Mac vs PC

 

Austin teacher threatens to sic cops on Linux group because “No software is free”

An teacher in Austin sent an angry, accusatory email to a local Linux collective (”HeliOS Project, which builds and provides Linux computers to disadvantaged or ‘exceptionally promising’ students”) accusing them of piracy for distributing the free operating system and excoriating them for encouraging her students to do the same. She threatened to have the group’s organizer investigated by the police, too.

…observed one of my students with a group of other children gathered around his laptop. Upon looking at his computer, I saw he was giving a demonstration of some sort. The student was showing the ability of the laptop and handing out Linux disks. After confiscating the disks I called a confrence [sic] with the student and that is how I came to discover you and your organization.

Mr. Starks, I am sure you strongly believe in what you are doing but I cannot either support your efforts or allow them to happen in my classroom. At this point, I am not sure what you are doing is legal. No software is free and spreading that misconception is harmful.

These children look up to adults for guidance and discipline. I will research this as time allows and I want to assure you, if you are doing anything illegal, I will pursue charges as the law allows. Mr. Starks, I along with many others tried Linux during college and I assure you, the claims you make are grossly over-stated and hinge on falsehoods. I admire your attempts in getting computers in the hands of disadvantaged people but putting linux on these machines is holding our kids back.

This is a world where Windows runs on virtually every computer, and putting on a carnival show for an operating system is not helping these children at all.

The HeliOS organizer kind of goes off the rails in his response, implying that the teacher’s been brainwashed by her union to support Microsoft because they get donations from Microsoft. I think it’s more likely that she just doesn’t know what the hell she’s talking about and has received umpty-million “piracy is terrorism” messages from the school board and the BSA.

AISD Teacher Throws Fit Over Student’s Linux CD

Source: Boing Boing

 

Intel says ‘no’ to Vista upgrade

Intel has decided that for its own employees, Windows Vista just won’t cut the mustard. According to the New York Times, “Intel information technology staff just found no compelling case for adopting Vista.”

Ouch. Intel’s IT staff arrived at their decision after a lengthy cost-benefit analysis.

Intel has 80,000 employees worldwide, and could be seen as a bellwether for large companies still on the fence about upgrading to Vista. Since Microsoft has been a tight partner with Intel for years, it remains to be seen what kind of pressure Intel will get from top Microsoft management.

Source: The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW) - Intel says ‘no’ to Vista upgrade.

 

BBtv: Speed Cabling — competitive ethernet detangling sport.

Xeni visits the first-ever “Cable Untangling Championships” at Machine Project in Los Angeles, where knottiness abounds and speedy-fingered sysadmins pwn the world.

“Cabling” is a new sport founded by Steven Schkolne in which competitors must race to detangle bundles of CAT-5 ethernet cables. The person who unravels their wire bundle the fastest at this particular meet wins a spaghetti dinner (hm, perhaps it’s all a front for Pastafarianism).

Cabling enthusiasts are not fooling around: there are detailed rules about the types of wire permitted:

CAT-5 Ethernet cables are to be used. Contestants may use any cable they wish, as long as it is capable of carrying 100Mb/s prior to competition. During competition, the colors red, blue, and yellow are used for the 7, 15, and 25 foot cables resepectively.

Link to full post with video, discussion, and “tangling regulations” on Boing Boing tv.

(Via Boing Boing.)

 

Leopard Overtakes Windows OS Sales In Japan For October

Apple’s Mac OS 10.5 Leopard launch will go down in history as record-breaking, both internal and external. In Japan, sales went up to 60.5% market share year-on year in the month of October, which was enough to bump Microsoft from the top spot (repo…

(Via MacRumors.)

 

MIT Startup Raises Multicore Bar with New 64-Core CPU

“A new startup out of MIT emerged from stealth mode today to announce that they’re shipping a 64-core processor for the embedded market. The company, called Tilera, was founded by Dr. Anat Agarwal, the MIT professor behind the famous and venerable Raw project on which Tilera’s first product, the TILE64 processor, is based. Tilera’s director of marketing, Bob Dowd, told Ars that TILE64 represents a “sea change in the computing industry”, and the company’s CEO isn’t shy about pitching the chip as the “first significant new chip architectural development in a decade”. So let’s take an initial look at what was announced about TILE64 today, with further information to follow as it becomes available.”

(Via OSNews.)

 

Apple Shipping 300,000 MacBooks in November?

A Commercial Times report claims that Apple is in line to ship approximately 300,000 MacBooks in November alone.

For reference, Apple shipped 986,000 Portables (MacBook and MacBook Pro) in Q4 2006 (July 1 - September 30).

(Via MacRumors.)

 

Altair 8800 replica kit

Cory Doctorow:

Check out these amazing replica Altair 8800 kit, composed all new (or new-old stock) parts, with the original instructions for assembly. The Altair 8800 was the microcomputer ancestor of the PC — the computer that inspired the PC revolution. It was — to some approximation — the first useful computer that you could build and run in your home workshop. Regrettably, these kits are only sold on eBay, making them a pain to acquire, but the idea is just fantastic, and it sounds like the build-quality is terrific.

Link

(via Make)

(Via Boing Boing.)

 

Attack code targets zero-day Mac OS flaw

The unpatched security hole could be used by a remote attacker to compromise a vulnerable Mac, advisories say.

(Via CNET News.com.)

 

Mac OS X Hints: Always use expanded Save dialogs

Boy, we could sure use this where I work. But we’ve got such poor tech support that even if I did ask for it to be setup on all our Macs it wouldn’t happen. Or it would then it would magically go away. Oh bother.

Do you always use the expanded Save dialog in OS X? Learn how to enable it by default in all applications.

(Via MacCentral.)

 

Tangerine beta

Every so often a program pops up that makes you say, “Man, why didn’t someone think of that before?” Tangerine is just such a program. I foudn out about Tangerine whilst surfing one of my favorite webistes - The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW). What it does is scans and analyzes your iTunes library. But wait! There’s more! It allows you to create iTunes play lists based on beat intensity and/or beats per minute.

As a teacher I would love to use this in class. I’d have a high, energetic, bpm playlist on days that my students are working on projects and a low, calming, bpm playlist for exams. Unfortunately I can’t get the app to work on my Dual G5 (haven’t tried it on my MacBook yet). When I try to save a playlist back to iTunes I get an error saying the script has timed out but the window saying it’s saving to iTunes stays forever. Command-. won’t shut it down nor will Command-w. Gotta force quit. But, I’m not going to give up on it just yet. This is such a cool idea that I feel compelled to play.

I’ll let you know how it goes.

 

Some 5.5 gen iPods ship with Windows virus

This certainly isn’t amongst the new features that Apple has touted for their latest rev of iPods. It would seem that a ’small number’ of iPods shipped after Sept. 12, 2006 may be carrying a Windows virus by the name of RavMonE.exe. Apple says that less than 1% of Video iPods are infected, and they have seen less than 25 cases reported. The most interesting sentence of this note is, ‘As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not catching it.’

Nice spin, Apple. ‘Umm.. yeah, so we shipped something with a virus on it, but Windows shouldn’t get viruses! Yeah, that’s the ticket.’

Apple suggests scanning your iPod with an anti-virus program and restoring the iPod’s software using iTunes.

iPod shuffles, nanos, and OS X are not affected and all currently shipping iPods are 100% virus free.

Thanks, Zack.

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

 

Disgruntled MacBook owners organising class action suit

AppleInsider has a story about a group of Mac users who have had enough of their faulty MacBooks, and they’re not going to take it anymore. The group has set up a page at ClassAction.com and is looking for support to force Apple into a recall of the company’s newest consumer notebook. AppleInsider also points to macbookrandomshutdown.com, a site dedicated to RSS (random shutdown syndrome) that already has over 1,250 reports of afflicted laptops.

This shouldn’t be much of a surprise. There have been reports of random MacBook shutdowns for months, and Apple even copped to the problem last month, but there’s not been much movement since then.

I didn’t sign up at either of the petitioning sites, but I could have. I bought my fiancee a MacBook about a month after they were released and within a week it was shutting down at will. We were lucky, though. We made an appointment at Apple’s main store in London and after the Genius witnessed two shutdowns in as many minutes, he said he’d give us a brand new MacBook. Things have been OK so far.

Are any of you still suffering with the same problem? How has Apple handled your complaints? Sound off in comments.

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

 

Crossover Mac enters Beta 2 phase

Filed under: Software

We missed this a few days ago, but Crossover Mac, CodeWeaver’s WINE environment that allows you to run Windows applications along side OS X applications, with no need for virtualization, has been updated to Beta 2. What’s new in b2? Lots, apparently. There are “dramatic” performance improvements and bug fixes for full screen mode, case-sensitive file systems, CPU detection, and the registration process, to name a few. Now I haven’t personally used Crossover yet, since I’m supremely satisfied with Parallels, so I can’t confirm that those updates are actually there, but I’m willing to give the developer the benefit of the doubt on this one. If you’re using it, please chime in with your thoughts.

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

 

Perian: Play (almost) every video file in QuickTime

Here’s one for the Mac folks: Perian is a free download for OS X that allows QuickTime to play video files in almost any format known to man. It uses the fantastic open source ffmpeg library to enable DivX, XviD, AVI, and even Flash Video files in a variety of configurations. According to the Perian web site, it will also be bundled with the next version of Democracy Player. Very cool.

[Via Anarchaia]

 

The Unarchiver

The Unarchiver is a replacement for Apple’s relatively hidden “BOMArchiveHelper” application, which is responsible for the Zip, Tar, and gzip abilities built into the Finder. Not only does The Unarchiver come pre-loaded with much better icons, but it handles Zip, Tar, gzip, bzip2, RAR (including multi-part RAR), 7-zip, StuffIt (but not SitX, sadly), and many other formats. Installation is as easy as dropping the program somewhere on disk, perhaps in /Applications, and then associating preferred formats to be opened with The Unarchiver. I find it’s a much better archive handler than Apple’s own, and the “brown box” icons help differentiate compressed files from regular documents.

(Via Command-Tab.)

 

8-Core Mac Pro Details Emerging?

Daily Tech claims to have received details for Intel’s next major Core-based Xeon processor, code-named Clovertown. The processors will be in the Xeon 53xx family (current Mac Pros use Woodcrest cores that are in the Xeon 51xx family), and will be a…

(Via MacRumors.)

 

A script to create a ‘new Mail messages’ screen saver

I often walk away from my desk (and computer) for a bit of time. When I get back, I have to interrupt the screensaver to see if I received any mail while I was away. I always wished the screensaver could just let me kow and save me the trouble of having to unlock my computer to find out. It turns out this is very simple in OS X. Here is what I did with a few minutes worth of learning AppleScript. (I am sure more experienced folks can find more elegant solutions.)
Here’s the four-step solution:

1. Create two image files, one called youhavemail.jpg and one called youhavenomail.jpg. My images are light blue text over a black background. The text says “You have mail” for the first file, and “No new mail” for the second file.
2. Create a new folder, I called mine screensaverpix. I created the files and the folder in my top-level directory. If you put them somewhere else, modify the script below accordingly.
3. Run the following AppleScript. …

   

   

(Via macosxhints.)

 

MacBook Pro better Vista machine than Vaio

Ken Mingis, writing for Computer World, says that Vista (Microsoft’s next generation OS) runs better on his new 17 inch MacBook Pro than it does on his year old Vaio. The Windows Experience Index, a utility that is included with Vista to measure what features will run on your machine, gave the MacBook Pro a score of 4.7 out of 5 while the Vaio got a 3.6.

Two things to keep in mind; Ken was running Vista in BootCamp and he is comparing a brand new top of the line laptop to one that was top of the line last year (which is a long time in the tech world). Still, it is nice to see that Macs won’t have trouble running the latest and greatest that Redmond has to offer. If you’re into that kind of thing, that is.

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)

 

All the cool things your Mac can do

I know your Mac is really cool, and you know it’s really cool, but do all of your friends (especially those using Windows)? One of the things I really enjoy is gloating showing off some of my Mac’s more interesting tricks, a job made easier by this cool list at Silver Mac. They describe one of my favorite tricks right off the bat: If you highlight at word in any cocoa app (like Safari) and hit Command-Control-D, a small window will appear with the dictionary definition and part of speech of that particular word. Move the cursor from word to word, and see their respective definitions.

The article also describes how to invert your screen’s colors, create a quick text clipping and more. Check it out, and really “wow” your friends.

(Via The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW).)