>So if one of the main arguments about why Macs are so >virus free is their small market share, should we really >keep telling people to switch, since a growing market >share will make Macs a bigger target?
How much would it have to grow before it becomes a likely target? A factor of 10? 20?
That said, there are two main reasons why viruses on the mac are less common:
1) Mail.app makes it more difficult to launch an application sent to you directly and warns you. It doesn't keep you from doing so, but its not as easy (or defaulted, like it used to be on Outlook).
2) Better security model. The damage one app can cause, even in an admin account, is limited unless it's given extra permissions, which requires giving it a password.
>Also, is it wise to keep pointing out so loudly that its so >hard to write a virus for OS X and that none currently >exist? I mean, it sounds kind of pompous and >arrogant...like an invitation to try write one?
The question would then be, providing you (or whoever) could actually write it, "how long would it stay in the wild."
The low marketshare means that even if you could get it to be as infectious as a virus on windows (same infectious characteristics) it wouldn't have a large pool of systems that it could infect, this means that it is more likely to fizzle than become an issue.
Even providing you could get it work and people to run it.
First, as has been pointed out, its the playlist which is restricted, not the files. You can reconfigure the files and burn them to your heart's content.
The reason for this is to prevent someone from setting up their mac to automatically mass-produce lots of CDs--just push a button and swap the CDs. This puts an extra step in there every so often to make it more difficult.
Users would welcome it, but Apple stands nothing to gain from it.
Apple ported iTunes over because, simply, that is the only way to remain competitive in the world of legal music downloads. Combined with deals with AOL and Pepsi, appealing to the other 95% of the market is the only way to go or you are going to lose the market forever. In short: it made a lot of sense to port iTunes now that the iTMS was out and tested on a Mac audience.
Safari, OTOH, is a Mac Advantage(TM) and will remain that way. There is no economic incentive for them to port one of their flagship products over to the PC side. They might build up a better reputation with PC users, but in doing so they remove a big reason to switch over to the Mac platform.
IIRC, AAC is actually an ISO standard and is used in MPEG4 and is significantly better than mp3s which are at much higher bitrates. WMA is wholly owned by Microsoft and doesn't seem to offer appreciable sound benefits over mp3s.
1) Play it on any three computers (that have iTunes) at a time.
2) Burn it to as many CDs as you like.
2a) Rerip it from CD.
3) Put it on as many iPods as you like.
What about these exactly do you consider draconian? The music companies are not going agree to a DRM-less system and, frankly, Apple's FairPlay doesn't get in my way at all and is/very/ fair.
"Microsoft has perfectly valid reasons for not giving a crap about Mac users. If I were Bill Gates, I would reply to this by removing Hebrew support from Office for Windows."
Wow, you think a business should retaliate against its customers because they refuse to deal with MS?
Let me know if you run any businesses so I can be sure not to buy from them, your customer service departments would be horrible!
Implementing internationalization for hebrew is trivial in Cocoa-based apps. It is significantly more difficult for Carbon based apps (which MS Office likely is). Microsoft also has a *serious* NIH syndrome when it comes to anything Apple-based and seems to prefer to implement their own versions of everything rather than use Apple's built-in libraries, so even if they could use Apple's internationalization (which I should add is absolutely gorgeous for Hebrew), I have a sneaking suspicion they would want to implement and use their own.
> but what I _do_ mind is a crappy 128bps recording.
You might want to listen to them before you make that judgment.
While I am not an audiophile, the 128 kbps AAC files, which they rip from the original masters, sound good to my ears and are significantly better than mp3s in headphones. I've been reripping my library from my CDs using 192 kbps, which I wouldn't even have considered with mp3s.
Now, as another poster pointed out, if you want full-CD, i.e. lossless, you are not in Apple's target market. Period, end of story. Full stop.
You also don't seem to get that Apple should only offer one version. The fewer buttons and decisions the average consumer has to make that they don't understand, the better.
Apple's DRM is called FairPlay and it applies as follows:
* You can make as many backups as you like. * You can play it on up to three of your computers as a time. If you switch computers you can de-authorize your old computer and re-authorize. * You can have it on as many iPods as you like. * You can burn it to as many CDs as you like.
My guess is that you will only be able to play them with iTunes, but if iTunes for the PC is anywhere close to iTunes for Mac that won't be a problem.
There is no reason why you couldn't do the same thing with Go. We have game records for thousands of games by professionals, because there are so many possibilities its much more difficult to deal with.
Remember that, if anything, Go is a much older game than chess is.
>Go can be done... its just that you would need a REALLY >powerful chip to brute force all those combos in less than >say... a few years...
I'm not sure you emphasized "REALLY" enough.
Lets put it like this, blatantly ripping Mechner's analysis: Providing that, out of the 200-some-odd number legal moves (average) at any given point in a Go game can be narrowed down to 15 or so "good moves" and that this program could evaluate 200 million moves a second, it would still take 70 years to do what Deep Blue did in *three minutes*.
To top that off, we still don't have a program that can accurately evaluate a *single* position of Go (though they are getting somewhat better), much less 200 million of them.
There really is far far more to this than just a "really powerful chip." Even with enormous computational power, we still couldn't brute force our way through it simply because of how big the problem really is.
Not to get too off-topic, but there are also now several (increasing) prizes for beating top ranked players (well, rather, any professional player and occasionally there's a prize for beating a dan ranked amateur) in Go.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, there is an excellent, if somewhat dated, article that discusses some of the difficulties for getting a computer to play Go well. It also talks about Janice Kim, a 1 dan (professional) at the time (now a 3 dan), beating the then-best program when the computer had a 25 stone handicap. To give an idea, a 9 stone handicap in an experimental games between evenly matched professionals generates about 140 point advantage.
As I said, it is a bit dated (5 years old) and computers have improved, but we are still nowhere close to beating a professional.
No problems here on a 12" PowerBook. In fact it was acting kind of flakey before the update. Maybe the original author would like to specify what he meant?
Meanwhile sendmail is not only not enabled by default, but there is no way to enable without the command line.
As for ssh, is there a working root exploit out? Just about *everything* that connects to the internet is vulnerable to connection overloading via a DoS. This makes it easier, sure, but that a DoS is possible isn't exactly a deal breaker.
Finally, if you are using these in a production environment where security patches are time-critical, you should probably be compiling your own versions of these services and not depending on Apple.
I would have liked to see the security patches to come faster as well, but for these kinds of things its not a big deal to me if they are a bit lax.
1) Use a mail filter;) I use the one in Apple's Mail program, using a combination of its built in abilities and custom filter settings to hit the big stuff.
2) Disable rendering of images in HTML documents. This way you'll kill most web bugs that indicate your account is valid.
3) Bounce messages. If it is connected to a live account you'll come up as an inactive account. This has helped before, but most of the time it just generates extra messages in your account.
Slashdot Mirror
>So if one of the main arguments about why Macs are so
>virus free is their small market share, should we really
>keep telling people to switch, since a growing market
>share will make Macs a bigger target?
How much would it have to grow before it becomes a likely target? A factor of 10? 20?
That said, there are two main reasons why viruses on the mac are less common:
1) Mail.app makes it more difficult to launch an application sent to you directly and warns you. It doesn't keep you from doing so, but its not as easy (or defaulted, like it used to be on Outlook).
2) Better security model. The damage one app can cause, even in an admin account, is limited unless it's given extra permissions, which requires giving it a password.
>Also, is it wise to keep pointing out so loudly that its so
>hard to write a virus for OS X and that none currently
>exist? I mean, it sounds kind of pompous and
>arrogant...like an invitation to try write one?
The question would then be, providing you (or whoever) could actually write it, "how long would it stay in the wild."
The low marketshare means that even if you could get it to be as infectious as a virus on windows (same infectious characteristics) it wouldn't have a large pool of systems that it could infect, this means that it is more likely to fizzle than become an issue.
Even providing you could get it work and people to run it.
I realize this is a joke, but I've heard this argument before.
My reply is simply: "I don't have to upgrade"
Now, as it so happens I've purchased a 5-computer license because I think it is worth the investment, but it isn't mandatory that I upgrade.
Three things come immediately to mind:
1) Would it be hot swappable? (Remember: don't build systems that won't fail, build systems that fail gracefully).
2) What would it cost?
3) Is the fail rate so appreciably different that it matters and so that it would make up for the increased capital cost?
This is only true for files over about 7 minutes long.
Look at Vanessae-Mae's classical album for a good example.
Violin Concerto in C Op.48, II. Andant (5:02) you can buy just the song.
Violin Concerto in D Op.35, III. Finale (Allegro Vivacissimo) (9:08) can only be purchased as part of the album (32 songs for $29.97).
Other songs that are album only on this:
*Violin Concerto in D Op.35, I. Allegro Moderato 17:22
*Violin Concerto in D 'Adelaide' (In the Style of Mozart) K294A1, I. Allegro (7:22)
*Violin Concerto in D 'Adelaide' (In the Style of Mozart) K294A1, II. Adagio (7:14)
*Violin Concerto in D Op.61, I. Allegro Ma Non Troppo (22:47)
*Violin Concerto in D Op.61, II. Larghetto (8:05)
*Violin Concerto in D Op.61, III. Rondo (Allegro) (9:48)
*Inspired by Folk Culture, Frere Jacques (8:54)
*Inspired by Opera, Concert Fantasy On 'Carmen', Op.25 (13:37)
*Inspired by Opera, Fantaisie Brillante On Themes from Gounod's 'Faust', Op.20 (16:21)
There's a fairly consistent pattern here and not many "One-hit Wonders" have a hit that's over 7 minutes.
First, as has been pointed out, its the playlist which is restricted, not the files. You can reconfigure the files and burn them to your heart's content.
The reason for this is to prevent someone from setting up their mac to automatically mass-produce lots of CDs--just push a button and swap the CDs. This puts an extra step in there every so often to make it more difficult.
Users would welcome it, but Apple stands nothing to gain from it.
Apple ported iTunes over because, simply, that is the only way to remain competitive in the world of legal music downloads. Combined with deals with AOL and Pepsi, appealing to the other 95% of the market is the only way to go or you are going to lose the market forever. In short: it made a lot of sense to port iTunes now that the iTMS was out and tested on a Mac audience.
Safari, OTOH, is a Mac Advantage(TM) and will remain that way. There is no economic incentive for them to port one of their flagship products over to the PC side. They might build up a better reputation with PC users, but in doing so they remove a big reason to switch over to the Mac platform.
If you want to use Safari, buy a Mac.
Brief correction.
IIRC, AAC is actually an ISO standard and is used in MPEG4 and is significantly better than mp3s which are at much higher bitrates. WMA is wholly owned by Microsoft and doesn't seem to offer appreciable sound benefits over mp3s.
You can:
/very/ fair.
1) Play it on any three computers (that have iTunes) at a time.
2) Burn it to as many CDs as you like.
2a) Rerip it from CD.
3) Put it on as many iPods as you like.
What about these exactly do you consider draconian? The music companies are not going agree to a DRM-less system and, frankly, Apple's FairPlay doesn't get in my way at all and is
As an aside, they have also added 5000 Audiobooks and cleaned up the interface. Good news all around.
For us Mac users: The updates for iTunes 4.1 and QuickTime 6.4 are both on softwareupdate.
Why use OroborOSX and XonX? Why not just use Apple's wonderful, Quartz Extreme capable version of X11?
TextEdit should offer full support for MS Word files in Panther and it currently supports hebrew, maybe that will work for you?
"Microsoft has perfectly valid reasons for not giving a crap about Mac users. If I were Bill Gates, I would reply to this by removing Hebrew support from Office for Windows."
Wow, you think a business should retaliate against its customers because they refuse to deal with MS?
Let me know if you run any businesses so I can be sure not to buy from them, your customer service departments would be horrible!
Well, you're mostly right.
Implementing internationalization for hebrew is trivial in Cocoa-based apps. It is significantly more difficult for Carbon based apps (which MS Office likely is). Microsoft also has a *serious* NIH syndrome when it comes to anything Apple-based and seems to prefer to implement their own versions of everything rather than use Apple's built-in libraries, so even if they could use Apple's internationalization (which I should add is absolutely gorgeous for Hebrew), I have a sneaking suspicion they would want to implement and use their own.
Under the spreading chestnut tree
I sold you and you sold me
There lie they and here lie we
Under the spreading chestnut tree
"Microsoft has several means at their disposal to effectively shut down Mono if it should ever gain critical mass."
Am I the only one who read this and first thought of mononucleosis, aka, "The kissing disease"?
You forgot: Lock it in a room by itself and epoxy the drives shut, then weld the case together. ;)
> but what I _do_ mind is a crappy 128bps recording.
You might want to listen to them before you make that judgment.
While I am not an audiophile, the 128 kbps AAC files, which they rip from the original masters, sound good to my ears and are significantly better than mp3s in headphones. I've been reripping my library from my CDs using 192 kbps, which I wouldn't even have considered with mp3s.
Now, as another poster pointed out, if you want full-CD, i.e. lossless, you are not in Apple's target market. Period, end of story. Full stop.
You also don't seem to get that Apple should only offer one version. The fewer buttons and decisions the average consumer has to make that they don't understand, the better.
>btw how are they handling the whole DRM thing?
I really should just say RTFM... Sigh.
Apple's DRM is called FairPlay and it applies as follows:
* You can make as many backups as you like.
* You can play it on up to three of your computers as a time. If you switch computers you can de-authorize your old computer and re-authorize.
* You can have it on as many iPods as you like.
* You can burn it to as many CDs as you like.
My guess is that you will only be able to play them with iTunes, but if iTunes for the PC is anywhere close to iTunes for Mac that won't be a problem.
>They analyze those games to find out what to do.
There is no reason why you couldn't do the same thing with Go. We have game records for thousands of games by professionals, because there are so many possibilities its much more difficult to deal with.
Remember that, if anything, Go is a much older game than chess is.
>Go can be done... its just that you would need a REALLY
>powerful chip to brute force all those combos in less than
>say... a few years...
I'm not sure you emphasized "REALLY" enough.
Lets put it like this, blatantly ripping Mechner's analysis: Providing that, out of the 200-some-odd number legal moves (average) at any given point in a Go game can be narrowed down to 15 or so "good moves" and that this program could evaluate 200 million moves a second, it would still take 70 years to do what Deep Blue did in *three minutes*.
To top that off, we still don't have a program that can accurately evaluate a *single* position of Go (though they are getting somewhat better), much less 200 million of them.
There really is far far more to this than just a "really powerful chip." Even with enormous computational power, we still couldn't brute force our way through it simply because of how big the problem really is.
Not to get too off-topic, but there are also now several (increasing) prizes for beating top ranked players (well, rather, any professional player and occasionally there's a prize for beating a dan ranked amateur) in Go.
For those of you who are unfamiliar, there is an excellent, if somewhat dated, article that discusses some of the difficulties for getting a computer to play Go well. It also talks about Janice Kim, a 1 dan (professional) at the time (now a 3 dan), beating the then-best program when the computer had a 25 stone handicap. To give an idea, a 9 stone handicap in an experimental games between evenly matched professionals generates about 140 point advantage.
As I said, it is a bit dated (5 years old) and computers have improved, but we are still nowhere close to beating a professional.
No problems here on a 12" PowerBook. In fact it was acting kind of flakey before the update. Maybe the original author would like to specify what he meant?
Repair permissions, the other white meat.
Meanwhile sendmail is not only not enabled by default, but there is no way to enable without the command line.
As for ssh, is there a working root exploit out? Just about *everything* that connects to the internet is vulnerable to connection overloading via a DoS. This makes it easier, sure, but that a DoS is possible isn't exactly a deal breaker.
Finally, if you are using these in a production environment where security patches are time-critical, you should probably be compiling your own versions of these services and not depending on Apple.
I would have liked to see the security patches to come faster as well, but for these kinds of things its not a big deal to me if they are a bit lax.
Installed the update to the update, no problems so far, will keep apprised if the situation changes.
These are some steps that I take:
;) I use the one in Apple's Mail program, using a combination of its built in abilities and custom filter settings to hit the big stuff.
1) Use a mail filter
2) Disable rendering of images in HTML documents. This way you'll kill most web bugs that indicate your account is valid.
3) Bounce messages. If it is connected to a live account you'll come up as an inactive account. This has helped before, but most of the time it just generates extra messages in your account.