In my continuing quest for things I can use to make fun of Macs and Mac users as much as possible, I stumbled across a little article today about some very interesting vulnerabilities in the latest Macs.

It appears that a couple of hackers have found a way to completely take over a Macbook in mere seconds, using nothing but it's wireless connection. That's right... completely take over the machine. Not just plant some trojan on it... or run some spyware in the background... but gain complete control over your machine, as if they are sitting at the keyboard themselves (doing things like deleting all of your important files and saying mean things to your friends using your iChat).  Apparently, one of their motivations for presenting a demo of a Mac being hacked was what they called the "Mac user base aura of smugness on security". Which, as you all know... I would staunchly disagree with... I mean really... Mac users...? Smug...? That's just ridiculous!

Anyway... I would say that this is a pretty good find.... but that would be the understatement of the year... so I won't. Instead, I'll just tell you more about the hack (and how you can witness it yourself), while throwing in a couple stabs at Mac users, just for kicks.

I was reading a blog the other day and the author was asking people to post their most interesting personal story. After a brief scan of what little memories I have of my life, I came to the conclusion that I was a very boring person, seeing how I couldn't think of one good story about something I'd experienced. But a day or so later, I was reminded that I did have a somewhat notable event happen to me, so I typed it all out and posted it on the site. I figured I might as well put it on my own website as well, seeing how it's the only semi-interesting personal experience that I'll ever have to offer.

When I was in my late teens, I worked at a used auto part yard on the far south side of Chicago... there were a number of VERY interesting characters who worked there, one of which was "Ned". At least... I'll call him Ned to protect his identity. He was pretty new at the yard and, I swear, he was the spitting image (in personality more than looks) of Ned Flanders. He was always chipper and dorky and "okeley-dokely" and what not, and he didn't quite seem to be "all there". Anyway, Ned was going to unknowingly have a large impact on my life... which I'll get to later.

A while ago, I posted a link to touchscreen UI that was being developed that looked like it had good potential. Well, here's another twist on touchscreen UIs. Instead of a back-lit touchscreen, this one uses touch sensitive projections (on a tabletop device) and voice commands. It doesn't look quite as cool (visually) as the last one, but functionally, it does a good bit more. They're integrated the UI into a few different kinds of software (Google Earth, Warcraft3, etc) and shown how it can be used in a fairly practical manner. Pretty cool stuff.

WATYF

So... everybody and their mother knows that Apple said that they wouldn't do anything to hinder or support the installation of Windows XP on their new Intel Macs (commonly referred to as Mactels). And everybody and their dog knows that some guy won 13 thousand dollars by figuring out how to boot Windows XP on a Mac.... and now everybody and their pet fish knows that Apple went back on their original promise (of not doing anything to support Windows installs) by offering BootCamp, which allows any dumb shmoe a chance to boot Windows XP on his shiny new Mactel.

But my question is... where is all this mad Mac/Windows love coming from...???

You know... it seems like just last week that Mac users were sitting... all smug and metrosexual... in their coffee shops... wearing their ridiculously over-priced Diesel jeans... sipping their lattes... and feeling all secure in the "fact" that their computers were "safer" than the "inferior" Windows PCs of the "lesser" humans.

Oh wait.... that was just last week. AAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.

And then... a little thing I like to call "reality" set it... and the ginormous myth that Mac's are "impervious" to viruses was dashed against the brutal rocks of inevitability.  For in one week's time we have seen not one..... not two.... but THREE viruses/security flaws appear on the radar screen.

And the best part about it is.... they just keep gettin' better.

I just wanted to take this opportunity to point and laugh at Apple over its latest troubles.

As if all of Apple's previous problems weren't enough.... here they go again.... puttin' a happy smile on my skinny little face.

Apparently, someone has filed suit against Apple claiming that they're.... wait for it....

*snicker*

.....a monopoly!!!!

AAAAAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!

So I guess that cornering a whopping 3% of the global computing market has put them in dangerous territory with the DOJ.

How many nerds, like myself, watched Minority Report and remember that scene where Tom Cruise was working with the "future telling" machine thingy and he was dragging visuals around in mid-air and using that wicked cool user-interface to check out all the crimes that hadn't happened yet? How many of you also remember thinking how cool of a UI that was, but that it wasn't very realistic and probably wouldn't be a "real-world" technology any time soon (if ever)?

Anyone? Come on... of all the countless thousands of people who real this blog every day (whuh?!) there has to be someone else who thought that. I dunno... it just came across to me as being a bit too "Jetsons"... a nice piece of eye-candy, but just not a technology that I could see being developed for widespread use.

Well,... I'm happy to say that my initial gut feeling was wrong...

It seems like only yesterday I was shilling.... I mean... "praising" Google for all the cool stuff that they keep putting out. But I guess even the greats have to put out a stinker every once in a while.

It looks like the general consensus all... over... the net is that Google Video is a huge bomb. Not only does the interface suck, but the content offering is anemic, at best. On top of that, Google has created their own DRM (for the paid videos) that makes it impossible to import the videos on to a portable device. Some are even saying that videos you purchase are only available as live streams, which means you can't truly download and view them offline (I haven't confirmed this one yet). Google also won't tell you what format the video is in until you've purchased it. All that stuff combined, Google Video is looking like a really lousy release. Me thinks they shoulda done some more in-house testing before letting this thing out into the wild.

But, as with anything Google makes, there are always a few cool attributes to it... and since I'm such a "glass is half-full/look on the bright side" kinda guy... (whuh?!?) I'm gonna point a few of them out to you...

So... I'm sittin' around, minding my own business last Friday, and I go to check something on my website (can't remember if it was email or the home page or whatever), and I notice that my website doesn't appear to be responding. I figured that the site was down.... again.... which actually isn't all that abnormal for the web host that I was using. But I couldn't do anything to fix it, because first thing Saturday morning I had a band coming in to do some recording, and then right after that, I had to run out to go..... wait for it......... camping. Yeah... that's not exactly part of my normal weekend activities. Needless to say it was a last minute whim someone had while we were hanging out Friday night that I got suckered into.  (ok... so I liked it... but that doesn't make me any less of a nerd.)

So basically, I was busy, 24/7 for the next two days and had no way of finding out what was wrong with the site... so I just left it at that and hoped that they'd have it back up in a reasonable amount of time.... but boooooy was I wrong.

Is it just me, or has VB always seemed like a C language with its nads cut off? (that's a rhetorical question, btw... I know it's not just me ) The thing is... they always try to give you little features and "productivity" advantages, but when it really comes down to it, there are always those "manly" programming functions that you just can't perform with VB. (That is, if you consider anything in programming to be "manly".)

When .NET came around, they made it sound like VB was finally getting some cahones and that it would be on par with its corresponding C language (C#)... and in a lot of respects, that was true... but you know... there must have been a bitter, old C coder working on the .NET project who just couldn't stand VB.NET being put on the same level as C#... because it looks like he decided to castrate a few features out of VB.NET just to stick it to us poor, lowly VB coders...

In this case, I'm talking about Pre and Post Build Events. These are obviously very handy tools... and they're available by default in C# projects... so why on earth would they not be available in VB.NET projects as well? There's just no rhyme or reason to it... (other than my bitter C coder theory)...