HiddenAccountsandFolders

Thanks to all for the replies. When it comes to security and control, there are a number of groups that are not in unison as to needs, rights, and approaches. There are the academics, the military, the common citizen, the common (or organized) criminal, and the foreign enemy. I represent the third group mostly concerned about the fourth group. But the lack of understanding and cooperation (because of a lack of mutual understanding) between the first and the second group is probably the greatest weakness of our common concern. Yet the intermingling and similarity between the third and the forth groups may be the cause of our greatest difficulties.

Mostly, military security seeks to know and understand limits and boundaries, and to define them so that they can be secured and not violated. Academic security seeks rather to move than to secure...to be bound less by property and more by dynamic cooperation and redefinition. Citizens have to live within that balance, at times securing property and insulating assets from changes, at times being willing and able to allow for changes that can threaten that very security. Academics expect people to trust in advances, and military expect people to be able to have confidence that their property will be secure. Both spend their lives working for these very things, and for good reasons, but both often do not understand the nature and concerns of each other.

There is a rightful concern for the security of property and a rightful concern for the advance of cooperative society. But there is also an errant concern for securing property, due to fear, and an errant concern for the advance of cooperative society, due to lack of concern for 'others'.

As for me, I am actually afraid of losing my current capabilities if I switch to a newer OSX. That fear may be unfounded, but I expect if anyone is monitoring my system, there is enough cooperation between academics and military that they are also being monitored in turn.

And while I don't care for companies monitoring my personal computer, and I don't have complete confidence in the benevolence of academia, I take that risk over the risk of losing the control over this asset and its capabilities that I have currently. So it is my ignorance that generates fear, but I simply haven't the time for the PhD in computer science that would give me the confidence with personal computer security that I actually deserve. And that is the same fear, at times well founded and at times due to ignorance, whether with technology or banking or any other cooperative institution, that generates resistance to society in all its forms.

And mostly that fear is due to the newness of changes, like the animals that flee when a new highway is put in (only men resist and are fearful, hateful, or upset), and when the changes have been adopted and settle in for a longer time, then fear gives way to acceptance and men become more social, just as animals begin to re-establish migration routes and feeding patterns. A natural balance reasserts itself and time geometrically increases mutual understanding and cooperation.

So anyway, that's my Leopard/Lion thought process at this point. Thanks again for the replies.

I guess if you could copy and paste the list, and put a question mark after any that you don't know, that would help me out a lot, too. 😁

What does the gid do? Is there a registry for that? And does that show up on Activities monitor?

And I have trouble trying to figure out which user is running a process when I'm listed as the user. Isn't that a user with more privileges on my system running something with my name on it?

I remember when I first got this computer (a year ago) that when I checked Activities Monitor, my name only appeared on processes that I knew I was running and why.