Winds of Change

written by Charles DeVore

from Mouse Tracks April 2004

Big brother is indeed watching you. If you use a TiVo, they are keeping track of what you watch. The user agreement that comes with the TiVo discloses the data-gathering of your television watching habits. It can even tell the company how many times you replay any of the programs. The company says it strips out the customer information (yeah, like the government can’t get it back if they want). This and many other examples of information gathering, such as grocery store discount cards when you buy food, software products that “call home,” and government equipment in your ISP’s office, basically strip away any and all privacy in the public sector. It’s sure strange with all this going on that they can’t seem to stop email spammers. I’m not sure how you folks feel about this, but I feel that 1984 just may have happened behind our backs.

Please be sure when emailing requests to people on the Internet that you put your real name at the end of the email. Several times a week I get emails, from people who may be PMUG members or just folks I have met, with no real names. Now you may be real good at remembering that john1234 is your neighbor down the street, but most of us are not good with names. Names kind of come and go in my mind, however I can always tell you what I did to your computer within the last six months. So please, do everyone a favor, and put your real name at the end of your message.

Email scams are everywhere, so please do not reply to email about you or your account via email. Many of the new scams are trying to get your account information so that they can clean out your credit card and bank accounts. They do this by asking for your passwords and account confirmations through an email that looks like it’s from your bank or Paypal account. If you are worried that the account may be at risk, you should log on to the internet and go to your bank/credit card site and check your information from the links there. Do not use any of the links in the email, as they will only go back to the scammer’s website. Please, everyone, these people are good at what they do. They always make things look just like the website you do business with, so be very careful. Most emails try to scare you into doing something right away, such as telling you your credit cards will be non-usable until you answer their email.

After complaining at a local Macintosh consultants meeting that Panther’s network browsing is broken, I was informed that there is an AppleScript that will make Panther do Jaguar-like network browsing. This can be found at the macintouch.com web site. Well, that’s great, but why do we need it? Why doesn’t Apple fix it and make us feel like Mac users again? The Network Browsing in Panther is so bad that Windows people most likely feel right at home. I really want to be able to mount the volume on my desktop without jumping through any hoops. Unless you ask for the volume you want to mount by the right name, it will not show on the desktop. You will be able to get to it, but you have no way of dismounting it after you’re done with it. There was a time when Apple’s file sharing and printing were by far the most advanced in the computer industry; now we get to be like the rest.

Mini-iPods seem to fly off the shelves at stores even as the other iPods still sell at a brisk pace. I understand that Apple got the size right and must have been right with all their research. However, I still can’t bring myself to spend $250 for a portable music player. It’s quite apparent to me that everyone thinks Apple’s pricing is OK due to the vast amount of sales in so short a time frame. It could be, however, that the PC users out there really do want a well-designed unit and are willing to pay whatever it costs to get it. Now if they could only figure out that their computer should work the same way.

Here’s a good one for the books: iDVD 4 burning problem (http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=93665) addresses the issue where iDVD 4 may not successfully burn a disc on dual processor Power Mac G5 computers if “Best Performance” is selected in the iDVD preferences. Basically you get told to update to version 4.0.1 of iDVD and to delete encoded assets from your iDVD 4 project. Looks like Apple needs to do better beta testing on its higher end machines as well as iMacs.

The Power Mac G5 Dual 2GHz machines are truly fast machines. I was able to test drive one of the refurbished units for several days while I did some configurations for a client. Just the speed at which the machine starts up and shuts down amazed me. After taking the 30 Gig hard drive out of the client’s old machine and placing it in an external FireWire case, I was able to move his email (Eudora 6.0) and his Explorer Favorites over to the new hard drive. Thanks to my Comcast broadband connection, all the updates were easily installed, and even AppleWorks got updated to 6.2.9, so that we were all ready to do real testing. Everything seemed to move faster; launching AppleWorks or any of the other programs on the machine happened in a heartbeat. Even Classic launched with very little waiting. Keep in mind that the serial ATA drive’s speed and the 2 Gig of RAM helped a lot in the speed boost for this machine. Then the client brought in his new 20 inch Apple monitor to make sure it worked correctly. The combination of the monitor with the fast machine is certainly one of the best computers I have seen in a long time. So far, the only hitch was when the external FireWire drive stopped mounting after six days of use. Swapping his old drive into a different case brought it back up. The G5 seems to be picky about the chip in the FireWire case, so it will be interesting to see if changes are made on the next rev of motherboards. This machine did not come with a modem due to the fact it is one of the 1100 machines from Virginia Tech’s super computer. They are replacing them with Apple Xserves and selling the used units though MacMall as refurbished. The good part about these machines is that they were equipped with 2 Gig of RAM and sold for $2799.

Some notes for anyone setting up a G5: keep track of the AirPort antenna; it’s very small and easy to misplace. If you’re buying a refurbished machine, be sure and check to see if it comes with a modem, Bluetooth and Bluetooth antenna. I suggest you make sure the System Software CD or DVD will really boot your computer. Also, you may need to update your utility CDs due to the fact that DiskWarrior 3.0.1 is required for Panther. Also required is Norton 8.0 and above, and TechTool 4.0 or above. Also be aware that any additional hard drives need to be serial ATA drives. You will not be able to easily put your old drive into the G5, so figure on an external FireWire case if you want to move it.

Are you looking for some new games to play now that you have switched to OS X? There is an assortment from Phelios for Mac users of all ages—such as Swap and Bongo Boogie. These are of the puzzle variety, and almost all of them have a demo version so you can try before you buy. Any MUG member interested in Phelios games can get a 30% discount by entering the discount code HUGAMUG when ordering games from their web site (www.phelios.com), so check it out and use the code if you want to order one of their products. Please note this is a very small company; if you have questions please email patrick@phelios.com.

For anyone on the Electric Sheep who is using System OS X, there is a fix for the password problem posted in the news area. This is an AppleScript that removes the encryption from the password in the settings file. Please follow the directions to complete the patch.

Everyone, repeat after me: I will not update or install strange software until I have at least backed up my data to CD, Zip, DVD, or hard drive. Now repeat that three more times, then go back up your data. This notice has been brought to you by all those users who call for help after their machine has crashed, and start out the conversation with, “but I was waiting to have enough data to fill the CD.”

You can reach me at charles@cdevsol.com.

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