Boing Boing: A talented speech therapist attended ...
Science fiction fans are alleged to have a characteristic pattern of speech. Sounds like geek/engineer speak to me. Guilty thereof.
Wednesday, October 13, 2004
Points for Safari over Firefox/Mozilla
Faughnan-Lagace Herald: Local and International News
Safari is often criticized for being less standards compliant than Firefox/Mozilla, but on this page it wins out. Both Safari and IE correctly refresh the iframe-embedded page, Firefox/Mozilla caches it until one manually clears the FF cache.
Now if Safari would only render recursive menu tags in a reasonable fashion ...
Safari is often criticized for being less standards compliant than Firefox/Mozilla, but on this page it wins out. Both Safari and IE correctly refresh the iframe-embedded page, Firefox/Mozilla caches it until one manually clears the FF cache.
Now if Safari would only render recursive menu tags in a reasonable fashion ...
Tuesday, October 12, 2004
USB Bluetooth Adapter (Class 2) - $40
USB Bluetooth Adapter (Class 2)
Reasonably compact. Still likely to get whacked off the side of a laptop. They might as well bundle it with some memory (thumb drive) given the size and shape.
Reasonably compact. Still likely to get whacked off the side of a laptop. They might as well bundle it with some memory (thumb drive) given the size and shape.
Apple selling used machines as new?
MacInTouch Home Page: "used Apple computers are apparently being sold as new ones"
Sounds like the problems were not subtle. I wonder if this is legal. Macintouch is collecting stories.
Sounds like the problems were not subtle. I wonder if this is legal. Macintouch is collecting stories.
Monday, October 11, 2004
Limitation of Apple's OS X setup Assistant system migration utility: Kernel Extensions
MacInTouch Home Page
Following up on issues with Apple's new Setup Assistant (included with the iMac G5, Power Mac G5, and other new Macs), we realized that it has at least one critical limitation: When you use it to migrate from another Mac system, even one that's up to date with the latest Mac OS X software, Setup Assistant apparently excludes kernel extensions ('.kext'), causing certain applications to fail. A perfect example is PGP Disk, which needs /Library/Extensions/PGPdiskDriver.kext to function. Another is Kensington's MouseWorks.
You'll have to manually re-install these applications, but it's not obvious which they are. You can search for 'kext' in the Finder, which is a start. You can dig deeper using Terminal to issue Unix commands. For example, you can type
kextstat -k
to list active kernel extensions. ('kextload' and 'kextunload' provide dynamic control over the loading and unloading of kernel extensions, but dependencies among extensions could create technical issues that may be very tricky to navigate.)
Digital Photo Copy Cruiser Plus: Burn CDs of images
Digital Photo Copy Cruiser Plus
One of the big fears of traveling with a digital camera is losing images -- especially if one doesn't also travel with a laptop, or one doesn't have a CD burner in the laptop. (The latter is rare now, but sadly I bought my G3 iBook without a CD burner. I really ought to start looking for used G4 iBook or even another G3 with a CD burner ...)
There are several products like this emerging -- probably all using innards for the same Taiwanese/Chinese manufacturers. They make it possible to travel with a digital camera and without a laptop. They are particularly appealing because they have their own internal LiOn battery.
The idea is that every few days one burns two CDs from every memory card, then erases the card. Mail one CD home and keep one with you. (Distributing images to friends at parties/etc is probably another "feature", not sure how well that would work in practice.)
Next best thing is to have an iPod to backup images on -- especially if one travels with an iPod anyway. Problem is current iPods require an expensive, bulky, and kludgy add-on to pull in digital images. I hope the next generation iPod will work with any memory card reader or mini-USB camera connector. We'll see -- Apple has has had a surprising amount of trouble figuring out digital images (witness their underfunding of iPhoto development).
There are other hard drive image stores, analogous to the iPod, but like the iPod they are not as safe as mailing CDs. Luggage does get stolen.
This is going on my "to consider" shopping list. I may wait until the price competition gets fierce -- or until they incorporate a DVD burner as well. I will also look for a manufacturer who gets the "power brick right" including. They key thing will be either:
1. recharge via USB 2 cable (there are lots of compact USB 2 charging devices on the market).
2. have a very compact and elegant power brick (but #1 is better).
Most vendors of these sorts of devices mess up on the power brick/adapter/charger.
So things to look for:
1. replaceable or standard LiOn battery (such things exist - as in digital cameras. Wouldn't it be radical for such a device to use the same LiOn battery the camera used? Nahhh.).
2. external compact LiOn charger or USB 2.0 charger
3. DVD burning support (futuristic, takes more power, more complex, etc.)
One of the big fears of traveling with a digital camera is losing images -- especially if one doesn't also travel with a laptop, or one doesn't have a CD burner in the laptop. (The latter is rare now, but sadly I bought my G3 iBook without a CD burner. I really ought to start looking for used G4 iBook or even another G3 with a CD burner ...)
There are several products like this emerging -- probably all using innards for the same Taiwanese/Chinese manufacturers. They make it possible to travel with a digital camera and without a laptop. They are particularly appealing because they have their own internal LiOn battery.
The idea is that every few days one burns two CDs from every memory card, then erases the card. Mail one CD home and keep one with you. (Distributing images to friends at parties/etc is probably another "feature", not sure how well that would work in practice.)
Next best thing is to have an iPod to backup images on -- especially if one travels with an iPod anyway. Problem is current iPods require an expensive, bulky, and kludgy add-on to pull in digital images. I hope the next generation iPod will work with any memory card reader or mini-USB camera connector. We'll see -- Apple has has had a surprising amount of trouble figuring out digital images (witness their underfunding of iPhoto development).
There are other hard drive image stores, analogous to the iPod, but like the iPod they are not as safe as mailing CDs. Luggage does get stolen.
This is going on my "to consider" shopping list. I may wait until the price competition gets fierce -- or until they incorporate a DVD burner as well. I will also look for a manufacturer who gets the "power brick right" including. They key thing will be either:
1. recharge via USB 2 cable (there are lots of compact USB 2 charging devices on the market).
2. have a very compact and elegant power brick (but #1 is better).
Most vendors of these sorts of devices mess up on the power brick/adapter/charger.
So things to look for:
1. replaceable or standard LiOn battery (such things exist - as in digital cameras. Wouldn't it be radical for such a device to use the same LiOn battery the camera used? Nahhh.).
2. external compact LiOn charger or USB 2.0 charger
3. DVD burning support (futuristic, takes more power, more complex, etc.)
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