Actually, many casual users don't understand the distinction between a document and executable code. They just know that they double-click on an attachment to see it.
Uhh, because some of us know our way around well enough to get programs from people that we want to run.
Seems like there is a simple solution. Don't allow the user to run the program from their email software. Double-clicking on an executable in an email should bring up a dialog explaining the danger of running attachments, and explaining that you must manually move the attachment to some other location to run it. Those who "know their way around," shouldn't find this much of a problem.
Sorry, you're a few months late. WebCore is already being used for the iTunes store interface, and Panther will use it to run the Help system and any other inline HTML rendering.
You are confusing WebCore with Safari. iTunes accesses the store just fine without Safari present. WebCore is a public source library that developers may optionally use for development of applications that render HTML. But applications that use WebCore will do so as standalone applications, not by making calls to Apple's Safari browser.
Again, for all we know the next exploit may be in Safari.
Even if that turned out to be the case (and I'm not aware of any serious security problems with Safari thus far, while Explorer has had many), it would have less of an impact on the Mac world than an Explorer exploit, because Apple has not pushed for the same kind of "software monoculture" that Microsoft promotes. Apple supplies Safira, but they have not tried to make Safari an inseperable part of the OS as MS has with IE. For example, you need Explorer to run Windows Update, whereas Apple's Software Update is stand-alone. So many Mac users are still using IE, or Mozilla, or Navigator, or Camino.
Microsoft has been very intent upon linking their applications into the operating system to cut out competitors. So virtually everybody running Windows is using Explorer and Outlook. Apple seems to be a lot more supportive of diversity in applications. So some people are running Safari, others are running Camino, Mozilla, or Explorer. A lot of people run Mail, but there is still a lot of use of Eudora. Especially for older-style worms that rely upon applications for their propagation, this makes Macs a more difficult target.
Even if the remote exploit only allows user privelages that is merely a first step. Historically under Unix the class of local exploits gaining root privelages is much larger than remote exploits.
Local exploits are primarily relevant to multiuser computers in business or academic environments. For personal computers, which are normally physically secured for use by only one or at most a few people, it is less of an issue. Similarly, the average personal user will be running their system with the most potentially exploitable services turned off. Those who turn them on are probably sophisticated enough to understand the hazards and pay attention to keeping their software up to date.
Macs aren't "vaccinated" against Windows-based e-mail viruses or worms.
Saying Macs are "immune" in this case is about like saying my car is immune to Polio.
The term "immune" does not imply vaccination. There is such a thing a natural immunity. And Wintel systems and Mac systems do pretty much the same thing, they are not so different as you and your car.
Anyone dumb enough to launch an executable e-mail attachment without first virus-scanning it is dumb enough to do it on any platform they run.
The MSBlaster worm hit many people who didn't run attachments. All that was necessary was that they hadn't updated their systems in a few weeks--which is pretty common in summer when people go on vacation. And Sobig attaches files to emails from somebody you know. If you get an email from a trusted source, with a plausible message, it is very easy to get fooled. Virus scanning software works well against old viruses, but these days new worms often spread pretty far before the antivirus companies catch up.
I find Excel's graphing system to be incredibly awkward and inconvenient compated to just about any graphing application, and the graphs tend to be ugly. But I find Excel's Solver incredibly useful and flexible, and have been able to use it to do complex fits of equations to multiple data sets with some parameters common and some separate.
I feel so strongly about this just because I would love to have a PVR, for the use I'd get out of it, the price of a TiVo + "lifetime service" is a bargain; I'd happily pay it for a PVR. The problem is the TiVo isn't a PVR, it's a personal rip-off device for gullable fools. It has less functionality than a $60 VCR. (I can't just enter the time and date to record a show without having to buy into the long-term future of the company). Why should the 30 second skip be a hack?
If I want the capability of a $60 VCR and nothing more, I'll use my VCR (which mostly gathers dust now that I have TiVo). I never record TiVo recordings by time/date; I record them by title. What I'm paying for (or paid for, since I paid the lifetime fee) is the ability to search the schedules and to set recording priorities without worrying about what comes on when, and the ability to see a list of just what is and isn't going to record, and why. Why should anybody care whether the 30s skip is a "hack"? It just works.
1. "I was playing and the game crashed to desktop."
Or...
2. "I was playing and the game crashed to desktop, but it wasn't a big deal because it only did it every 10 minutes."
The key difference there is that (1) is objective, while (2) is written very subjectively. Personally, a game crashing every 10 minutes is a very big deal to me, while to the reviewer it wasn't.
I would prefer reviewer #2, because his review includes additional useful facts--i.e. the frequency of crashing. I may or may not care how the reviewer feels about it--at worst, it is merely a bit of excessive verbiage, or it may add a bit of human interest if the reviewer writes engagingly.
Objectivity is essential in a game review. I want to know if a game crashes, if the AI is a pushover, if the interface is garbage, etc. While there's some subjectivity in those things, a crash is still a crash.
I think what you mean to say is that facts are essential. Objectivity would be not particularly caring whether the game crashes. The objective writer tries to set aside his own emotional reaction (which if he cares about games, he presumably has), and rate a game according to some external standard--perhaps a list of criteria, or his notion of what an "average" player might like.
I think he and his cohorts may be so insulated, out-of-touch, and unaware of how OS and its community works that they may honestly NOT believe it is capable of organizing without some mysterious backer. Their actions certainly show ignorance, willing or otherwise, of many things, from the origin of code to human nature.
No, I think they are perfectly aware that it is false, but the claim is addressed to the business community that knows little about Open Source, but a lot about IBM's past. To such an audience, a claim that IBM is orchestrating the whole thing probably sounds at least plausible. The object is to run up SCO's stock value, presumably so that SCO insiders can dump their stock at a nice profit.
No, I get spoiled in a hurry, just like you. Once you've used a faster system, it's hard to go back to a slower one. The difference in responsiveness may only be a hundred milliseconds, and have virtually no impact on actual productivity, but its annoyance factor far exceeds its actual impact on your time. If you can perceive the difference in speed then it's too much. You rapidly forget how that very same computer would have seemed blazingly fast two or three years ago.
I've turned a beige G3 running Jaguar into a "jukebox" music server. In addition to streaming mp3's to individual macs, it is hooked up to a stereo system. I'm running it "headless," controlling it with the excellent netTunes shareware program. It seems to be able to comfortably play one song through the stereo while streaming a different song.
A large percentage of homeless people are, in fact, mentally ill. Having the government aware of their whereabouts is the least of their problems.
However, that may not be how they perceive it. They're mentally ill, remember? A lot of them are going to be paranoid. So how do you think the knowledge that the government is tracking homeless people is going to affect their willingness to make use of shelters and other services? The net effect is going to be to drive away the people who most desperately need assistance.
One more caveat: if your HD is more than 8 GB, you will need to repartition so that the first partition is a bit less than 8 GB, and use that one for your OSX install.
I have a couple of beige G3/233's running Jaguar, and I've been pleasantly surprised with the performance. Although Jaguar has the reputation of being slower than OS9, I find that they feel "snappier", probably because the improved multitasking doesn't let one application bring everything else to a standstill. You can even work in one application while another one is loading. Performance is fine for web browsing, word processing, and other routine tasks, and iTunes runs well, copying from the CD drive at about 1x. I wouldn't plan on watching videos, however. Most OS9 apps run fine in the Classic layer, and you can always boot to OS9 if you need to.
Main limitations: 1) I don't think the built-in SCSI is supported (I couldn't get it to recognize a SCSI scanner). I haven't tried the floppy.
2) Some people have reported trouble getting OSX to install, and have had to pull out some RAM &/or use XPostFacto to get it to install. I haven't had these problems myself.
3) If you haven't already done so, you should put in as much RAM as it can hold. RAM makes a substantial difference in performance.
My postulate is that she says your computer is so fast because your internet connection is much faster than the one she normally uses. If she's using your computer to read her email she's probably using some form of webmail.
That was my first guess, but it turned out to be wrong. She had a fast connection, just a relatively old PC. But it is true that for web browsing, even with a fast connection, the computer often is not rate-limiting. A lot of what people perceive as speed (how fast windows are drawn on the screen, for example) doesn't have that much impact on how fast they work. After working on a fast machine for a while, a machine that is half as fast will seem unacceptably slow--but unless you are doing processor-intensive work, you'll probably get as much done on the slow machine as the fast one.
So why pay them any money if they are so stupid? We only want teachers who "have the calling" and will work regardless of the pay, right?
It doesn't work that way. If you want to attract bright, competent people to teaching, you've got to offer them a salary that at least approaches what they could earn elsewhere. Somebody who really wants to teach will accept a lower wage to do so, but there are limits. Yes, you'll pick up a few who have the calling, and who can afford to work for low wages (mostly people with a spouse in a well-paying job). But there are many others who would love to teach, and would be good at it, but who simply cannot afford to do so.
One may or may not like it, but for most kinds of work out there, the Wintel-platform is what it is all about. Working with office-apps? Chances are that you're not using a Mac. Accessing a database? I'll guess ten to one that the clientend is a windowsapp.
Keep in mind that these are kids who won't be entering the workplace for quite a few years. What will be the favored user interface at that time? Perhaps it will be Windows, but various flavors of Unix (of which OS X is one) are on the rise. And even Windows will probably be significantly different by the time they graduate. So locking them into the details of a particular OS is a fool's game. They need training that is sufficiently general that they'll be able to adapt to whatever is out there by the time they graduate. It's not that big a deal, anyway. Kids are adaptable, and they quickly figure out that it is basically the same thing, with some stuff moved around here and there.
Yeah, I did, when I was in 3rd grade, forty-odd years ago. I'm not surprised to see that nothing has changed. Teaching children is a low-paying occupation, and you get two kinds of people:
1) Those who aren't competent to do anything else ("those who can, do...")
2) Those who have a calling to teach and are willing to accept substandard pay to do it.
Teachers in category one mainly teach by rote, following a rigid lesson plan, so a bright student who thinks and reads ahead is a problem. Of course, teachers in category 2 are delighted by this kind of challenge.
School administrators, of course, tend to be mostly in category one, since they don't actually teach. And they tend to favor teachers in category one, because they don't make waves. Basically the same mentality that leads them to favor a single computing platform...
Oddly enough, I just had a friend visiting tonight, who asked to use my computer to read her email and browse the web. So I let her use my desktop computer, a 233 MHz G3 running OSX 10.2.She was exclaiming, "Your computer is so fast!"
Now, I don't find it fast; I use it mostly as a music/photo server and spare computer, because it is noticeably pokey compared to my 800 MHz G4 powerbook. My point is that those of us whose income or business allows us to use reasonably current machines get very spoiled, and we forget that performance that we now find "unacceptable" only a few years ago seemed impressive.
And in fact, that old G3 is indeed perfectly adequate for web browsing, word processing, and running iTunes. And in my opinion, a big improvement over the same machine running OS9.
Have you tried one? I upgraded the 150 MHz PPC 604 in an old Power Computing clone to a 400 MHz G3, and the difference in performance was quite substantial. It even runs Jaguar acceptably (using the XPostFacto installer).
Sorry, it doesn't run fully on G3 iMacs. Or G3 iBooks.
I'm not sure what it means to run "fully." I've certainly got it running on all of those, and it seems to work fine. Not quite as fast as on a faster machine, but what do you expect? OS9 does seem a bit faster, but with OSX I don't have to deal with one application hanging the whole system. I love being able to work in one application while another one is opening.
Most likely, this embryo will die after a few divisions, being so strange
Probably, but that hardly matters. They aren't even attempting to grow the "embryo" (although this is probably a misleading term for something that is likely inherently nonviable) into an organism, they are merely using it as a source of embryonic stem cells to save human lives. So they are going to disaggregate the cells before it has a chance to die.
And look what they used: human skin cells, which we routinely discard, and rabbits, which we slaughter for meat and fur. It's hard to argue that cells derived from essentially disposable components deserve protection.
But if they do succeed in making embryonic stem cells, there is a real prospect of using them to treat human disease. While a rabbit egg is probably not set up quite right to create a complete, viable human embryo, there is no obvious reason why cells with rabbit mitochondria couldn't function perfectly normally inside a human body.
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Actually, many casual users don't understand the distinction between a document and executable code. They just know that they double-click on an attachment to see it.
Microsoft has been very intent upon linking their applications into the operating system to cut out competitors. So virtually everybody running Windows is using Explorer and Outlook. Apple seems to be a lot more supportive of diversity in applications. So some people are running Safari, others are running Camino, Mozilla, or Explorer. A lot of people run Mail, but there is still a lot of use of Eudora. Especially for older-style worms that rely upon applications for their propagation, this makes Macs a more difficult target.
I find Excel's graphing system to be incredibly awkward and inconvenient compated to just about any graphing application, and the graphs tend to be ugly. But I find Excel's Solver incredibly useful and flexible, and have been able to use it to do complex fits of equations to multiple data sets with some parameters common and some separate.
I think what you mean to say is that facts are essential. Objectivity would be not particularly caring whether the game crashes. The objective writer tries to set aside his own emotional reaction (which if he cares about games, he presumably has), and rate a game according to some external standard--perhaps a list of criteria, or his notion of what an "average" player might like.
No, I think they are perfectly aware that it is false, but the claim is addressed to the business community that knows little about Open Source, but a lot about IBM's past. To such an audience, a claim that IBM is orchestrating the whole thing probably sounds at least plausible. The object is to run up SCO's stock value, presumably so that SCO insiders can dump their stock at a nice profit.
No, I get spoiled in a hurry, just like you. Once you've used a faster system, it's hard to go back to a slower one. The difference in responsiveness may only be a hundred milliseconds, and have virtually no impact on actual productivity, but its annoyance factor far exceeds its actual impact on your time. If you can perceive the difference in speed then it's too much. You rapidly forget how that very same computer would have seemed blazingly fast two or three years ago.
I've turned a beige G3 running Jaguar into a "jukebox" music server. In addition to streaming mp3's to individual macs, it is hooked up to a stereo system. I'm running it "headless," controlling it with the excellent netTunes shareware program. It seems to be able to comfortably play one song through the stereo while streaming a different song.
However, that may not be how they perceive it. They're mentally ill, remember? A lot of them are going to be paranoid. So how do you think the knowledge that the government is tracking homeless people is going to affect their willingness to make use of shelters and other services? The net effect is going to be to drive away the people who most desperately need assistance.
One more caveat: if your HD is more than 8 GB, you will need to repartition so that the first partition is a bit less than 8 GB, and use that one for your OSX install.
I have a couple of beige G3/233's running Jaguar, and I've been pleasantly surprised with the performance. Although Jaguar has the reputation of being slower than OS9, I find that they feel "snappier", probably because the improved multitasking doesn't let one application bring everything else to a standstill. You can even work in one application while another one is loading. Performance is fine for web browsing, word processing, and other routine tasks, and iTunes runs well, copying from the CD drive at about 1x. I wouldn't plan on watching videos, however. Most OS9 apps run fine in the Classic layer, and you can always boot to OS9 if you need to.
Main limitations:
1) I don't think the built-in SCSI is supported (I couldn't get it to recognize a SCSI scanner). I haven't tried the floppy.
2) Some people have reported trouble getting OSX to install, and have had to pull out some RAM &/or use XPostFacto to get it to install. I haven't had these problems myself.
3) If you haven't already done so, you should put in as much RAM as it can hold. RAM makes a substantial difference in performance.
It doesn't work that way. If you want to attract bright, competent people to teaching, you've got to offer them a salary that at least approaches what they could earn elsewhere. Somebody who really wants to teach will accept a lower wage to do so, but there are limits. Yes, you'll pick up a few who have the calling, and who can afford to work for low wages (mostly people with a spouse in a well-paying job). But there are many others who would love to teach, and would be good at it, but who simply cannot afford to do so.
Yeah, I did, when I was in 3rd grade, forty-odd years ago. I'm not surprised to see that nothing has changed. Teaching children is a low-paying occupation, and you get two kinds of people:
1) Those who aren't competent to do anything else ("those who can, do...")
2) Those who have a calling to teach and are willing to accept substandard pay to do it.
Teachers in category one mainly teach by rote, following a rigid lesson plan, so a bright student who thinks and reads ahead is a problem. Of course, teachers in category 2 are delighted by this kind of challenge.
School administrators, of course, tend to be mostly in category one, since they don't actually teach. And they tend to favor teachers in category one, because they don't make waves. Basically the same mentality that leads them to favor a single computing platform...
Oddly enough, I just had a friend visiting tonight, who asked to use my computer to read her email and browse the web. So I let her use my desktop computer, a 233 MHz G3 running OSX 10.2.She was exclaiming, "Your computer is so fast!"
Now, I don't find it fast; I use it mostly as a music/photo server and spare computer, because it is noticeably pokey compared to my 800 MHz G4 powerbook. My point is that those of us whose income or business allows us to use reasonably current machines get very spoiled, and we forget that performance that we now find "unacceptable" only a few years ago seemed impressive.
And in fact, that old G3 is indeed perfectly adequate for web browsing, word processing, and running iTunes. And in my opinion, a big improvement over the same machine running OS9.
Have you tried one? I upgraded the 150 MHz PPC 604 in an old Power Computing clone to a 400 MHz G3, and the difference in performance was quite substantial. It even runs Jaguar acceptably (using the XPostFacto installer).
Probably, but that hardly matters. They aren't even attempting to grow the "embryo" (although this is probably a misleading term for something that is likely inherently nonviable) into an organism, they are merely using it as a source of embryonic stem cells to save human lives. So they are going to disaggregate the cells before it has a chance to die.
And look what they used: human skin cells, which we routinely discard, and rabbits, which we slaughter for meat and fur. It's hard to argue that cells derived from essentially disposable components deserve protection.
But if they do succeed in making embryonic stem cells, there is a real prospect of using them to treat human disease. While a rabbit egg is probably not set up quite right to create a complete, viable human embryo, there is no obvious reason why cells with rabbit mitochondria couldn't function perfectly normally inside a human body.