This is not entirely the developers' faults but they are certainly a major contributing factor. Most windows software cannot be installed unless you are logged in as an admin. A great deal of windows software will not run once installed except when you are logged in as an administrator. This has become an accepted behavior for software under the Windows platform, and as a result, about 95% of windows users log in mainly with an administrative account for every day use. It's a vicious circle... software forces you to be logged in as admin, and therefore lazy/incompetent developers just code sloppy because they (correctly) assume all their users will be logged in as an admin, and this only encourages them to do so.
All MS would have to do is to place a few simple, sensible requirements on software in order to be given license to use that "made for windows xp" etc logo on their box. Requiring the installer to be logged in as admin is understandable, but once installed, most software should be perfectly usable when logged in as a non-administrator. If this were a requirement to obtain license for that logo, it would do a world of good for windows security. This is why I say that windows' security model is flawed. It may have the teoretical capability of working, but the accepted method of implementation, as sanctioned by MS, is fatally flawed. And that is microsoft's own doing.
Windows has no effective security model. Users run as admin, so when they run spyware, the spyware runs as admin. Nothing is really protected from an admin, on windows most users basically run as root. So, there's really no way to protect an important part of windows OS except through obscurity. (yes, we all love it, "security through obscurity"!) The hosts file unfortunately is a well known weakness in the OS, so there's no hiding it. And since it's windows, there's no protecting it. So MS has to try something different.
It's sad that they have to try to plug the hole somewhere else, but here the battle is long since lost. At least with this subversion of Hosts, the malware makers (most of them anyway) don't know enough about the internal mechanisms of that feature to disable it as they can with Hosts. Of course given a little time they'll have figured that out too and that battle will also be lost.
Windows security is as effective as a screen door on a submarine.
It'd take the malware makers about an hour to find any of the what, probably 80 holes that would let them go around such windows security. A back-and-forth battle like that could easily go on for months if not years. In unix, security and permissions are the foundation, on top of which everything is built. In windows, security is a hack that was added on later with no due consideration during the initial design phase of windows. It's no wonder it's next to impossible to get it to work the way you want it to.
When you are designing security, the sad truth of it is, the user is the enemy. There's no nicer way to look at it. So it takes a great deal of care to design a security system that can withstand the assult of a user while at the same time being functional and serving the user. It's too late for windows to make those design considerations. They have errored on the side of functionality and sacrificed the security of the system. There is no fixing that.
What is your ISPs policy regarding P2P and is it fair for them to put restrictions and conditions on its use.
When most of the big ISPs hit the scenes, they were all about promises. The provider that promised the most had the best shot at getting the new customers in what was a bit of a feeding frenzy as people rushed to get onto the "information superhighway". So naturally they promised no limits. If you will remember back ~10 years ago, there WERE limits. I very clearly remember my university had a large bank of dial-in modems at 2400bps, and a small bank of "fast" 9600's, and we were limited to 24 hrs per month on the fast ones. Anyone under such limits would gladly go with another ISP that had no limits on traffic.
Five years ago this was not a big deal for the ISPs. Very few users were even achieving 1/4 of their cap. An ISP could easily place customers on their network that could, if they capped out, consume 4x the available bandwidth that the ISPs were leasing. Since the average user wouldn't go above 25% usage even at peak hours (8-10pm) this was fine. The typical ratio of dial-up customers to dial-in lines was between 7:1 and 11:1 depending on your ISP, so they were figuring that at peak times, only 1/7th of their customers would be online.
Now, with things like BitTorrent and always-on internet like DSL and cable, it's entirely possible for a customer to max their line out, even for weeks at a time. As more and more customers go with things like BT, the average bandwidth usage of a customer skyrockets, and ISPs have to scramble to handle complaints of "the internet didn't used to be this slow!" from customers, and have to pay for more bandwidth from their upstreams to keep customers happy.
It takes about a quarter second to realize this makes the ISPs unhappy. They have lowered their prices in response to competition, and now their costs are going up. Now, should we have pity for them? I tried to think of a single ISP in my area that went out of business, and I can't think of one. Not a single one. I don't care how much of a hit they're taking to their bottom line, they must still be plenty proffitable. So instead of having a 10mil quarter, now they're having to "suffer" a 7mil quarter. Waaaah.
The ISPs are looking for ways to protect their pocketbook. The ISP industry is still proffitable, it's just not as lucritive as it used to be. Customers are willing to pay less, and are demanding more. That is how a free market economy works. Unlike some markets today, (gas stations come immediately to mind...) there are still going to always be a few providers willing to offer a little lower price for the same service, or the same service you used to get from your old ISP at the same price. Lower my cap or "shape" my bandwidth so my services go slower and I'll change providers tomorrow. Just watch me.
I hear a lot of noise about MS patches and "Patch Tuesday" curse words, but no one has much to say about Apple's patch schedule. Now I realize there are a lot less security updates from Apple, but that's another debate for another thread. What do people think of Apple's timeliness in the release of security updates? Have they been known to drag their feet on releasing, or maybe are they showing some hustle?
Nobody forces you to install patches. If you don't want to install an out of schedule patch, then don't. It's not like they're twisting your arm. Run your software update app once a month or set it to only check monthly or on whatever schedule you'd like.
I personally prefer updates to be delivered the day they are available and tested.
The concept of a release date means nothing here anyway. Say the next scheduled patch day is tomorrow. Say you come up with a fix today. Do you release it tomorrow? I wonder? Technically it's Patch Tuesday, so lets go for it! I don't see how this keeping to a schedule does anything to increase testing prior to release.
If they wanted to do something like that, they'd also have to have a limit saying "we will not release a patch on patch tuesday unless it has been in its final form and unmodified/unfixed for the last two weeks." I don't think they work that way.
Any system admin that is complaining about getting patches too often (so long as they are not having to be revised every 2 days to patch the patches!) is lazy on multiple fronts.
If my network just happens to be getting its butt kicked by some script kiddie with a mission, who is MS to decide whether or not I need the patch now ? (sometimes the risk of even bleeding edge beta is the preferred option)
Actually yes they did. Apparently safari.app = "the internet" and mail.app = "my email'. (the one in the dock, typically)
Of course when you're not on site and someone checks in a machine and you read the ticket and it's "I deleted the internet", you have to figure out which internet got deleted. Sometimes safari, sometimes explorer, sometimes netscape.
That's a nice novel use for an otherwise unrelated technology. I'm sure the SMS wasn't intended for security, but it works well for it.
As for being off... I wonder, does anything run while the laptop is asleep? My powerbook has probably spent less than 5 minutes turned off in the last four months. Most users close the lid and sleep it. (my powerbook draws the same 2 watts when it's asleep as when it's off, so why bother turning it off?)
A firmware hack might enable the alarm to wake up the book if it's moved. I assume the PMU/SMU is controlled by flashable firmware. Also, the SMS is in the older powerbooks also - this article only mentions the macbook pros, I wonder if it works in the older models also?
Is there a slip of paper in your deposit box at the bank with websites, account names and passwords?
Actually, yes there is. Well, it's not in a safe deposit box yet, but that's on my List of Things To Do. Currently it resides as a text file on my computer, in a place my relatives are informed about. It contains a lot of useful information that people just don't think about until they're dealing with the death of a friend or loved one.
- Logins and passwords for well... everywhere that I have logins and passwords. Includes username, password, and url. - credit card numbers, expiration dates, and PIN numbers (useful for cancelling cards AD!) - list of "commonly used low security passwords" - the passwords I might use to sign up for a temp account to post a comment on a forum etc. - checking and savings account numbers, TIN and PIN numbers for my bank cards with customer service phone numbers
With this list whoever gets to clean up after me will be able to go cancel out all those accounts or do whatever with them.
As for the porn, well if they're any good at guessing 42 character passwords they can have at it, because that one's not written down anywhere.
The spyware brats would just claim it is a "self repair" feature that repairs the app if it detects it's become "damaged". (ripped out by its roots by the user)
If I were writing laws, I'd make auto repair on reboot by anything short of an OS unlawful unless the user was prompted clearly with a fixed text message asking if they wanted the app to be repaired/reinstalled.
That is SO TRUE. Why is it people cannot see that spending two hours once is a better value than spending 10 minutes a day every day for the rest of your life?
The mathemeticians will be quick to notice that retraining is a one-time cost, and continuous damage control is an ongoing expense. Eventually, no matter how large the retraining costs, it will pay for itself in the end.
And this coming from someone that supports several hundred users at a school. Ratio here is about 10:1 Mac to PC. I handle the ~250 macs, and one other fellow handles the ~20 PCs. If he has a problem with a PC he usually reimages it. In most cases, I can fix whatever is wrong with the macs. What does that say about upkeep costs? We'd need a whole squad to man IT if the ratios were reversed.
Last month we had virus packets detected on the network. It took them two days to figure out where the new windows PC was that was infected. (thank you home-ec!) And the instructor that got the machine infected wasn't an admin user either. That alone speaks volumes about "Windows security".
My first "real job" (telemarketing!) got me into my first fight with NYB. The twits could not get rid of it. It was easy to spot because any machine infected could not format floppies. (I suspect DOS tried to verify the boot block after formatting, which by that time NYB had gotten to it) So I stuck around all night one evening and cleaned EVERY machine and EVERY floppy.
Two weeks later I tried to format a floppy and of course no go. Swept the machines again, all were infected and a pile of floppies.
Two weeks later here we go again. Pattern indicated the infection kept coming from the Stats PC which was ALWAYS infected when tested. (and so were the stats floppy backups) Finally figured out my manager was taking stats floppies home for off site backup. Doh! So we got to go clean up HIS system too.
NYB was annoying because it survived a control-alt-delete. You had to power the machine down to clear it from memory. If you stuffed a clean (/av) floppy in the drive and saluted the machine to reboot it, bam, floppy's infected now too. Of course the av disk was write protected, but after you rebooted after cleaning the HD, wow it's infected again!
Um, how exactly? The only way it could be proven is if Apple had a significant share of the market. Which they don't, and won't.
Wouldn't this mean you can neither argue for nor against it, since it's only theoretical? It sounds like you're using this as a point to argue against it?
Some people have to have the latest and greatest. I generally have bought a new powerbook every three years, and I get the cutting edge top model at the time. I get a kick out of owning a laptop that can still smoke a desktop a year later. And I'm never left wanting for something. A lot of the time this gives me access to gadgets that no one else even considers possible, let alone practical.
In 1999 I had a laptop that could burn CDs. I couldn't say that I knew anyone else that could do that.
Maybe it's an ego thing, or maybe it's wanting the latest gadget, or maybe not wanting to worry over upgrading a year later. Maybe a combination of the three.
That, and an important lesson I learned from my mother - "If it's important, don't go cheap." I've found this rule is very wise. If you're going to make a big purchase, it better make you happy and keep you happy for awhile, so why risk it buying mediocre or cheap? If it costs a little more and makes you a lot happier, or does not risk making you very unhappy, it's worth it.
But yes, I agree that when you buy on the bleeding edge you can get cut. I guess so far I've been lucky, and I think what we see in the press is mainly the bad news. (it's easier to find that 10% person that got a bad unit complaining to the world, than it is to spot the other 90% singing the praise)
I personally would have liked to have seen the powerbook line go just a liiiitle further, maybe to a 2ghz 15" PBG4, because that's about the point where I would have made my next upgrade. I'm a little skiddish about the macbooks so I will probably have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Intel world. I hope this powerbook lasts at least another year.
It's regrettably amusing that Apple competitors are working hastily to develop iPod clones to reap in success, but what many of them fail to comprehend is that it's not necessarily the iPod that makes Apple successful, but rather its customer service.
So many are trying to copy the result of Apple's innovation, and so few are actually trying to copy the concept of innovation. There is the reason Apple has been around for so many years, and why the iPod knockoffs will be gone next year.
this begs a freaking question, should a modern OS even allow some application to modify behaviour of another application in memory, especially behaviour of a system level application, an OS DLL?
Rememer please, this is windows we are talking about. How would anyone write viruses and pervasive spyware without this feature?
(lets all say it together, this is not a security hole / bug, it's a feature)
I would rate those top ten lists +1 insightful, -3 irrirating. They're one of those pages that has ONE screenful of content and a "next" button at the bottom, so you have to click to another page every 20 seconds. Whee, fun. Almost always a result of someone trying to get you to refresh banners 3 times a minute to get them more ad hits.
Damn ADC interface.. what am i to do with this big ass cinema display?!?!!?
As you may or may not be aware, the ADC connection provides a DVI signal, USB port, AND power. The display has no power pack, and gets its juice from the computer. If you have only a DVI port, you will require a rather large adapter. It's not so much an adapter as it is a "power injector" that injects power into the cable whilst converting it from DVI+USB to ADC. This takes the form of what looks like a very large white power brick from a powerbook.
They are unfortunately rather expensive. ($150?) You can get them from Apple, or from Dr Bott.
The other answer is of course to find a graphics artist or developer that does not already have a second display, and sell it to them. Odds are very hight that if you bring the display over and let them "test drive" it for even five minutes they'll buy it immediately.
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This is not entirely the developers' faults but they are certainly a major contributing factor. Most windows software cannot be installed unless you are logged in as an admin. A great deal of windows software will not run once installed except when you are logged in as an administrator. This has become an accepted behavior for software under the Windows platform, and as a result, about 95% of windows users log in mainly with an administrative account for every day use. It's a vicious circle... software forces you to be logged in as admin, and therefore lazy/incompetent developers just code sloppy because they (correctly) assume all their users will be logged in as an admin, and this only encourages them to do so.
All MS would have to do is to place a few simple, sensible requirements on software in order to be given license to use that "made for windows xp" etc logo on their box. Requiring the installer to be logged in as admin is understandable, but once installed, most software should be perfectly usable when logged in as a non-administrator. If this were a requirement to obtain license for that logo, it would do a world of good for windows security. This is why I say that windows' security model is flawed. It may have the teoretical capability of working, but the accepted method of implementation, as sanctioned by MS, is fatally flawed. And that is microsoft's own doing.
Windows has no effective security model. Users run as admin, so when they run spyware, the spyware runs as admin. Nothing is really protected from an admin, on windows most users basically run as root. So, there's really no way to protect an important part of windows OS except through obscurity. (yes, we all love it, "security through obscurity"!) The hosts file unfortunately is a well known weakness in the OS, so there's no hiding it. And since it's windows, there's no protecting it. So MS has to try something different.
It's sad that they have to try to plug the hole somewhere else, but here the battle is long since lost. At least with this subversion of Hosts, the malware makers (most of them anyway) don't know enough about the internal mechanisms of that feature to disable it as they can with Hosts. Of course given a little time they'll have figured that out too and that battle will also be lost.
Windows security is as effective as a screen door on a submarine.
It'd take the malware makers about an hour to find any of the what, probably 80 holes that would let them go around such windows security. A back-and-forth battle like that could easily go on for months if not years. In unix, security and permissions are the foundation, on top of which everything is built. In windows, security is a hack that was added on later with no due consideration during the initial design phase of windows. It's no wonder it's next to impossible to get it to work the way you want it to.
When you are designing security, the sad truth of it is, the user is the enemy. There's no nicer way to look at it. So it takes a great deal of care to design a security system that can withstand the assult of a user while at the same time being functional and serving the user. It's too late for windows to make those design considerations. They have errored on the side of functionality and sacrificed the security of the system. There is no fixing that.
What is your ISPs policy regarding P2P and is it fair for them to put restrictions and conditions on its use.
When most of the big ISPs hit the scenes, they were all about promises. The provider that promised the most had the best shot at getting the new customers in what was a bit of a feeding frenzy as people rushed to get onto the "information superhighway". So naturally they promised no limits. If you will remember back ~10 years ago, there WERE limits. I very clearly remember my university had a large bank of dial-in modems at 2400bps, and a small bank of "fast" 9600's, and we were limited to 24 hrs per month on the fast ones. Anyone under such limits would gladly go with another ISP that had no limits on traffic.
Five years ago this was not a big deal for the ISPs. Very few users were even achieving 1/4 of their cap. An ISP could easily place customers on their network that could, if they capped out, consume 4x the available bandwidth that the ISPs were leasing. Since the average user wouldn't go above 25% usage even at peak hours (8-10pm) this was fine. The typical ratio of dial-up customers to dial-in lines was between 7:1 and 11:1 depending on your ISP, so they were figuring that at peak times, only 1/7th of their customers would be online.
Now, with things like BitTorrent and always-on internet like DSL and cable, it's entirely possible for a customer to max their line out, even for weeks at a time. As more and more customers go with things like BT, the average bandwidth usage of a customer skyrockets, and ISPs have to scramble to handle complaints of "the internet didn't used to be this slow!" from customers, and have to pay for more bandwidth from their upstreams to keep customers happy.
It takes about a quarter second to realize this makes the ISPs unhappy. They have lowered their prices in response to competition, and now their costs are going up. Now, should we have pity for them? I tried to think of a single ISP in my area that went out of business, and I can't think of one. Not a single one. I don't care how much of a hit they're taking to their bottom line, they must still be plenty proffitable. So instead of having a 10mil quarter, now they're having to "suffer" a 7mil quarter. Waaaah.
The ISPs are looking for ways to protect their pocketbook. The ISP industry is still proffitable, it's just not as lucritive as it used to be. Customers are willing to pay less, and are demanding more. That is how a free market economy works. Unlike some markets today, (gas stations come immediately to mind...) there are still going to always be a few providers willing to offer a little lower price for the same service, or the same service you used to get from your old ISP at the same price. Lower my cap or "shape" my bandwidth so my services go slower and I'll change providers tomorrow. Just watch me.
I hear a lot of noise about MS patches and "Patch Tuesday" curse words, but no one has much to say about Apple's patch schedule. Now I realize there are a lot less security updates from Apple, but that's another debate for another thread. What do people think of Apple's timeliness in the release of security updates? Have they been known to drag their feet on releasing, or maybe are they showing some hustle?
Nobody forces you to install patches. If you don't want to install an out of schedule patch, then don't. It's not like they're twisting your arm. Run your software update app once a month or set it to only check monthly or on whatever schedule you'd like.
I personally prefer updates to be delivered the day they are available and tested.
The concept of a release date means nothing here anyway. Say the next scheduled patch day is tomorrow. Say you come up with a fix today. Do you release it tomorrow? I wonder? Technically it's Patch Tuesday, so lets go for it! I don't see how this keeping to a schedule does anything to increase testing prior to release.
If they wanted to do something like that, they'd also have to have a limit saying "we will not release a patch on patch tuesday unless it has been in its final form and unmodified/unfixed for the last two weeks." I don't think they work that way.
Any system admin that is complaining about getting patches too often (so long as they are not having to be revised every 2 days to patch the patches!) is lazy on multiple fronts.
If my network just happens to be getting its butt kicked by some script kiddie with a mission, who is MS to decide whether or not I need the patch now ? (sometimes the risk of even bleeding edge beta is the preferred option)
an article "-1 troll" ?
Do we really need a "status of open source" article every 2 weeks? Can't they just say "yup, two weeks later, not much'as changed..."
(now watch me get modded Troll)
Actually yes they did. Apparently safari.app = "the internet" and mail.app = "my email'. (the one in the dock, typically)
Of course when you're not on site and someone checks in a machine and you read the ticket and it's "I deleted the internet", you have to figure out which internet got deleted. Sometimes safari, sometimes explorer, sometimes netscape.
That's a nice novel use for an otherwise unrelated technology. I'm sure the SMS wasn't intended for security, but it works well for it.
As for being off... I wonder, does anything run while the laptop is asleep? My powerbook has probably spent less than 5 minutes turned off in the last four months. Most users close the lid and sleep it. (my powerbook draws the same 2 watts when it's asleep as when it's off, so why bother turning it off?)
A firmware hack might enable the alarm to wake up the book if it's moved. I assume the PMU/SMU is controlled by flashable firmware. Also, the SMS is in the older powerbooks also - this article only mentions the macbook pros, I wonder if it works in the older models also?
Is there a slip of paper in your deposit box at the bank with websites, account names and passwords?
Actually, yes there is. Well, it's not in a safe deposit box yet, but that's on my List of Things To Do. Currently it resides as a text file on my computer, in a place my relatives are informed about. It contains a lot of useful information that people just don't think about until they're dealing with the death of a friend or loved one.
- Logins and passwords for well... everywhere that I have logins and passwords. Includes username, password, and url.
- credit card numbers, expiration dates, and PIN numbers (useful for cancelling cards AD!)
- list of "commonly used low security passwords" - the passwords I might use to sign up for a temp account to post a comment on a forum etc.
- checking and savings account numbers, TIN and PIN numbers for my bank cards with customer service phone numbers
With this list whoever gets to clean up after me will be able to go cancel out all those accounts or do whatever with them.
As for the porn, well if they're any good at guessing 42 character passwords they can have at it, because that one's not written down anywhere.
I say, if you can't have a short user ID, then you should at least have a short user name.
(were one character nicks ever allowed?)
The spyware brats would just claim it is a "self repair" feature that repairs the app if it detects it's become "damaged". (ripped out by its roots by the user)
If I were writing laws, I'd make auto repair on reboot by anything short of an OS unlawful unless the user was prompted clearly with a fixed text message asking if they wanted the app to be repaired/reinstalled.
"i've deleted the internet"
Some will laugh when they read this, but I've received such a trouble report. Three times. It really does happen.
(and yes, once I have even repaired a broken "cup holder")
That is SO TRUE. Why is it people cannot see that spending two hours once is a better value than spending 10 minutes a day every day for the rest of your life?
The mathemeticians will be quick to notice that retraining is a one-time cost, and continuous damage control is an ongoing expense. Eventually, no matter how large the retraining costs, it will pay for itself in the end.
And this coming from someone that supports several hundred users at a school. Ratio here is about 10:1 Mac to PC. I handle the ~250 macs, and one other fellow handles the ~20 PCs. If he has a problem with a PC he usually reimages it. In most cases, I can fix whatever is wrong with the macs. What does that say about upkeep costs? We'd need a whole squad to man IT if the ratios were reversed.
Last month we had virus packets detected on the network. It took them two days to figure out where the new windows PC was that was infected. (thank you home-ec!) And the instructor that got the machine infected wasn't an admin user either. That alone speaks volumes about "Windows security".
My first "real job" (telemarketing!) got me into my first fight with NYB. The twits could not get rid of it. It was easy to spot because any machine infected could not format floppies. (I suspect DOS tried to verify the boot block after formatting, which by that time NYB had gotten to it) So I stuck around all night one evening and cleaned EVERY machine and EVERY floppy.
Two weeks later I tried to format a floppy and of course no go. Swept the machines again, all were infected and a pile of floppies.
Two weeks later here we go again. Pattern indicated the infection kept coming from the Stats PC which was ALWAYS infected when tested. (and so were the stats floppy backups) Finally figured out my manager was taking stats floppies home for off site backup. Doh! So we got to go clean up HIS system too.
NYB was annoying because it survived a control-alt-delete. You had to power the machine down to clear it from memory. If you stuffed a clean (/av) floppy in the drive and saluted the machine to reboot it, bam, floppy's infected now too. Of course the av disk was write protected, but after you rebooted after cleaning the HD, wow it's infected again!
Um, how exactly? The only way it could be proven is if Apple had a significant share of the market. Which they don't, and won't.
Wouldn't this mean you can neither argue for nor against it, since it's only theoretical? It sounds like you're using this as a point to argue against it?
Some people have to have the latest and greatest. I generally have bought a new powerbook every three years, and I get the cutting edge top model at the time. I get a kick out of owning a laptop that can still smoke a desktop a year later. And I'm never left wanting for something. A lot of the time this gives me access to gadgets that no one else even considers possible, let alone practical.
In 1999 I had a laptop that could burn CDs. I couldn't say that I knew anyone else that could do that.
Maybe it's an ego thing, or maybe it's wanting the latest gadget, or maybe not wanting to worry over upgrading a year later. Maybe a combination of the three.
That, and an important lesson I learned from my mother - "If it's important, don't go cheap." I've found this rule is very wise. If you're going to make a big purchase, it better make you happy and keep you happy for awhile, so why risk it buying mediocre or cheap? If it costs a little more and makes you a lot happier, or does not risk making you very unhappy, it's worth it.
But yes, I agree that when you buy on the bleeding edge you can get cut. I guess so far I've been lucky, and I think what we see in the press is mainly the bad news. (it's easier to find that 10% person that got a bad unit complaining to the world, than it is to spot the other 90% singing the praise)
I personally would have liked to have seen the powerbook line go just a liiiitle further, maybe to a 2ghz 15" PBG4, because that's about the point where I would have made my next upgrade. I'm a little skiddish about the macbooks so I will probably have to be dragged kicking and screaming into the Intel world. I hope this powerbook lasts at least another year.
I was thinking the same thing. That would probably overload the servers though, with so many people submitting forms.
It's regrettably amusing that Apple competitors are working hastily to develop iPod clones to reap in success, but what many of them fail to comprehend is that it's not necessarily the iPod that makes Apple successful, but rather its customer service.
So many are trying to copy the result of Apple's innovation, and so few are actually trying to copy the concept of innovation. There is the reason Apple has been around for so many years, and why the iPod knockoffs will be gone next year.
this begs a freaking question, should a modern OS even allow some application to modify behaviour of another application in memory, especially behaviour of a system level application, an OS DLL?
Rememer please, this is windows we are talking about. How would anyone write viruses and pervasive spyware without this feature?
(lets all say it together, this is not a security hole / bug, it's a feature )
...but it is true now more than ever.
Those who would give up essential Liberty, to purchase a little temporary Safety, deserve neither Liberty nor Safety.
It's not 1984 yet, but it's looking more and more like November of 1983. Scarry stuff.
I would rate those top ten lists +1 insightful, -3 irrirating. They're one of those pages that has ONE screenful of content and a "next" button at the bottom, so you have to click to another page every 20 seconds. Whee, fun. Almost always a result of someone trying to get you to refresh banners 3 times a minute to get them more ad hits.
Damn ADC interface.. what am i to do with this big ass cinema display?!?!!?
As you may or may not be aware, the ADC connection provides a DVI signal, USB port, AND power. The display has no power pack, and gets its juice from the computer. If you have only a DVI port, you will require a rather large adapter. It's not so much an adapter as it is a "power injector" that injects power into the cable whilst converting it from DVI+USB to ADC. This takes the form of what looks like a very large white power brick from a powerbook.
They are unfortunately rather expensive. ($150?) You can get them from Apple, or from Dr Bott.
The other answer is of course to find a graphics artist or developer that does not already have a second display, and sell it to them. Odds are very hight that if you bring the display over and let them "test drive" it for even five minutes they'll buy it immediately.