If you watch a computer novice use a Mac, or just anyone who is not used to the Mac - you'll notice that the vast majority of them have lots of application open without realizing it, as they think when they can't see the application, that it must be gone. They then wonder why their computer is running so slow. The Mac behavior is actually counter-intuitive to most people I have watched used them. The Dock improves this a bit, but most people don't connect a small, black triangle to the program open and hogging memory.
And Windows does allow for applications to not take up space on the task bar, and to stay open when the last window is closed. They can sit in the system tray too, which is intended mostly for applications that are to be running all the time. While this is very commonly abused (even by Apple), on my Windows computer, my mp3 player, IM client, firewall, virus scanner, and BOINC all reside there without cluttering the taskbar and can stay open even when I've closed all visible windows on my desktop.
I really want to see Angelina Jolie nude, but when I download her pictures, angelinanude.exe won't open?
Mac users don't visit the kind of sites that peddle this malware because these sites and the stuff they offer doesn't work on macs. That means you need a whole new distribution network.
As I was saying, the only real reason is because they the stuff out there doesn't target the Mac.
Also: a large proportion of mac users tend to frequent Mac news/rumor sites. One wiff of something like this and it will be plastered all over these sites and the vast majority of mac users will know about it.
If you want to get malware out on macs, you have to do it really quickly or really stealthily.
This is the typical slashdot Mac user, which is like the typical slashdot Windows user - a pretty rare breed. You underestimate the number of people who bought a Mac because "They don't get viruses.", or had a Mac foisted on them by friends/relatives who were tired of fixing their Windows boxes. These people don't understand how their Windows install became infected, and how to take basic security measures to prevent infections. These people will be easy pickings for any kind of Mac malware, just like they were easy pickings for Windows malware.
It's also my experience that if you have two similar computers, the one that only runs 6-12 hours a day will last a lot longer than the always on computer. This seems to be due mostly to the cheap capacitors used in many computers nowadays. Like the mechanical parts like drives and fans that are wearing out anytime they are on, these capacitors also only have a finite lifetime and you'll use it up a whole lot quicker if you don't turn the machine off. That, and the random power spikes that'll kill your computer can only affect it when it's powered up*.
*Well, assuming you turn it off at a power strip like I do.
It's just another example of a piece of software that could be made for the Mac (or Linux, etc.) that simply wasn't. There is no reason why they couldn't try to trick Mac users into installing the software like they do to the Windows/IE users.
It depends on the hardware. My AMD Athlon XP box I built from parts which is crammed full of parts and various stuff doesn't work right. It'll suspend and come back on, but no sound until I reboot, and sometimes no keyboard and mouse until unplug them and plug them back in. Usually sleep/hibernate just doesn't work quite right on my frankencomputers, and I just deal with it.
On the other hand, close to stock OEM computers work great. IBM Netvista's, most Dells, and HP Vectras just seem to work. I even put Vista on a 5 year old HP Vectra (1.5Ghz P4) and have no problems with sleep/hibernate/resume on that computer.
I would set up the computer to upload the files somewhere remote (for example, a PC set up where you are currently living would work fine). That way, if you can't connect to the server, you'll be able to atleast see what it was seeing up to the end. Though I still don't think it's a good idea - a cheap PC running Linux can easily stay up for months, but there are also plenty of things that can go wrong with it and leave you hanging.
Well... when you can't lead in performance, you try to lead somewhere else. Yes, the launch of Core2 parts drove AMD to cut the prices of their processors by 50% or more in order to stay competitive. Had they not done that, they would be selling nothing right now because even a fanboi couldn't justify buying AMD at the complete destruction that equal priced CPUs from AMD would get compared to the Intel parts. So, AMD dropped back to attempt to remain king of the bargain market until they could release something that would put them back into the performance game, which Intel currently owns (not counting the obviously boutique, one-off 4x4 deadend attempt to save face that AMD marketing released).
I don't think that you understand "bargain market". At the moment, Intel is still trying to push Pentium 4's and Prescott based Celerons against AMD's Sempron and Sempron 64. AMD has nothing to worry about here.
I find this a bit confusing - if everything was available on the Mac, then why do so many people run Windows on their Intel Macs? The simple fact that virtualization is so popular seems to suggest that there is a void that isn't being filled on the OSX side.
That's kind of risky for the buddy - if their target is too quick, they could all too easily end up not getting hit and their buddy gets stuck with an accident that's 100% their fault. I figure they just find some random dude that's getting tailgated by some other random dude and target them instead.
On the other hand, if you don't care about your car much and have good brakes, it does give a good way to deal with tailgaters.
I've thought about that. Basically a couple of very wide angle cameras, one pointed forward and one pointed backwards. Probably mounted right above the windsheild/rear window so they get a good view, and less likely to be damaged in an accident when you need them the most. In the car, install a device to capture the images to either a large flash drive, or possibly some kind of digital tape (a running harddrive may not survive a crash). Set the camera to run whenever the ignition is on, plus maybe a few minutes after the car is shut off. It would really do wonders if you had to prove that someone else actually caused the accident. It may even be a good idea to install a third camera pointed at the instrument cluster if you wanted to show you weren't speeding. And if you could have it activate for a few minutes when the car is off with a motion sensor, it would also do wonders to catch vandals, or people who run into your car at a parking lot and drive away. Given today's technology, it wouldn't cost more than a few hundred in hardware, and could easily pay for itself the first time you need it.
My other idea would be to put a small camera at the end of the radio antenna, pointed forward, with a monitor in the dash. Being able to look past the cars ahead of me in traffic without driving a large vehicle would be a nice feature to have.
What you do is aim for their driver's side rear tire (I'm assuming he cut you off in the left-most lane). When the tire blows out, most likely they will end up losing control and going into the median. If you're lucky, they'll flip over, giving you a chance to hit their gas tank. Works quite well, actually.
It makes sense though, as I've seen people get trapped in the middle of an intersection by pulling forward while waiting for a break. What happens is that when the light in their direction turns yellow, which should be their chance to get out of the intersection - instead you get a stream of cars zooming through the yellow. Then the light turns red, and several cars run the red light. By this time, the cross traffic has gotten the green light and they start pulling into the intersection, and get in the way of the vehicle who is still trying to execute their turn. And it turns into a giant mess. I've learned that for some intersections at certain times of the day, you'd best to stay put until you can make your turn.
As much as I hate red light cameras, they really need to set them up in some places. People running red lights when the light has been red 3-5 seconds is just plain dangerous.
I could see it if you were tailgating a car cruising in the passing lane that isn't passing anyone and there is no one in front of it, particularly if they don't move over when there is a chance to.
However, if your tailgating someone who is stuck in the same situation you are (car in front of them moving slow in the passing lane so they can't go any faster), you deserve your ticket.
On the other hand, don't tailgate if you aren't in the passing lane (I get these morons quite a bit - I'm not in the passing lane, the passing lane can even be open, and they prefer to ride my bumper. I don't get it). If you have to be in the right hand lane because your exit is coming up, deal with it. Don't tailgate someone in the passing lane if there is another car in front of them moving at the same pace. There is nothing the car in front of you can do to move faster, and tailgating them is simply dangerous and stupid. Also, if someone is using the passing lane the way its intended, but a little slower than you would like, don't tailgate them, because they intend to move back over when they are done passing and you'll be on your way. Tailgating them just pisses them off, and accomplishes nothing.
Some drunk drivers tend "focus" on another vehicle, and just follow what it's doing. I've heard of plenty of accidents involving drunks that focus on a vehicle on the side of the road and just drive right into it. Of course, sleepy drivers will do the same thing.
Well, I find it odd that Christians do things like trying to get their religion taught as science in schools, blocking important research, attacking abortion clinics, discrimenate against gays, affect foriegn policy, etc. and when the inevitable backlash comes, they go cry about intolerance. As far as I'm concerned, Christians* have made their bed, they can go lay in it.
*I don't really mean all Christians, just the hateful, hypocritical and willfully ignorant kind that do the type of things listed above.
With the index sizes that are being collected by search engines these days (on the order of 10 billion entries), it's completely naive to think that some humans are sitting at a terminal choosing to delist websites for some policy reason or other. It's also completely naive to think that a human email monkey can do any sort of digging to find out the exact reason that Google's automated algorithm has censored this particular site.
Why not? While it is certainly silly to think that there are people checking every single website that Google indexes, I don't see why it would be hard or implausable that someone who wanted to single out a certain website for whatever reason and had the needed access to Google's database couldn't simply blacklist it.
You don't have to worry about me buying an app that only runs under virtualization. I'll just wait until one of your competitors comes out with a native Mac version. It will work better, look better, integrate better and probably kick your ass for features.
You're assuming, of course, that anyone is going to bother to do so.
Take a look at Windows ME. Windows ME was really a stop-gap release, Windows 98 was supposed to be the end of Dos based Windows, after that it was all going to be based upon NT as Microsoft was going to merge their home and business versions of Windows (this eventually turned out be XP). However, this was taking too long, so Microsoft took a bunch of their features they wanted to release in XP, grafted them onto Windows 98, tried to hide the Dos stuff as much as possible, and called it ME. Which was a disaster - it was a kludge thrown quickly together and it showed.
It seems that Windows Vista is the same way in many aspects. It just feels like a bunch of features from some other, more advanced version of Windows was hurriedly grafted onto Vista in order get something out the door. Sure, some of the features in Vista are a big deal, much like Universal Plug and Play, system restore, Automatic Updates, and Windows Movie Maker were for Windows ME. The inclusion of new features in Vista doesn not make the comparsion invalid, especially since in all honesty, Windows Vista does remind me of Windows ME.
I'm going to guess that in a few years, Microsoft will be able to get things right, and we'll get a version of Windows where everything feels like it belongs, and things work in a consistent manner. Until then, I expect a lot of patches for Vista, much in the same way Microsoft eventually patched up Windows ME to the point where it ran acceptably (but by that time no one cared).
I think Microsoft's activation schemes tracks expansion cards being removed/installed, not necessarily what those expansion cards are. Though if it actually was a USB/Firewire TV tuner, then that's ridiculous.
The minimum for Windows XP is 233Mhz with 64MB of ram. I don't think XP would be even usuable on such a system, especially with SP2 installed. But it will install. I seriously doubt Vista would - though you might be able to convince it to if you loaded that computer up with 256MB of ram or more.
I did install Windows Vista on a P4 1.5Ghz with 1GB of ram, 7200RPM disk, and a GeForce 2 graphics card, which would be a high end 2001 machine. While it wasn't too terribly stable (I could get it to lock hard without too much trouble - Windows XPSP2, SUSE Linux, and Ubuntu are solid on this same computer), the speed at which it ran was perfectly acceptable, though noticably slower than XP.
ClearType is ONLY for LCDs, not for CRTs. It actually assumes pixels in the order of "r,g,b,r,g,b,..." on the screen, and will light up the "b" a little bit, or close up the "r" a little bit to make as if the pixels are there. CRTs put the colored pixels at the same place, so it's not the same thing. That said, it will work a little bit under CRTs because it will tend to anti-alias the fonts, but that's a side-effect, and it will not be as beautiful, far from it. That's why you got the "Standard" anti-aliasing feature inside that particular menu too, for CRTs.
Actually, it does work for Trinitron CRT monitors, which have their pixels lined up similar to LCDs. Works quite well, actually.
Slashdot Mirror
If you watch a computer novice use a Mac, or just anyone who is not used to the Mac - you'll notice that the vast majority of them have lots of application open without realizing it, as they think when they can't see the application, that it must be gone. They then wonder why their computer is running so slow. The Mac behavior is actually counter-intuitive to most people I have watched used them. The Dock improves this a bit, but most people don't connect a small, black triangle to the program open and hogging memory.
And Windows does allow for applications to not take up space on the task bar, and to stay open when the last window is closed. They can sit in the system tray too, which is intended mostly for applications that are to be running all the time. While this is very commonly abused (even by Apple), on my Windows computer, my mp3 player, IM client, firewall, virus scanner, and BOINC all reside there without cluttering the taskbar and can stay open even when I've closed all visible windows on my desktop.
I really want to see Angelina Jolie nude, but when I download her pictures, angelinanude.exe won't open?
Mac users don't visit the kind of sites that peddle this malware because these sites and the stuff they offer doesn't work on macs. That means you need a whole new distribution network.
As I was saying, the only real reason is because they the stuff out there doesn't target the Mac.
Also: a large proportion of mac users tend to frequent Mac news/rumor sites. One wiff of something like this and it will be plastered all over these sites and the vast majority of mac users will know about it.
If you want to get malware out on macs, you have to do it really quickly or really stealthily.
This is the typical slashdot Mac user, which is like the typical slashdot Windows user - a pretty rare breed. You underestimate the number of people who bought a Mac because "They don't get viruses.", or had a Mac foisted on them by friends/relatives who were tired of fixing their Windows boxes. These people don't understand how their Windows install became infected, and how to take basic security measures to prevent infections. These people will be easy pickings for any kind of Mac malware, just like they were easy pickings for Windows malware.
It's also my experience that if you have two similar computers, the one that only runs 6-12 hours a day will last a lot longer than the always on computer. This seems to be due mostly to the cheap capacitors used in many computers nowadays. Like the mechanical parts like drives and fans that are wearing out anytime they are on, these capacitors also only have a finite lifetime and you'll use it up a whole lot quicker if you don't turn the machine off. That, and the random power spikes that'll kill your computer can only affect it when it's powered up*.
*Well, assuming you turn it off at a power strip like I do.
AOL used to do it, maybe they still do. The only way for it to work is to have your ISP support it by recompressing the images on their end.
It's just another example of a piece of software that could be made for the Mac (or Linux, etc.) that simply wasn't. There is no reason why they couldn't try to trick Mac users into installing the software like they do to the Windows/IE users.
It depends on the hardware. My AMD Athlon XP box I built from parts which is crammed full of parts and various stuff doesn't work right. It'll suspend and come back on, but no sound until I reboot, and sometimes no keyboard and mouse until unplug them and plug them back in. Usually sleep/hibernate just doesn't work quite right on my frankencomputers, and I just deal with it.
On the other hand, close to stock OEM computers work great. IBM Netvista's, most Dells, and HP Vectras just seem to work. I even put Vista on a 5 year old HP Vectra (1.5Ghz P4) and have no problems with sleep/hibernate/resume on that computer.
I'll just unload the Bittorrent tasks to an unwanted P3 PC, and not worry about it.
Besides, any hardcore gamer is going to stop his torrents anyway when playing online.
I would set up the computer to upload the files somewhere remote (for example, a PC set up where you are currently living would work fine). That way, if you can't connect to the server, you'll be able to atleast see what it was seeing up to the end. Though I still don't think it's a good idea - a cheap PC running Linux can easily stay up for months, but there are also plenty of things that can go wrong with it and leave you hanging.
Well... when you can't lead in performance, you try to lead somewhere else. Yes, the launch of Core2 parts drove AMD to cut the prices of their processors by 50% or more in order to stay competitive. Had they not done that, they would be selling nothing right now because even a fanboi couldn't justify buying AMD at the complete destruction that equal priced CPUs from AMD would get compared to the Intel parts. So, AMD dropped back to attempt to remain king of the bargain market until they could release something that would put them back into the performance game, which Intel currently owns (not counting the obviously boutique, one-off 4x4 deadend attempt to save face that AMD marketing released).
I don't think that you understand "bargain market". At the moment, Intel is still trying to push Pentium 4's and Prescott based Celerons against AMD's Sempron and Sempron 64. AMD has nothing to worry about here.
I find this a bit confusing - if everything was available on the Mac, then why do so many people run Windows on their Intel Macs? The simple fact that virtualization is so popular seems to suggest that there is a void that isn't being filled on the OSX side.
That's kind of risky for the buddy - if their target is too quick, they could all too easily end up not getting hit and their buddy gets stuck with an accident that's 100% their fault. I figure they just find some random dude that's getting tailgated by some other random dude and target them instead.
On the other hand, if you don't care about your car much and have good brakes, it does give a good way to deal with tailgaters.
I've thought about that. Basically a couple of very wide angle cameras, one pointed forward and one pointed backwards. Probably mounted right above the windsheild/rear window so they get a good view, and less likely to be damaged in an accident when you need them the most. In the car, install a device to capture the images to either a large flash drive, or possibly some kind of digital tape (a running harddrive may not survive a crash). Set the camera to run whenever the ignition is on, plus maybe a few minutes after the car is shut off. It would really do wonders if you had to prove that someone else actually caused the accident. It may even be a good idea to install a third camera pointed at the instrument cluster if you wanted to show you weren't speeding. And if you could have it activate for a few minutes when the car is off with a motion sensor, it would also do wonders to catch vandals, or people who run into your car at a parking lot and drive away. Given today's technology, it wouldn't cost more than a few hundred in hardware, and could easily pay for itself the first time you need it.
My other idea would be to put a small camera at the end of the radio antenna, pointed forward, with a monitor in the dash. Being able to look past the cars ahead of me in traffic without driving a large vehicle would be a nice feature to have.
What you do is aim for their driver's side rear tire (I'm assuming he cut you off in the left-most lane). When the tire blows out, most likely they will end up losing control and going into the median. If you're lucky, they'll flip over, giving you a chance to hit their gas tank. Works quite well, actually.
It makes sense though, as I've seen people get trapped in the middle of an intersection by pulling forward while waiting for a break. What happens is that when the light in their direction turns yellow, which should be their chance to get out of the intersection - instead you get a stream of cars zooming through the yellow. Then the light turns red, and several cars run the red light. By this time, the cross traffic has gotten the green light and they start pulling into the intersection, and get in the way of the vehicle who is still trying to execute their turn. And it turns into a giant mess. I've learned that for some intersections at certain times of the day, you'd best to stay put until you can make your turn.
As much as I hate red light cameras, they really need to set them up in some places. People running red lights when the light has been red 3-5 seconds is just plain dangerous.
I could see it if you were tailgating a car cruising in the passing lane that isn't passing anyone and there is no one in front of it, particularly if they don't move over when there is a chance to.
However, if your tailgating someone who is stuck in the same situation you are (car in front of them moving slow in the passing lane so they can't go any faster), you deserve your ticket.
On the other hand, don't tailgate if you aren't in the passing lane (I get these morons quite a bit - I'm not in the passing lane, the passing lane can even be open, and they prefer to ride my bumper. I don't get it). If you have to be in the right hand lane because your exit is coming up, deal with it. Don't tailgate someone in the passing lane if there is another car in front of them moving at the same pace. There is nothing the car in front of you can do to move faster, and tailgating them is simply dangerous and stupid. Also, if someone is using the passing lane the way its intended, but a little slower than you would like, don't tailgate them, because they intend to move back over when they are done passing and you'll be on your way. Tailgating them just pisses them off, and accomplishes nothing.
Some drunk drivers tend "focus" on another vehicle, and just follow what it's doing. I've heard of plenty of accidents involving drunks that focus on a vehicle on the side of the road and just drive right into it. Of course, sleepy drivers will do the same thing.
Well, I find it odd that Christians do things like trying to get their religion taught as science in schools, blocking important research, attacking abortion clinics, discrimenate against gays, affect foriegn policy, etc. and when the inevitable backlash comes, they go cry about intolerance. As far as I'm concerned, Christians* have made their bed, they can go lay in it.
*I don't really mean all Christians, just the hateful, hypocritical and willfully ignorant kind that do the type of things listed above.
With the index sizes that are being collected by search engines these days (on the order of 10 billion entries), it's completely naive to think that some humans are sitting at a terminal choosing to delist websites for some policy reason or other. It's also completely naive to think that a human email monkey can do any sort of digging to find out the exact reason that Google's automated algorithm has censored this particular site.
Why not? While it is certainly silly to think that there are people checking every single website that Google indexes, I don't see why it would be hard or implausable that someone who wanted to single out a certain website for whatever reason and had the needed access to Google's database couldn't simply blacklist it.
You don't have to worry about me buying an app that only runs under virtualization. I'll just wait until one of your competitors comes out with a native Mac version. It will work better, look better, integrate better and probably kick your ass for features.
You're assuming, of course, that anyone is going to bother to do so.
Oddly enough compressed videos (that he gets off P2P) is "just fine."
.vob files of 3 minute music videos captured from MTV from standard definition cable TV?
Let me guess, he's one of those that distributes 300MB
Take a look at Windows ME. Windows ME was really a stop-gap release, Windows 98 was supposed to be the end of Dos based Windows, after that it was all going to be based upon NT as Microsoft was going to merge their home and business versions of Windows (this eventually turned out be XP). However, this was taking too long, so Microsoft took a bunch of their features they wanted to release in XP, grafted them onto Windows 98, tried to hide the Dos stuff as much as possible, and called it ME. Which was a disaster - it was a kludge thrown quickly together and it showed.
It seems that Windows Vista is the same way in many aspects. It just feels like a bunch of features from some other, more advanced version of Windows was hurriedly grafted onto Vista in order get something out the door. Sure, some of the features in Vista are a big deal, much like Universal Plug and Play, system restore, Automatic Updates, and Windows Movie Maker were for Windows ME. The inclusion of new features in Vista doesn not make the comparsion invalid, especially since in all honesty, Windows Vista does remind me of Windows ME.
I'm going to guess that in a few years, Microsoft will be able to get things right, and we'll get a version of Windows where everything feels like it belongs, and things work in a consistent manner. Until then, I expect a lot of patches for Vista, much in the same way Microsoft eventually patched up Windows ME to the point where it ran acceptably (but by that time no one cared).
I think Microsoft's activation schemes tracks expansion cards being removed/installed, not necessarily what those expansion cards are. Though if it actually was a USB/Firewire TV tuner, then that's ridiculous.
The minimum for Windows XP is 233Mhz with 64MB of ram. I don't think XP would be even usuable on such a system, especially with SP2 installed. But it will install. I seriously doubt Vista would - though you might be able to convince it to if you loaded that computer up with 256MB of ram or more.
I did install Windows Vista on a P4 1.5Ghz with 1GB of ram, 7200RPM disk, and a GeForce 2 graphics card, which would be a high end 2001 machine. While it wasn't too terribly stable (I could get it to lock hard without too much trouble - Windows XPSP2, SUSE Linux, and Ubuntu are solid on this same computer), the speed at which it ran was perfectly acceptable, though noticably slower than XP.
ClearType is ONLY for LCDs, not for CRTs. It actually assumes pixels in the order of "r,g,b,r,g,b,..." on the screen, and will light up the "b" a little bit, or close up the "r" a little bit to make as if the pixels are there. CRTs put the colored pixels at the same place, so it's not the same thing. That said, it will work a little bit under CRTs because it will tend to anti-alias the fonts, but that's a side-effect, and it will not be as beautiful, far from it. That's why you got the "Standard" anti-aliasing feature inside that particular menu too, for CRTs.
Actually, it does work for Trinitron CRT monitors, which have their pixels lined up similar to LCDs. Works quite well, actually.