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TETENAL · Feb 2, 2007, 02:28 AM

http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=416

Sort of interesting. My guess is that this would probably work with OS X as well.

zro · Feb 2, 2007, 03:09 AM

You kidding? Every real computer user know nothing works with OS X.

goMac · Feb 2, 2007, 03:09 AM

Slightly unrelated, did you know that speech recognition can be used to get past OS X parental controls? Speech recognition does not obey any of the rules parental controls sets up, and can launch any application.

The kids at work found this exploit rather quickly.

TETENAL · Feb 2, 2007, 03:14 AM

You have kids at work? Isn't child labour illegal where you live?

I didn't know speech recognition can circumvent parental controls. Did you report the issue to Apple?

goMac · Feb 2, 2007, 12:57 PM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

You have kids at work? Isn't child labour illegal where you live?

I didn't know speech recognition can circumvent parental controls. Did you report the issue to Apple?

I work for a school district. I should hope we have kids at work.

Apple knows about the issue. It's kind of reached one of those points where Apple is really working on 10.5 instead of 10.4.

hart · Feb 4, 2007, 03:50 PM

I saw this at BBC news. Sounds like one of those silly manufactured vulnerabilities they're always trying to scare people with for Macs. The necessary factors for an exploit to be successful are so complex that it's highly unlikely. And anyway, has voice recognition progressed enough to be usable without extensive "training"?

mduell · Feb 4, 2007, 06:24 PM

I've heard about this from back in the OS/2 days. People would change the default sound for dialog boxes to "Cancel" from "*beep*" and such to screw with their coworkers.

Mithras · Feb 4, 2007, 07:35 PM

Originally Posted by goMac

Slightly unrelated, did you know that speech recognition can be used to get past OS X parental controls? Speech recognition does not obey any of the rules parental controls sets up, and can launch any application.

The kids at work found this exploit rather quickly.

I really don't understand why parental controls doesn't operate at a deeper level, rather than having to patch each application one at a time.

Cold Warrior · Feb 4, 2007, 08:15 PM

One could always disable speech recognition.

goMac · Feb 4, 2007, 08:38 PM

Originally Posted by Cold Warrior

One could always disable speech recognition.

Yeah, we've been deleting the speech recognition floater via ARD.

Strupat · Feb 5, 2007, 04:46 PM

+1 OS X security flaw that will conveniently be forgotten when another Windows VS. OS X security debate pops up.

::maroma:: · Feb 5, 2007, 04:57 PM

Originally Posted by Strupat

+1 OS X and Vista security flaw that will conveniently be forgotten when another Windows VS. OS X security debate pops up.

Fixed.

Chuckit · Feb 5, 2007, 04:57 PM

Originally Posted by hart

And anyway, has voice recognition progressed enough to be usable without extensive "training"?

Voice recognition for dictation, no. Voice recognition for controlling your Mac has worked well enough to use since the early Power Macintosh models. (There's a world of difference between saying "Computer, open TextEdit" and trying to dictate a business letter with punctuation, big vocab, paragraph breaks, etc.)

Strupat · Feb 5, 2007, 05:01 PM

Originally Posted by Strupat

+1 OS X security flaw that will conveniently be forgotten when another Windows VS. OS X security debate pops up.

Restated. Joke lost in pretentious user's translation.

::maroma:: · Feb 5, 2007, 05:05 PM

Originally Posted by Strupat

Restated. Joke lost in pretentious user's translation.

That was a joke? Yeah, that was lost long before "pretentious user" translated it.

Chuckit · Feb 5, 2007, 05:08 PM

Originally Posted by TETENAL

� Vista Speech Command exposes remote exploit | George Ou | ZDNet.com

Sort of interesting. My guess is that this would probably work with OS X as well.

He specifically notes that OS X does it somewhat differently. I think both have it off by default, but OS X also by default requires a specific key to be held down to engage speech recognition and otherwise normally requires a customizable keyword to make commands work.

Strupat · Feb 5, 2007, 05:12 PM

Originally Posted by ::maroma::

That was a joke? Yeah, that was lost long before "pretentious user" translated it.

Exactly the delusional response I expected. Theory reaffirmed.

Chuckit · Feb 5, 2007, 05:17 PM

Originally Posted by Strupat

Exactly the delusional response I expected. Theory reaffirmed.

So, how is the trolling business these days?

::maroma:: · Feb 5, 2007, 05:21 PM

Originally Posted by Chuckit

So, how is the trolling business these days?

Apparently going pretty well. He's resorted to calling people names to make himself feel better about this false statements. But whatever, its par for the course.

Strupat · Feb 5, 2007, 07:41 PM

Honestly it is pretty good. I will, however, commend the pretentious Apple propaganda forum for their highly-troll-able content.

::maroma:: · Feb 5, 2007, 08:08 PM

Well, this is a Mac-centric forum. Can't really be surprised that there are people here who are going to be pro-Mac or pro-Apple or both.

Or can you...?

OwlBoy · Feb 5, 2007, 09:43 PM

Back in the day on OS 9 I figured out I could use Internet Explorers File helpers to launch any app I wanted

Not sure if that works these days.

-Owl