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The Low End Mac Link Archive, June 2002
Low End Mac Reader Specials
Memory To Go Special: MacPro 8 Core 8GB kit $232 / 4GB kit $116 / 2GB kit $72. New Macbook 2GB DDR3-$65. HARD DRIVES available -- Free shipping / LIfetime warranty.
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External news links are listed below by the date of publication
with the most recent articles listed at the top, older ones below
them. Other monthly archive indexes are linked on the right. Links
were correct when originally posted. However, we cannot guarantee
that these links are still active.
OS X:
XPostFacto 2.2b9, Other World Computing, 06.29. Latest version
provides some OS X support on additional unsupported
models.
Advocacy:
For Mac users, a life less complicated, Gene Steinberg, USA
Today, 06.28. "Sometimes I feel like that Maytag repairman, but I
don't mind it that much."
News: PCs: More
than 1 billion served, Michael Kanellos, c|net, 06.30.
"Approximately 1 billion PCs have been shipped worldwide since the
mid-'70s...."
Opinion:
Mac OS X vs. Windows XP: It's no photo finish, Rob Pegoraro,
Fast Forward, Washington Post, 06.30. "...if you're shopping for a
new machine, you'll probably be much happier with iPhoto...."
Dark Side: Broken trust, D. F.
Tweney, The Tweney Report, 06.28. "Microsoft wants you to entrust
it with the safekeeping of your computer's processor, memory, and
hard drive."
Analysis: Getting to know
you, J. D. Lasica, Online Journalism Review, 06.27.
"Registration required" may lose some visitors, but most appear to
come back eventually.
Web: Reasons
to think before you link, Richard Poynder, FT.com, 06.24.
"Recent cases in Europe and the US, however, have led some to
conclude that the law has begun to look more favourably on those
wishing to bar unwelcome links."
Opinion: One nation
under God?, Dan Knight's Soapbox, Cobweb Publishing, 06.28. Can
prohibiting schoolchildren from freely reciting the Pledge of
Allegiance solve anything?
Dark Side: Beware
Palladium!, John H. Farr, Applelinks, 06.27. "Palladium is
really a scheme to replace TCP/IP with something that Microsoft
will own and license...."
News: Kiss
your MP3s at work goodbye, Lisa M. Bowman, c|net, 06.27.
Copyright, the RIAA, liability, company equipment, getting fired -
good reasons to buy an iPod.
OS X: iMac Update
for Mac OS X, Apple, 06.27. Only for iMacs running Mac
OS X 10.1.5 build 5T91.
Opinion: Speed,
Charles W. Moore, OS X Odyssey, Applelinks, 06.27. Hard drive
performance can make a world of difference.
Web:
Publishers sue Gator over Web ad tactics, Leslie Walker,
Washington Post, 06.27. Gator uses spyware to display online ads
linked to sites with which they have no ad contracts.
Web: Way
beyond the banner, Owen Thomas, Business 2.0, 06.27. What works
in online advertising - and what just annoys people.
Web:
Puncturing Web ads before they pop up, David Pogue, New York
Times (free registration required), 06.27. No ad blocker is
perfect, but they can make surfing more pleasant.
Web:
Salon in dire straits, Slashdot, 06.26. Even with 40,000
subscribers, dropping ad income creates a growing deficit of $75
million.
Huh? Pledge of
allegiance ruled unconstitutional, Fox News, 06.26. "The Pledge
of Allegiance is an unconstitutional endorsement of religion and
cannot be recited in public schools, a federal appeals court ruled
Wednesday."
Advice: Declare
email independence, Simson Garfinkel, The Net Effect,
Technology Review. "In the 21st century, having your own domain
name is simple electronic self-defense."
News: Apple dumps Aussie
PR after news coup, The Register, 06.26. Apple sacks employee
for releasing Gartner study figures showing Macs 36% less costly to
own than Windows PCs.
Opinion:
Back to Mac, Alan Graham, O'Reilly Network, 06.25. "I would
like to take this moment to personally thank Dell, Toshiba, and
Microsoft for helping me to change my mind and move back to the
Macintosh platform."
Humor: Big
Switch, MacBoy.com, 06.25. "My name is Big Brother, and we
shall prevail."
Opinion:
I've switched from Windows, now what?, Terrie Miller, 06.25.
"...the combination of Unix-based OS running on very appealing
hardware seemed to be just the remedy for the Windows 98
blues."
Web: VeriSign Off,
VeriSignOff.org, 06.25. Why you might want to sign off of Network
Solutions (NSI) and VeriSign.
Opinion: Falling prey to
the VeriSign beast, Kirk L. Kroeker, osOpinion, 06.25. "Most
people who love the Internet hate VeriSign more than open source
advocates hate Microsoft."
Web: Teoma
vs. Google, round two, Search Engine Watch, 04.02. "...Teoma is
not a wholesale replacement for Google, nor is it an engine you'll
want to use exclusively."
Benchmarks: Virtual PC
5.04 vs. 5.03, Accelerate Your Mac, 06.25. VPC 5.04 ranges from
slightly faster to lots faster launching programs on 500 MHz
TiBook.
News: Be Inc.
completes takeover of Palm, Andrew Orlowski, The Register,
06.25. This is the same kind of "reverse takeover" NeXT engineered
after being purchased by Apple.
Opinion: IE(eeeee),
Rob Flickenger, O'Reilly Network, 06.24. IE 5.2 installer that
requires quitting all running applications was the last straw.
Macinschool: State
schools may test idea of laptops for kids, Mike Wendland,
Detroit Free Press, 06.24. State now provides a compute to each
teacher. Proposal seeks one per K-12 student in 2004.
Review: URL Manager
Pro, Matt Neuburg, Tools We Use, TidBITS, 06.24. "...if I had
to list the top five utilities without which I could never have
made the switch to Mac OS X, URL Manager Pro would be one of
them."
OS X: OmniWeb 4.1
available, Omni Group. Unlike IE, OmniWeb is beautiful and
supports left-to-right languages.
Macinschool:
Open-and-shut case for laptops?, Sherry Jones, Wilmington Star,
06.24. New Hanover educators say all students need laptops, hope to
deploy to all within 5 years.
Tech: Power 4 the
people, Tony Smith, The Register, 06.24. IBM's Power4 runs 2
CPUs at 1.3 GHz on a single die and is related to the PowerPC in
modern Macs.
Hands on: PowerBook
G4/800, Macs Only!, 06.24. "...we're even more impressed than
we were in April."
Opinion:
Spam vs. spam, Andrew Leonard, Salon, 06.24. SpamAssassin, an
effective, open source filtering engine seeks out and flags spam on
the server. (And the biggest, slowest, most annoying online ad
we've ever seen between pages 1 and 2.)
Web:
Free Web-mail waning?, Mike Musgrove, A Closer Look, Washington
Post, 06.23. Lots of sites, but several vanish each month.
Opinion:
Unicode: Sick of this push and pull, Piere Igot, Apple Peel,
Applelust, 06.21. The mess caused by different character sets, and
how Unicode will eventually make everything better.
OS X: Apple
releases networking update, MacNN, 06.21. Networking Update
v1.0 improves network and Internet access after "restarting your
computer or when waking from sleep."
OS X: Crouching
Apple, hidden "Jaguar," Cade Metz, ExtremeTech, 06.21. "Jaguar
is focused on moving the OS X platform forward, innovating in the
ways Apple has always done."
Web: NPR
Online reconsiders link policy, NPR, 06.21. NPR recognizes that
"the majority of the linking on the Web is not infringement,"
reevaluating existing policy on links.
Dark Side: A battle PC giants
should lose, Jill Ericksson, osOpinion, 06.21. Dell, H-P, IBM,
Gateway, and others hurting because "unbranded" PCs account for
over half of unit sales.
Analysis: Are Macs really
cheaper to own?, Ben Wilson, NewsFactor, 06.21. Gartner is
backing away from its finding that Macs are 36% cheaper to own and
maintain than Wintel PCs.
Web: It takes
a village to save a site, Paul Boutin, Wired, 06.21. Kuro5hin
site raises $35,000 (half its annual budget) from readers in less
than a week.
Memorial: For Rodney,
Anonymous, MyMac.com, 06.21. "Rodney loved the 'Think Different'
campaign because he did."
Web: Apache
anti-hack patch posted, Sam Costello, Macworld UK, 06.21.
Security patch covers Apache on big Unix boxes - and Mac
OS X.
Dark Side: Microsoft
vs. cultural diversity, Charles W. Moore, Applelinks, 06.20.
Microsoft chooses not to support right-to-left languages such as
Hebrew, Arabic, and Korean in their Mac apps.
Rights: Paul
Trummel pulls site, goes free for now, John H. Farr,
Applelinks, 06.20. Paul Trummel, a 70-year-old man, has been
imprisoned for 111 days because of his Web site satirizing
officials of a retirement home. Free speech?
Tech: USB,
FireWire head to battle, John G. Spooner, ZDNet, 06.20.
FireWire established, but USB 2.0 more cost effective.
Opinion: Isn't it time John C. Dvorak was put down like an
old dog? No, we're not linking to his drivel. We recommend
Bryan Chaffin's comments ("John Dvorak seems to have an
irrational hatred of the Mac and/or Apple itself") as well as
comments on apple.slashdot.org.
AAPL: Apple
falls after Tuesday warning, Robert Paul Leitao, Apple Stock
Watch, Mac Observer, 06.19. Yeah - like $3.00 a share. Ouch.
Humor: Bill Gates
Switch, Macboy.com. Animated cartoon. Enjoy the Pixar parody,
then click on the Play button. Priceless.
Wares: IPNetTunerX,
Applelinks, 06.19. Software claims up to 20% performance
improvement.
Humor: Simplifying
Tasks, IBM [mam].
Instructions for ordering this poster show that IBM still has a few
things to learn about simplifying things.
Web: NPR
Online's linking policy, NPR. We just violated their link
policy by linking to it without prior written consent. What's
become of the "public" in National Public Radio?
Memorial: Popular
Mac columnist mourned, Leander Kahney, Wired, 06.19. "Lain's
death is being widely mourned in the online Mac community. Hundreds
of people have posted messages of condolence on forums...."
Memorial: Remembering
Rodney, Charles W. Moore, Applelinks, 06.17. "One of the things
that impressed me immediately was the prominent discussion of
religion on [Rodney's] site."
Memorial: Rodney O. Lain, John
C. Welch, WorkingMac.com, 06.17. "... for a long time, I'm going to
regret not knowing this man."
Memorial: Mac
evangelist Rodney O. Lain dies, Julio Ojeda-Zapata,
TwinCities.com, 06.17. "He was the Angry Mac Man, a technology
pundit who wrote about Macintosh topics with more candor than some
could stand."
Memorial: Magnum
mysterium, John H. Farr, Grack, Applelinks, 06.17. "Rodney O.
Lain was the first person I know to write about 'Mac literature,'
and he was perfectly serious."
Memorial: Good
night, Rodney, Del Miller, Applelinks, 06.17. "He didn't just
talk about passion, he was passion and it showed in
everything he wrote."
Analysis:
PowerBook G4/DVI: Text too small?, PowerBook Central, 06.17.
1280 x 854 on a 15.2" display too small? Not according to PB
Central readers.
Web: The Apple
Museum, formerly Apple Online Museum, overhauled.
Web: MacTeens.com
relaunched yet again. How many times has it been now?
Memorial:
In memory of Rodney O. Lain, Bryan Chaffin, Mac Observer,
06.17. "I didn't agree with everything you wrote, but I loved every
word of it."
Memorial: For Rodney, Beth
Lock, MyMac, 06.17. "It is a helpless sadness that I feel about
Rodney's death, coupled with anger and compassion."
Memorial: Remembering
Rodney, John Martellaro, MyMac, 06.17. "At first reading, if
you read too fast, you could be offended. But upon further study,
you'd find that Rodney mostly nailed all the bullshit."
Dark Side: My name's too rude
for MS Passport, Andrew Orlowski, The Register, 06.17. Sorry,
Mr. Woodcock, you'll have to change your name before you can use
.NET.
Macinschool: MSU college recommends
Macs, MacNN, 06.16. "The College of Communication Arts &
Sciences at Michigan State University is recommending the purchase
of a Mac computer...."
Analysis:
Pay for content revisited, Bob McCormick, Applelust, 06.14.
Provocative thoughts on ads, online subscriptions, and the Mac
Web.
Opinion:
McAfee manufactures virus threat, michael, Slashdot, 06.14.
Enough of the anti-virus hype about viruses that don't even exist
on the Internet.
OS X: SpeedMeUp Pro
v. 2, NoName Scriptware. Script "prebinds" OS X
applications for faster launches.
OS X: Change Startup
Disk v 1.4, NoName Scriptware. Quick and easy way to switch
between OS 9 and X.
Opinion:
Darwin meets the digital camera, David Pogue, New York Times,
06.13 (free registration required). Canon, Nikon, Olympus, Minolta,
Kodak . . . which is the best 4 MP digicam?
Opinion: Why our OS X
rollout was hamstrung, Scot Hacker, O'Reilly.com, 06.12.
Software that won't run is Classic, new programs still not written
for X, and unsupported hardware hamstring migration.
Opinion: Switching to
the Mac, Kotke.org, 06.11. "I just want my computer to work for
the things I want to do with it, and if I have to pay a little more
for it or not have access to all the latest software, so be
it."
Web: Open Link Policy. A small step
in protecting your right to link.
Advice: Avoiding trouble
in the move to Mac OS X, part 1, Adam C. Engst, TidBITS, 06.10.
"No activity in the Macintosh world has ever inspired as much fear,
loathing, and terror as contemplating the upgrade from Mac
OS 9 to Mac OS X."
OS X: Rage Pro
Driver for Lombard, James Denton [MacNN]. Oops, OS X 10.1.5 missed
acceleration support for Rage LT Pro in Lombard. This patch solves
that oversight.
Opinion: The
end of the Mac Web?, John H. Farr, Applelinks, 06.10. The end
of the Web as we know it if "deep linking" becomes illegal. (We
support Open Link.)
Low End: The compact Macs,
Matthew Glidden, Profiles in Networking, ATPM. LocalTalk and
ethernet networking for compact Macs.
Low End: Why a Quadra
605?, Dana Siberia. Chipped Q605 runs Linux and Apache - and is
serving pages very nicely on the Web.
Digicams: Pentax Digibino
DB100, Digigraphica, 06.10. Unique digicam built into 7x
binoculars produced 1024 x 768 images.
Digicams: Pentax Optio 330
RS, 430
RS, Digigraphics, 06.10. New 3, 4 megapixel models include 11
MB built in memory - shoot even when your memory card is full.
Advice: Picking
the right 35mm SLR, Dan Knight, Digigraphica, 06.07.
Understanding the basics of reflex cameras so you can pick the one
that best suits your needs.
Opinion: Davy
and Goliath, Jeff Lewis, Mac Skeptic, Mac Opinion, 06.07. Some
provocative thoughts on Mac fanatics and their blind spots. Think
different.
Analysis: Could
broadband become the law?, Anne Jue, MacCentral, 06.07. Should
the government push for universal broadband access? Does the market
want it?
Macinschool: A Mac-centric
campus shifts to Windows, Florence Olsen, Chronicle of Higher
Education. Administration and students choosing Windows at one-time
Mac bastion.
Opinion: Bye
Napster. Long live MP3, Marc Zeedar, Less Tangible, Mac
Opinion, 06.06. "It's time the recording industry embraced the
digital revolution and stopped worrying about people 'stealing'
music."
OS X: Silk
1.0, Unsanity [MM].
Freeware program lets Carbon apps use Quartz rendering - makes
Internet Explorer look much nicer.
Software: iCab
2.8 released, available for free download. For a lot of Mac
users, it's our favorite alternative to Internet Explorer - and
they even make a 68K version.
Hands on: iCab
2.8 Web browser mini review, Charles W. Moore, Applelinks,
06.05. We agree: This still under construction browser deserves a
try, whether on OS X or the classic Mac OS.
Software: Mozilla
1.0 released. Finally out of beta, Mozilla hopes to become a
serious alterntive to Internet Explorer.
Analysis:
Will USB 2.0 cool off FireWire?, Charles Haddad, Byte of the
Apple, BusinessWeek, 06.05. FW established, but Intel "giving away"
USB 2.0 at no extra cost.
Opinion:
Ode to the expansion bay, Charles W. Moore, Road Warrior, Mac
Opinion, 06.04. A great idea from 1995-2000, but with internal
Combo drives and external FireWire options, we doubt the expansion
bay will make a comeback.
Software: Microsoft polishes
Office for Apple, Ian Fried, c|net, 06.02. Who else could
create software with room for over 1000 "tweaks, bug fixes, and
performance enchancements"?
Opinion: