AceCoolie
Mar 18, 11:09 AM
I want to jail break my iphone 4 and install mifi. The reason is to create a mobile router that my iPad and camera can connect to so that images shot my camera will appear on my iPad. This will not involve any data going to the internet. Is this a violation of my ATT agreement? Will then even be able to tell I'm doing it?
lifeinhd
Apr 9, 05:01 PM
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPod; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_2_1 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8C148 Safari/6533.18.5)
Real gamers won't use apple gear (for gaming at least). I don't really like the online game craze. You can't borrow games from friends or even trade them (yeah more profit for the industry).
Since my game pc died I've bought an psp to play a few games once in a while, and not an ipod touch since it doesn't have any friggin' buttons in it. And macs just suck too much at gaming (looking at toasty imacs), in here the only thing that keeps kids wanting an iDevice it's because it's cool and having an apple thing means that your either an hipster or an rich (or broke with lots of debts).
Long live the moments of the game boy, hell I still play some game boy games in my psp with an emulator:D
*Sniff*
*Sniff*
Troll.
Real gamers won't use apple gear (for gaming at least). I don't really like the online game craze. You can't borrow games from friends or even trade them (yeah more profit for the industry).
Since my game pc died I've bought an psp to play a few games once in a while, and not an ipod touch since it doesn't have any friggin' buttons in it. And macs just suck too much at gaming (looking at toasty imacs), in here the only thing that keeps kids wanting an iDevice it's because it's cool and having an apple thing means that your either an hipster or an rich (or broke with lots of debts).
Long live the moments of the game boy, hell I still play some game boy games in my psp with an emulator:D
*Sniff*
*Sniff*
Troll.
Dr.Gargoyle
Aug 29, 01:40 PM
There seems to be plenty of people who appear not to care about the environment, which is an extremely sad point of view.
In the last 200 years we've cut down vast amounts of trees ( the Lungs of the earth ), polluted the seas, the atmosphere , killed off many species of animals, etc. Over all that, all you people are saying "SO WHAT?".
Get a ****ing life.
If this planet dies, we die. This planet is a sick one, and we have to stop polluting - what ever happens to this planet, happens to us. We pollute this planet and that has consequences on every living thing on this planet like a domino affect.
I suppose you don't care about your children. This is not OUR planet to do what we want, its our future childrens planet. The way we are going - we will royally **** this planet up for them and they will have to live with it. There will be plenty of wars over scarce resources such as Food, water, farming land etc. This will make todays problems with terrorism a walk in the park.
I couldnt agree more, but...
Statements like that of Greenpeace take the focus from the big issues. Our extreme use of fossile fuel or cutting down the rain forest is a much MUCH more urgent problem.
From an enviromental impact perspective, the your choice of computer is pretty much as a fart in hurricane. We can make a much bigger difference by e.g. get more fuel efficient car.
In the last 200 years we've cut down vast amounts of trees ( the Lungs of the earth ), polluted the seas, the atmosphere , killed off many species of animals, etc. Over all that, all you people are saying "SO WHAT?".
Get a ****ing life.
If this planet dies, we die. This planet is a sick one, and we have to stop polluting - what ever happens to this planet, happens to us. We pollute this planet and that has consequences on every living thing on this planet like a domino affect.
I suppose you don't care about your children. This is not OUR planet to do what we want, its our future childrens planet. The way we are going - we will royally **** this planet up for them and they will have to live with it. There will be plenty of wars over scarce resources such as Food, water, farming land etc. This will make todays problems with terrorism a walk in the park.
I couldnt agree more, but...
Statements like that of Greenpeace take the focus from the big issues. Our extreme use of fossile fuel or cutting down the rain forest is a much MUCH more urgent problem.
From an enviromental impact perspective, the your choice of computer is pretty much as a fart in hurricane. We can make a much bigger difference by e.g. get more fuel efficient car.
DakotaGuy
May 7, 09:23 PM
I don't understand why someone would stay with AT&T if they are having so many dropped calls. With Verizon offering phones like the Droid Incredible and Motorola Droid it is possible to switch to a more reliable carrier and still have an "iPhone like" experience. I don't see the iPhone coming to Verizon anytime soon. If you really want an iPhone then just get a Touch and get a Verizon Android phone to go with it.
Of course it is your money, but I would be upset if I was paying my phone bill every month and not getting reliable service.
Of course it is your money, but I would be upset if I was paying my phone bill every month and not getting reliable service.
DemSpursBro
Apr 10, 07:00 PM
I'm not sure sure what you mean when you say "for the things it is good at." What do you mean? What things?
The only real advantage, aside from aesthetics, macs have over PC is more user friendly video/music editing. Speaking from experience here,
you can do the same on a PC, but it's slightly more difficult.
Unless you're buying some old/bad brand, a PC will normally give you greater hardware capabilities and you can always dual boot or just only use the Mac OS.
I would like to show this picture that I threw together a couple of months ago.
http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/4838/macnotworthit.jpg (http://img831.imageshack.us/i/macnotworthit.jpg/)
Of course, it's speaking about games, but that also doubles as video/music editing capability.
The only real advantage, aside from aesthetics, macs have over PC is more user friendly video/music editing. Speaking from experience here,
you can do the same on a PC, but it's slightly more difficult.
Unless you're buying some old/bad brand, a PC will normally give you greater hardware capabilities and you can always dual boot or just only use the Mac OS.
I would like to show this picture that I threw together a couple of months ago.
http://img831.imageshack.us/img831/4838/macnotworthit.jpg (http://img831.imageshack.us/i/macnotworthit.jpg/)
Of course, it's speaking about games, but that also doubles as video/music editing capability.
aquadjcity
Oct 31, 09:00 AM
My quad was to ship today, after waiting four business days and two weekend days for a CTO build (2 GB RAM). But I would feel sick to have had the machine for a week when the Octo's are announced. I hope this baby makes Logic Pro sing...
Luph67
Apr 9, 03:06 PM
There's a market for games with more depth that sell at higher prices, and there's a market for cheap on-the-go games that are great for downtime on the train or waiting at the airport.
Hopefully Apple and Nintendo jumps into the other's market at some point and we no longer have to have this debate.
Hopefully Apple and Nintendo jumps into the other's market at some point and we no longer have to have this debate.
Bill McEnaney
Mar 26, 01:44 PM
To be fair, I knew what you meant with your comment, but frankly there wasn't any sarcasm in my statement. You were attempting to defend your earlier poorly-constructed post, and I was bemused by it.
I'm sorry I misinterpreted your post, SC. But if you put your mouse cursor on this :rolleyes: smiley, you'll see the word "Sarcastic."
I'm sorry I misinterpreted your post, SC. But if you put your mouse cursor on this :rolleyes: smiley, you'll see the word "Sarcastic."
AppliedVisual
Oct 21, 02:06 PM
I've never understood why anyone buys RAM from the more expensive Crucial. Can only be marketing 'cause I have no reason to pay more for RAM from just another supplier of the same thing. :rolleyes:
Crucial makes great stuff (usually). The trick is to not buy direct from Crucial!!! But vendors like newegg and zipzoomfly sell Crucial memory at prices close to all the other "cheap" memory like OCZ, Corsair, Patriot, Kingston -- or all the other makers that make some pretty darn good stuff (usually). Right now, FB-DIMMs are pretty scarce... Most vendors for Mac Pro RAM are shipping the same Samsung modules that Apple is, they are just using different OEM heat spreaders. The price just keeps falling as the Mac Pro and other PC systems use more of this stuff and demand increases. I definitely see an 8-core Mac Pro w/8GB (4x2GB) in my near future. :) I think I'm going to sell one of my G5 Quads though, the resale value on these is really holding strong -- they're going on eBay for just about what I paid for them! May jump on it now or as soon as the 8-core Pro is released because I fear that as soon as Adobe CS3 hits along with a few other universal binary updates people are waiting on, the value of these G5 Quads is going to go in the crapper.
Crucial makes great stuff (usually). The trick is to not buy direct from Crucial!!! But vendors like newegg and zipzoomfly sell Crucial memory at prices close to all the other "cheap" memory like OCZ, Corsair, Patriot, Kingston -- or all the other makers that make some pretty darn good stuff (usually). Right now, FB-DIMMs are pretty scarce... Most vendors for Mac Pro RAM are shipping the same Samsung modules that Apple is, they are just using different OEM heat spreaders. The price just keeps falling as the Mac Pro and other PC systems use more of this stuff and demand increases. I definitely see an 8-core Mac Pro w/8GB (4x2GB) in my near future. :) I think I'm going to sell one of my G5 Quads though, the resale value on these is really holding strong -- they're going on eBay for just about what I paid for them! May jump on it now or as soon as the 8-core Pro is released because I fear that as soon as Adobe CS3 hits along with a few other universal binary updates people are waiting on, the value of these G5 Quads is going to go in the crapper.
torbjoern
Apr 24, 12:05 PM
This book says there is an invisible man in the sky who made the earth. We know this because the invisible man wrote the book. He listens to you but doesn't answer. If you do as he says you go to a wonderful afterlife, but if you don't you go to a horrible one.
If you do what he says? That's not enough - what have you learned? Salvation lies in sola fide, i.e. faith alone according to Luther. That is, faith in Jesus as the Saviour of the world. Protestants can do what they want and still go to Heaven. And if you're Catholic, you need to do good deeds and have faith in God - you can't get around the latter.
So - what happens to those who live a pious life and die without ever hearing about Jesus? According to my Christian teachers, those would go to hell. Those who grow up in totalitarian regimes where religion is banned, such as North Korea, will thus go from one instance of hell to another because they don't fulfill the requirements for salvation. Sounded quite self-righteous to me, but I cut the Christians some slack on that point anyway.
But what about the Jews? "Yes what about them?" They don't believe in Jesus as the world's Saviour either - not even today. "Oh, they are under some special set of rules so they will go to Heaven anyway." Yeah, right... The more I knew about Christians, the less I understood them. That's when I realised that something was fundamentally wrong (no pun intended).
If you do what he says? That's not enough - what have you learned? Salvation lies in sola fide, i.e. faith alone according to Luther. That is, faith in Jesus as the Saviour of the world. Protestants can do what they want and still go to Heaven. And if you're Catholic, you need to do good deeds and have faith in God - you can't get around the latter.
So - what happens to those who live a pious life and die without ever hearing about Jesus? According to my Christian teachers, those would go to hell. Those who grow up in totalitarian regimes where religion is banned, such as North Korea, will thus go from one instance of hell to another because they don't fulfill the requirements for salvation. Sounded quite self-righteous to me, but I cut the Christians some slack on that point anyway.
But what about the Jews? "Yes what about them?" They don't believe in Jesus as the world's Saviour either - not even today. "Oh, they are under some special set of rules so they will go to Heaven anyway." Yeah, right... The more I knew about Christians, the less I understood them. That's when I realised that something was fundamentally wrong (no pun intended).
�algiris
Apr 28, 12:11 PM
They didn't delete the word "computer" from the Apple name for nothing.
I could use a good laugh. Please "deduce" this one.
I could use a good laugh. Please "deduce" this one.
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.
Travisimo
Mar 18, 11:10 AM
Meh... I use MyWi occasionally, meaning only once or twice every TWO months.
Now I would spend an extra $5-10 a month if ATT offered tethering with a 5-10 Gigabyte total data cap on both phone and tethering usage. Spending an extra $25+ to be on a capped 2-4GB plan is BuL*Sh&^ if it means that I have to give up my unlimited plan as well as unrestricted 3G via My3G.
This. I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for tethering, but the $20/mo extra or nothing is really unacceptable. For those of us who only tethering sporadically, it's really a waste of money paying $20/mo. If the carriers really want an extra revenue stream from tethering, they should have different options available.
I would easily pay $5-10 more a month for 1GB of tethering data, and for those who want 2+ gigs for tethering, then $20/mo is fine. They really need a lower option.
Now I would spend an extra $5-10 a month if ATT offered tethering with a 5-10 Gigabyte total data cap on both phone and tethering usage. Spending an extra $25+ to be on a capped 2-4GB plan is BuL*Sh&^ if it means that I have to give up my unlimited plan as well as unrestricted 3G via My3G.
This. I wouldn't mind paying a bit more for tethering, but the $20/mo extra or nothing is really unacceptable. For those of us who only tethering sporadically, it's really a waste of money paying $20/mo. If the carriers really want an extra revenue stream from tethering, they should have different options available.
I would easily pay $5-10 more a month for 1GB of tethering data, and for those who want 2+ gigs for tethering, then $20/mo is fine. They really need a lower option.
WestonHarvey1
Apr 15, 11:13 AM
You know what IS a choice? Religion. And look at the lengths we go to to protect the right of every last believer to say and do the most ridiculous, hateful things.
By hateful things, you're talking about people like the Westboro Baptist Church and their picket signs, right?
Certainly you don't mean, say, this from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. [They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial.] This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God�s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
You may not agree with that, but if you find it "hateful", you've basically decided to check out of any possibility of rational argument.
By hateful things, you're talking about people like the Westboro Baptist Church and their picket signs, right?
Certainly you don't mean, say, this from the Catechism of the Catholic Church:
2358 The number of men and women who have deep-seated homosexual tendencies is not negligible. [They do not choose their homosexual condition; for most of them it is a trial.] This inclination, which is objectively disordered, constitutes for most of them a trial. They must be accepted with respect, compassion, and sensitivity. Every sign of unjust discrimination in their regard should be avoided. These persons are called to fulfill God�s will in their lives and, if they are Christians, to unite to the sacrifice of the Lord's Cross the difficulties they may encounter from their condition.
You may not agree with that, but if you find it "hateful", you've basically decided to check out of any possibility of rational argument.
Dr.Gargoyle
Aug 29, 02:45 PM
Notice the words "indirectly" and "thousands" in my post, not "directly" and "millions." You are correct that GM foods will not save Africa, and also correct that African goverments are as corrupt as they come.
But you're wrong to think that genetically-altered foods won't help, especially if administed by multi-national organizations, and NOT African governemtns.
It might help starving Africans, but we could also screw up our genetical inheritance royally. Cross breeding is a problem we know too little about.
But you're wrong to think that genetically-altered foods won't help, especially if administed by multi-national organizations, and NOT African governemtns.
It might help starving Africans, but we could also screw up our genetical inheritance royally. Cross breeding is a problem we know too little about.
iJohnHenry
Mar 13, 12:25 PM
Pumping in sea water seems like a panic back up plan.
And if the sea water doesn't reach the bottom of the reactor vessel, well, gravity will cause the bottom to drop out, IF there is sufficient heat to melt the stainless steel.
And if the sea water doesn't reach the bottom of the reactor vessel, well, gravity will cause the bottom to drop out, IF there is sufficient heat to melt the stainless steel.
m4c1nt05h
May 5, 06:35 PM
i really don't understand all the people in NYC who have dropped calls multiple times a day.
i live in brooklyn, ny and work in manhattan. i have NEVER experienced the amount of dropped calls as some people on macrumors (who live in the nyc area) have.
i want to know how many calls for those who have all these "problems" with AT&T make a day. i do not have a land line, so my iphone is the only phone i have. i have owned an 1st gen iphone and i have had a 3Gs for almost 1 year.
i make, on average, about 5 - 20 calls a day. i may experience a dropped call or a call that didn't go through about 3 - 5 times PER MONTH.
the only annoyance that i have experienced more often than i'd like has to do with visual voicemail. sometimes, when i try to play my messages via visual voicemail, it never connects. so i have dial my iPhone's # and check my messages the old school way. but that doesn't happen that often.
for all those people who have dropped calls every day, are your iPhones jailbroken? i am not sure that would have anything to do with it, though.
i live in brooklyn, ny and work in manhattan. i have NEVER experienced the amount of dropped calls as some people on macrumors (who live in the nyc area) have.
i want to know how many calls for those who have all these "problems" with AT&T make a day. i do not have a land line, so my iphone is the only phone i have. i have owned an 1st gen iphone and i have had a 3Gs for almost 1 year.
i make, on average, about 5 - 20 calls a day. i may experience a dropped call or a call that didn't go through about 3 - 5 times PER MONTH.
the only annoyance that i have experienced more often than i'd like has to do with visual voicemail. sometimes, when i try to play my messages via visual voicemail, it never connects. so i have dial my iPhone's # and check my messages the old school way. but that doesn't happen that often.
for all those people who have dropped calls every day, are your iPhones jailbroken? i am not sure that would have anything to do with it, though.
tteerts
Sep 28, 03:18 PM
Is there any advantage or disadvantage (other than future expandability) to getting to 4GB of memory by using 8x512MB versus using 4x1GB?
Dippo
Mar 18, 04:20 PM
RIAA Okay, so you want to actually pay for your music, huh?
Reacent Post
JFreak
Jul 13, 02:11 AM
I agree that Apple will wait on the Blu-Ray drives. Apple did jump on the BR bandwagon to support the format, but without a standard, I doubt they will call off all other bets.
Not so long ago Apple decided to include DVD-RAM drives into the Powermacs, so it's not impossible to think that they will soon release hardware with Blu-Ray.
Apple has a history of picking standardized I/O. Apple invented firewire (or at least licenses out the technology) and included it once it was approved by the IEEE. The same thing with their Airport technology. Once the 802.11 were decided upon, Apple released that product.
Apple and history? Well, you seem to forget all the proprietary niceties Apple has invented. Proprietary display connectors, proprietary mouse and keyboard busses, just to name few. Apple has only recently used same parts as the rest of the industry.
Not so long ago Apple decided to include DVD-RAM drives into the Powermacs, so it's not impossible to think that they will soon release hardware with Blu-Ray.
Apple has a history of picking standardized I/O. Apple invented firewire (or at least licenses out the technology) and included it once it was approved by the IEEE. The same thing with their Airport technology. Once the 802.11 were decided upon, Apple released that product.
Apple and history? Well, you seem to forget all the proprietary niceties Apple has invented. Proprietary display connectors, proprietary mouse and keyboard busses, just to name few. Apple has only recently used same parts as the rest of the industry.
callme
Apr 28, 07:35 AM
No surprise the iPad is just a fad and people are starting to realize how limited it is. Its frustrating on a lot of cool websites and no file system makes it very limited.
Stuck record! Same old comment, still not true.
They can sell as many as they can make, production is the limiting factor at the moment NOT lack of demand.
Stuck record! Same old comment, still not true.
They can sell as many as they can make, production is the limiting factor at the moment NOT lack of demand.
QCassidy352
Mar 18, 11:41 AM
Wirelessly posted (Mozilla/5.0 (iPhone; U; CPU iPhone OS 4_3 like Mac OS X; en-us) AppleWebKit/533.17.9 (KHTML, like Gecko) Version/5.0.2 Mobile/8F190 Safari/6533.18.5)
Option 3; STOP trying to cheat the system, and START using your iDevice the way the manufacturer designed it and the way your carrier supports it. (Is it unfair? YES! Are all of us iPhone users getting hosed, even though there's now two carriers? YES)
And while you're at it, knock off the piracy with the napster/limewire/torrent crap.
(Yeah, I said it! SOMEBODY had to!)
Poor thing... he doesn't realize napster and limewire are history. Also, once the data hits my device, it's mine to do with as I please. Thank you very much.
>laughing_girls.jpg.tiff.
No, that's just not true. You signed a contract saying you would only use the data on the phone. You paid for the data with the understanding that it comes with certain contractual restrictions. If you think those restrictions are unfair or arbitrary, you should have signed the contract. In no way shape or form does the contract you signed entitle you to do whatever you want with the data.
It's not a perfect analogy, but compare buying OS 10.6 and installing it on multiple machines with one license. You bought the disc, but that doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with it. The purchase comes with terms regulating the allowed uses.
Option 3; STOP trying to cheat the system, and START using your iDevice the way the manufacturer designed it and the way your carrier supports it. (Is it unfair? YES! Are all of us iPhone users getting hosed, even though there's now two carriers? YES)
And while you're at it, knock off the piracy with the napster/limewire/torrent crap.
(Yeah, I said it! SOMEBODY had to!)
Poor thing... he doesn't realize napster and limewire are history. Also, once the data hits my device, it's mine to do with as I please. Thank you very much.
>laughing_girls.jpg.tiff.
No, that's just not true. You signed a contract saying you would only use the data on the phone. You paid for the data with the understanding that it comes with certain contractual restrictions. If you think those restrictions are unfair or arbitrary, you should have signed the contract. In no way shape or form does the contract you signed entitle you to do whatever you want with the data.
It's not a perfect analogy, but compare buying OS 10.6 and installing it on multiple machines with one license. You bought the disc, but that doesn't mean you can do whatever you want with it. The purchase comes with terms regulating the allowed uses.
neiltc13
Apr 20, 05:35 PM
There are already a score of malware and spyware on Android, including software that phish for bank customer information of Fandroids.
But just like Windows, it's practically impossible to have any problems unless you do something stupid.
Another analogy - if you buy a car and put the wrong type of oil in it or inflate the tyres to the wrong pressure, bad things will probably happen.
If you don't know what you're doing with your own devices then maybe you need Apple to hold your hand.
But just like Windows, it's practically impossible to have any problems unless you do something stupid.
Another analogy - if you buy a car and put the wrong type of oil in it or inflate the tyres to the wrong pressure, bad things will probably happen.
If you don't know what you're doing with your own devices then maybe you need Apple to hold your hand.
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.
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