Intro to Open Source Scripting on Mac OS X

Introduction to Open Source Scripting on Mac OS X

One of the biggest advantages of Mac OS X’s UNIX heritage is the huge range of open source scripting languages available. Scripting languages are often the ideal tool if you want to manipulate text, manage jobs, or link together disparate components without resorting to a compiled language like C or Objective-C. Scripting languages are a great tool for system administrators, application developers, and pretty much any user who needs to perform complex or repetitive tasks, because they were invented to solve these types of problems more quickly than can be done with general-purpose languages.

Reports emerge of Mac OS X Trojan horse or worm (OSX.Leap.A)

Reports emerge of Mac OS X Trojan horse or worm – Yahoo! News

Reports indicate that someone has let loose a “Trojan horse” or worm for Mac OS X users. The program is hidden within a package that purportedly contains screenshots of Apple’s as-yet unannounced next major revision to Mac OS X. Whether it’s a Trojan horse or worm seems to vary depending on the source of the information. The code has also elicited a response from Apple, and a warning to its customers.

The package, called “latestpics.tgz,” first surfaced recently on a Mac rumors Web site. Independently verified by Ambrosia Software president Andrew Welch, he’s dubbed it the “Oompa-Loompa Trojan,” because the files in question check for the presence of an attribute called – an apparent reference to the movie and book “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.”

Here’s a link to Symantec’s notice.

Accessing a Windows 2003 Share from OS X

all in the head – Accessing a Windows 2003 Share from OS X

At home we have a Windows 2003 Server running as a domain controller and file server. Whilst this does its job pretty nicely for Windows clients, I’ve never been able to connect to it successfully with my Mac running OS X 10.3 Panther. Browsing the network I have always been able to see the server, but any attempt to authenticate simply returned a error along the lines of “the original item cannot be found”. Frustrating.

Despite much searching over the last six months, I%u2019d not found the solution %u2013 until today. Allow me to share the solution again, for the benefit of those searching with the same problem.

Handy CSS layout generator for web developers

Someone on IRC pointed me to this CSS generator, and the number of options and output are impressive. The ability to have verbose comments in the CSS is a nice way to learn what browser hacks are being implemented (and gives you an easy way to pull them out if you like). I can take no credit for this tool, so props to the appropriate party…

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Removing unused device drivers from Windows XP machines

Did you know that unless you uninstall a device driver on a Windows XP machine that it still may be sucking up valuable system resources? Here are step-by-step instructions on how you can view and remove these unnecessary devices.

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Enable XP Pro features on xp home

This hack allows xp home (oem or upgrade) to have all features of xp pro. This includes remote desktop. Finally making xp home worth something.

kd notes: I don’t know for sure if this works 100% so be carefull.

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