The Champaign-Urbana Computer Users Group

The Status Register - April, 2002


This newsletter will never appear on CUCUG.ORG before the monthly CUCUG meeting it is intended to announce. This is in deference to actual CUCUG members. They get each edition hot off the presses. If you'd like to join our group, you can get the pertinent facts by looking in the "Information About CUCUG" page. If you'd care to look at prior editions of the newsletter, they may be found via the Status Register Newsletter page.
News     Common     PC     Linux     Mac     Amiga     CUCUG

April 2002


To move quickly to an article of your choice, use the search feature of your reader or the hypertext directory above. Enjoy.

April News:

The April Meeting

The next CUCUG meeting will be held on our regular third Thursday of the month: Thursday, April 18th, at 7:00 pm, at the Illinois Technology Center. Directions to the ITC are at the end of this newsletter.

The April 18 gathering will be one of our split SIG meetings. The Linux SIG, which meets at 6 pm - an hour prior to the main meeting, will be learning how to install software from source code or RPM archives (Redhat Package Manager). The Macintosh SIG will have Edwin Hadley working with Photoshop, making desktop pictures and exploring the topic of filters. The PC SIG will be doing one of their Tips and Tricks / Question and Answer Sessions. So, be inquisitive and bring your curiousity with you.

ToC

Welcome New Members

We'd like to welcome the newest members of our group, joining us in the last month: Gail Scherba (Mac 680xx, Mac PowerPC, CD-ROM Burner, Digital Video Camera), and Frank Cooper (Windows PC Desktop, Windows PC Desktop, CD-ROM Burner, Digital Video Camera, Broadband Internet Connection).

We'd also like to welcome renewing member Michael R. Habermann.

We welcome any kind of input or feedback from members. Have an article or review you'd like to submit? Send it in. Have a comment? Email any officer you like. Involvement is the driving force of any user group. Welcome to the group.

ToC

Linux Comparisons - Wednesday

From: Mark S Zinzow (markz@UIUC.EDU)

Wednesday, April 17, 2001, * 335 Grainger * 3:00 - 4:30 pm

Alex J. Lovell-Troy will be do a new comparison of recent popular Linux distributions. The sneak preview of this at last week's PC User's Group meeting was very informative. I'm looking forward to the additional detail that Alex has promised for this presentation.

Invite your friends, this meeting is open to the public!

For those unfamiliar with the Grainger Engineering Library a map showing the location of room 335 may be found at:

http://www.als.uiuc.edu/DRES/wheelchair/324PLAN3.html

More maps and images of Grainger are linked at:

http://www.staff.uiuc.edu/~markz/grainger.html

ToC

Palm Desktop 4.0 Released

TidBITS#622/25-Mar-02

Palm, Inc. today made Palm Desktop 4.0 for Macintosh available as a free download. The new version adds Mac OS X compatibility, support for records marked private, and the capability to import and export vCard and vCal files. (As a quick example of vCard use, you can drag a contact's title bar icon directly to the Contacts folder of a mounted iPod to add it to the rudimentary address book feature added in last week's iPod 1.1 software update.) Palm Desktop 4.0 is a 10 MB download. [JLC]

http://www.palm.com/software/desktop/mac.html

ToC

New Cinema Display, iPod, Bluetooth, and iMac Prices

by Mark H. Anbinder (mha@tidbits.com)
TidBITS#622/25-Mar-02

Apple CEO Steve Jobs last week unveiled two new products in his keynote address at Macworld Expo in Tokyo. A new 23-inch Apple Cinema HD Display with 1920 x 1200 resolution joins the company's existing LCD flat-panel displays and will sell for $3,500 when it becomes available next month. (In contrast, the 22-inch Apple Cinema Display, still available for $2,500, offers a mere 1600 by 1024 resolution.) The company says the new display's resolution will allow editing of HDTV (high definition television) digital video "with room to spare." At the same time, Apple introduced a more capacious iPod, a $500 version of the portable MP3 player with a 10 GB internal hard drive, available immediately. The existing 5 GB model remains available for $400. For an extra $50, either model can be personalized at the Apple Store with laser engraving of two lines of text containing up to 27 characters each.

http://www.apple.com/displays/acd23/
http://www.apple.com/displays/acd22/
http://www.apple.com/ipod/
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06608

Jobs also previewed Apple's upcoming support for Bluetooth. The short-range wireless communication technology is intended to link personal electronic devices such as computers, cell phones, and personal digital assistants when they're in close proximity. Promising "a Bluetooth solution that actually works and is easy to use," Jobs said that, in early April 2002, Mac OS X users will be able to download free preview software from Apple's Web site for use with the D-Link USB Bluetooth adapter, itself to be offered at the Apple Store for $50. Apple's Bluetooth software will automatically recognize other Bluetooth devices that come into range and offer to connect to them.

http://www.apple.com/bluetooth/
http://www.bluetooth.com/

At the same event, Jobs made the surprise announcement that, effective 21-Mar-02, current flat-panel iMac configurations have _increased_ in price by $100; orders placed prior to that date retain the price at the time of order. Citing rising component costs for memory and flat-panel screens, Jobs defended the price hikes as a better alternative to keeping the original pricing but reducing features. Given the demand for the new iMac, we don't see the price increase as a deal-killer: Apple says it has shipped 125,000 new iMacs since the model's introduction in January and is now shipping 5,000 iMacs per day.

http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2002/mar/20imac.html

ToC

April Mac OS X Security Update

TidBITS#625/08-Apr-02

Apple last week released the Security Update April 2002 through Software Update and the Apple software downloads site. The 4.7 MB download includes updates to a number of Mac OS X's Unix components, including OpenSSH 3.1p1, rsync 2.5.2, groff 1.17.2, PHP 4.1.2, sudo 1.6.5, mod_ssl 2.8.7, and mail_cmds. These updated components provide increased security against Unix-based exploits for gaining unauthorized access to your Mac. Everyone should download and install this security update. Most notable with this release, though, is Apple's first real use of their Security Announce mailing list, a PGP-signed posting to which carried more detailed change notes than were available via Software Update's description of the update. Plus, the version of the change notes on Apple's Security Updates page included links where you could read more about the exploits in question. It's taken over a year, but it appears that Apple is finally living up to all of the responsibilities to the community it took on by moving the Macintosh away from the highly secure Mac OS 9 to the far more open Unix core of Mac OS X. [ACE]

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=120111
http://lists.apple.com/mailman/listinfo/security-announce
http://www.apple.com/support/security/security_updates.html

ToC

Common Ground:

Join the CUCUG Folding@Home Team!

by Kevin Hisel (khisel @ kevinhisel.com)

I've got four PC boxes of varying talent and they run 24/7. I've always had an interest in distributed computing. Distributed computing enlists thousands of computers to work on small parts of a (usually) mathematical problem. The beauty of this is that people rarely always use all the power of their computers, so they can run an application in the background to solve big problems.

The most popular distributed computing application is SETI@Home. SETI (Search for Extra Terrestrial Intelligence) uses your computer to analyze small portions of radio telescope data to look for telltale evidence of alien life. It sounds neat, but I don't have a lot of confidence that this project will ever succeed.

Recently, I came across another distributed computing project called Folding@Home (http://folding.stanford.edu/) which allows you to use your unused processor cycles for a good cause. Go to their web site, download and install the appropriate application (versions are available for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X), choose a user name and team number and you're off and running. The application's calculations mathematically "fold" proteins in a quest to find new treatments for real diseases like Alzheimer and AIDS. When it finishes with one batch of calcs it uploads the results and downloads the next set of problems (called a work unit). The program comes with a neato molecular display that changes while it's working.

Folding@Home is now running on all four of my machines and it has had no apparent ill effects. At first I was reluctant to even install it on my main machine but the thing runs at such a low priority that I haven't noticed any kind of degradation at all. I'm running it on Windows XP and 98.

If you've got some extra processor cycles (and who doesn't?) why not run Folding@Home? You'll be helping to solve problems that could lead to new treatments for human disease and using your computer for a good cause.

If you do decide to give it a try, join the CUCUG Folding@Home Team! We are team number 3154 (just enter the team number into the configuration screen).

Now I feel a little less guilty running all these machines all day--hey, I'm doing good work here!

ToC

InsightBB Pricing

from Kevin Hisel (khisel @ kevinhisel.com)

Here's the official poop from InsightBB regarding their high-speed Internet pricing:

Current Prices:

Premium Installation $ 99.95

Insightbb.com monthly service $ 44.95
Insightbb.com modem rental $ 10.00
Digital Cable Discount $-10.00

So, the current rate is $54.95 with the modem. Insight's Marketing Coordinator told me that @Home customers who signed up before August 1, 2001 are charged only $44.95. There should be a discount line shown on your cable bill reflecting this. If you have Digital Cable TV with at least one programming pack, you'll also get an *additional* $10 discount. These "grandfathered" @Home rates are good only through the end of the year.

If you signed up for @Home service after August 1, 2001 you are probably already paying $54.95 (with the modem).

Anyone who had @Home service before August 1 should not be charged $54.95. If you are being charged the higher rate, contact Insight Communications at 217-384-2500. If you can't get through (pretty common, lately) contact me via e-mail and I can put you in direct contact with the Marketing Coordinator who has promised to fix these kinds of problems for CUCUG.

ToC

Return to sender: AOL nixes e-mail rule

By Jim Hu
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
March 22, 2002, 7:10 AM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1023-866659.html

America Online, the world's most popular Internet service, seems to be losing its home-field advantage.

Executives at AOL Time Warner, the parent company of AOL, are no longer requiring its many high-profile divisions to exclusively use an e-mail service developed by AOL's Netscape subsidiary. This flies in the face of a directive established last May that required all AOL Time Warner employees to use AOL technology as their corporate e-mail service.

Since the merger between AOL and Time Warner, executives have been trying to weave AOL's influence throughout the company's array of media and entertainment divisions. In the case of using AOL e-mail, the move was a gesture of solidarity behind the service and also offered potential cost savings by eliminating licensing fees for corporate e-mail software, such as Microsoft's Outlook or IBM's Lotus Notes.

Some AOL Time Warner divisions, including magazine publisher Time Inc. and Warner Music Group, were required to use a customized product developed by AOL's Netscape.

AOL Time Warner spokeswoman Tricia Primrose said the Netscape product was developed to meet specific needs of the company's various divisions.

"Unfortunately, it didn't work for everybody," Primrose said. "So we decided to give everybody the choice that met their needs. Some will stay with it, some will move to others."

AOL Time Warner divisions now are permitted to license e-mail management software from non-affiliated companies, such as Microsoft and IBM.

Other divisions have decided to stick with AOL and/or Netscape consumer e-mail products including AOL corporate, AOL Time Warner corporate and Time Warner Cable, according to Ann Brackbill, a spokeswoman for the AOL division.

Brackbill added that since the merger, the company has also consolidated its network backbone onto AOL's, which has made network operations across the company more efficient.

In the past, AOL Time Warner employees had been quick to complain about being forced to use AOL's e-mail system. The complaints mainly centered on the system's shortcomings for daily business tasks such as difficulty in sending large attachments and a reliance on cumbersome security features, according to an AOL Time Warner employee who spoke under the condition of anonymity.

AOL Time Warner executives have been trying to show how the marriage between the companies would chart a new course for the media empire. The company has taken steps to reduce costs by consolidating the technical management of all its Web sites, including those from Time Inc. magazines and Warner Bros. Executives have also been touting the company's ability to cross-promote its offline products, such as movies and television shows, to AOL's Internet audience.

However, most of these crossover benefits have been anecdotal. Furthermore, AOL Time Warner's latest financial earnings report showed that the AOL division, under fire for its lackluster financial growth, gained $138 million worth of advertisements from other AOL Time Warner divisions during the fourth quarter of 2001. That spending helped the AOL division report less of a revenue loss from the sour advertising environment.

News.com's John Borland contributed to this report.

ToC

Hunting for Easter eggs? Try a DVD

By Richard Shim
Staff Writer, CNET News.com
March 22, 2002, 4:00 AM PT
http://news.com.com/2100-1040-866520.html

Two weekends from now, people will search for hidden Easter eggs on the lawn--but they don't have to wait to find them inside the DVD version of "X-Men."

Easter eggs in the world of technology are not trinkets covered in hard, colored shells. Those found in software applications contain a different kind of goodie, usually consisting of a hidden message or command that developers tuck away as an inside joke or tip. They range from anything as tame as a list of the often-unnamed developers who wrote the application to something more substantial, such as extra scenes in a video game.

While Easter eggs are nothing new to software applications, they are increasingly finding their way into movies on DVD, especially recent releases such as "X-Men" and "The Godfather DVD Collection."

For example, viewers of "The Godfather DVD Collection" can watch James Caan's audition, an impersonation of Marlon Brando's "On the Waterfront" character, Terry Malloy, according to a Web posting on DVDeastereggs.com, a site that details how to find Easter eggs and gives a brief description of each egg.

On the "X-Men" DVD, there's a clip of an on-set joke that includes a cameo by Spider-Man.

The new features are the latest push to maintain the growing momentum of the DVD format. Last year, consumers spent $16.8 billion renting and buying movies in that format, which is more than twice as much as they spent on movie tickets, according to the DVD Entertainment Group, a nonprofit organization that advocates the DVD format. The amount spent on DVDs in 2001 was a 21 percent increase from the preceding year.

Consumers bought $4.6 billion worth of movies on DVDs--more than what they paid to buy movies on VHS tape, although videocassette recorders far outnumber DVD players. Last year, there were 25 million households in the United States with a DVD player, compared with 96 million with a VCR. In addition, DVD-ROM and DVD-recordable drives have become popular add-ons for desktop PCs, and DVD players are nearly universal in all but the cheapest laptops.

Easter eggs have "always been around, but now they're becoming more of a marketing tool," said Amy Jo Donner, executive director with the DVD Entertainment Group. "Studios are now publicly acknowledging them and in some cases actively putting Easter eggs in" movies on DVD.

It's not clear whether the Easter eggs have boosted sales, but some say that's not the point.

"I'm not sure that you can say that they've enhanced sales, but they are clearly popular," Donner said. "They're similar to looking for buried treasure, or like a modern-day Cracker Jack prize."

Cracking open some buzz

Geoffrey Kleinman, founder of DVDTalk.com, a forum for DVD enthusiasts, said Easter eggs are more about getting people to talk about movies and building online buzz.

"Someone will generally start a thread by talking about an Easter egg they found in a movie, and that will launch into a whole discussion about the movie," Kleinman said.

Martin Blythe, vice president of publicity with Paramount Home Entertainment, said Easter eggs are one of several features that studios have been pushing at an audience that is increasingly looking for more of an interactive experience. Film studios have already been releasing longer versions of movies, including scenes not in the theater release of a film, to tempt consumers into buying movies on DVD.

"For the generations that have been raised on gaming, they're more interested in interactivity, which is the direction that DVDs are now going in," Blythe said. "The dilemma is that we want people to find them, but we don't want to take away from the fun of hunting."

Rob Engstrom, founder of DVDeastereggs.com, said enthusiasm for the eggs doesn't come from just the studios and the developers. Seventy-five percent to 80 percent of the almost 600 Easter egg descriptions on DVDeastereggs.com come from readers. The remaining 15 percent to 20 percent come directly from movie studios.

Engstrom has noticed that more reports of Easter eggs are from newer releases of movies on DVD.

"They seem to be getting more frequent, especially in new releases," he said. "Some studios seem to be adding eggs just because they know people are looking for them...For programmers of the menu system, they're almost like a signature."

What came first? The chicken or the...

The inspiration for Easter eggs can be traced to one of the most commonly used key combinations in the computer world, Ctrl-Alt-Delete, which restarts a computer and was developed by David Bradley, one of the original 12 designers on the IBM PC. Bradley inserted the command code for programmers, but a magazine published the shortcut, and the public embraced it.

The 4.7GB capacity of DVDs gives developers and film directors more storage space to insert more than just shortcuts. Easter eggs can include segments that weren't part of the theater release, such as video clips, deleted scenes and messages from directors.

James Rocchi, a spokesman for DVD rental Web site Netflix, gives the example of "American Pie 2," in which the uncovered Easter egg shows stars of the movie throwing eggs at the screen.

Another example is in the movie "Mallrats." In the DVD movie's system menu, going to the Deleted Scenes icon and pressing the right arrow key on a DVD player lights the eyes of a robot that is in the corner of the screen. If a viewer presses Enter, a video clip of director Kevin Smith starts up in which he chastises viewers for having nothing better to do with their time.

"If you're watching this, I bet you thought this was going to be an Easter egg, something hidden. No, nothing, just us sitting here laughing at you as you lie there looking for Easter eggs on a D-V-D," Smith scolds on the DVD. "God almighty, get out there, live, smell the air, sniff a dog...You're looking for Easter eggs? No, no, no. What you should be looking for is apparel."

And yet there is another Easter egg on the "Mallrats" DVD: a music video of two key characters in "Mallrats," Jay and Silent Bob, dancing to the song "Build Me Up Buttercup." Going to the MCA Soundtrack Presentations icon and watching the presentation through to the end reveals the hidden video clip.

Rocchi called Easter eggs "garnish," adding that the eggs aren't enough of a feature to make a mediocre movie good, but depending on how the eggs are hidden and what they contain, they can make a mediocre movie into an interesting DVD. Besides, there's room on the disc.

"One of the exciting things about DVDs is that you can add new features to them, just like with software applications," he said. "And through word of mouth, consumer interest in DVDs can increase."

ToC

The PC Section:

Lies, Darn Lies, and "Windows More Secure Than Linux"

by Kris Klindworth (kris.klindworth@Carle.com), et al.

The March edition of The Status Register included a portion of an article by Paul Thurrott entitled "Windows More Secure Than Linux? Yep!". Some of us in the Linux SIG felt compelled to counter Paul's twisted use of statistics from an NTBugTraq security report. He was playing fast and loose with the numbers from this report by constructing apples to oranges comparisons to support his statements. Take this claim:

For at least the first 8 months of 2001, open-source poster child Linux was far less secure than Windows, according to the reputable NTBugTraq, Windows 2000 Server had less than half as many security vulnerabilities as Linux during the reported period.

Paul reached this erroneous conclusion by adding together the reported vulnerabilities for ALL of the Linux distributions. It doesn't work that way. You run one distribution, you are at risk for only the vulnerabilities listed in that distribution.

And then there is this claim:

When you break the numbers down by Linux distribution, Win2K had fewer vulnerabilities than RedHat Linux 7.0 or MandrakeSoft Mandrake Linux 7.2, and it tied with UNIX-leader Sun Microsystems Solaris 8.0 and 7.0.

In fact, when you look more closely at the NTBugTraq numbers, Windows 2000 has easily the WORST record in the group. The real numbers for these distributions since their release in the year 2000 are:


     Distribution                    Vulnerabilities
	 ------------------------------  ---------------
     Microsoft Windows 2000                76
     RedHat Linux 7.0                      56
     MandrakeSoft Mandrake Linux 7.2       33
     Debian Linux 2.2                      26
     Sun Solaris 8.0                       24 

The situation gets even worse for Windows 2000. Although the MS-IIS web-server ships as part of Windows 2000, the NTBugTraq report counted its 29 vulnerabilities for this period separately. Since the NTBugTraq numbers for Linux distributions included vulnerabilities for all applications that shipped with the distributions, an apples to apples comparison would require counting these MS-IIS vulnerabilities against Windows 2000. Under this more accurate comparison of platforms, the Windows 2000 count balloons to 105.

In reality, the whole exercise is silly. It isn't appropriate to use the NTBugTraq numbers to compare Linux against Windows. The NTBugTraq report itself advises against using its data for this purpose. Quoting the text at the top of the NTBugTraq report:

There is a distinct difference in the way that vulnerabilities are counted for Microsoft Windows and other operating systems. For instance, applications for Linux and BSD are often grouped in as subcomponents with the operating systems that they are shipped with. For Windows, applications and subcomponents such as Explorer often have their own packages that are considered vulnerable or not vulnerable outside of Windows and therefore may not be included in the count. This may skew numbers.

...

The numbers presented below should not be considered a metric by which an accurate comparison of the vulnerability of one operating system versus another can be made.

It is our sincere opinion that both Linux and Windows 2000 servers can be secured by competent system administrators. Further both Linux and Windows 2000 servers pose serious security threats in the hands of incompetent system administrators. Security is important. Let's generate more light and less heat shall we?

References:
      The Status Register article:
            http://www.cucug.org/sr/sr0203.html#PC.3
      Paul Thurrott article:
            http://www.wininformant.com/Articles/Index.cfm?ArticleID=23958
      NTBugTraq statistics:
            http://securityfocus.com/vulns/stats.shtml.

ToC

The Linux Section:

Linux Bits

from John Ross (hurricanejohnn@prairieinet.net)

Mozilla is just about to be released.

Mozilla is a project that consists of multiple applications: web browser, wysiwyg html editor, email client, chat client, and help viewer.

Mozilla is free, open source, and cross-platform (Mac OS X, Linux, Windows). I've been using Mozilla to create my web pages on my Mac for about a month -- it works pretty well.

www.mozilla.org

KDE 3.0 released!

KDE is a powerful Open Source graphical desktop environment for Unix workstations. It combines ease of use, contemporary functionality, and outstanding graphical design with the technological superiority of the Unix operating system.

You can find a list of improvements that KDE 3 brings at: http://www.kde.org/announcements/announce-3.0.html

Yellow Dog Linux 2.2 is now available.

YDL 2.2 redefines your PowerPC experience. A complete Linux operating system, YDL 2.2 offers an elegant array of highly customizable graphical environments; familiar, functional internet, office, and multi-media applications; and all of the expected code development and server tools that have become the foundation for a traditional, stable, fast Linux box.

http://www.yellowdoglinux.com/products/ydl.shtml

Sharp Zaurus PDA is available in local stores.

It was advertised in an Office Depot circular in the weekend paper. This PDA runs embedded Linux and includes many applications including a web browser (Opera), productivity apps, an mpeg player, and an email client.

Besides the fact that it runs Linux, what makes this PDA interesting is its embedded keyboard and dual card slots - CompactFlash Type II and Secure Digital card slot.

http://www.linuxdevices.com/articles/AT2134869242.html

Apache 2.0 now available.

The Apache HTTP Server Project is proud to announce the first GA [General Availability] release of Apache 2.0. Apache 2.0 has been running on the Apache.org website since December of 2000 and has proven to be very reliable.

Apache 2.0 offers numerous enhancements, improvements and performance boosts over the 1.3 codebase. The most visible and noteworthy addition is the ability to run Apache in a hybrid thread/process mode on any platform that supports both threads and processes. This has shown to improve the scalability of the Apache HTTP Server significantly in our testing. Apache 2.0 also includes support for filtered I/O. This allows modules to modify the output of other modules before it is sent to the client. We have also included support for IPv6 on any platform that supports IPv6.

This version of Apache is known to work on many versions of Unix, BeOS, OS/2, Windows, and Netware. Because of many of the advancements in Apache 2.0, the initial release of Apache is expected to perform equally well on all supported platforms.

http://www.apache.org/dist/httpd/Announcement2.html

ToC

Mandrake Linux 8.2 PPC Beta is out

In a long awaited move, a beta version of the 8.2/PPC has joined the i586 version of the upcoming Mandrake Linux 8.2 distribution. This beta has a bit different schedule from the i586 version, but it should be roughly equivalent to beta2, with a few bug-fixes, and some PPC-specific features.

What's new since 8.0?

Ahem... It's been almost one year now, asking "what hasn't changed" would be easier to explain. .-)

As Uncle Stew is feeling very lazy today, I'll simply point you to the stuff we wrote about i586 beta. As far as the "applications" are concerned, this distribution is comparable to the second beta of the 8.2/i586, plus a few bug-fixes. What's more important is the support for the Mac- hardware, and network protocols.

PPC-specific features

By far the most important news is that 8.2/PPC should work on both "OldWorld" and "NewWorld" machines. In particular, it DOES work on a 7600 test machine we have in the lab. There have even been some efforts towards supporting the IBM's PPC machines, but this has been put "on ice" for now, due to the lack of demand, and lack of the test machine. Other new features include:

(*) Thanks to the PPC distribution, 8.2/i586 users will also profit from improved support for Appletalk protocol and (to a certain extend) FireWire devices!

Test the hardware support!

As you can imagine, we have a very limited supply of Apple hardware. Thus, if you want to see 8.2/PPC working nicely on YOUR machine, give this beta a try, and report your experiences. I'll monitor this story, and if there is enough interest I'll do the same kind of "test this" for PPC distribution, as I do for the i586 betas, but concentrating on PPC specific hardware, and Mac specific programs.

Note: everything what is said about testing the /i586 distribution applies to the PPC version too, except for the "cooker" list. That is, PPC distribution has its own "cooker-PPC" mailing list, which is used for discussing the PPC-hardware- and Apple- specific development.

Subscribe to the dedicated mailing list by sending an email to sympa@linux-mandrake.com with the words "SUB cooker-ppc" in the body of your message. You can also follow the discussions by reading two online archives:

http://www.mandrake.com/en/archives/cooker-ppc/
http://marc.theaimsgroup.com/?l=mandrake-cooker-ppc&r=1&w=2

Download 8.2 PPC Beta:

Czech Republic:
      ftp://mandrake.redbox.cz/Mandrake-iso/ppc/

Estonia:
      ftp://ftp.aso.ee/pub/os/Linux/distributions/mandrake-iso/ppc/

France:
      ftp://fr2.rpmfind.net/linux/Mandrake-iso/ppc/
      ftp://ftp.ciril.fr/pub/linux/mandrake-iso/ppc/
      ftp://ftp.lip6.fr/pub/linux/distributions/mandrake-iso/ppc/
      ftp://ftp.proxad.net/pub/Distributions_Linux/Mandrake-iso/ppc/

Germany:
      ftp://ftp-stud.fht-esslingen.de/pub/Mirrors/Mandrake-iso/ppc/

Netherlands:
      ftp://ftp.nluug.nl/pub/os/Linux/distr/Mandrake/Mandrake-iso/ppc/

Sweden:
      ftp://ftp.chello.se/pub/Linux/Mandrake-iso/ppc/

Taiwan:
      ftp://mdk.linux.org.tw/pub/mandrake-iso/ppc/

United States:
      ftp://carroll.cac.psu.edu/pub/linux/distributions/mandrake-iso/ppc/
      ftp://ftp.cse.buffalo.edu/pub/Linux/mandrake-iso/ppc/
      ftp://ftp.orst.edu/pub/mandrake-iso/ppc/
      ftp://ftp.software.umn.edu/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandrake-iso/ppc/
      ftp://ftp.umr.edu/pub/linux/mandrake/Mandrake-iso/ppc/

ToC

The Macintosh Section:

Late for the Train: Editing Digital Video on the Cheap

by Derek K. Miller (dkmiller@penmachine.com)
TidBITS#621/18-Mar-02

For a long time, digital video editing seemed more work than it was worth, and I let Apple's DV train pass right on by. Recently, I was forced to catch up all too quickly, but I managed to do it without emptying my bank account on new hardware and software.

The Train Has Left the Station

One of my jobs is being a drummer for a retro-'60s faux British Invasion band here in Vancouver called The Neurotics.

http://www.theneurotics.com/

In spring 2001, our booking agent arranged to have one of our larger performances professionally videotaped by a camera crew. Several months later, she asked if we could make a three-minute promotional video from the resulting VHS tape, since many high-end clients want to see what they'll be paying for.

We had no particular deadline, no budget, and no one who knew what they were doing. The rest of the band members swiveled their eyes in my direction.

Laying the Tracks

I decided to work with what I had: an older beige Power Mac G3, USB video input, the free version of iMovie 1.0.2 for Mac OS 9 (iMovie 2 for Mac OS 9 remains a $50 upgrade), and whatever other hardware and software I had kicking around. I wanted to buy only new videotapes and CD-Rs for the end product.

I figured that I would digitize the audio and video separately, then put everything together in my very limited spare time over the course of a couple months. I started by watching the whole performance and took many notes. Then I recorded the entire show's audio from my VCR (in mono) into Coaster, the free audio digitizer from Visual Click Software:

http://www.visualclick.de/products/coaster/

I broke the resulting files into a few chunks with the QuickTime Pro Player, then backed up the results to CD using Roxio's Toast.

http://www.apple.com/quicktime/buy
http://www.roxio.com/en/products/toast

Next, I fired up Pro Tools Free, a freeware 8-track sound mixer, which I used to edit (again in mono) the best bits of audio into a continuous montage of various songs and silly stage banter, with cross-fades, seamless splices, and other trickery to make sure it kept up a good pace. I saved it as an 18 MB AIFF file that was three and a half minutes long.

http://www.digidesign.com/ptfree/

This soundtrack formed the backbone of everything else I did. Once it was finished, I left it alone.

Scanning the Scenery

The next step was to tackle the video. I used my XLR8 InterView USB video capture device to digitize useful videotape segments. The InterView captures at 320 x 240 pixels, which is a lower resolution than the 720 x 480 output of a digital camcorder's DV (digital video) stream. However, it shares the same 30 frames per second (fps) frame rate as a camcorder.

http://www.xlr8.com/ProductInfo/interview/
http://www.adamwilt.com/DV.html

Digitizing only short segments (between 30 seconds and 2 minutes each) became necessary because I have a relatively small 12 GB partitioned hard drive with lots of stuff on it already. At 215 MB or so per minute, there's no way it could hold two hours of video. (I ended up having to back up and purge my MP3 collection to make room.)

iMovie is designed to take digital video only from a DV camera through a FireWire port. With some trickery, however, it can also import DV files (but no other type of movie) from a hard disk. I used QuickTime Pro to convert each InterView QuickTime video file into a DV-formatted file. That scaled up the dimensions of the video images, but with the DV compression algorithm, each file stayed roughly the same (fairly huge) size, using up roughly twice as much hard disk space as the raw video files required on their own. After another backup, I deleted the non-DV movie files.

Coupling the Cars

After all my importing and conversion, I created an iMovie 1 project. Although I have both Strata VideoShop 4.5 (included with the InterView) and Adobe Premiere LE 5.1 (included with my FireWire/USB card), I find iMovie so much easier to use that I was willing to go through all the DV conversion rigamarole just to use it. That's a testament to the good job Apple did simplifying iMovie to do the very essentials.

http://www.apple.com/imovie/imovie1.html
http://www.strata.com/
http://www.adobe.com/products/premiere/

I next imported the entire audio track and did nothing with it for the rest of the time I worked.

After dumping a few of the DV stream files at a time into the iMovie project folder, I ran iMovie so it would find the clips and automatically import them as "strays." I then dragged them into the Timeline Viewer in rough order before I quit and dropped in the next batch, so that iMovie's clip tray wouldn't get full. (iMovie 2 removes this limitation.)

http://www.apple.com/imovie/

I did my editing in iMovie in one day, dragging files around, shortening them, creating transitions, and trying to get the images to match the rhythm of the soundtrack. During that time, I used GraphicConverter and Photoshop to create logo-title cards, manipulate still photos, and generate other JPEG and PICT files. On the Web, I also found an old-style "Indian head" TV test pattern, and a little stock clip of applause for the end of the video.

http://www.lemkesoft.com/us_gcabout.html
http://www.adobe.com/products/photoshop/
http://www.pharis-video.com/p2807.htm
http://www.apple.com/imovie/freestuff/sounds.html#people

Since I had sampled them separately, I didn't try to sync up video and audio at all, even though they were from the same performance. In the end, I was surprised at a few clips where it looked like people were playing precisely what was on the audio track - even when the audio and video were from completely different parts of the show.

The End of the Line

I saved the completed video using iMovie's "Expert" QuickTime export settings, at 640 x 480, 29.97 frames per second, Cinepak compression at maximum quality, and uncompressed mono audio, 16-bit, 22.5 kHz. Essentially, that was as high quality as I could manage. This file was about 260 MB, and took my Power Mac G3/266 about four hours to generate.

http://www.webopedia.com/TERM/C/Cinepak.html

I exported and posted large (13 MB) and small (6 MB) Web videos. Before posting them to the band's Web site, I opened them in the QuickTime Pro Player and zoomed them to double size for better visibility in Web browsers, especially on large monitors.

After I outlined most of this process in a TidBITS Talk discussion of digital video, Duane Byram of Apple's QuickTime engineering group noticed that he had to wait as each video downloaded before it would play. He offered a simple fix: save the file again from the QuickTime Pro Player as a "Self Contained" movie file. Apparently, any edits made to a saved movie file (such as adding annotations) prevent it from fast-starting when downloaded. Saving a self-contained version _after_ all modifications solves the problem.

http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=1586

Following comments from the rest of the band and our agent, I popped back into iMovie and changed a few small things, then exported and uploaded again the next night. I used Apple's iTools HomePage tool to create the video pages, since it was fast and I was hosting the video on our iTools site anyway.

http://itools.mac.com/

I burned a few different versions of the video to CD - first a data backup, then a Video CD/audio hybrid (with some audio-only song demos we'd recorded a couple of years ago on the audio portion), then a QuickTime/audio hybrid. Those were for clients who would rather watch the video on a computer or DVD player. (Having missed the DV train, of course, I don't have a DVD burner.)

http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/2496/vcdfaq.html

Finally, I used my ATI Xclaim 3D Plus video card's analog video- out port to transfer the completed video (running full-screen from the QuickTime Pro player) to VHS tape, then added the audio-only song demos on the end with static title cards displaying as they play. I made the title cards in Photoshop, and simply manually switched between layers to display each song's title as it played from iTunes during recording. A bit awkward (especially since I had to do it all manually again for each new master tape), but it worked.

http://www.ati.com/products/mac/xclaim3dplus/

Unloading the Luggage

Making the video took a lot of time, but very little expense. I have never edited video of any kind before, so I think it turned out quite well.

Surprisingly, the actual "video editing" was a small part of the procedure. Just as in real movies, preparation and post-production are much bigger pieces. Most of the work was not in the video editing, but in the sampling and conversion, and (surprisingly) in the creation of the audio track. I spent a lot of time doing other things (or sleeping) while my Mac turned one sort of file into another sort of file. I see now why people who do this for a living buy the fastest computers possible, regardless of cost.

The final video quality is not spectacular, but it is full-screen, 30 fps, and it looks like old film from the '60s (slightly washed- out colours, somewhat grainy), which is perfectly appropriate for our retro-'60s band. It also helped that the original footage, shot by a team of professionals, was so good.

My main frustrations with iMovie 1 were its lack of support for anything but DV stream video, its limited clip-tray space, its unwillingness to run on more than one monitor, and its inability to view the audio track waveforms visually, so that I could coordinate the video more precisely with the sound. (All of these shortcomings were fixed in iMovie 2, except for the multiple monitor support.) I liked the multi-level undo and the overall ease of using iMovie, compared to Strata or Premiere.

In iMovie, the video never played smoothly on my old Mac, even though it played fine in QuickTime Player after export. For that reason, and because much of my audio software doesn't work in Mac OS X (my normal environment), I worked under Mac OS 9.2.2, with virtual memory off, for the whole process. I also have 416 MB of RAM - I recommend lots of it, whether your machine is old or new.

Once I returned to Mac OS X, I discovered that iMovie 2 (which comes with Mac OS X) works rather well even on my old G3. Luckily, iMovie projects move seamlessly between iMovie 1 and 2, and between Mac OS 9 and X - you can even, it seems, open iMovie 2 projects in iMovie 1, which is impressive.

http://www.apple.com/imovie/macos9/

Looking Back on the Journey

So how did it turn out? See for yourself:

http://homepage.mac.com/neurotics/

Editing this, my first real video, reminds me of the joy I felt when I first got into desktop publishing 15 years ago or so and ditched Letraset forever. It was fun, but the rest of my family (not to mention the band) is probably glad I'm finished - for now.

[Derek K. Miller is a homemaker, writer, editor, Web guy, and drummer whose wife and two daughters are pleased that he finally brought the VCR and little TV back upstairs. Derek lives in Vancouver, Canada, and tries to keep his weblog interesting.]

http://www.penmachine.com/

ToC

Top Mac OS X Utilities: Restoring Mac OS 9 Functionality

by Adam C. Engst (ace@tidbits.com)
TidBITS#622/25-Mar-02

Everyone knows that the group that's by far the most important to Apple is composed of small utility developers. Several years back, Apple saw that the Mac market was stagnating because almost every conceivable utility had already been developed. Realizing drastic resuscitation measures were necessary, Apple moved quickly to replace the Mac OS with the NeXTstep-based Mac OS X, hoping to give Mac developers the opportunity to restore Mac OS 9 functionality to Mac OS X and further extend Mac OS X's limited interface, to draw Unix hackers into the Mac camp, and to provide a market for all seven NeXT utility developers.

Sarcasm aside, the number of utilities available for Mac OS X has indeed mushroomed of late. In preparing for this article, we turned to TidBITS Talk for recommendations, and the response was overwhelming - so much so that we've decided to publish a group of articles on the topic; this one will focus on utilities that restore Mac OS 9 functionality to Mac OS X. Read through the TidBITS Talk discussion for an unfiltered view of what's coming up.

http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=1497+1600

Without further ado, here are the top utilities for restoring Mac OS 9 functionality to Mac OS X, though please note that these are not intended to be full-fledged reviews - we simply don't have enough experience with each utility. If we've missed your favorite utility, bring it up on TidBITS Talk.

WindowShade X

The windowshade functionality that's been in the Mac OS since System 7.5 actually dates back to an independent control panel for System 6 from Robert Johnson. Double-click a window's title bar or click the collapse box and the window "rolls up" into the title bar. You can still position the title bar anywhere on screen; it's an efficient way to reduce the space taken up by windows. Mac OS X eliminated this approach in favor of minimizing windows to Dock icons. Unfortunately, Mac OS X's approach fills up the Dock quickly, and it can often be difficult to distinguish between different minimized windows. But with Unsanity's WindowShade X, you get everything Mac OS 9 could do and more. There are four methods of invoking WindowShade X (the minimize button, double-clicking the title bar, Control-double- clicking the title bar, and pressing Command-M), and each method can cause a window to minimize to the Dock, roll up into the title bar, make the window transparent, or hide the application. Although you can control the opacity of windows made transparent, I find that option, like almost all other transparent interface features in Mac OS X, utterly annoying. WindowShade X is $7 shareware, and it's a 374K download.

http://www.unsanity.com/haxies.php

ASM & X-Assist

In Mac OS X, Apple tried to do too much with the Dock, making it serve as an application launcher, list of running applications, and more. Mac OS 9 broke those features out, and in particular, the list of running applications was always tucked away in the menu bar's application menu. In Mac OS X, the clock and other menu bar icons take over that space until you install ASM or X-Assist, both of which return the application menu to the upper right corner. In ASM's preferences panel, you choose whether it should show as an icon or a menu title, or both, and how much space the menu should take up. Other settings control how the contents of the ASM menu appear, what special commands (such as for hiding and showing applications) appear, and so on. Most important, it offers a return to Mac OS 9's window layering, which ties all of an application's windows together, so clicking one brings them all to the front (that happens in Mac OS X only if you click the application's Dock icon or switch applications using Command-Tab). ASM also offers a Single Application Mode that hides all applications other than the current one. X-Assist replicates most of ASM's feature set and offers two additional features: the capability to display a user-defined hierarchical menu of files, folders, and disks (much as you can do in Mac OS 9's Apple menu), and support for special plug-ins (the included samples can set the Mac's volume and play MP3 files). Though both appear to work, several people have said that they found ASM more stable. ASM author Frank Vercruesse asks for donations if you like ASM, which is a 354K download for version 2.0.2; X-Assist is free and is a 291K download.

http://asm.vercruesse.de/
http://members.ozemail.com.au/~pli/x-assist/

FruitMenu & Classic Menu

The Apple menu has been a fixture of the Mac OS for years, and although Apple wisely kept it in Mac OS X, it's a shadow of its former customizable self. Two utilities, Sig Software's Classic Menu and Unsanity's FruitMenu, recall the old days. Classic Menu is the simpler of the two; it merely displays the contents of the Classic Menu Items folder located in your Library folder's Preferences folder. Populate it with aliases to files, folders, and disks, and you'll have something that works much like the old Apple menu when you click on the Apple menu icon itself. Other helpful menu items add aliases of selected items to the Classic Menu Items folder, open that folder in the Finder, and let you select a different folder to use. Access the default Mac OS X Apple menu (which has useful commands like Log Out and Restart) by clicking right next to the Apple menu icon. Although FruitMenu provides the same functionality as Classic Menu, it more closely resembles Power On Software's Action Menus in providing a preference panel for arranging your Apple menu and offering custom items not normally available, such as one that displays your current IP address. Overall, FruitMenu feels a bit more powerful, and it's only $7 shareware, compared to Classic Menu's $10, but both will do the job. FruitMenu 1.5.2 is a 481K download; Classic Menu is a mere 43K download.

http://www.unsanity.com/haxies.php
http://www.sigsoftware.com/classicmenu/

SharePoints

In Mac OS 9, you could share any particular folder you wanted, and you could create users and groups that would have access to different folders. That functionality, though present under the hood in Mac OS X, wasn't easily accessible until the release of SharePoints. Operating either as a stand-alone application or as a preferences panel, SharePoints lets you share any given folder and create users who can access specific shared folders but who cannot login via Telnet or SSH and who lack home directories. As a small bonus, SharePoints lets you specify a custom message to be displayed to users on connection. The author asks that for donations if you like SharePoints; SharePoints 2.0.4 is an 824K download.

http://www.hornware.com

Xounds

Although Apple has only dabbled in interface sounds, the sound effects for interface actions available from the Appearance control panel were effective at providing an additional dimension to using the Mac OS. Those disappeared in Mac OS X, but Unsanity's Xounds can bring many of them back again. Xounds offers to import existing sound sets (though importing a third-party set and switching between it and the sounds from Mac OS 9 caused Xounds to stop working until I reinstalled Xounds), and provides roughly the same level of control as you had in Mac OS 9. You can choose to play sound effects associated with menus, windows, controls, and the Finder, although dragging sounds aren't yet supported. Xounds 1.1.2 is a 384K download; it's $7 shareware and works for only an hour per login if left unregistered.

http://www.unsanity.com/haxies.php

Next Up

Keep in mind that I chose these utilities based purely on the fact that they returned features to Mac OS X that existed in a stock installation of Mac OS 9. In future installments in this series, I'll look at utilities that extend Mac OS X's new features in useful and interesting ways, utilities that bring to Mac OS X features that independent developers had added to Mac OS 9, and utilities that bring Mac OS X's Unix underpinnings into the light of Aqua.

ToC

Top Mac OS X Utilities: Restoring Third Party Capabilities

by Adam C. Engst (ace@tidbits.com)
TidBITS#625/08-Apr-02

In the first installment of this series on Mac OS X utilities, I looked at utilities that restored capabilities inherent to Mac OS 9 that we had all been accustomed to over the years. For many people though, the full Mac OS 9 experience came not just from Apple, but from a bevy of utility developers who extended Mac OS 9 well beyond the stock configuration. This week I'll look at a few of the most important utilities that have evolved to bring those capabilities into the world of Mac OS X. We've examined many of these utilities in the past; in those cases, consider this compilation a refresher on our previous scattershot coverage.

http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06763

In an attempt to keep this article relatively short, I've held a significant set of utilities for a later article. Utilities like DragThing, LaunchBar, QuicKeys X, Keyboard Maestro, MenuStrip, PiDock, and others certainly count as restoring capabilities offered by third party utilities in Mac OS 9, but when you look deeply at them, you realize that they all basically do the same thing. You can think of them as alternate control mechanisms for operating system functions like displaying and opening files, typing text, restarting the Mac, and more, so I'll cover them as a group later on.

Finally, a few new utilities have appeared that should have been mentioned last week. I'll catch up with them at some future point, but in the meantime, check out the TidBITS Talk threads for the latest additions and for utilities that have slipped through my admittedly arbitrary categorizations.

http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tlkthrd=1497+1600

Default Folder X

Apple has never done a good job of making it easy to open and save files, and as Matt Neuburg pointed out in "Apple's Dirty Little Secret" in TidBITS-601_, Mac OS X is in many ways a step back even from Mac OS 9. In earlier versions of the Mac OS, savvy users fixed Apple's Open and Save dialogs with utilities like Power On Software's Action Files (the successor to Now Software's Super Boomerang) and St. Clair Software's Default Folder. Only Default Folder has made the jump to Mac OS X so far, and in doing so, it has fixed a number of Mac OS X's Open and Save dialog navigation problems in Carbon (though not yet Cocoa) applications. We wrote about Default Folder X 1.0 when it shipped; it's well worth it for anyone frustrated by Apple's clumsy and inconsistent Open and Save dialogs. The just-released Default Folder X 1.1 offers a variety of small feature improvements and bug fixes, including the option of showing free disk space and icons in Default Folder's menus. Compatibility has been improved with a number of programs, including the heavily used Microsoft Office X. Default Folder X 1.1 is $35 shareware and is a 1.5 MB download.

http://www.stclairsoft.com/DefaultFolderX/
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06594
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06718

CopyPaste-X & PTHPasteboard

For most people, Apple's implementation of the clipboard is sufficient. Select something, choose Copy or Cut, and the selected item replaces whatever was on the clipboard and is ready for pasting. Applications like Nisus Writer and utilities like CopyPaste (reviewed way back in TidBITS-364_) cleverly extended the clipboard by making it possible to access multiple clipboards. That functionality has arrived in Mac OS X thanks to CopyPaste-X and PTHPasteboard. Both utilities track recently copied or cut items (20 for PTHPasteboard and between 10 and 200 for CopyPaste-X) and let you paste any one of them into other applications with a keystroke or a click in a palette. Both also save the recently remembered items through restarts, but CopyPaste-X goes beyond this in making these clipboards editable, storing user-defined clipboards permanently for repeated use, and providing full drag & drop to and from the CopyPaste-X palette. If your needs are minimal, PTHPasteboard is probably sufficient, but for a full-fledged multiple clipboard utility, CopyPaste-X is the only way to go. CopyPaste-X is a 1.3 MB download and costs $20 shareware. PTHPasteboard is a 123K download; it's free, although donations are accepted.

http://www.scriptsoftware.com/copypaste/cpx.html
http://www.pth.com/PTHPasteboard/
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=00751

USB Overdrive

Apple ships only single-button mice with Macs, but many people prefer mice or trackballs with buttons, scroll wheels, missile launchers, and so on. Some vendors of these alternate pointing devices have provided Mac OS X drivers (Kensington is a notable example), but for many devices, the only way to bring them into the world of Mac OS X is through Alessandro Levi Montalcini's USB Overdrive. Currently still in beta for Mac OS X, USB Overdrive lets you program multiple buttons and access scroll wheels, although I suspect he won't support missile launching. Alessandro is extremely up front about the fact that USB Overdrive is currently a beta, so be sure to read all the release notes and known problems, and send in detailed reports of anything you experience. USB Overdrive beta 4 is a 617K download; it will be shareware when released.

http://www.usboverdrive.com/trouble.html
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=05831

Snapz Pro X

Though the Mac OS has, since time immemorial, offered the capability of capturing an image of the screen, and even though Apple enhanced this screen capture capability to capture just windows a few years back, everyone who's serious about taking screenshots uses a third party utility. The same truism applies in Mac OS X. There have been numerous such programs over the years, but Ambrosia Software's Snapz Pro is the screen capture utility of choice for many people, TidBITS staff members included. Snapz Pro X makes it possible to take professional screenshots in Mac OS X; although it isn't quite as snappy as it was as an extension in Mac OS 9, it's still the only game in town for screenshots. Snapz Pro X 1.0.2 costs $30 ($50 for Movie Capture); a licensed version also ships for free with most new Macs. The utility is a 13.1 MB download.

http://www.ambrosiasw.com/utilities/snapzprox/
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=00696
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06546
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06707

Font Reserve & Suitcase

Another area in which the Mac OS has never met the needs of serious users is in font management. With 15 or 20 fonts, it's not a big deal, but with the hundreds of fonts and font-intensive projects many users have, a font management utility like Suitcase or Font Reserve has always been essential. Matt Neuburg reviewed Font Reserve 3.0 in TidBITS-620_; he has a review of Suitcase 10 coming soon. Both utilities help you gather all your fonts from the various different locations Mac OS X stashes them. Then you can group the fonts into sets and activate and deactivate them at will to keep the current set at a manageable size. Font Reserve 3.0 costs $90 with $30 upgrades; Suitcase 10 is $100 with $50 upgrades.

http://www.fontreserve.com/products/frmac.html
http://www.extensis.com/suitcase/
http://db.tidbits.com/getbits.acgi?tbart=06751

ToC

Something Interesting

from Edwin Hadley (e-hadley@life.uiuc.edu)

Here's an item of interest.

http://www.wired.com/news/mac

has an interesting site caslled the Cult of Macintosh.

Such items as (updated Mar. 20, '02)

Where Old Macs Go Off to Thrive
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,51231,00.html
- Japan! They are collecting old 'All-In-One' Macs

Macs Macs Macs Macs Macs
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,51189,00.html
- Apart from Apple's headquarters in Cupertino, California, perhaps the only other Macintosh mecca on the planet is the giant Computer Mac Kan store in Tokyo's famed Akihabara "Electric Town" district.

The Old Mac That Went to Pot
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,50820,00.html
- Illustrating the connection between Macs and marijuana, an old Mac Classic has been converted into a bong.

PCs Are Incorrect on TV
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,50441,00.html
- In TV and movies, the bad guys wear black or have foreign accents. They also use PCs, while the good guys use Macs.

Master Maker of Mockup Macs
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,49918,00.html
- Japanese photographer Isamu Sanada fancies himself another Steve Jobs, spending weeks designing Macintosh computers. He's so good at anticipating Apple, he dreams up machines before the company does.

Absorbing Apple's Aesthetic
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,49920,00.html
- Trainee industrial designers usually learn how to design in broad categories, like cars. They never learn how to make "Fords" or "Sonys." But one teacher is so enamored of Apple's design, his students get to design Macintoshes. By Leander Kahney.

A Mac Box Worth Weight in Gold
http://www.wired.com/news/mac/0,2125,51208,00.html
- An original Macintosh computer is now considered worthless. But the box it came in? It goes for hundreds of dollars on eBay.

Plus some other articles about Apple fans designing future Macs. Also another about the popularity of the Powerbook 2400 because it is smaller and lighter than many Powerbooks.

ToC

Quicktime Pro

From: "Phil A. Lefebvre" (p-lefebvre@northwestern.edu)

On 4/3/02 at 1:21 PM -0500, mpno wrote:

I, for one, applaud Apple's decision to stop giving away one of their crown jewels for free.

I don't disagree that Apple needed to find ways to increase revenue, and QT Pro is worth $30. OTOH, I didn't appreciate the loss of lifetime tech support promised to me when I bought my Mac, or reneging on the promise of advanced OS support for the 8500, so here is my revenge:

For those who don't know, Movie Player v2.5 (the predecessor to QuickTime Pro Player) from QuickTime 2.5 (found on System 7.6 CDs, games or anything else of that era that required QT) will give you access to 99% of the features of QuickTime Pro for free. The only thing it can't do is the Internet stuff. (QTV, open URL, etc.) Oh, and it doesn't have that wonderful brushed aluminum look.

If you want to save a web movie to your hard drive, most browsers store the movie in a temporary files folder you can access. In MS Internet Explorer, find them in System Folder>Preferences>Explorer>Temorary Items Folder. Download the movie, watch it once to make sure it is all there, open that folder, drag the often cryptically named .mov file to another location on your hard drive, change file type to MooV and creator code to TVOD, viola, saved web movie. Only you can decide if not having to do that is worth $30.

A steal at $30, though I did not like having to pay the $30 again to upgrade to 5.0. Then again, the new "lite" sorenson 3 codec is worth $30 by itself easily.

What I describe is perfectly legal even from an anal obey-all-software-license point-of-view. However, even if you want to spend money, I say spend it on supporting an Apple developer, before Apple alienates/kills them all. BTV is only $20 for access to most QuickTime Pro features, and adds several more cool ones of its own, including capture. BTV Pro is $40 for even more way cool features. It's such a steal I told the developer to raise his price, so get it before he decides to.

Compare BTV to QT Pro at http://www.bensoftware.com. (PS: Seems to be down at the moment. Was there yesterday when I sold a friend on it.)

--
Phil Lefebvre
Chicago, IL

ToC

The Amiga Section:

Executive Update - Amiga Status Announcement

Bill McEwen - March 25, 2002
URL: http://www.amiga.com/corporate/032502-mcewen.shtml

Greetings once again - To One and All:

Fresh from a fantastic showing at the Embedded Systems Conference in San Francisco, where Amiga Anywhere wowed and amazed commentators, developers and potential customers alike, I wanted to take the time to get the Amiga community caught up on our flagship project, the AmigaOS.

Contrary to the nonsense that is being spread about by a few very noisy people, the AmigaOS is more than alive and well and we have very exciting plans for the future with more hardware designs and exciting new features. We have very long term life and long term goals for this amazing product.

We look to the AmigaOS as the desktop solution and Amiga Anywhere as the embedded solution for Cell Phones, PDA's, Set Top Boxes, Internet Appliances and some other new products. When AmigaOS 5.0 hits the road then you will see these code bases merging and the two worlds will allow the content to co-mingle and proliferate.

Another way to view this is that AmigaOS is for the Amiga Community whereas Amiga Anywhere introduces Amiga to the rest of the world. It is then that they can join us and be part of the Amiga community. It is all about market share and the opportunity to further expand and grow the Amiga market and user base.

As you know, we took the strategic decision to outsource development of the next generation hardware and compatible AmigaOS version. This was done to allow us to concentrate on AmigaOS5, our long term goal, whilst also providing a compelling and high performance path from AmigaOS3. What this does is give the Amiga community a product that they can be proud of in the short and medium term.

The hardware contract was awarded to Eyetech Limited, of Stokesley, England, and the software contract was awarded to Hyperion Entertainment, of Belgium. Both companies have an impressive reputation for quality products and a deep commitment to the Amiga, having played a major part in keeping the platform going through the last five years.

These two contracts underlie the first new combined Amiga hardware and software product in over 8 years; the AmigaOne, a product whose features and functions were set after looking at the thousands of mails, articles and comments generated by the community. A PowerPC (PPC) CPU was asked for and it was selected. The ability to take advantage of the latest video and audio technology was demanded and it was successively built in. USB support was talked about and we obliged. A better filesystem, integrated TCP/IP and 3D, an enhanced Workbench; all have been designed into AmigaOS4.

The excitement is growing. The AmigaOne is already running PPC Linux, AmigaOS4 is progressing rapidly on 68K Amigas equipped with PPC accelerators and integration is currently underway. Orders for developer boards are already being taken and many developers are working closely with the AmigaOS4 team to ensure that their applications are optimized for the future.

It has been a long haul and there have been many bumps on the road. With the world economy starting to move out of recession, and the success of Amiga Anywhere, Amiga Inc is moving from strength to strength. It could not have been done without the support and commitment of the Amiga community and we want the community to know that we share its support and commitment to the success of both our product lines, Amiga Anywhere and the AmigaOS.

Hardware Update

Last month, Fleecy Moss, CTO of Amiga Inc visited the headquarters of Eyetech and spent a few hours with Eyetech management, engineers and their newest addition, a PPC mother board that will be the at the heart of the AmigaOne. Running a version of PPC Linux specially designed for it to permit evaluation, the board and its peripherals performed flawlessly with the system being very responsive, boding well for an optimised and efficient AmigaOS in the future.

The original hardware plan for the AmigaOne was to create two products, a motherboard with an integrated A1200 interface, allowing for the first version of AmigaOS4 (4.0) to be completed quickly by still having access to the AA chipset, and a second product, a standalone board that would work with the second version of AmigaOS4 (4.2), which would be independent of the AA chipset.

Over the past 6 months, advances in hardware have meant that the second product is actually going to be available before the first. As a result, the hardware strategy has been updated. The AmigaOne will be built around a revision 1.5 motherboard. This board will be completely independent of the AA chipset and will not need a connected A1200 in order to run AmigaOS4. There will be no motherboard with an integrated A1200 connector. Instead, Eyetech are planning on developing a PCI to A1200 product for those who wish to run older Amiga software that requires direct access to the AA chipset. In effect, the A1200 will be like just another graphics card plugged into the PCI bus of the AmigaOne.

Using this approach it is also technically feasible to use the PCI-cable interface to connect to an A3/4000 via the CPU slot connector - and even to an A2000 via a CPU pin header. These interface variations may follow later, depending on demand.

The current hardware specification for the AmigaOne is as follows;

Beginning on the 18th of March, developers and dealers can order developer versions of the boards, allowing them to evaluate the product and to be prepared for optimising their applications for AmigaOS4. To order a developer board, please use Eyetech's online shop.

For more information on the AmigaOne hardware, please visit Eyetech's AmigaOne pages.

Software Update

Hyperion Entertainment have assembled the cream of Amiga developers to work on AmigaOS4.0, guaranteeing both high quality and high performance in the final product and ensuring that AmigaOS4.0 and beyond will be a true Amiga product, created with due care and attention to the philosophy and practices that have always made Amiga solutions the envy of the world.

AmigaOS4.0 is currently being developed on Amiga 4000s equipped with CSPPC accelerators, and integration is now underway on the AmigaOne 1:5 boards provided by Eyetech.

The aim of AmigaOS4.0 is five fold;

  1. to provide a transition from the 68k based custom chipset Amiga hardware to PPC based pluggable sub system hardware
  2. to provide as great a degree of backwards compatibility as is possible
  3. to optimise the AmigaOS for its new hardware foundation
  4. to move the AmigaOS forwards, offering new features and high performance all wrapped up in the traditional easy to use Amiga architecture
  5. to prepare the way for AmigaOS5

Its feature set as currently defined is as follows;

Exec SG (Second Generation) - A rearchitectured and reimplemented Exec core services manager that allows the deployment of AmigaOS4 to any suitable PPC hardware including but not limited to the Amiga One, Blizzard PPC, Cyberstorm PPC, Shark PPC from Elbox, Pegasos from bPlan etc.

The following features are being added;

  1. Hardware abstraction layer
  2. Virtual memory
  3. New library interface
  4. Resource tracking and management
  5. Optional memory protection
  6. WarpOS backwards compatibility

68K emulation - This is key to AmigaOS4.0 as many of the less performance crucial OS elements, as well as the entire body of Amiga third party applications will require it in order to work. The latest Just In Time (JIT) techniques are being employed to ensure maximum performance, with hand tuning of many areas to accelerate the Amiga architecture.

PPC native connectivity suite - this was the most requested feature from the community, integrated connectivity, and given its importance, we trusted its development to Olaf Barthel, one of the most respected Amiga developers in the world. He has not disappointed, with benchmarks suggesting that the new AmigaOS4 solution is faster than any other available solution. Its feature set includes;

  1. implemented as a single shared library
  2. compatible with the Amiga standard "bsdsocket" API, as defined by the AmiTCP product
  3. enhanced API for more control over the inner workings and configuration
  4. built-in DHCP client
  5. Internet Superserver (inetd)
  6. IP filtering and networking address translation
  7. drivers for asynchronous PPP (dial-up networking) and PPP over Ethernet
  8. SSLv2

PPC native reimplementation of the Amiga File System (FFS2) - FFS2 is a fully backwards compatible re-implementation in C of the Fast File System. It supports media greater than 4 GBytes, and a new variant of the file/directory name storage format which allows for long file names (up to 108 characters). Salvage and recovery tools will also be included that support both FFS2 and SFS.

PPC native CD file system - the feature set for this second most requested feature of AmigaOS4 is as follows;

  1. Joiliet support
  2. RockRidge support
  3. CDDA support
  4. multi-session support
  5. Video CD support

We also intend to add support for mixed audio/data CD's and support for the HFS and HFS+ filesystem as used by Apple.

PPC native RTG system - with the AmigaOne supporting both AGP and PCI graphics cards, the ReTargetable Graphics system is crucial to high performance. Redesigned and reimplemented for AmigaOS4 and the AmigaOne, a team lead by the creators of the Picasso96 solution will ensure the hightest quality graphics display for the consumer, whether gamer, artist or general user. In addition, hand tuned drivers are being written to support the following graphics cards, with more to be announced later.

  1. Permedia 2
  2. Permedia 3
  3. Voodoo 3
  4. Matrox G450/G550
  5. ATI Radeon

Amiga3D - developed from the pioneering Warp3D solution offered by Hyperion and now available on both the AmigaOS and AmigaDE, this 3D solution offers the power and simplicity of a low level 3D interface, allowing developers to create blazingly fast 3D applications without the overhead of a fatter 3D solution such as OpenGL. Hand tuned hardware drivers for the above mentioned graphics cards will provide even higher performance. Whoever said games are irrelevant on the Amiga is in for a surprise.

OpenGL 1.3 support (mesa 4.0) - whilst Ami3D allows the developer to get down close to the metal, OpenGL is the standard for a full 3D solution. AmigaOS4.0 will offer OpenGL1.3 support by implementing mesa 4.0 on top of Ami3D, giving developers the 3D choice of performance and feature set.

PPC native RTA - With the introduction of PCI card support, the Amiga community now has access to the latest in audio hardware. Given its excellent collection of audio software, such as Audio Evolution, Samplitude and others, this AHI compatible solution will allow the AmigaOne to become a major force in audio creation. With support for most existing Amiga audio cards as well as Soundblaster live and Soundblaster 128, the future has never sounded so good.

PPC native GUI system - the entire look and feel of AmigaOS is being reworked;

Intuition is being rewritten and enhanced, to give a PPC native foundation to the AmigaOS interactive environment.

Reaction, the BOOPSI based component GUI system has been reimplemented and enhanced for seamless integration with the AmigaOS.

Many new classes are being developed whilst drag and drop will be supported across the system.

Matt Chaput, designer of the famous GlowIcons is taking a leading role in the look and feel, ensuring that AmigaOS4 will look both modern and unique.

A PPC version of AmiDock will also be included, ensuring that Workbench continues to be the most usable environment of all the desktop platforms.

PPC native CLI - the tool of choice will be removed of annoying bugs and enhanced to make it even more useful.

SCSI interface - SCSI will be supported, allowing the many devices already owned by Amigans to be used, but with particular attention being paid to SCSI devices that use the SCRIPTS controller, for the next generation of devices.

AmigaInput - A new framework for managing input devices is being designed as a prelude to the requirements for AmigaOS5. This will appear in AmigaOS4 and become a crucial part of the developing Amiga solution.

USB - USB was to be introduced in AmigaOS4.2 but given the developemtent of the 1:5 motherboard, parts of it will be introduced in AmigaOS4.0. Currently this will allow USB mice and keyboards to be supported but, if all goes well, new devices will be added as they become available, with scanner support next in line.

PPC datatypes - the datatypes system has been implemented and extended within the AmigaDE, demonstrating our commitment to superior Amiga technology. With the move to PPC, the system and many of the datatypes will also be moved across, increasing their performance dramatically.

PPC Storage Toolbox - a set of functions allowing for the management of fixed and removable storage devices.

PPC font engine - surprisingly one of the most requested features for AmigaOS4.0, a brand new font engine will be added to the AmigaOS, providing support for both True Type and Open Type fonts. In addition, bullet.library and diskfont.library will be reimplemented and enhanced and a contract with Agfa for 12 truetype fonts has been negotiated.

In addition, many Amiga developers are coming forwards and demonstrating their commitment to the AmigaOne and AmigaOS4; in particular

  1. 1. Special PPC native OEM version of Ibrowse 2.3
  2. PPC native version of MUI for applications that require it
  3. Special PPC native lite version of Audio Evolution

All in all, AmigaOS4.0 is shaping up to be a very compelling and exciting product which in combination with the AmigaOne will provide the product that we have been waiting so long to offer to the Amiga community.

Whilst the the changed schedule for the AmigaOne boards is very welcome, it has added AmigaOS4.2 work to the schedule for AmigaOS4.0, namely the abstraction of the AA chipset. Coupled with the need to reimplement certain features included by Haage and Partner in AmigaOS3.5 and AmigaOS3.9, this may push out the final consumer delivery date; an analysis is underway at the moment to determine this.

The Amiga community is owed a great debt by Amiga Inc and, with the success of AmigaDE now allowing us to build revenues and increase resources, the long layed plans for the future of both the AmigaDE and the AmigaOS can be put into action. Thanks for all your support and here's to the future,

Signed on behalf of Amiga Inc, Eyetech, Hyperion and all those working together for the future of the Amiga.

Bill McEwen
CEO
Amiga Inc
Snoqualmie, WA

ToC

Editorialities by Eric W. Schwartz

Eric W. Schwartz, Editor
AmiTech-Dayton Gazette, March 2002

I periodically rediscover a certain realization --- The world of computing is a very different place now than it was when I first got into it. In the eighties, the top computers were eight-bit wonders, good for games or getting some office work done, and best of all, they were inexpensive, from $100 to $500, up to over $1000 if you wanted a "serious" computer like an IBM PC or an Apple II. Admittedly, inflation would push those prices up a bit for today, but surely the equivalent of a $200 Atari or Commodore computer would not cost a thousand bucks today. The Amiga grew out of those times, when it was not shameful to have your own custom formats, hardware, or operating system, and value for money was a larger force in the market. That has obviously changed. The crippling majority of all systems are based on Windows, which forces everyone else to adopt at least some of that operating system's "standards" in order to seem like part of the market. The real killer from then to now, for me at least, is that there are no truly inexpensive systems to be found anymore, unless you count machines such as game consoles or WebTVs, or resort to pre-owned hardware.

I'm sure people who can build their own systems in their sleep will tell me I'm wrong, but the real truth is in the stores, where the average person shops for a computer. You're unlikely to find any desktop system for less than 6 or 7 hundred, or laptop for under $1000. It's not because it can't be done (as the system-builders know), it's more a symptom of the market. We have Intel and their clones, constantly making bigger, faster, hotter, more expensive CPUs, and Microsoft and the rest of the software makers coming up with bigger, but not necessarily better, gluts of code to take up the slack. Each new software release or OS upgrade places much bigger demands on the hardware than the last, leaving us with our expensive cutting-edge machine-pushing obsolescence in a matter of months --- at least that's how it often seems. It's not a system that's likely to change either, since it's a push to keep the consumer spending money to keep up. The not-as-cutting-edge machines are naturally less expensive, but those same forces of movement pull the older technology off the shelves before they become actually inexpensive, however.

I find it quite ironic that the expensive, decked-out, obsolete in a week computer and the sub-$300 console are both ideal for the same group --- hard-core game players. From what I've seen, a hefty percentage of computer users today make use of their machines roughly the same as they did in the days of the Vic-20: Basic office work and the occasional game, though of course nowadays you can add web-surfing to that too. None of those activities are fundamentally horsepower-intensive, so I think it wouldn't be too tough at all to put together a 3 to 4 hundred dollar system, maybe even a $100 system, to appeal to that market, and the more frugal side of it. Sure, it wouldn't have all the bells and whistles, and might only run at 600 Mhz or so, but it's not needed to do the same things you might have used a Commodore 64 to do 18 years ago. It's a concept that has been tried before in various ways, from CD-I to WebTV to Email terminals, even to Palm Pilots and the like. Companies like Extreme computers are building fairly inexpensive PC-based Amigas (with the help of Amithlon), and it's possible to turn a Playstation 2 into a Linux box for programming purposes. I'm just surprised no one seems to have the guts to produce and market a cheap Windows machine, where the answer to the question of "how fast does it run" is "Fast enough," and the answer to "How does this compare to that top-end Dell machine?" is "It's 1200 bucks less."

Better yet, tell them it runs quicker because it's running Amiga OS.

ToC

The CUCUG Section:

March General Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

The March General Meeting took place on March 21, 2002.

Just prior to the main CUCUG meeting, Linux group were treated to an exploration of the KDE environment by John Ross.

President Jim Lewis began the main meeting with the traditional introduction of officers. Next, he welcomed our visitors for the evening, among whom was Wayne Hamilton, one of the co-founders of the original Champaign Urbana Amiga Users Group. CUAUG joined with CUCUG in 1987. It was good to see Wayne again.

Jim made mention of the Linux SIG's activities this evening.

Jim then turned to PC News. He asked for a report from Kevin Hisel, but Kevin had nothing to report. Mike Latinovich said it had been a slow month. About the only topic that raised any interest was CD burners. Rich Hall brought up the topic of the HP / Compaq merger. Jim Lewis offered up the news that Intel had released the newest iteration of the Celeron chip, noting that the Celeron now had a P3 core and the cache memory had not been crippled in the process. Jim said, "They're cheap: under a hundred dollars, and for all intents and purposes they're a P3. Any motherboard that'll handle P3s will handle these chips and that includes any multiprocessor versions there may be. Also, you can overclock a 1 Ghz chip to 1.3 or 1.4 quite handily."

Kevin Hisel talked about the Microsoft court battle with the nine states that won't let them off the hook as easily as the Bush administration wants to do. He noted that a settlement might be the breeding ground for multiple versions of Windows to meet specific specifications.

Jim Lewis brought up an annoyance he had been having with the Real audio player. He said the Real-One player insists on running a little "fetch" type program when it loads, that goes out on the Web and trolls up some RM ads to annoyingly "pop up" at various times. First, he tried to keep it from auto-starting with MSConfig, but every time he ran Real One, it came back. So, he fired up the XP Task Manager, discovered the name and location of the program that was doing the fetching and deleted it. No more annoying popups! Now when Real One tries to run the thing, NOTHING happens, just the way it should be!!

In a note after the meeting Jim said, "Here's where this thing lives under XP:

C:\Program Files\Common Files\Real\Update_OB\evntsvc.exe

According to Jim Huls after a time (unknown how long), Real One will re-download this little irritant and it's Deja-Vu, all over again. This hasn't happened yet, Jim stated, but when/if it does, he's going to write a script to look for and delete the thing and schedule it to run daily after the Antivirus and defrag tasks. "I'll get that little begger for GOOD!!" Jim said.

Harold Ravlin brought up the item from the newsletter about Walmart.com selling PCs with no installed OS.

Bill Zwicky asked if it was worth upgrading to Windows XP yet. Our XP experts said yes.

Rich Rollins informed everyone that the HP Scanjet software for Windows XP was now available. Kevin Hisel noted that it had some rudimentary OCR software in it.

Mac News: Jack Melby announced that the topic for this evening's Mac SIG meeting would be some very nice shareware and freeware utilities for OS X.

Richard Rollins brought up an article he saw in today's Wall Street Journal about the price for the new flat panel iMacs going up by $100, noting that RAM prices have tripled since the iMacs were introduced in January and the price of the flat panel screens have gone up 25% and are in short supply. He also noted that the iPod now comes with a 10 Gig hard drive.

Pixar has launched a lawsuit against a company started by 5 former employees.

There was an update to iTunes, today, to version 2.04.

Linux News: When asked for the Linux News, John Ross began by showing a couple articles from the tabloids. The first was one from The Star, entitled "Bill Clinton to Head All Girls School (Monica to be Assistant Principle)". The second was from the National Enquirer: "Smoking doesn't cause cancer -- People cause cancer." (Actually, John made up that headline.) Then, he turned to the topic of concern, from the CUCUG newsletter: "Windows More Secure Than Linux? Yep!" John said the articles were all of a par. John commented on the latter item, submitted to the newsletter by Jim Lewis, which stated Windows was more secure than Linux. To say the least, the article was... misleading. John encouraged people to view the original numbers themselves and noted that the website even admits up front that bugs in 3rd party applications were counted against Linux, but bugs in Windows-compatible software were not counted against Windows. Clearly, a double-standard.

http://securityfocus.com/vulns/stats.shtml

There was laughter, but the point had been made.

John went on to say it had been a quiet month on the Linux front. He talked a little about Star Office. He also spoke about Oracle 9I, a download for Linux mainframes, but as this is hugely expensive, it is of little practical consideration to the rank and file.

SuSE 8 is due out April 22.

Matt Skaj commented on some crazy bills that have been emanating from Insight. The service has gone up to $54 per month despite their promise not to raise their rates. Matt urged people to attend the oversight commission meeting on April 17 to voice their protest.

Richard Rollins showed the Linux CDs that are available from the club through him.

Bill Zwicky said he has Virtual PC for Windows running Linux.

Charlie Earle asked about speed of connection settings for stuff like Limewire. Kevin Hisel informed him this wasn't for his download speed, but to inform others of the speed of his connection to be able to download things from him.

ToC

The Linux SIG: Linux End User Applications

by Kris Klindworth (kris.klindworth@Carle.com)

In the March Linux SIG meeting, John Ross gave an introduction to end users applications for Linux. Most of his time was spent on office applications. We saw parts of the KDE office suit and the StarOffice/OpenOffice suit. We also saw the stand-alone word processor AbiWord and the spreadsheet program Gnumeric.

John went into the greatest detail with StarOffice, demonstrating the word processor, spreadsheet, and slideshow/presentation applications. They all displayed good though not perfect abilities to import MS-Office data files. StarOffice 5.2 is available now for free. Version 6.0, currently out in beta release, is expected to retail at the $100 price point with volume discounts as low as $25. OpenOffice 6.0 will continue to be down-loadable for free.

The greatest difference between the two versions is that 5.2 requires that you run the individual applications from the StarOffice desktop, where as version 6.0 allows you to run the applications independently from the desktop. StarOffice 6.0 is based on OpenOffice 6.0. It includes several proprietary extensions to OpenOffice, including the Adabas D database and a more extensive clip art gallery. John also made the point that both version are available for both the Linux and Windows platforms.

Toward the end, John demonstrated several graphic and multi-media applications. We saw Gimp, which is an open-source graphics program that works very much like Photoshop. We also saw the XMMS MP3 player and the plaympeg, gtv, and mpg123 mpeg video players.

Resouces:
      http://www.openoffice.org
      http://www.staroffice.org
      http://www.koffice.org
      http://www.gimp.org
      http://www.abiword.org
      http://www.gnome.org
      http://www.gnumeric

ToC

The Macintosh SIG: Jack Melby shows OS X freeware and shareware utilities

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

This evening Jack Melby gave a presentation on OS X freeware and shareware utilities which make the OS X experience more enjoyable.

First he addressed miscellaneous software that allows the user to run Unix tasks from the GUI without the necessity of dealing with the Terminal, among which were:

Swap Cop - change swap file locations (virtual memory space) (freeware; http://homepage.mac.com/jschrier/).

MacJanitor - allows the user to run shell scripts for regular maintenance that would otherwise be scheduled to run in the middle of the night when the computer might be off (freeware; http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/macjanitor.html; NOTE: this software is written by the same person who wrote Brickhouse, and his site contains several other useful items).

REALejectX will do a Force Eject of troublesome disks (freeware); available from http://www.realsoftware.com.

Xoptimize - an add-on to update pre-bindings; can greatly improve system performance if used periodically (freeware; http://www.versiontracker.com/moreinfo.fcgi?id=10451&db=mac).

Brickhouse - firewall configurer (shareware); http://personalpages.tds.net/~brian_hill/brickhouse.html

FireWalk - firewall configurer (shareware); http://www.pliris-soft.com. Jack said, for what it's worth, he recommends this one over Brickhouse.

Next he addressed group/permissions/file and creator types utilities:

BatChmod - owner/group permissions modifier and can force the Trash to empty of troublesome files (freeware); http://homepage.mac.com/arbysoft.

Xray - fixes all problems relating to permissions, locked files, file owners, forced trash emptying, and lots of other bells and whistles--definitely a MUST HAVE! (shareware; http://www.brockerhoff.net/xray).

SuperGetInfo - a commercial program from Bare Bones Software ; similar to XRay and FileXaminer.

In addition, a terrific program now called FileXaminer (formerly "GetInfo" - the name was already taken) does most of what BatChmod and XRay, and SuperGetInfo do, with a few additional features (shareware; http://www.gideonsoftworks.com).

Jack also mentioned that the plain old system Get Info has some amazing hidden capabilities. It will allow you to change which program a file (or class of files) will use when they open. He showed how to change all Simple Text files so that they will use OS X's Text Edit as their application when they open.

Next were System Preference panes:

ASM - Apple Switcher Menu - like the old Application Switcher; lists all programs, both OS X-native and Classic, currently running and allows easy switching between them (freeware; http://asm.vercruesse.de).

"Haxies" written by Unsanity Software (http://www.unsanity.com): Programs that do useful things like FruitMenu ($7; enables a customizable Apple Menu like that in previous Mac OS versions),

and

WindowShadeX ($7; performs the function of the old WindowShade control panel--but that's only the beginning!).

TinkerTool -- gives the user control over many aspects of the OS X UI--system and application fonts, anti-aliasing, scroll bars, dock, media auto-play options, and much more (freeware; http://www.bresink.de/osx/TinkerTool2.html). A MUST HAVE!

USB Overdrive - a preference pane that supports practically all USB input devices--mice (including those with any number of multiple buttons), trackballs, scrolling wheels, joysticks, keyboards, gamepads, etc. Usually works better than the software provided by the hardware developers (shareware; http://www.usboverdrive.com/.

Other useful items:

Classic Spy - puts a little ball on the menu bar with an X (if Classic is not running) or a 9 (if Classic is running) in it and allows the user to start and stop Classic without going to System preferences (freeware, http://homepage.mac.com/costique/sw/products.html).

Snax - a Finder replacement - has spring-loaded folders and many more features (shareware; http://www.cocoatech.com).

BootCD - creates a bootable OS X CD (freeware; http://www.macfixit.com/library/tul/BootCD.sit

CarbonCopyCloner - backup entire OS X volume to another volume (freeware; http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html).

(NOTE: Holding down the Apple-S key combination on boot up causes you to enter Single User Mode. Once there, type "fsck -y" to fix problems on the OS X startup volume. Repeat this instruction until the report says that the volume appears to be OK, and then type "reboot" to start up in OS X.)

WordLookUp - As supplied, WordLookup has 'Book' support for translating words using downloadable books (plugins). These can be obtained so far for English to and from Spanish, Chinese, Japanese, Latin, German and New Zealand Maori(!). In addition you can use IDP (Internet Dictionary Project) files with WordLookup as well (freeware; http://www.lindesay.co.nz/).

Photoshop Elements - stripped down version of Photoshop ($99--but an upgrade from an old copy of Photoshop LE or PhotoDeluxe, one or the other of which comes with nearly every scanner and/or inkjet printer, will drop the price to $70; http://www.adobe.com). It's kind of a Best of Photoshop for the average user. It replaces Photoshop LE. Kevin Hopkins mentioned the free Unix clone version called NIH Image.

Ed Hadley asked about a filetype problem he was having at work. Jack recommended FileTyper, a Classic application, to handle it, but the items above under "Group/permissions/file and creator types utilities" will also handle this problem.

NOTE: If you're afraid of using the Terminal, skip the following:

X-Windows on Mac OS X: go to http://fink.sourceforge.net/ for information on Fink, a package manager that can perform a painless installation of XFree86 and a large number of X-Windows applications, such as the following:

XFree86 - installs X Darwin. This must be installed to use X-Windows on OS X, but it can be installed by Fink.

The GIMP (Graphics Image Manipulation Program) - similar to Photoshop, but free!

OroborOSX - invisible X Windows manager that allows X-Windows to run in "rootless" mode alongside OS X applications.

AbiWord - word processor with some MS Word compatibility.

XonX - site dedicated to porting X-Windows applications to OS X (http://sourceforge.net/projects/xonx/).

Information about other useful items can be found at http://www.macfixit.com/library/osxu.shtml.

ToC

March Board Meeting

reported by Kevin Hopkins (kh2@uiuc.edu)

The March meeting of the CUCUG executive board took place on Tuesday, March 26, 2002, at 7PM, at Kevin Hisel's house. (For anyone wishing to attend - which is encouraged, by the way - the address and phone number are both in the book). Present at the meeting were: Jim Lewis, Dave Witt, Mike Latinovich, Kris Klindworth, Rich Hall, Jim Huls, Kevin Hopkins, Kevin Hisel, and Emil Cobb.

Before the meeting began officially, Kevin readdressed a question that had arisen at the main meeting on Thursday about Insight and their billing practices on their Internet services. He said he had called and gotten the information directly from their Marketing Coordinator (article elsewhere in the newsletter). This launched a big discussion about Insight's service and many of their competitors.

Jim Lewis: Jim said the meeting was interesting. He commented on the phantom Internet connect problem the Mac SIG was having in the back room. We never did get connected and Jim said he would run the problem down.

Jim noted that the Linux SIG seems to be growing. He said perhaps we should populate the room with chairs prior to the meeting to encourage people to come in. He stated that John's presentation this last time was great.

Turning to the Windows SIG, Jim said, "Mr. Serbe did an exemplary job, as usual. It was pretty cool. Ed always draws a crowd." Several Board members made jealous statements about how well Ed flew the helicopter simulator. Their own propensity for crashing sparked these envious comments.

On a business note, Jim said we should get some Visitors forms in the hands of our Linux SIG chairmen.

Dave Witt: Dave said, "Ed's presentation was awesome." The Linux meeting was very good An hour is hardly enough time to learn everything that is being offered.

Dave reported that Sony had announced the release of Linux for the Playstation 2 and a price drop of $100. Pretty impressive.

Mike Latinovich: Mike said he couldn't understand who'd want to put Linux on a Playstation 2 anyway. Kris said it might open up the hardware to more game development. Mike responded that there was no API for it, so he didn't buy that argument.

Anyway, Mike said it was interesting to see some of the applications John was showing for Linux. Star Office 6 looks really, really nice. Mike winked and said, "It makes me hate Linux less than I do."

Regarding the Windows SIG, Mike stated that he had learned stuff about his own video card that he didn't know it did. He also said he saw more about Flight Simulator than he could comprehend.

Kris Klindworth: Kris said John did a great job with his presentation. Linux is getting there for the end user ... but not quite there yet. Maybe in another year.

Kris said the Mac SIG was kind of interesting.

Kris reported that there were some questions about the article in the newsletter about Windows being more "secure" than Linux. He asked if it had been offered "Tongue in cheek." Everyone agreed it was well within the range our usual twisted sense of humor. Jim Lewis, who submitted the article, said it was "baloney."

Kris said he had plugged CUCUG on a WILL radio show he had done on Monday, March 4 at 10:00 am on the topic of Linux.

Next month, the Linux SIG will be learning how to install software from source code or RPM archives (Redhat Package Manager).

Rich Hall: Rich reported that we had one member join at the last meeting. We also had two join through the mail. He also noted the payment received from Emil Cobb for one of the TIMM monitors.

Jim Huls: Jim expressed his opinion that the "meeting was cool." He enjoyed the Linux SIG. He also noted that "Ed always does a good presentation."

Jim brought up the possibility of organizing a Saturday afternoon gaming meeting. This was discussed.

Rich Hall brought up the idea about dedicating a monthly meeting to a single platform so that everyone could get an in depth, 3 hour exposure to what other members in the club are doing. Each SIG could take a machine from beginning to end, from OS installation to the final tweaks. Mike Latinovich voiced his opinion that he'd like to see that. Jim suggested that we coordinate this over the next couple of weeks via email. We could do these specially focused meetings, interspersed with general monthly meetings, as the year progressed.

Kevin Hopkins: Kevin reported that our current membership total is 39. Emil requested a list for his badge making.

Kevin passed on Jack Melby's apologies for not being at the meeting this evening. He had home repair issues to deal with. Jack also requested that Charlie's email address be corrected on CUCUG's home page.

Kevin Hisel: Kevin made note of his previous comments on Insight's billing. He said that through some SNAFU any CUCUG.org email address had ceased to work. He was speaking with Advancenet about this. A discussion about this service ensued. Kevin made mention of the surprising fact that our web site usage hasn't gone down for at least a year and a half, since the big drop off after the Amiga Web Directory was retired.

At this point, John Ross paged Kris Klindworth at the Board meeting and told him to give us hell and said if we really wanted a secure system, we could use his VIC20. Everyone had a good laugh. Missed you, John!

Emil Cobb: Emil reported that we had 29 members in attendance at the last meeting.

Emil said perhaps he would put together a CD of Palm software.

ToC

The Back Page:

The CUCUG is a not-for-profit corporation, originally organized in 1983 to support and advance the knowledge of area Commodore computer users. We've grown since then, now supporting PC, Macintosh and Linux platforms.

Meetings are held the third Thursday of each month at 7:00 p.m. at the Illinois Technology Center. The Center is located at 7101 Tomaras Ave in Savoy. To get to the Illinois Technology Center from Champaign or Urbana, take Neil Street (Rt 45) south. Setting the trip meter in your car to zero at the McDonalds on the corner of Kirby/Florida and Neil in Champaign, you only go 2.4 miles south. Windsor will be at the one mile mark. Curtis will be at the two mile mark. Go past the Paradise Inn/Best Western motel to the next street, Tomaras Ave. on the west (right) side. Tomaras is at the 2.4 mile mark. Turn west (right) on Tomaras Ave. The parking lot entrance is immediately on the south (left) side of Tomaras Ave. Enter the building by the front door under the three flags facing Rt 45. A map can be found on the CUCUG website at http://www.cucug.org/meeting.html . The Illinois Technology Center is also on the web at www.IL-Tech-Ctr.com .

Membership dues for individuals are $20 annually; prorated to $10 at mid year.

Our monthly newsletter, the Status Register, is delivered by email. All recent editions are available on our WWW site. To initiate a user group exchange, just send us your newsletter or contact our editor via email. As a matter of CUCUG policy, an exchange partner will be dropped after three months of no contact.

For further information, please attend the next meeting as our guest, or contact one of our officers (all at area code 217):

   President/WinSIG:   Jim Lewis                621-2343                 lewisj@pdnt.com
   Vice-President:     Emil Cobb                398-0149                 e-cobb@uiuc.edu
   Secretary/Editor:   Kevin Hopkins            356-5026                    kh2@uiuc.edu
   Treasurer:          Richard Hall             344-8687                 rjhall1@uiuc.edu
   Corporate Agent:    Jim Lewis                621-2343                 lewisj@pdnt.com
   Board Advisor:      Richard Rollins          469-2616
   Webmaster:          Kevin Hisel              406-948-1999           khisel @ kevinhisel.com
   Mac SIG Co-Chair:   John Melby               352-3638           jbmelby@johnmelby.com
   Mac SIG Co-Chair:   Charles Melby-Thompson   352-3638            cmelby@princeton.edu
   Linux SIG Co-Chair: John Ross                469-0208  hurricanejohnn@prairieinet.net
   Linux SIG Co-Chair: Kris Klindworth          239-0097       kris.klindworth@Carle.com

Surf our web site at http://www.cucug.org/

CUCUG
912 Stratford Dr.