baleensavage
Sep 12, 03:45 PM
But I expected something abit more radical than what they showed.
Me too. The other announcements met or exceeded my expectations, but the iTV just made me wonder why Apple even bothered. It's not a very revolutionary product to warrant a preview. As far as I can tell is its a souped up Airport with HDMI ports that can run Front Row. What can that offer me that a $40 DVD player from Best Buy can't. The DVD player has better resolution, costs 7.5 times less and has more content available for it. Sure I don't have to change DVDs but Im not that lazy yet that I mind doing that.
Now if it would stream HD content... that would be another story. Give me another option other than participating in Sony and Toshibas little spat. That would be cool.
Me too. The other announcements met or exceeded my expectations, but the iTV just made me wonder why Apple even bothered. It's not a very revolutionary product to warrant a preview. As far as I can tell is its a souped up Airport with HDMI ports that can run Front Row. What can that offer me that a $40 DVD player from Best Buy can't. The DVD player has better resolution, costs 7.5 times less and has more content available for it. Sure I don't have to change DVDs but Im not that lazy yet that I mind doing that.
Now if it would stream HD content... that would be another story. Give me another option other than participating in Sony and Toshibas little spat. That would be cool.
calvin66
Aug 29, 01:31 PM
While I'm sure Apple and everyone else has a long way to go with regard to clean manufacturing practices, I'm not sold on Greenpeace's approach to the ratings.
If you look at their scoring system, it is a compilation of Greenpeace's subjective evaluation of a variety of practices by each company. Much of what Dell gets credit for is timelines for changing its business practices, and openness with regard to information on hazardous substances in the manufacturing process. When you look at what they are doing (rather than what they are saying), Dell and Apple score the same--a +2 (partially good) on amounts recycled, and a 0 (bad) for PVC & BFR free products. The report doesn't say how it quantifies these rankings, nor the underlying data regarding the score....which is kinda funny given their harping on full disclosure for all the companies mentioned.
It turns out Greenpeace is like everybody else--manipulating the data to support its goals. It sure doesn't help their credibility.
If you look at their scoring system, it is a compilation of Greenpeace's subjective evaluation of a variety of practices by each company. Much of what Dell gets credit for is timelines for changing its business practices, and openness with regard to information on hazardous substances in the manufacturing process. When you look at what they are doing (rather than what they are saying), Dell and Apple score the same--a +2 (partially good) on amounts recycled, and a 0 (bad) for PVC & BFR free products. The report doesn't say how it quantifies these rankings, nor the underlying data regarding the score....which is kinda funny given their harping on full disclosure for all the companies mentioned.
It turns out Greenpeace is like everybody else--manipulating the data to support its goals. It sure doesn't help their credibility.
Peterkro
Mar 13, 05:06 PM
You all seem to be ignoring the elephant in the room.
The spiralling demand for still more energy.
Someone mentioned California, and their inordinate requirement for 'more power' <ugh, ugh ... thank you Tim>.
How about we stop with the over-population, and working everyone 24-7?
Farmers used to get up with the Sun, and went to bed when it set.
If there is a lost tribe still somewhere that is flourishing, I hope that they never get "discovered".
I hope you're not including me in that as I've posted several times on the very subject.I'm not a Malthusian but I agree that human population is something we need to look at,every child a wanted child and cared for child for instance.Why do westerners use so much energy?Because they are not in touch with their environment,airconditioning in cars and homes?wtf for there are technologies hundreds of years old that can deal with that.To me it appears a lot of people work harder and harder for less and less.Bah humans in general are eejits.
The spiralling demand for still more energy.
Someone mentioned California, and their inordinate requirement for 'more power' <ugh, ugh ... thank you Tim>.
How about we stop with the over-population, and working everyone 24-7?
Farmers used to get up with the Sun, and went to bed when it set.
If there is a lost tribe still somewhere that is flourishing, I hope that they never get "discovered".
I hope you're not including me in that as I've posted several times on the very subject.I'm not a Malthusian but I agree that human population is something we need to look at,every child a wanted child and cared for child for instance.Why do westerners use so much energy?Because they are not in touch with their environment,airconditioning in cars and homes?wtf for there are technologies hundreds of years old that can deal with that.To me it appears a lot of people work harder and harder for less and less.Bah humans in general are eejits.
aftk2
Sep 12, 07:02 PM
I agree with a previous poster who was longing for a developer kit, and with the recent post about third party addons. This is an exciting aspect to iTV, made possible because it streams its content from the host Mac.
For example, I'd hope they'd put in some simple way to stream the contents of my dashboard with one click onto a transparent overlay onto whatever I'm watching. Heh - check MySpace from the couch.
Wait! Did I say that? I mean, uh...get weather reports. And up to date stock information. Er. Yeah. That's it.
For example, I'd hope they'd put in some simple way to stream the contents of my dashboard with one click onto a transparent overlay onto whatever I'm watching. Heh - check MySpace from the couch.
Wait! Did I say that? I mean, uh...get weather reports. And up to date stock information. Er. Yeah. That's it.
supermacdesign
Sep 12, 06:20 PM
I am dying to see what this thing looks like. Does anyone have an image of it?
Please?!
Please?!
firestarter
Mar 13, 03:58 PM
The obvious real answer is a globally connected power grid with generation all over the place so as night is not such an issue. Of course we'd need to agree on voltages, frequencies, cost etc.
Back to the original trigger for this whole thread... it's interesting that the Japanese are running rolling blackouts on the North East coast, because they can't even agree a mains electricity frequency standard for the country! :o
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Power_Grid_of_Japan.PNG
Remember also that grid losses are significant when transporting electricity over any distance, even at 400kv+
Back to the original trigger for this whole thread... it's interesting that the Japanese are running rolling blackouts on the North East coast, because they can't even agree a mains electricity frequency standard for the country! :o
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/cb/Power_Grid_of_Japan.PNG
Remember also that grid losses are significant when transporting electricity over any distance, even at 400kv+
balamw
Apr 9, 03:50 PM
If it's too hot on bare legs, then common sense says, "don't put it on bare legs!" It's so simple, even a cave man could figure it out.
We keep a spare 0.5" 3 ring binder in the family room for the rare time when using the MacBook is potentially uncomfortable.
99% of the time, e.g. couch surfing, it doesn't get hot at all. When it can, e.g. gaming, you have plenty of warning before it really starts getting warm (the fans start balring, etc...) to reach for a barrier.
Most, if not all, notebooks from all vendors suggest not using the notebook on anything other than a hard surface like a desk or table. Do not use in bed, on a sofa, couch, rug or bare legs. A lot of that has to do with blocking the vents they rely on for air cooling.
B
We keep a spare 0.5" 3 ring binder in the family room for the rare time when using the MacBook is potentially uncomfortable.
99% of the time, e.g. couch surfing, it doesn't get hot at all. When it can, e.g. gaming, you have plenty of warning before it really starts getting warm (the fans start balring, etc...) to reach for a barrier.
Most, if not all, notebooks from all vendors suggest not using the notebook on anything other than a hard surface like a desk or table. Do not use in bed, on a sofa, couch, rug or bare legs. A lot of that has to do with blocking the vents they rely on for air cooling.
B
elbirth
Oct 21, 10:44 PM
Zactly. Waiting for prices to change is probably an act of futility other than waiting for an 8-core refurb. The 3GHz Woody Mac Pro Refurb is $3299 which would compare to the 2.33GHz Clovertown. So there isn't going to be a lot of "savings" waiting for the refurbs which probably won't show up until late January at the soonest. Can you afford to be without all that power in the meantime? I can't wait.
Well, I'm waiting until around January to buy a new 8-core, not a refurb. I'm just seeing if I could perhaps save a couple bucks on the RAM because every little bit would help. I've been planning for a couple months now to wait until Macworld SF in January because initially I assumed that would be when the 8-core systems would be out. However, if they're out this year, even better- if any big issues pop up hopefully they can have them worked out. In that case I *may* get a refurb if they have them that soon- otherwise I'm just saving my money and had planned it out to have what I think should be enough (or close) by mid-January.
Luckily I can afford to wait (and my bank account thanks me for doing so). While I'm not in need of that kind of processing power, I believe I could definitely put it to use. My 2GHz MacBook Pro is my primary machine right now and I regularly get it to the point where it's starting to crawl and becomes painfully slow at times.
Well, I'm waiting until around January to buy a new 8-core, not a refurb. I'm just seeing if I could perhaps save a couple bucks on the RAM because every little bit would help. I've been planning for a couple months now to wait until Macworld SF in January because initially I assumed that would be when the 8-core systems would be out. However, if they're out this year, even better- if any big issues pop up hopefully they can have them worked out. In that case I *may* get a refurb if they have them that soon- otherwise I'm just saving my money and had planned it out to have what I think should be enough (or close) by mid-January.
Luckily I can afford to wait (and my bank account thanks me for doing so). While I'm not in need of that kind of processing power, I believe I could definitely put it to use. My 2GHz MacBook Pro is my primary machine right now and I regularly get it to the point where it's starting to crawl and becomes painfully slow at times.
Abulia
Sep 29, 11:03 AM
No.
Not helpful and wrong.
The most efficent use of the riser slots are dual rank FB-DIMMs and 4 of them. So 4 1GB sticks or 4 2GB sticks.
Four FB-DIMMs is the sweet spot between memory bandwidth and latency, based on tests.
Not helpful and wrong.
The most efficent use of the riser slots are dual rank FB-DIMMs and 4 of them. So 4 1GB sticks or 4 2GB sticks.
Four FB-DIMMs is the sweet spot between memory bandwidth and latency, based on tests.
sinisterdesign
Jul 11, 11:06 PM
from my source, i can confirm that they will indeed have 2 dual cores.
i've also been told that the case has only minor changes, which kind of sucks. i'm hoping it's still smaller than the big chunk of aluminum under my desk.
i've also been told that the case has only minor changes, which kind of sucks. i'm hoping it's still smaller than the big chunk of aluminum under my desk.
leekohler
Mar 25, 03:39 PM
You have to prove the rights existed in the first place otherwise I could argue the government is denying my right to drive a tank
No- you have to prove why I should be denied that right. It clearly exists.
You guys continue to ignore that marriage is in fact, a right. That has already been proven to you. And again, quit comparing us to weapons of mass destruction or murderers. I'm sick of it.
The Catholic view does not demand the death of homosexuals, instead it seeks to change the behavior for they are lost sheep.
I am not lost. I know exactly where I am. I am also not a sheep. I don't blindly follow any leader or religion.
No- you have to prove why I should be denied that right. It clearly exists.
You guys continue to ignore that marriage is in fact, a right. That has already been proven to you. And again, quit comparing us to weapons of mass destruction or murderers. I'm sick of it.
The Catholic view does not demand the death of homosexuals, instead it seeks to change the behavior for they are lost sheep.
I am not lost. I know exactly where I am. I am also not a sheep. I don't blindly follow any leader or religion.
ddtlm
Oct 12, 06:56 PM
nixd2001:
The flags don't do anything to my x86 results either. This loop is just hard to optimize. I did manual unrolling, replaced mults with adds (which we can actually do safely since the float values in the loop controlls are not factions), and even replaced one of the loop counters with an int in conjuntion with the other two above (in such a way that I needed no typecaseing)... and the resukts inproved maybe 5% on the Mac and none on the PC.
The flags don't do anything to my x86 results either. This loop is just hard to optimize. I did manual unrolling, replaced mults with adds (which we can actually do safely since the float values in the loop controlls are not factions), and even replaced one of the loop counters with an int in conjuntion with the other two above (in such a way that I needed no typecaseing)... and the resukts inproved maybe 5% on the Mac and none on the PC.
milo
Sep 20, 11:39 AM
With FrontRow on the Mini it can act as a hub for the other computers in the network and play the movies via iTunes streaming.
Sure. And you're spending more to have two computers instead of one computer and one cheaper, simpler box.
1) No TV tuner support (eyeTV hybrid no go on iTV). eyeTV on another computer defeats the purpose of pausing live TV.
If they can make it work, I don't see any reason why eyeTV live TV couldn't be paused via the iTV remote. There's no technical reason it wouldn't be possible, they'd just have to implement it. Same with buying iTunes content direct from iTV, they could certainly add the feature if they wanted to.
But nobody will be downloading HD for iTV, so that's a moot point. From what I've seen so far it actually does less than other media streamers.
That's an assumption on your part. How do you know that iTunes won't include HD content in the future? How do you know that people won't be able to stream HD content from other sources?
?? TiVo will provide you a PVR that burns DVDs, has a tuner and hard drive, and wirelessly connects to your macintosh and plays your photo library and itunes for $300 plus you have to buy a usb network reciever for like $25.
So it's basically the same thing except for the videos which of course didn't exist when tivo adopted the technology, and since they'll play your photos they'll probalby adopt the videos too. I think I'll just hold out for my TiVo to do the same thing PLUS be a PVR and DVD burner.
Link? And is the $300 buying the box, or is that a montly fee for some amount of time? Where is the mac support, the tivo site says they don't support it?
Sure. And you're spending more to have two computers instead of one computer and one cheaper, simpler box.
1) No TV tuner support (eyeTV hybrid no go on iTV). eyeTV on another computer defeats the purpose of pausing live TV.
If they can make it work, I don't see any reason why eyeTV live TV couldn't be paused via the iTV remote. There's no technical reason it wouldn't be possible, they'd just have to implement it. Same with buying iTunes content direct from iTV, they could certainly add the feature if they wanted to.
But nobody will be downloading HD for iTV, so that's a moot point. From what I've seen so far it actually does less than other media streamers.
That's an assumption on your part. How do you know that iTunes won't include HD content in the future? How do you know that people won't be able to stream HD content from other sources?
?? TiVo will provide you a PVR that burns DVDs, has a tuner and hard drive, and wirelessly connects to your macintosh and plays your photo library and itunes for $300 plus you have to buy a usb network reciever for like $25.
So it's basically the same thing except for the videos which of course didn't exist when tivo adopted the technology, and since they'll play your photos they'll probalby adopt the videos too. I think I'll just hold out for my TiVo to do the same thing PLUS be a PVR and DVD burner.
Link? And is the $300 buying the box, or is that a montly fee for some amount of time? Where is the mac support, the tivo site says they don't support it?
charliehustle
Oct 8, 05:03 PM
..and of course more people using Google's services. I think their major issue was that smartphone makers like Apple and Microsoft have a decided interest in leading users to their own, non-Google services, while "old school" mobile phone companies like Nokia or Motorola don't even have many Web services to speak of. Apple may still be using quite a few Google services, but haven't they just bought a Google Maps competitor? And Google, MS and Apple are all competing in the "Docs" department.
Still, I'm not convinced that the Android investment was really necessary. Microsoft, their biggest enemy, is failing in the mobile OS market, whereas Apple isn't really showing any signs they might target Google's core business, the search engine and Web ads, in the future.
I wonder in which way Google sees its "auxiliary" services (Mail, Docs, Maps, Voice, Wave, et bloody cetera) as a future money maker. They must play a key role for the Android stretgy. However, quite a few people (including me) have my doubts about them. Even the highly successful YouTube isn't making any money.
I never doubted that Google as a pure software company may have a better margin, but you would need to compare Apple's iPhone business to Google Android business and see who is making more money in total.
Ya, Don't get me wrong, I own an iPhone, and I can't really see anything coming close to it in the next few years.
And it's not that big of a deal if google takes over when it comes to market share, especially when they're giving android away for free.. (from a phone manufacturer point of view, it's saving them money)
IMO, Google knows that it's gonna be pretty hard for them to increase revenue from anywhere except advertising, and they want to allow people who (for whatever reason) choose not to buy an iphone, still a chance to browse then net easily to click on their adds...
17% of phones sold last year were smartphones, and I think thats going to increase year over year.. and regardless of what hardware you have, all google wants is more and more people on the internet, since they dominate online search.. (Bing is losing market share as we speak, and they're the only company with deep enough pockets to take a stab at google (microsofts operating cashflow is around 20 Billion, apple is only around 10 Billion)
and apple does not look like they will ever try to tackle google when it comes to search..
and personally, if there are over 30 phones running on android, it wouldn't be too hard to believe that for every one person that buys an iphone, there might be two people who purchase a phone that runs on android..
but again, I think people assume that this means apple will be inferior in some way because they will not dominate the market share..and this is not true..
they will continue to make a great product..and at the end of the day, it will inspire other companies to make better products..
and I know I just blabed on, but about the last part of your post.. I think it would be really hard to see who is making more money,
because google does not receive cash for android, but apple gains income from each iphone sale..
but google indirectly makes money off any smartphone that can access the internet (assuming they use google search)
at the end of the day, I like both companies for the service they provide.. I don't have a beef with apple in any way, even though it may sound like it..
Still, I'm not convinced that the Android investment was really necessary. Microsoft, their biggest enemy, is failing in the mobile OS market, whereas Apple isn't really showing any signs they might target Google's core business, the search engine and Web ads, in the future.
I wonder in which way Google sees its "auxiliary" services (Mail, Docs, Maps, Voice, Wave, et bloody cetera) as a future money maker. They must play a key role for the Android stretgy. However, quite a few people (including me) have my doubts about them. Even the highly successful YouTube isn't making any money.
I never doubted that Google as a pure software company may have a better margin, but you would need to compare Apple's iPhone business to Google Android business and see who is making more money in total.
Ya, Don't get me wrong, I own an iPhone, and I can't really see anything coming close to it in the next few years.
And it's not that big of a deal if google takes over when it comes to market share, especially when they're giving android away for free.. (from a phone manufacturer point of view, it's saving them money)
IMO, Google knows that it's gonna be pretty hard for them to increase revenue from anywhere except advertising, and they want to allow people who (for whatever reason) choose not to buy an iphone, still a chance to browse then net easily to click on their adds...
17% of phones sold last year were smartphones, and I think thats going to increase year over year.. and regardless of what hardware you have, all google wants is more and more people on the internet, since they dominate online search.. (Bing is losing market share as we speak, and they're the only company with deep enough pockets to take a stab at google (microsofts operating cashflow is around 20 Billion, apple is only around 10 Billion)
and apple does not look like they will ever try to tackle google when it comes to search..
and personally, if there are over 30 phones running on android, it wouldn't be too hard to believe that for every one person that buys an iphone, there might be two people who purchase a phone that runs on android..
but again, I think people assume that this means apple will be inferior in some way because they will not dominate the market share..and this is not true..
they will continue to make a great product..and at the end of the day, it will inspire other companies to make better products..
and I know I just blabed on, but about the last part of your post.. I think it would be really hard to see who is making more money,
because google does not receive cash for android, but apple gains income from each iphone sale..
but google indirectly makes money off any smartphone that can access the internet (assuming they use google search)
at the end of the day, I like both companies for the service they provide.. I don't have a beef with apple in any way, even though it may sound like it..
deus_ex_machina
Apr 21, 04:40 AM
I live in a country of excess. Excuse me if I don't weep at night because Kanye West or Lil Wayne are missing out on my $1+ for their songs.
If an artist isn't mainstream, I'll gladly pay for their music to support it. But since my musical tastes tend to gravitate towards major artists, I don't think twice when I torrent their albums.
No worries gwangung - anyone who admits to listening to Lil Wayne isn't worth your time lol
If an artist isn't mainstream, I'll gladly pay for their music to support it. But since my musical tastes tend to gravitate towards major artists, I don't think twice when I torrent their albums.
No worries gwangung - anyone who admits to listening to Lil Wayne isn't worth your time lol
justflie
Mar 18, 07:29 AM
What exactly about "unlimited" don't people understand? Without limits.
peharri
Sep 22, 02:33 PM
i think you misunderstood the recent reports: the consensus interpretation is that iTV does require a computer, and that the hard drive is just for buffering.
I'm not seeing any consensus interpretation that suggests anything of the sort. I can also say with some certainty that the hard drive is "not just for buffering". At the kinds of data volumes streaming media generally runs at, you can store a couple of hours of video in a gig of RAM. This is considerably cheaper, lower power, and smaller, than a hard disk drive. Why would you put a hard disk drive in a device solely for "buffering"?
What I'm seeing, according to the reports so far, is a machine that can make use of local iTunes libraries, but can also show media streamed directly from the iTS.
It makes no sense for Apple to sell an STB that requires a computer. They can make a much more limited device for that purpose, and such a device would not bring the concept of streamed media "to the masses". We don't have all the information at this point, but there's absolutely nothing about the iTV that suggests it's some pricy bolt-on for an existing multimedia computer installation. There'd have been no point in pre-announcing it if it was, and it'd be a complete disaster if it were.
I'm not seeing any consensus interpretation that suggests anything of the sort. I can also say with some certainty that the hard drive is "not just for buffering". At the kinds of data volumes streaming media generally runs at, you can store a couple of hours of video in a gig of RAM. This is considerably cheaper, lower power, and smaller, than a hard disk drive. Why would you put a hard disk drive in a device solely for "buffering"?
What I'm seeing, according to the reports so far, is a machine that can make use of local iTunes libraries, but can also show media streamed directly from the iTS.
It makes no sense for Apple to sell an STB that requires a computer. They can make a much more limited device for that purpose, and such a device would not bring the concept of streamed media "to the masses". We don't have all the information at this point, but there's absolutely nothing about the iTV that suggests it's some pricy bolt-on for an existing multimedia computer installation. There'd have been no point in pre-announcing it if it was, and it'd be a complete disaster if it were.
pdjudd
Oct 7, 03:31 PM
Just like Mac OS X would gain market share if you could install it on any PC.
No, they most likely wouldn't. There is no reason to think that it would - it's conjecture. (http://daringfireball.net/2004/08/parlay)
No, they most likely wouldn't. There is no reason to think that it would - it's conjecture. (http://daringfireball.net/2004/08/parlay)
KnightWRX
May 2, 05:51 PM
Until Vista and Win 7, it was effectively impossible to run a Windows NT system as anything but Administrator. To the point that other than locked-down corporate sites where an IT Professional was required to install the Corporate Approved version of any software you need to do your job, I never knew anyone running XP (or 2k, or for that matter NT 3.x) who in a day-to-day fashion used a Standard user account.
Of course, I don't know of any Linux distribution that doesn't require root to install system wide software either. Kind of negates your point there...
In contrast, an "Administrator" account on OS X was in reality a limited user account, just with some system-level privileges like being able to install apps that other people could run. A "Standard" user account was far more usable on OS X than the equivalent on Windows, because "Standard" users could install software into their user sandbox, etc. Still, most people I know run OS X as Administrator.
You could do the same as far back as Windows NT 3.1 in 1993. The fact that most software vendors wrote their applications for the non-secure DOS based versions of Windows is moot, that is not a problem of the OS's security model, it is a problem of the Application. This is not "Unix security" being better, it's "Software vendors for Windows" being dumber.
It's no different than if instead of writing my preferences to $HOME/.myapp/ I'd write a software that required writing everything to /usr/share/myapp/username/. That would require root in any decent Unix installation, or it would require me to set permissions on that folder to 775 and make all users of myapp part of the owning group. Or I could just go the lazy route, make the binary 4755 and set mount opts to suid on the filesystem where this binary resides... (ugh...).
This is no different on Windows NT based architectures. If you were so inclined, with tools like Filemon and Regmon, you could granularly set permissions in a way to install these misbehaving software so that they would work for regular users.
I know I did many times in a past life (back when I was sort of forced to do Windows systems administration... ugh... Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server edition... what a wreck...).
Let's face it, Windows NT and Unix systems have very similar security models (in fact, Windows NT has superior ACL support out of the box, akin to Novell's close to perfect ACLs, Unix is far more limited with it's read/write/execute permission scheme, even with Posix ACLs in place). It's the hoops that software vendors outside the control of Microsoft made you go through that forced lazy users to run as Administrator all the time and gave Microsoft such headaches.
As far back as I remember (when I did some Windows systems programming), Microsoft was already advising to use the user's home folder/the user's registry hive for preferences and to never write to system locations.
The real differenc, though, is that an NT Administrator was really equivalent to the Unix root account. An OS X Administrator was a Unix non-root user with 'admin' group access. You could not start up the UI as the 'root' user (and the 'root' account was disabled by default).
Actually, the Administrator account (much less a standard user in the Administrators group) is not a root level account at all.
Notice how a root account on Unix can do everything, just by virtue of its 0 uid. It can write/delete/read files from filesystems it does not even have permissions on. It can kill any system process, no matter the owner.
Administrator on Windows NT is far more limited. Don't ever break your ACLs or don't try to kill processes owned by "System". SysInternals provided tools that let you do it, but Microsoft did not.
All that having been said, UAC has really evened the bar for Windows Vista and 7 (moreso in 7 after the usability tweaks Microsoft put in to stop people from disabling it). I see no functional security difference between the OS X authorization scheme and the Windows UAC scheme.
UAC is simply a gui front-end to the runas command. Heck, shift-right-click already had the "Run As" option. It's a glorified sudo. It uses RDP (since Vista, user sessions are really local RDP sessions) to prevent being able to "fake it", by showing up on the "console" session while the user's display resides on a RDP session.
There, you did it, you made me go on a defensive rant for Microsoft. I hate you now.
My response, why bother worrying about this when the attacker can do the same thing via shellcode generated in the background by exploiting a running process so the the user is unaware that code is being executed on the system
Because this required no particular exploit or vulnerability. A simple Javascript auto-download and Safari auto-opening an archive and running code.
Why bother, you're not "getting it". The only reason the user is aware of MACDefender is because it runs a GUI based installer. If the executable had had 0 GUI code and just run stuff in the background, you would have never known until you couldn't find your files or some chinese guy was buying goods with your CC info, fished right out of your "Bank stuff.xls" file.
That's the thing, infecting a computer at the system level is fine if you want to build a DoS botnet or something (and even then, you don't really need privilege escalation for that, just set login items for the current user, and run off a non-privilege port, root privileges are not required for ICMP access, only raw sockets).
These days, malware authors and users are much more interested in your data than your system. That's where the money is. Identity theft, phishing, they mean big bucks.
Of course, I don't know of any Linux distribution that doesn't require root to install system wide software either. Kind of negates your point there...
In contrast, an "Administrator" account on OS X was in reality a limited user account, just with some system-level privileges like being able to install apps that other people could run. A "Standard" user account was far more usable on OS X than the equivalent on Windows, because "Standard" users could install software into their user sandbox, etc. Still, most people I know run OS X as Administrator.
You could do the same as far back as Windows NT 3.1 in 1993. The fact that most software vendors wrote their applications for the non-secure DOS based versions of Windows is moot, that is not a problem of the OS's security model, it is a problem of the Application. This is not "Unix security" being better, it's "Software vendors for Windows" being dumber.
It's no different than if instead of writing my preferences to $HOME/.myapp/ I'd write a software that required writing everything to /usr/share/myapp/username/. That would require root in any decent Unix installation, or it would require me to set permissions on that folder to 775 and make all users of myapp part of the owning group. Or I could just go the lazy route, make the binary 4755 and set mount opts to suid on the filesystem where this binary resides... (ugh...).
This is no different on Windows NT based architectures. If you were so inclined, with tools like Filemon and Regmon, you could granularly set permissions in a way to install these misbehaving software so that they would work for regular users.
I know I did many times in a past life (back when I was sort of forced to do Windows systems administration... ugh... Windows NT 4.0 Terminal Server edition... what a wreck...).
Let's face it, Windows NT and Unix systems have very similar security models (in fact, Windows NT has superior ACL support out of the box, akin to Novell's close to perfect ACLs, Unix is far more limited with it's read/write/execute permission scheme, even with Posix ACLs in place). It's the hoops that software vendors outside the control of Microsoft made you go through that forced lazy users to run as Administrator all the time and gave Microsoft such headaches.
As far back as I remember (when I did some Windows systems programming), Microsoft was already advising to use the user's home folder/the user's registry hive for preferences and to never write to system locations.
The real differenc, though, is that an NT Administrator was really equivalent to the Unix root account. An OS X Administrator was a Unix non-root user with 'admin' group access. You could not start up the UI as the 'root' user (and the 'root' account was disabled by default).
Actually, the Administrator account (much less a standard user in the Administrators group) is not a root level account at all.
Notice how a root account on Unix can do everything, just by virtue of its 0 uid. It can write/delete/read files from filesystems it does not even have permissions on. It can kill any system process, no matter the owner.
Administrator on Windows NT is far more limited. Don't ever break your ACLs or don't try to kill processes owned by "System". SysInternals provided tools that let you do it, but Microsoft did not.
All that having been said, UAC has really evened the bar for Windows Vista and 7 (moreso in 7 after the usability tweaks Microsoft put in to stop people from disabling it). I see no functional security difference between the OS X authorization scheme and the Windows UAC scheme.
UAC is simply a gui front-end to the runas command. Heck, shift-right-click already had the "Run As" option. It's a glorified sudo. It uses RDP (since Vista, user sessions are really local RDP sessions) to prevent being able to "fake it", by showing up on the "console" session while the user's display resides on a RDP session.
There, you did it, you made me go on a defensive rant for Microsoft. I hate you now.
My response, why bother worrying about this when the attacker can do the same thing via shellcode generated in the background by exploiting a running process so the the user is unaware that code is being executed on the system
Because this required no particular exploit or vulnerability. A simple Javascript auto-download and Safari auto-opening an archive and running code.
Why bother, you're not "getting it". The only reason the user is aware of MACDefender is because it runs a GUI based installer. If the executable had had 0 GUI code and just run stuff in the background, you would have never known until you couldn't find your files or some chinese guy was buying goods with your CC info, fished right out of your "Bank stuff.xls" file.
That's the thing, infecting a computer at the system level is fine if you want to build a DoS botnet or something (and even then, you don't really need privilege escalation for that, just set login items for the current user, and run off a non-privilege port, root privileges are not required for ICMP access, only raw sockets).
These days, malware authors and users are much more interested in your data than your system. That's where the money is. Identity theft, phishing, they mean big bucks.
alex_ant
Oct 11, 04:36 PM
Javajedi, what you've done with your benchmarking is very helpful and I believe provides much insight. I too was surprised to see that the PowerPC performed as poorly as it did. Sorry if I missed you addressing this, but did you use GCC 3.x on the PPC?
There are a few conclusions I could draw from this performance data:
1) AltiVec acceleration is crucial to attain performance competitive with x86.
2) In the best case, AltiVec-accelerated code will perform several times faster than optimized x86 code. However, the best case is very rare and limited to specialized tasks like BLAST, RC5, SETI, certain Photoshop filters, and so on.
3) In the worst case, AltiVec-optimized code will perform barely any better or perhaps even worse than non-optimized code.
4) The G4's integer and floating-point units are extremely weak.
4a) Even MHz-for-MHz, they appear to be slower than those of the Pentium 4.
4b) The 750FX's integer unit is stronger than the Pentium 4's clock-for-clock, but considering the Pentium 4 is clocked 4x higher at the moment, it does about 4x better overall.
5) The c't SPEC benchmarks from a while back (the only source of G4 SPEC results I'm aware of) weren't that far off.
I'm disappointed but not surprised to see that gopher has split from the thread. Oh well, I'm sure he'll reappear at a later date oblivious to everything that has just been presented in this thread.
Alex
There are a few conclusions I could draw from this performance data:
1) AltiVec acceleration is crucial to attain performance competitive with x86.
2) In the best case, AltiVec-accelerated code will perform several times faster than optimized x86 code. However, the best case is very rare and limited to specialized tasks like BLAST, RC5, SETI, certain Photoshop filters, and so on.
3) In the worst case, AltiVec-optimized code will perform barely any better or perhaps even worse than non-optimized code.
4) The G4's integer and floating-point units are extremely weak.
4a) Even MHz-for-MHz, they appear to be slower than those of the Pentium 4.
4b) The 750FX's integer unit is stronger than the Pentium 4's clock-for-clock, but considering the Pentium 4 is clocked 4x higher at the moment, it does about 4x better overall.
5) The c't SPEC benchmarks from a while back (the only source of G4 SPEC results I'm aware of) weren't that far off.
I'm disappointed but not surprised to see that gopher has split from the thread. Oh well, I'm sure he'll reappear at a later date oblivious to everything that has just been presented in this thread.
Alex
DavidLeblond
Mar 18, 03:56 PM
The DRM has nothing to do with ITMS's business model.
The main purpose of iTMS is to sell iPods. iPods are the only players at this time that can play iTMS purchased music, due to the DRM. Tell me how the DRM has nothing to do with iTMS's business model.
The main purpose of iTMS is to sell iPods. iPods are the only players at this time that can play iTMS purchased music, due to the DRM. Tell me how the DRM has nothing to do with iTMS's business model.
tempusfugit
Jun 18, 01:33 AM
My husband has been an AT&T user for over a decade. He never experienced dropped calls until we started dating and he was talking to me (I'm on an iPhone, he is not). We often get disconnected 2-4 times per hour as we talk during our commutes home. We have different shifts, but take the same routes home and we get dropped no matter whether I'm stationary and he's moving, vice versa, or if we're both moving. This also happens when we're on business trips - both stationary - him at home, me in a hotel - and we will get disconnected. The recurring motif has been the iPhone. When I talk with others who have AT&T but no iPhone, they only get disconnected when they are talking w/ someone who has an iPhone. The worst issue is when I am communicating w/ someone iPhone to iPhone.
IF this wasn't the iPhone and otherwise so awesome, I would have switched a long time ago... and frankly, I'm still contemplating going to another phone when my contract is up - because the dropped calls are so aggravating.
Coworkers of mine that have switched from Blackberry on AT&T to iPhone have reported an inordinant number of disconnected calls since switching to the iPhone, even though it's the same carrier, same phone number and same physical location of use.
My "assumption" is that the iPhone software is making some errant call to the tower intermittently (whether too high/low power request or other issue) at which point, the tower drops the call.
While my experience with disconnects are sometimes random, there are some places that either I or my husband will be travelling by, when we will experience a disconnect - a place where he never gets disconnected while speaking to others w/o iPhones... places I never got disconnected before having an iPhone, either.
This may not be just an AT&T issue. It could be when you are a certain distance from a tower (lower power or significantly higher power?) and/or the phone is experiencing a push of data, that the interrupt happens.
This has largely been the elephant in the living room that AT&T and Apple has been ignoring. I have not only not seen an improvement, I've seen the situation get worse over time - whether this has to do w/ an increase of iPhone use faster than the towers can keep up, OR problems w/ iPhone OS updates or a combination of both - who knows. They need to fix this already.
people like you make me sick. stop talking on your ****ing phone so much while driving and you wouldn't have nearly as much to complain about. not to mention you'd be doing everyone around you a favor.
IF this wasn't the iPhone and otherwise so awesome, I would have switched a long time ago... and frankly, I'm still contemplating going to another phone when my contract is up - because the dropped calls are so aggravating.
Coworkers of mine that have switched from Blackberry on AT&T to iPhone have reported an inordinant number of disconnected calls since switching to the iPhone, even though it's the same carrier, same phone number and same physical location of use.
My "assumption" is that the iPhone software is making some errant call to the tower intermittently (whether too high/low power request or other issue) at which point, the tower drops the call.
While my experience with disconnects are sometimes random, there are some places that either I or my husband will be travelling by, when we will experience a disconnect - a place where he never gets disconnected while speaking to others w/o iPhones... places I never got disconnected before having an iPhone, either.
This may not be just an AT&T issue. It could be when you are a certain distance from a tower (lower power or significantly higher power?) and/or the phone is experiencing a push of data, that the interrupt happens.
This has largely been the elephant in the living room that AT&T and Apple has been ignoring. I have not only not seen an improvement, I've seen the situation get worse over time - whether this has to do w/ an increase of iPhone use faster than the towers can keep up, OR problems w/ iPhone OS updates or a combination of both - who knows. They need to fix this already.
people like you make me sick. stop talking on your ****ing phone so much while driving and you wouldn't have nearly as much to complain about. not to mention you'd be doing everyone around you a favor.
emotion
Sep 20, 10:30 AM
That's pretty much my question too. The iTV is a mini without DVD, storage, OS, or advanced interface? I guess I just don't see a market for this at $300.
I do, it's like an ipod for video. Or more like maybe airtunes. Anyway. Read the whole thread I think some people get it.
I think I understand what Apple is getting at here. Not sure I'll buy one but they might be on to something
I do, it's like an ipod for video. Or more like maybe airtunes. Anyway. Read the whole thread I think some people get it.
I think I understand what Apple is getting at here. Not sure I'll buy one but they might be on to something
zgh1999
Apr 20, 08:12 PM
Yeah! My battery lasts for upwards of two days. Definitely not comparable at all to an iPhone.
Inferior interface is subjective, and you've given no reference so that comment is irrelevant.
Name me one app that you have on your iPhone that doesn't have a similar if not identical app on the Android Market.
Get with the program here.
Everyone should buy an iPad 2, in both black and white.
And everyone should also buy an iPhone 4, just in black.
Didn't you get the memo?
Inferior interface is subjective, and you've given no reference so that comment is irrelevant.
Name me one app that you have on your iPhone that doesn't have a similar if not identical app on the Android Market.
Get with the program here.
Everyone should buy an iPad 2, in both black and white.
And everyone should also buy an iPhone 4, just in black.
Didn't you get the memo?