The dangers of a growing market share

[[vL]Kp]

That said, a popular Application like iPhoto should work with a restricted user account, without hassles why the camera on USB is not recognized by a restricted user, but works fine with an administrative account, eg. The same is valid when said about all 3rd party software, there's no reason why a ProTools PlugIn only recognizes its key/dongle in administrative mode.

Assuming that the OS X kernel behaves roughly Linux-like in this way, then there's a good reason why this doesn't work by default. There's no good reason they can't fix it, though. The problem is that peripherals like this will tend to be backed by device nodes that default to ACLs that only let administrative users touch them. For some things, like USB hard drives, this is a good thing, since direct access would allow raw modification of the data on the disk, bypassing any safety or security checks normally imposed by the filesystem on that disk. For the examples you cite, there's no obvious danger in letting a non-administrative user open the device. The vendor can, and should, fix this by granting the appropriate users permission to open the device. In the meantime, assuming I am right, you can do a spot fix on your system by changing the permissions on the device node.

So, main rule is 'be on guard', eg surf with care, don't open any stuff from anywhere, keep an eye open for irregularities and so on.

Also, pressure site operators to design sites to degrade gracefully. A well written site can be used effectively with no Flash, no JavaScript, and sometimes even no images. Disabling extra features like Flash and JavaScript can go a long way toward mitigating attacks on browsers. Sadly, most companies are determined to design sites that completely and totally break when faced with such a browser.