Ask TUAW: PPPoE, SSH, Exposé, Wake on LAN, importing DAT tapes and more

I have a problem with files being visible/invisible or accessible/not accessible when they're on a network disk. When i access the disk with SMB, the files are visible. When i access the disk with AFP, they're not.
Copied (with chronosync) to a local disk (Mac OS Extended journaled, connected through USB), they are present, but invisible as well. In the terminal, i see a "@" after the attributes of each invisble file.

The 3 screenshots:
- SMB (visible): http://img.skitch.com/20080515-mtj939ya8jxqnqg2w2fmn3ucb.jpg
- AFP (invisible): http://img.skitch.com/20080515-dqaw9h3r5thain4kbg99tdn77q.jpg
- Terminal view of local folder with invisble files: http://img.skitch.com/20080515-ef2jm6bwc9igm61nq79dgjrjn1.jpg

I would appreciate it if you could tell me what happenend en show me how to make those files visible again (if possible: for all subdirectories at once).

System:
- Dual 2GHz PowerPC G5, 3GB RAM
- Leopard 10.5.2
- attached disk "Apollo" (LaCie Ethernet Disk) with share "music", accessible with AFP and SMB
- attached local disk (USB) "POLLUX" , Mac OS Extended (Journaled)

Question here: Various apps keep asking if I want to "accept incoming network connections". Should I let them or not? Clearly some will need to accept them. But does MS Word need to accept incoming network connections? Why would it? Is there a rule of thumb for what do when asked this question by a pesky app?

Question for next week:

I have a Macbook and old G4 Powermac, both running Leopard. The Macbook is my main computer, and I run the Powermac in a closet to act as a media server for XBMC and run Front Row, all connected to my TV. I don't want to use a remote or my wireless keyboard to control front row, so I have been using Chicken of the VNC to view the Powermac's Screen on the Macbook and pass on keystrokes to activate and control front row. I don't need to view the screen on the Macbook, it's right there in front of me on the TV.
So, what I am wondering, is there a piece of software that, when activated, will pass on keystrokes from my Macbook to my Powermac to control Front Row?

Question:

For reasons which aren't particularly interesting i need to be able to set my MAC address (ethernet address) on my ethernet port to a specific value.

The machine in question is a 2 GHz intel core duo MacBook (i.e the 802.11g one, not the Core2 duo)

On 10.4 it was simply a matter of opening Terminal and then:

sudo ifconfig en0 ether xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx
or
sudo ifconfig en0 lladdr xx:xx:xx:xx:xx:xx

i even wrote a boot-time startup item to run this shell as admin at launch

I now have 10.5 and currently have to dual boot into tiger to be able to change the MAC address.

none of the command line stuff I have tried has worked in 10.5 - i pulled across my startup item and that ran without problems [eg no errors] but still didn't change the MAC address.

It seems to me that although the command still exists, it no longer does anything.

I'd quite like to be able to use a MAC address of my choice without having to reboot in and out of it!

What would happen if i was somehow able to locate the bit of the kernel responsible for this and lift it from tiger into leopard? bad things?
Obviously it's not a hardware issue since 10.4 and 10.5 are running on the same machine.

Can anybody see what is going on here? Any help is greatly appreciated

Thanks

There is a better WOL (Wake on LAN) utility for OS X called WakeUp which can be found here for free:

http://www.coriolis.ch/en/wakeup/

If you want to move text, hold a left-click on the text, then move it once the "I" (text insert symbol) changes to an arrow. To add functionality, you can "copy" if you press the "alt" key when moving -- useful for working in word processing apps.

By the way I'm pretty sure you meant 32kHz sample rate rather than MHz!

Question for next time:
Lately, for about the last week or so, every time I am done with my MacBook (2.2 2GB BlackBook 10.5.2) I press the power key to give me the prompt to shut down. I press enter to select shut down and after about 3 seconds I get a pop up that says "The application iTunes cancelled shutdown. Select shut down from the apple menu to try again". I can recreate it by powering up, opening iTunes, syncing my iPhone, and then selecting shut down. It also gives me the same message when I try to restart. Every single time! I don't know what the problem is. I have repaired permissions 3 times from the factory install disks. I just cannot get it to go away! Every time I want to shut down my Mac I have to select shut down two times! PLEASE HELP!

Hi, I had a question regarding synchronizing bookmarks. I often use Safari for both my Mac partition and my Boot Camp partition. Are there any programs that can synchronize bookmarks between Safari 3.0 for the Mac and Safari for Windows?

I know there delicious has been a solution for synchronizing between Firefox 2.0 on the Mac and Windows, but I haven't quite found a solution for Safari. While I ordinarily wouldn't mind using Safari on the Mac and Firefox on Windows, I can't seen to synchronize the bookmarks there either. The only delicious plug in I found for Safari doesn't allow for the user to open all bookmarks in a tag as tabs in the browser. For me this is a must have feature.

Up until now, every so often I just have Safari save my bookmarks to my Boot Camp partition, and then I load Safari in Windows and import the bookmarks. Then I have to replace the bookmarks bar and menu. Is there any way to solve my bookmark syncing woes without resorting to this?

Here's something not really appropriate for this thread, but it is a question, so here goes:

I know it's irrelevant now, but did anyone ever determine what made the officially unlocked iPhones in Germany be unlocked? Was it different software/hardware? I don't remember, and I was suddenly curious about it today.