William

I want this!!!!! Darn…

The really nice thing about Mac OS X is that, beneath it, lies another Operating System called Unix. And Unix by itself was invented more than 35 years ago for scientific and professional users who wanted a very powerful and flexible OS.

However, due to the fact that Unix was designed by experts for experts, it can be a bit overwhelming at first. But after you get the basic, you’ll start to appreciate some of the reasons to use Unix.

I taught myself a few Unix commands in order to move around Terminal and Single User Mode. There are some very helpful stuff like:

“mdls” a certain file and look in details of its metadata.

“rm -rf” to remove stubborn trash.

“chmod” to allow me to change the permissions of certain files and folders.

You can even drag and drop files/folders/anything into terminal, saving you the needs to type in the location. But nothing is complete when you exclude “sudo“!

Sudo = Superuser! With this command, you are required to enter your password. However, by default, this sudo will required the “invoking” user’s password, instead of the root user!

Most user will find this “okay”. But not for me. To me root user is my last door of defense. If any admin user is able to perform superuser task w/o going thru me, Hell might break loose.

In order to change the password required to root password:

Start the Terminal, su root and enter your password. (If you have not enable root user, proceed to Directory Utility and enable the root user).

Enter: vi sudoers (or visudo sudoers)

Type: Defaults:ALL,!%wheel rootpw (under Default_Entry lines)

Exit by typing: “:w!”

You can try sudo again on any commands, this time round, you will need root password instead of your/any admin password.

For some unknown reasons, permissions can go bad and cause trouble . Repairing the permissions solves many mysterious things. The fact, repairing permissions using Disk Utility also allow any admin account user to correct/amend the changes set exclusively for root user.

As a System Engineer/Administrator, I hate this.. It is kinda pointless for me to spent times setting various permissions for certain users and applications, just to be defeated by a click of mouse button from Disk Utility. Apple made it so easy for consumer to use their OS, but it made it extremely hard for us to configure them to match or go in line with certain schools or companies computer policies.

Also, 10.5 (Leopard) repairing permissions functions suck totally. It can easily take up 10 mins & above.

Lastly, Security Software for Mac.. This is one question which puzzled me. For peace of mind? Any will do. If you ask me which are the best?… Honestly want my answer?

My answer is “None of them”…

The software can stop user from booting from external volume, connect Internet and capture image then send the IP information to the owner, etc etc etc. I can hack it within 10 mins, depending on the model.

Though I’ve been playing PSP for about 3 years, it is an on-&-off relationship. Sometimes I picked up my NDS, drifted to Xbox 360, then go back to PSP again. My PSP was among the first parallel import console in 2005, where it was only launched in Japan (taking quite a long while to export overseas).

And @ that time, a PSP can easily cost you up to 700 bucks (Sing Dollars).And I am glad that it is still working well. Consider the fact that I don’t have any warranty from the very first day I got it.And I had a few games which I really enjoy playing on my PSP, below are the few:

1. Metal Gear Acid (I & II)

2. Super Robot War MX

Only recently, my colleague (Mervin) told me about a game which prompted him to buy a PSP console. He recommended “God Of War” to me with two-thumbs up. I wanted to try, but I am currently on very tight budget.

So instead of buying the game, I finally submitted myself to the Evil Dark side. I asked my PSP-Expert-Colleague (Daniel) to hack my PSP to play downloaded games. Then I duplicate Dan’s PSP harddrive with 70 over GB of PSP downloaded games.

TATA~

Without wasting anytime, I go straight to God Of War. And the result? I was mesmerized by the game. Spent hours in it (burning my weekends) and reading game guides to make sure that I don’t miss anything. Below is a short preview on the game by GameTrailer.com (may need to enter your age as the content is too bloody):

I’ve been using Parallel Desktop for the past 2 years. As we all know, this software is only possible with Apple switching from PowerPC chips to Intel. Virtualization allows us to run different/multiple Operating Systems. It is awesome, but take up plenty of computing resources from your Mac as well.

So if you’re a new Mac User who intend to try out or at least install Windows on your Mac and you decided that Boot Camp’s method of rebooting isn’t the kind of workflow you want, get Parallel Desktop.

Q: Why not VMware Fusion? 

A: Parallel was the first virtualization software in the market (2006). I would not say Parallel is awesome, consider the promises of Games Drivers are still crappy. However, Parallel is much stable compared to VMware Fusion. Also, it is so easy to backup your Vitual HDD.

Attached below is a pic of my XP running on my Mac (For 2 Years) without getting any viruses. Recently, I even installed ZUNE desktop theme to make it feel more Microsoft… Then again, if there is no Macintosh OS in this world.. I would rather embrace Linux then to bear with Windows.