Since MacOS9, the Finder has had integrated disk burning. Put in a blank cd, burn files.
The implementation has sucked for 5 years.
18 months ago (EIGHTEEN) a shareware app was introduced that addressed the weaknesses of Apple's scheme (slooow process, tied up optical drive, wastes disk space) called TheHotFolder that introduced the concept of a monitored Finder "Smart" folder that was user assigned, to drop stuff into for burning later. Capacity was monitored dynamically, the user could "upgrade" their CD sized HotFolder to a DVDR capacity if the machine had one.
Once the user was satisfied, the could burn their HotFolder, etc.
Earlier this year, that app was updated to integrate even more into the Finder by the developer, and received a Mac Gems rating by MacWorld.
Apple appears to be adding this feature to MacOS X 10.4.
Finder burning worked *nothing* like this...not even close.
Someone sits down, figures out what sucks about it, writes a solution, and Apple nicely implements it.
I know this is WAY out of line on/. to actually Know the whole story before posting...but what the heck, right?
First a note/discliamer: I'm not the coder of note. I do however know exactly what happened. I know the guy, etc.
Some points/clarifications:
1. He's not evil, or an ass. Just young.
2. The code never actually deleted ~. it was a bit more clever, and used Social Engineering to get the user to do it instead.
3. The code was not in the original app; he re-released it with the code in question for 4 hours to target specific cases/individuals, then replaced the app with a version without it.
4. NO ONE who knows him knew about it beforehand; we would have stopped him if we did.
5. The code was constructed in a way that it would have NEVER, and could not POSSIBLY have run by "mistake'. I've seen it and have verified this myself.
After a short summary, I'll go over each of the above. There are some Mac specific things here that y'all might not be hip to, so for the lack of extra detail about them I apologize in advance:)
He'd worked on Echelon for about, oh, 6 months. He taught himself to code to write the thing, in fact, asking other small devs and folks he knew that did ObjC stuff for hints and help along the way. The kind of thing folks here talk about a lot, etc.
In the Mac world, there is a small, misguided group of folks that play the warez scene game and prop themselves up as 'heroes" helping the "little guy" by cracking, almost exclusively, small demoware and shareware apps. I've always thought this was a punk ass approach, out of fear of the Big Guys, but no matter.
Anyway, the day he released Ech, these fools made it their mission to get it cracked as soon as possible...and because of some OTHER idiocy on the part of Ech's coder (remember, he's inexperienced) were able to do so fairly quickly.
In the Mac Underground, the first place you go to look for these kinds of things is macserialjunkies. Folks have chased these clowns around the world, and they have found a home where they can operate with out getting their access cut, and thanks to the whores at NIC can better hide their identies as well...but thats an aside.
Anyway, the day he released Ech, "iDave" and friends rev-eng'd his serial scheme and posted a couple of reg/serial pairs in a thread on MSJ.
By the NEXT DAY, the coder's registrations ddropped to ZERO. NOTHING. NADA.
If folks do think this stuff matters...well, theirs yer sign right there.
Now...to our points from above:
1. Dude isn't a "bad guy" and he LOVES the Mac platform. He's in college as an art major, but likes (probably less so now) to code, and love video conversion to the largely out-of-fashion IMHO mpeg1/2 formats. Its a hobby of his that he's quite passionate about.
That said, he's impetuous...and a bit of a hothead sometimes. He'll most likely grow out of it.
2. What the code *actually* did was move the user's home dir into the user's sub directory inside of/tmp, in situ.
This REALLY pisses off MacOSX (as it should)..but more importantly, a scriptkid of farquad pirate would have no real way of knowing what was going on, because as soon as they switched back to the Finder, the World Around Them begins to crumble...mas rapido.
Of course, all one must do at this point is log in/drop to a term and move it back out of/tmp and all is well.
Guess what your average Mac User is gonna do? (I think the bright ones in the bunch see where this is going...)
When the user reboots, the system of course, flushes/tmp. Data's gone...he's dead, Jim...you get the idea.
3. The app originally was not released with code that did this. If an invalid serial was entered, it wouldn't work. When he found out about iDave's...help...he added a block of code that specifically and explicitedly looked for the name/code pairs off MSJ
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If you have a mac with a ton of files, various "Previous System Folders" etc...follow along :)
I have smart folders for pdfs, avis, mpgs, and wmvs
I have these sorts of files *all over the place*...movie clips, test files, you name it.
I go to the finder, "open" the Windows Media Files folder, and they are all "there"
Or all the "archive" files (zip, rar, sit/sitx etc) i've collected and not erased in the last year...
or all of the emails i've received from japanese users...
it goes on and on.
To me, its like the whole star trek "Computer..find all of the blah blah blah for sector Whatever"
It concentrates on the "what you want" as opposed to the current paradigm of where did i pit it/what app did i use, etc
The implementation has sucked for 5 years.
18 months ago (EIGHTEEN) a shareware app was introduced that addressed the weaknesses of Apple's scheme (slooow process, tied up optical drive, wastes disk space) called TheHotFolder that introduced the concept of a monitored Finder "Smart" folder that was user assigned, to drop stuff into for burning later. Capacity was monitored dynamically, the user could "upgrade" their CD sized HotFolder to a DVDR capacity if the machine had one.
Once the user was satisfied, the could burn their HotFolder, etc.
Earlier this year, that app was updated to integrate even more into the Finder by the developer, and received a Mac Gems rating by MacWorld.
Apple appears to be adding this feature to MacOS X 10.4.
Finder burning worked *nothing* like this...not even close.
Someone sits down, figures out what sucks about it, writes a solution, and Apple nicely implements it.
APPLE RAWKS!
First a note/discliamer: I'm not the coder of note. I do however know exactly what happened. I know the guy, etc.
Some points/clarifications:
1. He's not evil, or an ass. Just young.
2. The code never actually deleted ~. it was a bit more clever, and used Social Engineering to get the user to do it instead.
3. The code was not in the original app; he re-released it with the code in question for 4 hours to target specific cases/individuals, then replaced the app with a version without it.
4. NO ONE who knows him knew about it beforehand; we would have stopped him if we did.
5. The code was constructed in a way that it would have NEVER, and could not POSSIBLY have run by "mistake'. I've seen it and have verified this myself.
After a short summary, I'll go over each of the above. There are some Mac specific things here that y'all might not be hip to, so for the lack of extra detail about them I apologize in advance :)
He'd worked on Echelon for about, oh, 6 months. He taught himself to code to write the thing, in fact, asking other small devs and folks he knew that did ObjC stuff for hints and help along the way. The kind of thing folks here talk about a lot, etc.
In the Mac world, there is a small, misguided group of folks that play the warez scene game and prop themselves up as 'heroes" helping the "little guy" by cracking, almost exclusively, small demoware and shareware apps. I've always thought this was a punk ass approach, out of fear of the Big Guys, but no matter.
Anyway, the day he released Ech, these fools made it their mission to get it cracked as soon as possible...and because of some OTHER idiocy on the part of Ech's coder (remember, he's inexperienced) were able to do so fairly quickly.
In the Mac Underground, the first place you go to look for these kinds of things is macserialjunkies. Folks have chased these clowns around the world, and they have found a home where they can operate with out getting their access cut, and thanks to the whores at NIC can better hide their identies as well...but thats an aside.
Anyway, the day he released Ech, "iDave" and friends rev-eng'd his serial scheme and posted a couple of reg/serial pairs in a thread on MSJ.
By the NEXT DAY, the coder's registrations ddropped to ZERO. NOTHING. NADA.
If folks do think this stuff matters...well, theirs yer sign right there.
Now...to our points from above:
1. Dude isn't a "bad guy" and he LOVES the Mac platform. He's in college as an art major, but likes (probably less so now) to code, and love video conversion to the largely out-of-fashion IMHO mpeg1/2 formats. Its a hobby of his that he's quite passionate about.
That said, he's impetuous...and a bit of a hothead sometimes. He'll most likely grow out of it.
2. What the code *actually* did was move the user's home dir into the user's sub directory inside of /tmp, in situ.
This REALLY pisses off MacOSX (as it should)..but more importantly, a scriptkid of farquad pirate would have no real way of knowing what was going on, because as soon as they switched back to the Finder, the World Around Them begins to crumble...mas rapido.
Of course, all one must do at this point is log in/drop to a term and move it back out of /tmp and all is well.
Guess what your average Mac User is gonna do? (I think the bright ones in the bunch see where this is going...)
When the user reboots, the system of course, flushes /tmp. Data's gone...he's dead, Jim...you get the idea.
3. The app originally was not released with code that did this. If an invalid serial was entered, it wouldn't work. When he found out about iDave's...help...he added a block of code that specifically and explicitedly looked for the name/code pairs off MSJ