleaver@7320.13.46.14.921.ca.us". This will keep physical locations private, and allow a "buffer zone" between someone's "real address" and their e-address. You could even expand this system and have your regular ISP forward mail to your ID number at the USPS, allowing all your mail to end up at the same location easily w/o compromising your privacy or security.
One of the cool things about the Mac Shareware community is that there's *tons* of stuff out there that a lot of people don't know about. (Try PureMac.com).
IP masquarading takes about 2 minutes to set up with a cool utility called IPNetRouter avaiable from Sustworks for pretty cheap. (Shareware).
There's a solution for pretty much everything out there on the Mac, if you just know where to look.
(Also, do a search for Virtual on the pure-mac site... you'll find virtual desktops, too!)
> The one thing that always bugged me about Macs was the lack of a terminal. OK, the GUI says the file is there, but I never believe anything till I see it in ls...
The beauty of the (Classic) Mac OS is that there is no CLI. The Mac OS and Finder are not simply shells ontop of a pre-existing substrate interface (ie, Windows Explorer, KDE/Gnome, etc...). If the Finder says it's there... it's really there! There's no way for it to get out of synch with the disk. (short of a disk error, and in that case a CLI utility would have the same problem)
This is the same issue that people seem to forget when they talk about customizability and installing/deinstalling software. (and what will be so beautiful if the "bundles" thing really takes off). On a Mac, if I don't want to run quicktime, I just (physically) drag the "Quicktime" files out of the extensions folder... Presto! Restart and Quicktime is deinstalled. Don't want Apple Guide? Do the same thing.. Built-in web sharing? Find-by-Content indexing? Automatic Time synchronization? Use the same method...
When something is designed to be used by a GUI, it will find alternate methods to do whaat You all might think can only be done efficiently by a CLI.
Sure, grep is great, but can you toss out 24 arbitrary uniquely-named documents in a 256-item folder all at once with rm ?
Don't diss the interfaces... they each have their advantages...
>Good. Just WHAT is the ALT+TAB equivalent on macs, to switch applications ?
On Mac OS 8.5+ it's Command-Tab. If you're still running OS 8.1 or earlier, there's a freeware program called "Program Switcher" you can find in about 30 seconds off of VersionTracker.
>I think they WILL be complaint about it. Want some easy ones ? Okay, the kernel is OSS, but not Cocoa, Carbon, Aqua, right ? A kernel is not everything in an OS, and it's one of the more frightening part to hack (for a beginning programmer). Will MacOS X include themability, for those who will dare not to like the Aqua interface ?
If you can show me one secretary, accountant, or other "desktop user" who will complain about not being able to hack the kernal of Mac OS X, I'll personally donate my next pay check to the MS Legal Defense Fund =)
I'm not going to respond to your last paragraph because I'm not really sure what you're trying to say....
-jc
> Do they have Lynx, Mozilla, KFM/Konqueror, whatever? It's interesting that Opera and Amaya were forgotten.
Actually, yeah... someone ported Lynx over, mozilla is there (though it reeks), dunno what KFM is, but does Linux have iCab? WebThing? Opera is coming out with a Mac rev, too...
>On the user interface side, I was surprised they say MacOS was more secure, because each virtuel desktop is protected by a password.
Well, security can mean lots of different things.. as far as Internet Security goes.. Macs have linux bet hands down. It's pretty hard to get root remotely on a machine that doesn't have a CLI! Macs don't have any ports open on a standard install... and buffer-overflow exploits almost never do anything significant on a Mac (the recent AppleShareIP exploit is the first one I think i've ever heard of). Security when someone is actually at the computer is irrelevant... anyone can boot a Mac with extensions off, and anyone can boot a linux box in single user mode... physical security is up to You.
If it's good enough security-wise for the military to switch their webservers to Macs, it's good enough for me... -jc