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• Blocking access to websites with objective-C / root privileges in objective-C

  - by kvaruni

  I am writing a program in Objective-C (XCode 3.2, on Snow Leopard) that is capable of either selectively blocking certain sites for a duration or only allow certain sites (and thus block all others) for a duration. The reasoning behind this program is rather simple. I tend to get distracted when I have full internet access, but I do need internet access during my working hours to get to a number of work-related websites. Clearly, this is not a permanent block, but only helps me to focus whenever I find myself wandering a bit too much. At the moment, I am using a Unix script that is called via AppleScript to obtain Administrator permissions. It then activates a number of ipfw rules and clears those after a specific duration to restore full internet access. Simple and effective, but since I am running as a standard user, it gets cumbersome to enter my administrator password each and every time I want to go "offline". Furthermore, this is a great opportunity to learn to work with XCode and Objective-C. At the moment, everything works as expected, minus the actual blocking. I can add a number of sites in a list, specify whether or not I want to block or allow these websites and I can "start" the blocking by specifying a time until which I want to stay "offline". However, I find it hard to obtain clear information on how I can run a privileged Unix command from Objective-C. Ideally, I would like to be able to store information with respect to the Administrator account into the Keychain to use these later on, so that I can simply move into "offline" mode with the convenience of clicking a button. Even more ideally, there might be some class in Objective-C with which I can block access to some/all websites for this particular user without needing to rely on privileged Unix commands. A third possibility is in starting this program with root permissions and the reducing the permissions until I need them, but since this is a GUI application that is nested in the menu bar of OS X, the results are rather awkward and getting it to run each and every time with root permission is no easy task. Anyone who can offer me some pointers or advice? Please, no security-warnings, I am fully aware that what I want to do is a potential security threat.

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• Mathematical annotations in a PDF file

  - by kvaruni

  I like to annotate papers I read in a digital way. Numerous programs exist to help in this process. For example, on OS X one can use programs such as Skim or even Preview. However, making annotations is dreadful when one wishes to add mathematical annotations, such as formulas or greek letters. A cumbersome "solution" is to select the desired symbol one by one using the Special Characters palette, though this considerably slows down the annotation process. Is there any way to add mathematical annotations to a PDF? The only two limitations that I would impose on a solution is that 1) the mathematical text needs to be selectable, i.e. it must be text and 2) I want to limit the number of programs I need to make the process as painless as possible. Some of the more promising solutions I have tried include generating LaTeX with LaTeXiT, but it seems to be impossible to add a PDF on top of another PDF. Another attempt was to use jsMath to generate the symbols and copy-paste these as annotation using one of the jsMath fonts. This results in unreadable, incorrect characters.

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• How to run an application as root without asking for an admin password?

  - by kvaruni

  I am writing a program in Objective-C (XCode 3.2, on Snow Leopard) that is capable of either selectively blocking certain sites for a duration or only allow certain sites (and thus block all others) for a duration. The reasoning behind this program is rather simple. I tend to get distracted when I have full internet access, but I do need internet access during my working hours to get to a number of work-related websites. Clearly, this is not a permanent block, but only helps me to focus whenever I find myself wandering a bit too much. At the moment, I am using a Unix script that is called via AppleScript to obtain Administrator permissions. It then activates a number of ipfw rules and clears those after a specific duration to restore full internet access. Simple and effective, but since I am running as a standard user, it gets cumbersome to enter my administrator password each and every time I want to go "offline". Furthermore, this is a great opportunity to learn to work with XCode and Objective-C. At the moment, everything works as expected, minus the actual blocking. I can add a number of sites in a list, specify whether or not I want to block or allow these websites and I can "start" the blocking by specifying a time until which I want to stay "offline". However, I find it hard to obtain clear information on how I can run a privileged Unix command from Objective-C. Ideally, I would like to be able to store information with respect to the Administrator account into the Keychain to use these later on, so that I can simply move into "offline" mode with the convenience of clicking a button. Even more ideally, there might be some class in Objective-C with which I can block access to some/all websites for this particular user without needing to rely on privileged Unix commands. A third possibility is in starting this program with root permissions and the reducing the permissions until I need them, but since this is a GUI application that is nested in the menu bar of OS X, the results are rather awkward and getting it to run each and every time with root permission is no easy task. Anyone who can offer me some pointers or advice? Please, no security-warnings, I am fully aware that what I want to do is a potential security threat.

  Read the article

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