I know this story is a little old, and it's probably been said already, but...
this is a *really* big deal for Macintosh users. It's the first time they've really been confronted with such a huge security problem. Seriously, there's a project manager at Apple who needs to be fired over this.
The real problem turns out to be the Help Viewer, not Safari. So changing browsers doesn't do much. You need to either remove the Help Viewer or de-register it as a ( ha ha ) helper application by using something like "MoreInternet" to get at a ( sigh ) stupidly hidden set of related preferences. I'd provide the link but I think y'all can do your own searches... just be careful what you click on!
Yes, this is a client-level attack which requires the user to pull down malicious data- but all the user has to do is click on a URL, and that's *it*, the deed is done. If I click on a URL, get an executable downloaded to my desktop, then I click on that executable, that's just me being stupid. But if I click on a URL and it *automatically runs code*, that's a serious security problem. Sure, Windows users are used to VBScripts and such running without permission, but that's *exactly* the type of problem that, up until now, the folks at Apple have managed to avoid.
I have to object to your notion that use of the word "censorship" in this case is just "spin".
Look up the definition of 'censor': Main Entry: censor Function: transitive verb : to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable
If US justice department agents examining the ACLU website in order to supress objectionable information isn't censorship, what is it exactly ?
Yes, all court secrecy rules impose some level of censorship. It's still censorship, and it's not at all clear that the ACLU can say anything it wants when the case is over- the point is that the extent of the court secrecy is vastly increased in this case exactly *because* it's the use of the Patriot Act which is at issue.
I'll believe we live in a free society when the government stops censoring people "to protect the children" or whatever. Until the FCC can't stop someone from screaming obscenities or showing whatever images they want, your 'freedom' is limited ( i.e. conditional, i.e bullshit ) at best.
Some limited censorship of court documents and information related to ongoing cases might be OK at some point to protect individuals before they're found guilty, but even that type of protection is problematic at best- it prevents transparency in the courts and a host of problems arises- and it's *still* censorship.
funny, that's not such a bad idea, a software condom.
I want to run this binary to see what it does, but I want to run it as a user with *no* read/write privledges outside of ( perhaps ) the application's own bundle.
That actually shouldn't be too hard to do. Of course, you could always create a 'test' user account with no priviledges outside it's home directory, but a more straightforward solution is always more user-friendly... the best trick would be to make all downloaded, double-clickable items launch in 'software condom' mode until 'unwrapped'...
Just so y'all know, I'm patenting this idea. This slashdot message is my example of prior art;-)... of course, it's quite obvious, and not new idea, not that such details stop folks from getting software patents in the US... I'll just avoid the use of the term 'sandbox' and make it sound like something new...
That's a fine idea, but why not just save yourself the $5/month box rental ( or most of the inflated price they'd charge to sell you their box ) and buy a $29.99 ( yea, after rebates, whatever ) Cable modem/lan/wifi router which you'll admin yourself ?
Seriously, this equipment is getting so cheap, I'm amazed that Comcast has the balls to charge for it anymore. Yea, whatever, if they send me a nastygram telling me I need to buy a "home networking" plan because of all of the NAT-translated wifi-connections they detected on *my* box, I'll just buy a different LAN-only cablemodem and put this thing behind another router and tell them where they can look...
This only screws with the non-technical. In the future, the non-technical will get screwed over by tech-using businesses, and the future is now.
Actually, I suppose that's not a new trend, non-technical folks being blown away by technical folks, it's just that now the tech is computers, not firearms or manufacturing...
I've looked at the issue a *lot*, and it appears the nastygrams really have been in what even I would categorize as extreme cases. NO service would let you soak up 100% of your bandwidth all of the time and not come knocking on your door about setting up a business-class service. Most would just kick you off and cite abuse clauses in the contract. The biggest problem with Comcast's policy is that they don't give specific limits- it's a "we'll send you a letter when someone else on your block complains" policy.
Sadly, in a market when there are maybe only one or two players, your choices are often too limited for real competition to occur. I'm not any more excited about using Comcast for internet access than I am about using DirecTV for video content, but they're the best options I have.
My alternative broadband service was/is Covad IDSL. I'm willing to bet I can use Comcast's service just like I was using my Covad service without getting close to the nasty-gram limit. Even WITHOUT getting my video via Comcast ( they tack on an extra ten bucks if you aren't a cable subscriber ), their cable internet is over $10/month cheaper than the Covad IDSL price... cheaper and at least 6-10 times faster.
As much as I'd love to stick with Covad, I just can't justify doing so given Comcast's service being _both_ cheaper _and_ faster.
I'm a few blocks out ( seriously only a few hundred feet ) of SBC DSL range, or I'd get that; as utlimately evil as SBC is ( really, really, really evil ), $25/month for dedicated DSL would do just fine, I'd really rather save myself on the monthly fee rather than have the faster cablemodem service. But SBC is *so* evil that they don't want to build out their network ( ?!? ), their stated reason being that companies like Covad would just leach of it, except, wait, they get to charge Covad a premium now and they're _still_ not building out their network... which reveals that the *real* reason they don't need to invest in their network is that they're a monopoly, but I digress.
Seriously, my choice is IDSL (144Kb/sec) with Covad at $65/mo. or this "3Mbit/sec" Comcast service at $55/mo... you're seriously telling me I should keep the Covad service? Tell you what, you pay for it, I'll keep it...
Oh, an interesting note... apparently you *can't* currently buy the Covad plan I have now, it'd be an $80/mo. service...
In the exceedingly unlikely event that I do get a nasty-gram from Comcast, I think it'd be easy for me to cut back enough to keep them happy... also I know too many people who are happily using their Comcast internet service *a lot*, without issue, to think that I'm going to have problems. My household's use is probably going to be well within the limits, even with my son downloading flash games from noggin.com and my wife downloading gnutella content and myself downloading usenet binaries and OS X updates. We'll see... but from what research I've done into the subject, the folks getting letters really were saturating their connections in a big, big way... I'd have to buy some serious disk arrays to store half GB I'd have to download before getting in trouble with Comcast.
Interesting... when did you work SQA @ NeXT ?
I ask because I did as well, for a short time as a contractor, post-hardware ( I'm not saying the campus was weird and empty, but we did have our pick of office space... ). It was my first post-college gig.
Unfortunately, there are a couple of key Apple applications which could clearly use a few more developers working on them. Whoever is in charge of Mail.app's non-transport-related features ( read: printing and offline mailbox management ) needs some serious help, even though the app is usable for most individuals, it misses some key business features and preference options. Let's hope Apple is able to worry a *little* less about the bottom line in the near future so they can add a little more oomph to the application development budget.
Steve is really, really good at convincing people they can do what seems impossible, and sometimes they're actually able to do it as a result. That's the most important feature of the RDF, and, along with some help from Objective-C and the AppKit framework, is what allows for such lean development teams to do so very much.
I hate to generalize, but these slashdot types often have a serious case of what I've heard refered to as "Subject Matter Expert Syndrome". That's where someone is an expert in an area of knowledge, where they're very often correct in their opinion. The "syndrome" part comes in where these people apply their confidence in their knowledge of their area of expertise to *all* of their opinions.
And you're right, telling them they don't know what they're talking about is a waste of time. They're not capable of being wrong, or they'd be able to question their opinion in matters where they *aren't* experts. None of these geeks know squat about the environment, they just don't want to hear that they're doing something which could possibly be unwise or incorrect, and most importantly, their opinion can't and shouldn't be questioned.
It was called Greenland to *fool* people into going there, instead of "Iceland" which is actually much greener...
How deep is your knowledge of environmental issues, is it as good as your knowledge of history and geography? Why do you presume your opinion on the matter is worth something? Why do you disregard any warning about technology as silly? If someone told you holding something highly radioactive might be hazardous, would you believe them, or would you call them alarmist? What would your attitude have been shortly after the discovery of atomic radiation, before the dangers were well-known?
The concern isn't that the earth is getting warmer, it's that it's doing so *quickly*. California's economy won't be destroyed by global warming of 10 degrees over 800 years, but 10 degrees in the next 100 years wouldn't give us time to relocate coastal communities and farming regions without some *severe* economic impact. If there's something we could do to slow down the current trend, it might be wise, no? Or do you just not care about your children?
Look, just because you know something about computer systems or whatever your specialization happens to be, why do you assume to know so much about global thermal trends and their consequences?
Part of what's going on here is we have data which we didn't used to have access too, and there's some question over what it means.
However, there is very little question that an average 1 and a half degee F warmer in two decades is a pretty dramatic change, especially when compared to evidence of climate change trends in geologic records. The problem isn't so much that we're getting warmer as much as that we might be doing so at a rate which will cause climate changes so quickly that we might not be able to reorganize our farming practices quickly enough to adapt without excessive cost. So yea, we'll probably survive, but we'll be a lot poorer for it, and a *lot* of people will suffer, and a *lot* of ecosystems will go extinct, just so you can drive your SUV and have 'cheap' coal power...
and just in case you *are* going to say you're some sort of expert on global climate trends, where's your evidence that.7 degrees F increase in a decade is historically 'normal' ?
the troll didn't mention video editing, did he?
Besides, I find my 800Mhz iMac edits video just fine, that's the purpose I bought it for so many years ago. Sure, it'd be nice if it got the job done faster, but the stage that is slow is in creating a file for burning onto the DVD, something that's not going to be a 5-minute operation any time soon, no matter what hardware you're buying. I get the process started and go do something else, big deal...
the *worst* part is that I'm replying to a message from a troll who can't figure out how to use a mouse that my two-year-old has completely mastered.
Having said that, I *want* a G5, and IBM should figure out what's wrong with their Fishkill plant and start cranking those suckers out, but until then... I have to admit I can't think of a single *good* reason why I need anything faster than my old 800Mhz G4 flat-panel iMac... poor Apple, I probably won't be buying another computer until my 2-year-old demands his own computer... at which point he'll get the plenty-usable iMac. He probably won't need his own since he has his own login anyway... I won't have a new computer at home for years and years. They'll have G6s before I can justify buying a new machine.
for what purpose do you need something faster than a 2Ghz PentiumIII, in all seriousness ? No, enterprise server uses don't count here, I'm talking about home machines... fast enough to look at web pages, launch a word processor, and play some games is, well, fast enough. Anyone who says different is either trying to sell you something, or just trying to impress you with their l33t boXen ( since they can't get a girl to talk to them ).
My 800Mhz iMac is not only fast enough to do all of the above, it's also plenty fast at editing DV movies and authoring DVDs. These new machines would be even better, and portable as a bonus... what exactly were you claiming as the reason why you'd not buy a G4 laptop?? I'm not sure that reason makes sense, that's all I'm saying... don't get me wrong, I like PCs just fine, my *last* machine was an HP, but I'm not sure your dissing Apple is justifiable.
What? What are you looking at me like that for? Hey, sometimes it helps to give the brain a rest, you know... if I watched TV less, I'd just play video games more. If I wanted to do something productive, I'd work on the house. The point is that when I watch TV, I'm actively choosing to *not* be productive. If anyone has a problem with that choice, they need to get a new hobby outside of worrying about what I'm doing with my time.
Now that I have Tivo, I can more efficiently spend my unproductive time being entertained rather than watching commercials and bad shows "because nothing else is on", but I'm still *choosing* to be unproductive... kinda like right now...
except, now it's 'everyone'...
on
Apple Revises eMac
·
· Score: 2, Informative
the eMac was originally introduced for "education", it was in fact only available via edu channels, i.e. at your university bookstore or via the Apple Store after you proved you were a teacher, student or school administrator. After initial sales, they opened up the buying to 'everyone'.
Think of it as the VW bug of the Mac line... the sad thing is it's now 30% or so faster than the original iMac that I spent a cool grand more on a couple of years back... that's tech for ya.
Those statements struck me as particularly odd given Apple's JVM releases under OS X.
Apple's OS 9 JVM was sacrificed for reasons having more to do with the design of OS 9 ( think about the command-line and unix-based process design in Java vs. OS 9 ) and the looming introduction of OS X than Microsoft's investment. I'd expect this guy to know enough not to tie these things together- it makes him come of sounding like an uninformed conspiracy theorist. It *is* too bad Apple didn't feel like it had the resources to make Java really great under OS 9, but any company has to focus it's resources where they're needed the most- strapping a good JVM onto OS 9 would be somewhat wasted effort when it comes to Apple's bottom line, as the only folks who would use it would do so on hardware over 6 years old anyway... not a great market for Apple to have spent badly-needed money on.
no, really? He wants us to all write for Qt rather than Java?
I'll write for something other than Java when I find something that works better cross-platform than Swing *and* has a good OO programming model *and* good database access and XML support. Until then, what's he asking, again?
It's fine that all of this is your opinion, but it's just that.
My opinion is that all of the cross-platform GUIs you've mentioned are fine for some uses, but impossible or a PITA for others. Swing, although much maligned and not without it's issues, is perfectly usable for enterprise ( or other, general ) applications where you'd like to avoid porting.
Of course, you have to have a developer with some idea what they're doing, and it always helps to have a good application design, but those factors aren't language-dependant.
1) it's a 'proof-of-concept' virus, meaning that Intego wrote it for the express purpose of selling their product. No OS X user has ever had a single virus or trojan *unwillingly* infect their computer, as of the date this email is written. Not bad for 3 years and an install base of 50 million. Having said that, this doesn't mean we should all just double-click on any random file without a care; that would have been a poor practice under OS 9, and it still isn't a good idea.
2) If you get the trojan MP3 file in mail, it's correctly identified as an application. The downside is of course that many users seem to have no problem launching some random executable file, but basically this means that the main method of transmitting this trojan is somewhat blocked. Sure, you could get it via P2P, but it'd have to be an archive, not an MP3 file, which should set of alarm bells if you have an ounce of computer knowledge or even P2P experience.
3) The file is also correctly identified as an application if you look at the "preview" of it. So if you have the default columns view in Finder, you're likely to notice that it's an application. You'll also notice it's an application if you 'Get Info', not that you're too likely to do that.
4) You'd have to get the file in an archive ( like a.sit file or something ) or it'd lose it's resource fork, which is where the executable is. It's essentially an OS 9 virus that works on OS X because of support for Classic and Carbon applications.
This works, essentially, because of OS 9 support, which allows something to be an application even though it has a different file name extension from.app, by setting it's OS 9 file type to "APPL". I'm further driven to my conviction that Carbon applications are slightly evil, even if they're a necessary evil. Of course, I suppose the flip side of that argument could be made; if the Finder favored the file type over the extension in showing the user what the file is, you'd know it's an application. I'm willing to bet some future update to OS X changes the Finder to do just that, especially since that's what the Finder already does in Get Info and file preview, and is also what Mail.app does. Hmmm... maybe we should all file a bug report against Finder ?
I don't want to verify this claim, but at least one user is reporting that they can't launch the proof-of-concept virus since they're not running an administrator account. I'm not sure I see why not, but it's possible that this is true, especially depending on how you set up the user's account. I suppose having your admin account *not* as your main account is probably a good idea if you're paranoid about security, in *any* event.
In the final analysis, this is exactly the same type of social-engineering exploit we're used to seeing in Windows-based email-attachment trojans: a file which is actually an executable hides it's true nature by using a.jpg or other file extension. It's also exactly the same in most respects as any OS 9 virus, and thus not terribly new.
This is perhaps a nice wake-up call to OS X users not to just blindly click on any random file, though... and yes, it's a real problem. A malicious application can be written for almost anything the executes code, including OS X and your cell phone- that's a reality.
If you already know C, and have some experience with OO ( like in Java, for example ), you already know most of what you'll need for Objective-C. As a language, there's not a lot to learn, it'll be learning new design patterns ( like Distributed Objects for threading and Key-Value-Coding for binding and serialization ) that'll take time to learn.
If you don't already know C, you should learn it anyway, IMHO.
Objective-C does reference counting, not garbage collection. That said, it really is a pretty simple set of rules to follow for memory management, it's just annoying for folks who've become lazy under true GC, and of course a terrible source of seg faults and memory leaks.
Creating your own Cocoa control is easy as pie, though most often you start with a custom view object... data types are almost all exactly C data types.
Cocoa does indeed have 'neat ideas', always has...
Cocoa's APIs are growing with every OS release. There are tons of Cocoa APIs and classes that are '10.3' only. Probably the most important of these are the APIs that support Bindings, although there are also a lot of silly new convenience APIs like one to automatically do iTunes-like table stripes.
Also, there's something to be said for simplicity in APIs... Java's tendency ( especially in Swing ) to have two different API which do similar things "except", and convenience methods which duplicate functionality elsewhere, have caused myself and other Java developers some considerable trouble and add to slowness and general code bloat.
Part of the reason for the "missing" API is that it isn't generally needed, as the "missing" functionality is often available in C. IHMO, Objective-C's greatest feature and worst problem is that it's a superset of C... so nobody spent the time needed to put together a true Objective-C XML parsing-API until relatively recently, because you could get the job done just fine using C calls. As you seem to almost say, there's usually a good way to do what you want in Objective-C, often using tricks of the dynamic runtime, which you wouldn't think of in something strongly-typed like Java.
Myself, I'm surprised ( and happy ) to be *back* writing Objective-C after years of writing C and Java apps following my first-ever post-college gig at NeXT...
By the way, Cocoa Bindings is maybe the coolest thing I've seen programming-wise in years. Check it out. I'm sure it's copied from elsewhere ( I think I saw something similar mentioned in Python or something? ) but it's still cool as hell.
I like what is currently the last post on that page, by one Paul K Brandon, Professor at the Psychololgy Dept, Minnesota State University, Mankato:
There are many possible contaminating variables here besides the ones that Gallagher mentions. The data are based on retrospective self reports by the parents of the children whose behavior is in question. I see no indication of any systematic validation of the accuracy of these reports. It is quite possible that parents who are more sensitive to or concerned about their children's behavior are more likely to both report behavioral abnormalities and give higher estimates ot the time those children spend watching TV. To conclude, the only way to imply causation to any observed relationship between the reported time spent watching television and reported frequency of problem behaviors would be to randomly assign subjects to TV and NO TV groups, have them log defined behaviors and TV time in real time, and have external observers occasionally make reliability checks on their recording.
Failing that, all we have is a vague suggestion that some sort of undefined relationship exists.
This ain't science, folks. Use common sense, don't let your kid sit in front of Nickelodean all day when you can go out and play, but it makes more sense to be worried about flame-retardant clothing and you own interaction with the kid, rather than being worried about Blue's Clues...
Have you ever sat and watched a two-year-old play on website games designed for kids?
Check out noggin.com or nickjr.com, or even pbskids.org, and check out their games.
My two-year-old stays with one game for typically about 10 minutes. I'm still unsure if it's good or bad.
He doesn't run to turn on the TV in the morning- he runs to sit down at the computer. On the other hand, when he does watch TV, we make sure it's commercial-free stuff, and even a lot of the commercial-TV kids shows, like "Blue's Clues" on Nick are commercial-free and really don't switch around.
Typically the news story is sensational and thin on details- what kind of TV? My kid would beg us to let him watch Toy Story ( 1 and mostly 2 ) and Finding Nemo, and he'd watch the whole damn movie, is that a harbinger of a short attention span?? No kid plays with *anything* for two hours straight...
But good lord, the fight we get when we try to drag him away from the computer. That's the worst part. We make sure he gets outside so he can't spend all day in front of the various screens, but it's not easy.
Incidentally, he uses one of those "hard-to-use" one-button iMac mice...
My girlfriend once got me Sega Channel for Christmas.
It was great. A little pricey, but I definitely played enough of the games that I probably came out way ahead had I been foolish enough to buy every game I played. Of course, I wouldn't have bought all those games, and I wish I had some of them which I never did buy ( specifically ToeJam&Earl ). I did by a few games I ran across on the service, though ( Earthworm Jim rocks! )...
Hey hey, AppleWorks isn't dead *yet*, a copy of it came with my flat-panel iMac, along with a ton of other useful software. Appleworks now includes a "Paint" document type which looks suspiciously like "what ever became of MacPaint" so I'm not sure it's right to say MacPaint is dead, either.
My 2-year-old loves to use the Paint part of AppleWorks. He does so with one of those "hard-to-use" one-button mice.
Slashdot Mirror
I know this story is a little old, and it's probably been said already, but...
this is a *really* big deal for Macintosh users. It's the first time they've really been confronted with such a huge security problem. Seriously, there's a project manager at Apple who needs to be fired over this.
The real problem turns out to be the Help Viewer, not Safari. So changing browsers doesn't do much. You need to either remove the Help Viewer or de-register it as a ( ha ha ) helper application by using something like "MoreInternet" to get at a ( sigh ) stupidly hidden set of related preferences. I'd provide the link but I think y'all can do your own searches... just be careful what you click on!
Yes, this is a client-level attack which requires the user to pull down malicious data- but all the user has to do is click on a URL, and that's *it*, the deed is done. If I click on a URL, get an executable downloaded to my desktop, then I click on that executable, that's just me being stupid. But if I click on a URL and it *automatically runs code*, that's a serious security problem. Sure, Windows users are used to VBScripts and such running without permission, but that's *exactly* the type of problem that, up until now, the folks at Apple have managed to avoid.
I have to object to your notion that use of the word "censorship" in this case is just "spin".
:
Look up the definition of 'censor'
Main Entry: censor
Function: transitive verb
: to examine in order to suppress or delete anything considered objectionable
If US justice department agents examining the ACLU website in order to supress objectionable information isn't censorship, what is it exactly ?
Yes, all court secrecy rules impose some level of censorship. It's still censorship, and it's not at all clear that the ACLU can say anything it wants when the case is over- the point is that the extent of the court secrecy is vastly increased in this case exactly *because* it's the use of the Patriot Act which is at issue.
I'll believe we live in a free society when the government stops censoring people "to protect the children" or whatever. Until the FCC can't stop someone from screaming obscenities or showing whatever images they want, your 'freedom' is limited ( i.e. conditional, i.e bullshit ) at best.
Some limited censorship of court documents and information related to ongoing cases might be OK at some point to protect individuals before they're found guilty, but even that type of protection is problematic at best- it prevents transparency in the courts and a host of problems arises- and it's *still* censorship.
Freedom... yea, RRRRIIIIIGHT !
funny, that's not such a bad idea, a software condom.
;-)... of course, it's quite obvious, and not new idea, not that such details stop folks from getting software patents in the US... I'll just avoid the use of the term 'sandbox' and make it sound like something new...
I want to run this binary to see what it does, but I want to run it as a user with *no* read/write privledges outside of ( perhaps ) the application's own bundle.
That actually shouldn't be too hard to do. Of course, you could always create a 'test' user account with no priviledges outside it's home directory, but a more straightforward solution is always more user-friendly... the best trick would be to make all downloaded, double-clickable items launch in 'software condom' mode until 'unwrapped'...
Just so y'all know, I'm patenting this idea. This slashdot message is my example of prior art
Seriously, this equipment is getting so cheap, I'm amazed that Comcast has the balls to charge for it anymore. Yea, whatever, if they send me a nastygram telling me I need to buy a "home networking" plan because of all of the NAT-translated wifi-connections they detected on *my* box, I'll just buy a different LAN-only cablemodem and put this thing behind another router and tell them where they can look...
This only screws with the non-technical. In the future, the non-technical will get screwed over by tech-using businesses, and the future is now.
Actually, I suppose that's not a new trend, non-technical folks being blown away by technical folks, it's just that now the tech is computers, not firearms or manufacturing...
I've looked at the issue a *lot*, and it appears the nastygrams really have been in what even I would categorize as extreme cases. NO service would let you soak up 100% of your bandwidth all of the time and not come knocking on your door about setting up a business-class service. Most would just kick you off and cite abuse clauses in the contract. The biggest problem with Comcast's policy is that they don't give specific limits- it's a "we'll send you a letter when someone else on your block complains" policy.
Sadly, in a market when there are maybe only one or two players, your choices are often too limited for real competition to occur. I'm not any more excited about using Comcast for internet access than I am about using DirecTV for video content, but they're the best options I have.
My alternative broadband service was/is Covad IDSL. I'm willing to bet I can use Comcast's service just like I was using my Covad service without getting close to the nasty-gram limit. Even WITHOUT getting my video via Comcast ( they tack on an extra ten bucks if you aren't a cable subscriber ), their cable internet is over $10/month cheaper than the Covad IDSL price... cheaper and at least 6-10 times faster.
As much as I'd love to stick with Covad, I just can't justify doing so given Comcast's service being _both_ cheaper _and_ faster.
I'm a few blocks out ( seriously only a few hundred feet ) of SBC DSL range, or I'd get that; as utlimately evil as SBC is ( really, really, really evil ), $25/month for dedicated DSL would do just fine, I'd really rather save myself on the monthly fee rather than have the faster cablemodem service. But SBC is *so* evil that they don't want to build out their network ( ?!? ), their stated reason being that companies like Covad would just leach of it, except, wait, they get to charge Covad a premium now and they're _still_ not building out their network... which reveals that the *real* reason they don't need to invest in their network is that they're a monopoly, but I digress.
Seriously, my choice is IDSL (144Kb/sec) with Covad at $65/mo. or this "3Mbit/sec" Comcast service at $55/mo... you're seriously telling me I should keep the Covad service? Tell you what, you pay for it, I'll keep it...
Oh, an interesting note... apparently you *can't* currently buy the Covad plan I have now, it'd be an $80/mo. service...
In the exceedingly unlikely event that I do get a nasty-gram from Comcast, I think it'd be easy for me to cut back enough to keep them happy... also I know too many people who are happily using their Comcast internet service *a lot*, without issue, to think that I'm going to have problems. My household's use is probably going to be well within the limits, even with my son downloading flash games from noggin.com and my wife downloading gnutella content and myself downloading usenet binaries and OS X updates. We'll see... but from what research I've done into the subject, the folks getting letters really were saturating their connections in a big, big way... I'd have to buy some serious disk arrays to store half GB I'd have to download before getting in trouble with Comcast.
Interesting... when did you work SQA @ NeXT ? I ask because I did as well, for a short time as a contractor, post-hardware ( I'm not saying the campus was weird and empty, but we did have our pick of office space... ). It was my first post-college gig. Unfortunately, there are a couple of key Apple applications which could clearly use a few more developers working on them. Whoever is in charge of Mail.app's non-transport-related features ( read: printing and offline mailbox management ) needs some serious help, even though the app is usable for most individuals, it misses some key business features and preference options. Let's hope Apple is able to worry a *little* less about the bottom line in the near future so they can add a little more oomph to the application development budget. Steve is really, really good at convincing people they can do what seems impossible, and sometimes they're actually able to do it as a result. That's the most important feature of the RDF, and, along with some help from Objective-C and the AppKit framework, is what allows for such lean development teams to do so very much.
And you're right, telling them they don't know what they're talking about is a waste of time. They're not capable of being wrong, or they'd be able to question their opinion in matters where they *aren't* experts. None of these geeks know squat about the environment, they just don't want to hear that they're doing something which could possibly be unwise or incorrect, and most importantly, their opinion can't and shouldn't be questioned.
It was called Greenland to *fool* people into going there, instead of "Iceland" which is actually much greener...
How deep is your knowledge of environmental issues, is it as good as your knowledge of history and geography? Why do you presume your opinion on the matter is worth something? Why do you disregard any warning about technology as silly? If someone told you holding something highly radioactive might be hazardous, would you believe them, or would you call them alarmist? What would your attitude have been shortly after the discovery of atomic radiation, before the dangers were well-known?
The concern isn't that the earth is getting warmer, it's that it's doing so *quickly*. California's economy won't be destroyed by global warming of 10 degrees over 800 years, but 10 degrees in the next 100 years wouldn't give us time to relocate coastal communities and farming regions without some *severe* economic impact. If there's something we could do to slow down the current trend, it might be wise, no? Or do you just not care about your children?
Part of what's going on here is we have data which we didn't used to have access too, and there's some question over what it means.
However, there is very little question that an average 1 and a half degee F warmer in two decades is a pretty dramatic change, especially when compared to evidence of climate change trends in geologic records. The problem isn't so much that we're getting warmer as much as that we might be doing so at a rate which will cause climate changes so quickly that we might not be able to reorganize our farming practices quickly enough to adapt without excessive cost. So yea, we'll probably survive, but we'll be a lot poorer for it, and a *lot* of people will suffer, and a *lot* of ecosystems will go extinct, just so you can drive your SUV and have 'cheap' coal power...
and just in case you *are* going to say you're some sort of expert on global climate trends, where's your evidence that .7 degrees F increase in a decade is historically 'normal' ?
the troll didn't mention video editing, did he? Besides, I find my 800Mhz iMac edits video just fine, that's the purpose I bought it for so many years ago. Sure, it'd be nice if it got the job done faster, but the stage that is slow is in creating a file for burning onto the DVD, something that's not going to be a 5-minute operation any time soon, no matter what hardware you're buying. I get the process started and go do something else, big deal...
Ok, so you live somewhere that : 1. winter temperatures -30F. 2. has poor water supply. This is where you choose to live because of ???
Having said that, I *want* a G5, and IBM should figure out what's wrong with their Fishkill plant and start cranking those suckers out, but until then... I have to admit I can't think of a single *good* reason why I need anything faster than my old 800Mhz G4 flat-panel iMac... poor Apple, I probably won't be buying another computer until my 2-year-old demands his own computer... at which point he'll get the plenty-usable iMac. He probably won't need his own since he has his own login anyway... I won't have a new computer at home for years and years. They'll have G6s before I can justify buying a new machine.
for what purpose do you need something faster than a 2Ghz PentiumIII, in all seriousness ? No, enterprise server uses don't count here, I'm talking about home machines... fast enough to look at web pages, launch a word processor, and play some games is, well, fast enough. Anyone who says different is either trying to sell you something, or just trying to impress you with their l33t boXen ( since they can't get a girl to talk to them ).
My 800Mhz iMac is not only fast enough to do all of the above, it's also plenty fast at editing DV movies and authoring DVDs. These new machines would be even better, and portable as a bonus... what exactly were you claiming as the reason why you'd not buy a G4 laptop?? I'm not sure that reason makes sense, that's all I'm saying... don't get me wrong, I like PCs just fine, my *last* machine was an HP, but I'm not sure your dissing Apple is justifiable.
What? What are you looking at me like that for? Hey, sometimes it helps to give the brain a rest, you know... if I watched TV less, I'd just play video games more. If I wanted to do something productive, I'd work on the house. The point is that when I watch TV, I'm actively choosing to *not* be productive. If anyone has a problem with that choice, they need to get a new hobby outside of worrying about what I'm doing with my time.
Now that I have Tivo, I can more efficiently spend my unproductive time being entertained rather than watching commercials and bad shows "because nothing else is on", but I'm still *choosing* to be unproductive... kinda like right now...
the eMac was originally introduced for "education", it was in fact only available via edu channels, i.e. at your university bookstore or via the Apple Store after you proved you were a teacher, student or school administrator. After initial sales, they opened up the buying to 'everyone'.
Think of it as the VW bug of the Mac line... the sad thing is it's now 30% or so faster than the original iMac that I spent a cool grand more on a couple of years back... that's tech for ya.
Those statements struck me as particularly odd given Apple's JVM releases under OS X.
Apple's OS 9 JVM was sacrificed for reasons having more to do with the design of OS 9 ( think about the command-line and unix-based process design in Java vs. OS 9 ) and the looming introduction of OS X than Microsoft's investment. I'd expect this guy to know enough not to tie these things together- it makes him come of sounding like an uninformed conspiracy theorist. It *is* too bad Apple didn't feel like it had the resources to make Java really great under OS 9, but any company has to focus it's resources where they're needed the most- strapping a good JVM onto OS 9 would be somewhat wasted effort when it comes to Apple's bottom line, as the only folks who would use it would do so on hardware over 6 years old anyway... not a great market for Apple to have spent badly-needed money on.
no, really? He wants us to all write for Qt rather than Java?
I'll write for something other than Java when I find something that works better cross-platform than Swing *and* has a good OO programming model *and* good database access and XML support. Until then, what's he asking, again?
It's fine that all of this is your opinion, but it's just that.
My opinion is that all of the cross-platform GUIs you've mentioned are fine for some uses, but impossible or a PITA for others. Swing, although much maligned and not without it's issues, is perfectly usable for enterprise ( or other, general ) applications where you'd like to avoid porting.
Of course, you have to have a developer with some idea what they're doing, and it always helps to have a good application design, but those factors aren't language-dependant.
A few key points are worth noting :
.sit file or something ) or it'd lose it's resource fork, which is where the executable is. It's essentially an OS 9 virus that works on OS X because of support for Classic and Carbon applications.
.app, by setting it's OS 9 file type to "APPL". I'm further driven to my conviction that Carbon applications are slightly evil, even if they're a necessary evil. Of course, I suppose the flip side of that argument could be made; if the Finder favored the file type over the extension in showing the user what the file is, you'd know it's an application. I'm willing to bet some future update to OS X changes the Finder to do just that, especially since that's what the Finder already does in Get Info and file preview, and is also what Mail.app does. Hmmm... maybe we should all file a bug report against Finder ?
.jpg or other file extension. It's also exactly the same in most respects as any OS 9 virus, and thus not terribly new.
1) it's a 'proof-of-concept' virus, meaning that Intego wrote it for the express purpose of selling their product. No OS X user has ever had a single virus or trojan *unwillingly* infect their computer, as of the date this email is written. Not bad for 3 years and an install base of 50 million. Having said that, this doesn't mean we should all just double-click on any random file without a care; that would have been a poor practice under OS 9, and it still isn't a good idea.
2) If you get the trojan MP3 file in mail, it's correctly identified as an application. The downside is of course that many users seem to have no problem launching some random executable file, but basically this means that the main method of transmitting this trojan is somewhat blocked. Sure, you could get it via P2P, but it'd have to be an archive, not an MP3 file, which should set of alarm bells if you have an ounce of computer knowledge or even P2P experience.
3) The file is also correctly identified as an application if you look at the "preview" of it. So if you have the default columns view in Finder, you're likely to notice that it's an application. You'll also notice it's an application if you 'Get Info', not that you're too likely to do that.
4) You'd have to get the file in an archive ( like a
This works, essentially, because of OS 9 support, which allows something to be an application even though it has a different file name extension from
I don't want to verify this claim, but at least one user is reporting that they can't launch the proof-of-concept virus since they're not running an administrator account. I'm not sure I see why not, but it's possible that this is true, especially depending on how you set up the user's account. I suppose having your admin account *not* as your main account is probably a good idea if you're paranoid about security, in *any* event.
In the final analysis, this is exactly the same type of social-engineering exploit we're used to seeing in Windows-based email-attachment trojans: a file which is actually an executable hides it's true nature by using a
This is perhaps a nice wake-up call to OS X users not to just blindly click on any random file, though... and yes, it's a real problem. A malicious application can be written for almost anything the executes code, including OS X and your cell phone- that's a reality.
If you already know C, and have some experience with OO ( like in Java, for example ), you already know most of what you'll need for Objective-C. As a language, there's not a lot to learn, it'll be learning new design patterns ( like Distributed Objects for threading and Key-Value-Coding for binding and serialization ) that'll take time to learn.
If you don't already know C, you should learn it anyway, IMHO.
Objective-C does reference counting, not garbage collection. That said, it really is a pretty simple set of rules to follow for memory management, it's just annoying for folks who've become lazy under true GC, and of course a terrible source of seg faults and memory leaks.
Creating your own Cocoa control is easy as pie, though most often you start with a custom view object... data types are almost all exactly C data types.
Cocoa does indeed have 'neat ideas', always has...
Right now I'm talking to a coworker who, in the past month has written a *very* fancy jigsaw puzzle application using Cocoa. In his spare time.
He did not know ANY programming language besides C a month ago. No OO programming, nothing, he'd just written C-code shell apps for years prior.
Sure, he's a smart cookie, but... if you're a good C programmer, you might be able to do the same type of thing, though.
Also, there's something to be said for simplicity in APIs... Java's tendency ( especially in Swing ) to have two different API which do similar things "except", and convenience methods which duplicate functionality elsewhere, have caused myself and other Java developers some considerable trouble and add to slowness and general code bloat.
Part of the reason for the "missing" API is that it isn't generally needed, as the "missing" functionality is often available in C. IHMO, Objective-C's greatest feature and worst problem is that it's a superset of C... so nobody spent the time needed to put together a true Objective-C XML parsing-API until relatively recently, because you could get the job done just fine using C calls. As you seem to almost say, there's usually a good way to do what you want in Objective-C, often using tricks of the dynamic runtime, which you wouldn't think of in something strongly-typed like Java.
Myself, I'm surprised ( and happy ) to be *back* writing Objective-C after years of writing C and Java apps following my first-ever post-college gig at NeXT...
By the way, Cocoa Bindings is maybe the coolest thing I've seen programming-wise in years. Check it out. I'm sure it's copied from elsewhere ( I think I saw something similar mentioned in Python or something? ) but it's still cool as hell.
I like what is currently the last post on that page, by one Paul K Brandon, Professor at the Psychololgy Dept, Minnesota State University, Mankato :
There are many possible contaminating variables here besides the ones that Gallagher mentions. The data are based on retrospective self reports by the parents of the children whose behavior is in question. I see no indication of any systematic validation of the accuracy of these reports. It is quite possible that parents who are more sensitive to or concerned about their children's behavior are more likely to both report behavioral abnormalities and give higher estimates ot the time those children spend watching TV. To conclude, the only way to imply causation to any observed relationship between the reported time spent watching television and reported frequency of problem behaviors would be to randomly assign subjects to TV and NO TV groups, have them log defined behaviors and TV time in real time, and have external observers occasionally make reliability checks on their recording.
Failing that, all we have is a vague suggestion that some sort of undefined relationship exists.
This ain't science, folks. Use common sense, don't let your kid sit in front of Nickelodean all day when you can go out and play, but it makes more sense to be worried about flame-retardant clothing and you own interaction with the kid, rather than being worried about Blue's Clues...
Have you ever sat and watched a two-year-old play on website games designed for kids?
Check out noggin.com or nickjr.com, or even pbskids.org, and check out their games.
My two-year-old stays with one game for typically about 10 minutes. I'm still unsure if it's good or bad.
He doesn't run to turn on the TV in the morning- he runs to sit down at the computer. On the other hand, when he does watch TV, we make sure it's commercial-free stuff, and even a lot of the commercial-TV kids shows, like "Blue's Clues" on Nick are commercial-free and really don't switch around.
Typically the news story is sensational and thin on details- what kind of TV? My kid would beg us to let him watch Toy Story ( 1 and mostly 2 ) and Finding Nemo, and he'd watch the whole damn movie, is that a harbinger of a short attention span?? No kid plays with *anything* for two hours straight...
But good lord, the fight we get when we try to drag him away from the computer. That's the worst part. We make sure he gets outside so he can't spend all day in front of the various screens, but it's not easy.
Incidentally, he uses one of those "hard-to-use" one-button iMac mice...
My girlfriend once got me Sega Channel for Christmas.
It was great. A little pricey, but I definitely played enough of the games that I probably came out way ahead had I been foolish enough to buy every game I played. Of course, I wouldn't have bought all those games, and I wish I had some of them which I never did buy ( specifically ToeJam&Earl ). I did by a few games I ran across on the service, though ( Earthworm Jim rocks! )...
Also, of course, I married that girl...
My 2-year-old loves to use the Paint part of AppleWorks. He does so with one of those "hard-to-use" one-button mice.