Because Apple stated as much. They indicated if you want a virus scan there are numerous open source projects like ClamXav, as well as closed source options from the typical VScan vendors.
There have been some actual viruses in the wild for Mac, but the vulnerabilities are quickly patched, effectively preventing the viruses from spreading on any up-to-date system.
They are few and far between and patched relatively quickly but they do occur from time to time. No OS is immune from malware, although they are also not all equally susceptible.
The Mac scanner only scans for Trojans at this point (3 of them including MacDefender), not viruses. Apple has typically left virus scanning up to 3rd parties, while taking a more active role in alerting users about phishing and malware up front.
1. No allergies were found and the studies did not measure soy allergy. These studies have not been published in the peer-reviewed scientific literature–they appeared on the York Laboratories’ website. The most significant problems with the claim that GM soybeans caused an increase in soy allergies are that the assays reported in the study cited don’t measure allergies (that is to say, allergies weren’t counted). York laboratories reported that antibodies against soybean proteins were measured in 10 percent of 4,500 individuals in 1996 and that number grew to 15 percent over six-months. The problem is that they measured normally occurring antibodies and did not measure the type of antibody that is specifically associated with soybean allergy. True soybean allergy in the UK remains well below 1 percent (see #4 below) that fact being no consolation for the unfortunate few who suffer from soy allergy.
The World Health Organization would also seem to go counter to your claims as well.
So by your logic, all GM's should be banned, even if the risk of cross pollination is remote. One bad apple and all of that. That's a bit like saying we will ban all energy research because Nuclear power is dangerous. If the government lacks regulation/transparency, then they should fix that, but don't destroy research because you simply disagree with it. Belgium is not under a dictatorship. The people do have legal means to get their point across.
Also consider that this was a test crop. Unless things are drastically different there, I highly doubt this test crop would end up as feed somewhere.
Most major food chains in the US elected to NOT use GM foods as as is their right, and they should advertise that if they feel strongly about it. I absolutely think that labeling is important so that consumers can choose. EU did it right in that regard. The sad thing is that the use of animal feed that is GM is not considered as a primary ingredient for animal food products like meat or milk. Labeling GM foods, even those that contribute to an animal product via feed, should be required, or at least the product in question should be certified as GM free (there have been instances where tests did show that the use of animal feeds did show up in the animal product itself and that should be indicated on the label). That said, a potato is a tuber and is created from a cloned plant (you plant the potato itself to grow a new crop of potatoes. The chance of cross pollination is pretty remote.
If these folks were going to protest a 'risky' crop, they should have picked an actual 'risky' variety which would be much more likely to cause cross pollination and they definitely shouldn't have broken the law to demonstrate that point.
Which if you had read my post, I indicated by stating it does not require indirect use of GM foods for farm animals (meaning the 'feed' used on farm animals does not need to be indicated on a food label since it is an 'indirect' ingredient'). I also noted that indirect GM food sources are irrelevant to a potato. I mean really, my post was only 2 sentences long sans the URL. Was it really that hard to read the second sentence?
The law requires that any direct ingredients involving genetically modified food must be labeled as such. It does not require indirect use of GM foods for farm animals, but that's irrelevant for potatoes.
The law requires that any direct ingredients involving genetically modified food must be labeled as such. It does not require indirect use of GM foods for farm animals, but that's irrelevant for potatoes.
Odd that they don't simply spread their message by not buying these types of food. They find it acceptable to destroy property that does not belong to them, and which probably cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in lost time and research, just to force people to view things their way. I also found the article to be a bit funny regarding these GM crops being 'forced' onto local farmers.
If you don't want to eat that shit, don't buy it, or grow your own disease ridden organic food. If they prove that it's safe, then I have no issues with it. Since this crop was still being studied, apparently they weren't interested in it's safety, but rather in destroying it before that fact was determined.
It's also pretty sad when they announced their plans to do this and the police still failed to do much but slow them down. Pellet guns or water hoses would have seemed to be a good non-lethal solution here.
I wonder how long a typical contract is that they sign? I know a lot of younger artists are using the net for distribution, and doing so with great success. Surely those contracts don't last a lifetime. I would think even older artists, once they get past that 'new' stage and get some name recognition, probably have more bargaining power.
The artists are partially to blame for that. They continue to perpetuate the control the record labels extend by signing those shitty contracts. The sad thing here is that if they managed to block that site, and records sales still don't improve, who are they going to after next? Recorded music, as a technology, hasn't decreased in price as the technology became cheaper. People can buy spools of a hundred CDR's for pennies, meaning the only real value is the music itself, and when you compare a 3 minute song to the value of a matinee movie for 5 bucks, the difference is a bit startling. 5 Bucks for a few hours of entertainment vs. a $1.00 or more for 3 minutes, it's just not a good value in most people's eyes.
Not only that but you still have to agree to install it. It requires no password because it's run at the user's authority but it must still ask to install.
Usability alone should not dictate an interface, but it should also be intuitive. Unfortunately, the very nature of gestures is unintuitive. There are no visual queues as to what any particular gesture will do, whereas a button is very clear. Click here, and 'this' will result. Gestures are just too vague. They are handy as shortcuts but a standard must be applied for them to be useful. The first versions of the new Google app is a good example. It was all over the place, where a lot of it made no sense and seemed to add no value. Why must I pull down on the screen to see my 'apps' when a simple button that labeled apps is much more effective and intuitive? Another example was searching. When you are searching you probably don't need an apps button. They eventually incorporated both so that you actually had an apps button and various menu items disappeared where they were unlikely to be needed. That meets both usability and intuitive needs. I wasn't clawing at the screen trying to remember which direction to slide the screen to see my apps, and I now recover that space when I'm searching with only search related items on the screen.
Gestures by themselves with no visual queues are pretty useless to a laymen or someone unfamiliar with the interface.
Actually you get a different message for known 'bad' executables like the hacked Adobe installers. It will actually warn them that the package is malicious.
The software downloads and opens the installer if you agree to 'scan' your computer, but it certainly doesn't install. You have to agree to install it and then put in your admin password. Unless you do that, it won't go anywhere. You can always just cancel the install and drop it in the trash. Pretty convincing hack though except that it crashes most of the time.
I agree though that they should disable the option to automatically open 'safe' attachments. It's a common vector of infections on a Windows PC and never a good idea. Some times making things too easy for an end use is just begging for trouble. It's the first thing I turn off whenever I setup a Mac for someone.
According to TFA, the shaping being done isn't protocol specific (although it can be). They equate it to a bucket of tokens, where you start your transfer with a full bucket, and at specific intervals, you must use a token to transfer X amount of data. What that means is that when you start your transfer, you would have full bandwidth until you empty your bucket, after which you have to wait for the bucket to be filled again to continue your transfer. This has the effect of giving you a full pipe during your initial transfer (burst), but that will quickly turn into a more metered throughput according to whatever policy they have applied to your account.
From TFA:
Traffic shaping hardware generally relies on the concept of a “token bucket.” Traffic management hardware will generate a digital token for each Internet user at a predetermined rate. These tokens fill a virtual token bucket; transmitting packets over the Internet removes tokens from the bucket. If the bucket empties, no more data can be transmitted until a new token is deposited.
The practical result is that the user sits down to her computer with a full token bucket and can immediately blast data through her connection as fast as the connection can go. But after some interval of time, usually measured in seconds, this sort of full-throttle data transmission empties the token bucket and the user is now limited to transmitting at the token generation rate.
I'm a little surprised that they didn't include the polling methods used for this. Glossy vs. Matte is one of the passionate arguments that people love to argue about. I have to wonder if the only people who responded are simply those that cared enough to respond. The fact that they don't seem to list that info in TFA tends to make me want to simply discard it as a headline grab rather than anything useful.
A Trojan horse, or Trojan, is a destructive program that masquerades as a benign application. The software initially appears to perform a desirable function for the user prior to installation and/or execution, but (perhaps in addition to the expected function) steals information or harms the system.[1] Unlike viruses or worms, Trojan horses do not replicate themselves, but they can be just as destructive. The term is derived from the Greek myth of the Trojan War, in which the Greeks give a giant wooden horse to their foes, the Trojans, ostensibly as a peace offering. However, after the Trojans drag the horse inside their city walls, Greek soldiers sneak out of the horse's hollow belly and open the city gates, allowing their compatriots to pour in and capture Troy.
A computer virus is a computer program that can copy itself[1] and infect a computer. The term "virus" is also commonly but erroneously used to refer to other types of malware, including but not limited to adware and spyware programs that do not have the reproductive ability.
It has everything to do with attack vector. A virus may provide remote access, or it may not. That depends entirely on the purpose of the virus. The same is true for a trojan. Some viruses simply replicate, some just trash local files, some display annoying messages, some change your start page in the OS browser, and some provide remote access but that alone is not the 'definition' of a virus or a Trojan.
A Trojan is named as such for historical reasons. The trojan horse was used to launch an attack on the city of Troy which was unassailable otherwise (hence the social engineering aspect of a Trojan).
Dont' confuse them with facts. They still believe Apple owns the rights to this, when in fact, Apple is transferring them to Intel. Apple cut a deal to get unhindered use of the technology and gave the rights away. I love how the Anti-Apple crowd is already pouncing however, except they missed the boat. Apple no longer owns this;)
1) From cost to the technology's features in comparison to USB 3.0 2)...um..
Conclusion: which is why it may be dead in the water.
New tech is always expensive. If there is a market demand, then it will sell. Price itself is rarely ever the only determining factor in this as all new tech is expensive until adoption picks up. The same argument could have been made about blu-ray yet it's thriving and outpacing DVD adoption, and it did so during a recession and at a higher price than the competing DVD and HD-DVD formats.
So your theory is that thousands of researchers are blithly unaware that there are Mac viruses in the wild, and no one has managed to detect them?
As to the built in protection, it warns you against known trojans like the hacked adobe software, which also requires an admin password and social engineering.
If you are going to try to use an example of xprotect.plist, you should probably look at what it actually scans for. Guess what? It scans for trojan's, not viruses.
No, what I'm saying is there are currently NO viruses in the wild for Mac. How you came away with "Mac is invulnerable" from my statement above is a bit odd. Since I never mentioned any other malware but this one trojan. As far as real viruses, contrast that with 100,000+ viruses for Windows OS and you begin to see a bit of a difference between the two OS's. Saying that a trojan is a virus is nonsense. A virus attacks via vulnerabilities in the OS which should be addressed and closed. A trojan can only attack via the user (socially engineered). Any OS can be infected by a trojan if they are able to dupe the user into giving up the admin password. No OS is secure from user exploits.
Slashdot Mirror
Because Apple stated as much. They indicated if you want a virus scan there are numerous open source projects like ClamXav, as well as closed source options from the typical VScan vendors.
There have been some actual viruses in the wild for Mac, but the vulnerabilities are quickly patched, effectively preventing the viruses from spreading on any up-to-date system.
http://www.scmagazineus.com/second-mac-virus-in-the-wild/article/32987/
They are few and far between and patched relatively quickly but they do occur from time to time. No OS is immune from malware, although they are also not all equally susceptible.
The Mac scanner only scans for Trojans at this point (3 of them including MacDefender), not viruses. Apple has typically left virus scanning up to 3rd parties, while taking a more active role in alerting users about phishing and malware up front.
This article would seem to go counter to your claims that GM crops were the cause of a soy allergy increase.
http://academicsreview.org/reviewed-content/genetic-roulette/section-1/1-15-roundup-ready-soy-is-safe-6/
The World Health Organization would also seem to go counter to your claims as well.
http://www.who.int/foodsafety/publications/biotech/20questions/en/
So by your logic, all GM's should be banned, even if the risk of cross pollination is remote. One bad apple and all of that. That's a bit like saying we will ban all energy research because Nuclear power is dangerous. If the government lacks regulation/transparency, then they should fix that, but don't destroy research because you simply disagree with it. Belgium is not under a dictatorship. The people do have legal means to get their point across.
Also consider that this was a test crop. Unless things are drastically different there, I highly doubt this test crop would end up as feed somewhere.
Most major food chains in the US elected to NOT use GM foods as as is their right, and they should advertise that if they feel strongly about it. I absolutely think that labeling is important so that consumers can choose. EU did it right in that regard. The sad thing is that the use of animal feed that is GM is not considered as a primary ingredient for animal food products like meat or milk. Labeling GM foods, even those that contribute to an animal product via feed, should be required, or at least the product in question should be certified as GM free (there have been instances where tests did show that the use of animal feeds did show up in the animal product itself and that should be indicated on the label). That said, a potato is a tuber and is created from a cloned plant (you plant the potato itself to grow a new crop of potatoes. The chance of cross pollination is pretty remote.
If these folks were going to protest a 'risky' crop, they should have picked an actual 'risky' variety which would be much more likely to cause cross pollination and they definitely shouldn't have broken the law to demonstrate that point.
Which if you had read my post, I indicated by stating it does not require indirect use of GM foods for farm animals (meaning the 'feed' used on farm animals does not need to be indicated on a food label since it is an 'indirect' ingredient'). I also noted that indirect GM food sources are irrelevant to a potato. I mean really, my post was only 2 sentences long sans the URL. Was it really that hard to read the second sentence?
Actually they do, but don't let facts get in the way of your argument.
http://healthimpactnews.com/2011/europe-has-gm-food-label-law-but-consumers-concerned-about-food-produced-with-gm-feed/
The law requires that any direct ingredients involving genetically modified food must be labeled as such. It does not require indirect use of GM foods for farm animals, but that's irrelevant for potatoes.
Odd that they don't simply spread their message by not buying these types of food. They find it acceptable to destroy property that does not belong to them, and which probably cost the taxpayers hundreds of thousands if not millions of dollars in lost time and research, just to force people to view things their way. I also found the article to be a bit funny regarding these GM crops being 'forced' onto local farmers.
If you don't want to eat that shit, don't buy it, or grow your own disease ridden organic food. If they prove that it's safe, then I have no issues with it. Since this crop was still being studied, apparently they weren't interested in it's safety, but rather in destroying it before that fact was determined.
It's also pretty sad when they announced their plans to do this and the police still failed to do much but slow them down. Pellet guns or water hoses would have seemed to be a good non-lethal solution here.
I wonder how long a typical contract is that they sign? I know a lot of younger artists are using the net for distribution, and doing so with great success. Surely those contracts don't last a lifetime. I would think even older artists, once they get past that 'new' stage and get some name recognition, probably have more bargaining power.
The artists are partially to blame for that. They continue to perpetuate the control the record labels extend by signing those shitty contracts. The sad thing here is that if they managed to block that site, and records sales still don't improve, who are they going to after next? Recorded music, as a technology, hasn't decreased in price as the technology became cheaper. People can buy spools of a hundred CDR's for pennies, meaning the only real value is the music itself, and when you compare a 3 minute song to the value of a matinee movie for 5 bucks, the difference is a bit startling. 5 Bucks for a few hours of entertainment vs. a $1.00 or more for 3 minutes, it's just not a good value in most people's eyes.
Not only that but you still have to agree to install it. It requires no password because it's run at the user's authority but it must still ask to install.
Usability alone should not dictate an interface, but it should also be intuitive. Unfortunately, the very nature of gestures is unintuitive. There are no visual queues as to what any particular gesture will do, whereas a button is very clear. Click here, and 'this' will result. Gestures are just too vague. They are handy as shortcuts but a standard must be applied for them to be useful. The first versions of the new Google app is a good example. It was all over the place, where a lot of it made no sense and seemed to add no value. Why must I pull down on the screen to see my 'apps' when a simple button that labeled apps is much more effective and intuitive? Another example was searching. When you are searching you probably don't need an apps button. They eventually incorporated both so that you actually had an apps button and various menu items disappeared where they were unlikely to be needed. That meets both usability and intuitive needs. I wasn't clawing at the screen trying to remember which direction to slide the screen to see my apps, and I now recover that space when I'm searching with only search related items on the screen.
Gestures by themselves with no visual queues are pretty useless to a laymen or someone unfamiliar with the interface.
Actually you get a different message for known 'bad' executables like the hacked Adobe installers. It will actually warn them that the package is malicious.
The software downloads and opens the installer if you agree to 'scan' your computer, but it certainly doesn't install. You have to agree to install it and then put in your admin password. Unless you do that, it won't go anywhere. You can always just cancel the install and drop it in the trash. Pretty convincing hack though except that it crashes most of the time.
I agree though that they should disable the option to automatically open 'safe' attachments. It's a common vector of infections on a Windows PC and never a good idea. Some times making things too easy for an end use is just begging for trouble. It's the first thing I turn off whenever I setup a Mac for someone.
Not only that, but they neglect to realize that there would be no 'alternative' without a mainstream...
According to TFA, the shaping being done isn't protocol specific (although it can be). They equate it to a bucket of tokens, where you start your transfer with a full bucket, and at specific intervals, you must use a token to transfer X amount of data. What that means is that when you start your transfer, you would have full bandwidth until you empty your bucket, after which you have to wait for the bucket to be filled again to continue your transfer. This has the effect of giving you a full pipe during your initial transfer (burst), but that will quickly turn into a more metered throughput according to whatever policy they have applied to your account.
From TFA:
I'm a little surprised that they didn't include the polling methods used for this. Glossy vs. Matte is one of the passionate arguments that people love to argue about. I have to wonder if the only people who responded are simply those that cared enough to respond. The fact that they don't seem to list that info in TFA tends to make me want to simply discard it as a headline grab rather than anything useful.
FYI, from TFA:
3 Percent of all total PC business sales is a bit more than a dozen machines...
Last Post!
You do realize that both links you just posted contradict what you just stated?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trojan_horse_(computing)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_virus
It has everything to do with attack vector. A virus may provide remote access, or it may not. That depends entirely on the purpose of the virus. The same is true for a trojan. Some viruses simply replicate, some just trash local files, some display annoying messages, some change your start page in the OS browser, and some provide remote access but that alone is not the 'definition' of a virus or a Trojan.
A Trojan is named as such for historical reasons. The trojan horse was used to launch an attack on the city of Troy which was unassailable otherwise (hence the social engineering aspect of a Trojan).
Dont' confuse them with facts. They still believe Apple owns the rights to this, when in fact, Apple is transferring them to Intel. Apple cut a deal to get unhindered use of the technology and gave the rights away. I love how the Anti-Apple crowd is already pouncing however, except they missed the boat. Apple no longer owns this ;)
It's beating DVD's adoption rate when it was new, and current sales as well...and doing so with Netflix competing, during a recession.
http://n4g.com/news/255491/blu-rays-first-two-years-outpaces-dvds
http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118029765
http://www.blu-ray.com/news/?id=6399
That and the in depth summary:
New tech is always expensive. If there is a market demand, then it will sell. Price itself is rarely ever the only determining factor in this as all new tech is expensive until adoption picks up. The same argument could have been made about blu-ray yet it's thriving and outpacing DVD adoption, and it did so during a recession and at a higher price than the competing DVD and HD-DVD formats.
So your theory is that thousands of researchers are blithly unaware that there are Mac viruses in the wild, and no one has managed to detect them?
As to the built in protection, it warns you against known trojans like the hacked adobe software, which also requires an admin password and social engineering.
http://www.cultofmac.com/everything-you-wanted-to-know-about-apples-new-anti-virus-spotter/15475
If you are going to try to use an example of xprotect.plist, you should probably look at what it actually scans for. Guess what? It scans for trojan's, not viruses.
No, what I'm saying is there are currently NO viruses in the wild for Mac. How you came away with "Mac is invulnerable" from my statement above is a bit odd. Since I never mentioned any other malware but this one trojan. As far as real viruses, contrast that with 100,000+ viruses for Windows OS and you begin to see a bit of a difference between the two OS's. Saying that a trojan is a virus is nonsense. A virus attacks via vulnerabilities in the OS which should be addressed and closed. A trojan can only attack via the user (socially engineered). Any OS can be infected by a trojan if they are able to dupe the user into giving up the admin password. No OS is secure from user exploits.