Take the command: open -a "Abobe Photoshop CS2.app"/~user/Pictures/temp2.tiff
WOW! You're aware that virtually all Windows programs have supported this since the beginning of time, right? Guess not. [That's also not "piping", BTW. I would be surprised if you could cat file.tiff > Photoshop.app, but maybe it's possible.]
Try moving a folder in Explorer and see what happens to your view of it in Cygwin.
So, Cygwin is really buggy -- just another reason not to use it, I guess. I get by with native ports of the GNU tools. Also, IIRC, Cygwin Perl and the like doesn't talk to COM, so of course there's no integration. Use the native versions instead, and the scriptablity of the software like Photoshop and MS Office is usually identical between the Windows and Mac versions.
On top of that you have OS X's better integration with applications on other levels. Agreed. But it has very little to do with Unix.
Does this statement make any sense? OS X has built in scripting interpreters for numerous languages, a functional command line, GUI piping/tranforms/scripts via Automator, free dev tools including gcc. On Windows the user has to install cygwin, which does not even interact with cygwin in any meaningful way.
I'm not convinced that the AppleEvents/Mac side of the house interacts with the Unix side very well (osascript, eh). At least not any better than on Windows.
Well, one doesn't need a vulnerability to create a trojan, and out of that 82% figure only a handful targetted Macs. The point is that you can't really make an argument about "successful malware" if the unsuccessful malware basically doesn't exist.
OK let's assume you are correct. Most of of the widely spread Windows malware was detected long ago (sometimes years ago). How does earlier detection prevent this malware from existing in the first place?
I should interject that there's another factor -- the Mac programming culture is very pro-Apple and perhaps more circumspect and unwilling to hurt the Mac user base. For example, there's very little spyware bundled with Mac freeware/shareware, unlike in the Windows world.
One is to target the worm at a concentration of Mac users, either via a dedicated mac resource, a business that uses them, or via some other means.
Agreed, and one would also more likely see exposed ports/deamons on a corporate system. Somebody once said "A Mac worm could take out an art college or a small advertising agency.":)
there would probably be a better return than with Windows machines.
Well, this might be the case, but it seems that if Macs were such a juciy target, I would expect to see more blunt-force attempts. I think the case is still that there's very little Mac malware, even unsuccessful malware.
On your Mac, as a default admin user, try and delete an application from your Applications directory?
OK -- I just dragged QuickTime Player to the trash and emptied it. No password prompt. Also a quick ls -l shows that nearly every thing is rwx for the admin group. Even repaired permissions. Maybe you could clarify, because it seems like you're simply wrong here.
Ridiculous overestimate of the number of "security experts" in the user population. In reality, there's an insigificant percentage of these people, and they find malware because they go and look for it, not because it randomly hits them.
the first worm that targets OS X machines and actually propagates significantly in the wild will be big news and generate a lot of press. It is an ideal target, if you can pull it off.
Except due to the size of the installed base, it's almost impossible to pull off: Assume that 1% of Windows/Mac users will be socially engineered into running a trojan.
An infected Windows XP (75% installed base) has to send the trojan to an average of 133 other users before it finds another sucker.
For a Mac (3% installed base), it needs to hit an average 3333 other users to spread. That's a huge difference. Most users simply don't anywhere near that many addresses on their system.
Plus you consider that most Macs are used in home or soho situations and the users aren't connected to a network full of machines or have access to a giant corporate directory of email addresses.
No, a key part of Firefox's marketing has always been "Firefox protects you from viruses, spyware and pop-ups." (http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/).
Which is basically true -- if you keep your Firefox updated, you won't have a virus problem. But it's not really because Firefox is any better than IE by design -- it has all the same extendibility points and hooks -- they're just better about patching things up.
On OS X, you can do more than screw the user account. The entire Applications directory is writable as users are in the "Admin" group by default.
The perms in general are a good deal looser than a normal Unix system in order to make it more useful as a single-user desktop. Totally understandable decision, but peopel tend to make assumptions about the protection level of OS X sudo login system that aren't true.
1) FUD. Doesn't affect how the iPod/iTMS functions. Astroturf. 2) Far fewer rights that MP3ed CDs. Lie. 4) Software companies collaborate on standards all the time. Astroturf.
5) Right now the biggest impediment to technologies that might mitigate the situation is that they are unable to interoperate with the defacto iTMS standard... except via an iPod connector with associated Apple fees.
I fully appreciate the revenue advantage that a Proprietary DRM system gives Apple (or Microsoft or whomever is running it). France may be totally unable to implement what they want, but there's absolutely no question that vendor-neutral DRM would much more ideal from a consumer standpoint. The counter arguments all boil down to "Apple butters my bread".
Microsoft's eager to offer plug-ins for nearly any other proprietary file format.
Actually, they pretty much only support legacy formats. You won't find modern WordPerfect or Lotus converters in there either.
I think what the ODF Supporter miss is that right now there is basically zero demand for ODF from MS Office customers. Which is too bad, because ODF is a good idea, but a couple random state governments is not a real substantial customer base.
If you walk up to Microsoft and demand support for Random Obscure Unused Format "or else", it's perfectly natural they'll tell you to fuck off. You're negotating from a position of very little strength. Ultimately, MS just called MA's bluff, figuring they couldn't/wouldn't move off MS Office, and politically just totally outplayed them.
Yes of course, and I can understand Apple's point of view. However, the idea that Apple is protecting people from the RIAA is bogus because their goals are for the most part identical.
Yeah, why should people complain about a process that was specifically designed to be a pain in the ass and suboptimal in terms of results? How completely irrational.
(A) Interoperable DRM would be better for the consumer (B) Proprietary DRM is better for Apple's stockholders (C) Don't care (D) Libertarian/Ayn Rand
A rational conculsion is that the pro-Apple position are mainly stockholders, employees, or other people with a financial interest in the matter. Of course this interest is rarely disclosed which is why it's astroturf.
The RIAA also wanted to lower prices on some music to as low as 39c, which Apple oppposed. It was mainly a marketing strategy disagreement between a monopoly and a cartel... both have the same goal of maximizing profits and weren't especially interested in what's best for the consumer.
Yes, but Intel hardly planned it that way. The incremental "Tejas" P4 CPU cratered, so Intel has had nothing to do for the last 2 years except talk about the upcoming NGMA/Core chips. Not having a competitive product has hurt them quite a bit financially.
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Take the command: /~user/Pictures/temp2.tiff
open -a "Abobe Photoshop CS2.app"
WOW! You're aware that virtually all Windows programs have supported this since the beginning of time, right? Guess not. [That's also not "piping", BTW. I would be surprised if you could cat file.tiff > Photoshop.app, but maybe it's possible.]
Try moving a folder in Explorer and see what happens to your view of it in Cygwin.
So, Cygwin is really buggy -- just another reason not to use it, I guess. I get by with native ports of the GNU tools. Also, IIRC, Cygwin Perl and the like doesn't talk to COM, so of course there's no integration. Use the native versions instead, and the scriptablity of the software like Photoshop and MS Office is usually identical between the Windows and Mac versions.
On top of that you have OS X's better integration with applications on other levels.
Agreed. But it has very little to do with Unix.
Does this statement make any sense? OS X has built in scripting interpreters for numerous languages, a functional command line, GUI piping/tranforms/scripts via Automator, free dev tools including gcc. On Windows the user has to install cygwin, which does not even interact with cygwin in any meaningful way.
I'm not convinced that the AppleEvents/Mac side of the house interacts with the Unix side very well (osascript, eh). At least not any better than on Windows.
That's the nice thing about boot sector viruses -- they hit the intended OS 100% of the time :)
Well, one doesn't need a vulnerability to create a trojan, and out of that 82% figure only a handful targetted Macs. The point is that you can't really make an argument about "successful malware" if the unsuccessful malware basically doesn't exist.
Have you done anything weird with your system?
:()
Not that I know of. Maybe my Mac has malware.
OK let's assume you are correct. Most of of the widely spread Windows malware was detected long ago (sometimes years ago). How does earlier detection prevent this malware from existing in the first place?
Also:
Most malware is not trojans, but spreads without user interaction.
In TFA, Sophos says that 82% of new security threats are trojans.
I should interject that there's another factor -- the Mac programming culture is very pro-Apple and perhaps more circumspect and unwilling to hurt the Mac user base. For example, there's very little spyware bundled with Mac freeware/shareware, unlike in the Windows world.
:)
One is to target the worm at a concentration of Mac users, either via a dedicated mac resource, a business that uses them, or via some other means.
Agreed, and one would also more likely see exposed ports/deamons on a corporate system. Somebody once said "A Mac worm could take out an art college or a small advertising agency."
there would probably be a better return than with Windows machines.
Well, this might be the case, but it seems that if Macs were such a juciy target, I would expect to see more blunt-force attempts. I think the case is still that there's very little Mac malware, even unsuccessful malware.
Hmm. Although I'm not sure what this helps security, except in perhaps an obtuse case.
On your Mac, as a default admin user, try and delete an application from your Applications directory?
OK -- I just dragged QuickTime Player to the trash and emptied it. No password prompt. Also a quick ls -l shows that nearly every thing is rwx for the admin group. Even repaired permissions. Maybe you could clarify, because it seems like you're simply wrong here.
Ridiculous overestimate of the number of "security experts" in the user population. In reality, there's an insigificant percentage of these people, and they find malware because they go and look for it, not because it randomly hits them.
the first worm that targets OS X machines and actually propagates significantly in the wild will be big news and generate a lot of press. It is an ideal target, if you can pull it off.
Except due to the size of the installed base, it's almost impossible to pull off: Assume that 1% of Windows/Mac users will be socially engineered into running a trojan.
An infected Windows XP (75% installed base) has to send the trojan to an average of 133 other users before it finds another sucker.
For a Mac (3% installed base), it needs to hit an average 3333 other users to spread. That's a huge difference. Most users simply don't anywhere near that many addresses on their system.
Plus you consider that most Macs are used in home or soho situations and the users aren't connected to a network full of machines or have access to a giant corporate directory of email addresses.
No, a key part of Firefox's marketing has always been "Firefox protects you from viruses, spyware and pop-ups." (http://www.mozilla.com/firefox/).
Which is basically true -- if you keep your Firefox updated, you won't have a virus problem. But it's not really because Firefox is any better than IE by design -- it has all the same extendibility points and hooks -- they're just better about patching things up.
On a Mac you actually have to confirm that you intend to run a new app the first time that you run one.
I've never seen this prompt, so I have to call BS.
On OS X, you can do more than screw the user account. The entire Applications directory is writable as users are in the "Admin" group by default.
The perms in general are a good deal looser than a normal Unix system in order to make it more useful as a single-user desktop. Totally understandable decision, but peopel tend to make assumptions about the protection level of OS X sudo login system that aren't true.
1) FUD. Doesn't affect how the iPod/iTMS functions. Astroturf.
... except via an iPod connector with associated Apple fees.
2) Far fewer rights that MP3ed CDs. Lie.
4) Software companies collaborate on standards all the time. Astroturf.
5) Right now the biggest impediment to technologies that might mitigate the situation is that they are unable to interoperate with the defacto iTMS standard
I fully appreciate the revenue advantage that a Proprietary DRM system gives Apple (or Microsoft or whomever is running it). France may be totally unable to implement what they want, but there's absolutely no question that vendor-neutral DRM would much more ideal from a consumer standpoint. The counter arguments all boil down to "Apple butters my bread".
Microsoft's eager to offer plug-ins for nearly any other proprietary file format.
Actually, they pretty much only support legacy formats. You won't find modern WordPerfect or Lotus converters in there either.
I think what the ODF Supporter miss is that right now there is basically zero demand for ODF from MS Office customers. Which is too bad, because ODF is a good idea, but a couple random state governments is not a real substantial customer base.
If you walk up to Microsoft and demand support for Random Obscure Unused Format "or else", it's perfectly natural they'll tell you to fuck off. You're negotating from a position of very little strength. Ultimately, MS just called MA's bluff, figuring they couldn't/wouldn't move off MS Office, and politically just totally outplayed them.
#3 might be a valid point, but the rest is totally false astroturf. And by totally false, I mean outright lies.
Yes of course, and I can understand Apple's point of view. However, the idea that Apple is protecting people from the RIAA is bogus because their goals are for the most part identical.
Thank you for the correction. I will stop trolling on that topic now.
Yeah, why should people complain about a process that was specifically designed to be a pain in the ass and suboptimal in terms of results? How completely irrational.
Why do people defend Apple on this?
There's really only four positions on this issue:
(A) Interoperable DRM would be better for the consumer
(B) Proprietary DRM is better for Apple's stockholders
(C) Don't care
(D) Libertarian/Ayn Rand
A rational conculsion is that the pro-Apple position are mainly stockholders, employees, or other people with a financial interest in the matter. Of course this interest is rarely disclosed which is why it's astroturf.
The RIAA also wanted to lower prices on some music to as low as 39c, which Apple oppposed. It was mainly a marketing strategy disagreement between a monopoly and a cartel ... both have the same goal of maximizing profits and weren't especially interested in what's best for the consumer.
Bruce Perens sells some sort of patent insurance, so he has a profit motive to FUD this issue.
Bruce Perens is usually a very balanced and reasoned thinker
*snort*
Yes, but Intel hardly planned it that way. The incremental "Tejas" P4 CPU cratered, so Intel has had nothing to do for the last 2 years except talk about the upcoming NGMA/Core chips. Not having a competitive product has hurt them quite a bit financially.
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