The Mac Pirate’s Toolbox, aka “Essential Apps For The Digital Junkie”.

MacPAR deLuxe is a very good free utility (donations welcome) for verifying, repairing and decompressing rar archives with par (parity) files, commonly downloaded from usenet newsgroups.

It has been updated for Snow Leopard.

Download MacPAR deLuxe for 10.6
Visit MacPAR deLuxe Site for other versions

“Licensing for this product has expired”
“The serial number you used to activate this product has expired”
“Invalid serial number. The serial number appears to be invalid”

- Adobe CS5, 2010

To stop Adobe CS5 calling home to Mother Ship on your mac in OS X you need to edit the hosts file as described in ‘Stop Adobe CS4 calling home to Mother Ship in OS X’.

Simply follow the instructions in the ‘Stop Adobe CS4 calling home to Mother Ship in OS X’ tutorial and use the list of hosts below for CS5:

# Block Adobe Activation
127.0.0.1 hl2rcv.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 t3dns.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 3dns-1.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 3dns-2.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 3dns-3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 3dns-4.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate-sea.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate-sjc0.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate.wip.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate.wip1.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate.wip2.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate.wip3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 activate.wip4.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 adobe-dns.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 adobe-dns-1.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 adobe-dns-2.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 adobe-dns-3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 adobe-dns-4.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 crl.verisign.net
127.0.0.1 CRL.VERISIGN.NET
127.0.0.1 ood.opsource.net
127.0.0.1 209-34-83-73.ood.opsource.net
127.0.0.1 practivate.adobe
127.0.0.1 practivate.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 tpractivate.adobe.newoa
127.0.0.1 practivate.adobe.ntp
127.0.0.1 practivate.adobe.ipp
127.0.0.1 ereg.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 ereg.wip.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 ereg.wip1.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 ereg.wip2.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 ereg.wip3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 ereg.wip4.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 wip.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 wip1.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 wip2.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 wip3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 wip4.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 www.wip.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 www.wip1.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 www.wip2.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 www.wip3.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 www.wip4.adobe.com
127.0.0.1 wwis-dubc1-vip60.adobe.com

“I don’t know of anyone who has successfully cracked apps from the iTunes Store…” – Andy Ihnatko, November 2009.

Listening to Macbreak Weekly is pretty fun, especially when Leo forgets the names of the different releases of OS X. But I had no idea how much fun Macbreak Weekly could be until Andy Ihnatko and Leo Laporte revealed their total ignorance about cracked iPhone apps! Also guilty were the show’s other guests, Don McAllister and Wil Harris. For shame.

When you consider Andy Ihnatko writes books about the iPhone this faut-pas will surely have him shaving off his mutton chops and turning in his utility belt so that another Jedi might carry on his work.

OK Andy, so chapter elevnteen will be called www.appulo.us … and you’re gonna say how every fraggin’ iPhone app (even the totally shit ones) are cracked and ready to be downloaded and installed onto any jailbroken iPhone or iPod Touch with a Patched MobileInstallation Library. Then you’ll tell them how to patch a mobileinstallation library. Or I will.

This revelation occurred in Macbreak Weekly episode 166 and the offending excerpt can be heard below. That’s right! This is mac celebrity gossip! WARNING: This clip damaged the podcasting careers of 4 men, 2 of them British: http://machacks.tv/clips/MBW-TWITS.mp3