True. How would those users normally monitor the status of the application? Possibly through the log file? If so, then they would see the message in the log file requiring the validation.

If with "Those users" you're refering to a victim of "BOINC infection" from a trojan, most wouldn't know BOINC exists, so they don't know any log to look at.

There's a reason simpler than all that, why we can't do anything: the hacker could always compile his own BOINC core client, removing *any* protection we add now.

My suggestion for you is to subscribe to the developers list and start a conversation on that. The major developers don't read these boards unless Jord and I point them to a specific problem.

The W* account at Predictor has been blocked, while Mr. Braun considers the best way of action what to do with the credits, while trying not to break the PAH database.

We'll allow discussion, solutions and your opinion about the original problem to continue here. What we do not allow is for you to post inflammatory posts and rouses to make the problem worse. Any such posts will be removed.

It's time to stop the fire, not fan the flames.

I'm not a developer nor am I a programmer. So I don't have any solutions. I won't pretend to understand how send mail works, but to the average user (like me) what you're proposing seems to be a security risk (even if it's not). I know of quite a few people who don't even have an email client installed.

Only if you set a default email client, else no email program will open. Before you say that Windows will always set (that stupid) Outlook Express as your default email program, what clicking on a MAILTO link will do then is start up the setup wizard for OE... Not really friendly.

All of what you are opting is all nice and well, but did you know that BOINC doesn't need to be installed on your computer? Just the boinc daemon and an account_*.xml file is needed for it to start crunching. So then what? You want the the boinc daemon to periodically scan the system it is on to check if it's 'installed correctly'? I wouldn't want it to do that.

You can't use a spot in the registry either, as BOINC is multi-platform, only Windows uses a registry (as far as I know). Besides, the spot can be spoofed by adding a batchfile that runs a .reg file.

How do you get the computer owner's email address?

Not only that: screen-less Unix computers, with no X server installed. You can't show a message there.

What sort of complaints are you seeing? I haven't seen major complaints about the Mac version.

As far as the command line stuff, I don't use a Mac, but the couple times I've tried to use the Windows command line, it was fairly easy. But take that for what it's worth...