Tag: mac

Categories
Release_Candidate Security

Mac malware that can tap into live webcam and mic feeds

Security is hard, and the bad guys are clever.

Security researcher and former NSA staffer Patrick Wardle is this afternoon demonstrating a way for Mac malware to tap into live feeds from the built-in webcam and microphone. His presentation is being delivered at the Virus Bulletin conference in Denver later today.

Although any unauthorized access to the webcam will light the green LED – a firmware-level protection that is exceedingly difficult to bypass – Wardle’s presentation shows how a malicious app can tap into the outgoing feed of an existing webca

Source: Former NSA staffer demonstrates Mac malware that can tap into live webcam and mic feeds | 9to5Mac

Categories
Apple Personal

Because without impermanence

Emptiness is impermanence, it is change.
We should not complain about impermanence,
because without impermanence, nothing is possible.

I am not a spiritual person. I do not believe in a God, or a spirit, or an afterlife. But I can see the beauty and truth in the above Buddhist quote, and I feel its weight. It is incredible to me how emotional I have been tonight after learning about the death of Steve Jobs. It is fortunate for the 21st century that we had Steve as long as we did, but I will not complain about impermanence. It is what allows the future to happen.

Thanks for showing us your vision of the future, Steve. I look forward to seeing what is possible next.

Categories
Personal Technology

Hack of the week: Dropbox

I’m really particular about the background images on my computers. I like dark, subdued backgrounds that don’t attract the eye. I do like pictures, but ones that highlight any icons easily and don’t strain my eyes trying to find what I’m looking for. As a result, I’ve spent years collecting images that I like, upgrading to higher and higher resolutions as my monitors got better and better. I’ve got tons of fractals, dark photos, and other such images that I just prefer to have as my desktops.

Oh, and a few pictures of Eliza, of course.

So previously, I’ve kept a copy of this “Wallpapers” folder at the root of whatever computer I’m using, and set the system to use that as images for the desktop. But then if I find a new image I like, I’ve got to remember to distribute it to my laptop, and my home desktop, and my work desktop…blah.

Dropbox

Enter: Dropbox. Now hopefully everyone knows how amazingly awesome dropbox is by now, but if you don’t, just click that link and sign up for it. Trust me. Dropbox creates a folder on each of your computers that you install it on, and a folder in the cloud, and keeps all of them in sync all the time. You get 2 gigs free, and can pay for extra space as you need it.

I just realized that I can now put a Wallpapers folder inside my Dropbox, and it will propagate to every machine. I can set my desktop pics to choose from that folder, and anytime I find a new one, it will automagically sync to all the others with no effort from me. So all my pics will be the same on all my machines, no matter which I find and add from. It’s a little thing, but it makes me happy.

Categories
Digital Culture Library Issues Technology

I really hate Zotero

There, I said it. Zotero should warm the heart of any academic, but somehow it escapes me. I’ve been loath to admit it for a long time, especially since I was part of the beta, and tried it for a long time. Plus, it’s exactly the sort of tool that I should really love.

Except I don’t.

Why not? Well, after examining my prejudice, I came to one conclusion: I no longer have any patience with applications that are local. Unless the application I want AND my data live in the cloud, I just won’t use it. I’ve found myself, over the last 6 months to a year, moving nearly everything I do online. Documents are created with Google Docs, I prefer Gmail to any local mail client I’ve tried, heck, I’ve even started using Flickr’s editing deal with Picnik to do my photo edits, and I luuuuuuurve me some photoshop.

What’s up with this change? I really only use two computers; my work PC and my Macbook. It wouldn’t be that hard to use local programs, and sync my documents. The problem is that it’s any effort at all. Syncing my documents shouldn’t be something that I think about, it should just happen…Mac nearly has it right with their .mac syncing, but the PC world just doesn’t operate like that without some serious effort on the user’s part. If Apple would move hard into this space, perhaps with Google as a partner…I think they could revolutionize computing yet again, especially if they leveraged their media power as a part of the cloud storage.

But I digress…

After using Zotero for awhile, I found myself cursing the fact that I had two different databases of information…the “macbook” stuff and the “desktop” stuff. This is why the third lobe of my brain is del.icio.us…I don’t have to think about where I might need that information. It just goes to the cloud, and I pull it down no matter where in the world I may be. I know that Zotero has listed on it’s homepage:

Remote library backup
Shared collections
Access your library from anywhere via the web

Give me that, and maybe it becomes a tool that is useful to me. But until then, local just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Categories
Digital Culture Personal

Smartphone choices

I call upon the wisdom of the Intertubes: Help me decide on a smartphone. Our cell contract runs out this month, and I need to get a Smartphone of some type.

Needs:

  • Obviously, it needs to be a good phone
  • IM, SMS, and email must be solid and easy to use (bonus for gmail & outlook both working well)
  • View Word and PDF, edit would be nice
  • Must be a Cingular phone, due to coverage in our area

Here are the contenders:

I like the form factor of the Blackjack, but both it and the Treo lack 802.11 support, and I’d like to be able to browse/IM/Email via wifi if I’m somewhere with a signal. Hell, I’d love to be able to Skype with it if possible. The 8125 has wifi, but is the largest of the bunch…on the other hand, the slide out keyboard is pretty great. As much as I lust after the iPhone, Apple is not known for flawless first-gen products, and the $$ is a bit to drop in the foreseeable future. I like the Treo because I’ve always had a soft spot for Palm, and the secondary software support is huge, but Palm is, frankly, dead.

So I’m torn, Intertubes. Anyone use any of these phones? Got a recommendation for me for something I haven’t looked at?

Categories
Personal

Firefox/OSX/Flash solution

The power of the intertubes in action! Some wonderful soul named PÃ¥l Kristiansen found a solution to my Firefox problem!

Found a solution that worked for me:

1. delete the file located at

/Users//Library/Application Support/Firefox/pluginreg.dat

2. Restart Firefox.

…as I said, it worked for me :

And low and behold: no more flash problem! Thank you so much PÃ¥l.