I think I was going for like a book title, where all imporant words are capitalized, but I think I was also trying to stick to the Unix style 'all program names are lowercase' thing (even though OS X, which this is all about, isn't case sensitive). It was all kinda subconcious. Ah well. =3
Me and my computer science teacher/school's net admin have a hacking contest going back and forth. The rest of the school is basically droolfaces when it comes to computers (the computers themselves are mostly underpowered '98 machines, with a smattering of 2k's in the main lab), so I decided to make his life interesting. I find some trick around the security, he raises it, I find a way around again, and so on. It started with simply typing 'Control Panel' in IE, and has now escalated to custom VB programs. (advice: on any computer with Word, pop open it's VBscript editor and run ' Shell (C:/windows/explorer.exe)' and bam you can access the whole HD =D )
Anyway, for april fool's day, the computers all load the same home page, stored on one of the servers, when he wasn't looking, I went back into the server room with a floppy of images to replace the default ones. One Win2k Find command later, and all of the computers now load animated gifs of the comp sci teacher and the principal dancing.
This same ability is already available, and not just within Japan. Most games offer a 'download' feature where one player with a cartridge uploads game data to other DS's, and then all the players can kick each other's butts. These booths in Japan are using the same protocol, except that once the game is uploaded, the wireless connection to the booth is turned off.
I'm still waiting for Nintendo's Palm OS liscence to come to fruition, especially considering the PSP has a similar system coming.
OS X's built in 'Simple Finder' mode lets you set a user account (or heck, a thousand user accounts) to run in simple mode. and yes, I believe the default save location is '~/documents.' Simple Finder really doesn't let you browse the hard drive, and the only applications that the user can access are ones that the system administrator(s) have allowed access to.
Even a friend of mine, who is an artist (not the deisnger kind, the painty kind, no need for a computer and no interest in learning) was able to use my computer for six weeks this summer when I loaned it to her. she had big fat buttons for AIM, Safari, DVD Player and Word on the dock, and that was it. She was fine. I didn't have to explain a thing.
Yes, requires a password for serious damage
on
Beginning AppleScript
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· Score: 4, Informative
Applescripts don't have any better access privledges than any other OS X program. In order to seriously damage the system, you need the admin password for access to system folders.
Unix kids should note that this is OSX's policy of 'sudo everything:' let the user do as they please, but if they're going somewhere they might not want to, get passwordy real fast. Even the 'administrator' account is not truly an administrator (though he can do a lot more than a 'normal user'), the root account is actually disabled on OS X (though it can be re-enabled with little work). OS X Server, on the other hand, tries to log you in as root by default, taking the fair guess that it's dealing with someone significantly wiser with the system.
Applications designed for Aqua, that is ones that follow Apple's guidlines, are very consistent. Apple layed out the ground rules for EVERYTHING plain and simple, and I think that they were smart for doing so, and would not mind a bit if others copied them.
However, I'm going to call you on the claim that all OS X apps are consistent. you said that x11 apps have a different feel from native gnome apps. On OS X, x11 apps not only have a different feel from Aqua apps, they stick out like sore thumbs, badly. all the running x11 apps are listed under the same icon in the dock, and the fact that programs have menu bars within the window, not the top, throws mac users big time. Apple has a 'ghost' window manager thing going that makes copy and paste (from Aqua to x11), dock minimization etc work, so the apps are as functional as an Aqua counterpart, but just so ugly and...well, NOT Aqua that most mac users want nothing to do with them.
Apple systems are a bit different from Windows machines when it comes to megahertz. OS X (recent versions at least. anything 10.2 or later, with the Mac Mini shipping with 10.3) runs suprisingly well on 'older' hardware. OS X will run just fine on a 500mhz mac with 512mb of ram (128 is minimum, but bump it anyway, trust me). a 1ghz system with at least 512mb is a field day for OS X. My powerbook was top-of-the-line one and a half years ago, with 1 ghz G4, 1gig ram, and a 60 gig HD. That hardware is perfectly capable of doing some of those awesome tricks like having a bunch of hardcore apps running at a time.
The final answer is just about any program you throw at it will run excellent, except 'pro' apps, where performance will be acceptable (not great, but if you want to, you can). Example: Video editing with iMovie is WELL within it's abilities, and the step-ups of Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express should move along pretty quick too...Assuming you do get a ram bump, which I HIGHLY recommend. Other than that, this looks to be a nonissue.
He says himself he's running in in Virtual PC. An emulator. Emulators can cause strange bugs.
And only a small number of people actually run XP SP2. Half of the computers in the US are still 98 or below, and only small portion of the other half have been upgraded to/came with SP2. So the vast majority of users won't see the signature message.
Should Firefox get a signature? I don't see how it could hurt, and it would help for situations like this.
In order for people to make the jump from one platform to another, the other platform has to have something that the current one lacks. not a 'killer app' but a 'killer feature.' There's very little available only for Mac OS X that's doesn't have a Windows port, or an app on Windows that does the same thing. However, Apple says that it's superior in it's performance, ease of use, and stability. That's what drives switchers to switch. Linux needs to offer something Windows doesn't, and just as importantly, GET THAT INFORMATION OUT THERE.
IE for mac is vulnerable to many of the 'make it crash!' exploits. exploits designed to mess with Windows through IE of course fail.
Many mac users use IE because it was the default browser in OS X before Safari came out (Irony, huh?). Safari came with 10.3, but I don't think the system changes the default browser on install.
Almost every single Mac OS X application out there, down to the tiniest, simplest freeware applications, have awesome icons and graphics. I'm not kidding, go look. Surely some of those guys coupld point out who helped them. And also, it may not be quite what you're looking for, but the guys of iconfactory.com might surely be able to point you on the right direction. Their stuff is meant for Mac, but just being graphics files, making the cross-platform hop is a snap.
You'll find that a lot of the mac guys are willing to lend a hand. Since OS X came out and they all started playing with unix, there's been a LOT of interest in programming and open source projects. Most mac users can't do basic, but can own you in Illustrator.
Of course, the flipside to this is Mac users who learned cd and ls and think they know unix. I was one of them. I tried to install Slackware on a borrowed PC. It was NOT pretty.
Should be a spoof of Apple's switcher ads. Now those were dumb advertisiments, but they have a good point. When was the last time you heard of a Apple user switching back to Windows? Or a Firefox user going back to IE? I use Linux, Windows XP and Mac OS X on a daily basis, and it's incredible how much the other two OS's have going for them. If only Linux was more polished, or OS X wasn't trapped on proprietary hardware....
In the Longhorn builds that have leaked out onto the internet, IE does in fact have tabbed browsing. However, it also has some STUPID new crap, like a redesigned bar at the top that has....a pointlessly MASSIVE back button. However, it still has just as just as many issues as current IE.
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I think I was going for like a book title, where all imporant words are capitalized, but I think I was also trying to stick to the Unix style 'all program names are lowercase' thing (even though OS X, which this is all about, isn't case sensitive). It was all kinda subconcious. Ah well. =3
Me and my computer science teacher/school's net admin have a hacking contest going back and forth. The rest of the school is basically droolfaces when it comes to computers (the computers themselves are mostly underpowered '98 machines, with a smattering of 2k's in the main lab), so I decided to make his life interesting. I find some trick around the security, he raises it, I find a way around again, and so on. It started with simply typing 'Control Panel' in IE, and has now escalated to custom VB programs. (advice: on any computer with Word, pop open it's VBscript editor and run ' Shell (C:/windows/explorer.exe)' and bam you can access the whole HD =D ) Anyway, for april fool's day, the computers all load the same home page, stored on one of the servers, when he wasn't looking, I went back into the server room with a floppy of images to replace the default ones. One Win2k Find command later, and all of the computers now load animated gifs of the comp sci teacher and the principal dancing.
This same ability is already available, and not just within Japan. Most games offer a 'download' feature where one player with a cartridge uploads game data to other DS's, and then all the players can kick each other's butts. These booths in Japan are using the same protocol, except that once the game is uploaded, the wireless connection to the booth is turned off. I'm still waiting for Nintendo's Palm OS liscence to come to fruition, especially considering the PSP has a similar system coming.
OS X's built in 'Simple Finder' mode lets you set a user account (or heck, a thousand user accounts) to run in simple mode. and yes, I believe the default save location is '~/documents.' Simple Finder really doesn't let you browse the hard drive, and the only applications that the user can access are ones that the system administrator(s) have allowed access to. Even a friend of mine, who is an artist (not the deisnger kind, the painty kind, no need for a computer and no interest in learning) was able to use my computer for six weeks this summer when I loaned it to her. she had big fat buttons for AIM, Safari, DVD Player and Word on the dock, and that was it. She was fine. I didn't have to explain a thing.
Applescripts don't have any better access privledges than any other OS X program. In order to seriously damage the system, you need the admin password for access to system folders. Unix kids should note that this is OSX's policy of 'sudo everything:' let the user do as they please, but if they're going somewhere they might not want to, get passwordy real fast. Even the 'administrator' account is not truly an administrator (though he can do a lot more than a 'normal user'), the root account is actually disabled on OS X (though it can be re-enabled with little work). OS X Server, on the other hand, tries to log you in as root by default, taking the fair guess that it's dealing with someone significantly wiser with the system.
No one goes around saying 'excuse me sir, I need to check your antennas.' So if he did do it, no one would really check.
Applications designed for Aqua, that is ones that follow Apple's guidlines, are very consistent. Apple layed out the ground rules for EVERYTHING plain and simple, and I think that they were smart for doing so, and would not mind a bit if others copied them. However, I'm going to call you on the claim that all OS X apps are consistent. you said that x11 apps have a different feel from native gnome apps. On OS X, x11 apps not only have a different feel from Aqua apps, they stick out like sore thumbs, badly. all the running x11 apps are listed under the same icon in the dock, and the fact that programs have menu bars within the window, not the top, throws mac users big time. Apple has a 'ghost' window manager thing going that makes copy and paste (from Aqua to x11), dock minimization etc work, so the apps are as functional as an Aqua counterpart, but just so ugly and ...well, NOT Aqua that most mac users want nothing to do with them.
Apple systems are a bit different from Windows machines when it comes to megahertz. OS X (recent versions at least. anything 10.2 or later, with the Mac Mini shipping with 10.3) runs suprisingly well on 'older' hardware. OS X will run just fine on a 500mhz mac with 512mb of ram (128 is minimum, but bump it anyway, trust me). a 1ghz system with at least 512mb is a field day for OS X. My powerbook was top-of-the-line one and a half years ago, with 1 ghz G4, 1gig ram, and a 60 gig HD. That hardware is perfectly capable of doing some of those awesome tricks like having a bunch of hardcore apps running at a time. The final answer is just about any program you throw at it will run excellent, except 'pro' apps, where performance will be acceptable (not great, but if you want to, you can). Example: Video editing with iMovie is WELL within it's abilities, and the step-ups of Final Cut Pro and Final Cut Express should move along pretty quick too ...Assuming you do get a ram bump, which I HIGHLY recommend. Other than that, this looks to be a nonissue.
He says himself he's running in in Virtual PC. An emulator. Emulators can cause strange bugs. And only a small number of people actually run XP SP2. Half of the computers in the US are still 98 or below, and only small portion of the other half have been upgraded to/came with SP2. So the vast majority of users won't see the signature message. Should Firefox get a signature? I don't see how it could hurt, and it would help for situations like this.
In order for people to make the jump from one platform to another, the other platform has to have something that the current one lacks. not a 'killer app' but a 'killer feature.' There's very little available only for Mac OS X that's doesn't have a Windows port, or an app on Windows that does the same thing. However, Apple says that it's superior in it's performance, ease of use, and stability. That's what drives switchers to switch. Linux needs to offer something Windows doesn't, and just as importantly, GET THAT INFORMATION OUT THERE.
IE for mac is vulnerable to many of the 'make it crash!' exploits. exploits designed to mess with Windows through IE of course fail. Many mac users use IE because it was the default browser in OS X before Safari came out (Irony, huh?). Safari came with 10.3, but I don't think the system changes the default browser on install.
The product design kids, like myself, do care, unlike the other art kids. Mainly because we're well aware that IE is a badly designed product. =)
Almost every single Mac OS X application out there, down to the tiniest, simplest freeware applications, have awesome icons and graphics. I'm not kidding, go look. Surely some of those guys coupld point out who helped them. And also, it may not be quite what you're looking for, but the guys of iconfactory.com might surely be able to point you on the right direction. Their stuff is meant for Mac, but just being graphics files, making the cross-platform hop is a snap. You'll find that a lot of the mac guys are willing to lend a hand. Since OS X came out and they all started playing with unix, there's been a LOT of interest in programming and open source projects. Most mac users can't do basic, but can own you in Illustrator. Of course, the flipside to this is Mac users who learned cd and ls and think they know unix. I was one of them. I tried to install Slackware on a borrowed PC. It was NOT pretty.
Should be a spoof of Apple's switcher ads. Now those were dumb advertisiments, but they have a good point. When was the last time you heard of a Apple user switching back to Windows? Or a Firefox user going back to IE? I use Linux, Windows XP and Mac OS X on a daily basis, and it's incredible how much the other two OS's have going for them. If only Linux was more polished, or OS X wasn't trapped on proprietary hardware....
In the Longhorn builds that have leaked out onto the internet, IE does in fact have tabbed browsing. However, it also has some STUPID new crap, like a redesigned bar at the top that has....a pointlessly MASSIVE back button. However, it still has just as just as many issues as current IE.