Disqus - Latest Comments for Loweded Wookie

Re: Who Needs a .Mac Account?

Loweded Wookie — Wed, 07 Mar 2007 19:58:06 -0000

To those who say that these features are available elsewhere on the web I say this to you:

"They are found ELSEWHERE on the net."

They aren't all in one place. Sure you've got GMail or Yahoo Mail but these don't give you disk space.

You've got Flicker AND YouTube but not both in the same place.

But .Mac has backup software, access to software deals for other companies, free content such as sounds and jingles for GarageBand, and much more.

Tell me of one service that offers the exact same features as .Mac on the Net in ONE place and then maybe I'll accept your arguement.

Re: Why Apple Didn’t Release An iPhone SDK

Loweded Wookie — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:00:01 -0000

I agree fully with your comments.

The iPhone is such a new device for Apple that they've had to control development of the device. The original iPod never had third party devices hook into it. These didn't come until the 3rd Gen iPods.

Web2.0 and AJAX are very powerful development environments as can be seen by Google Docs among others and as more people are developing AJAX than Cocoa it is a major coupe for development enabling more people to develop SAFE apps for it.

Oh and just a pendantic side thought it's "faux paux" not "feux paux". :-)

Re: 5 Reasons Why the iPhone is a Mistake for Apple

Loweded Wookie — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 17:26:36 -0000

5 reasons this post is wrong:

1): The current cellphone/MP3 market is shit. It needs Apple to shake it up to make some devices that are simple AND worthy of the pricetag.

2): Apple is selling through one carrier because that one carrier has the services required to get this phone working. Word is that the iPhone is going to be sold through Vodafone in Europe. Apple is going after numbers and services because THAT makes sense not going after someone who's network is crap.

3): I can't believe you tried to pull that one out. How many people actually use Media Center? Stuff all. Because it is a shit product. As is Windows Mobile. Apple invented the PDA market therefore M$ has only followed and has performed a shit job of it. You're missing the point as to what the iPhone is about. It's not about producing something that hasn't been done before, it's about producing a better rat trap.

4): The iPhone has push email like the Blackberry. The iPhone has visual voicemail that the Blackberry DOESN'T have. The iPhone has the ability to have applications that can extend its use into say things like editing Word and Excel documents etc something the BlackBerry CANNOT do. Clutching at straws on this one here mate. Also why do you tangent into the world of AppleTV in a post about the iPhone?

5): One word, PALM. Running just the software that comes with the Palm the unit runs sweetly. Running outside developed apps causes it to fall over more times than a one legged man on a bender. Outside development is a double edged sword. It relies on developers making quality products. Apple KNOWS how to make quality products including software so having complete control is actually a good thing. It means the iPhone is stable and the software isn't bloated and crash happy. Merely because you are a developer doesn't mean that you should have the right to make software for it. Apple knows what it wants the iPhone to do. What piece of glorious software can you really come up with that Apple hasn't thought of yet? The iPhone has/will have GPS, mapping, a webbrowser I seriously doubt you could ever have come up with, an email reader I seriously doubt you could ever have come up with, a voicemail system I seriously doubt you could have come up with, etc. See my point. Apple is ahead of the game so chances are it's already developing stuff that you have thought of and being Apple will do it better than most developers would. Do we really need a bunch of crap software or do we really need a limited supply of seriously powerful and simple to use software? Give me the latter any day of the week.

I don't see how any of your points actually point out any flaws in the iPhone. Like most of the iPhone dejectors you have failed to grasp what the iPhone actually is about. You think about what you want out of the phone but you're a developer and what you want isn't necessarily what the people this phone is aimed at need from a phone. It's developers that have made the current crop of phones such shit in the first place.

I suggest you read some of these articles if you haven't already.

http://roughlydrafted.com/RD/RDM/19A62044-5937-4245-B320-CF4020F7368D.html

Re: A Picture’s Worth 100M Users???

Loweded Wookie — Fri, 15 Jun 2007 23:46:37 -0000

Safari supports web standards and IE and FireFox don't. If they did they'd easily pass the Acid2 test but they don't (I'm talking current versions not betas and alphas here). By supporting standards then Safari is better for the web than IE or FireFox.

The notion that Apple doesn't support OpenSource is so plainly wrong. Safari is based on WebKit which is based on KHTML. Apple puts back what it changes of KHTML back into the KHTML community. WebKit itself is OpenSource. Why should Apple make the whole of Safari OpenSource when it's nothing more than a wrapper for WebKit? No one asks for iTunes to be OpenSource when it's just a wrapper for MP4, WebKit, and various other technologies that are standards or OpenSource.

Of course the whole of Leopard's underpinnings is OpenSource but why does Apple need to open up it's layers that it owns? CoreFrameworks? Aqua? Why do these need to be OpenSource when they are part of a commercial package?

Don't get me wrong I use OpenSource all the time with GIMP and NeoOffice but to be truthful FireFox doesn't offer me that much more than Safari offers me. I just want a browser that I can go to the sites I want to go to. Safari offers me that out of the box with the exception of our call system but then FireFox can't offer me that either.

I love FireFox but on my Mac it's not the best option for me and on Windows at work it's not the best option for me either. It's a sad sad fact of life that no matter how good a product it is, if it doesn't satisfy people's needs then it's not going to be used.

That being said though, it's the only browser I use on my Windows machine at home. Once our call system gets upgraded (it's over 9 years old currently and sucks more than Paris Hilton's career - in more ways than one) then I will be using FireFox at work and nothing but FireFox at work.

Re: Mac Punditry and The Office Paradox

Loweded Wookie — Tue, 08 May 2007 00:39:42 -0000

I tend to agree more with the Roughly Drafted article than this one.

At least 60% of the world's internet servers are UNIX based. It would make sense that if you wanted to really exploit the internet with viruses or hacks you would do so on those servers. So why is this not the case? It's because those internet servers are more securely built. They are behind firewalls, MPRs, and have nigh-on bulletproof OSs. It's a 3 pronged attack.

Windows internet servers on the otherhand are really only a 2 pronged attack as they sit behind firewalls and MPRs but their OS is so insecure, although the security risks are lowered if those Windows servers are running Apache.

MacOS X is based on BSD Unix. OpenBSD is actually rated as the most secure OS not Sun but then it isn't really deployed widely so Thomas may be right.

Incidentally there are actually 5 major viruses for BSD OSs. But those were patched 20 years ago.

With MacOS X making more headway in both the desktop and server market it makes more sense to want to attack those systems if only to get the kudos of being the first to fully hack the system. Guess why the attacks aren't happening? It's because it's not as easy as everyone makes it out to be. If it was, all BSD based OSs would have been exploited over their lifetime but it simply isn't the case.

I like Max's quote:

Now, if you are an attacker, are you going to go after the 80% part of the Internet?

Nope, I am going after the platform that will allow me to have an automatic installation, replication, distribution of my malware with little to no user interaction after first infection. If I need to have a simpleton at the keyboard having to always authenticate and authorize activities that supposedly should happen without requiring attention of the user then I am not interested. I do not care whether there are 2 million, 20 or 200 if that is a constrain. I’ll go with the platform where I only need the user just once at most. And I’ll go toward the platform where I could gather zombies that I can sell more profitably. For that again, I do not care to look at your files, photos, documents etc in the user space. I need full control of your machine quickly, automatically and unnoticed. When that will happen on Mac OS X it will become instantly very interesting a target.

This is what Daniel was trying to say. The exploits for MacOS X required a user's interaction. Most of the Windows attacks don't. Recall the difference between Windows and Mac for the Sony RootKit debarcle. Windows automatically allowed the software to be installed without users knowing. On the Mac the user had to specifically install the application. Now tell me how MacOS X isn't more secure than Windows in this case?

But then when MacOS X gets hacked those hacks will also effect BSD unless you hack Aqua, Quartz, or QuickTime. If you can hack QuickTime then this would effectively add another attack on Windows but not so much BSD as QuickTime isn't on UNIX.

And this is also what Daniel was saying. To hack MacOS X you effectively have to hack OpenSource software which means you're not really hacking the Mac which makes this exploit meaningless.

Dino's attack was the JAVA plugin so the exploit is effectively on every machine that uses the Java plugin. Therefore once again the exploit isn't Mac specific, unless you're trying to tell me Java isn't available on Windows, *NIX...

Re: Why Apple Didn’t Release An iPhone SDK

Loweded Wookie — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 16:00:01 -0000

Re: Vodafone Fold in New Zealand

Loweded Wookie — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 03:13:25 -0000

Oh thank you. I've been trying to find out what this song is ever since I first saw the ad and you've not only done that but you've given me the lyrics as well.

Thanks also to iTunes Store because I now own this song.

Site is now going into my bookmarks. Good job.