Think Different store: iPod and Apple accessories

iSkin eXo iPod Cases

MadsonLine Portable Power Devices: iPods and Portables

MadsonLine Portable Power DevicesAnother eclectic vendor of OS X/Mac portable hardware. Well known and respected.

Other World Computing: Mac upgrades, odd hardware

Other World ComputingAn eccentric Mac vendor who's been around for 15 years. Quite a selection of useful and plain odd equipment.

Installing Panther: bug in 10.3.1 breaks .dmg file mounting on some machines?

MacInTouch Home Page: "My sister just got a new iBook G4 and asked me to configure it. So the first thing I did after going though the setup stuff was to update it 10.3.1. I then tried to mount a .dmg file but it failed. Checking the boards I found this to be a known issue with no fix from Apple. One of the threads put me on the path to the solution, at least for me.
What I found from the threads is that there's a plist file that gets created the first time you mount a .dmg file. This file is called com.apple.frameworks.diskimages.diskimagesuiagent.plist. When I search for the file it was missing. That got me thinking, could this be the problem. The .dmg file won't mount because the plist is missing.
So to test my theory I reinstalled 10.3, but this time before upgrading to 10.3.1, I first mounted a .dmg file. Then I checked to make sure the file com.apple.frameworks.diskimages.diskimagesuiagent.plist was created, which it was. Then I updated to 10.3.1, and now .dmg files mount just fine. So before upgrading to 10.3.1 make sure you have mounted at least one .dmg file so the plist is created.
It looks like I found a bug in 10.3.1 plists; if they are missing they are supposed to be recreated, like 10.3 did, but 10.3.1 failed to do so."

Cat lovers and rare beef eaters may be easy prey for automobiles ...

BBC NEWS | Health | Eat worms - feel better

One third of Britons carry the toxoplasma parasite in their brain.

Its natural home is the cat and it's spread in cats' faeces. It can be picked up by any mammal, from rats to cattle. The main way we get it is by eating undercooked meat (which is why 80% of the French are estimated to have it, with their love of rare meat).

Once we have it we have it for life, there's no way we can get rid of it.

Research shows it somehow manipulates rats' behaviour - it makes rats attracted to cats - their natural predator, so they're more likely to be eaten by a cat and the parasite can complete its life cycle.

For years scientists thought it had no effect on our behaviour, but now the parasite's changing their minds. Recent research suggests that people with toxyplasma have slower reaction times than those without and are also more than twice as likely to be involved in a traffic accident than those who aren't carrying the parasite.

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The BBC news story is a tie in to a BBC broadcast. The broadcast sounds gruesome and fascinating. I've been following the UC/hookworm studies for years and I'm looking forward to the study publications. This Toxoplasma data is new to me though, and it's rather unsettling. It's not good news for people who have pet cats or who like their meat rare. Personally, I'm switching to well done, though it may be too late for me! Good news for dog loving cat hating vegetarians though ... (I think dogs don't get toxoplasma ...)

Palm desktop security: good usenet thread

Google Groups: View Thread "PALM desktop 4.1 password prompt"

Slashdot | Review of inMotion iPod Speakers

Slashdot | Review: inMotion iPod Speakers (updated)

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The reviewer has a good point. For the price they should come with a standard iPod power adaptor and a firewire cable, and it's disappointing the speakers can't be angled. The iPod power adaptor is a marvelous travel companion, the inMotion speakers use a typical cheap wall wart.

These are popular, but if they came with an iPod power adaptor and iPod cable ... wow.

Maybe SONY will adapt their superb travel speakers in this way ...