Freshman year: nothing Sophomore year: Hypercard (yeah, yeah read on) first half of year - into to C second half of the year Junior Year: Continued C first half of the year - C++ second half of the year Senior Year: Continued C++ first half of the year - Visual C++ second half of the year
When I entered college they had me skip the 100 level classes based on my HS education. Which was nice because I ended up taking more 400 level classes later. What I found interesting was that until I got to college I thought this was the standard CS curriculum everywhere. For that matter I thought the curriculum for all subjects were the same across districts. I will say that I am grateful for the education I was provided and that it is amazing that in 2012 the town I live in now (not in PA) does not even have a CS curriculum.
The "voice of reason" compels me to post. It is apparent to me that the vast majority of you have never worked with a Mac in an enterprise environment before. That or you are basing your comments on outdated, inaccurate and or completely made up information. Now that is all well and good but at least you should admit it.
Now I will give you that the article (if you even took the time to read it) was very much one sided and dismissing Linux in one line not "fair and balanced". I don't believe the intention of the article was to provide a balanced commentary. It was my take that the article was trying to express how far Macs have come in the enterprise without Apple really trying that hard.
That said let me qualify myself a bit. I currently manage 18 servers, 13 of which are running OS X Server as well as ~900 mainly OS X clients (there are a few PC clients less than 10) in addition to running the network. This over four physically separated locations.
Now a large percentage of the tasks my users work 100% on the Mac. The typical office apps, creative apps etc. There are two fairly large and important tasks that are Windows only. One of our main record tracking systems and our purchase order system. These are hosted on Windows servers and are accessed with Citrix and Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection respectively. My users have not had any difficulty with this.
I use Apples Open Directory to manage users, groups, "group policies", 10.4 Server has an included software update server that will enable you to push out locally hosted Apple software updates. This combined with Apple Remote Desktop to remotely manage, run reports, push out software or run commands on any number of systems.
My users all have network home directories or portable home directories for the laptops. This enables me to have a more reasonable backup strategy as well as gives the ability to users to login to ANY computer and have the environment that they are familiar with appear. I know you can do this with any platform.
One of the advantages that Mac OS X has over Linux is the commercial development of software for the platform. Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office are just not available for Linux. While I am sure people are going to say what about Open Office and GIMP?! Yes they work and I like them a lot. I don't know if I would deploy them in a enterprise environment... yet. Well maybe Open Office (I'm actually testing this out for my environment). So I get professional software AND open source software in one system. Wait... with Crossover for the Mac (http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/) I can run Windows apps native as well. This isn't mentioning Parallels and VMware where I can run pretty much any other OS I need to all on the same system. So now I can replace my Linux box, my Windows box, my Solaris box and my OS X box with... ONE BOX! Talk about ROI.
Speaking of ROI. I replace my systems every 5 years. I have had them go for as long as 8 years. My mission critical systems hardly ever go down.
Onto support. Apple does have enterprise support (http://www.apple.com/support/products/macosxserve r_sw_supt.html) in addition to the typical AppleCare
Choose from three levels of AppleCare technical support: Select covers up to 10 incidents with four-hour response for priority 1 (server down) issues,(2) 12/7. Additional incidents can be purchased as needed. Preferred covers an unlimited number of incidents with two-hour response for priority 1 (server down) issues,(2) 12/7, and assigns a technical account manager to your organization. Alliance covers an unlimited number of incidents at multiple locations with one-hour response for priority 1 (server down) issues, 24/7. This plan includes an onsite review by an Apple technical support engineer.
So stop complaining that you can get support for mission critical systems already! You obviously didn't even look at their w
What you are looking for is the open firmware password. It is really easy to enable. Apple hase a Kbase article on it. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106 482 They even have an app that takes all of the work out of enabling and disabling it. When it is enabled it disables all of the "snag" keys that you can hit on boot to say boot to a CD or single user mode. Cheers.
Here is at a very minimum the steps required to perform forensics work on your system, I should also mention at this juncture that it is imperative to take detailed notes on what is happening both observations and actions.
The first thing is to connect another system either to the same hub or switch that you can capture packets from the compromised system. This will enable us to run a packet analyzer such as Ethereal to determine what network traffic is leaving the system. We need to do this incase of a program that is "phoning home" and when you take it off the network and subsequently it can't phone home it deletes itself or performs some other nefarious task.
When you are confident that no unusual network traffic is leaving the system we want to run a few commands that will not compromise the integrity of the system. Ideally not modify any file access times as well. What we are looking for are active processes, open files and if possible the contents of memory and the swap file. The output of these commands should be sent to a trusted remote system and the binaries themselves should come from a trusted source IE not the system you are working from. Make a CD with all of the commands that you intend to use (mount, lsof, top, ps, ssh for example). Before you run any commands on the system it is important that you have a game plan in place. Due to the nature of operating systems anything that you do at this stage can damage evidence that you may later need. But the list of open files can be critical in determining the extent of disruption to the system
After you have all the information that you can gather from the booted system the next step is to image the drive. Either via a drive duplicator (which you probably don't have) or using Disk Utility and imaging the drive. Boot the system into target disk mode holding the 'T' key at boot. You will know the system is in target disk mode when there is a blue screen with yellow FireWire icon. After it is in target disk mode connect it to another trusted Mac launch Disk Utility and image the drive (IMPORTANT: not the logical volume, the drive will have numbers in front of it) you want to make a READ ONLY disk image of the drive. It is important that for the remainder of the investigation you only work from the image of the drive.
When the drive has been imaged open the image on a known good system and inspect the log files. Ideally you will have other logs than the one on your system to examine. For example firewall logs of network connections to the compromised system. Look for file modification times that don't appear to be accurate
I apologize for the lack of detail in this post, I had to generalize many concepts into one brief memo. If time avails itself I will follow up with a more detailed post later. Good luck. And if you have any questions just ask.
Sorry about that: original post plus the URLs that didn't copy.
Ok, I have tried to read as may of the moderately rated posts as possible. What I have found was (sorry about the length): - Many of the negative comments are based on issues that have been resolved for several years. (Pre Mac OS 10.2 at least, most pre Mac OS 10.1)
- There was a post that complained about the difficulty of using Mac OS 10.2 Server. I personally find it extremely easy to use and manage. Mac OS 10.3 Server is making advances on that including adding the ability to act as a primary domain controller thanks to the inclusion of Samba 3. For the poster that did not like the management apps they have been completely rewritten as well as being able to be managed via the command line. On the documentation side yes it is a little light. That too is supposed to change in 10.3 Server. For more information on 10.3 Server go to http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/pantherserver.h tml for information on the currently shipping 10.2 server http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/ Oh and one more thing. Mac OS 10.2 Server received Product of the year from NetworkMagazine.com (http://www.networkmagazine.com/shared/article/sho wArticle.jhtml?articleId=9400008&pgno=3) that has to be worth something right?
- Cost. While Linux and BSD systems cannot be beat for cost. The amount of dedicated support and liability that they have can be. Microsoft on the other hand can be beaten in the per user license realm. Both in desktop OS and server OS Apple's Macintosh licensing fees are reasonable and flexible. The general single user licenses are free with purchase of a machine and $129 standalone. Apple can be flexible on this with large or educational purchases. The server version of their OS is even better priced $499 for a 10-user license and $999 for and unlimited user license. They also provide a plethora (sorry you never get to use that word enough) of support options all reasonably priced.
- Reliability and Stability. The one thing I absolutely love about Mac OS X is the stability it offers. This is part due to the OS and part hardware. The key thing here is that Apple controls them both. I don't have to worry about the hardware I'm running being compatible with the OS and vice versa. Apple has already done that for me. The result uptime. Which at the end of the day is worth the extra dollar for me. For instance the PowerBook, which I am writing this on, has had uptimes on the order of 80 days (I just put it to sleep when traveling.) The only time I have to reboot is when an update requires it.
- Major OS releases. When Apple releases a new version of its OS for example the to-be-released before the end of the year Mac OS 10.3 and Mac OS 10.3 Server add several new features and improvements not just "bug fixes." And the nice thing about the releases is that Apple takes feedback about its products and if the demand is high enough put it into its next release (http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/) for the client version and (http://www.apple.com/feedback/server.html) for server. I want to see that from a major commercial OS.
- Open Source. Mac OS X is built on open standards, and open source. You can download and tweak Darwin, upload changes. The same features that you get with all open source projects. The exception to this is the GUI interface. Most other commercial operating systems do not give you this ability. Also check out Fink a package manager (based on the Debian package manager) for ported open source projects.
- Security. Mac OS X abandoned telnet in favor of the more secure SSH in 10.1. Apple has a quick response time to up coming security threats and releases an update to fix them (http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/08/14/213240.s html?tid=126&tid=172&tid=179&tid=185&tid=190). Apple provides easy and efficient methods of applying the updates via "Software Update". The OS ships in a secure
Ok, I have tried to read as may of the moderately rated posts as possible. What I have found was (sorry about the length):
-Many of the negative comments are based on issues / biases that have been resolved for several years. (Pre Mac OS 10.2 at least, most pre Mac OS 10.1)
-There was a post that complained about the difficulty of using Mac OS 10.2 Server. I personally find it extremely easy to use and manage. Mac OS 10.3 Server is making advances on that including adding the ability to act as a primary domain controller thanks to the inclusion of Samba 3. For the poster that did not like the management apps they have been completely rewritten as well as being able to be managed via the command line. On the documentation side yes it is a little light. That too is supposed to change in 10.3 Server. For more information on 10.3 Server go to for information on the currently shipping 10.2 server Oh and one more thing. Mac OS 10.2 Server received Product of the year from NetworkMagazine.com () that has to be worth something right?
-Cost. While Linux and BSD systems cannot be beat for cost. The amount of dedicated support and liability that they have can be. Microsoft on the other hand can be beaten in the per user license realm. Both in desktop OS and server OS Apple's Macintosh licensing fees are reasonable and flexible. The general single user licenses are free with purchase of a machine and $129 standalone. Apple can be flexible on this with large or educational purchases. The server version of their OS is even better priced $499 for a 10-user license and $999 for and unlimited user license. They also provide a plethora (sorry you never get to use that word enough) of support options all reasonably priced.
-Reliability and Stability. The one thing I absolutely love about Mac OS X is the stability it offers. This is part due to the OS and part hardware. The key thing here is that Apple controls them both. I don't have to worry about the hardware I'm running being compatible with the OS and vice versa. Apple has already done that for me. The result uptime. Which at the end of the day is worth the extra dollar for me. For instance the PowerBook, which I am writing this on, has had uptimes on the order of 80 days (I just put it to sleep when traveling.) The only time I have to reboot is when an update requires it.
-Major OS releases. When Apple releases a new version of its OS for example the to-be-released before the end of the year Mac OS 10.3 and Mac OS 10.3 Server add several new features and improvements not just "bug fixes." And the nice thing about the releases is that Apple takes feedback about its products and if the demand is high enough put it into its next release () for the client version and () for server. I want to see that from a major commercial OS.
-Open Source. Mac OS X is built on open standards, and open source. You can download and tweak Darwin, upload changes. The same features that you get with all open source projects. The exception to this is the GUI interface. Most other commercial operating systems do not give you this ability. Also check out Fink a package manager (based on the Debian package manager) for ported open source projects.
-Security. Mac OS X abandoned telnet in favor of the more secure SSH in 10.1. Apple has a quick response time to up coming security threats and releases an update to fix them (). Apple provides easy and efficient methods of applying the updates via "Software Update". The OS ships in a secure fashion with all incoming ports closed. There is a good paper on securing Mac OS X available at () There are A/V solutions from all of the main companies (Symantec, Sophos, Virex.) Tripwire has been ported for host based IDS. You can run snort, nmap, nessus, etc.
-Expandability and performance. The Power Mac G5 can handle up to 8GB of Ram. Show me a desktop PC that can handle that much memory. The G5 processor has a half speed front side bus so the Dual 2Ghz has two 1Ghz FS
Slashdot Mirror
Freshman year: nothing
Sophomore year: Hypercard (yeah, yeah read on) first half of year - into to C second half of the year
Junior Year: Continued C first half of the year - C++ second half of the year
Senior Year: Continued C++ first half of the year - Visual C++ second half of the year
When I entered college they had me skip the 100 level classes based on my HS education. Which was nice because I ended up taking more 400 level classes later. What I found interesting was that until I got to college I thought this was the standard CS curriculum everywhere. For that matter I thought the curriculum for all subjects were the same across districts. I will say that I am grateful for the education I was provided and that it is amazing that in 2012 the town I live in now (not in PA) does not even have a CS curriculum.
Now I will give you that the article (if you even took the time to read it) was very much one sided and dismissing Linux in one line not "fair and balanced". I don't believe the intention of the article was to provide a balanced commentary. It was my take that the article was trying to express how far Macs have come in the enterprise without Apple really trying that hard.
That said let me qualify myself a bit. I currently manage 18 servers, 13 of which are running OS X Server as well as ~900 mainly OS X clients (there are a few PC clients less than 10) in addition to running the network. This over four physically separated locations.
Now a large percentage of the tasks my users work 100% on the Mac. The typical office apps, creative apps etc. There are two fairly large and important tasks that are Windows only. One of our main record tracking systems and our purchase order system. These are hosted on Windows servers and are accessed with Citrix and Microsoft Remote Desktop Connection respectively. My users have not had any difficulty with this.
I use Apples Open Directory to manage users, groups, "group policies", 10.4 Server has an included software update server that will enable you to push out locally hosted Apple software updates. This combined with Apple Remote Desktop to remotely manage, run reports, push out software or run commands on any number of systems.
My users all have network home directories or portable home directories for the laptops. This enables me to have a more reasonable backup strategy as well as gives the ability to users to login to ANY computer and have the environment that they are familiar with appear. I know you can do this with any platform.
One of the advantages that Mac OS X has over Linux is the commercial development of software for the platform. Adobe Photoshop and Microsoft Office are just not available for Linux. While I am sure people are going to say what about Open Office and GIMP?! Yes they work and I like them a lot. I don't know if I would deploy them in a enterprise environment... yet. Well maybe Open Office (I'm actually testing this out for my environment). So I get professional software AND open source software in one system. Wait... with Crossover for the Mac (http://www.codeweavers.com/products/cxmac/) I can run Windows apps native as well. This isn't mentioning Parallels and VMware where I can run pretty much any other OS I need to all on the same system. So now I can replace my Linux box, my Windows box, my Solaris box and my OS X box with... ONE BOX! Talk about ROI.
Speaking of ROI. I replace my systems every 5 years. I have had them go for as long as 8 years. My mission critical systems hardly ever go down.
Onto support. Apple does have enterprise support (http://www.apple.com/support/products/macosxserve r_sw_supt.html) in addition to the typical AppleCare
So stop complaining that you can get support for mission critical systems already! You obviously didn't even look at their w
What you are looking for is the open firmware password. It is really easy to enable. Apple hase a Kbase article on it. http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106 482 They even have an app that takes all of the work out of enabling and disabling it. When it is enabled it disables all of the "snag" keys that you can hit on boot to say boot to a CD or single user mode. Cheers.
Here is at a very minimum the steps required to perform forensics work on your system, I should also mention at this juncture that it is imperative to take detailed notes on what is happening both observations and actions.
The first thing is to connect another system either to the same hub or switch that you can capture packets from the compromised system. This will enable us to run a packet analyzer such as Ethereal to determine what network traffic is leaving the system. We need to do this incase of a program that is "phoning home" and when you take it off the network and subsequently it can't phone home it deletes itself or performs some other nefarious task.
When you are confident that no unusual network traffic is leaving the system we want to run a few commands that will not compromise the integrity of the system. Ideally not modify any file access times as well. What we are looking for are active processes, open files and if possible the contents of memory and the swap file. The output of these commands should be sent to a trusted remote system and the binaries themselves should come from a trusted source IE not the system you are working from. Make a CD with all of the commands that you intend to use (mount, lsof, top, ps, ssh for example). Before you run any commands on the system it is important that you have a game plan in place. Due to the nature of operating systems anything that you do at this stage can damage evidence that you may later need. But the list of open files can be critical in determining the extent of disruption to the system
After you have all the information that you can gather from the booted system the next step is to image the drive. Either via a drive duplicator (which you probably don't have) or using Disk Utility and imaging the drive. Boot the system into target disk mode holding the 'T' key at boot. You will know the system is in target disk mode when there is a blue screen with yellow FireWire icon. After it is in target disk mode connect it to another trusted Mac launch Disk Utility and image the drive (IMPORTANT: not the logical volume, the drive will have numbers in front of it) you want to make a READ ONLY disk image of the drive. It is important that for the remainder of the investigation you only work from the image of the drive.
When the drive has been imaged open the image on a known good system and inspect the log files. Ideally you will have other logs than the one on your system to examine. For example firewall logs of network connections to the compromised system. Look for file modification times that don't appear to be accurate
I apologize for the lack of detail in this post, I had to generalize many concepts into one brief memo. If time avails itself I will follow up with a more detailed post later. Good luck. And if you have any questions just ask.
Sorry about that: original post plus the URLs that didn't copy.
Ok, I have tried to read as may of the moderately rated posts as possible. What I have found was (sorry about the length):
- Many of the negative comments are based on issues that have been resolved for several years. (Pre Mac OS 10.2 at least, most pre Mac OS 10.1)
- There was a post that complained about the difficulty of using Mac OS 10.2 Server. I personally find it extremely easy to use and manage. Mac OS 10.3 Server is making advances on that including adding the ability to act as a primary domain controller thanks to the inclusion of Samba 3. For the poster that did not like the management apps they have been completely rewritten as well as being able to be managed via the command line. On the documentation side yes it is a little light. That too is supposed to change in 10.3 Server. For more information on 10.3 Server go to http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/pantherserver.h tml for information on the currently shipping 10.2 server http://www.apple.com/server/macosx/ Oh and one more thing. Mac OS 10.2 Server received Product of the year from NetworkMagazine.com (http://www.networkmagazine.com/shared/article/sho wArticle.jhtml?articleId=9400008&pgno=3) that has to be worth something right?
- Cost. While Linux and BSD systems cannot be beat for cost. The amount of dedicated support and liability that they have can be. Microsoft on the other hand can be beaten in the per user license realm. Both in desktop OS and server OS Apple's Macintosh licensing fees are reasonable and flexible. The general single user licenses are free with purchase of a machine and $129 standalone. Apple can be flexible on this with large or educational purchases. The server version of their OS is even better priced $499 for a 10-user license and $999 for and unlimited user license. They also provide a plethora (sorry you never get to use that word enough) of support options all reasonably priced.
- Reliability and Stability. The one thing I absolutely love about Mac OS X is the stability it offers. This is part due to the OS and part hardware. The key thing here is that Apple controls them both. I don't have to worry about the hardware I'm running being compatible with the OS and vice versa. Apple has already done that for me. The result uptime. Which at the end of the day is worth the extra dollar for me. For instance the PowerBook, which I am writing this on, has had uptimes on the order of 80 days (I just put it to sleep when traveling.) The only time I have to reboot is when an update requires it.
- Major OS releases. When Apple releases a new version of its OS for example the to-be-released before the end of the year Mac OS 10.3 and Mac OS 10.3 Server add several new features and improvements not just "bug fixes." And the nice thing about the releases is that Apple takes feedback about its products and if the demand is high enough put it into its next release (http://www.apple.com/macosx/feedback/) for the client version and (http://www.apple.com/feedback/server.html) for server. I want to see that from a major commercial OS.
- Open Source. Mac OS X is built on open standards, and open source. You can download and tweak Darwin, upload changes. The same features that you get with all open source projects. The exception to this is the GUI interface. Most other commercial operating systems do not give you this ability. Also check out Fink a package manager (based on the Debian package manager) for ported open source projects.
- Security. Mac OS X abandoned telnet in favor of the more secure SSH in 10.1. Apple has a quick response time to up coming security threats and releases an update to fix them (http://apple.slashdot.org/apple/03/08/14/213240.s html?tid=126&tid=172&tid=179&tid=185&tid=190). Apple provides easy and efficient methods of applying the updates via "Software Update". The OS ships in a secure
Ok, I have tried to read as may of the moderately rated posts as possible. What I have found was (sorry about the length):
-Many of the negative comments are based on issues / biases that have been resolved for several years. (Pre Mac OS 10.2 at least, most pre Mac OS 10.1)
-There was a post that complained about the difficulty of using Mac OS 10.2 Server. I personally find it extremely easy to use and manage. Mac OS 10.3 Server is making advances on that including adding the ability to act as a primary domain controller thanks to the inclusion of Samba 3. For the poster that did not like the management apps they have been completely rewritten as well as being able to be managed via the command line. On the documentation side yes it is a little light. That too is supposed to change in 10.3 Server. For more information on 10.3 Server go to for information on the currently shipping 10.2 server Oh and one more thing. Mac OS 10.2 Server received Product of the year from NetworkMagazine.com () that has to be worth something right?
-Cost. While Linux and BSD systems cannot be beat for cost. The amount of dedicated support and liability that they have can be. Microsoft on the other hand can be beaten in the per user license realm. Both in desktop OS and server OS Apple's Macintosh licensing fees are reasonable and flexible. The general single user licenses are free with purchase of a machine and $129 standalone. Apple can be flexible on this with large or educational purchases. The server version of their OS is even better priced $499 for a 10-user license and $999 for and unlimited user license. They also provide a plethora (sorry you never get to use that word enough) of support options all reasonably priced.
-Reliability and Stability. The one thing I absolutely love about Mac OS X is the stability it offers. This is part due to the OS and part hardware. The key thing here is that Apple controls them both. I don't have to worry about the hardware I'm running being compatible with the OS and vice versa. Apple has already done that for me. The result uptime. Which at the end of the day is worth the extra dollar for me. For instance the PowerBook, which I am writing this on, has had uptimes on the order of 80 days (I just put it to sleep when traveling.) The only time I have to reboot is when an update requires it.
-Major OS releases. When Apple releases a new version of its OS for example the to-be-released before the end of the year Mac OS 10.3 and Mac OS 10.3 Server add several new features and improvements not just "bug fixes." And the nice thing about the releases is that Apple takes feedback about its products and if the demand is high enough put it into its next release () for the client version and () for server. I want to see that from a major commercial OS.
-Open Source. Mac OS X is built on open standards, and open source. You can download and tweak Darwin, upload changes. The same features that you get with all open source projects. The exception to this is the GUI interface. Most other commercial operating systems do not give you this ability. Also check out Fink a package manager (based on the Debian package manager) for ported open source projects.
-Security. Mac OS X abandoned telnet in favor of the more secure SSH in 10.1. Apple has a quick response time to up coming security threats and releases an update to fix them (). Apple provides easy and efficient methods of applying the updates via "Software Update". The OS ships in a secure fashion with all incoming ports closed. There is a good paper on securing Mac OS X available at () There are A/V solutions from all of the main companies (Symantec, Sophos, Virex.) Tripwire has been ported for host based IDS. You can run snort, nmap, nessus, etc.
-Expandability and performance. The Power Mac G5 can handle up to 8GB of Ram. Show me a desktop PC that can handle that much memory. The G5 processor has a half speed front side bus so the Dual 2Ghz has two 1Ghz FS