Killing a stuck process

I have been using my new Mac Mini mostly from the terminal commandline, but I have decided that I need to at least get familiar with the GUI desktop. Unfortunately, most Mac help files are online and I am stuck with a 26k half speed dialup. Not the optimum resource for googling and checking huge graphical help files.

Whenever my Mac is copying something from a CD or DVD and hits a bad sector, it posts a message that it cannot continue because of the error. At that point, the disk can't be ejected because it is busy and the Mac won't even shut down. Of course, this is normal BSD/Unix behaviour that Leopard is based on.

The message itself only has the orange minimise button available. Since I know BSD, I can enter a terminal session and kill it that way, but that is probably considered cheating. What is the normal Mac GUI procedure to kill a stuck program? It has to be right there, but I have right and left clicked all over without finding it.

Thanks
Konan

If I'm understanding you correctly it would be Command+Option+Esc (or Apple menu => Force Quit). Then terminate the offending application.

If you're trying to terminate a more low-level process, open Activity Monitor (Applications => Utilities => Activity Monitor). Highlight the offending process, then click "Quit Process".

kill works in OS X just as it does in BSD.

Ohh, thanks for the tip