You can change your display contrast by using a simple keyboard shortcut:
Ctrl + Option + Cmnd + period (or >) to increase the contrast, or
Ctrl + Option + Cmnd + comma (or <) to decrease it.
Dock Spaces is an application that allows you to have up to 10 different docks and swap anytime you want from the menu bar. It will radically improve your productivity, and completely reinvent your user interface experience.
Spaces integration will offer you a different Dock depending on your Space. A native Cocoa application, FREE of charge and Leopard only.
Here is a very handy tip for all of you who like to have a messy and crowded desktop, with hundreds many windows open at the same time.
You are writing an article and referencing at the same time from another source, say the web browser. Now you need to move that browser window in the background, but it really annoys you that every time you do that, you lose the focus of your main window, or even a group of windows. Photoshop, anyone?
Don’t worry, doesn’t need to happen. Simply hold the Command key down, then click on the window in the background and move it.
The window will move in the background, without affecting the harmony of your desktop mess. You can even move it ‘through’ the foreground window, it will just keep going like there’s nothing in its way.
If you are one of a numerous victims of MacBook and MacBook Pro hard drive failures, there is a glimpse of hope that you can still have your data recovered. It involves removing the hard drive from its enclosure, from the computer in this case.
Removing the hard drive from a MacBook is a breeze, it takes good part of a few minutes. However, MacBook Pro owners will need some bravery, surgical precision and, of course, lots of time. Be aware that opening the MacBook Pro will definitely void your warranty.
Sometimes the drive heads get stuck in a parking bay and consequently your hard drive fails to read or boot. There is no clear indication that would help distinguish between this and the genuinely dead hard drive, but since it’s not working anyway, you can still give it a try. Often this fixes the issue.
Remove the hard drive from your computer and hold it on the palm of one hand. Give it one flat-handed brisk slap on the top of the drive. Just one. Then place it back into your computer and see if it worked.
If it’s still dead then it’s bad news. If it works – you have a decision to make; leave it as it is, and continue with your life like nothing ever happened, or get the data off the drive as soon as possible and get a replacement drive. It’s really up to you.
You’ve also learned about the benefits of backing up, so go on and get that external drive, they’re cheap as chips now, and back-up, back-up, back-up …
Referer spam is a technique that involves making repeated web site requests using a fake referer url that points to the site the spammer wishes to advertise. Sites that publicize their access logs, including referer statistics, will then end up linking to the spammer’s site, which will in turn be indexed by the search engines as they crawl the access logs.
This benefits the spammer because of the free link, and also gives the spammer’s site improved search engine placement due to link-counting algorithms that search engines use. [Wikipedia]
I have tried using several WordPress plugins but without much luck. However blocking the referer in the htaccess file has surely done the trick.
I have added the following to the .htacess file
SetEnvIfNoCase Via pinappleproxy spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer doobu.com spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer poker spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer casino spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer cazino spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer kasino spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer medici spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer medica spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer insur spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer roulet spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer virtuel spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer pharma spammer=yes
SetEnvIfNoCase Referer adult spammer=yesOrder allow,deny
allow from all
deny from env=spammer
… and the amount of referer spam has gone from several hundred hits per day to zero in three days. Fingers crossed.
Just came across an interesting discussion on Whirlpool, where a poster asks why there are no viruses for OS X. The quick and obvious answer by a few “enthusiast experts” was that the market share of OS X is so small that nobody really bothers writing any malware for Mac.
Yes, this is the most common answer you get from people who also answer “right-click” when asked what Macs can’t do that Windows can. Sigh!
I liked the reply by the user TwoFruits, so I thought I’d share his very down-to-earth analysis of the malware absence phenomenon on Macs.
There is no silver bullet answer as to why not, its a combination of reasons :-
1. OS X is built on UNIX. UNIX was a multi user system with a security architecture built into it at the beginning. WINDOWS came from a single user architecture with security and multi user capability as an after thought.
2. UNIX had networking built into it from the beginning, again in Windows this was bolted in at a later date.
3. Windows built Internet Explorer into the O/S at a very deep level, and allowed code execution within the browser. In OS X the browser is a completely separate application, its not a integral part of the OS. IMHO, this is the fundamental screw-up Microsoft made, as they created so many hooks into which someone can attack the OS.
4. In earlier Windows everything ran as the system user, so the capability to compromise an entire system was easier. (see reason 1)
5. Microsoft’s backward compatibility mantra doesn’t do them any favours as to run old software they need so many old APIs, all of which can have holes in them.
6. OS X has no registry. IMHO, second fundamental flaw Microsoft made.
7. OS X asks for your password before allowing you to run new software or install something. Not fool proof, but at least fool resistant.
Personally I don’t buy the “lack of market share” reason. Consider that in pre OS X days Macs did have viruses. Also interesting, that at that stage Macs were suffering point 1 & 2.
No system is totally safe, but Macs have a lot of architecture working in their favor.
