Are you talking about the "Thanks, Bill" moment in 1998 when MSFT announced Mac Office 98 + 5 years of continued support for the platform + an investment of about $200M of non-voting AAPL stock?
I believe that was partially due to a court settlement, but it was also a big PR stunt for both companies. It got the DOJ off of MSFT's back, it renewed faith in the Apple/Mac platform, and it was a hell of an advertisement for Mac Office 98 (believe it or not, MSFT makes good money from Mac Office).
Apple has *always* had a lot of money in the bank. $Billions ever since their IPO in the early 1980s. At their lowest point they still had over a billion dollars in cash in the bank. Compare this to Silicon Graphics who is now down to a few tens of millions in the bank, dwindling from about $500M about 5 years ago. Even if Apple would have continued bleeding money, they would have remained in business for a long time, even without this so-called MSFT bailout.
You have to admit though that many Mac users would like to see Panther pictures, and this is a good way of propagating the trojan. Panther was 10.3 Tiger is 10.4 Dunno what 10.5 is
So, to me the question remains... is there a way to get this (or any other) Mac OS X virus by just connecting a Mac to the Internet and/or surfing websites? Or do these exploits still require the user to manually execute a trojan? I guess I'm curious how automated these Mac OS X "viruses" are.
It seems that if you have configured your computer correctly, you would have to enter your admin password in order to allow it to do any harm.
That should be pretty much any default or out-of-the-box configuration of Mac OS X me thinks. Even on Macs with only one user and no password the machine will generally put up a prompt before making certain changes. Probably even saver if you have a password and multiple user accounts.
Sounds more like a trojan to me. But the question is, how in the world did they get it to show up as a JPEG image and still be executable? And does this script do any damage beyond the user's home directory? I.E., does it have some sort of a rootkit? Or does it simply prompt the user for the root/admin/sudo password?
Somebody better wake up Apple and fix this application-looks-like-a-pretty-JPEG icon bug!!
Wow. OK, I got so wound up on my analog CRT vga cable rant that I forgot that this whole article is about LCD color correction...
My rule of thumb is stick to DVI for LCD, period. With DVI you don't have to muck around with sync, phase, geometry, etc. It just works. Color correction is a must if you're doing any sort of print work, there are great calibrators available. Digital LCD has been great ever since the Silicon Graphics SGI 1600SW LCD monitor + ColorLock calibrator from way back in early 1999. Don't waste your time with analog LCD.
cheap cables are bad for high resolution analog
on
LCD Color Corrector?
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· Score: 1
I've seen my share of crappy video cables. If you're doing analog 1280x1024 or better, you really need to have a cable with individually shielded R, G, B, and perhaps even H and V sync. The best cables have thin coax cables for those 5 lines inside the VGA cable. I only buy UltraSpec cables for VGA (and 13w3) and SCSI. It's worth the added cost. And where else can you get a video cable that's thicker than your thumb for $30?:)
You haven't seen good CRT graphics until you've seen 2048 x 1536 driven by a Matrox card and connected by an UltraSpec cable.
Moral: Don't buy the crappy, overpriced video cables sold at your local big box store. Don't buy the cheap garbage either.
This must be a common problem as Sears is already out of stock on that one!
Re:What ever happened to 2AM, $3 overnight shippin
on
A Look Inside Newegg
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· Score: 1
Let me refresh my memory. This was the same time period where people thought that paying shipping on 25 pound bag of dog food instead of buying it at the local store was a good idea, and that buying furniture from a 100x200 pixel picture with a 10x10 color swatch AND paying shipping to your house was a good idea, etc? Right?
Back then, everybody and their redheaded stepchild thought that you could make millions because you could sell stuff (insert drumroll here) ONLINE!
Er no. This was a couple years before anyone had even heard of Netscape. I was ordering lots of hardware and software for $3 overnight shipping from big thick montly print catalogs long before anyone was selling online. (I don't think there were too many online stores in Gopherspace). The earliest I saw MicroWarehouse/MacWarehouse advertise $3 overnight shipping was 1992, and they might have been doing that even earlier.
Oddly enough, most of the $3 shipping went away just as companies moved their catalogs online. Perhaps it was the online price competition that killed their markup and prevented them from offering such cheap shipping.
Re:What ever happened to 2AM, $3 overnight shippin
on
A Look Inside Newegg
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· Score: 1
Thank you for the awesome, helpful reply. I totally forgot about the "we also have on special" items. I did buy several games, floppy-calculators, and other widgets for the $5 or so extra.
I was actually very happy with my Newton. I watched the VHS video it came with and followed their handwriting learning recognition (as well used some handwriting recognition training tips from an issue of MacUser). After the first week I didn't have any problems with my Newton recognizing my combination print / cursive chicken scratch. Damn thing was almost magical. I used it long after the rubberized surface wore off. It's still in my desk drawer, but I haven't used it heavily since about 2001.
What's this about MacWarehouse being a tax writeoff? Do you know more about the history of the company? What other companies had their warehouses at the Airborne hub?
If I place my order early in the morning, it almost always gets shipped that same day. The longest it ever took NewEgg to get my order to me was 5 business days.
DigiKey is located in tiny Thief River Falls, Minnesota... about half an hour from Grand Forks, North Dakota and about 90 minutes from Fargo, North Dakota. They have a huge complex of warehouses full of electronic components. Every chip, diode, resistor, LED, sensor, etc etc etc you could ever imagine. Their print catalog is two inches thick and doesn't even contain half of their inventory! I've never toured their warehouse, but based on their inventory and quick shipping I can only imagine how awesome it must be!!
Rush Processing is only handy if you order late in the day or if you're ordering on a very busy day. Otherwise they usually get your order packaged up that same day. $3 is a little much in my opinion. In the 1992 - 2000 glory days of catalogs like MicroWarehouse/MacWarehouse, PCMall, etc, you could place your order by 2AM and have it delivered by Airborne/DHL that same day by 10AM. Shipping usually cost $3 for the entire order, no matter how much you ordered.
NewEgg has never taken more than 5 days for me. It's usually about 3 or 4. Sometimes 2 days.
Depending on what time of day you order, they usually package up your goodies on the same day. Standard "freeish" (sometimes they charge for certain items) FedEx 3-day shipping takes 1 - 3 days depending on where you live and how busy FedEx is.
The beauty of FedEx is they're designed for overnight shipping. Packages shipped 2-day or 3-day are usually sorted after the overnight packages and often make it in time for overnight shipping. Again it depends on how busy FedEx and how far they have to fly their planes. More distance = less time for sorting.
What ever happened to 2AM, $3 overnight shipping??
on
A Look Inside Newegg
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· Score: 5, Interesting
Believe it or not, this isn't a troll. From about 1993 - 1999 there were dozens of printed catalogs that offered overnight (technically same-day) shipping if you placed your order before 2AM EST. For $3 your package was delivered by Airborne Express (now DHL) by 10AM that SAME DAY! I ordered many computer parts over the phone around the 2AM deadline and had them in my hand just 8 hours later. And this was to Fargo, North Dakota. Amazing IMHO.
The first time I took advantage of this crazy fast, crazy cheap shipping was when I bought my Newton PDA in 1994. I remember placing my order around 11 PM and paying with the Newton the next morning just after breakfast. I think I ordered it from MicroWarehouse/MacWarehouse. This was many years before the dot-com boom, so I'm still a little baffled at how so many companies were able to update print 200+ page catalogs every month and still offer such awesome shipping.
As far as I can tell, this all ended around the time of the dot com bubble burst. What I don't really understand is why. Or why they didn't just up the shipping charge to $6 or downgrade to overnight instead of overnight-priority shipping. 4 PM the next day isn't a whole lot worse than 10 AM the next day.
I miss those days. Now it seems like NewEgg's 1 - 2 day order turnaround + freeish FedEx 3-day shpping is the best I can find in the same price ballpark. I can usually order from NewEgg on a Monday morning, opt for the Free to $5 shipping, and have the item by Thursday afternoon. Good but still nothing like the 8 hour delivery I experienced for most of the 1990s. Now with online ordering, better tracking/sorting, and greater package delivery competition you would think that $3 - $7 overnight shipping would still be a possibility. Or at the very least, give me back the 2AM cutoff again instead of this 5PM sillyness.
Rabbit hole goes deeper -- existing HDTVs w/ compo
on
The Great HDCP Fiasco
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· Score: 4, Informative
The requirement of HDCP via DVI/HDMI is also a major issue for those who bought the first few generations of HDTVs equiped with component inputs, or in some cases, DVI without HDCP support.
Cases in point, I know of several major HDTV purchases made about 2 years ago, late 2003 / early 2004. All of these were CRT or CRT projection based and have the ability to do full 1080i resolution, in fact most are currently being used with DVHS D-Theater, Dish Network HD, and XBOX360 at full 1080i, 720p or similar HD resolutions. Mostly via 3x RCA component input, but plain computer style DVI in a few cases. But since none of these TVs support HDCP, they will most likely be unable to display full HD resolution material from BluRay or HDDVD.
Many Dell 20" LCD monitor users are in the same boat. They love their sweet pivoting DVI monitors. But without HDCP support, they will never be useful as, say, a bedroom TV connected to a BluRay player or a future Comcast HD cable receiver.
HDCP is to protect the world from the pirates... who will work around this limitation somehow anyway.
It used to be that one had to buy an illegal converter/filter in order to make copies of Macrovision protected DVDs and VHS tapes. Now we're going to need to buy illegal converters/filters just to *use* our older HDTVs to their full resolution potential.
Tell me again... why do taxpayer dollars have to pay for security at this game? Let the NFL pay for their own damn security.
Because tax-paying Americans are the vast majority of those attending the Super Bowl, which is held here on our homeland, in the United States of America.
Put another way, if there is an emergency at your local shopping mall, it's the local taxpayer-supported police and fire departments that will come to help. The mall rent-a-cops are only there as first responders and as a first line of defense. The local taxpayer-supported agencies do all of the real work, including booking/charging teenage petty theft.
I'm removing my last catalytic converter as we speak. I love nature.
It's funny because it's true. Catalytic converters are essentially worthless at reducing emissions in most short stop-and-go city driving trips. These do very little, if anything, to reduce emissions in cities. Unless you're a cab driver with the engine running all day, or driving down the highway on a road trip, your catalytic converter isn't doing much to help the environment.
> since 2001 Apple has released 5 different releases of OSX, > 4 of witch were paid upgrades (approx. $600 if you were > staying current all along)
4 x $129 = $516, not $600. That's an $84 difference. $84 buys a gig of ram.
In my case, my G4 came with 10.0. The upgrade to 10.1 was free for all 10.0 users. I bought 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4 from Amazon.com and used their three $35 rebates, which means these upgrades cost me $282, or about half of what you quote. I probably could have saved $94 by sticking with 10.3 as 10.4 didn't give me too many new features, but it would have been an awesome upgrade for, say, someone coming from 10.2 -> 10.4
To look at this another way, the public beta of Mac OS X came out in 2000 and the final retail version came out in early 2001, or about 5 years ago. I really doubt there are many people running 10.4 on their 5+ year old Macs. I'm trying to say that I doubt many people bought, say, a 450 MHz G4 with Mac OS 9, then bought every upgrade since, now up to 10.4. Even the 466 and 533 Mhz G4s came with Mac OS X 10.0 (and 9.1, a dual boot plus Classic VM).
At this point I will stop defending Mac OS X upgrade prices. Mac users pay a price premium for their machines and software, but these days it's a really good deal once you tally up all of the features and bundled software. I do wish the major OS upgrades were cheaper, I think $49 would be more fair than $129. But it certainly hasn't cost me "approx. $600".
Slashdot Mirror
Are you talking about the "Thanks, Bill" moment in 1998 when MSFT announced Mac Office 98 + 5 years of continued support for the platform + an investment of about $200M of non-voting AAPL stock?
I believe that was partially due to a court settlement, but it was also a big PR stunt for both companies. It got the DOJ off of MSFT's back, it renewed faith in the Apple/Mac platform, and it was a hell of an advertisement for Mac Office 98 (believe it or not, MSFT makes good money from Mac Office).
Apple has *always* had a lot of money in the bank. $Billions ever since their IPO in the early 1980s. At their lowest point they still had over a billion dollars in cash in the bank. Compare this to Silicon Graphics who is now down to a few tens of millions in the bank, dwindling from about $500M about 5 years ago. Even if Apple would have continued bleeding money, they would have remained in business for a long time, even without this so-called MSFT bailout.
You have to admit though that many Mac users would like to see Panther pictures, and this is a good way of propagating the trojan.
Panther was 10.3
Tiger is 10.4
Dunno what 10.5 is
"Liked Macs when they still pushed performance over style"
When was that?
Macintosh IIfx
Macintosh Quadra 900 and 950
Daystar quad PowerPC 604e Mac clone
Ugly and fast. Like a good muscle car.
How do you protect against "stupid user"??
WebTV?
Etch-a-Sketch?
So, to me the question remains... is there a way to get this (or any other) Mac OS X virus by just connecting a Mac to the Internet and/or surfing websites? Or do these exploits still require the user to manually execute a trojan? I guess I'm curious how automated these Mac OS X "viruses" are.
It seems that if you have configured your computer correctly, you would have to enter your admin password in order to allow it to do any harm.
That should be pretty much any default or out-of-the-box configuration of Mac OS X me thinks. Even on Macs with only one user and no password the machine will generally put up a prompt before making certain changes. Probably even saver if you have a password and multiple user accounts.
Sounds more like a trojan to me. But the question is, how in the world did they get it to show up as a JPEG image and still be executable? And does this script do any damage beyond the user's home directory? I.E., does it have some sort of a rootkit? Or does it simply prompt the user for the root/admin/sudo password?
Somebody better wake up Apple and fix this application-looks-like-a-pretty-JPEG icon bug!!
Wow. OK, I got so wound up on my analog CRT vga cable rant that I forgot that this whole article is about LCD color correction...
My rule of thumb is stick to DVI for LCD, period. With DVI you don't have to muck around with sync, phase, geometry, etc. It just works. Color correction is a must if you're doing any sort of print work, there are great calibrators available. Digital LCD has been great ever since the Silicon Graphics SGI 1600SW LCD monitor + ColorLock calibrator from way back in early 1999. Don't waste your time with analog LCD.
I've seen my share of crappy video cables. If you're doing analog 1280x1024 or better, you really need to have a cable with individually shielded R, G, B, and perhaps even H and V sync. The best cables have thin coax cables for those 5 lines inside the VGA cable. I only buy UltraSpec cables for VGA (and 13w3) and SCSI. It's worth the added cost. And where else can you get a video cable that's thicker than your thumb for $30? :)
You haven't seen good CRT graphics until you've seen 2048 x 1536 driven by a Matrox card and connected by an UltraSpec cable.
Moral: Don't buy the crappy, overpriced video cables sold at your local big box store. Don't buy the cheap garbage either.
This must be a common problem as Sears is already out of stock on that one!
Let me refresh my memory. This was the same time period where people thought that paying shipping on 25 pound bag of dog food instead of buying it at the local store was a good idea, and that buying furniture from a 100x200 pixel picture with a 10x10 color swatch AND paying shipping to your house was a good idea, etc? Right?
Back then, everybody and their redheaded stepchild thought that you could make millions because you could sell stuff (insert drumroll here) ONLINE!
Er no. This was a couple years before anyone had even heard of Netscape. I was ordering lots of hardware and software for $3 overnight shipping from big thick montly print catalogs long before anyone was selling online. (I don't think there were too many online stores in Gopherspace). The earliest I saw MicroWarehouse/MacWarehouse advertise $3 overnight shipping was 1992, and they might have been doing that even earlier.
Oddly enough, most of the $3 shipping went away just as companies moved their catalogs online. Perhaps it was the online price competition that killed their markup and prevented them from offering such cheap shipping.
Thank you for the awesome, helpful reply. I totally forgot about the "we also have on special" items. I did buy several games, floppy-calculators, and other widgets for the $5 or so extra.
I was actually very happy with my Newton. I watched the VHS video it came with and followed their handwriting learning recognition (as well used some handwriting recognition training tips from an issue of MacUser). After the first week I didn't have any problems with my Newton recognizing my combination print / cursive chicken scratch. Damn thing was almost magical. I used it long after the rubberized surface wore off. It's still in my desk drawer, but I haven't used it heavily since about 2001.
What's this about MacWarehouse being a tax writeoff? Do you know more about the history of the company? What other companies had their warehouses at the Airborne hub?
If I place my order early in the morning, it almost always gets shipped that same day. The longest it ever took NewEgg to get my order to me was 5 business days.
DigiKey is located in tiny Thief River Falls, Minnesota... about half an hour from Grand Forks, North Dakota and about 90 minutes from Fargo, North Dakota. They have a huge complex of warehouses full of electronic components. Every chip, diode, resistor, LED, sensor, etc etc etc you could ever imagine. Their print catalog is two inches thick and doesn't even contain half of their inventory! I've never toured their warehouse, but based on their inventory and quick shipping I can only imagine how awesome it must be!!
That was a typo, I was *playing* with the Newton the next morning.
How does a jar of pickles help make boxes?g g/automaticboxmaker.jpg
http://images.anandtech.com/reviews/IT/InsideNewe
Rush Processing is only handy if you order late in the day or if you're ordering on a very busy day. Otherwise they usually get your order packaged up that same day. $3 is a little much in my opinion. In the 1992 - 2000 glory days of catalogs like MicroWarehouse/MacWarehouse, PCMall, etc, you could place your order by 2AM and have it delivered by Airborne/DHL that same day by 10AM. Shipping usually cost $3 for the entire order, no matter how much you ordered.
NewEgg has never taken more than 5 days for me. It's usually about 3 or 4. Sometimes 2 days.
Depending on what time of day you order, they usually package up your goodies on the same day. Standard "freeish" (sometimes they charge for certain items) FedEx 3-day shipping takes 1 - 3 days depending on where you live and how busy FedEx is.
The beauty of FedEx is they're designed for overnight shipping. Packages shipped 2-day or 3-day are usually sorted after the overnight packages and often make it in time for overnight shipping. Again it depends on how busy FedEx and how far they have to fly their planes. More distance = less time for sorting.
Believe it or not, this isn't a troll. From about 1993 - 1999 there were dozens of printed catalogs that offered overnight (technically same-day) shipping if you placed your order before 2AM EST. For $3 your package was delivered by Airborne Express (now DHL) by 10AM that SAME DAY! I ordered many computer parts over the phone around the 2AM deadline and had them in my hand just 8 hours later. And this was to Fargo, North Dakota. Amazing IMHO.
The first time I took advantage of this crazy fast, crazy cheap shipping was when I bought my Newton PDA in 1994. I remember placing my order around 11 PM and paying with the Newton the next morning just after breakfast. I think I ordered it from MicroWarehouse/MacWarehouse. This was many years before the dot-com boom, so I'm still a little baffled at how so many companies were able to update print 200+ page catalogs every month and still offer such awesome shipping.
As far as I can tell, this all ended around the time of the dot com bubble burst. What I don't really understand is why. Or why they didn't just up the shipping charge to $6 or downgrade to overnight instead of overnight-priority shipping. 4 PM the next day isn't a whole lot worse than 10 AM the next day.
I miss those days. Now it seems like NewEgg's 1 - 2 day order turnaround + freeish FedEx 3-day shpping is the best I can find in the same price ballpark. I can usually order from NewEgg on a Monday morning, opt for the Free to $5 shipping, and have the item by Thursday afternoon. Good but still nothing like the 8 hour delivery I experienced for most of the 1990s. Now with online ordering, better tracking/sorting, and greater package delivery competition you would think that $3 - $7 overnight shipping would still be a possibility. Or at the very least, give me back the 2AM cutoff again instead of this 5PM sillyness.
The requirement of HDCP via DVI/HDMI is also a major issue for those who bought the first few generations of HDTVs equiped with component inputs, or in some cases, DVI without HDCP support.
Cases in point, I know of several major HDTV purchases made about 2 years ago, late 2003 / early 2004. All of these were CRT or CRT projection based and have the ability to do full 1080i resolution, in fact most are currently being used with DVHS D-Theater, Dish Network HD, and XBOX360 at full 1080i, 720p or similar HD resolutions. Mostly via 3x RCA component input, but plain computer style DVI in a few cases. But since none of these TVs support HDCP, they will most likely be unable to display full HD resolution material from BluRay or HDDVD.
Many Dell 20" LCD monitor users are in the same boat. They love their sweet pivoting DVI monitors. But without HDCP support, they will never be useful as, say, a bedroom TV connected to a BluRay player or a future Comcast HD cable receiver.
HDCP is to protect the world from the pirates... who will work around this limitation somehow anyway.
It used to be that one had to buy an illegal converter/filter in order to make copies of Macrovision protected DVDs and VHS tapes. Now we're going to need to buy illegal converters/filters just to *use* our older HDTVs to their full resolution potential.
Tell me again... why do taxpayer dollars have to pay for security at this game? Let the NFL pay for their own damn security.
Because tax-paying Americans are the vast majority of those attending the Super Bowl, which is held here on our homeland, in the United States of America.
Put another way, if there is an emergency at your local shopping mall, it's the local taxpayer-supported police and fire departments that will come to help. The mall rent-a-cops are only there as first responders and as a first line of defense. The local taxpayer-supported agencies do all of the real work, including booking/charging teenage petty theft.
I debated this very same issue, you can read my thought on it at my homepage:
http://www.cocacola.com/~robert
I'm removing my last catalytic converter as we speak. I love nature.
It's funny because it's true. Catalytic converters are essentially worthless at reducing emissions in most short stop-and-go city driving trips. These do very little, if anything, to reduce emissions in cities. Unless you're a cab driver with the engine running all day, or driving down the highway on a road trip, your catalytic converter isn't doing much to help the environment.
> since 2001 Apple has released 5 different releases of OSX,
> 4 of witch were paid upgrades (approx. $600 if you were
> staying current all along)
4 x $129 = $516, not $600. That's an $84 difference. $84 buys a gig of ram.
In my case, my G4 came with 10.0. The upgrade to 10.1 was free for all 10.0 users. I bought 10.2, 10.3, and 10.4 from Amazon.com and used their three $35 rebates, which means these upgrades cost me $282, or about half of what you quote. I probably could have saved $94 by sticking with 10.3 as 10.4 didn't give me too many new features, but it would have been an awesome upgrade for, say, someone coming from 10.2 -> 10.4
To look at this another way, the public beta of Mac OS X came out in 2000 and the final retail version came out in early 2001, or about 5 years ago. I really doubt there are many people running 10.4 on their 5+ year old Macs. I'm trying to say that I doubt many people bought, say, a 450 MHz G4 with Mac OS 9, then bought every upgrade since, now up to 10.4. Even the 466 and 533 Mhz G4s came with Mac OS X 10.0 (and 9.1, a dual boot plus Classic VM).
At this point I will stop defending Mac OS X upgrade prices. Mac users pay a price premium for their machines and software, but these days it's a really good deal once you tally up all of the features and bundled software. I do wish the major OS upgrades were cheaper, I think $49 would be more fair than $129. But it certainly hasn't cost me "approx. $600".
B de Burro
B as in Billion.
He bought the Lucasfilm computer graphics department for $10 Million. His share of the Pixar sale is $3.5 Billion.