How many Mac owners do you think run their admin account as the personal account. I bet more than a few don't bother with the distinction between user and admin.
That's like asking how many ubuntu users run their account as root. Almost None. The default in both cases is a normal user with sudo access (requesting a password). I'm not even sure where to start if I wanted to log in as root (not just in a terminal).
I just tried logging in as root on my Mac from the graphical login, works fine! If you don't know your root passwd you can also 'sudo passwd'.
There's no advantage really, though, since the gksu style authentication popup system when you need admin privileges is very painless. I too doubt if many people run their Macs as root.
Maybe when you typed 'sudo passwd', which created the root password. Just as in Ubuntu the root user exists, the account is merely locked (see 'man passwd', -l option)
Apple describes how the Right Way here http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1528 but I'm sure I've never seen Directory Utility before. However, in the Edit menu they reference, it said 'Disable Root User', not Enable, so it's been activated somehow. Perhaps doing sudo passwd did it, though I don't recall setting it up through an unofficial method such as that on my Mac. I'm not really comfortable hacking around on MacOS since it's a bit different than Linux, being a BSD, and the extent of integration between traditional text file style configuration and Apple's GUI stuff is unclear to me.
I previously enabled it via Directory Utility, but disabled it again and tried it for you:
$ sudo passwd
Changing password for root.
New password:
Retype new password:
passwd: Unable to change the password for record root. Credential verification failed because account is disabled.
$
So there you have it: you couldn't have done it this way.
> If you want your mail delivered to your door, then you can pay extra. Otherwise pick it up yourself.
The funny part of that is, that is the inverse of how it is now. The post office charges for PO Box rental [0], but delivers to your house for free. Keep in mind that most post offices do not have sufficient PO Box numbers to cover all teh points they currently deliver to.
[0] the exception being those places with insufficient density to justify street/rural delivery. In those places the customers must travel to the post office to collect their mail, and they get the PO Box for free.
> Dead tree mail isn't dead just yet; they definitely have enough time to figure out a plan.
Traditional printed mail (flats, letters, etc) will not go away until every person has an iPad (or equivalent) and has broadband. Many many areas of the US are still without broadband access.
That doesn't reduce the mail volume. Then you would have to store the mail somewhere, and still have the same amount to sort. So on the days when they did deliver, it would take longer to sort it.
> I'm surprised that you don't have access to dsl but do have access to 3G.
There are quite a few locations (including mine) where the remote infrastructure is fractured (for lack of a better term). The remote box out here, a Lucent Mod 5, is quite capable of housing a DSLAM, and I am certainly within a functional distance from the Lucent box (4k-5k feet). The problem is the distance from the Lucent box back to the CO (6 miles) which is on copper T1 circuits. No fiber out here. The ILEC, AT&T Florida, appears to have no interest in replacing the T1 cable with fiber, nor to populate the box with a DSLAM.
There is an ISP that has deployed 2.5GHz WiMax, but I'm on the fringe of the range, plus I have vegetation issues.
When I see a title like the one at the top, I always cringe, because I know full well that saying 'everyone' will get this is hyperbole.
One thing that isn't particularly clear, is the timestamps on tweet library. Based on the top entry, I presume those are UTC. So if the action kicked off at 1 AM PST (UTC+5 according to wiki), then it would have been 4 PM EDT (UTC-4) in Washington. 3:50 PM doesn't jive with this (unless Pakistan is on DST).
Another article said that the burial at sea was completed by 2 AM EDT (so they presumably were done by 3 PM in Pakistan, about 14 hours after the first tweet).
Yeah, times didn't hold up in the yesterday's reports, the attack was around 12-1AM in Pakistan as witnesses' reports state so it must have been around 3-4PM in Washington.
Today's news are more accurate on that matter:
"At 2:05 p.m., Mr. Panetta sketched out the operation to the group for a final time. Within an hour, the C.I.A. director began his narration, via video from Langley. “They’ve crossed into Pakistan,” he said."
[http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/03/world/asia/03intel.html?pa...]
I never saw anything to suggest that it was, so I believe it simply makes them feel good. Also, undisclosed location is very suspect. How long will it take to traceroute it and find the nearest Level3/other major company node's location, therefore the probable location of Sony's servers.
Of course, to your average user "we've moved the datacenter to prevent attacks" looks pretty good.
I fail to see importance of most steps that are outlined in the article. Things like "Implementation of additional firewalls" are just technobabble for their fans: "Look, we are doing something!"
> In a off-the-shelf service like Amazon, you as a customer are welcome to suggest a change of penalty to your Amazon account manager, and unless you're something like the US government, you will probably be directed to other cloud providers or your own internal IT organisation!
What that suggests to me, is that the time has arrived for an external organization, one that sells loss-of-business protection against such failures, needs to become involved. Such an organization, should enough cloud customers subscribe to it, would become an influence upon services like AWS. I'm not sure I 'like' this idea, but the premise that a customer is using the cloud service at the whim of whatever the provider decides is best practice needs to be revisited.
convince the major (big box) retailers to provide an access point, so that you can price scan with your smart phone, instead of having to hunt all over the store for a working scanner. places like walmart, target, kmart, bestbuy, etc, etc could all benefit from this.
